“Help me!” the man wearing a Black Jack’s uniform screeched hysterically while his cousins stumbled over him as they tried to take each other down in a headlock.
Shaking his head in disgust, he walked down the hallway, grabbed the sobbing delivery man off the floor by the back of his shirt and shoved him towards the door while his cousins continued to fight over the stack of pizza boxes marked, The Monster. Their food obsession was pathetic, Danny thought with a disgusted sigh as he reached down and picked up the stack of pizzas. He walked back to his apartment, pausing only long enough to reach down and help his horrified neighbor to her feet and give her a gentle push towards his apartment. Once they were inside, he shut the door behind him, dropped the pizza boxes on the coffee table and announced, “Dinner is served,” with a satisfied sigh.
“You can’t ban all of us!”
“This is bullshit!”
“I wasn’t even home!”
“You made a grown man cry!” someone, probably the cop, yelled.
“When will this night end?” Jodi asked no one in particular as she rubbed her temples.
“Probably not for a while,” Danny admitted, sounding oddly defeated as he sat there, staring at the destruction that had once been his living room.
“Probably not,” she murmured in agreement as she looked around the living room and took in the damage.
She toed the remains of his coffee table, still amazed over the amount of damage that three men fighting over pizza could do in less than a minute. And yes, she was definitely sure that the damage to Danny’s apartment had only taken a minute because when the door burst open, she’d been looking down at Danny’s cell phone. By the time she’d looked up, the door was falling off its hinges, the coffee table was in pieces, the television was smashed, the large leather chair that had actually looked pretty comfortable was in three pieces, a window had been smashed and there were five very large, and very noticeable, holes marring Danny’s living room walls and only one minute had passed.
“I’m gonna need a rain check,” Danny said, drawing her attention away from the electrical socket hanging by its wires from the wall.
“A rain check for what?”
He sighed heavily as he stood up and held his hand out to her. “For our date.”
“Our…date?” Jodi asked slowly, wondering if he’d hit his head when his cousins tackled him.
He nodded as he reached down and took the decision out of her hand. “I’m afraid that I’m going to have to regroup,” Danny said, taking her hand and gently pulling her to her feet.
“Regroup…”
“Mmmhmmm,” Danny murmured, entwining his fingers with hers as he raised their hands and pressed a kiss against the back of her hand. “Just a day or two to fix this.”
“A day or two,” Jodi repeated numbly as she allowed her gaze to run over the destruction.
“Are you going to repeat everything that I say?” Danny asked teasingly with a sexy smile that had her revisiting that whole brain injury idea.
“Yes,” Jodi said, nodding as she allowed him to lead her to his apartment door. He was forced to release her hand so that he could grab the door and move it aside so they could go into the hallway where his cousins were still arguing with the cops and the manager from Black Jack’s, “And this wasn’t a date.”
“Yes, it was,” Danny said, reaching into his pocket and pulling out-
“You stole my keys?” Jodi demanded when he proceeded to unlock her door and open it for her.
“Of course, I did,” Danny said, smiling down at her.
“And why exactly did you do that?” she asked, shaking her head in disbelief.
“It seemed necessary at the time,” he said sheepishly.
“Uh-huh,” Jodi said, staring up at him as she tried to make sense of this man. After a minute, she decided that it was simply impossible and gave up.
“I’m going to bed. Have a good night,” she said, suddenly feeling exhausted.
“Good night, Tinkerbelle,” came the response that had her shaking her head and resisting the urge to remind him that her name wasn’t Tinkerbelle, but she was too tired to argue with him right now.
She walked into her room, grabbed her favorite pair of sweatpants, a tee-shirt and headed to her bathroom. She tore her clothes off along the way, tossing them aside as she headed for her sanctuary. Five minutes later, she was soaking in a hot bath, savoring the moist heat seeping into her bones and the scent of lavender surrounding her as she closed her eyes and fantasized that she lived in a world where men didn’t ditch their fiancées the day before their wedding, destroy their credit, steal their life savings, humiliate them, leave them destitute, and jobless and with no other choice but to move in across the hall from an incredibly sexy ex-Marine who went from getting a kick out of screwing with her head one day to undressing her with his eyes the next.
In this fantasy, she still had her job at the museum. The promotion that Jerry stole behind her back was hers. Her credit was still perfect, her bank account healthy and her biggest problem was deciding between sleeping in on the weekend or spending the day reading, curled up on the couch. She’d never accepted Jerry’s invitation for coffee and had seen the prick for the jerk that he really was. Things were the way that they were meant to be.
