by Mara Wells
He ignored her teasing. “Will you go out with me? On a date?”
“A date?” Her fingers curled into his wrist, nails sharp on his skin.
“A real date.” He tilted his head in her direction, eyes still closed. “Dinner. Maybe a walk on the beach? Or a movie. Whatever you want.”
She took a deep breath, reaching for her calm. He was teasing. She’d started it, so she would tease back. In a friendly way. “What if I want flowers?”
“Violets.” He cracked open one eye. “I remember.”
She remembered, too, the violet corsage the exact shade of her prom dress. How he’d been so nervous, slipping it onto her wrist while her dad took a thousand photos. He’d worn a matching violet pinned to the tux’s lapel, and she remembered thinking how unfair it was that the purple made his eyes seem even bluer when her eyes were always brown. Just brown.
“Friends don’t date, Knox.” But her fingers had uncurled to caress the inside of his wrist, a gentle back-and-forth with the pad of her finger that traced the veins and was also something that friends didn’t do. Probably.
“Dani.” He tipped his head back, and their eyes met. The tight lines spoke of the pain he was in, but even so, he managed to smile. “One date, that’s all. Humor an injured man.”
“Playing the wounded-soldier card, huh?” Danielle felt the heat creeping up her neck, into her face, and she felt heat lower down, too, flushing through her body like a wildfire, but she didn’t look away. He saw her reaction, and his nostrils flared.
“Marines aren’t soldiers. We’re Marines.” He bopped her nose with the tip of his finger. She resisted the urge to turn her cheek into his palm. “But basically, yeah. Is it working?”
“Only one date?” It was a bad idea. A terrible idea. She was already planning what to wear.
He nodded solemnly. She nodded back.
“We have a deal?” His eyes searched her face like he wasn’t sure she’d actually agreed.
“What we have is a date.” A giggle skittered out of her, nervous and too high-pitched.
“Good.” Knox closed his eyes again, and Danielle closed hers, too, because everything suddenly seemed too much. The lights too bright, the room too warm, Knox too far away. They waited another half an hour, holding hands in the dark they’d created together.
Finally, a nurse opened the door and called his name, then seeing he was in a wheelchair, walked toward them and grabbed the handles. She wheeled him backward through the doors.
He waved at Danielle. “You don’t have to wait for me.”
I never stopped waiting for you.
The doors closed behind him, and Danielle sank back in her chair. Good thing she hadn’t said the words aloud. How pathetic was she? A question she preferred not to contemplate. She took out her phone and opened up her reading app, picking up in her latest romance novel where she’d fallen asleep last night. At least in books, she could believe in happily-ever-after.
Chapter 20
Knox kept both hands on the wheel, mostly to keep them from either rubbing his still painful leg or reaching for Danielle, who had dressed like he’d told her: jeans and a T-shirt. But the way the lavender scoop-neck tee outlined her breasts and how those jeans hugged her rounded hips, that was all Danielle. So much for thinking a daytime date would make everything less intense.
“Are you sure you’re up for this?” Danielle chewed on her lower lip, her fingers twining and untwining themselves in her lap. “I mean, after yesterday?”
The VA had eventually sent him home after scheduling more tests for the near future. Tests he’d had before and that never came back with the results he desperately wanted. Maybe this time would be different. Maybe not. He needed to plan for bad news, but not today. Today was for Danielle. Thankfully, after a night of rest and alternating heat and ice, his leg was cooperating. Mostly.
“I’m not juggling any bathroom sinks today, so I should be fine.” He didn’t want to cloud this, their first date in decades, with medical talk. He for sure wasn’t going to mention how his leg still hurt like hell, especially if he put all his weight on it. Driving didn’t strain his injury, and it wasn’t as if he planned to stand around on one leg like a drowsy flamingo.
Knox surreptitiously checked the directions on his phone. He’d propped it on his left thigh, angled slightly toward the door, to keep Danielle from easily seeing their destination. His plan also made it more difficult for him to see the directions, but once they hopped on the extension, it was a fairly straight shot to their location.
“The turnpike?” Danielle swiveled in the passenger seat, pointing at the overhead sign as they passed under the southbound sign. “We’re not going to the Keys, are we? I can’t be gone that long. The puppies—”
“You are a difficult woman to surprise.” Knox cut across a lane. “There are things south of Miami that are not the Keys.”
“Such as?” she asked as if she hadn’t grown up here, that teasing smile he adored on her lips.
Lips he was going to kiss today. What was the point of a date if there wasn’t any kissing? Wasn’t that the difference between plans with a friend and a date? The whole bodily contact thing? If this was the only date she ever agreed to, he planned to get as much of that bodily contact as possible. Starting now. He reached across the center console and grasped her hand. She sighed and flipped her hand so their fingers interlaced.
“Patience. Besides, didn’t you tell me Flurry is a good mother?”
“She needs to be let out. And—”
“And don’t you live in your father’s backyard? He wouldn’t let her out if you texted him?”
“Of course he would. So we are going to the Keys?”
He grinned at her tenaciousness. “No, but you can settle in. It’s a bit of a drive.”
