34. Landry
CHAPTER 34
landry
“Look who showed up after all,” Dr. Broussard says cheerfully when I approach.
“Yeah, well, here I am. Merry Christmas, everyone.” I force a smile and reach out to shake hands with the crowd clustered near one of the tables in the town’s biggest event hall. There are only a couple of rental options for a decent-sized gathering in Camellia, so the group that owns the hospital and its satellite health clinics is hosting their annual Christmas party in the multipurpose building where my sister’s wedding reception was held last month. It’s also the same place that houses the high school prom, the town’s Cajun heritage festival, some of our Mardi Gras festivities, and a small annual rodeo.
Dr. Broussard gestures to a glass of champagne, but I politely decline. I’ve done enough drinking lately to last a while.
“Where’s your sweet, little friend?” Mrs. Broussard asks.
I clear my throat. “Oh, um, Daisy’s at home, getting ready for her teaching certification exam.”
“And I was looking forward to seeing her,” Mrs. Broussard says, sounding genuinely disappointed. As if I wasn’t already feeling bad enough for leaving her at home. “Tell her we wish her good luck on her test.”
I nod politely, thinking I might want a drink after all. I excuse myself to find the open bar and request a plain Sprite. At least it’ll give me something to sip on and hold in my hands.
“Hey, Landry,” Tenley greets me when she and JD approach the bar. She surprises me by pulling me in for a friendly hug.
She steps away, and I stick out my hand before JD can get any funny ideas. He chuckles and shakes it. “You’re good, bro. I’m saving my hug for a rainy day,” he reassures me with a pat on the shoulder.
“Where’s Daisy?” Tenley asks.
I sigh. “At home, studying for her test.”
JD hums in disapproval. “I’m sure she’ll do fine. She’s been preparing for a while. You should get her to take a break and come out with you. I bet she would love this.”
I look away, the guilt making my stomach turn. “Yeah. She would have. But, you know, we’re not …”
“Not what?” He furrows his brow.
The bartender hands over my drink then, and Tenley quietly excuses herself to visit the ladies’ room while JD puts in their order. Then he turns and looks at me expectantly again.
I shrug. “Wouldn’t it be inappropriate if Daisy and I kept going to every event in town together since we’re just roommates?”
He rears back, looking surprised. “What do you mean, you’re just roommates?”
“Daisy and I are friends. That’s all.”
He scoffs. “Bullshit. You were certainly acting like more than friends when I saw you at the last Christmas party.”
“That was an accident,” I spit out before I realize I’m sounding like a jerk. “I mean, we only kissed because of the mistletoe or whatever,” I add in a softer tone and take a sip from my drink.
He frowns. “You guys kissed? I was only talking about the way you seemed so comfortable together.”
“She gets handsy when she drinks. I didn’t want to hurt her feelings,” I fib.
“You forget I’ve seen you drunk, too. And I’m pretty sure you’re the one who gets handsy when he drinks,” JD points out smugly.
“All I did was run my mouth.” But the feel of Daisy’s soft body under my hands the morning after the wedding reception flashes through my mind, and I cough awkwardly.
“Yeah, and you also hit on Daisy in front of all of us. Not to mention, the two of you are inseparable. A man doesn’t spend every waking moment with a woman unless he’s either trying to hook up with her or he likes her so much that he can’t stay away.”
“Well, in our case it’s neither. You don’t know a damn thing about Daisy and me, and it’s none of your business, anyway,” I retort, getting defensive again.
But JD laughs. “You’re right, it’s not. But the longer we stand here, the more you’re convincing me that you’re already in love with her.”
My stomach flips again, and he grins as he reaches over to get his drinks from the bartender before dropping a tip in the jar. A growl threatens to escape my throat when I open my mouth to deny his accusation, so I have no choice but to snap my jaw closed and continue fuming at him in silence.
“Easy, loverboy,” JD drawls. “Your secret’s safe with me.”
I think I see where Ethan gets it.
“You … I … I’m not,” I begin again, but that condescending look on his face keeps distracting me. “Look, I don’t do that shit, all right? So don’t go giving her any ideas.”
His expression shifts. “What are you talking about?”
“I don’t …” But he’s got me so worked up that I have to stop and breathe before I can go on. “I don’t do relationships. And I can’t have Daisy thinking there’s a chance something might happen with us, because I’d only be letting her down.”
Well, that came out surprisingly honest.
“Man, you can’t just pick and choose which people to love and how much. That ain’t the way life works,” he says matter-of-factly before he takes a drink. “Just look at the way I gained a wife and two kids in the span of a year if you need a testament to that. Hell, I should get Ten to tell you?—”
“You should just drop it and leave me the hell alone,” I mutter.
“Eh, but where’s the fun in that?” he muses and shoots me another self-satisfied grin as Tenley joins us.
“What’s wrong?” she asks, glancing back and forth between us.
“Landry thinks he friend zoned Daisy, but it’s giving for now ,” JD tells her and hands over her drink.
