at her, she felt like a weight had been lifted off her chest.
“Don’t worry about it,” he said and from the tone in his voice, Anna guessed that he had forgiven her for most of her stupid behavior. “I was pretty awful myself. We can call it even. I’m Sam. Sam Drynan.”
“Hi, Sam, I’m Anna.” She held out her hand and he shook it and, though she really couldn’t believe it, certainly never heard of it occurring in real life, electricity zipped across her fingertips and up her arm from the contact.
What the…? She looked down at her hand nearly lost in the giant paw of his hand and wondered if maybe she had stepped into some sort of Meg Ryan movie. Electric touches did not happen in Anna’s life.
“Is there anything else I can do for you?” He grinned. His thumb lightly stroked the flesh of her hand and Anna’s stomach did a pleasant little shimmy.
Oh…what? That? Is he? Flirting! Anna pulled her hand out of his and he smiled warmly at her. He is! He is flirting with me!
Anna giggled and then quickly wanted to kill herself.
“No, that will be all.” She cringed. “I mean that’s all I need. Thanks.”
“Are you a professional Celine Dion impersonator?” he asked.
“No, strictly amateur.”
“Well, you’ve certainly got her moves down.” She looked at him blankly before he lightly beat his chest with his fist.
“Right.” She clapped her hands together in front of her so they wouldn’t do anything stupid like try to touch him. “Well, you should see my Michael Jackson.”
He laughed and she appreciated his sense of humor. A funny guy, she thought. I like that in a total hunk.
She stood there smiling at him, her body doing ridiculous things in reaction to just him being there. Shirtless and very handsome. Her thoughts about getting naked from the morning came back. Sam Drynan was definitely the kind of man she could get completely naked with.
“Well, um…” Anna realized she had been standing there, staring silently for several seconds. “Yes, thanks for the number and um, again sorry about earlier and…” She nodded her head and started backing off the porch. “Yeah, that’s it.”
“Okay, you don’t need anything else?” he asked, crossing his arms over that nice chest and leaning against the door frame. Anna shook her head, the power of speech suddenly abandoning her.
He lifted his hand in goodbye and shut his door. Anna started to walk back to her apartment. She stopped.
Camilla. The doctor. She sucked air in through her teeth and weighed the satisfaction of thwarting Camilla against the embarrassment of asking Sam out on a date. He was infinitely more effective than Gary. He was gorgeous and straight. More than that, he had flirted. She might be out of practice, but she wasn’t a complete lost cause.
The fact was she had nothing to lose and just imagining the look on Camilla’s face was enough to make her head back to Sam’s door and knock.
“You need to borrow some quarters?” he asked, laughing as he opened the door.
“I need a date,” she blurted. His mouth fell open and Anna wished that the ground would open right up and swallow her. “I mean, not a real date. A fake date.” His eyebrows snapped together and Anna, in a panic of regret and embarrassment, just kept digging the hole. She was the kind of person who, once she made a mistake, could seem only to make it worse. It was why she tried to never make mistakes in the first place. But here she was trying to jam both feet in her mouth. “There’s a doctor and Camilla and a picnic, well, a picnic and a birthday party…”
“You need two dates?” he asked.
“No!” she said. “Just one. It’s a picnic and birthday party combined.”
“For a doctor?”
“No, I’m trying to stay away from the doctor.”
“Oh!” Understanding dawned on his face. “You need a decoy date.”
That sounded a bit cold, but when a spade was a spade… “Yes, I need a decoy. I came by here to get Gary to go with me but…”
“He’s moved.” He nodded his head and Anna reminded herself that he had been flirting with her. She wasn’t that out of practice. She wasn’t that blind. Sam had shown definite interest and she was just doing what hundreds of women did everyday. She was asking a handsome man on a date. Well, a decoy date, but he seemed to understand.
“It’s on Monday. Noon,” she said into the very uncomfortable silence. “Memorial Day.”
“Good day for a picnic.” He was nodding again and the suspense was becoming almost too much. She was about to tell him to stick his six-pack and his lovely hairless chest right up his…
“I’ll think about it, Anna,” he said with a smile.
I’ll think about it? He might as well say I’d rather date Don Rickles.
“Okay,” she answered, feeling like an idiot.
She turned.
“Maybe you should leave me your number?” he said.
Right. Number. Duh. She turned around and told him her number before he could go back in and get a piece of paper or a pencil. Then she leaped down from the landing and walked across the grass, feeling the whole time the weight of his eyes on her back. What the hell was that? she wondered. I’ll think about it? The man had stroked her hand with his thumb. Men don’t just do that, do they? Maybe they do. Maybe I am a complete loser.
She almost went back and told him not to do her any favors, but in the end decided that there really was only so much embarrassment a girl could take in one day and she had hit her limit.
The last part of the day stretched ahead of her in one long yawn. A whole lot of absolutely nothing. How was she ever going to survive this sabbatical? Perhaps if she made an effort to make an ass of herself in front of a handsome guy every day, the time would just fly by.
Anna shook her head and shoved open the door to her apartment.
Maybe daytime TV improved the later it got in the day. She shrugged. It’s not like she had anything better to do.
SAM DRYNAN watched Anna leave and couldn’t quite decide what to do. He couldn’t actually figure out who she was and why he even wanted to watch her walk across the manicured lawn that separated her unit from his.
She was partly a nightmare, that was certain. A bossy nightmare. But at the same time there had been a few seconds while watching her dance around the laundry room that he had been charmed. And then she had looked at him with those impossible blue eyes and wide genuine smile and he had thought, Am I really this lucky? Do I get to walk into a laundry room and meet this girl?
Then, of course, she’d opened her mouth and ruined the image.
She was gorgeous. Tall and thin with black hair that had been tied back in a sort of serious-looking bun. Mostly it was her eyes, so big and so blue, blinking up at him that had him wondering what he was doing. A woman with eyes that big and that blue could only be trouble.
He had had the same kick-in-the-gut feeling tonight when he opened the door and saw her there with the same smile. Of course, immediately after she asked him out as a decoy. Did she think he was nuts? Well, he was a little, clearly, because he was thinking about going with her.
Sam laughed and shook his head. He closed his front door and went back into his apartment. He walked to his kitchen and grabbed a bottle of water and leaned against the counter to drink it. She was something.
One minute sharp and bitchy, the next sort of soft and sad and awkward. Watching her ask him out on a date was like watching a train derail. Gorgeous women like Anna usually weren’t so uncomfortable. Which was the real Anna? Sam wanted to put his