Chapter Twelve
Dakota
Tuesday
So apparently, Dakota didn’t need to see Rylee to feel that odd sensation.
When they found a table at the back of Macadoo’s, there it was, the now familiar buzz. Boom experiment complete. No Rylee in sight, and my circuitry is going nuts.
But before he could take that thought to its next rational step of medical intervention, Jasper said. “I think that’s Neesa at the bar. She’s here with another woman.”
Dakota turned and looked across to the front. “Rylee Jones, Neesa’s co-director.” This time, Dakota managed to keep his atoms mostly stitched together, but she definitely gave him butterflies. Wasn’t it interesting that he hadn’t seen her when his nervous system first reacted?
“Rylee? I’ve only spoken to her by phone. You already met her?” Jasper asked.
“Never,” Dakota said. “I think we’ve crossed paths three times this week; this might be number four.” He stood to the side and let Veer slide down the booth seat.
“Seems significant,” Veer said, adjusting herself into the curve of Kumar’s arm. “Maybe your guardian angel is trying his best, but you’re not cooperating.”
“Either that,” Kumar said, “or her guardian angel keeps seeing Dakota and is steering her in the other direction.”
“In that case, you should probably leave the poor girl alone,” Veer said.
“Three times? Where was this?” Jasper asked.
“First time at that charity race on Sunday. She was at the finish line. The second time, she was the woman I handed my flowers to when she got in a cab. Third time, I passed her running out of the WorldCares Operations offices.”
“The woman in the taxi could have been anyone, right?” Jasper asked. “A doppelganger?”
“I don’t think so.” No, Dakota was absolutely sure it was the same woman for no other reason than how his body reacted when she was around.
“Wait,” Kumar leaned forward, “You thrust a bunch of flowers at a strange woman?”
“She didn’t deck you and run away screaming?” Veer asked.
“It’s not like that,” Dakota told Veer. “I had just bought some flowers. Then Jasper rerouted me, and I was suddenly heading to the airport. I had the flowers in my hand. She looked stressed out. I didn’t really think about it.
It all just happened.” Dakota beat “She got into the cab, I gave her the flowers, shut the door, the taxi drove off. So yeah, that’s about how it went down. ”
“And you know her name because?” Jasper asked.
“When we went to WorldCares, I first saw her coming out of the building. Then I saw the bouquet on the desk in the office next to Neesa’s. When I asked whose office it was, Erica said it was the co-director, Rylee Jones’s, office. It was Sherlock Holmes 101.”
“Must have been a very distinctive bouquet,” Kumar said.
“It was.”
“So, no room for a mistake?” Jasper asked, taking off his coat and draping it on the back of his chair. He seemed to be slow-rolling, settling in his seat, perhaps to give Neesa time to see him and come over.
And maybe that was why Dakota was standing there, too. “I’d say not, especially with Neesa sitting right next to her at the bar right up the street from their office.”
“Look at Jasper grinning away. I do believe our Jasper is smitten.” Veer grinned up at him. “Both of them,” she told Kumar, “are smitten kittens.”
“Go invite them over, Jasper,” Kumar said, “for your sake, but also so Dakota can finally meet his future wife.”
“Stop.” Dakota pulled out a chair and forced himself into it.
Jasper turned and looked Neesa’s way. “Yeah, I’ll be right back.” As he started toward the front of the bar, Neesa took a step his way. Jasper raised his arm and flagged her over.
The crowd was growing thicker as people left work and came for a drink to unwind.
Neesa was making her way over, but much to Dakota’s disappointment, Rylee stayed at the bar. Dakota smiled, stood, and gestured for her to take his seat. “Neesa, good to see you outside of the office.”
Neesa’s face pinked. “Yes, it’s a nice little place here, very convenient to my work, and, I guess, yours too.”
Jasper introduced her to Veer and Kumar.
“Should we invite your friend over?” Veer asked, sending an evil grin in Dakota’s direction.
Neesa turned to look Rylee’s way. “She’s waiting for Erica to get here.”
As Dakota went to a nearby table to ask if they could spare one of their chairs, Jasper’s phone pinged.
Focusing on the screen, Jasper said, “Hey, Benny’s out of surgery. All’s good.”
A sigh of relief made its way around the table.
Dakota put the chair at the far side of the table and sat down across from Neesa. “Our friend had a heart attack going home on the Metro yesterday.”
“What now?” Neesa went blank-faced, her lids blinking in a steady tempo.
“I was on the phone with him when it happened,” Jasper said. “The people around him were rock stars. They saved his life.”