“Ooh. How fun!” She takes a sip and smirks at me.
That growl rumbles up from my chest this time. “No, it’s not fun . Nothing’s going on.”
“What about that kiss you shared?” she asks, tilting her chin up and inspecting my reaction. “I bet you’re thinking about it right now, aren’t you?”
Well, I wasn’t before, but now …
“He says they only kissed at the faculty party because of the mistletoe,” JD volunteers on my behalf.
“I wasn’t talking about the faculty party.” Tenley eyes me more carefully.
I feel my face reddening. “What did Daisy tell you?”
“So you have kissed before?” I look away and curse under my breath while JD snickers beside her.
“I didn’t need Daisy to tell me anything. I was working off a hunch, and apparently, I was right.”
My nostrils flare again. “People kiss all the time, Tenley. It’s not like they end up together, right?” I gesture toward the two of them, and she frowns.
“Only after they start kissing the right person,” she declares, and I don’t like the sympathetic look in her eyes.
Another partygoer bumps into me before I can reply, causing my drink to slosh up over the side of my glass and down the front of my shirt. I mutter another curse.
“Oh, Dr. Reed, I’m so sorry,” croons a gray-haired lady apologetically, and I immediately regret the four-letter word I just uttered.
“No worries,” I tell her. She looks familiar, but I can’t remember where I should know her from.
“Nurse Tenley, Coach JD, Merry Christmas to you,” she says.
“Merry Christmas to you, Mrs. Ardoin. How are things down there in the business offices?” Tenley asks politely.
The business offices? Wait, that’s where she’s from. She’s the human resources manager of the hospital group. She takes care of the intake paperwork, including the benefits applications. Which means she knows?—
“All alone, Dr. Reed?”
“Mm-hmm.” My heart begins beating faster, and my eyes dart around us, searching for an out.
“Where’s your wife tonight? I can’t imagine you newlyweds would want to?—”
“I’m sorry, I’ve gotta go get cleaned up,” I cut her off and make a beeline for the door. I don’t stop until I reach the safety of my Jeep.
After I slam the door behind me, I drop my head to the steering wheel for a second as I take a few deep breaths. I have to go so far as to picture Daisy beside me in the passenger seat offering some overly sweet affirmation and patting my back before I can calm myself enough to drive home.
“Well, you’re back early,” Daisy mutters when I walk into the house. She yanks her arm as if she’s pulling a needle through fabric, though I can’t tell if she’s sewing or cross stitching from here.
I press my lips together and nod, though the sight of her is enough to make me feel slightly better. “I saw my opportunity to sneak out after an unfortunate soda accident and took it. But it’s not like I wanted to go in the first place.”
“You said you didn’t want to go alone. Weren’t JD and Tenley there?” she asks, sounding only remotely interested in my answer.
“Yeah, but …”
She lifts a brow at my damp shirt when I come around to join her in the living room. “I thought you were friends now?”
“I still felt like a third wheel,” I tell her, and she makes room for me to sit beside her on the couch.
“I could see that,” she replies, smirking down at her work. My chest tightens when I realize it’s my lab coat. She’s stitching the pocket I ripped the other day. I hadn’t even told her about it, but she must have noticed the tear when she was doing our laundry.
“And I …” I swallow hard. “I realized I’d rather be here … with you.”
She stops, and her eyelashes flutter before she turns her big, green eyes to me. “You did?”
I nod, trying to ignore the urge to touch her in some way. I settle for letting my thigh rest against hers, and it instantly grounds me. “How’s your studying going?”
“Ugh, it’s not,” she groans and lets her head fall back against the couch. “Why am I taking this test again?”
“So you can get a raise and benefits, divorce my old ass and kick me out of your house, and become the best home ec teacher Camellia’s ever had, all own your own,” I say, unable to hold back a small smile.
“I’m not even sure I want any of that anymore,” she mumbles, closing her eyes.
My heart jumps up into my throat. “What?”
“Landry, I don’t want to teach home ec. I don’t want to teach at all, at least not in a school setting. I can’t even cook, for goodness sakes!” She exhales before her eyes pop open again. “Son of a nutcracker, it felt good to say that out loud!”
I chuckle hesitantly, hoping that’s all she meant. “Good. I mean, I’m glad you finally figured that out. So what are you gonna do instead?”
“I don’t know,” she whines and sticks out her bottom lip. “I just know I don’t want to go back to living with my parents. I feel like … like Camellia might be my home now.”
I look away when I realize I’ve been torn between wanting her to have her independence and needing her to return to the safety of her family. Whether it’s for my safety or hers, I’m not sure anymore.
“I’d still like to work with kids. Maybe I can apply for a job as a babysitter or a nanny?” she thinks aloud. “I should be able to drive myself around soon. But, I don’t know if anyone would feel comfortable letting me stay at home alone with a baby or a toddler,” she says sadly.
“Have you ever thought about getting a service animal to help?” I pose. “I know it would make me feel a lot better about leaving you by yourself.”
