"Do you mind if I try Damien’s cell real quick?"
"No, go ahead."
Mandy dialed Damien’s number on her phone and held her breath. After six rings, she was despairing and preparing to leave a rather pathetic sounding message when he answered.
"Damien! Oh, good, I’m so glad you answered."
"Mandy?" His voice sharpened. "Is something wrong?"
Relief and irritation intermingled. "I could ask the same of you! I’ve been worried sick. Where are you?"
"Chicago. I had some things to take care of." He sucked in his breath quickly.
"Chicago?" Mandy frowned. He’d just winged off to Chicago, canceling their dinner plans, and nothing was actually wrong? She thought she might be angry about that.
"You were worried about me?" He winced, then said, "Oww, damn it, that hurts."
Well, excuse the hell out of her.
"Stop moving," she heard someone say in the background.
"What are you doing?" If it was kinky and involved a woman, she was going to become seriously unpleasant.
"Getting a tattoo."
Oh. That seemed as unlikely as him taking a bad hair day off, but then she remembered the tattoo on his arm. How she had suggested he get it fixed to cover Jess’s name – before she had known his wife had died.
"Where?" She wanted to confirm what she suspected. Crumpling her napkin, she waited for his answer.
"Over my old one."
Mandy closed her eyes. She wasn’t sure what it meant, but she thought it meant Damien was trying to leave the past behind. That he was trying to move forward.
Please, God, let moving forward include her.
Trying to make light of it, she swallowed hard. "Is it a demon?"
Instead of answering, he gave another wince. "So why were you worried about me?"
"Surely you’ve figured that out." Probably everyone except Ben had figured it out. She felt she might as well be wearing a sticky note on her forehead announcing it. "It’s because I’m in love with you!"
And over the cell phone probably wasn’t the best way to tell him that for the first time.
"Shit," he said, and she wasn’t sure if he’d been stabbed by a sharp needle or if her love caused him to swear. "You don’t mean that, you can’t mean that."
Oh, the hell she couldn’t.
"I most certainly do mean that." Mandy glanced over at Caroline, who was gaping at her, but now that she’d opened her mouth, she couldn’t stop. He had to know, had to understand how much he mattered to her, how wonderful she thought he was.
"I am in love with you, Damien. Completely and totally. So what are you going to do about it?"
There was a pause where her entire future hung in the balance, as traffic on the street shot past her and cigarette smoke from a pedestrian drifted up her nostrils.
Then he said, "I have to go."
Not quite the sentiment she’d been hoping for.
"This is really uncomfortable, Mandy."
Lovely. Her feelings made him uncomfortable. Her face went hot.
"I don’t remember this hurting so much the first time I did it."
Even better. She was painful. Her mouth opened but no words came out.
"So let me call you back when I’m done getting the tattoo."
He said goodbye and hung up before she could even say a word. Not that she could think of any. A strange wheezing sound came out of her mouth.
"What did he say?" Caroline was leaning across the table eagerly. "Did he say it back? God, I envy you the courage to just blurt it out like that."
"He said he had to go. He’s getting a tattoo and he’ll call me back later." It was a small comfort that he’d been talking about a needle and not her when he’d been using words like uncomfortable and painful. On second thought, no it wasn’t.
Caroline’s lip curled back in astonishment, and Mandy was so certain her face looked exactly the same that she covered her mouth and started to laugh. Air squeezed between her fingers and made a snorting sound.
She had blurted out her feelings for Damien, and he had rushed off the phone. It was so horrible it was almost comical. She had fallen into a country-western song.
Tossing her napkin on her plate, she said, "Gee, I’m so pleased I called him. Now I only need to be mortified instead of worried."
It was one in the morning when Damien’s plane landed at LaGuardia. By the time he had waited in the cab line and ridden through the tunnel, it was two when he pulled up in front of Mandy’s building in the Village. He had been planning on picking her up there for the dinner plans they’d had the night before.
The plans he had canceled on her after he’d walked out of the hospital.
And now she’d told him she loved him.
Biting his fingernail, he climbed out with his carry-on and paid the driver.
She couldn’t mean it. She couldn’t possibly.
He wasn’t worthy of her love.
Damien took a deep breath and hit the buzzer for her apartment. His foot tapped impatiently on the sidewalk. The June evening air was humid but breezy, and it felt like rain might fall before the morning.
No one answered the buzzer. He hit it again, holding it longer than was courteous. But damn it, he knew she was in there, and he needed to talk to her. After his tattoo was completed, he’d finished up his business with George and caught the first plane back.
He needed to look her in the eye and tell her to stop feeling whatever she thought she felt for him.
Before he admitted that he loved her as well, however flawed that love was. Before she tried to convince him that it would be enough. Before he believed her and then later hurt her.
"Who the hell are you and why are you ringing my doorbell at two in the goddamn morning?"
That most definitely wasn’t Mandy’s voice. Damien had forgotten about her roommates. He’d also forgotten that most of the world was asleep at two in the morning.
"Uh, sorry. This is Damien Sharpton. I’m looking for Mandy. Is she there?"
"Of course she’s here, but she’s sleeping. Like a normal person who has to go to work the next day is."
"Can you wake her up for me?" He was her boss, after all. He wasn’t going to dock her pay if she slept in tomorrow.
There was total silence for a good sixty seconds.
Damien hit the buzzer again. It got a reaction.
"Stop it, jerk! There are three other people still sleeping in this apartment."