The Mindy Project fic: Landing in Turbulence (2/3)
They sat down at the table, and Paul immediately asked for wine. The waitress who seated them glanced around the table, and they all nodded. More alcohol-that should make this evening at least slightly more bearable.
The conversation stuck to bland topics for a while-the number of rainy days they’d had in a row, the way the Mets were playing, work. Christina was being Christina-soft-spoken, intelligent, awkward and endearing-but he mostly managed not to be endeared by her. Paul, for his part, seemed as uncomfortable as Danny felt, and it served him right. He was a history PhD, which Danny might have found interesting, but in this situation, it was hard to think of him as anything other than the guy he’d caught in bed with his wife.
Where Paul was lacking, Mindy more than compensated. She was almost better than the alcohol as a conversational lube-always coming up with an anecdote to fill an uncomfortable lull or finding (mostly) tactful ways to steer the conversation away from more treacherous topics. He never thought he’d be grateful for her babbling, but… he had to allow it had its occasional practical applications. Heck, in this weird alternate version of reality, he was almost proud of her-like he’d won the moving-on contest between him and Christina.
Throughout, she kept smiling at him and touching him and saying nice things about him, and he knew it was pretend, but it was nice. Not because it was Mindy. Because he was sitting across from the love of his life who’d handed him the ultimate rejection, and even the pretense of being desirable to someone else made him feel a little better. There were moments when an exchanged glance or a hand on his knee made him feel warm all over, in spite of everything.
“Mindy,” Christina said as dinner wound down, and she neared the end of her second glass of wine, “I have to say, you’re nothing like what I expected.”
“Well, that doesn’t make any sense,” Mindy pointed out. “You didn’t know I existed until yesterday.”
Christina laughed self-consciously. “No, I mean, you’re just not like anyone I would have ever pictured Danny being with.”
“Thanks?” Danny said, making a face.
“Yeah, I’m not sure if that was a slam on you or me,” Mindy said, with a smile that took most of the sting out of her words.
Christina laughed again, and he wondered how he’d never noticed what a grating laugh she had. There was something unnatural and joyless about it. She hadn’t always had that laugh, but it sounded familiar enough that Danny knew tonight wasn’t the first time he’d heard it either. How long before the divorce had he stopped hearing her real laugh?
“No, I’m sorry how that sounded. That came out all wrong,” Christina said, obviously flustered. “I think it’s just that you’re so, well, that you’re so unlike me. And I know that’s dumb, it’s not like I thought he was going to fall for someone exactly like me or anything. I just … you know, it’s weird meeting your replacement, is all.”
“Tell me about it, right, Paul?” Danny muttered.
“Oh, don’t worry about it,” Mindy said, laughing in a way that sounded genuine and friendly, even in the circumstances. “Danny took a while to come around on me too, didn’t you, Danny?” She put a hand on his arm and smiled at him with what seemed almost like genuine affection. She was good at this-she was almost fooling him.
“That’s interesting,” Christina said. “How did you two get together? If you don’t mind me asking.”
“No, we don’t mind, do we, Mindy?” Danny said. He stretched an arm across the back of her chair, his fingers lightly resting on her bare shoulder. She wasn’t the only one who could pretend.
“You know I love hearing you tell this story,” Mindy said mischievously, and he raised an eyebrow at her.
“We met at work, obviously,” Danny began, trying to figure out exactly how he wanted to tell this.
“Obviously,” agreed everyone at the table.
“And … it’s true, we didn’t really get along at the beginning,” he continued.
“I thought he was really arrogant and rude, and he thought I was chubby and annoying,” Mindy piped up.
Danny shook his head, glaring at her slightly for making him sound like an asshole. “That’s not what I thought,” he mumbled. “But you’re right, I was really rude to you at times. I was going through … well, you all know what I was going through.” And Mindy hadn’t exactly made his divorce easier by waltzing around yodeling about soulmates.
He cleared his throat. “Anyway … somehow in spite of everything, she wormed her way into my life, and … before I knew it, we were friends. And I realized what a good person she is. How really thoughtful and generous she can be with other people.”