“Mystery man.” She thumped back in the seat, his hand still in hers. “How about a clue? Like, how far is a bit?”
“That’s too much of a clue. You’ll guess in a second.” He slanted a glance her way. “Which I’m sure is your intention but will ruin the surprise.”
“Fine.” Danielle pushed out her lower lip, gnawing on it with her teeth. His groin tightened at the sight. “Will there be food?”
“What kind of date doesn’t have food?”
“That’s not an answer.”
“Yes, there will be food.”
“What kind of food?”
“Delicious food.”
“Not an answer. You’re not very good at this game.”
Knox shook his head. “I’m not playing a game. I’m taking this date very seriously, but you are clearly bent on destroying it.”
She huffed. “Am not.”
“Then stop trying to guess. Enjoy being surprised.”
“Fine.” She let go of his hand, which was not fine as far as he was concerned, and turned her attention to finding the perfect road-trip music. She rifled through his playlists, trying out a few and snorting in derision. Then she gasped.
“You still have it!”
“What?” An uncomfortable itch rode his spine. What had she found?
She cued it up, and he groaned. “Not that. Anything but that.”
“Hey, you’re the one who still has it.” Danielle turned up the volume. “I loved this song.”
“I remember.” He remembered every song on the playlist, the one she’d made for him for high-school graduation. She’d called it the Summer of Love, and it included, as far as he could tell, every cheesy love song ever written. That summer, no matter what song came on, she’d scream “That’s our song!” and kiss him. So he’d developed a love-hate relationship with the playlist. He hadn’t listened to it in over a decade, but he also had never been able to delete it. He’d dutifully transferred it to every new device he bought. And now he knew why. For this moment.
“That’s our s
ong!” Danielle screeched with laughter. “God help us both.”
“You had terrible taste in music.” He turned the music down, but she swatted his hand away.
“Still do. The dogs don’t mind.” She bounced in her seat, shaking her shoulders as the singer entreated them to never, ever find another.
He smiled. This was already the best date he’d been on in fifteen years, and they weren’t even out of Miami yet.
* * *
Knox almost missed the turn, but he saw the wooden sign listing farm goods and petting zoo at the last moment. He pulled off the main road and onto a dirt-and-rock path that deteriorated the closer they got to a ramshackle structure made of graying wood. Hand-painted signs advertised canned preserves, goat milk, hand-carved figures, and pies. His mom had brought him here when he was in the first grade and obsessed with goats. He’d read about fainting goats at school, he remembered, and although he’d loved the petting zoo, had been sorely disappointed that none of them had fainted. When planning this day-long date, he’d thought this would be the perfect spot to take Danielle—time with animals she could enjoy but didn’t have to rescue herself. It was, however, decidedly shabbier than in his memories. Hopefully, they still had goats, and hopefully they weren’t the same ones from when he was six years old.
“What is this place?” Danielle jumped out of the Range Rover before he could round the hood to open the door for her. “Is there really a petting zoo?” She bounced in place, not unlike his nephew when Meerkat Manor came on Animal Planet. She already had her purse open, wallet in hand, searching for the five dollars advertised as the entry fee.
“Let me.” Knox clamped his hand over her well-worn wallet, pushing it back into her small mesh bag. The cross-body strap nestled between her breasts, outlining them in sharp detail, but he forced his gaze away from the distracting sight and led the way up the weathered steps into the one-room building. Shelves lined every wall, filled with preserves and jars of honey, and a few racks displaying key chains and fake alligator heads dotted the small interior.
An older woman, white hair arranged in tight curls around her face, smiled at them from behind an old-fashioned cash register. “Where you from, folks?” Her smile, though yellowed and crowded, was warm and welcoming.
“Miami Beach,” Danielle answered, perusing a card that looked like it had been laminated several decades ago. The edges were jagged and moisture darkened the edges of the paper within. “How much for the petting zoo?”
“You brought your kids? Got a special price for families.” The woman’s smile widened, and she looked past them as if expecting a troupe of children to come clamoring up the steps.
Knox saw the moment it happened; all the anticipation that animated Danielle’s entire body leached from her in the second it took her to inhale sharply and put the card back on the counter. “No. No kids.”
The woman looked from Danielle to him and winked. “Don’t worry, honey. I’m sure you’ll be blessed soon enough.”
“No.” Danielle stiffened, and then her left leg started to shake. First, it was only a small tremble, but it intensified until her foot tapped against the wooden floorboards like it had to let the energy out somehow. She stared at the woman for a long moment, clearly debating something. Then she spun and darted out the door.
The woman turned confused eyes his way. “What’d I say?”
Knox clamped his jaw shut against the angry words that he wanted to lash at the woman who’d hurt Danielle. He wasn’t sure exactly why Danielle had reacted the way she did but standing here wasn’t going to help him figure it out. He handed over a twenty-dollar bill. “We’ll take two of the bottles.”
The woman was too slow, crouching to the level of the small refrigerator behind her. When she finally handed over the bottles with their large plastic nipples, she said, “Tell her I’m sorry.”
Knox gave a curt nod. He didn’t owe the woman any explanation—not that he could give one—or an apology. She’d started it after all.
