“Oh, shit!” he grabbed a throw pillow off the couch and proceeded to beat the flames licking at the curtains until he was left with a ruined curtain, pillow and enough damage to the wall to guarantee that he’d be spending the weekend and about five hundred bucks fixing the wall, the molding around the window and possibly the window itself.

“Fucking great,” he said, tossing the ruined pillow to the floor right beside the puddle of wax that marked the final resting place of his dreams for a romantic night.

This was a lot harder than he’d realized. Maybe he should just suck it up and take the easy way out with a nice restaurant and a-

“Please stop!” came a woman’s high-pitched scream.

Terror for Jodi had him jumping over the couch and across the room in seconds. He tore the door open, ready to tear apart whoever was attacking her only to stop abruptly when he spotted Tinkerbelle sitting across from him, unharmed and looking torn between amusement and horror as she watched as two of his cousins guaranteed their spot on another restaurant’s banned list.

“Help me!” the man wearing a Black Jack’s uniform screeched hysterically while his cousins stumbled over him while they tried to take each other down in a headlock.

Shaking his head in disgust, he walked down the hallway, grabbed the sobbing delivery man off the floor by the back of his shirt and shoved him towards the door while his cousins continued to fight over the stack of pizza boxes marked, The Monster. Their food obsession was pathetic, he thought with a disgusted sigh as he reached down and picked up the stack of pizzas. He walked back to his apartment, pausing only long enough to reach down and help his horrified neighbor to her feet and give her a gentle push towards his apartment. Once they were inside, he shut the door behind him, dropped the pizza boxes on the coffee table and announced, “Dinner is served,” with a satisfied sigh.

*-*-*-*

“You can’t ban all of us!”

“This is bullshit!”

“I wasn’t even home!”

“You made a grown man cry!” someone, probably the cop, yelled.

“When will this night end?” Jodi asked no one in particular as she rubbed her temples.

“Probably not for a while,” Danny admitted, sounding oddly defeated as he sat there, staring at the destruction that had once been his living room.

“Probably not,” she murmured in agreement as she looked around the living room and took in the damage.

She toed the remains of his coffee table, still amazed over the amount of damage that three men fighting over pizza could do in less than a minute. And yes, she was definitely sure that the damage to Danny’s apartment had only taken a minute, because when the door burst opened she’d been looking down at Danny’s cell phone. By the time she’d looked up, the door was falling off its hinges, the coffee table was in pieces, the television was smashed, the large leather chair that had actually looked pretty comfortable was in three pieces, a window had been smashed and there were five very large, and very noticeable, holes marring Danny’s living room walls and only one minute had passed.

“I’m gonna need a rain check,” Danny said, drawing her attention away from the electrical socket hanging by its wires from the wall.

“A rain check for what?”

He sighed heavily as he stood up and held his hand out to her. “For our date.”

“Our…..date?” she asked slowly, wondering if he’d hit his head when his cousins tackled him.

He nodded as he reached down and took the decision out of her hand. “I’m afraid that I’m going to have to regroup,” he said, taking her hand and gently pulling her to her feet.

“Regroup………”

“Mmmhmmm,” he murmured, entwining his fingers with hers as he raised their hands and pressed a kiss against the back of her hand. “Just a day or two to fix this.”

“A day or two,” she repeated numbly as she allowed her gaze to run over the destruction.

“Are you going to repeat everything that I say?” he asked teasingly with a sexy little smile that had her revisiting that whole brain injury idea.

“Yes,” she said, nodding as she allowed him to lead her to his apartment door. He was forced to release her hand so that he could grab the door and move it aside so they could go into the hallway where his cousins were still arguing with the cops and the manager from Black Jack’s, “And this wasn’t a date.”

“Yes, it was,” he said, reaching into his pocket and pulling out-

“You stole my keys?” she demanded when he proceeded to unlock her door and open it wide for her.

“Of course I did,” he said, smiling down at her.

“Wow…….,” she said, shaking her head in disbelief. “And why exactly did you do that?”

“It seemed necessary at the time,” he said sheepishly.

“Uh huh,” she said, staring up at him as she tried to make sense of this man. After a minute she decided that it was simply impossible and gave up.

“I’m going to bed. Have a good night,” she said, suddenly feeling exhausted.

“Good night, Tinkerbelle,” came the response that had her shaking her head and resisting the urge to remind him that her name wasn’t Tinkerbelle, but she was too tired to argue with him right now.

She walked into her room, grabbed her favorite pair of sweatpants, a tee shirt and headed to her bathroom. She tore her clothes off along the way, tossing them aside as she headed for her sanctuary. Five minutes later she was soaking in a hot bath, savoring the moist warmth seeping into her bones and the scent of lavender surrounding her as she closed her eyes, and fantasized that she lived in a world where men didn’t ditch their fiancés the day before their wedding, destroy their credit, steal their life savings, humiliate them, leave them destitute and jobless and with no other choice but to move in across the hall from incredibly sexy ex-marines who went from getting a kick out of screwing with her head one day to undressing her with his eyes the next.

In this fantasy she still had her job at the museum. The promotion that Jerry had stolen behind her back was hers. Her credit was still perfect, her bank account healthy and her biggest problem was deciding between sleeping in on the weekend or spending the day reading, curled up on the couch. She’d never accepted Jerry’s invitation for coffee, had seen the prick for the jerk that he really was. Things were the way that they were meant to be, should be.

But all too soon, she was forced to come back to reality. Her bath water had long since gone cold, she was exhausted and all she wanted to do was to crawl in bed and pretend that getting up at six in the morning was her choice. Yawning, she reached over and pulled the drain as a slight shiver shook her. Freezing, she stood up and grabbed a towel, quickly drying off, eager to crawl into her warm bed.

Biting back another yawn, she got dressed and opened the bathroom door. She couldn’t wait to-

“Romantic comedy or a horror flick?” the bastard lounging on her bed next to a monster size bowl of popcorn asked as she stood there, staring dumbly at him while she tried to make sense of what she was seeing.

This couldn’t be happening.

It just……..couldn’t……..

She closed her eyes, counted to ten and opened them only to close them again, counted to a hundred, praying that he would just take pity on her and take a hint and get out of her apartment before she opened her eyes again. Nope, still there, she realized as she opened her eyes to find him holding up two DVDs and sending her an incredibly sexy smile that had her shaking her head.