Belatedly, he realized he might still be harboring some annoyance at her prick pastor boyfriend for the things he’d been saying to her. He just wanted it on the record that pastor boy was wrong on some things.
“Danny,” Mindy exclaimed beside him. “Stop it. You really think that?”
Christina and Paul were giving them a weird look, and he realized how odd that must sound, for the woman he was “dating” to be surprised he thought she was a good person. But fuck what they thought.
“Yeah, sure I do,” he said directly to Mindy. “You take care of your brother. You take on the uninsured patients. You were going to read that sappy 17-page speech at the Christmas party. And … you know, you’ve been a good friend to me.”
Mindy leaned over to give him a kiss on his cheek, and Danny could feel himself turning red. Time to cut himself off the wine maybe.
“Don’t leave us hanging,” Paul said. “Then what happened?”
Was Paul a schoolgirl? It occurred to Danny that if an intruder ever entered Paul’s apartment, he’d be a dead man. It was becoming increasingly difficult to feel threatened by the guy.
“Paul’s kind of a sap,” Christina filled them in, with an affectionate glance in her fiancé’s direction. “He really likes romantic stories. But you don’t have to …”
Paul shrugged sheepishly. “It’s part of being an historian. I like to know how things happen. You’d be surprised how much of history has been shaped by minor inclinations of-”
“Yeah, that’s great, Paul.” Mindy waved him off, in that dismissive way that was usually directed at Danny. “But it’s really not that interesting … not that romantic of a story. We were friends who got together. The end!”
Danny turned to Mindy again. “You have a warped view of romance. Friends who fall for each other is a perfectly romantic story.”
“Let’s hear it, then,” Paul said. “How did you become more than friends?”
“Well …” Danny started, considering his options. He went with the first thing that sprang to mind, editing the timeline to fit. “We were attending a medical conference … three months ago. We were flying back and watching a movie together.” Glancing sideways at Mindy, he noticed now she was watching him intently. “And there was turbulence. And she grabbed my hand.”
“I didn’t grab your hand. You grabbed my hand,” she corrected him.
“You grabbed my hand first,” he countered.
“I was just grabbing the armrest, and your hand was there.”
“You see what I have to put up with? Anyway … we ended up holding hands. And it was nice, and it felt weird … but nice. Sometimes, you just get a feeling, and you know it fits. And I didn’t want to stop holding her hand.”
He shrugged, self-consciously, and glanced nervously at Mindy again. She was staring at him like she’d never seen him before.
“I didn’t know you felt that way,” she said quietly.
“Did you feel something?” he asked, almost under his breath to her. The thing that happened on the airplane, he didn’t know what it was, and he didn’t really know what it meant, if it had even meant anything, but whatever it was it had at least seemed mutual. And for the ten seconds he saw her at work before Christina barged in, it felt like something had shifted, subtly, and with everything going on, he hadn’t put his finger on what or how.
Mindy nodded, mutely. Danny answered her nod with one of his own, then shrugged and looked around the table, trying to diffuse the moment.
“That was a really lovely story, Danny,” Christina said, with a warmth that sounded more like the woman he fell in love with, all those years ago. “I suppose you already know our how-we-met story,” she added, nodding at Paul with an awkward laugh.
Danny shook his head. “I don’t, really. Unless Paul here was naked when you met. Sorry, Paul.”
“No! God, no,” Christina said, with that awkward laugh again. “But you don’t want to hear that story. Do you?”
Danny froze for a moment as he thought about that, about the fact that this would double as the story of how she fell out of love with him.
“Want is a strong word. But, I’m here.” He shrugged uncertainly toward Mindy, and she nodded approvingly. “Yeah, okay, rip off the bandage. I can take it. Let’s hear it-you and Paul.”
“Oh. Okay.” Christina looked startled. She had a long drink of wine and took a moment to collect her thoughts.
Mindy started to get up, and Danny looked at her questioningly. She was leaving him now? “I think I’m just going to take a few minutes to freshen up, that okay?”
Mindy caught Paul’s eye and motioned with her head, but Paul turned to Christina for direction, confused. “Do you want me to … do you want a few minutes to talk to Danny alone?” Christina nodded, and he gave her a kiss on the cheek before going.
