Going for Four: Counting on Love, Book 4 (35 page)

They sipped. Then Conner said, “Cody was on his way here tonight. He said he was meeting you but you didn’t know it was him.”

“But I was coming here to meet…” She trailed off as she realized what had happened. “He’s CAM609.”

Conner looked puzzled. “What?”

“That was the username of the guy I thought I was meeting here tonight.”

“Yeah, Cody.”

“But I didn’t know it was him.”

“How?” Conner asked, digging into the salad the waiter had set in front of him. “C.A.M. are his initials and his birthday is June ninth.”

Olivia felt her eyes widen. “Oh, wow.” It hadn’t even occurred to her. And she felt stupid—and kind of guilty—about that. “We’ve been chatting online for two weeks. I was coming down here tonight to be sure his date went well with the girl he was supposed to be meeting.”

“He was supposed to be meeting you.”

“But I thought there was another girl.”

“How could you be sure? Just because he told you that?”

Well…yeah.

“You came down here to meet some guy who
said
he had a date with another girl?” Conner asked.

She shrugged.

“What if he’d said that to get you down here?”

“He
did
say that to get me down here,” she pointed out. “It was Cody.”

“But if it had been another guy. You obviously would have come.”

“Yes. But I thought…”

“Jesus, I’m glad you’re marrying Cody. I can’t handle you out there on a dating site.” He swallowed the rest of his champagne.

Olivia watched him, then started grinning. “I’m not engaged to Cody.”

“Yes, you are.”

“No one’s asked me and I haven’t given an answer.”

“But you
will
say yes,” Conner said. He pointed at her. “I mean it, Liv.”

“And now you’re telling me that I
have to
marry Cody?”

“Yes. Dammit, Olivia.”

Her grin grew. “Well, okay.”

It took Conner a second to realize that she’d stopped arguing.

She took a bite of salad, then looked up quickly. “Is there a ring?”

“A…ring.” Conner groaned. “Shit. He didn’t give it to me.”

“That’s okay. I’m actually kind of in the mood to see him soon.” Then she shoved her chair back and jumped to her feet again. “Oh, my god, Conner! Cody’s in the hospital.”

The waiter arrived with their entrees.

“Can’t we stay and eat—”

Olivia was already on her way to the door and didn’t hear the rest. She glanced back. Conner was looking longingly at the food and talking with the waiter.

Well, they’d arrived separately. He could get the food to go—and pay the bill.

She was on her way to get engaged for real.

“Okay, Amanda’s got the car outside the ER entrance and Emma is going to distract Nate when he comes down the hall. We have about three minutes to get you out of here without being seen,” Isabelle said as she steered the wheelchair into the exam room where Cody had been stitched up and given blood and antibiotics.

He’d called the Dixon Divas the moment he’d been alone.

“Great.” He eased himself off the bed and into the chair, of course banging his sore leg hard against the bed, then the footrest of the chair. “Fuck!”

“Be careful,” Isabelle hissed. “You’re going to get us in trouble.”

Cody lifted his injured leg onto the footrest with both hands. “You and Emma used to get into trouble every other minute.”

“Not with Olivia,” she said, pushing the chair to the doorway.

They both peered out and looked in both directions. The hallway was clear of people they knew. For now.

She pushed him through the doorway and hung a right.

“You’re all worried about Olivia being mad?” Cody asked.

“Yes,” Iz answered without hesitation.

He chuckled.

“Hey, we’ve never seen her get really riled up. It could be worse than any of us imagine,” Isabelle said. “And she’s never cared about anything the way she cares about you.”

Cody loved hearing that. He hadn’t heard from Conner or Olivia and it was well past the time they should have met at the restaurant. And
he
still had the ring in his pocket. He’d forgotten to give it to Conner as proof of how serious he was.

Isabelle took the next corner a little tight and Cody felt the chair tip.

“Hey.” He put his hand out on the wall to brace himself.

“Shit.”

“Just nice and easy,” he coached, feeling damned helpless and anxious.

They rounded one more corner, the sliding ER doors in sight, when they heard, “This seems like a bad idea.”

Busted.

Isabelle leaned down. “I can try to shove you hard enough that you’ll make it to the doors, and I’ll run interference if you want.”

“You’re the best almost-sister-in-law I’ve ever had,” he told her, his hands going to the wheels and stopping the chair. “But no.”

They both turned to find Nate, Ryan and Conner standing behind them, arms crossed.

“Where’s Olivia?” he asked when he saw Conner.

“On her way to find you in the exam room that I told you to
stay
in,” Nate answered.

“I needed to see her.”

“And you would have two minutes ago if you’d stayed put,” Nate said, coming around to the back of the chair and pushing Cody back in the direction he’d come.

He tried to defend himself. “I didn’t know she was coming here.”

He held his breath as Nate got his sore leg really close to the wall.

“You really didn’t think she’d come straight over here?” Conner asked.

Cody craned his neck, trying to see his friend and soon-to-be brother-in-law. “You had a chance to tell her about the proposal though?”

Conner chuckled. “Yeah. Thanks for the champagne by the way.”

“Champagne?”

“I think it was on the house,” Conner said. “Once they found out we were engaged, they were pretty excited. But I didn’t look at the bill before I plunked down your credit card. Maybe they charged us for that. And the roses. And the dessert.”

“Dessert?” Cody repeated. “You stayed for dessert? While I was bleeding in the hospital?”

