“Neither would I,” Danny said, picking his fork back up to push a kernel of corn around his plate. “I’m more than capable of taking care of our tickets.”
“So, you’ll go?” his mother asked, perking up.
“No, I’m sorry.”
“Then, why are you taking time off?” Aidan, the bastard, asked.
Because he’d been looking forward to two weeks without his family, without anyone fussing over him, calling him a thousand times a day to make sure that he was okay, to make sure that he was eating enough, that he was taking his medication, and getting enough sleep. As soon as his mother had announced their annual family trip, he’d gone to Uncle Jared and requested the time off with plans of staying in his apartment with his books and beautiful silence. But now…
Now, he wanted to spend those two weeks in bed with Tinkerbelle, but that wasn’t going to happen. They were taking things slow…very slow… No matter how much it was killing him or how badly he needed to tear her clothes off and slide inside her, he was going to take this slow and do this right. Just thinking about all the things that he wasn’t allowing himself to do to her had him shifting discreetly in his chair.
“I made plans,” Danny said, looking up to give his mother an apologetic smile and wishing that he hadn’t seen the hurt expression on his mother’s face.
“Oh,” his mother said, giving him a trembling smile as she looked away, but not before the expression on her face made him feel like the biggest asshole to ever walk the face of the planet.
He ignored the way that his brothers, sister, and cousins were looking at him and focused on the woman that had cried over him, held his hand, wiped his face and arms down with a cold cloth when his fever got too high and the medication stopped working. This was his mother and he was breaking her heart.
He sighed heavily, already regretting what he was about to say before the words left his mouth.
“We’d be more than happy to go, Mom.”
“Danny, I-”
“I have to go, Tinkerbelle,” Danny sighed, throwing the truck into park.
“Yes, but I don’t,” Jodi said, opening her door and jumped out.
She still couldn’t believe that he’d done this to her, putting her on the spot like that in front of his family. What was she supposed to say when his mother suddenly burst into tears? Say no? Seriously? The woman had practically tackled her and strangled the life out of her when she’d reluctantly agreed to go.
She also couldn’t afford this trip or to take any time off.
God, what the hell was she supposed to do? She’d told Danny’s mother that she would go, but she didn’t have any money, wouldn’t be able to get the time off, and had a large credit card payment to make at the end of the month. She wasn’t going to be able to go, which meant that she’d lied to her boyfriend’s mother the first night that she’d met her. This did not bode well for their relationship.
“You promised my mother that you’d go,” Danny said, joining her in front of the truck.
“No, you promised your mother that I would go,” she felt obligated to point out as they walked up to the front door.
“I distinctly remember you telling my mother that you would go,” Danny said, reaching past her to open the door for her.
“You mean when she was crying hysterically as she clung to me, thanking God for sending me to her?” Jodi snapped back, rolling her eyes in disgust.
“It still counts,” he said, shooting her a grin as he reached down and took her hand in his.
“No,” Jodi said, sighing heavily as she pulled her hand free and pulled her keys out of her purse, “It doesn’t.”
“It really does,” Danny said, taking the keys out of her hand and unlocking the door for her.
“Think again,” she said, taking her keys back from him and tossed them on the table by the door. “I’m not going.”
“You really are.”
“Nope,” Jodi said, walking towards the back hall. She gestured towards the kitchen as she walked past the open door. “There’s leftover spaghetti if you’re hungry,” she said, guessing that he was starving since he hadn’t eaten a single bite of the delicious meal that his mother had made.
Then again, neither had his father…
“I’ll heat some up in a bit,” he said, following her into her bedroom. “First, we’re going to discuss our plans for the trip.”
She sighed as she kicked off her shoes and undid her pants. “We’re not going on a trip,” she reminded him as she pulled off her shirt.
