“Don’t worry. I’ve already patched up the hole in the soffit.”
She gaped at him. “You’re climbing ladders?”
“Did I say I patched it?” He grinned. “I told Owen to patch it. I guess I can ask you that important question now,” he said. “Promise you’ll think about it before you say no.”
“Why do you assume I’ll say no?”
“Just promise.”
“I promise.”
Somebody moved to stand next to Chad, drawing Lindsey’s attention from him. Their party crasher wasn’t a stranger this time. Lindsey had seen this bitch at the hospital in San Antonio.
“Hello, Chad,” Josie said, her brown eyes raking over the man she’d discarded just a month before. “You’re looking well.”
Eyes narrowed, Lindsey reached for her steak knife.
Chapter Fourteen
Chad’s heart was ripped from his chest and tossed on the ground, where it crept across the floor like a wounded slug to curl up in the corner and await death.
“Josie,” he said, her name a breathless croak.
“I didn’t realize you were already out of the hospital,” Josie said, resting a hand on his shoulder and gifting him with a familiar smile. A month ago, he’d have paid any price to see that smile in person. And now . . . now he wasn’t sure how he felt at all. Seeing her tore open the reinforced mental black box he’d placed her memory in. The box he’d thought impenetrable when he’d closed the lid and shelved it alongside the memory of Emerson’s death and the one of the first man he’d shot dead in the line of duty and all the other memories he wasn’t prepared to deal with.
“Don’t touch him,” Lindsey snarled. “Don’t even talk to him.”
“Who’s this?” Josie asked. Her voice ripped his spine out and sent it slithering off to join his heart.
“A friend,” he said, scarcely recognizing that breathless voice as his own.
He looked up at Josie, and his mind went blank as his brain vacated his skull. Just how many internal organs was she going to rip out of him before she was finished?
“Josie!” The harsh whisper came from several feet away.
Chad looked over his shoulder. Desmond, a good friend of Chad’s from high school, was waving a hand at her, signaling her to join him. Chad lifted a finger of greeting at Des and was ignored. He dropped his hand. He understood that some people were uncomfortable around the differently abled, but he’d known Des for over ten years, and as far as Chad knew, the man wasn’t blind. Maybe he didn’t recognize him. Or maybe he was so fixated on Josie that he hadn’t seen Chad’s gesture. Surely he wasn’t just rude.
“Josie!” Desmond said a little louder. “We have to go.”
We?
“Your date is calling you,” Lindsey said, gripping her steak knife in a tight fist.
“I hear him. He’ll wait.”
“You’re dating Des?” Chad managed to get the question out through his constricted throat.
“You were gone so long,” Josie said. “And it just sort of happened. I didn’t mean—”
“You were dating Des while I was in Afghanistan?”
She took her hand off his shoulder as if he’d burst into flames, and as hot as his temper had just flared, maybe he had.
“Did you use my amputation as an excuse to dump me?” And did that make her a better person or a worse one? It definitely made her a stranger. How could she have cheated on him and still smiled and flirted like nothing was wrong whenever they Skyped? What the fuck?
“I just wanted to say hi.” Josie backed away. “Be seeing you.”
“He hopes not!” Lindsey yelled after her.
Chad just sat there, too stunned to get off his ass and beat the ever-loving shit out of Desmond Parrish. At least he knew why Des had ignored his greeting. How long had he been fucking Chad’s fiancée? Did it matter? What the hell?
“Are you okay?” Lindsey asked, dropping her steak knife and reaching across the table for his hand.
He withdrew it and hid it under the table.
“Chad?” She sniffed. Tears were leaking from her eyes.
“Are you crying for me again? In public?”
She grabbed a napkin and dabbed at her eyes. “I’m sorry. I’m just . . . just so mad. I should have stabbed her.”
The thought of enormously pregnant Lindsey taking Josie out with a steak knife caught Chad as humorous, and he laughed. “Ah, fuck my life.” He rubbed his face with both hands, wishing he was at home on the sofa with Lindsey curled against his side watching another Schwarzenegger flick. When had he become such a homebody?
Their server arrived with their steaks, and they both stared at their plates as if they’d been served manure. Chad met Lindsey’s gaze across the table. “Want to eat at my house?” he asked.
She nodded.
He signaled their waitress, who’d just stepped away with the huge serving tray under one arm.
“I’m sorry, but can you wrap this up for us. We have somewhere we need to be.”
She blinked as if it was a request she’d never heard before, but then she smiled. “Absolutely.” She collected their plates and carried them back to the kitchen.
“Wasn’t there something important you were going to ask me?” Lindsey asked.
He wasn’t sure he could take a rejection from her after what Josie had done to him. He also wasn’t sure why he wasn’t more upset by Josie’s betrayal. Maybe because in at least one way, he was glad she was gone. Fuck that bitch.
“I was . . . uh . . .” Words failed him, so he chugged half his beer. “I thought maybe . . .” He reached for his beer again and chugged the second half.
“Thirsty?”
He nodded, wondering where his spine had wandered off to and if it planned to return anytime soon. He could really use it at the moment. “Will you move in with me?” he blurted.
She stared at him unblinking for a long moment. “As your nurse?”
He shook his head.
“Friend?” she asked.
He shook his head again.
“Roommate?”
“As my lov . . . ver.” Smooth, Chad. “My lover. Girlfriend, significant other, or whatever you prefer to be called. You can have your own room if you want, but I hope you’ll want to sleep with me.”
“I thought your house was a demolition zone.”
“The bedrooms are fine, and I won’t redo the upst
airs bath until later, but I understand if you—”
“Yes.”
“—don’t want to make that kind of commitment until—”
“Yes.”
“—after the baby is born. But before you decide, I want to show you something.”
Lindsey chuckled and squeezed his hand. “I already decided. I said yes, Chad.”
“Oh.” He huffed on a laugh, not sure what the bubbly feeling inside his chest was all about. “Okay, well, I guess I didn’t need to rush on your surprise then.”
“My surprise?”
“At the house.”
Their server placed two Styrofoam containers on the edge of the table. “Thanks for coming,” she said. “I hope you’ll visit us again soon.”
“I need the check,” Chad said, lifting the sack of food to see if she’d placed it underneath.
“Oh, that gentleman over there paid for your meal.” She pointed at a stranger a few tables away who smiled and saluted him.
Chad nodded at the friendly fellow, whose entire party was now grinning and saluting. “That’s awfully nice of him, but I can’t accept—”
Lindsey squeezed his hand, cutting him off.
“Thank him for us,” she said to the server. Then she hauled herself out of her chair.
Chad got his foot under him and pressed against the wall to stand. He grabbed his crutches and avoided eye contact with gawkers as he led the way back to the car.
Once Lindsey was tucked inside with their meals on the floorboards at her feet, he shut her door and took a deep breath. Images of Josie—her smile, her laugh, the way she used to look at him—crowded his thoughts, but he pushed them aside and pushed her into his past where she belonged.
By the time he backed the car out, he had his wits about himself again. He’d be okay. Especially with Lindsey beside him. Sometimes he wondered if she really was an angel sent from heaven to look after him when he’d needed one most.
“Do you have a bed yet?” she asked.
Then again, he didn’t think real angels had sex on the brain 24-7. Not that he minded. He grinned to himself and said to Lindsey, “It was delivered this afternoon. Why? Did you want to break it in?”