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Shelly silenced her phone and stuck it back in the pocket of her scrubs. She decided the best way to handle the situation was to pretend to be upset about Alan’s arrest. She’d never confided in Dan regarding anything that she’d discovered about Alan, except that he was never home.
The patient arrived, and fortunately, they’d be able to save her. Shelly poured her whole being into making sure that happened. At seven, she reluctantly left the unit, even asking the night supervisor if she needed an additional pair of hands anywhere in the hospital.
Approaching Dan’s house didn’t have the same effect it usually had on Shelly. As confident as she felt, she dreaded hearing Dan theorize about the murder. She was sure the ownership of the gun had been revealed. And Dan was sure to question her.
He waited at the door, his hunky frame obscuring the interior of the house, a big grin on his face. That completely defused her angst, and she laughed. He skipped down the steps to greet her, embracing her before the car door had closed.
“I’m so glad you’re home. I missed you today.”
“You did? Why?”
“You have to ask why? Because I like you. I think I might love you.”
“Aw, Dan, you don’t love me yet, but it would be wonderful if we are headed in that direction.”
“We are. I can feel it in my bones. I usually know within a week if a relationship is going to go anywhere, and I think this is it.”
Across the street, Laura looked out the window at the romantic exchange taking place in full view of the neighbors.
“I think Dan’s lost his mind.”
Will came up behind her and craned his neck to see. “Wow, Alan Stone’s old girlfriend.”
“Ah, yeah! And now he’s in jail for supposedly killing his lover with Shelly’s gun. Um, I’m not buying it. Are you?”
“No, but I don’t have your intuition, either.”
“It’s common sense. Boy, I wish I was a fly on the wall right now. Dan got Alan his defense attorney and knows all the details. So now, Dan gets to tell Shelly that her ex was canoodling with a murder victim.”
Dan and Shelly walked into the house together, his arm around Shelly’s shoulders. “I guess you have a lot to tell me,” she said, sniffing.
He looked down at her, sorry he was probably going to make her feel worse. “I’m so sorry. I don’t even know where to start.”
“Tell me what you’re free to tell me, then,” she said, flicking a tear from her cheek.
Dan helped her get her coat off. “Do you want to change?”
“I think I will. Change and shower. Do you want to get in with me?”
“I’d love it,” he answered, not really wanting to shower but not willing to hurt her feelings by refusing.
Shelly had a different perspective; she wanted to get his mind off arrests and weapons and murder. After being intimate with Alan, she realized that she was sort of awhite bread screw, a terrible term one of her co-workers had used to describe people who weren’t adventuresome in the bedroom.
“What’s the alternative?” she’d asked innocently, making the others roar with laughter.
The plethora of sex acts described during that coffee break had shocked her, but she was a fast learner, and that evening in Dan’s grubby shower stall, she practiced a few new techniques that had him moaning and grunting in pleasure, almost making her laugh. Maybe if she’d done it with Alan, they’d still be together and he wouldn’t have sought out Fatty.
Afterward, with pj’s on and towels around their shoulders, they sat at the kitchen table, eating pizza and drinking wine, making light conversation, all thoughts of Alan in jail wiped away for a few brief moments.
“I’m going to build a fire,” Dan said.
“Nice! I need to make a decision about staying home from work tomorrow. People were already talking about Alan and looking at me, so it might be better if I was gone for a few days.”
“That’s up to you. Less is probably more at this point.”
“Dan, what does that mean?”
He handed her a full glass of wine as she sat on the couch. She watched as he crumpled up paper and laid kindling on top of it. “This is probably the last fireplace on Sea View that isn’t gas.”