“You weren’t bleeding by dessert time,” Nate said. “Where do you think you are?”

“Yeah, yeah.” Cody still couldn’t really see Conner behind him. “What took you so long to get here?”

“I had to convince her that I wasn’t dying and give her my little speech and…”

“
You
had a little speech?” Cody asked. “This was supposed to be about
me
.”

“She’s my little sister,” Conner said. “Of course I had a little speech. It was awesome by the way. I almost made her cry. Of course,” he added, in a near mutter, “that was when she thought I might be dying.”

“Did you propose to your sister or not?” Cody demanded as they rolled into the trauma area.

The family of four gathered in one corner of the waiting area looked appalled.

Cody huffed out a frustrated breath.

“Yes, he proposed to me.”

Cody looked up at the sound of the soft, sweet voice. “Olivia.”

Nate rolled him the rest of the way into the exam room he’d exited only a few minutes ago. “We’ll leave you two alone for a bit,” Nate said, pulling the door shut behind him.

“Hey, Doc,” Olivia said.

“Yeah?”

“Is he okay?”

“He’s going to be fine. Now that you’re here, I doubt he even remembers he has a leg.”

“Is he okay to…”

Cody grinned. He was more than okay to… She’d just have to be on top for a while. “I’ll give it my best.”

“…get on one knee and propose properly?” she finished.

Nate laughed. “Sorry. No. And if you rip my stitches out, you have to put them back in.”

She wrinkled her nose. “We’ll make do.”

Nate closed the door behind him, and Olivia turned to Cody.

“I can’t believe you’re CAM609.”

“I can’t believe you didn’t figure it out.”

She gave him a sheepish look. “Yeah. Sorry.”

He laughed and grabbed her hand, tugging her into his lap. “I forgive you. I think it was sweet that you were going down to Cliff’s to be sure my date went well.”

“I will admit I wondered what I was going to do if your date didn’t show.”

Since it had been
him
, he hadn’t given a lot of thought to her reactions. The friendship they’d struck up online had simply confirmed that much of what drew them together was far more than their physical chemistry.

“Hey, you got kind of cozy with this guy you didn’t know.”

She leaned back slightly. “But it was
you
.”

“But you didn’t know that. You told him some pretty personal stuff.”

“About how I felt about
you
.”

“But you thought he was a stranger.” She’d been
very
friendly. Warm. Sweet. The guy—had it not been Cody—would have absolutely fallen for her.

“But he wasn’t a stranger. He was
you
.”

“You were pretty quick to make new friends.”

“There was something about him—you—that felt right,” she said with a shrug. “Now that I know it was you, it makes complete sense.”

“But you were willing to go along with it before you knew it was me,” Cody said, feeling very conflicted and not completely sure why.

“We clicked.
Because it was you
,” she said. “That wouldn’t have happened with anyone else.”

“But you didn’t know that. You thought he was some stranger. And you were going to the restaurant to meet him.” He suddenly didn’t like that.

“To help him with his date. With someone else. I mean, to help
you
.” She shook her head. “This is really confusing.”

“What if the whole needing help with his date thing was a ploy to get you to go out with him?” Cody asked.

“Conner said something like that,” she said. “But if that had happened—and it wasn’t you, which it
was
—then I would have broken it off with him.”

“With me?”

She huffed out a breath. “I would have been breaking up with him—
you
—for…
you
.”

“But we really connected online. We were talking and joking and…”

“Oh, my god,
you
kiss me. Now.” She took his face in her hands and shut him up with her mouth.

She tasted like everything he’d ever wanted, everything he’d ever need.

He cupped the back of her head and deepened the kiss, needing her and her sweetness and love surrounding him, filling him up. Forever.

She leaned back, panting, a few minutes later. “There. That was
you
and
me
. That’s all we need.”

“I can’t believe you were going to break up with me.”

“For
you
,” she said with a laugh.

“But we were a ninety-three-percent match online.”

She raised an eyebrow. “Online? What about in person?”

Cody reached into his pocket and withdrew the ring he’d picked out with Ryan’s help three days before. He slipped it onto Olivia’s finger, then lifted her hand for a kiss.

“My ring looks good on you.”

Her eyes were filled with tears as she nodded. “It sure does.”

“Marry me, Olivia.”

“Yes.”

“It’s official. You can’t take it back now.”

She laughed. “There’s no way I’m going to take it back.”

“Okay, then I can tell you—I might have lied a little on the Perfect Pick thing when I signed up as CAM609.”

“What do you mean?”

“Well, we’re a ninety-three percent match when I’m CAM609. But when I looked at my percent as me, the profile you first helped me put in…”

“Yeah?”

“It’s lower.”

“Lower? Like what? Ninety percent?” she asked.

“Lower.”

“Eighty-five?”

“Lower.”

Her eyes got big. “No way. We get along great. We have a ton in common.”

“Not according to Perfect Pick.”

She wrapped her arms around his neck and kissed him, then snuggled close. “Who cares? It’s a dumb website. I don’t need them to tell me that we’re perfectly matched.”

“Okay, good.” He stroked his hand up and down her back. Waiting.

Less than a minute passed before she asked, “But out of curiosity…”

He laughed. “Seventy-one.”

She pulled back to stare at him. “No.”

“Yep. A measly seventy-one percent.”

She took his face in her hands, studying his eyes, then said sincerely, “Well, I’d take seventy-one percent of you over one hundred percent of anyone else.”