Samuel’s resolve and good intentions lasted another twenty seconds – until he walked into her office and found her sitting on the floor next to the trash can. Her face was pale and her eyes wide as she looked up at him.
“I don’t feel so good,” she said.
Even if she wasn’t pregnant, something was definitely wrong. “I need to get you to the doctor,” he said.
She shook her head. “I’ll have to call my doctor in Los Angeles, then get my dad to fly me over.”
Even to Samuel, a pilot, Danielle’s way of thinking baffled him. It obviously didn’t even occur to her to see a doctor in Houston; Houston was home to some of the best doctors in the country.
He smiled to himself. Was this what he had to look forward to with his own child? Did the daughter of a pilot automatically think of flying as the first option for transportation?
He cleared his throat to keep from laughing. Danielle didn’t even have a car. She used the city bus system and Uber.
“I can get you in to see a doctor here.”
“I don’t have a doctor here,” she said, as he helped her off the floor and into her chair.
“My sisters go to the Houston Women’s Clinic. I can call and get you an appointment.”
She didn’t say anything. She just watched him with those huge green eyes. I pushed her too far. He opened the box of crackers and tore one of the sleeves open. He smiled as he held it out to her. “It’s just an offer,” he said.
She took a cracker, chewed, and leaned back with her eyes closed. “That might be a lot easier,” she said. “I don’t really have the energy to make the trip to L.A. right now.”
“Do you want me to see if I can get you in tomorrow?” he asked, slipping his cell phone out of his jacket pocket.
“Sure,” she said, rubbing her temples. “I didn’t know I was going to fall apart at age twenty-three.”
He laughed. “I don’t think you’re falling apart.”
She sniffed and sighed. “I think I’m coming down with a cold, too.”
Samuel located the phone number of the clinic and dialed. He told himself that his deception was warranted. She doubtlessly thought she would be seeing a primary care physician. He would play dumb when she found out she was seeing an obstetrician.
Chapter 11
Danielle was miserable. She felt like she was coming down with a cold. She was nauseated and throwing up. And she was exhausted. She needed to work on a book cover for Isabella Quinn, but she had zero energy, much less any creativity.
Samuel had dropped her off at her apartment, so now that she was alone, she collapsed on the sofa and, curling her feet beneath her, pulled a throw off the back of the couch and closed her eyes.
She wondered, again, if her father was secretly paying Samuel to watch out for her. He said he was on her father’s payroll, but here he was hanging out with her. He couldn’t possibly be bored enough to want to spend time with a girl who was always either being sick or complaining about feeling sick.
She would go to his doctor and get something to get past this, then she would be better-able to fight her growing attraction and attachment to this man.
Samuel was nothing like Joey. She’d met Joey when they were just freshmen in college. That had been ages ago. Her stepfather, Grayson, had inspired Joey to join the military, and she had watched him become a different person. Unlike most guys, the uniform had not been good for Joey. He’d gone weeks without calling while he was stationed here or there, and they had drifted apart. He’d dropped out of college, and they’d grown even further apart. But then, just when she’d moved on and put him behind her, he’d show up again.
Joey had a certain charm that she wasn’t immune to. He would use we language and talk about getting married. Danielle considered herself trendy when it came to fashion and hair color. She was the first to jump on the mermaid hair color trend, and she did yoga at least once weekly. She enjoyed her mother’s artsy friends. They were so different from Claire, her very traditional mother, that Danielle had been fascinated – like a moth to a flame, she’d studied them and learned about the art world. Not the history of art, but modern art, what attracted people to a painting. Things like that.
She’d switched her major from psychology to fine arts. She had enough of her mother in her to take on a second major, marketing, and so far, the combination was serving her well in the real world of work.
Her downfall had been Joey.
He’d crooked his finger, and she’d followed. Come join me in Houston. We’ll have so much to do. It’ll be fun.
She should’ve known better. She knew him well enough to know that come join me did not translate into come be with me and be my girl.
At least not in the sense of any depth. He wanted her to be his girl, alright, for just about three days.
Then he’d recruited a young eighteen-year-old into his bed.
Danielle wasn’t shocked. She pretended to be. But she knew he’d been playing around on her ever since he put on that uniform and went off to basic training in San Antonio. A girl could tell those things.
Instead of being shocked, she’d been repulsed.
She wondered now why she suddenly developed repulsion toward her on-and-off boyfriend of five years. Perhaps it was the detail of walking into his apartment and finding him in bed with a young girl, kissing her on the stomach.
Still… not a complete shock.
There were rose petals tossed all over the room. Rose petals? Joey had never used such a romantic gesture with Danielle. Not even once.
When she stripped it down to the bare bones – and Danielle had taken plenty of time to dissect her feelings – it wasn’t finding him with the girl. It was finding him with the girl in the very same bed where they had made love the night before.
The. Very. Same. Sheets.
And rose petals?
He’d told Danielle that he loved her. He always did that when they were intimate. He would tell her when he thought she was asleep.
