Chapter 24
“Have you given any thought to joining us in Florida?” his mother asked.
“I can’t go, Mom,” Danny said, continuing to push his food around on his plate.
“We already bought your ticket, Danny. I was talking to Jodi,” his mother said, making him drop his fork on his plate with a clang as he sat back in his chair.
“Me?” Jodi asked, shooting him a questioning look.
“Of course,” his mother said, smiling warmly. “We’re taking our family trip in October and we’d love for you to join us.”
“We can’t go, Mom. I’m sorry,” Danny said, wondering when his mother was going to start listening to him.
He didn’t want to go on a trip where he was forced to pretend that the fact that his father couldn’t stand looking at him didn’t make him want to shove his fist through a wall.
He’d already made that mistake once and that had been enough.
Two weeks after the last surgery on his leg, he’d foolishly allowed his mother to convince him that a trip to Cape Cod was a good idea.
For whatever reason, she’d thought that being cooped up all day in a cottage by the water was a good way for him to overcome his differences with his father.
What she hadn’t counted on was his father renting him his own cottage down the beach and avoiding it like the plague.
He’d spent the entire trip sitting on the cottage’s small stone patio with his leg propped up, staring at the ocean.
Since then, he’d refused to join his family on their annual trips and his mother refused to listen to him.
Every year, she bought him a ticket, reserved a room for him and pretended that she didn’t hear him when he told her that he didn’t want to go. He never went and she always seemed to forget that he never showed up the next year when she started to plan their trip.
“Your Uncle Jared already said that he’d approved your time off so you can go,” his mother said with a pleased smile.
He nodded, never taking his eyes off his mother because he’d learned long ago never to show weakness to this woman when she was busy meddling with his life. “I took the time off, but I’m not going on the trip.”
“Of course, you are,” his mother said, quickly dismissing him as she refocused all of her attention back on Jodi, who was sitting there, clearly trying to resist the urge to get up and flee from the table. “Now, how about you, dear? Do you think you’ll be able to get the time off from work?”
“Ummm,” Jodi licked her lips nervously as she shifted in her chair, throwing him a pleading look that he was helpless to ignore, but he knew that there was nothing that he could say that would save Jodi from this line of interrogation.
“Mom, we can’t go,” Danny said, but not surprisingly, she ignored him and continued.
“Since the ban has been removed,” his mother said, pausing to shoot Jason and Trevor a pointed look, “at least for some of us, we’ve decided to take a trip to Disneyworld.”
“Ban?” Jodi asked, squishing her face up adorably as everyone at the table suddenly became occupied with their food again.
His mother waved it off. “The point is that we’re heading down there in a month and we’d love it if you could join us.”
“Thank you very much for the invitation, but I haven’t been working at the library long enough to get vacation time,” his little Tinkerbelle explained with a blush and a smile.
“But if you were able to get time off?” his mother asked with a familiar gleam in her eyes that he knew all too well.
“Then, I would still have to decline because a trip to Florida is out of my budget at the moment,” Jodi said with that same smile, but that blush…
It deepened.
“Oh, sweetie, we wouldn’t expect you to buy your own ticket,” his mother said with a reassuring smile.
“I’m sorry, but I wouldn’t feel comfortable with that,” Jodi said softly, shifting her attention down to her plate in an attempt to hide her embarrassment, but he saw it.
He saw everything.
He knew that she made good money, was frugal, and never so much as bought a candy bar without planning it into her budget, but he also knew that she was broke.
She was barely getting by and was living paycheck to paycheck.
She made every cent count, but she was still struggling and he didn’t know why.
“Neither would I,” Danny said, picking his fork back up to push a kernel of corn around his plate. “I’m more than capable of taking care of our tickets.”
“So, you’ll go?” his mother asked, perking up.
“No, I’m sorry.”
“Then, why are you taking time off?” Aidan, the bastard, asked.
Because he’d been looking forward to two weeks without his family, without anyone fussing over him, calling him a thousand times a day to make sure that he was okay, to make sure that he was eating enough, that he was taking his medication, and getting enough sleep.
As soon as his mother had announced their annual family trip, he’d gone to Uncle Jared and requested the time off with plans of staying in his apartment with his books and beautiful silence. But now…
Now, he wanted to spend those two weeks in bed with Tinkerbelle, but that wasn’t going to happen.
They were taking things slow…very slow… No matter how much it was killing him or how badly he needed to tear her clothes off and slide inside her, he was going to take this slow and do this right.
Just thinking about all the things that he wasn’t allowing himself to do to her had him shifting discreetly in his chair.
“I made plans,” Danny said, looking up to give his mother an apologetic smile and wishing that he hadn’t seen the hurt expression on his mother’s face.
“Oh,” his mother said, giving him a trembling smile as she looked away, but not before the expression on her face made him feel like the biggest asshole to ever walk the face of the planet.
