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One of my brows lifted, silently questioning her. When she continued to stare at me expectantly, I countered, “Does it look like I’m struggling?”
She pressed her lips together, a hint of her dimple coming out, and her face flushed. “No,” she whispered.
Feeling the urgent need to get her to the clinic, I decided I was done with the conversation for the time being. My priority was to get us to my truck.
So, I started moving through the snow with Daisy in my arms.
The first few minutes of the walk were done in silence, but after that, Daisy couldn’t seem to hold herself back. “I feel horrible.”
“Sick?”
“No. I feel bad about this, about ruining the day you and I had planned,” she clarified.
Unwilling to risk losing my footing and falling, I kept my focus in front of me. “I hate that you were injured, Daisy, but I’ve got to be honest. I’m holding a beautiful, funny, and energetic woman in my arms who smells incredible, so this really isn’t as big of a deal as you’re making it out to be. In fact, I’m inclined to say that this is working out better for me than what we originally had planned for today.”
“Oh. Wow,” she murmured.
I glanced at her for just a moment, noticed her cheeks were red again—which was not the result of being in the cold—and felt my lips twitch.
There had been some hesitancy on my part to dive in and share too much too quickly. Recognizing that I liked Daisy enough to want to be able to spend more time with her, the last thing I wanted to do was say something that would send her running in the opposite direction.
Though it remained to be seen if I had done just that, I had to admit I thought she looked utterly adorable right now. Overall, Daisy had been very outgoing and talkative, so to see the shy side of her only made her more endearing to me.
When we finally made it to my truck, I carefully lowered Daisy to her healthy foot and kept one arm wrapped around her while I grabbed my keys out of my pocket. Only after I’d opened it, helped her inside, and rounded the hood to get in on my side did she speak.
“Thank you for doing this for me, Forrest. It means a lot to me.”
Waving my hand in front of me in an attempt to dismiss it, I insisted, “It’s nothing. Honestly. Do you need me to get anything from your room? Your purse, maybe? I doubt you grabbed your insurance card as you hobbled over to meet me this morning.”
She dropped her head back against the headrest. “Crap. I didn’t even think about that.”
“It’s okay. We’ll drive over there and get it before we head down to the clinic.”
Just over ten minutes later—after Daisy gave me the key to her room and told me where her purse was, because she was worried about me having to carry her again—we were making our way to the clinic.
“I can’t tell you how relieved I am that you were still there at the lodge this morning,” Daisy declared, breaking the silence. “I was sure I’d show up and find that you had already assumed the worst about me.”
“I won’t lie and say the thought of you standing me up didn’t cross my mind, but I don’t think I was going to assume the worst about you,” I returned.
She let out a soft laugh. “You can’t tell me you would have been thinking anything good about me if I’d done that.”
“Actually, I stood there trying to figure out what I could have said or done yesterday that would have had you changing your mind,” I revealed. “One part of my brain was telling me I’d screwed up while the other was trying to remind me that you admitted you’re always late.”
I felt Daisy’s head snap in my direction, so I pulled my focus away from the road for just a few seconds to look over at her. She was horrified.
“What?” I asked. “What does that look mean?”
“I can admit that I have a problem with being punctual, but arriving thirty minutes after we were supposed to meet isn’t late, Forrest. It’s just plain rude.”
I couldn’t stop myself from laughing. “Fair enough. I wasn’t suggesting that was your intention, or that I believed you thought it’d be okay to do something impolite. It’s just that it was better for me to believe you were running behind instead of blowing me off completely.”
My words were met with silence. Only after what felt like two or three minutes—though the clock on the dash indicated it hadn’t been even a full minute—Daisy said, “Thank you for giving me the benefit of the doubt.”
“You’re welcome. But do you know what this situation has taught me?”
“What?”
“We should have exchanged numbers before going our separate ways yesterday. Then you could have called me to tell me about your foot instead of having to risk injuring yourself further.”
