Just Like That (23 page)
“I’m helping her out. Period.”
“Right. Another rule down the drain. You never go out of your way for women, in case they get the wrong idea.”
“Did you bring liquor in that care package?” Sam asked, hating that his friend was not only right, but knew him so well.
Mac chuckled. “It’s not a care package for you.”
“Maybe I need one.”
“It’s sure sounding like it,” Mac agreed, tipping his bottle back again. “Why haven’t you slept with her?” he asked after swallowing.
Sam sighed. “It’s complicated.
“Uh-huh.”
“What?”
“You’re allergic to complicated.”
“I know.” Sam scratched an itchy spot on his shoulder.
“You know, maybe you should let it be complicated,” Mac said.
“Not with her.”
“Why not her? She’s great. She’s beautiful, sexy, smart, funny. What else do you want?” Danika. Nothing else. But he could barely admit that to himself.
“
Not her,
” he repeated.
“No attraction?” Mac said it with thick sarcasm.
“Insane attraction,” Sam admitted.
“Then what’s the problem?”
Sam regarded his friend. He’d known Mac for ten years. There was very little humiliation that Sam had suffered without Mac’s witness. “I like her.” He said it as if confessing a gruesome crime.
Mac looked intrigued. “As in you could see yourself spending time with her during which she remained completely clothed? Doing things like picking out furniture and actually caring? Looking forward to seeing her even if it’s to go to a retirement party for her boss?”
“Yeah.”
Mac chuckled. “Oh, man, you are totally screwed.”
“Yeah.” Sam knew it. Hearing his friend confirm it did nothing to make him feel better about it.
They stood in silence, thinking about this new development.
Finally, Mac straightened. “Listen, man, just for the record, you’ve never let me down.” Sam scoffed.
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“Seriously. Sure you’re late sometimes and you blow things off once in a while, but you never miss anything important.”
“What about your big Labor Day bash?”
Mac had thrown the party to celebrate finishing his deck off the back of his house.
“Important things,” Mac said. “To some people that would have been important, but to me it was just fun. And you knew it. Or you would have been there. You were at your sister’s birthday party because you knew it mattered to her.”
Sam had been psychoanalyzed more in the past couple of days than ever in his life and he was growing impatient with it—and with realizing that the people around him had rarely, if ever, been fooled by his plot to seem the carefree, fun guy in the group, not to be depended on, but liked and included anyway.
That was the bottom line—he wanted to be part of the group, just not the heart, without whom the entire thing would fall apart. He couldn’t carry that burden.
“That doesn’t mean I’m ready for a grown-up relationship with a grown-up woman like Danika.” Mac tipped his soda bottle in acknowledgement. “You might be right. Then again, you’re the first person I’d call if I ever needed anything. Whether you like it or not.” Sam didn’t know if he did like it or not. So he changed the subject—kind of.
“Listen,” Sam said, abandoning all hope of salvaging his pride with Mac. “You have to stay and help me with the floor.”
Mac coughed. “What?”
“Call the guys. Get them over here. Ben too.” Sam shoved away from the counter he was leaning on.
“I’ll do steaks on the grill and buy the beer after.”
“Why?” Mac asked. “It’s what? Ten by ten?”
“Six by six.”
“We won’t even all fit in there.”
“You have to help me.”
“With what exactly?” Mac asked. “Because it’s just a floor. Even you’ll be able to figure that out.” Sam had never seen Mac crazy for a woman. But he had to hope that at some point in Mac’s thirty-seven years, it had happened.
“I need a buffer and some distraction, okay?” he admitted, his voice low. He hadn’t heard Danika come out of the bathroom yet, but he wasn’t taking chances. The fewer people who heard this confession, the better.
“You want me to spend the night? Take a shift for you?” Mac asked, one corner of his mouth trying to pull upward.
“No.” Sam frowned, even though he knew his friend was joking.
“Hey, we’re all paramedics, as qualified as you are to take care of her. We could take turns.” 134
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“
No.