“Real subtle, Paul,” Mindy said under her breath. As she walked away, she squeezed Danny’s shoulder and leaned in close to his ear. “You got this.”
“And then there were two,” he commented once he and Christina were alone, his heart thumping weirdly in his chest.
“Probably better this way,” Christina said with a weak smile. She took another drink of wine. “Okay, well … you remember you were in medical school. And you weren’t around much.”
“I was studying. That’s what medical school is.”
“I’m not blaming you. I’m just stating facts. You were studying, and I had all this time to myself, when I wasn’t working. And I was really lonely. And I realized I didn’t have any idea who I was.”
“That’s ridiculous,” Danny said without thinking.
“And, this is why I never talked to you about it,” she snapped.
“I’m sorry. I do want to hear this, I swear. I won’t interrupt again.”
After a moment, she began again. “We were so young. All I’d ever been was Danny’s girlfriend, Danny’s wife, then a doctor’s wife, which seemed like this thing I should really want, but I didn’t. I mean, I didn’t want to be just that.”
“That’s ridiculous,” he blurted out again. “I’m sorry. I don’t mean that, I didn’t mean to say that. What I meant was, that’s ridiculous. You were always Christina. You were smart and funny and caring, and … and … I loved you. Yeah, I was away studying a lot, doing my residency, but I was working so hard for this life we were going to have. For both of us.”
So much for being tongue-tied. Now he was saying more than he’d meant to, and louder than he’d meant to say it. He looked up to see the waitress hovering by the table with a pitcher of water and glared at her. “I’ll come back,” she said, and hurried away.
“I’m sorry,” Christina said quietly, her eyes all shiny, and he felt like shit for unloading on her.
“I’m sorry,” he said, pressing his hands into his forehead. “It’s all old news, long over and done. And I’m okay, I am. Just seeing you … it’s bringing it all to the surface again.”
“I know what you mean.”
“And Paul?” he couldn’t help but ask. He might as well hear all of it.
“We were just friends for a long time, just talking. I know that doesn’t make it any better.”
“Friends who fell for each other,” he mumbled, understanding even though he didn’t want to. “So, what, so, you know who you are with Paul?”
Christina furrowed her brow uncertainly. “Paul’s less rigid. I don’t mean that in a good or bad way. You’re very confident. You’re Danny Castellano, and I found that overpowering. He’s … well, he’s just more easygoing. He doesn’t have a big plan for how our lives are going to go, and I like that, because I don’t know either. I don’t even know if I want kids, and he’s fine with that. We’re going to do some traveling for a while, I might go to grad school …”
“You don’t want kids?” Danny stared at her, suddenly wondering if he really ever knew this woman as well as he thought he had. When had she changed her mind? Why had she never told him?
“I don’t know.”
“But you knew I wanted kids.”
She nodded. “It was one of the reasons I think we were never going to work out.”
He swallowed hard and looked away, realizing she was right-they married young, they drifted apart, they wanted different things. They were never going to work out, Paul or no Paul.
He felt Mindy’s reassuring hand on his back as she came up behind him. “Everything okay?” she asked.
“Yeah.” He cleared his throat. “Just give me one minute, and I’ll meet you out front, okay?”
It was time, he knew. He needed to wish her well and let her go.
“You know, I never thought I’d be saying this, but I really hope you and Paul …” He grunted. “Well, you know. I don’t want you to be miserable forever.”
“Thank you,” she said sincerely, like his approval was the only thing she’d come back for, and it surprised him. He hadn’t realized she still cared one way or the other about what he thought. “I know Paul and I made such a huge mess of things, and I ruined all your plans, and it was a stupid, selfish thing to invite you here tonight. But I’m really glad you came.”
“Yeah,” Danny said, swallowing hard to push the lump back down his throat.
“Mindy seems great. She’s so vibrant and sure of herself. I can see how you two would do really well together. And the way you look at each other … it’s obvious, she makes you happy. I’m glad.”
“Obvious, huh?” Danny couldn’t help but laugh. With everything on the table, it seemed hardly worth holding up the fiction at this point. “We’re not actually together, you know. She’s a friend.”
