Chapter 19
“Wake up,” a deep, sexy voice that she vaguely recognized said, drawing her away from her dream just as things were getting good and adding to her frustration.
Jodi cracked one eye open to see who it was, only to promptly close it and say, “Get out.”
“Sorry, sweetheart, but we’re not leaving until we have a talk,” Trevor’s cousin, Jason, said.
“Out,” Jodi grumbled, hugging the throw pillow as she turned over and snuggled beneath her blanket, determined to return to the dream where Danny was making all her fantasies come true.
“Let’s go, Jodi. Rise and shine,” Trevor said as her comfy blanket was suddenly yanked away from her.
She blindly reached for it, managing to grab it only to end up getting dragged off the couch. She landed on the floor with an ooof. She opened her eyes to find Trevor and Jason standing over her, casually sipping their coffee as they regarded her with twin expressions of amusement.
“Now that you’re up, we can have ourselves a little chat,” Trevor said, sitting on the couch that she’d been happily sleeping on less than a minute ago.
Sighing, Jodi stood up and brushed off her clothes as she said, “Get out.”
With that, she headed to the bathroom. Ten minutes later, her teeth and hair were brushed, her face was washed, and she was positive that her unwanted guests had shown themselves to the door, she decided that it was safe to leave her bathroom.
“Ready for that talk now, princess?” Trevor asked as she opened her bathroom door.
“No, so get out,” Jodi said around a yawn as she headed to her kitchen. She didn’t have to look back to know that she was being followed by two very large annoying men.
While she pointedly ignored them and started making coffee for herself, the only thing that would save them from a brutal death, they sat down at the table and sipped their coffee.
Accepting the fact that they weren’t leaving anytime soon and used to dealing with men hanging out in her apartment, Jodi pulled out all the ingredients to make pancakes and set to work.
“We want to know what your intentions towards our cousin are,” Jason announced, taking a sip of coffee as he watched her work.
She stopped mid-whisk and looked up to find both men staring at her intently. “You can’t be serious.”
“Very,” Trevor said evenly.
Jason nodded firmly in agreement.
“You do realize that I’ve only been on one date with him, don’t you?” Jodi asked as she turned on her electric griddle and dropped a spoonful of butter on the surface.
“Four dates,” Trevor said distractedly as he watched her work.
“What are you doing?” Jason asked, licking his lips hungrily as the butter began to melt.
“Making pancakes,” she answered, wondering why they felt the need to have the “talk” with her.
“For us?” Trevor asked, sitting up straighter in his chair as he watched her spoon batter onto the hot surface.
“Well, that depends,” Jodi said, watching them closely as she leaned back against the counter and crossed her arms over her chest.
“On what?” Jason asked, barely able to take his eyes off the griddle as the pancake batter rose.
“On whether or not Zoe knows that you’re here,” she said, watching their reaction closely. When Trevor winced, she had her answer.
“I see,” Jodi murmured thoughtfully as she walked over to the kitchen island and picked up her cell phone.
“What are you doing?” Trevor asked nervously.
“Nothing much,” Jodi murmured, searching through her contacts until she found Zoe’s phone number. After she sent Zoe a quick text, she realized that she didn’t have Danny’s phone number, but that wasn’t a problem.
She flipped the pancakes, waited until they were done and then split them between two plates.
After she added more butter and batter to the griddle, she walked out of the kitchen.
She wasn’t surprised when the men didn’t follow this time since Jason was busy devouring both plates of pancakes while Trevor did a half-assed job of explaining to his wife why he’d dragged another woman out of bed.
She walked out her front door and across the hallway, where she knocked on Danny’s door.
A minute later, he was standing in his doorway wearing a pair of unbuttoned jeans, a sleepy smile and looking incredibly sexy first thing in the morning.
“I just thought you should know that two of your cousins are in my apartment eating the pancakes that I’d planned on surprising you with,” Jodi said with a shrug before he had a chance to say anything.
His sleepy smile quickly faded, only to be replaced with a grim frown a second later as he walked past her and headed straight for her apartment.
She took her time following him, deciding that it was probably for the best if she wasn’t within throwing distance of them since she’d seen firsthand how badly things could end when the men in this family had a disagreement over food.
“Those are my pancakes, you bastard!”
“Ow!”
“Stop!”
“No, don’t do-”
Seconds later, everything went quiet. Afraid that things had gone too far, she walked into the kitchen in time to see Danny yank his cousins off the floor and, in a move that had her brows shooting up in astonishment, twisted their arms behind their backs and used his hold on them to force them to walk.
“You’ll regret this, you son of a bitch!” Trevor snapped as Danny calmly escorted him and a pouting Jason past her. He paused briefly next to her so that he could lean down and plant a quick kiss on her stunned lips. “I’ll be back in a minute.”