” The biggest problem with Mac’s suggestion was that it was true that his friends were as qualified as he was to take care of Danika. Mac and Dooley didn’t have the reputation that Sam did, but they were no slouches in the woman-pleasing department. In fact, while Mac couldn’t compete for volume, he made up for it with a wildness that made Sam’s eyes go wide at times. Even Kevin, before he’d found the Lord, had been with his share of satisfied women.
Mac chuckled but said, “You think having us help with the floor will help avoid complications with Danika?”
“Yes.”
“You’re an idiot.”
“Very, very likely.”
“I’ll call the guys.” He pulled out his cell phone.
Danika wasn’t sure how or why, but within twenty minutes of emerging dressed more appropriately and with her hair untangled, her house was full of men. They’d started filling her front entryway, but the space was simply too small for the five guys who all had an opinion about her new floor, so they were spilling into her living room and even the doorway of her bedroom.
Goodness, her bedroom hadn’t seen that much testosterone in…ever.
Her kitchen had also been taken over. Her fridge was full of steak and brats, her countertop was covered with potatoes and ears of corn and her kitchen table held a huge cooler of soda and beer.
Now she’d just overheard Ben say that Jessica and Sara were on their way over with dessert.
Danika had intended to make Sam work for his penance for sleeping on the couch last night instead of keeping her awake in her bed. Instead, he’d turned it into a party.
Typical.
But she couldn’t bring herself to mind. For one, some buffer between her and Sam seemed to be a good idea. She couldn’t believe how she’d dumped on him earlier about her mom. She hadn’t talked to anyone about her mom for a long time. Her sisters didn’t like to talk about anything other than the time before their mom got sick, her father refused to talk about it at all, and very few of her adult friends knew more than the fact that her mom had passed away when Danika was a teen.
She also enjoyed seeing Sam interact with his friends and brother-in-law and was looking forward to getting to know his sisters better. Besides, they had made her a care package. Which touched her.
The package itself was as unusual as the fact she’d even received it.
Each thing had a sticky note on top with a message and signed by the person the item was from.
Sara had sent her a box of gourmet truffles, and Jessica had added two romance novels by Susan Elizabeth Phillips, one of Danika’s favorite authors. A Ziploc bag held a small bottle of ibuprofen, an ice
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pack and an ace wrap from Ben, the doctor. And Sam’s friends had each added their own flair. There was a book of puzzles and games from Kevin, the Guinness Book of World Records from Mac and an erotic stories magazine from Dooley.
Plenty of stuff to occupy her time, that was for sure.
She’d smiled and rolled her eyes the whole time she was opening it. A lot like the time she’d spent with Sam so far.
She wondered what Sam thought of his people giving her a gift.
“I’m going to start the grill.” Sam came into the kitchen, seeming disgruntled. The grill had arrived in the back of Kevin’s pick-up but was, evidently, Sam’s.
“How are things going out there?” she asked, pushing to her feet. She could surely help with something for dinner. Though husking the corn seemed out of the question with one hand.
“Great.” He seemed irritated. He opened the packages of steak and started to season them.
“Are you being sarcastic?”
“No.” He sighed. “They’re almost done. Mac and Dooley are great at this kind of stuff.”
“Good thing you called them then.” She stood beside him and decided she could cut and butter the garlic bread. Somehow.
“Yeah, nothing better to show off in front of a woman than to have other guys come over and prove that he sucks at something.”
She turned to look at him in surprise. “You were trying to show off?”
“At least I didn’t want you to know that, of all of us, I’m the least valuable with a set of tools.” She smiled. “They were supposed to fake that they didn’t know what they were doing and let you take the credit?”
“Good friends would have.”
Danika bumped him with her hip. “I’m guessing there are things that you are better at than they are.” He looked at her. Then stepped behind her, his hands braced on either side of her on the edge of the sink, imprisoning her between the counter and his body. “There are,” he said in her ear. He moved his hips forward, pressing a rather firm fly against her butt.
Tingles skipped down her neck, shoulders and arms, across her stomach and in between her legs.
