But Amy just said, “You work at the hubcap factory? I heard that’s a good job if you can get in there. I applied once, but they didn’t take me.”
I laughed at that. “You applied there?”
“Yeah. What, you don’t believe in equal rights for women?”
“Of course I do. But you’d cause the place to shut down. Too many accidents from men checking out you’re a—”
I caught myself just in time.
She blushed and averted her eyes, blinking rapidly.
That’s when I realized I should probably cool my jets.
Amy was the ultimate example of a captive audience. The woman was strapped to a board. There was no getting away from me.
“Sorry about that. I’ve been told I can be a bit crass at times.”
“No, it’s okay. I’m grateful to have someone here with me,” she said, her eyes tearing up again. “This is a little scary.”
We’d both been ignoring Gabe’s partner, who was sitting in the back of the ambulance with us, the silent third wheel. But he chimed in anyway. “This is a hell of a first date.”
She grinned and said, “If this is a first date, I think we’re a throuple.”
Uh, oh. My baby girl better not swing that way. I was a one-woman kind of man.
But I knew she was only joking. And she squeezed my hand tight while she said it, her death grip on my fingers growing tighter.
At the hospital, I had to lie and say I was her husband. It was the only way the receiving nurse would let me in.
The only time she was out of my sight was when they wheeled her away for an MRI and a series of X-rays. I tried like hell, but they wouldn’t let me go with her.
Then there were a few fretful hours while we waited to get the test results.
We talked the whole time, my hand never leaving hers, mostly to keep her mind off the fact that they still had her strapped to a board.
But I got to know so much about her in that time. And even though it really wasn’t a first date. It started to feel like one to me.
Thebestfirst date of my life.
It turned out Amy was a lot like me. She’d grown up pretty dang poor, then scraped her way up the ladder high enough to be able to cover her bills with ease.
Not that she was loaded. But she had a nice car, rented a decent townhouse and had a cat named Noodles.
What more could a woman need?
At least according to her.
There was no mention of a man in her life… and no ring on her finger. So, those were good signs.
I tried to probe what was going on between her and that cowboy at the bar, but she didn’t offer anything up other than that he was an ex of hers.
It didn’t sound active, but I’d been burned a few times myself. So it was important to me that whoever I got with didn’t have a wandering eye.
And in my mind, Amy and I were already halfway to dating. The woman would probably freak out if she knew that.
“So that’s why I stopped taking the ceramics class. Who blows up a kiln?” she sighed as she finished telling me about one of her misadventures in life.
“There’s an artist colony out on Red Oak Mountain. The Beaux Arts Society. They’ve got a kiln. If you ever wanted to try your hand at it again, I’m sure I could sneak you in there.”