“I suspected,” Christina admitted with a smile.
Of course she had. “Yeah. You’re smart like that.”
“You should tell her, though.”
That caught him off guard, and he flinched, unsure why the idea bothered him so much.
“ … maybe.”
Outside, they said their goodbyes, and he hugged Christina and wished her luck, which felt strange. He wasn’t sure he’d ever see her again. Watching her walk away and get into a taxi with Paul, it felt like a world was ending … but not necessarily in a bad way.
“You okay?” Mindy asked.
“I feel like I got hit by a truck,” he said.
She smiled sideways at him, sympathetically, and he couldn’t help but smile back at her. “But in a good way, right?” she asked.
He took mental stock, like he was doing the emotional equivalent of checking each extremity, looking for anything broken. Nothing seemed to be too damaged or missing-he supposed time would tell. “I don’t know yet.”
He started to walk with her, and she slid her arm around his waist comfortingly. Instinctively, he put his arm around her shoulder and let himself lean into her as they started toward her apartment. It felt good-reassuring. Like feeling the solid ground under his feet after stepping off a particularly bumpy flight.
“I milked Paul for all the info I could get, and sadly, I cannot report that Christina is or has ever been addicted to any form of drug, illicit or pharmaceutical,” Mindy said.
He shook his head, laughing, starting to feel a little steadier now that this dreaded evening was over. “That’s okay.”
They walked along in easy silence for several minutes.
“Do you find me overpowering?” Danny asked suddenly, the things that Christina had said still lodged uncomfortably in his brain.
“Overpowering, what do you mean? Like, if we arm-wrestled, would you win? Probably.”
Danny laughed, slightly embarrassed. “No … my personality. Never mind, it’s just something Christina said.”
She was quiet for a moment, and he thought she was letting it drop, but no such luck. “You’re loud. Opinionated. Stubborn as all get out.”
“Okay, okay, you don’t have to-” The last thing he need right now was a critique of his personality.
“But no, I don’t find you overpowering,” Mindy finished. She shook her head like the thought was amusing to her, and something else Christina had said popped into his head-that Mindy seemed so sure of herself. That they might do well together because of that.
The idea made his lightheaded, and he pushed it back down, out of sight.
The night air was chilly, making an easy excuse to stay close to her, keeping his arm around her shoulder and holding her against his side. They kept walking like that until Danny unthinkingly dropped a kiss on the top of her head. He hadn’t meant to do it. He’d just turned his head and it was there.
Mindy paused and turned toward him on the sidewalk, her brow furrowed.
“Danny, did you mean the stuff you said?”
“Which stuff?” he said, putting his hands in his coat pockets. He felt cold all the sudden, since they’d separated.
“The stuff, the important stuff you said back there at dinner, the things you said about me,” she said.
“I don’t know why anyone would ever think of you as self-centered,” he cracked, deflecting.
“Hey. Not cool.”
“Sorry. Yeah … yeah, I guess I did.” He pushed his shoulders up defensively.
“Which things?” she pressed him.
He turned half away from her, kicking a rock on the sidewalk. “What, you want me to say them again?” It was different now, now that they were out from under the cloak of pretense, and he felt caught and exposed, especially since he’d had his arm around her for several blocks just now, for no real reason. “Okay, fine. I think you’re a good person, most of the time, and I felt a spark the other day, for a moment on the airplane, and no, I don’t know what it means. Probably nothing.”
He hazarded a glance in her direction, and she was staring at him intently, but he couldn’t read her expression, and now his palms were sweating like crazy.
“I didn’t know you felt that way,” she said quietly.
Then the music swelled, and someone fell down, he thought sardonically.
“Feel what way? It was probably just the turbulence.” Turbulence that hadn’t really let up for two days straight.
“Okay, look, you’re obviously very confused right now,” she said, folding her arms across her chest. “You’ve been on an emotional rollercoaster for days. And I have a boyfriend, and you were dating my friend up until a few weeks ago. And this whole fake couple thing has maybe gotten a little out of hand.”