He ignored the way that his brothers, sister, and cousins were looking at him and focused on the woman that had cried over him, held his hand, wiped his face and arms down with a cold cloth when his fever got too high and the medication stopped working.
This was his mother and he was breaking her heart.
He sighed heavily, already regretting what he was about to say before the words left his mouth.
“We’d be more than happy to go, Mom.”
“Danny, I-”
“I have to go, Tinkerbelle,” Danny sighed, throwing the truck into park.
“Yes, but I don’t,” Jodi said, opening her door and jumped out.
She still couldn’t believe that he’d done this to her, putting her on the spot like that in front of his family.
What was she supposed to say when his mother suddenly burst into tears?
Say no? Seriously? The woman had practically tackled her and strangled the life out of her when she’d reluctantly agreed to go.
She also couldn’t afford this trip or to take any time off.
God, what the hell was she supposed to do?
She’d told Danny’s mother that she would go, but she didn’t have any money, wouldn’t be able to get the time off, and had a large credit card payment to make at the end of the month.
She wasn’t going to be able to go, which meant that she’d lied to her boyfriend’s mother the first night that she’d met her.
This did not bode well for their relationship.
“You promised my mother that you’d go,” Danny said, joining her in front of the truck.
“No, you promised your mother that I would go,” she felt obligated to point out as they walked up to the front door.
“I distinctly remember you telling my mother that you would go,” Danny said, reaching past her to open the door for her.
“You mean when she was crying hysterically as she clung to me, thanking God for sending me to her?” Jodi snapped back, rolling her eyes in disgust.
“It still counts,” he said, shooting her a grin as he reached down and took her hand in his.
“No,” Jodi said, sighing heavily as she pulled her hand free and pulled her keys out of her purse, “It doesn’t.”
“It really does,” Danny said, taking the keys out of her hand and unlocking the door for her.
“Think again,” she said, taking her keys back from him and tossed them on the table by the door. “I’m not going.”
“You really are.”
“Nope,” Jodi said, walking towards the back hall. She gestured towards the kitchen as she walked past the open door. “There’s leftover spaghetti if you’re hungry,” she said, guessing that he was starving since he hadn’t eaten a single bite of the delicious meal that his mother had made.
Then again, neither had his father…
“I’ll heat some up in a bit,” he said, following her into her bedroom. “First, we’re going to discuss our plans for the trip.”
She sighed as she kicked off her shoes and undid her pants. “We’re not going on a trip,” she reminded him as she pulled off her shirt.
“Yes,” he said, reaching back and grabbing a handful of his shirt, “we are.”
Jodi shook her head as she reached back and unsnapped her bra. “Danny,” she said, sighing his name as she dropped her bra on the floor and walked into the bathroom, “I can’t go, so please just let it go.”
“Why not?” Danny asked, following her into the bathroom as he shoved his pants down.
She hooked her thumbs in her panties and opened her mouth to tell him exactly why she couldn’t go when something occurred to her. “Umm, what are you doing?” Jodi asked, pointedly looking at his hands, which were currently pulling down his boxers.
He blinked innocently at her breasts as he said, “Continuing our conversation?”
Shaking her head, Jodi turned around and pulled the curtain open. “You don’t need to be naked to continue this conversation.”
“No,” Danny murmured thoughtfully, “but it helps.”
Too tired to argue with him, Jodi pushed her panties off and climbed in the shower, uncaring if he followed her inside.
They hadn’t seen each other naked since that morning when she’d woken up to find him lying on top of her, apparently pinning her to the bed so that she couldn’t do anything questionable during her drugged-out state.
“It will be fun,” Danny said as he stepped inside the shower behind her, pausing by her side long enough to press a kiss against her shoulder.
“I’m sure you’ll have a great time with your family, Danny,” she said, licking her lips and trying to pretend that the feel of his lips on her bare skin didn’t make her breath catch.
“Not unless you’re there, Tinkerbelle,” Danny said, moving his lips along her shoulder. “Please come with me, sweetheart,” he asked softly as he wrapped his arms around her and pulled her against him.
She opened her mouth to argue with him, but that “please” undid her so the only thing that came out of her mouth was, “I can’t. I just can’t.”
“Why not, Tinkerbelle?” he asked, turning his head so that he could press another kiss against her neck. “I can’t do this without you, Jodi. Please don’t make me do this without you.”
She opened her mouth to tell him, no, but somehow, she found herself saying, “I’ll ask, but I can’t make any promises.”
“Thank you,” Danny whispered, pressing another one of those kisses to her shoulder that she was really starting to love.
She closed her eyes and leaned back into his touch and felt herself relax for the first time all day.
She’d ask and her boss would say no, but at least she could say that she’d tried.
Then Danny would go on his trip, she would stay here and miss him, those two weeks would be difficult, but she’d get through it. Then, when he came back, she would-
“Pass the soap?”