Just Like That (33 page)
“Matt Dawson.”
Her arm dropped. “What are you talking about?”
“Matt is the perfect guy for you.”
The pounding of her heart in her ears turned to a strange rushing sound. “You think I should ask Matt Dawson out?”
“Yes. Unless you want him to ask you. I know he’s interested. I’ll tell him—”
“No!” She was almost certain that she was going to vomit.
“He’d be an imbecile to not be interested, Dani. I’ll subtly hint that—”
“
God,
no,” she said firmly.
She was such an idiot. She’d thought Sam was talking about himself. One more second and she would have said something completely humiliating. “I’ll, um… I’ll take care of it.” Of course, humiliation would likely be an improvement over the sick to her stomach, tight in the chest, stinging behind the eyes she was feeling now. There was
no way
she was calling Matt—or any other guy. Ever probably. But she wasn’t going to tell Sam he’d ruined her for other men. He was quite clearly done with whatever it was they’d been doing.
She wanted to bang her head against the side of his car, but thought that would be an obvious sign that she wasn’t okay. Instead, she calmly walked back and got into the car. On the way back to the church, Danika finally processed and admitted into her conscious mind the fact that Sam really was asking her to date another man.
“Do you want his home number?” Sam asked as he pulled up next to her car.
She looked at him quickly. He sounded a little sick himself. “No. I’ll be seeing him.”
“You will?”
Was that a frown she saw on her new matchmaker’s face? She hoped so.
“Yeah.” She held up her right wrist.
“Oh, right.” He did frown this time. “You’re going to ask him out during a checkup?”
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“No.”
“Good.”
“I’ll wait until after the checkup.”
Another frown. “Next Thursday, right?”
“Right.” The frown increased. “Oh.”
Was that too soon? Or waiting too long in Sam’s opinion? She couldn’t care less.
She wrenched open her car door and got out, slamming it behind her, but unable to get rid of enough adrenaline.
“Dani are you…okay?”
She whipped around to find him standing beside the car, watching her worriedly.
He was an idiot, she decided. He was an idiot if he thought she could be okay with this. He was an idiot to think that Matt Dawson could replace him for her. He was an idiot if he didn’t want to be with her himself.
“You bet,” she said with forced cheeriness. “I’m fantastic.” Something softened in his face. “I know.”
And she wanted to smack him.
He knew she was fantastic? Sure. Right. Of course. Because he was pawning her off on another man before she could get needier with him.
She was just fucking fantastic.
She tipped her chin up and met his eyes. “Goodbye, Sam.” Then she turned and walked away. From Sam Bradford. Something she would never have guessed she’d ever want to do. But in that moment, he was the last person she wanted to be with. It probably wouldn’t last, but she was going to enjoy a few seconds of not wanting to cry, curl into a ball, or smash something.
It was Danika’s date night with Matt. Sam hadn’t forgotten. Even if he’d tried, everyone in the damned hospital had been talking about the two of them being seen together over the past two weeks and four days. He’d heard exactly how many cups of coffee they’d had and how long each one of them took to drink.
The fact that they’d finally taken their relationship out of the hospital was a relief. Or should have been. While they were in the hospital he’d had a play-by-play account of their get-togethers. Now he had to
wonder
what they were doing which, given his imagination and experience, was downright scary.
His so-called best friends were not helping.
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“I can’t believe he was a slow starter,” Mac said. He curled his middle finger against his thumb, then flicked it out, shooting the wadded gum wrapper across the table, aiming for the goal—the Styrofoam cup lying on its side in front of Dooley. He missed. “Dawson seems like the kind of guy to take a woman out, come on strong, lots of romance, something right out of the gate.”
“Something that involves alcohol,” Dooley agreed. “And skimpy clothes.”
“At least not work clothes and cafeteria coffee,” Mac said.
“The cafeteria coffee isn’t so bad,” Kevin said. “It’s better than the stuff at the Quick Mart.”
“He’s not going to take a woman to Quick Mart,” Mac said, rolling his eyes.
“I’m just saying,” Kevin muttered.
