Just Like That (29 page)
“What about Nat-Natalia?” Sam asked, tripping over her name.
“She knows that one of us comes over to her house, too, but we didn’t tell her, or the other ladies, about you. We knew it was important to you to keep that secret.” Sam didn’t know what to think, or feel, about the revelation. “I’ve got to go.”
“You coming down here?” Kevin asked.
“No.” Sam disconnected before Kevin could ask him more, or make him feel guilty. Guilti
er.
Sam scrubbed his hand over his face feeling agitated and exhausted at the same time.
Would she be okay? If so, could he go back to how things were, him just showing up once a week when she wasn’t home? He had a nearly overwhelming urge to storm into the hospital and demand to know what was going on. He also wanted to hug Natalia. And tell her that he cared and wanted her to be okay.
If she wasn’t okay…
He shut down that train of thought before it could go any further.
Danika, bless her, didn’t try to talk to him any more. She probably knew that he was replaying all of her words about going to the hospital even without her repeating it out loud.
She was right. He’d gotten to know Natalia quite well now that he was thinking about it. The allergic to poppy seeds thing hadn’t registered until Dani asked him about it, for instance. Sam leaned his head back against the headrest and let his mind wander over Natalia’s house, over her life, or at least the snapshot of it he’d been given.
She drank coffee out of the same cup every day. He’d been there on almost every day of the week at some point and that cup was always the one sitting next to the sink with the millimeter of coffee left in the bottom. There were others in the cupboard of course, but that was the one she used. He assumed there was some significance to that, and now he was curious about the story behind that cup.
Other things started coming to mind quickly, as if he’d let the plug out of the dam he’d put on the realizations and…okay,
emotions
, he had about Natalia.
She watched CBS most often. When he turned on the TV to check it, no matter what day or time he was there, it was always on CBS. From her refrigerator and the cards and letters on her kitchen counter he
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knew that she had fifteen grandchildren and three great grandchildren. Her oldest son lived in Tennessee.
She saved pennies in an old-fashioned milk bottle on her dresser, collected thimbles that were displayed in a shadow box in her living room and she’d read the entire series
The
Chronicles of Narnia
in the past year.
That was an easier one though. She’d had the books on the table next to her chair each week.
Sam felt his throat thicken. He supposed in many ways the look into Natalia’s life that he’d been given was more accurately who she was than most, or any, other people in her life saw. After all, when was anyone more themselves than when they were alone at home? Even when a person had guests over they cleaned and tidied. She wouldn’t have left her favorite coffee cup or books lying around if she’d known he was coming over.
“You okay?”
Dani’s soft question opened his eyes. They were parked in front of her building.
Was he okay?
He was confused. Worried too. And sad. Even if Natalia survived the stroke, there was a chance there would be long-term impairments. She might not be able to go home and live alone anymore. If someone moved in with her, she wouldn’t need him checking on things. If she lived somewhere else, it would likely be an assisted living apartment, or even a nursing facility. Again, she wouldn’t need him anymore.
“No,” he said hoarsely. “I’m not okay.”
“What can I do?”
He rolled his head to look at her. Danika. He was glad she was there.
That didn’t make sense either.
Except in the context of what he already feared—he was falling for her.
“Let me come upstairs.”
She nodded. She didn’t seem surprised or confused about his request. It seemed to be what she’d expected.
“Let me stay all night.” He’d never asked that. He’d never wanted to. But now he wanted nothing more. “In your bed.”
“Of course,” she said simply.
They didn’t say a word as they climbed the steps and Danika opened the door. As soon as it closed behind them, she turned. She tossed the keys on the table and leaned around him to lock the door. Then she wrapped her arms around his neck and pulled him close for the kiss he needed desperately.
He held her against him with his palms wide on her hips, devouring her lips, drinking her in, loving the feel of her in his arms. Living, breathing, wanting him with her, in her home.