She closed her eyes and rested her head back on his shoulder, forgetting, as she had for most of the day, that she was mad at him for the night before. “You’ve already got a fan in me.”
“Good thing. Because I don’t want you to like anyone more than me.” Something about his words made her pause. He was being flirtatious, she knew, but there was an underlying thread of something that made her want to not just tease about it. There was a heart behind the impressive chest pressing against her back. Sam held himself back from people for some reason, but he still liked people, cared about people…and wanted to know they cared about him. So he connected in the only 136
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ways he thought were safe—partying with his friends, letting his sisters fuss over him and being a sex god to the women he knew.
“There’s more to you than sex, Sam.” She should know. She hadn’t even had sex with him and she liked him way too much. Sure, he knew his way around the female anatomy, but he was kind and intelligent and fun to be around.
Crap.
She liked him for way more than sex and she wanted him to know it.
Which meant that she’d done something pretty stupid and started to fall for him.
“For instance, you said you were good at grilling. Show me your culinary talents,” she said, trying to distract him from the confession she’d almost made and to stop the delicious things he was doing. Like licking the skin along the back of her shirt’s neckline.
“I can show you all kinds of talents…”
She pushed back against him, dislodging his hands from the countertop. “Oh, no you don’t.” She turned quickly, though there were mere inches between them. “You didn’t want to show me your stuff last night, so you’re not going to start it here, now, in the kitchen with a houseful of people.” It was like she could read his mind. He thought of saying something provocative, but considered what she said.
“You’re right.” He stepped back. “I shouldn’t start something I can’t finish.”
“Like last night,” she said, giving into the temptation she’d been fighting to bring it up.
“I didn’t not finish last night,” he said with a frown.
“Oh? I don’t remember seeing you naked. Seems that’s something I would have made note of.” She crossed her arms, more to make him back up than anything. He, of course, didn’t move a millimeter.
In fact, he leaned in slightly. “I finished my objective last night,” he said, looking directly into her eyes. “Very nicely if I do say so myself.”
She swallowed, overwhelmed by memories of the night before. Yeah. Nice was a good word. So was spectacular, amazing, and unbelievable.
She was glad she hadn’t known she was missing
that
all these years.
“What’s your objective for tonight?”
A myriad of emotions played across Sam’s face. Surprise, desire, resignation. It was that last one that didn’t make any sense. “To prove my manliness…by grilling some kick-ass steaks.” He slid to the side and resumed preparation of the meat.
She opened her mouth to reply, but suddenly four other people were in the kitchen with them. Jessica and Sara had arrived and were accompanied by Ben and Mac—or at least the huge pan of some kind of cobbler was accompanied by Ben and Mac.
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“We’re here!” Sara came into the room and kissed Sam’s cheek before enfolding Danika in a huge hug.
Belatedly, Danika returned the squeeze. “Welcome.”
The guys gave Sam some trouble about the steak, Mac managed to dip a finger into the corner of the cobbler, and Ben pressed Jessica against the wall next to the fridge for a long, deep kiss. Her cheeks were flushed when he let her up for air but she didn’t seem upset. Ben was grinning.
“Good grief.” Sara rolled her eyes. “You act like you haven’t seen each other in days.”
“It’s been six hours, forty minutes and twenty seconds,” Ben said, his hand cupping the back of Jessica’s neck.
Jessica elbowed him in the ribs. “You made that up.”
“No, I last saw you when I pulled you into exam one and…”
“Okay!” Jessica slapped her hand over Ben’s mouth. She was laughing as she pulled him into the next room.
“Yes, they’re always like that,” Sara said to Danika. “Can I use your bathroom?”
“Down the hall, you can’t miss it.”
“I’m hungry.” Mac grabbed the plate of steaks and headed out of the kitchen.
“Hey…” But Sam’s protest didn’t even make Mac glance back.
“Don’t look now, but Mac just watched your sister leave the room,” Danika said.
Sam glanced after his friend. “Coincidence,” he said.
“Coincidence?”
“That he was looking in that direction when she just happened to leave.”