“He bought her lunch twice here too. I hope he takes her out for real food this time.” Dooley shot his gum wrapper straight into the cup in front of Kevin.
Mac hit his next shot too. “I think he should skip dinner and go for chocolate-dipped strawberries and champagne.”
“That’s pretty romantic for you,” Kevin commented, his wrapper shooting off the end of the table. It joined at least twenty others. Apparently gum-wrapper-table-hockey didn’t include a clean-up crew.
“They’d be eating them in bed, of course.” Mac wiggled his eyebrows. “Or just the chocolate sauce and forget the strawberries.”
Sam gripped his pencil tighter and kept his eyes on his Sudoku puzzle, but the image of Danika in nothing but chocolate wouldn’t leave him.
The crew needed a call. Something to do. Something to interrupt conversation. Something where everyone lived, but that took some brainpower and time on the part of his crew. And did not involve insane amounts of chewing gum.
“Did it occur to you two that Matt might
like
her and doesn’t want to sleep with her right away?” Kevin asked.
Sam hadn’t filled a number in on the puzzle in at least five minutes. He kept writing a six in the third box from the top, erasing it, then writing it again.
Six was the time Matt was supposed to pick Danika up, according to hospital gossip.
Hospital gossip was frighteningly accurate.
“Oh, he likes her,” Mac said. “What’s not to like?”
Kevin nodded. “Women like Danika are worth drinking a few bad cups of coffee.”
“Thought you said the cafeteria coffee wasn’t that bad,” Dooley said.
Kevin gave him an irritated frown.
Sam almost broke his pencil.
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He knew his friends were messing with him. He could not rise to their bait. They wanted him to react to show that he cared about Danika, that he didn’t want her out with someone else, that he did
not
want her out with frickin’ Matt Dawson. Even though it was his dumbass idea.
As if her dating someone else, someone who seemed good for her, would magically make him not want her himself.
Yeah, great dumbass idea.
“Is he the type to get her into bed tonight?” Dooley asked, shooting three wrappers into the cup one right after the other.
“I can’t think of why not,” Mac said, mimicking Dooley’s trick, but missing on two.
Sam couldn’t think of a reason why not either.
“Maybe
she’s
not the type to jump into bed with someone on the first date,” Kevin pointed out. He flipped five wrappers in before missing.
Maybe
, Sam thought. But she was the type to go to an adult toy shop with a virtual stranger.
He’d like to think that it was because it had been him, but he wasn’t quite in the frame of mind to let his ego talk him into that. Matt Dawson was the only guy Sam knew who could rival his reputation.
The reputation that had led to him being set up with her in the first place. When she needed him sexually. She wasn’t supposed to need a man in any other way. She only wanted sex. And orgasms.
But it sounded like she and Dawson were getting to know each other.
Which was tying Sam up in knots.
That was the stupid part. The idea of another man so much as holding Danika’s hand made his blood pressure go up. In fact, he’d been purposely ignoring the idea that there might be anything more than handholding between Danika and Matt.
Now, though, the idea of Matt enjoying the simplest things—singing along to the radio with her, or sharing her toothpaste, or learning if she liked red or black licorice better, or helping her fold towels—made Sam almost crazier with jealousy than the idea that Matt might sleep with her.
Which proved that he was insane.
He
didn’t even know which licorice she liked best. Or if she even liked licorice.
And—God help him—he really did want to know how Dani felt about licorice.
Which made that the moment when Sam realized that he was in love with Danika Steffen.
The sex was the best he’d ever had.
Being the one that got to share every aspect of her life was more than he’d ever even imagined having.
“Maybe Matt will change her mind about sex on the first date,” Mac said.
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Sam did break the pencil then. “You guys suck.” Sam stalked to the next desk and jerked open the drawer, could find only an ink pen—which was more commitment than he liked to give even a puzzle—
and slammed it shut again, more ticked off than he’d started.
He managed to fill in two boxes in the second row of his puzzle, with his mind mostly not on Danika, and his friends managed to talk about something else for ten minutes.
“Good thing we changed her garbage disposal, though,” Dooley said. “Wouldn’t want the surgeon getting his hands dirty.”