Both her hands were on his head, and the fingers of her unrestricted hand curled into his hair, while he considered taking her up against the wall in her foyer, or on top of the new flooring his friends had helped 170
Just Like That
lay. Instead, he dipped his knees and swung her up into his arms. She didn’t stop kissing him for even a second.
They made it to the bedroom, to an actual mattress, finally. He let her feet touch the floor and she immediately moved to lie back on the bed. He followed her down. They didn’t need words, there was no rushing, it was like they each knew just what the other wanted and needed. Their lips met, their hands roamed, discarding clothing until there was only skin and they came together slowly and sweetly.
It lasted longer than the other times and when he climaxed, Sam knew that in spite of all the experience and the reputation, he had only just now made love to a woman.
“We need chicken.”
Danika opened one eye and saw that it was eight-seventeen in the morning. She’d slept like a log. In between bouts of making love with Sam. It seemed that every two to three hours he’d need her again. He’d reach for her and she always went. It was like it was a need for him rather that just physical desire. There was something Sam was looking for and he seemed to think that she could give it.
There had been no real talking. There had been some sexy comments that fired her blood, some sweet murmurings that made her heart beat even faster and some moans and sighs that made her feel a surge of power that was growing addictive. But he hadn’t opened up about how he was feeling about Natalia or her hospitalization, or anything besides how much he wanted her.
“Fried chicken. Lots of it.”
She rolled to her back and squinted at him. “You’re kidding, right?” He grinned at her from the foot of the bed. He was fully clothed. “Nope. Fried chicken. Right now.”
“You want me to make you fried chicken at eight o’clock in the morning?” She wasn’t even sure she knew how to make fried chicken.
“No, no.” He reached for the sheet covering her and started pulling it down her body. “We’ll buy it.” She grabbed for the sheet, but he was too quick. He swept it off of her and the bed, his eyes lingering with appreciation on her now uncovered, naked body. She blushed, but didn’t try to hide.
“Buy it where?” she asked, swinging her legs over the side of the bed to sit up.
“Buy what?”
She looked over her shoulder to find his eyes studying the profile of her breast.
“The chicken.”
“What chicken?”
She laughed and grabbed the T-shirt lying on the floor, holding it against her chest. He blinked and looked up at her. “The chicken you claim we need to have,” she said.
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He made a production of blinking and searching his mind for the recent memory. Then he grinned.
“We’ll get it at George’s.”
“George?” she asked.
“You’re too talkative in the morning.” He pushed her, literally, in the direction of the bathroom. “I just called George. By the time you’ve showered, he’ll have it ready. We’ll get the chicken and go up.”
“Up where?” she asked, just before the door slammed behind her, enclosing her in the bathroom.
“To the hospital,” he said through the door. “They’ve been there all night and Mac and Dooley love fried chicken.”
She opened her mouth to tell him that fried chicken before ten a.m. was impossible, but she couldn’t make the words to discourage him. It was sweet that he wanted to feed his friends and it was wonderful that he wanted to go up to the hospital.
George turned out to be the owner of the appropriately named
George’s Chicken
, a small, open-late restaurant that Sam and his ambulance crew frequented after their late shifts. Apparently George didn’t do much beyond chicken and some potato salad and baked beans, but he didn’t need to. He was famous for the battered, deep-fried chicken he served for cheap prices. In fact, to hear Sam tell it, Danika was the only hospital employee who
didn’t
know about George and his chicken.
George met them at the door with a huge cardboard box filled with Styrofoam containers of chicken, potatoes and beans. He’d even put several cold cans of soda in. He’d gone down and cooked just for Sam and his friends and Danika liked him simply because of that.
A few minutes later they stepped off the elevator on the fourth floor where Natalia had been admitted.
