Just Like That (35 page)
A second later the shower turned into a Yellowstone National Park geyser.
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Just Like That
Water shot straight up from the connection between the showerhead and the wall pipe. In seconds, every surface in her bathroom was dripping. Including her.
She struggled for nearly a minute before she managed to get the water turned off with her bum hand.
By then the water was running into her eyes
Saying things that would make her mother blush, Danika got up onto the side of the tub to look at the showerhead. It wasn’t that old. There hadn’t been so much as a tiny prior leak. What the hell had happened…
It took her less than a minute to realize that someone had sabotaged her showerhead.
She didn’t need even a millisecond to figure out who.
Danika stood on the edge of her bathtub, staring at a white plastic showerhead, processing that the man she loved had done the exact
opposite
of fixing and taking care of everything without fanfare or attention…the opposite of every instinct he seemed to have.
He’d made a damned mess for her. A
huge
damned mess. An
obvious
huge, damned mess. He had to know that she would take one look and know that it was intentional.
This wasn’t helpful, it wasn’t considerate, it wasn’t Sam. And doing it had probably driven him crazy.
Thinking about the mess, thinking about her struggling with it with her hand, pondering how mad she was going to be and how apparent it would be that Sam had done it had to be making him nuts.
It could mean only one thing.
Well, two.
It could mean he had tried to fix it—for some reason—and had botched it. Or it could mean that he wanted her to come to him.
But why this? Something she could either fix herself or go out and quite easily buy a replacement?
Why had he done this?
She figured it out almost immediately. He was surrendering. He was showing her that not only was he not going to fix everything, he was also going to sometimes make messes that she would have to fix. And he was okay with that.
It certainly wasn’t subtle, she thought as she watched water drip from the lavender towel hanging on the rod straight across from the shower. It was also in the bathroom. The room where they’d finally made love. Was that symbolic?
She was going to make a complete ass of herself if he hadn’t done this, or hadn’t intended it to mean anything.
Because, whatever he’d intended, what he was going to get was a soaking wet kind-of girlfriend showing up in the middle of his work shift and making a public spectacle of this whole thing.
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Erin Nicholas
“Stop trying to fix my stuff!”
Sam smiled as the familiar voice and exasperated tone came from behind him. She sounded irritated.
But she was here.
He stopped and turned in the middle of the busiest hallway intersection in the hospital. The hallway to his left led off to the cafeteria, the parking garage behind him, the lab to his right and the ER in front of him, where Danika had clearly just come from.
The charming quip never made it off of his tongue.
Danika was dripping wet. Her hair hung in a limp, wet ponytail against her shoulder, she was devoid of makeup and was still wearing a tiny pink baby-doll T-shirt with gray cotton workout pants. Both of which were soaked…and clingy.
In spite of the fact that she looked like a street urchin, he had to clear his throat before he spoke. She was a sexy street urchin.
“It’s about time you got down here. I’ve been coming to your house, slaving away for you, for seven days.”
“Slaving…” she started to snort, then stopped. “Seven?” He watched her mentally trying to figure out what he’d been doing in her place for seven days. It had only been four days ago that he’d started noticing things were truly broken around her place. It had been two days ago that he’d realized she was doing it on purpose. Which had thrilled him. She wanted him there.
“How was I supposed to know that you wanted me to come to you? Normal people call people they want to see. Or show up to see
them
. Or send an e-mail or text.” He fought his smile, but thoroughly enjoyed—without hiding it—her ranting and raving. She was here. She was so beautiful, and smart, and passionate and…his.
He crossed the distance between them in three strides, stopping right in front of her, but she was so far into her tirade that she simply tipped her head back and looked up at him as she went on.
“And besides, you spent
months
not wanting Natalia to find out who you were and would have freaked out if she would have showed up down here. So how should I know—” There were some things he really wanted to say to her. There was only one thing to do.
He pulled her up against him, tangled one hand in her hair, settled the other on her butt and covered her moving lips with his.
She gave a soft sigh and her eyes opened very slowly when he lifted his head several minutes later.
They were in the midst of the most un-private spot in the hospital, but he didn’t care and he didn’t think Danika noticed.
He could listen to that sigh for the rest of his life. In fact, he fully intended to.
And the best way to start that was with a few important words. He knew she loved him—whether he deserved it or not—but he had a little groveling to do.
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Just Like That
“Danika, I love you. I was a jackass. I get that I need to let people need me and I want the first one to be you. Please promise me that you will fix everything that breaks in my life, that you’ll forgive me for the messes I make.”
She just stood blinking up at him. Without a word.
“And that you will never,
ever
, even smile at Matt Dawson again.” Still no response.
“And I promise that I will be there for you. I want to be involved in everything you do, take care of everything I can, know everything about you…” She wasn’t saying anything and it was beginning to bother him. “You okay?”
She finally spoke. “Did you say you were a jackass?”
He raised an eyebrow. “Yes.”
“Have you ever admitted, to a woman, that you were a jackass before?”
“Did you hear the part about me loving you?”
“Yeah. I know you do. Answer the question.”
He grinned. “No, I’ve never told a woman I was a jackass before.”
“But you have been one?”
“Without a doubt. Though I don’t think quite to this extent before.” She seemed to consider that for a moment. “Hmm. I like it.”
“I have a feeling we should both get used to it.”
“You being a jackass, or you admitting it?”
Sam sighed. “Probably both.”
“Can I smile at other men?”
“Just not Dawson.”
“Okay.”
Okay. That was Danika. Sweet, to the point.
“What were you saying before?” he asked.
“I was asking how I should know that you wanted me to come down here when all this time you’ve been avoiding being involved,” she said, picking up exactly where she’d left off.