And that was the one detail that tripped her up every time. Because he told her when he thought she was asleep, she believed him.
She believed that even though he wasn’t ready to commit, that he still loved her more than anyone else.
She’d thought he would commit eventually.
The old Danielle, back when she was a teenager, hadn’t been very good at coping. In high school, while her mother had been out at a gallery event, and her father had been with his new girlfriend, Danielle had been alone after a breakup with a boy she’d particularly liked. His name was Richard, and he’d completely swept her off her feet. She had thought they were going to get married. He was five years older and was a pilot she’d met through her father. She’d had enough sense to never tell her father those two details. Even after weeks of family therapy, she kept those details to herself. In retrospect, she’d sensed it was rather Freudian. She hadn’t known about Freud at the time, but she had known that her father didn’t need to know.
Nonetheless, in a moment of desperation, she’d taken her mother’s Xanax and mixed it with her father’s bourbon. That had led to intense individual and family therapy during a mental health hospitalization. It was not a time in her life that she ever wanted to repeat.
She’d lost track of the number of boyfriends she’d been through since then, Joey not included. She suffered through many breakups, but none of them had taxed her coping skills like the one with that pilot. He had been her first sexual experience, and her last, until that night with Joey five weeks ago.
All in all, Danielle’s adventurous spirit with clothes, hair, and even in some ways, her career, didn’t cross over into her world of relationships.
She dated. A lot. But she rarely crossed that line. With Joey, she’d still been young and vulnerable when their relationship started. She couldn’t explain why she’d kept going back to him.
But just because she’d slept with him, didn’t mean she couldn’t let him go.
Over.
With.
She was over Joey.
Somehow the process of being over her long-time on-off boyfriend had led to her needing to take a break from all men.
She hadn’t decided how long this self-imposed hiatus was going to last. There was currently no expiration date.
So here she was, vulnerable from her breakup with Joey, when Samuel waltzed in with his innocent sweetness.
Such was the story of her life. Joey had waltzed in when she was vulnerable from her brush with suicide, and Samuel waltzed in after her discontinuation of what she now knew was a toxic relationship with Joey.
Only this time, she was better at coping. If she just didn’t have this cold. Or virus. Or whatever it was that was making her sick. She’d felt off since that morning nearly six weeks ago. She’d gotten up while Joey was still asleep, gotten dressed, and while it was still dark outside, slipped outside and taken an Uber to her apartment.
She’d not more than pulled up to her apartment, when she realized she’d left her keys lying on his counter. She had the driver turn around take her back to Joey’s. The whole trip took no more than forty-five minutes.
After letting herself inside, she’d calmly walked past Joey and his new girlfriend to empty the contents of the one dresser drawer Joey had shared with her. As she tossed her pajamas and sweats and underwear into her overnight bag and lugged it to the bathroom to gather up her toothbrush, hair dryer, and cosmetic bag, they had become aware of her.
As they scrambled for clothing, she’d calmly taken the key Joey had given her out of her pocket and laid it on the kitchen counter as she walked out.
She hadn’t looked back. She had gotten into the Uber that waited for her and gone straight back to her apartment. On the drive back, she’d blocked Joey’s number, then on second thought, deleted his number from her phone.
Danielle woke the next morning on the couch and reached for her cell phone on the coffee table. She blinked against the sunlight streaming in through the patio doors. Since she was on the tenth floor of her apartment building, she didn’t bother closing the blinds at night. She liked the view of the city lights below.
It was eight o’clock. She’d been asleep for nearly fifteen hours. Samuel would be there to pick her up at eleven. She needed to shower and get herself together. Sitting up, she groaned. It was never a good idea to sleep on the couch. Every muscle ached from sleeping so long on the uncomfortable couch.
Fifteen hours! How was that even possible? She stumbled to the bathroom to take a shower. The hot water on her aching muscles helped. After stepping out of the shower, she tied the towel around her and walked to the kitchen where she had left the package of saltine crackers Samuel had given her.
Her doctor’s appointment was at one o’clock. That gave them time for a quick lunch.
Unfortunately, right now, the very thought of food left her feeling ill.
Chapter 12
Samuel knew it was Noah calling before he even looked at his phone. His new boss had a special ring tone.
“I know I promised you this week for moving,” Noah said as a greeting. “But can you make a quick run for me?”
Oh no! “Today?”
“Yeah,” Noah said.
“I can’t.”
There was silence on the other end.
Samuel made the quick decision to appeal to Noah’s emotional side. “I promised to help Danielle with something.”
He heard what sounded like a sigh on the other end of the phone. “Well, can it wait until tomorrow?”
“No. Tomorrow’s Saturday. I can fly tomorrow if you need me to.”
“It needs to be today,” Noah said.
“I’m sorry,” Samuel said. “I can’t let Danielle down.”
“Alright,” Noah relented. “I’ll see if I can get someone else.”