He found Danielle, arms folded across the top of a fence overlooking the petting zoo, gaze on a black dog lounging in the shade of a wild tamarind. She had one of its orb-shaped, sweet-smelling flowers held under her nose.
“It’s infuriating.” She took a loud sniff. He hoped it was because of the flower and not from crying.
“It is,” he agreed, not sure what he was agreeing with.
“I hate it when people ask me about kids.” The flower crumbled in her fist, tiny petals drifting to the ground.
Ah, the kids question. He occasionally got asked about them, too, and it always reminded him of her miscarriage. Their miscarriage. Time had dulled the impact for him, although he still felt the sadness each time, but it made sense that each reminder could be a fresh opening of the wound for Danielle.
“Breeders gotta breed,” he tried to joke but instantly regretted it. What they were talking about deserved to be ridiculed, but what they weren’t talking about—what they hadn’t talked about since the day she informed him the baby was gone—was no laughing matter. “What I mean is, they don’t mean any harm. She was well intentioned, trying to give us a discount.”
“Well intentioned?” Danielle reached up and plucked another flower from the tree, weaving the stem between her fingers. “Where do I even start? First, it’s rude. She’s essentially commenting on my sex life. How is that even remotely socially acceptable?” The stem tore in two. “How would you like it if people you’d just met asked about your sperm count?”
“I would not like that.” He’d never thought about people’s questions about kids quite like that before, but she had a valid point. It was a really personal question. “What about people who can’t have kids? It could be really painful for them. Or don’t want them? Why should they have to explain themselves to strangers?”
Danielle dropped two flower petals and turned a fierce grin on him. “Exactly. But it’s rude of me to correct them? I am so tired of this conversation.”
He hoped she meant the one about kids and not the one with him. He was afraid to ask directly, so he held out one of the bottles to her. “Here. Wanna go meet some goats? I promise they won’t ask any unwelcome questions.”
“Thanks.” She took the bottle, keeping her head down. Bangs brushed forward, brown hair concealing her face. The rest of the flower floated to the ground, its petals scattering in the light breeze.
“This way.” Knox led her around the enclosure. The dog wagged its tail at them before putting its head back on its paws as they passed to the other side of the building where a barn in no better shape than the store leaned in a way that suggested it wouldn’t make it through the next hurricane. Another hand-painted sign pointed them behind the barn.
“I’m sorry.” Danielle clutched the bottle to her chest. “About back there. I—”
“It’s fine. As long as you’re fine?”
She nodded.
“Do you want to talk about it some more?”
She shook her head so hard her short hair spun around her head.
Thank God. He tipped the bottle in his hand toward hers in a toast. “Then onward. Baby goats await.”
The smile trembling on her lips broke his heart just a little bit. He wanted to go back and give that woman a dressing-down like he would a recruit fumbling his rifle during drills. Instead, he placed his hand between Danielle’s shoulder blades, guiding her to the back field where the petting-zoo animals grazed.
Danielle took a deep breath, her back rising and falling under his palm. She tipped her head back, her smile back at full force. “This is heaven.”
Heaven seemed a strong word for such a hodgepodge of animals wandering around a half-mud, half-grass pasture, but he remembered his six-year-old self had felt similarly. The baby goats rushed the fence, clearly interested in the bottles. Two potbellied pigs lounged in the shade, and a few newly shorn sheep
meandered their way. Chickens pecked away on the grassy side, and in the far corner next to a cement trough, a sway-backed Clydesdale chomped on a mouthful of hay with his giant teeth. One goat pushed his head against the gate, begging for attention. Or a bottle. Probably the bottle.
“Impatient, aren’t you?” Danielle reached through the gap in the fence to scratch under the goat’s chin while she figured out the latch. After a few fumbles, she got it open, and they slipped in, careful not to let any animals out. Not that any were trying.
Knox shuffled forward, using his knees to move the goats back, bottle held overhead. “They have a good life here, don’t they? Strangers coming by to feed them at all hours of the day? We’re basically their pizza delivery service.”
“It’s good to be a goat. They do seem happy to see us.” Danielle backed against the fence, a trio of goats clamoring to be first. She lowered the bottle to the gate thumper for a few moments, then transferred to the next goat, and then the next. She bent at the waist, her purse hanging down. A white goat gnawed gently on the strap. Danielle didn’t notice, and Knox was pretty sure she wouldn’t care if she did.
She petted each goat while it ate, telling them how beautiful they were. Soon, two more goats and a sheep joined the crowd around her. She spoke with each one, praising their friendliness and asking them questions like “Why are you so cute?” that they couldn’t answer. He could ask the same thing of her, but he didn’t. He leaned against the gate and enjoyed the show.
A bump against his brace made him look down. A brown goat, smaller than the others and with white ears, looked up at him with liquid brown eyes full of hope. Knox had intended to give the second bottle to Danielle when hers ran out, but this little guy was too adorable. Knox offered the nipple and the goat latched on eagerly, sucking half the bottle down with such strength Knox had no idea how Danielle had managed to give her goats turns. In another moment, his entire bottle was empty, and the voracious little beast trotted away to try its luck with Danielle.
