Coming Home (5 page)

Leah stripped down to her underwear and crawled into bed, suddenly too tired to even think about putting on pajamas.

She pulled her comforter up to her chin, and before her mind could rehash the infuriating text, she was fast asleep.

Danny DeLuca glanced at his watch before shoving his hands back in his pockets.

It was twenty after one.

“Excuse me,” someone said as they opened the door to the restaurant, and Danny stepped to the side, allowing the man to pass.

He didn’t know what to make of it. She had seemed too excited over the bracelet to be a no-show. Plus, he hadn’t pegged her as the kind of girl who would stand someone up anyway.

Not that he even knew anything about her.

He lifted his chin, blowing his breath out in puffs of vapor and watching it dissipate before his eyes. This was a sign. The universe telling him what he already knew. If he had anything resembling a brain in his head, he would walk away right now. Give the bracelet back to Gram and let her handle it.

Danny sighed, pulling his phone out of his pocket.

Ten minutes. He’d give her ten more minutes.

He scrolled through his apps and opened Words With Friends.

“Oh, bull
shit
!” he laughed when he saw Jake’s 103-point word. He had built off the
C
in Danny’s
laces
to make the word
quixotic
.

The direct message that accompanied Jake’s move read simply:
BOOYAH, BITCH!

Danny smirked as he hit reply:
I’d be impressed if I thought for one second you knew what that word meant, or even how to pronounce it. Dick.

“Fucking cheater,” he laughed, hitting send.

“Hey.”

Danny lifted his head to see her standing in front of him, her arms crossed over her chest and her shoulders shrugged against the wind.

He cleared the screen before putting his phone back in his pocket. “I was right about to give up on you,” he said, ignoring the quickening of his pulse.

“Sorry. Parking was awful. I forgot about the gift-returners who would be out today,” she said, waving her hand in a circle around her head.

He nodded, looking around them. “Ungrateful bastards.”

The corner of her mouth lifted in a smile before she said, “You didn’t have to wait outside. It’s freezing.”

Right. He was supposed to be inside. Having lunch.

He shrugged dismissively, scratching the back of his neck. “It’s fine.”

Leah tucked her chin into her scarf and looked up at him from under her lashes. “You’re taller than I remember.”

He smiled then. Not just because of how she looked staring up at him that way, but because of her comment. Like they were long-lost friends who had just been reunited.

There was something so damn charismatic about this girl. He’d spent barely five minutes with her that day at Gram’s, and yet she had managed to charm him. He liked that she wasn’t afraid to call him out on his shit; there was a confidence about her that not a lot of girls had—a toughness—but at the same time, she had been so incredibly compassionate and sweet when it came to Gram.

“So,” she said after few seconds of silence, bouncing up on her toes and looking at him expectantly.

“Oh shit. Sorry,” he said with a laugh, taking his hands out of his pockets and reaching inside his jacket. He pulled out the tiny sandwich bag with the bracelet inside, holding it out to her, and she unfolded her arms, ripping her gloves off and tucking them under her elbow as she took it from him.

She had the bracelet out in an instant, taking the sandwich bag between her teeth to free her hands as she held her forearm against her stomach, trying to close the clasp around her wrist.

The wind was relentless, blowing the plastic bag and strands of her dark, wavy hair into her face, and every few seconds, she would flick her head to the side, trying to clear her vision while her numb fingers struggled with the tiny clasp.

Danny pressed his lips together, fighting a smile as he watched her blow a raspberry with the bag still between her teeth, trying to get an errant strand out of her eyes. He reached down, taking the plastic between his fingers.

She jolted as her eyes flashed to his, and he quirked his brow, giving the bag a little tug.

Leah released it from between her teeth, and he crumpled the bag and shoved it back in his pocket. “Better?”

She smiled self-consciously. “Yeah, thanks,” she said, her eyes dropping back to the task at hand.

When she finally closed the clasp, Leah wrapped her hand around the bracelet, holding it against her skin and closing her eyes. She exhaled heavily as her entire body relaxed, almost as if she had just been relieved of some terrible pain.

She looked so vulnerable standing there like that, and Danny suddenly had the ridiculous urge to pull her against his chest and wrap his arms around her.

“Thank you,” she said as she put her gloves back on.

“You’re welcome.”

“Okay, so,” she exhaled, starting to walk backward. “I’ll let you get back to your friend.”

“Actually…he couldn’t make it.”

What the hell are you doing
?

She stopped short, her shoulders dropping. “Oh. Well, now I feel bad.”

“Why do you feel bad?”

“Because you came up here for nothing.”

“No I didn’t. I came up here to give you back your bracelet.”

“You know what I mean,” she said with a huff, and Danny smiled.

“Don’t worry about it,” he said with a wave of his hand. “I work near here. I was gonna stop in and check on some shit anyway.”

Yeah. That sounded good
.

“Oh. Alright,” she said as she started to walk backward again. “Well, thanks again.”

With every click of her heel against the pavement as she walked away from him, his unintended resolution became stronger.

And when she turned her back to him, he couldn’t stop himself.

“Hey, Leah?”

She stopped, cocking her head over her shoulder.

“Since we’re here, did you want to grab lunch?”

Stupid. So fucking stupid.

She turned to face him, but her expression was hesitant. Almost startled.

“Oh. I, um…I don’t really…I mean…”

“If you’re hungry,” he offered. “Since we both made the drive.”

She started chewing on the corner of her lip, glancing around as if looking for a way out of the situation.

Leave it alone, asshole.

“So, are you hungry?” he asked, ignoring the voice in his head.

She pressed her lips together as she shrugged slightly. “A little.”

He took a step back and opened the door, gesturing for her to enter, and Leah looked at the entrance, still wavering.