Suddenly he felt nervous she was going to slam the door on this thing before they even knew it was, just because it didn’t conform to her ideals of how things should happen. Which was absurd, because it’s not like he wanted the door open either. He didn’t know what he wanted. Except that maybe he wanted to go back to having her arm around him again, but that was just part of the pretending that started blurring over inconveniently into real life.
“So I think we should table this,” she said, and for a moment he was relieved she wasn’t going to press the issue tonight after all. “Give it a month, and then-you’ve seen Sleepless in Seattle, right? Or An Affair to Remember?”
He’d seen both, and he didn’t like where this was going. “Yeah, I’m familiar.”
“Maybe tonight’s not the best night to get into this. That’s fine. It’s been an intense night for you,” Mindy said. “So give it a month, and then, if you want, meet me at the top of the Empire-”
“We’re not meeting at the top of the Empire State Building. That’s ridiculous,” Danny spat out.
“Why not? It’s just a place to talk. I’m not saying we have to-”
“At the top of the Empire State Building? You know what happens when you get your expectations up like that? Deborah Kerr never shows up. She’s hit by a car and she can’t walk. Is that a happy ending?” Mindy opened her mouth to protest, but he cut her off. “Sleepless in Seattle. They live on opposite sides of the country, and he’s basically still in love with his dead wife. What do you think happens? They live happily ever after?”
“You don’t know-”
“I do know. I know.” It was harsh, he knew, but it was her fault for talking about unrealistic fantasies on a night when he’d said goodbye to the woman he’d thought had been the love of his life.
She was still looking at him skeptically. “What happened to the guy who said bad things are always going to happen?”
“Bad things do happen,” Danny muttered.
“It sounded better somehow the last time said it.”
“What are you even talking about?”
“At my Christmas party. When you were saying all those things … after Josh left.”
Now he remembered, vaguely. He’d felt bad for her and just wanted to say something nice to help her feel better. She remembered that?
“Look … maybe Christina wasn’t the one for you,” she said. “It doesn’t mean someone else won’t be. You’re a …” She gestured vaguely at his entire person. “ … a catch. For someone.”
He raised an eyebrow at her delivery, even as it he did appreciate the sentiment. “For someone?”
“Sure, maybe. So all I’m saying is, give it a month, and if you feel like it, you have the option-”
His eyes widened at her, and he put his hands back in his pockets. “Oh, you think you’re the someone?” It came out sounding less surprised and more skeptical than he’d meant it, and she recoiled, visibly hardening toward him.
“I don’t know. Who knows, I probably won’t even be there. I might be in love with Casey by then.”
“That guy?” Danny shook his head disbelievingly. “No. You’re not going to fall in love with him.”
“Maybe. I might fall in love with him and convert to Christianity, you don’t know. I guess you’ll have to show up in a month if you want to find out.”
He half believed Mindy actually might be interested in talking about this-she was the type to try to overanalyze every little thing that happened-and half suspected this was some elaborate trick to catch him out and laugh at him.
“I’m not going to-”
“I think you’ll be there,” she said smugly. “Waiting at the top of the Empire State Building for me.”
“You’re going to be the one who’s up there waiting. And you’re going to be waiting a long time,” Danny countered. And she would be, if she was waiting for the Hollywood version.
Mindy shook her head, her dark eyes narrowing to slits. “I don’t think so. I think you have feelings for me. And when you’re less confused, you’re going to want to find out if I have feelings for you. I don’t know, do I?”
Did she?
No. He wasn’t going to fall for this.
“That’s not going to happen.”
“We’ll see. You’ll be running through the city, cutting in line-”
“That’s not the way it happens.”
“How does it happen, then? What do you want, Danny? You want never to talk about this?”
“No. Yeah. I don’t know.” He threw up his hands in frustration. What did she want from him? All he’d done tonight was confront things and talk about things. He’d had enough with talking.
“You’re going to just ignore it, hope it goes away? Why can’t we just-”
As if she was queen of not ignoring things. He’d show her who wasn’t ignoring things. Impulsively, he stepped forward quickly, closing the distance between them, put a hand on either side of her face and kissed her.
At first her lips were still attempting to form words, and her hands stopped their gesturing to flap comically at her sides, and he had the horrifying thought that this was exactly the wrong thing to do. It was like he’d called her bluff only to find out she actually held all the cards.