“O-Okay,” Jodi mumbled, not exactly sure what the correct response was and after a slight pause, she shrugged it off, deciding that she really didn’t care as long as he got rid of her interrogators.
She walked back into the kitchen in time to flip the pancakes and add a little more batter to the griddle.
While she waited for them to cook, she cleaned up the small mess the men had left behind, grabbed another clean plate, another bottle of maple syrup, and more butter.
She’d just turned off the griddle and started removing the pancakes when two large arms wrapped around her and pulled her back against a rather large body.
“I’m sorry,” Danny said, pressing a very distracting kiss against her neck.
“It’s fine,” Jodi said, wondering if he’d noticed the way that she couldn’t stop trembling every time he touched her.
“They won’t be bothering you again,” he said, pressing another kiss against her neck. Since she had a feeling that his cousins weren’t done interrogating her, she didn’t say anything.
“What are your plans for lunch?” Danny asked, pressing another kiss against her neck.
“I’ll be spending this lovely Sunday afternoon boxing up whatever’s left at the library,” Jodi said, adding the last pancake to the stack and stepped out of his arms, gesturing to the plate of pancakes.
“What about you?” he asked, frowning down at the plate stacked high with pancakes.
“Coffee,” she said, picking up her mug in answer.
“Have dinner with me tonight?” he asked, picking up the bottle of maple syrup.
“Can’t,” Jodi said, heading towards the doorway. “I’m meeting the guys at Joe’s Tavern after work for a drink.”
“The guys, huh?” Danny murmured thoughtfully, absently adding more butter to his pancakes.
“Mmmhmmm, and if you behave, you can tag along,” she said, watching as the corner of his lips kicked up into a pleased smile.
“I’m sure that I can manage.”
“Pick me up at seven!” Jodi threw over her shoulder as she left the room to get ready for a fun-filled day of sifting through rotted boxes, dust and the moldy basement that she normally avoided at all costs.
She wanted to try to salvage whatever she could before tomorrow when the old library was demolished.
“Where are you?”
“Ummm, nowhere special,” Jodi muttered, worrying her bottom lip as she watched the man lying on the gurney next to hers vomit all over himself, again.
“Nurse!” his nervous wife yelled, making Jodi cringe because she knew without a doubt that Greg had also heard it.
There was a long-suffering sigh on the other end of the phone before Greg said, “You’re at the hospital, aren’t you?”
“Maybe,” she mumbled, looking down at her arm where a large icepack sat, concealing the reason why Mr. Tate had felt it was necessary to browbeat her into going to the hospital.
It wasn’t a big deal, but he’d refused to listen.
Instead, he’d mumbled something about liability, lawsuits, and unnecessary paperwork that would pull him away from his bridge game as he’d dragged her to his car, shoved her inside and drove her to the hospital where he’d made sure the doctor knew the extent of her injuries before he’d wished her luck and ditched her ass to the tender mercies of the emergency room staff.
“Do you need a ride?” Greg asked, not sounding all that happy about it. Not that she could blame him.
“No,” Jodi lied, hating the idea of putting any of her friends in the position of having to handle her when she had medicine in her system.
“Are you sure?” Greg asked, sounding relieved that he wouldn’t have to take care of her, but she knew that if she told him that she needed a ride that he would be here in a heartbeat to look after her. He wouldn’t be happy about it, but he would do it.
“Yeah, I’m-” Jodi started to say, only to have her phone suddenly taken from her.
“She’ll be fine,” Danny answered for her, ending the call and tossing the phone on the bed next to her.
“What are you doing here?” Jodi asked, shifting self-consciously as she took in his freshly combed hair, handsome face and the dark navy shirt that molded to his muscles and then glanced down at her ripped, dust-covered, coal-stained shirt and pants and dirt coasting her arms.
“They told me what happened down at the library,” Danny said, gingerly raising the icepack off her arm so he could get a look at her injury.
“Why were you at the library?” Jodi asked, deciding that it was for the best to pretend that her hair wasn’t a tangled mess.
He gently gripped her arm and turned it over. “I came to bring you coffee and to see if you needed a hand,” Danny murmured thoughtfully as he studied her wound.
“It’s not broken,” she said, forcing a small smile as she picked up the icepack and placed it back on her arm.
“No, it’s not,” Danny said, sighing heavily as he rubbed the back of his neck.
“I’ll be fine,” she assured him, wondering where the doctor was. “It’s just a few nasty scrapes and a bruised bone.”
He nodded but said nothing.
“It’s no big deal.”
Silence.
“Mr. Tate got nervous and made me come here. I just need to clean the scrapes and as long as I keep ice on my arm, I’ll be fine,” Jodi promised him when the silence became awkward.
Rubbing his hands roughly down his face, Danny sighed, “It’s going to be a long night.”