“Did you know they have tiramisu cheesecake here?”

She swiped the hair out of her eyes, looking back at him.

“Godiva too,” he said. “And Reese’s.”

Her posture relaxed a bit as the corners of her mouth turned up slightly.

“No dice?” he asked. “How about lemon-raspberry? Caramel apple? Just tell me what’s gonna get you in here.”

She laughed then, looking down as she shook her head. Danny watched her shoulders rise as she took a deep breath, and then she lifted her head and walked toward him.

“Just so you know, you had me at Godiva,” she said, continuing past him into the restaurant.

Danny chuckled as he followed her inside and approached the hostess, and she led them to a small table up against the far window. He leaned over, pulling the chair out for Leah before he walked around to his side.

“Thanks,” she said softly, removing her jacket and hanging it on the back of the chair.

As Danny removed his own coat, his eyes instantly dropped to take her in. He felt like such a scumbag, but he couldn’t help it. Everything had happened so fast back at Gram’s that day, so he hadn’t really noticed—although looking at her now, he couldn’t understand how he’d overlooked it.

She had one of the most incredible bodies he’d ever seen.

She wore a fitted sweater that reached her hips with some type of stretchy black pants that emphasized the tone of her legs. Slim waist. Phenomenal chest. She was long and lean, with gorgeous, feminine curves in all the right places.

And a pair of knee-high boots.

Jesus.

He forced his eyes back up to her face, realizing what a creep he must have looked like.

Her eyes were on his chest before they flitted up to his face and then away, and he tried to hide his self-satisfied smirk as he sat across from her.

A waitress approached their table before he could say anything, handing them a set of menus and taking their drink order. As soon as she left, Leah opened her menu and looked down, scanning the pages as she chewed on the side of her lip. He could see her body moving slightly as she tapped her foot restlessly under the table.

She was uncomfortable.

Danny would have chalked it up to his insensitive ogling, except he knew she hadn’t caught him. Besides, she’d seemed uneasy long before that, from the moment he asked her to join him.

He had no business being there with her. It was an asinine decision, any way he looked at it. But the damage had already been done. So now, he wanted to make the best of it.

Even if it would never go beyond this afternoon.

“So,” Danny said, flipping open his menu, and Leah glanced up at him.

“So,” she said with a tentative smile.

They looked at each other until Leah started chewing on her lip again, dropping her eyes back to the menu.

“Where were you driving home from?”

“Hmm?”

“Last night. You said you were driving home and trying to stay awake. Where were you coming from?”

“Oh,” Leah said, looking up from the menu. “My dad’s house.”

“Ah,” Danny nodded. “Big family gathering for the holiday?”

“Not really,” she said. “What about you?”

He shook his head. “Dinner with my sister and her boyfriend-of-the-minute. Stopped by Gram’s for a bit. Found your bracelet,” he said, nodding toward her wrist. “And then I hung out with my buddy at his job.”

Leah made a face. “He had to work on Christmas?”

“He’s a bartender. It got busier than they thought it would, so he got called in,” Danny said, turning a page of the menu.

“On Christmas night? Where does he bartend?”

“The Rabbit Hole.”

“Here in White Plains? That’s only a few blocks from here.”

Danny lifted his eyes, a slow smile curving his lips. “I know where it is.”

She closed her eyes and shook her head quickly as she mumbled, “Right. Duh.”

“Have you been there?” he asked, watching the most attractive blush color her cheeks as she refocused on the menu.

She nodded. “A while back.”

“That means a lot to you, huh?”

Leah looked up at him questioningly, and he pointed to her wrist, where she was carefully rolling the bracelet between her fingers.

She dropped it like it burned her, looking somewhat embarrassed as she brought her hands under the table and gripped the side of her chair, shifting it slightly.

“It was my mom’s,” she said, picking up the menu and studying it with renewed intensity.

Danny watched her for a moment before lowering his eyes. There were a hundred reasons he could think of that might have caused her to use the past tense in that last sentence, and none of them were good.

The waitress approached the table with their drinks then, and Leah visibly relaxed, looking like she wanted to jump up and hug her for the interruption.

After they had placed their orders, Danny reached for Leah’s menu and handed them both to the waitress.

“By the way,” he said. “I never got a chance to thank you.”

“For?” she asked, leaning over to sip her iced tea.

“For being so nice to Gram the other day.”

Leah smiled the first genuine smile he’d seen since they entered the restaurant. “She’s so sweet.”

“Yeah, a little too sweet. I don’t know what she was thinking, inviting a complete stranger who could have been a lunatic into her house.”

Leah raised her eyebrows.

“No offense to you or anything,” he added quickly. “It’s just that…well, you never know…you know?”

“No, it’s okay,” she said with a laugh. “I totally understand you being protective of your grandmother.”

“She’s not my grandmother.”

Leah pulled her brow together. “She’s not? You call her Gram.”

“Yeah, I know,” he said, rubbing the back of his neck. Why the hell did he just tell her that? “It’s just…I grew up with her grandson. So we’re sort of like family.”

Please just drop it,
he prayed silently.

“Wow,” she said.

“Wow? What’s wow?”

“I don’t know,” Leah answered, stirring her drink with her straw. “It’s just, I thought it was really nice of you to do all that work around the house for her when I assumed she was family. But, now that I know she’s not…I don’t know. It’s even nicer of you, I guess.”

Danny looked down, shredding his napkin with his fingers. “I guess.”

Even if he wanted to talk about this, which he didn’t, there was no way he could ever explain why he did what he did for Gram. It had nothing to do with being nice. The truth was, he could work in her house every hour of every day for the rest of his life, and it would still never be enough.