But then she opened her mouth and kissed him back, softening against him, and he still wasn’t sure this was the right thing to do, but he was doing it, he was kissing Mindy Lahiri, and it felt shockingly good. He hadn’t known it was going to feel this good, and now he didn’t want to stop. She looped her hands into the back of his hair, and he put his arms around her, sinking more fully into the warm curves of her body as he started to explore the contours of her mouth.
Just as he was deepening the kiss, she turned her face to the side and dropped her hands, and his mouth slid sloppily over her cheek. Embarrassed, Danny jerked backward, and they went from wrapped around each other to a yard away in an instant.
“Why did you do that?” Mindy asked, her eyes wide and stricken looking.
It figured. She’d make out with just about any guy who came along-Stevie, DeLaurier, a male prostitute-but one kiss from him, and she looked like that.
“Because that’s real life, Mindy,” he snapped. “It doesn’t happen on the top of the Empire State Building. It happens here, down on the sidewalk, and it’s messy.” He raked his hands through his hair and took a deep breath.
And because he’d wanted to. What was going on? They’d just been pretending, and it had gone to his head, and in his confused state he’d taken it too far. That’s all it was.
She was still looking at him inquisitively, her expression more amused now, which was almost worse than her first reaction. “So, what, now … this sad little patch of sidewalk is going to be a significant moment in our story, Danny? I don’t see how that’s better.”
“No.” What? Like it mattered where they were standing. “We don’t have a story. There’s no our. There’s no us. Forget it.”
“Okaaaaaay …” she said quietly, starting to walk again. He fell into step beside her, close but conspicuously not touching. “I don’t know why you’re yelling at me. You’re the one who kissed me.”
He grunted. “You’re the one wearing that dress and making eyes at me all night. You haven’t been able to keep your hands off me.”
“You asked me to wear this dress,” she pointed out. “I’ve been doing you a favor. I was acting.”
“Well, good, you’re a really good actress.”
“Thank you,” she said, like he’d actually given her a compliment.
“This whole night was a terrible idea,” he muttered under his breath.
“It was not a terrible idea,” she retorted. “Everyone got along. She totally bought what we were selling. You’re way better looking than Paul. And you got closure with Christina. Success!”
“Closure?” he repeated, wrinkling his nose. “Nobody gets closure. That’s still not a thing.”
“Of course you got closure,” Mindy said. “You confronted your ex and you had a conversation, after which you felt worse but will eventually, soon probably, feel better. Now you get to move on, for real move on instead of pretend move on.”
“Maybe.” The thing was, he was never not going to be divorced from Christina-that was always going to be a part of him, no matter how much he tried to ignore it. He couldn’t just draw a line and not have her exist on the other side of it. He wondered if after tonight he’d find a way to be okay with that.
They started walking again, side by side but no longer touching, and he noticed she kept glancing at him sideways.
“What?” he finally said.
“Nothing. Nothing. It’s just, you have a really big mouth. I don’t mean you’re loud-I mean physically … you have a large mouth. Has anyone ever told you that? I never noticed.”
He eyed her warily. “Yeah, I get that all the time. People say it goes well with my weird body. Proportionally speaking.”
She giggled at his sarcasm, and he smiled at her. He’d appreciate not having to hear any more commentary on the subject from her, but at least the relative lightness of the moment felt a little bit more normal. Maybe he wouldn’t need that Hemlock capsule hidden behind his ear after all.
When they reached her building, he followed her up the steps, and she looked at him questioningly as she paused with her key outside the door.
He didn’t know what to say to erase all the weirdness he’d stirred up and get them back to that place they were in earlier in the evening, when she was helping him and touching him reassuringly and none of it had to mean anything.
“Thanks for tonight,” Danny said, shifting awkwardly from side to side. “I hope I didn’t screw anything up for you with Casey.”
“I don’t see why,” she said. “You were the one who kissed me. I wasn’t even into it.”
Okay, seriously? “You kissed me back.”
“Yeah, well, I’m not an ice queen.”
“This is ridiculous. This whole thing was your idea. You started this. You grabbed my hand.”
