Dennis, finished with his third black drink, looked around for their waitress.
“Maybe you want to take a break from the tar?” she asked, smiling so he wouldn’t think she was taking his inventory.
“You mean switch to bourbon?”
“Uh…”
Half an hour later, Ava was helping Dennis out to the parking lot, if “helping” meant “staggering under his weight.”
“Ggggggnnnnn work with me, Dennis! We might be the same height, but I’m pretty sure you’ve got at least twenty pounds on me.”
“Haven’t lost my winter weight,” he slurred, which made her laugh, which made her lose her grip, which meant Dennis’s ass was about to meet pavement.
“Captain Capp?” Suddenly most of Dennis’s weight was gone. “May I be of some assistance?”
“Some,” Dennis mumbled to … someone. “But don’ go overboard. With the … uh … the assist-tancing. Assisting. We could use a little. Of the assistancing. But not too much.”
The man who had come to her assistancing—wait, now she was doing it, and she wasn’t even drunk—was over six feet tall, with the broad shoulders and overall musculature of a regular lifter. His eyes were deep brown (probably—it wasn’t a well-lit parking lot) and his nose was a blade; he was clean-shaven and unabashedly bald, with broad wrists
(Why am I noticing his wrists?)
and casually dressed in tan slacks and a navy-blue dress shirt. His voice was a deep rumble, almost a baritone, as he quietly answered Dennis’s questions.
“You’re super tall. And big. Are you a skyscraper sometimes?”
“I am not.”
“Well, you should drink about it. Think about it. Is what I meant. Not drink. D’you want to get a drink and tell me how you became a skyscraper?”
“No, thank you.”
“Thanks a lot,” she told the mystery hunk after he’d manhandled Dennis into the car with about as much trouble as she’d have with a sack of groceries. “We’ve had a long day.”
“Not as long as Danielle’s!” Dennis shouted from the back seat. “That day, I mean. Her last day. Not today. Ava, is this a rental car? Cuz I might have to throw up in it. So much. Not right this second. Prob’ly later. Just so you’re apprised of, y’know. The situation.”
“Thanks,” Ava said to the mystery man, and she could feel her face getting warm. Drunken ex-boyfriend shouting inappropriate observations? Check. Long-ass day including her best friend’s memorial? Check. Mysterious hunk seeing her and Dennis at their worst? Mark that one off, too. Vomiting imminent? Of course! “I’m not sure I could have gotten him in.”
“Where do you have to go?”
“The Hyatt next to the mall. But we’ll be fine. I’m sure I can manage.” Her confident tone was immediately contradicted by the sound of retching from the back seat. “Anyway. Thanks again.”
He chuckled, a wonderful rumble that she practically felt, then held up a finger in the universal gesture for “give me a minute,” and sprinted away. Yeah. Sprinted. If she wasn’t seeing it, she wouldn’t have believed a large man could move so quickly. And he was back in seconds, reaching through the open back seat door and handing Dennis a …
“What is that?”
“Emesis basin.”
“Thanks, man! If my dead sister wasn’t dead, she’d really like you! She’s dead, though. So. There’s that.”
Ava tried to shut out the drunken babble and focus. “Emesis? Those things you find in hospital rooms?”
“Yes.”
“Why are you traveling with an emesis basin?”
“Don’t worry. I’ve got plenty. I don’t need that one back.”
Plenty? “Thank God,” she replied with no small amount of relief, because from the sounds, Dennis was using the hell out of the thing. Or he was being devoured by dinosaurs.
The weight-lifting track star smiled and said, “Why don’t I follow you? The Hyatt is less than ten minutes from here. I’ll help you so you can get him up to your room.”
“We’re not sharing a room,” she said quickly, because she’d decided it was important to establish that for some reason. “I mean, it’s not necessary. Don’t put yourself out.”
“I wouldn’t be, Captain Capp. I didn’t imply I would aid you without payment.”
Hey! “Hey, that’s right! How’d you know who I was? Wait, don’t tell me…”
“Belly landing,” they finished in unison. “Argh, they’re gonna chisel that into my tombstone.”
“As well they should, if the stories are accurate. In return for my assistance with your friend this evening, I ask that you allow me to buy you a drink in the hotel bar and tell me the tale of the belly landing.”
She stared at him. “I don’t even know you.”
“Yes, that’s correct.”
She thought about trying to wrestle