“Great. If I’d known ahead of time…”
“We talked about this Samuel,” Noah said. “You have to be available at a moment’s notice.”
“It’s your daughter, Mr. Worthington. It’s important.”
“She’s okay?” He asked, alarm in his voice.
“She’s okay,” Samuel said. “But I’m picking her up at eleven for an appointment. If I’m not there, she’ll have to take the bus.”
“Yeah,” he said, his voice softening. “She has an aversion to driving.”
“She told me she never drives.”
“She told you the truth. Her mother and I tried giving her a car years ago. It sat in the garage. I think she took it out once when I insisted she drive me to the airport.”
Samuel laughed. “Maybe she prefers flying.”
“Maybe.” Noah hesitated. “Take care of my girl. I’ll find someone else for the flight.”
Samuel hung up and sighed with relief. He hadn’t said anything that wasn’t true. He’d merely sketched around the truth. It was the right thing to do anyway. It wasn’t his place to disclose Danielle’s business. But if Noah sent him off flying today, Danielle wouldn’t make her doctor’s appointment, and his gut told him she’d put off going altogether.
Glancing at the time, he showered, shaved, and put on a pair of jeans and a polo shirt. It may be November, but it was warm today in typical Houston weather.
He reminded himself, on the drive over to pick up Danielle, that he was doing this for Noah. His employer’s daughter needed help, and since he was on the payroll, he was honor-bound to take care of her.
When he pulled up to the door of her apartment building, Danielle was standing outside waiting for him.
She was wearing a flowing lavender dress splashed with a bouquet of flowers and a little matching sweater. She looked incredibly feminine. His heart stuttered just a little as she smiled at him.
He pulled up and got out of the truck, meeting her on the passenger side. She was wearing flats today, so the top of her head barely reached his shoulders. He opened the door and helped her climb inside. When she put her hand on his arm before stepping into the truck, she looked up at him and smiled.
The flash of attraction was unmistakable. He not only wanted to take care of her, he wanted to know what it felt like to kiss her.
These were feelings he’d thought he’d buried with Jessica.
His boss’s daughter was not the one for him to be having these thoughts and feelings about. If they were going to resurface, they needed to resurface with someone else.
Once she was inside the truck, he closed the door and pulled himself together as he walked around to the driver’s side.
“Where would you like to eat lunch?” he asked.
She grinned sheepishly. “Pappa’s Burgers?”
If he’d learned one thing, it was to never question a woman’s food cravings – pregnant or not. “Alright,” he said. “Pappa’s it is.”
He saw her expression of relief out of the corner of his eye.
As they waited for their shrimp po’boys to arrive, Samuel said, “You look like you’re feeling better.”
“I am,” she agreed. “The crackers help.”
He smiled. “I’ll tell my mother. She’ll be happy to know that her insistence that I keep crackers in my truck paid off.”
Danielle chuckled.
“Did you find out what happened to that model you were expecting?”
“No,” she said. “Sometimes they get cold feet.” She shrugged.
“Really? That’s odd.”
“It’s kind of an odd business.”
“Do you work for yourself?”
“Sort of, but not really. Sort of like you and my father, actually.”
“How so?”
“I work for a company called ‘Show Don’t Tell Book Covers.’ They do all the advertising and handle the office. I make my covers and submit them to the office manager, who posts them on a website. I make a percentage.”
“Why not just do it yourself?” Samuel sipped his soda.
“Because I’m new at it. A lot of designers spin off their own companies.”
“Maybe. What about you? Are you thinking about starting your own company?”
He waited while the server dropped their food off. Then dipped a French fry into ketchup before tasting it. “I don’t know. I’m not sure I want the overhead.” He met her gaze. “As you may be aware, airplanes are rather costly.”
She chuckled. “I suppose there is quite a difference between buying an airplane and buying a computer. I’d still have to hire models though, just like he hires pilots.”
“I guess we have similar business models.” He took a bite of his sandwich. It was good, but he truly hoped she got around to wanting to try something new for lunch, sooner rather than later.
Then he caught himself. It had been so easy to just slip into a routine with Danielle. They’d meet for lunch, then work around her office until she was ready to go home, then he’d drive her to her apartment building and drop her off. She hadn’t invited him up, so their activities had been restricted to lunch and afternoons.
It was for the best.
She was the boss’s daughter.
Samuel was smart enough to know better.
But her being the boss’s daughter was a double-edged sword. He needed to keep his distance, but he also needed to watch out for her.
He had a feeling Noah had no idea how much Danielle needed watching after. She ate half her sandwich, just like yesterday. He picked up the other half and finished it off. He only shrugged when she smirked at him.
“You know, I was thinking.” She smiled at the waiter when he stopped at their table.
“Can I get you a hand-made milkshake?” The waiter asked hopefully.
Her eyes lit up. “Hmm. That sounds good. What do you think, Samuel?”
“Sure,” he agreed, pushing his empty plate aside. It was a good thing he had a high metabolism.
Falling Again Page 4