The waiting room was full of big guys and little ladies. Dooley was slumped in the corner of a sofa, his head back, still snoring softly. Mac was sitting in a deep chair, feet on the coffee table, watching the
Today
Show
. Kevin was reading in another chair in the corner. The ladies, Katherine, Dorothy and Barb, were seated around one of the small round tables, sipping coffee. The room was filled with only the sound of Matt Lauer and Meredith Vieira bantering with a chef who was showing them something spectacular—
according to Meredith anyway—to do with tomatoes. No one was talking. In fact, they all looked exhausted. And worried.
“Hey, keep it down up here,” Sam said.
Everyone turned to look at once. They all looked slightly stunned. Whether it was the lack of sleep, the fried chicken as breakfast food, or that Sam was there, Danika couldn’t tell.
Mac got to his feet first. “Hey, Sam. Dani.”
She didn’t mind that Mac called her Dani for some reason. Maybe because it was meant affectionately, because she was a part of the group, because she was with Sam.
“George got up early just for you all,” Sam said, setting the box in the middle of the table.
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The guys descended on the box, but there was plenty for everyone and Danika was surprised to see even the women partaking of chicken. They declared it delicious and confessed that they hadn’t eaten for hours.
It was several long minutes before it happened.
Katherine looked up to thank Sam, and frowned. “Aren’t you the man who was at Natalia’s house yesterday when we stopped for her things?”
Sam struggled to swallow his bite of food, while his friends all turned to look at him. None of them said a word, however. In fact, they continued chewing, clearly not trying to think of a way to help Sam out.
Danika hated the look on Sam’s face. He looked panicked.
A guy like Sam never panicked. He knew what he was doing all the time. He was a born charmer with women, a paramedic who didn’t even blink when he saw a human body with it’s vital organs exposed, a guy who went out of his way to help an older, widowed woman keep her house going.
“Yes, he is,” she said for him. “His friends had mentioned her house to us and as we said, we wanted to look at her landscaping.”
His friends simply switched their attention from Sam to Danika to Sam. Katherine looked puzzled.
“Why didn’t you mention that you knew these boys?”
“We didn’t know that you knew them,” Danika said.
“Oh. I suppose I just assumed they would have mentioned all of us if they spoke about Natalia,” Katherine said.
That earned Danika a frown from Dooley, Katherine’s self-appointed guardian angel.
Finally Sam sighed. “We weren’t there for the landscaping.” Danika slumped back in relief. He wasn’t going to let Katherine have her feelings hurt by the thought that Dooley hadn’t mentioned her.
“I’m the one who’s been taking care of Natalia’s house,” he confessed. “Like Dooley’s been looking out for you.”
Katherine was obviously surprised. “You did this too?”
“It was actually his idea,” Kevin finally spoke up. “He wanted it to be anonymous though, so we never told you his name.”
“But…” Katherine looked around the table.
The other women were just as befuddled, it seemed. “Why…” Dorothy said, without finishing the thought.
“You should have told her,” Barb said.
Sam shook his head. “I didn’t need for her to know my name. I just liked helping her out.”
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“But she…she knew someone came in and helped out, and she wanted to know who it was. I told her how Doug and I would sit and have coffee together when he came over and she was so envious,” Katherine said.
“I told her that Mac likes my homemade cinnamon rolls,” Dorothy added. “She asked me if it was Mac that came to her house and if so what she could bake for him. Since I didn’t know who it was, I couldn’t tell her. That bothered her.”
“She makes fantastic banana bread,” Katherine said and all the women nodded.
“And when I told her that I’d given Kevin one of my late husband’s favorite novels, she wanted so much to give something special to whoever came to her house too,” Barb said.
Danika wanted to hug someone. She wasn’t sure if it was one of the ladies, or all of them, or one of these men who had become such important people to these sweet women and allowed them to dote on them. She suspected that the things the women did for them were better for the women than they even were for the guys. But she was pretty sure that the person she wanted to hug most was Sam.
“I just…”
She held her breath, praying that he wouldn’t say something like
I didn’t tell her who I was because I
didn’t want to have coffee with her or get gifts from her
.