Mac snorted. “Like Dawson would know the first thing about impellers.” Sam frowned, but none of them noticed as they were pretending he was not in the room as they talked about his personal life. It was subtle and indirect, but they were making their point loud and clear. They thought he was a dumbass for telling Danika to date Matt Dawson.
They could join the club.
“What about her garbage disposal?”
Dooley didn’t look at him when he answered, “We replaced it last week.”
“It was this week,” Kevin corrected.
“It was Saturday,” Dooley said. “That was technically still last week. Sunday starts the new week.”
“Yes. But it wasn’t Saturday. It was Sunday night,” Kevin said.
“It was not. That movie was on. That one with Bruce Willis.”
“It was Kevin Costner and it was on Sunday night.”
“You sure?”
“That’s why they called it the Sunday Night Movie.”
“
Anyway
,” Sam interrupted, trying to remember why he liked these guys. “You replaced Danika’s garbage disposal?”
“It broke,” Dooley said with a shrug.
Sam gritted his teeth. “I assumed.”
“And she couldn’t do it with her wrist,” Mac said.
“She still has the brace on?” He’d been wondering how her wrist was doing.
“No, but Matt wants her to take it easy with it until she has some physical therapy on it,” Mac explained.
“So she asked you to do the garbage disposal?” Sam asked, ignoring the mention of Matt.
“Yeah. She figured we knew how,” Mac said.
“Which we did,” Dooley said.
Sam frowned. He wouldn’t have known how to fix her garbage disposal.
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None of them were trying to date her, she’d needed help and Sam had made it clear he didn’t want to be involved, so she’d called his buddies. No big deal. It was good she felt she could ask them for help and Sam was grateful they were good guys and went over. It was great, even.
“No more fixing stuff at Danika’s,” he said firmly.
Three pairs of eyes focused on him. One looked surprised, one looked thoughtful and one was frowning.
“What are you talking about?” Dooley asked.
“I’m talking about you guys not going over to Danika’s to fix stuff anymore.”
“Why, exactly?” Mac asked.
“Because…” He was an idiot. He’d acted like an ass. And he obviously wasn’t done yet.
He was in love with her and he had to do something about it. Having his friends over there helping her out, taking care of her, wasn’t going to work. Danika was his and so were her problems, needs and desires.
He was going to need to learn how to fix a fricking garbage disposal. Among other things.
Many other things.
“Because I said so.”
“You’ve got to be shitting me—”
Four pagers went off all at the same time.
Thankfully, they had a call.
They arrived at the scene fourteen minutes later. It was a huge old white house on the corner, with a wraparound porch and five steps leading to the front walk, which stretched for almost fifty feet to the street.
It was the middle of that strip of pavement where a white-haired little lady sat, surrounded by neighbors.
Sam pushed through the small crowd, followed by Dooley and Mac with a stretcher.
“Evenin’ ma’am,” Sam said, squatting next to the woman. “I understand you had a little spill.” The woman gave him a wobbly smile. “My hip hurts.”
“Yes, ma’am.” It was very likely a hip fracture. “What’s your name?”
“Donna.”
“Do you know what day it is Donna?”
“Thursday.”
“Do you know where you are?”
“On my front sidewalk.”
Sam smiled. “Can you give me your address?”
“But you’re already here.”
His smile grew and he squeezed her hand. “I need to see that you know your address so I know you don’t have a head injury, Donna.”
“Oh.” She rattled off her address.
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“Thanks,” Sam said when she got it right. “Did you hit your head?” He started feeling through the fluffy white curls for bumps or abrasions.
“I think I did,” she admitted.
“Did anyone see the fall?” he asked. No one had. “Does your head or neck hurt?” he asked Donna.
“Yes,” she nodded. “The back of my head.”
Mac and Dooley moved in and one applied a neck collar as a precaution. She lived alone and her estimate about what time she’d come out to get her mail was fuzzy, leading Sam to wonder if she might have blacked out. Still, she was oriented and making sense and was able to move her fingers and toes and feel Dooley touching the lower leg on the side she’d hurt. All good signs.