The first two times.
She widened her big brown eyes at him and shrugged, resting her hand on her hip. “Okay. If that makes you feel better, Danny.”
He laughed humorlessly at that. “No, you know what would make me feel better? If you would stop doing this.”
He reached for her hand and moved it away from her hip, hearing her sharp intake of breath.
Now he had a hold of her wrist and he was standing really close to her and he knew he should probably just put it down and step back. Instead he froze, waiting to see what she would do.
Mindy’s eyes darted down to the spot where his fingers were encircling her wrist and then back up to his eyes. She seemed to be barely breathing, waiting for him to do something, her lips slightly parted, and he realized something.
“You kissed me back,” he said again, his voice low and quiet this time. He rubbed a thumb experimentally against the inside of her wrist, hearing her breath catch, and pressed it back into the door behind her.
She didn’t answer him, but her eyes flicked down to his lips tellingly, and he smiled.
“And you were into it,” he murmured, more certain of himself this time. Slowly, almost absent-mindedly, he dragged her hand up the door until it was slightly over her head and leaned into her.
He raised an eyebrow at her, waiting for her to say it.
“Maybe,” she admitted, biting her lip, her eyes glittering.
He grinned victoriously and then lowered his mouth onto hers. She kissed him immediately this time, enthusiastically even, and pressed her body full against his. He explored her mouth hungrily, letting the feel of her blot out everything else in his mind. She felt different from any woman he’d ever been with, curvy and warm and soft, somehow both familiar and surprising at the same time, and he wanted to feel all of her.
Forgetting where they were or even who they were, he let his hands slide down her body, brushing the sides of her breasts, down to her hips, letting his hands slide around to-
Suddenly, she laughed, and the kiss was broken. Startled, he stepped backward, breathing shakily, more affected than he wanted to be. He swiped his mouth with the back of his sleeve and glared at her uncertainly. What now?
“I just remembered who you are,” she said, still giggling slightly, and he stared at her. “The butt grab. Your move. It just totally took me out of it. Danny Castellano was grabbing my ass.”
“That’s not my move. That’s not the way the move goes,” he said, completely flustered. “There’s a whole … never mind.”
She shrugged, smiling, and he realized she wasn’t making fun of him-she was just as weirded out by this whole situation as he was.
They eyed each other uncertainly for a few more seconds, and he considered whether he could get away with trying to kiss her again without really starting anything he wasn’t ready for, but the mood had been broken.
It was probably just as well. She’d been right about one thing-he was in no shape for this tonight.
“I’m sorry if I messed anything up for you and Casey,” he repeated, and she actually looked a little worried about that when he mentioned it this time.
“Well, you could stop grabbing me and kissing me, and that might help,” she mused.
“Right,” he said, racking his brain for something to say to explain that away. “I don’t know what came over me.” Twice, now.
“It happens. Sometimes men are just overcome with sexual desire for me.” She was trying to play it off too-he didn’t know how he felt about that. Disappointed maybe, but he didn’t want to think about why.
“Okay,” she said after a moment. “Well, I’m going to go inside now.”
“Yeah.”
“And I’ll see you at work tomorrow.”
“Yeah.” The thought of having to see her at work tomorrow gave him a sinking, panicky feeling. Suddenly he wished he could take back … pretty much everything.
“Good night, Danny.” She looked him over uncertainly. “You going to be okay?”
He wondered if he said he wasn’t, if she’d invite him in.
The momentary thought was as alarming as it was interesting to him. He shook his head, trying to clear it.
“Yeah. Yeah, I’m fine. Good night, Min.”
She nodded and unlocked her door, disappearing through it, with a quick backward glance that was filled with questions to which he had zero answers. When she was gone, Danny leaned his forehead against the side of the building. He breathed in and breathed out, then breathed in and out again.
He felt just as unsettled now as he had been at the start of the evening, but now it was like all his emotions had been knocked around and shifted into unfamiliar places, and he didn’t recognize any of them.
When he felt a little steadier, he made his way down the steps, turned left on the sidewalk, and flagged a taxi. What he really needed was coffee and sleep-maybe not in that order.
***
Continue to Part 3