Chapter Eight
I had no idea where he was taking me, but even with being furious with him, I wasn’t all that concerned about him hurting me. Still pissed at him, yes, but not fearful for my life. So when he pushed me into a room—his bedroom by the looks of it—and let go to shut the door, I was ready to let him have it.
“Is that what you were doing while I was on the phone with Lydia? Putting them all to bed? Without asking me? When did I agree to them sleeping over here? Do you really expect me to just leave them here and go home? Or, or stay or something?” I gulped at the thought, warring emotions tearing me apart despite how angry I was.
“No,” Roman said as he threw his hands up. “I just, I didn’t know how long we’d be out there talking and they were tired and asked if they could get out the sleeping bags to lay in while they watched their movie. They do it all the time. I’ll help you carry them home if you want.”
“And leave Sammy here while you do it? Or wake the poor kid up and drag him along, too?” I shook my head, too angry to think straight or give him any credit for offering to help me.
Bracing one hand against the door, Roman’s head hung down. “I’m sorry, okay? I’m sorry for letting them fall asleep and for whatever I did to make you think badly of me in the first place.”
Anger and frustration still hummed right below the surface, but his defeated posture and weird apology wasn’t completely lost on me. “What are you talking about?” I snapped. “I don’t think badly of you. I think you’re freaking awesome. Which is why I’m so ticked off right now. How can you be this amazing guy all day and then do a complete one-eighty into this ego obsessed jerk?”
Roman’s head came up slowly. One corner of his mouth turned up, though I hadn’t the foggiest as to why. He pushed away from the door and came to stand right in front of me. It was almost intimidating except for the smile still hovering at the edges of his mouth. “Why,” he said slowly, “did you refuse to go out with me?”
I swallowed slowly, trying desperately to stir my anger back up. When that proved impossible, I went to plan B and tried to invent a better reason than the ones I’d already given him. By that point in the day, my brain was pretty much fried and I found myself left with only the truth. Anger fizzled in the face of his closeness and insanely sexy half-smile. Words started tumbling out of my mouth even though I hadn’t planned to tell him a single thing.
“The week…the week before Lydia, um, tried to set us up, I’d…” I swallowed again, not completely sure why I was telling him this, but helpless to stop. “I’d gone out with a guy, not one Lydia found. He came into the library where I work. Seemed nice, charming even. I said yes when he asked me to dinner.”
Roman’s expression went from playful and curious to worried. “What happened?”
“I knew better than to let him pick me up from work. Out of practice, I guess, or just stupid.” I shook my head as the memory spawned a bout of anxiety. “We had a nice night. He was easy to talk to, smart, funny. I had fun, and I thought I’d made a good choice. Until he pulled up to my apartment to drop me off and asked to come in.”
“What did you say?” Roman asked. He moved in closer, his hand brushing against my arm, but falling away after only a brief touch.
I shivered being this close to him. “I said no. I didn’t know him. Dinner was one thing, sleeping with him after chatting for a few hours was a whole other thing.”
Roman blew out the breath he was holding, but then seemed to realize there was more to the story. “I’m guessing he didn’t appreciate the rejection.”
Shaking my head, I tried to sound nonchalant when I spoke. “He locked the car doors and kept this finger on the button so I couldn’t get out. I freaked out a little and, uh…hit him with my purse.”
Both of Roman’s hands came up to hold my arms. “And?”
“And I jumped out of his car when his hand came off the lock button and sprinted to my apartment, of course.” I felt my own relief mingled with his as his grip relaxed into a softer caress. “I reported him to campus security as soon as I got inside. My apartment isn’t technically on campus, but they still manage it so I called them first. They couldn’t do anything right then, but they said they’d keep an eye out for him and that I should file a report with the police…which I did, even though it was incredibly embarrassing to have them lecture me about not accepting rides from strangers like I was a child.”
Being in such close quarters, I wanted to pull away so I could breathe in something other than Roman. But his hands were still on my arms. Stepping away would mean losing contact. Despite having been spitting mad at him not more than five minutes ago, his touch was reassuring and I hesitated pulling away.
“Anyway,” I said more shakily, “I never told Lydia because I was too embarrassed and I kind of had a meltdown when she mentioned having set me up on another blind date.”
“So…it really didn’t have anything to do with me?” Roman asked.
Now I did push him away, though there wasn’t much bite behind it. “No, Mr. It’s All About Me. It had absolutely nothing to do with you. Feel free to go back to stroking your ego and reassuring yourself that there isn’t a woman alive who wouldn’t be thrilled to jump into your arms.”
I was smiling by the end of my spiel and so was he. My stomach twisted a little being faced with it. Why did he have to have such a great smile?
“I know what I said earlier came out completely wrong, but it was driving me crazy not knowing why you’d turned down the blind date so vehemently. I thought I’d done something to offend you.”
“Offend me?” I asked. “I’d never even met you before.”
Now it was Roman’s turn to look chagrined. “Actually, we had. At Lydia’s Christmas party.” When I screwed up my face in confusion, he clarified. “I looked a little different then, thanks to a full beard and different haircut. We only spoke for a few minutes about Hawaii before someone pulled you away and I never managed to catch back up to you that night.”