She smiles. “Of course. But they’re not easy to get, and I certainly can’t afford one myself.”
“There are foundations that sponsor that sort of thing.” I watch her expression carefully.
“As much as I’d love having a seizure alert or even a seizure response dog, it doesn’t seem fair to go out looking for a sponsorship when there are so many kids with epilepsy who probably need it more than I do.” She shrugs. “Besides, I just remembered that I can’t become a nanny, anyway. I wouldn’t get health insurance, would I?”
“Not around here, I’m afraid. I don’t even think there are any daycares big enough to offer the salary and benefits you’d need to survive on your own. Especially once I move out and you go back to paying full rent.” I barely catch the way she winces at the last part before I continue. “What if you applied to teach at the elementary school instead?”
She shrugs. “I suppose teaching is my only option. Unless we find some other rich doctor willing to marry me and turn me into a stay-at-home mom between now and the end of the year.”
I laugh shortly, trying to disguise my disdain of that idea. “Should I start asking around on your behalf?”
“No.” She sighs and sits up to trade my lab coat for the study guide on the table. “I guess it’s time to accept my fate and make the best of it. At least I get to work at a great school, and I love my little house. And my roommate is kind of amazing, especially since he’s willing to stay up late to braid my hair and paint my toenails.” She slings her legs over mine and drops her feet into my lap, wiggling her toes.
I shake my head and bite back a smile. Little does she know that I’d happily accept a night of nail polish with her over a party with anyone else.
“Daisy,” I begin, barely aware of where I’m going with this. “I’d really like it if you came with me to my dad’s house on Christmas Eve. I think … I think it would make it a lot easier for me to get through the night without, you know …”
“Of course I’ll go with you,” she replies, tucking her hair behind her ears. “All you had to do was ask.”
I nod and squeeze her foot affectionately. “Thank you.”
She giggles and squirms, and the corners of my mouth turn up once I realize she’s been hiding something from me. “Wait a minute. Are you telling me,” I pause to run my fingers over the bottom of her other foot, and she squeals as she attempts to escape, “after all this time, you’re ticklish? What happened to full transparency, hmm?” I continue pinning her ankles against my lap with one hand while I tickle her feet with the other, and she’s breathless in no time.
“Okay, okay, stop!” she wheezes, reaching up to wrench her legs from my grasp. “Wait, ew, your shirt’s still all wet.” She tugs her hand back and wipes it on the couch.
“Told you so,” I retort with a laugh.
“Give it here,” she demands. “I was about to put this lab coat in the wash, so I might as well take your shirt, too. You’ll probably want to wear that one again before Christmas, since it’s such a pretty green.”
“It’s fine. I’ll wash it later.”
“Just hand it over,” she insists as she leans up and begins unfastening my shirt, her slender fingers making quick work of the buttons.
My chest starts heaving by the time she gets to the third button, and she pauses there to drag her eyes up to mine. Her eyelashes flutter and her lips part when she realizes what she’s done.
And dammit if she doesn’t keep going.
I barely hold back a whimper as the fabric loosens over my chest, but she continues, her gaze darting back and forth between my eyes and the next bit of skin she exposes.
Then she climbs up to her knees before fisting her hands into the sides of my shirt, tugging upward until she untucks the hem. She reaches up to grab me by the lapels, and I’m afraid I’m going to spontaneously combust any second. I garner every bit of willpower I’ve got and attempt to stop her by covering her hands with mine and holding her in place. But it backfires, because my skin burns at the contact.
“Daisy,” I rasp, my eyelids heavy.
“I’ve undressed you before, you know,” she tells me, her voice taking on a sultry tone, and I don’t know why I free her hands, but I do. She moves them up to my shoulders, peeling my shirt away and forcing the sleeves down my arms. I automatically lean up when she lets go of one side to wrench it out from behind me while her mouth looms only inches from mine.
Something rumbles in my chest against my will, just as I surrender the last remnants of my self-control. I can already taste her by the time I concede, reaching out to grasp her by the hips and tilting my chin up to her.
But I’m too late. She backs away and rises to her feet, leaving me struggling to catch my breath. And the sight of my rumpled shirt in her hands makes the last of the blood drain from my head and gather in a more central region.
“What else is dirty?”
“Wha-what?” I sputter.
“Anything else you want me to wash now?” she asks, smirking and reminding me that she still has the upper hand. Because she’s not anyone’s little sister. She’s a grown woman, and she’s not going to let me forget it.
“Um, I might have gotten some of that soda on my pants,” I mumble without thinking. Then I stop and squeeze my eyes shut. “I mean, no—NO. Just the shirt, thanks.”
“Landry? Are you okay?”
“Mm-hmm,” I intone, grabbing the nearest throw pillow and clutching it tightly in front of my middle.
“Well, I guess I’m not the only one who’s ticklish,” she declares, and I wait for the sounds of her snickering to fade before I open my eyes and grin.