Coming Home(78)

Leah said good-bye to Holly and Robyn on Sunday afternoon, wishing Robyn a wonderful honeymoon and telling Holly she’d talk to her later that week. She hadn’t told her about her plans with Danny that night for fear of getting a lecture about not taking things slow enough.

Before Leah left the hotel, she texted Danny, and he asked her to meet him at his apartment around seven. He also told her that she shouldn’t eat anything because he’d have dinner ready for them, a notion that left her apprehensively intrigued.

She spent the afternoon running errands before she showered and headed down to his place, and as soon as she neared his building, a series of flutters started low in her stomach. She had thought of Danny so many times that weekend, wondering what it would have been like if he had come to the wedding with her. Picturing him in a suit, his black hair in sexy disarray, smiling his adorable smile. Laughing with her, holding her hand as she introduced him to people.

Kissing her softly as they danced.

Leah parked at the end of his block, and the fluttering in her stomach doubled as she rode the elevator to his floor.

When the doors finally opened, she approached his apartment and closed her eyes, taking a deep breath before she opened them and knocked. There was a muffled rustling sound, followed by the muted thud of footsteps.

A few seconds later, the door swung open, and the fluttering moved up into her chest. His dark hair was tousled to perfection, and he had a hint of a five-o’clock shadow defining his jawline. He was wearing a pair of worn jeans with a gray zip-up hoodie over a white T-shirt.

And her favorite dimpled smile.

“Hey,” he said, leaning over to kiss her cheek before he stepped to the side to let her in, and she was immediately greeted with the smell of Chinese food.

Leah hummed as she walked past him into the apartment. “Good call. That smells amazing.”

“You got here before I could take it out of the containers and put it in pots and pans on the stove.”

Leah laughed as he took her coat and hung it by the door. “Right, because I totally would have believed that.”

“Hey, I can cook,” he said in feigned offense as he walked over to the table and pulled a chair out for her.

“I know,” she said as she sat. “I was there for the Hot Pocket.”

Danny laughed, shaking his head. “Why did I ask you to hang out again?”

“No clue. Maybe you’re a masochist.”

Danny pushed her chair in before he walked around to the other side of the table. “Sometimes I think so,” he said, but his voice was strangely devoid of humor.

Leah glanced up at him, but by the time he sat across from her, his dimples were back on display.

“So how was the wedding?” he asked as he started opening containers. He looked up at her, his smile still intact.

Maybe she’d imagined it.

“It was really fun,” Leah said, reaching for the bottle of water in front of her. “Robyn looked amazing. Everything went smoothly.”

“It went smoothly? What’s to mess up? Both people say ‘I do,’” Danny said, holding out a pack of chopsticks and a fork for Leah to choose from.

She grabbed the fork. “Girl stuff again. But there’s a lot of behind-the-scenes stuff that can get messy if it’s not well planned. Or if the bride is a bitch.” She smiled. “Thankfully, neither was the case this weekend.”

Danny placed two opened cartons of food in front of Leah before he started opening the others. “Do those bitch brides actually exist? I thought that shit was just for TV.”