I gasped, and a new round of mortification washed over me. I remembered that conversation. I’d thought about it many times and cursed my former roommate for yanking me away from the most captivating guy I’d met in forever. “I had no idea that was you,” I groaned. My hands covered my face, dragging down as if that could erase everything. “I’d just gotten back from a week in Hawaii, a present from Lydia and James, and I was still really jetlagged and probably a little buzzed, and it was dark and there were way too many people in that house…”
Roman started laughing and shaking his head. “It’s okay, Greenly. I’m not upset you didn’t remember me. I’m just glad I hadn’t managed to piss you off or offend you in the couple minutes we spoke.”
“No, of course not,” I said hurriedly. Chances were, if we had been able to talk longer the opposite would have happened. “Saying no really was just bad timing.”
Real relief rolled off his body in an almost visible wave as he realized I didn’t despise him for something he might have said months ago, and didn’t think he was a hugely egotistical jerk now for what he said out on the deck. “Good,” he said simply.
I almost asked him why it matter to him so much, but my conversation with Lydia shoved its way back into my head like she was standing right next to me hammering it in. The question slipped out before I could really consider whether I actually wanted to hear the answer or not.
“Why did Lydia try to set us up in the first place when you’d already asked her to keep her nose in her own business?”
Roman took a step back and leaned against the wall comfortably. He looked at me like he had a secret he was all too eager to tell. “Because I asked her to.”
If choking on air were possible, I would have done it right then. His answer couldn’t have been further from what I’d been expecting if he’d said an angel from God had come down and commanded it. “What?” I asked, sounding completely strangled. “Why on earth would you ask
Lydia to set you up with me?” I held back on expounding my less than desirable qualities because, well, he’d already experienced plenty that day to turn him away.
“Why?” Roman asked. The disbelief in his voice made no sense. “Why would I want to go out with an intelligent, kind, beautiful, strong woman? What about you should be unappealing to me?”
How long did he have to stand there and listen? I shook my head back and forth. “You can’t be serious. I can only imagine the things Lydia has told you about me, and today…I was just one disaster after another.”
“First off,” Roman said firmly as he stalked toward me, “your sister has only ever said nice things about you to me. She’s always bragging about how smart you are, how determined, how great you are with her boys, how tough you are for making it through losing your dad and not falling apart. Lydia adores you, Greenly. Yeah, she might be bossy and think she knows best, but she is so incredibly proud of everything you’ve done in your life.”
Tears blurred the edges of my vision. “Really?” It came out as more of a squeak than an actual word.
Roman’s hand slid onto my hip while the other one cradled my cheek. “Yes, really.” His thumb swept over my cheek and he smiled. “And even though today was a little crazy, you were amazing through all of it.”
“No I was not,” I argued. Did we experience the same day together? Did he not see me get taken down by a puppy—a large puppy, sure—but a puppy all the same?
Moving his hand from my hip to my lower back, closing the distance between us as he did, he noticed when my breath caught and couldn’t start back up again. “When Evan spit gum in your hair, you didn’t get mad at him. I spilled soda down your shirt and you took that in stride, too. Sure, flip flops are pretty easy to wash off, but getting ice cream dropped on them after everything else would have tested anyone’s patience. But you just let it roll off you and moved on. I was more upset with Thor than you were for lunging like that and hurting you.”
“But the boys are just kids and Thor’s an excitable puppy. None of what happened was their fault.” I shook my head at what he was saying.
“Exactly,” Roman said. “It was just one of those days, but I’ve seen people lose it from much less. You put the boys, and even Thor, first, and you even put up with me all day. None of what happened today made me think less of you or made me not want to spend time with you.”
“I’m pretty sure it should have,” I argued. “I mean, I’d stay away from me after today.”
Laughing in earnest, Roman did something unexpected. He pulled me into a hug and held me there as he chuckled. “Greenly, I doubt there’s anything you could do that would change my mind about you.”
He was still laughing when I pulled back to stare up at him in confusion. “What?”
“This is the best Valentine’s Day I’ve had in a long time,” he said.
My first thought was that his previous experiences must have been really bad, but then I realized what he was actually saying. It was good not because I provided him with plenty of opportunities to laugh, but because we’d spent it together. He had been the one to initiate the blind date that wasn’t actually a blind date. He actually wanted to spend time with me, and had for a while. I wasn’t imagining those brief moments in the kitchen when he got closer than necessary or touched me when he didn’t need to. It wasn’t wishful thinking when I saw the carefully concealed desire in his eyes and regret when the arrival of the pizza pulled him away from me.
“You…you actually…wanted to, um, go out…with me?” I swallowed the crazy elation welling up inside of me at the thought. “For real, you were interested in me?”
“I still am,” Roman said.
I couldn’t breathe. For a split second there, I felt positive I was going to end the day by passing out in Roman’s arms. Not a bad way to go, mind you, but not exactly ideal. I’d much rather be conscious and in his arms if I could manage it. After getting a hold of myself, my brilliant response to that was, “Oh.”
Pulling me in more tightly, Roman’s free hand cupped my chin and guided me to meet his gaze. “The question is…do you want to go out with me?”
As confident as he was pretending to be, I saw the fear of rejection in his eyes, and all I wanted to do in that moment was make it disappear. “Yes,” I whispered. “Very much.”
Roman’s mouth split wide in a grin before we both reacted. Rising onto my toes as he leaned down, everything else melted away at the feel of his lips meeting mine. It was the kind of end to a day I knew every other day of my life would be measured against.