After a minute she came to the conclusion that standing outside in the middle of a thunderstorm probably wasn’t the best idea. That left her with two choices, sit in the hallway and catch a cold or ask Danny for help and a dry towel and risk losing what was left of her sanity.

“Oh, you son of a bitch!” came Danny’s shout, making the decision for her.

It took a minute, but she managed to find a rather comfy spot on the floor by her door. She drew her knees up to her chest, wrapped her trembling arms around them as she ignored the squishy sounds her clothes made against the rough carpet and tried to get comfortable as she closed her eyes. It had been a long day, a very long day, and all she wanted to do was go inside her warm, dry apartment, soak in a hot bath, pull on her favorite tee shirt, watch a movie and get good and fat on a few pints of Ben and Jerry’s, but it didn’t look as though that was going to happen any time soon.

So instead, she resigned herself to sitting there in the hall, wondering how this day could possibly get any worse. Her answer came from an unexpected source, letting her know that yes, yes her day could get much worse than being stranded with an incredibly sexy man.

A lot worse………

*-*-*-*

Danny glared down at the burnt mess simmering in the kitchen sink, wondering exactly where he’d gone wrong.

“So much for a romantic dinner,” he said, sighing in disgust as he returned to the refrigerator and grabbed a pound of butter and tossed it on the counter along with a loaf of bread. “Grilled cheese it is then.”

That was fine. He still had a few other cards up his sleeve. He walked into his living room and-

“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.”