“Goose flesh,” Neesa whispered as she rubbed a hand up and down her arm.
“How’s that?” Veer asked
“Balding head, blue pin-striped shirt, wife named Martha?”
“That’s right,” Jasper said with a scowl.
“That was me. Rylee and I did CPR on a man at the L’Enfant Plaza Station right after leaving work on our way to go meet friends for dinner last night.”
The table stilled until Veer whispered, “Me too. Goose flesh.” She leaned toward Dakota and lifted her brows.
“Many people believe there’s no such thing as a coincidence.
And if you don’t believe in one set of odd circumstances, certainly you can’t ignore an entire string of coincidences,” she whispered, then raised her voice, “Dakota, go invite Rylee over. We need to thank these wonderful women and toast Benny’s successful surgery. ”
Veer was right about coincidences. It all seemed very neatly woven. Enough so that it was throwing him off.
“How’s Benny doing?” Neesa asked. “He’s out of surgery, but do they have a handle on things?”
“Good,” Jasper said. “Well, not good. He’s had better days.
But alive. He’s on the right road to get him to recovery.
” He swiveled closer to Neesa. “I’m so glad I found you.
Benny wanted to thank someone, but of course, the police don’t give out information.
” He nodded toward Dakota. “Dakota was telling Benny he looked bad and to go to the doctor the morning of his heart attack.”
“In my experience,” Veer shot a glare in Kumar’s direction, “men don’t like to know their vulnerabilities, so they rarely go.”
“Well, they’re rewarded when they do show up. Doctors take men seriously, and they diagnose them with great efficiency,” Neesa said. “Their medications are correct and appropriate, and they’re very much cared for.”
Dakota thought there was a bite of bitterness in her tone.
“It’s a little in my face right now, through a colleague,” Neesa said, “that women’s interactions with the medical establishment are vastly different.”
“Really?” Kumar took a moment to shoot a glance back at Veer. Obviously, this was an ongoing point of tension for them. But his expression was neutral when he asked Neesa, “How did you arrive at that conclusion?”
“In every way you can imagine. Mostly, they never really studied the female body until the nineteen nineties. Even things as simple as the BMI. Most people know their BMI, and doctors use it to tell women about their body composition, but it was invented by a Belgian statistician in the eighteen thirties who studied—ready for this? European men. So, white men two centuries ago created the framework for what is a mathematical, not medical metric, that we’re judged by at the doctor’s.
There was no diversity in his work. Women just need to conform to the male scale. ”
“Huh,” Jasper scowled with a hand to his chest. “So not black men or men of Indian descent,” he raised his chin toward Kumar.
“And certainly not me,” Veer said. “I have two strikes—female and Punjabi, so to hell with the BMI, I’m going to eat what I want.” She turned to Kumar, who smiled at her, then leaned in for a kiss.
“Be right back.” Dakota stood and wended his way toward the front of the bar.
From his height, he could see over everyone’s heads.
His height was good for that. It was bad when he was trying to blend; his head and shoulders rose above everyone else’s like a whack-a-mole, stuck in the upright position, making it easy to bonk.
As Dakota bladed his body to move sideways through the crowd, he could make out a man talking to Rylee and Rylee sending out visible barbs to ward him off.
The bell on the front door continuously jingled with every newcomer. And with each sound of bells, Rylee was checking the door. Her face brightened with a smile as Erica, her PA, pushed through the door, swinging her head to find her friends.
A group doing a round of hugs and birthday wishes stalled Dakota’s progress.
Rylee took Erica’s hands in hers and was making a kind of barricade with their bodies to wall out that bar leech.
The guy wasn’t letting off.
Yeah, Dakota was aware of the protective growl that rumbled in his chest as he moved more aggressively through the tightly knotted klatches. Dakota got pinned by the corner of the bar, still an arm’s length away from throttling the guy.
Suddenly, there were bobbing heads, a gasp of bystanders, and the crowd spread to make a ring around the man who was face down, his hand bent backward, locked in Rylee’s arm bar, and Erica dropped to kneel on the man’s lower back.
“Security!” A woman called out, holding her phone out, recording the scene.
As always in these types of situations, the crowd surged to make a ring around the action.
The crowd was three people deep, and Dakota would have to muscle in.
Rylee didn’t know him, Dakota reasoned. Didn’t know he was on her side.
He’d just be another man pushing into the space that she controlled with mastery.
The only reason for him to drop in on her then would be ego.
Rylee looked unhurt, or there would be zero hesitation from him.