AllFreeNovel
Share Us
I rolled down the window and extended my hand trying to be polite, but a combination of embarrassment and anger made it difficult to seem even remotely sincere.
“Don’t be so dramatic,Skipper,” I said. “I didn’tsave his life.”
Flynn Safadi looked stunned. “Miss Roman, you did. The doctors in the ER said that if I’d stayed in that position for more than a minute, the blood supply to my brain could have been compromised. And I was told by the firefighters that your quick thinking got a gasoline fire extinguished before it engulfed my car.”
Staring at the steering wheel, I tried to muster up some social graces, but it was all I could do to just nod at him. “Thank you for the beautiful flowers,” I said after a moment. “They were completely unexpected and unnecessary.”
“I wanted you to know how much it meant to me, that you risked your own safety for mine.”
His hands rested on the window opening of my car. Perfectly manicured nails. I remembered then that he was a surgeon. Surgeon’s hands. I stared at his fingers. I suddenly felt the need to explain. When I spoke, I felt heat flooding my face.
“I went to nursing school.”
“You did? That’s how you knew what to do, then.”
“I couldn’t pass the boards. It’s why I work at the car wash.”
That silly confession struck me as hysterical, and I barked out a laugh. Compassion flooded his face, making me cringe. I wasn’t really looking for sympathy.
“Will you have coffee with me?” he asked.
I looked up at him, wondering where we could go where no one would see us.
Like he could read my mind, he told me. “We can go to Reeza’s on Wyoming. It’s an old neighborhood. We won’t be bothered.”
The scenario felt surreal—the surgeon and the car wash attendant. It was odd, because I had never imagined doing this, but I wanted to spend more time with him. I agreed to follow Flynn to the coffee shop.
When we got there, I felt immediately at ease, like I had known him forever. No one else was inside.
“How do you know this place?” I asked.
“My grandmother lives on Indiana.” He pointed east.
“Indiana!”
“One of the first families from Lebanon to move in,” he replied with a big grin. “Isabella Roman. Italian, correct?”
“Yes. But it’s Bella. No one calls me Isabel anymore.”
“At your request?”
“No. I actually like Isabel. No A on the end. My brother, Rocko—yep, that’s really his name—called me Bella when he was a tot.” I was uncomfortable spending so much time on my name. “Where’d Flynn come from?”
“Ha! My great-grandfather loved the actor Errol Flynn.”
I laughed. There was something boyish and humble about him I found appealing. It was completely not what I’d thought he’d be like from looking at him.
He was gorgeous. Tall, dark, and handsome.
“Gotcha. I’ve heard of him but confess I’ve never seen any of his movies.”
“Me either.”
“My family’s in awe that your family has a huge chain of Christmas stores.”
“They do, yes. It’s generated its share of controversy over the years because we’re Lebanese, and Americans don’t know that many Lebanese are Christian. Over forty percent.”
We talked like that, sharing the superficial stuff of our lives. But the raw confession I’d made after the first hello, that I had not been able to pass the nursing boards, lingered there. I knew it would have to surface.
