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“I’m sure you are used to working a lot,” she said. “I’d think you didn’t get much of a break in the service and, since you said you didn’t have family to visit, I get the feeling you don’t like the idle time either.”
He never had before. “No,” he said. “But it’s different now. You’re here.”
“Awww,” she said. He frowned when she did that. It felt as if the ego balloon he blew up at times just got poked with a hot pin.
“Does that mean you’re willing to give this thing a try with us?” He wasn’t going to say what Daisy told him in the hospital.
“I’d be crazy not to. You’ve seen me at my worst at this point and you came back.”
She was grinning and he couldn’t help but smile back. “That’s a good point.”
“You smiled,” she said. “A true one. I haven’t seen that in a while. I wasn’t sure why.”
Because when he first met her he was pretending to be the person that the outside world saw all the time. But now that he was getting closer to her, there was part of him that wanted her to see more of the real him.
Not the whole him, no one saw that. Very few got let in enough. But some of it at least.
And that meant not always smiling unless he meant it. Which he did just now.
“I haven’t had a lot to smile about recently,” he said. “Now that I’ve seen you and have talked to you and not texted, I feel better.”
“I told you I was fine. So fine I needed you to come save me from my parents.”
“They seemed somewhat harmless,” he said. “Unless they wanted to drag you back home.”
“Oh, they would have if I gave in. Noah and Gavin did help calm my mother down. I owe them.”
“I was worried,” he said suddenly. “That I caused damage to you when I got you out of the car. But I couldn’t wait until more help arrived either.”
“No, you didn’t do any more harm. I have to ask just out of curiosity… How did you carry me from the car?”
He frowned, not sure why she was asking this. “What do you mean?”
“Like a sack of potatoes or over the threshold? Noah said he would have tossed me over his shoulder. That is how he carries people out of fires.”
Luke didn’t want to be embarrassed, but he said, “Over the threshold.”
“Awww,” she said again.
He laughed. “Sorry, but I didn’t know it was you.”
She frowned this time. “You didn’t?”
“No. I went into rescue mode to get you out. Your head was turned away from me, your hair in your face and you were out cold. It wasn’t until I finished running far enough away in case the car exploded and put you down that Dr. James was behind me and adjusted your head for your airway. He’d grabbed your purse for ID but once I saw your face I knew.”
“What did you do?” she asked, staring into his eyes.
“Swear,” he said. No reason to say all the calm he had in his life was gone at that moment. The training he had too. He’d gotten it back fast enough.
“And then you came to check on me,” she said. “And you haven’t stopped since.”
“I’m not going to either,” he said.
“Awww,” she said again and then laughed when he squinted his eyes at her.
She had his ticket, there was no doubt there.
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