He grinned and held her face in his hands. “Because you know me, honey.” She sighed again. If he was the kind of guy to use the word
dreamily
he would have used it to describe her sigh. “Yeah, I knew. After a couple of days.”
“Exam room six has a door and blinds on the windows…”
“No.” But she smiled and put her hand on his chest. “I want more than that, Sam. From you. With you.”
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Erin Nicholas
“For the record, whenever I refer to sex, that includes toys, oral, flavored body oil…all of that.
Whatever you want.”
She rolled her eyes but her smile grew. “I mean more than any of that. I want to just be together, talk—”
“About sex?”
“No. Politics, movies, the weather.”
He moved his hips, pressing against her. “You can talk about anything you want as long as I’m deep inside you while you do it.”
Her breath hitched, but she kept going. “No. In fact, I’m thinking maybe we shouldn’t have sex for a while.”
He knew she was kidding, but his stomach still knotted. “Don’t
ever
say that again.”
“But I love you.”
Wanting to hear those three words over and over until he was at least one hundred and forty years old, he said, “I love you too.”
“You do.” She said it matter-of-factly. “More than anyone in the world.”
“Yes. And that means that we should have
lots
of sex. All the time.”
“Not until you believe that you have more to offer than that. And fixing things around the house.”
“Um, I have a secret,” he said. “I can’t actually fix anything.”
“Yes, I’m aware,” she said dryly. “Hence the fact that I’m here looking…bedraggled.” He chuckled. It was a good word. Her hair was beginning to dry and curl at the temples. He flicked one of the curls. “You’re bedraggled because I happen to be good at messing stuff up.”
“Sam, you’re not. You’re so much more—”
“I know,” he interrupted. “I was kidding.” He didn’t mean it when he said he was good at messing up.
Anymore. He wasn’t a screwup. As Sara had pointed out, if he messed up on purpose it didn’t count.
Besides, he was turning over a new leaf. His sisters had come to him four days ago and they’d had a nice, long talk about the past and how they felt and what they were each doing about it. They’d agreed to focus on the future and making it everything they wished their past could have been. He was ready to be there, one hundred percent, for everyone he loved, and, though it scared him to death, he was ready to make—and keep—some promises.
Danika’s eyes softened with tenderness. “There is something I need you for—only you.”
“Does it involve lace or need batteries?” he asked hopefully.
She shook her head. “This.” She held up a map.
He took it from her fingers. “South Dakota?”
“Take me there.”
“To South Dakota.”
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Just Like That
“Yes. The Black Hills. Mount Rushmore.”
“You know that whole City of Gold in
National Treasure
2
isn’t real, right?”
“I need someone to go with me who I can stand being cooped up in a car with for ten hours. I need someone who will stop at every tourist attraction and interesting site along the way, including the Corn Palace. I need someone who will just stand and gaze at Mount Rushmore and feel the majesty and not laugh when I get choked up. And I need someone who will listen to me go on and on about why Thomas Jefferson is my favorite President.”
She took a deep breath and looked into his eyes. “And you will, right, Sam? Because you love me and want to share my life and be that person I need for the things
I
need.” He was going to make some smart-ass comment about the Corn Palace, but he looked down into the face of the woman he was going to love for the rest of his life and simply nodded. “It will be my pleasure.” Which was, amazingly, completely true. He would probably never know how to fix a garbage disposal or rewire a ceiling fan, but that wasn’t what Danika needed. Thank God. He would, however, love watching her face while she looked at Mount Rushmore and he would love to hold her hand while they talked about dead presidents, and absolutely anything else in the world. No one else could do that like he could, because no one else would ever love her like he did.
“You know, everything’s going to be a lot easier if you just marry me,” he said.
Her eyebrows rose slightly. “Easier?”
“You’re going to be running over to my apartment to fix things all the time. It’d be easier on you if we just lived together and you only had one place to take care of.”
“We have to get married to do that?”
“Of course. You can’t live together without being married.”
“And we’re not going to sleep together until the wedding night, right?”
“Let’s not get crazy.” He looped his arm around her waist and started for the parking lot outside of the ER.
They were almost to his car when she stopped and drew him up short. “Guess we’re taking my car.” She was looking at the two front tires of his car. The very flat front tires of his car.
“Guess so.” He grinned down at her.
She looked at his grin and suddenly realization dawned on her face. “Sam, did you flatten your car tires?”
“Why would I do that?”
“So you could call me and get me down here to change them for you.”
“Hmm, that would have been a pretty good idea.”
“I can’t change a car tire with a bad wrist.” She wiggled that bad wrist as she said it.
“But you would have come down here to help me anyway, right?”
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Erin Nicholas
She sighed, shook her head, then smiled up at him with resignation. “Yes. Of course I would have.”
“And you can change a car tire by yourself?” he asked. “When your wrist is working?”
“Of course.”
He rolled his eyes. Of course. He looked down at her. “I’m not going to kiss you right now.”
“Why not?”
“Because I won’t be able to stop. Let’s go somewhere that we can do that for a long, long time.
Naked.”
Danika grinned up at him. “We are so going to get along fine. Forever.” He grabbed her hand and started for her car. “We can call the tow truck while we drive.” They had just pulled away when she said, “Do
you
know how to change a tire, Sam?” He cleared his throat and got busy watching the stop light.
“Sam?” She repeated.
He didn’t look at her, but he heard the amusement in her tone.
“It’s been awhile,” he muttered.
There was a long pause, then a loud snort of laughter. He felt his lips curl up in response. “Don’t worry,” she said, giggling. “I’ll teach you.”
“I have some things I can teach you, too, you know,” he growled.
“Oh, I’m counting on it.”
She cuddled up next to him, and as he slipped his arm around her, he knew that he could absolutely be everything Danika needed.
