Uncomfortable for me, I mean; she looks perfectly comfortable in them — comfortable and sexy. Of all the times I’ve thought about seeing Jourdan again, it wasn’t like this. And of all the things I fantasized her wearing, it wasn’t this much. But the details don’t matter; I still want her, desperately.

“Fuck,” I grumble under my breath, the hand at my side clenching.

“Oooh, I’m telling mama,” Nate says with a childlike giggle. It pulls me out of the lust-filled spiral.

“No, don’t. Shit,” I gasp.

Nate howls in laughter, his adorable little boy laugh making me smile even as I feel like the ground is sinking under my feet.

“Forget you heard that, please.”

My son shakes his head. “Nuh-uh. No way.”

“Buddy, come on.”

He shakes his head with his whole body.

I run a hand over my beard and glance up. My eyes crash into Jourdan’s. She’s blinking at me with lifted eyebrows and slightly parted lips. She looks as shocked as I feel. That’s oddly comforting in some small way.

Maybe if we were still dating, this would be less awkward. Coincidences do happen, and our city isn’t that big, right? But we’re not still dating. I haven’t seen Jourdan since the nature preserve. And since pushing at her boundaries was why that date crashed and burned to ashes in front of me, I can’t escape the fear that showing up at her job — however accidentally — might be too much for her. It’s too much for me.

I’m so happy to see her that for a brief moment, joy overrides my fear.

I squeeze Nate’s shoulder — mostly for my own benefit — and make eye contact with Jourdan, silently pleading with her to understand that I didn’t know. If there’s a look that communicates, “Fuck, I swear I didn’t know you worked here, I’m here by chance,” I channel it.

This really is an accident. Our regular optometrist’s office is a forty-five-minute drive away. We go there for the boys’ check-ups once a year, but we don’t have time in the middle of a busy week to drive there just to pick up Nate’s glasses. This was just the closest distributor to us. We knew Jourdan worked in the medical field, but not in optometry. I never could have guessed.

We’d thought she was a nurse. In fact, Nadia and I had crafted an elaborate fantasy about her in a nurse’s outfit that ended with Nadia bent over the bathtub with me balls-deep inside her. We’d hoped to recreate it one day. With Jourdan.

But if she understands what I’m trying to communicate, she doesn’t care.

“Hello, how can I help you?” the other woman at the front desk asks.