The Dating Intervention: Book 1 in the Intervention Series (40 page)

“Seriously?” Delaney said.

A long pause, then Doctor Kat spun her chair around to face Delaney’s, and slapped her wide hands on her thighs. “Yep. Seriously.”
 

She leaned forward, looked into Delaney’s eyes and repeated each word slowly. “How. Was. Your. Weekend?”
 

Delaney rolled her eyes. “I don’t want to talk about it.”
 

“Yes, you do.” She turned back to her desk, picked up the ruler.
 

“No, I don’t. By the way, I need to get a new phone today.”
 

Doctor Kat’s body froze. “New phone?”
 

Delaney rolled her eyes again.
 

“Yep. New phone. I lost mine Saturday night.”
 

“Rodeo dance?”
 

This was the second time Delaney’s new boss knew something about Delaney’s life she didn’t have any reason to know. A few weeks ago, she’d known when Delaney and Jake went out … and now she knew Delaney had gone to the rodeo dance.

“How’d you know?”

Doctor Kat turned around again and regarded Delaney over the tops of her reading glasses, eyebrows raised. In a very snooty voice, she answered, “I guess you don’t know Jake as well as you thought you did, Doc Collins. But if you’re so riled up about him that your weekend was shit, may I strongly suggest you go get that new phone now and call him on it.”
 

“I’m never speaking to him again!” Delaney said. Then, after a pause, she said, “Wait. How do you know this is about Jake? How do you always know what’s going on?”
 

“I repeat: go get yourself a new phone, woman. See you in thirty.”
 

“But I don’t
want
to know!” Delaney said, knowing even as she spoke that this wasn’t really an appropriate conversation to be having with her boss. But wasn’t it Doctor Kat who’d brought up bars and drinking during their first interview? “I don’t want to know where I fell short, what I said wrong. I don’t want to know if I walked around with a toilet seat cover hanging out the back of my skirt!”
 

It was a lie, of course. She did want to know. Desperately.
 

“Not funny,” Delaney said when she saw the humor hovering around her boss’s mouth.
 

“It is, actually, to see you so wound up.”
 

Delaney didn’t answer.

“Well, get to it. You have an hour until your first patient. Get out of here. Go get your new phone.”
 

Delaney got up and stomped out of the office. She thought she heard Doctor Kat snicker, but she ignored it.
 

***

The phone store squatted at the opposite end of town, a low stucco building next to a nail salon. Somebody apparently had a tough time deciding what color to paint the building and decided on a bland non-color that blended in with the dead grass on the hillside behind it.
Of course. Because everyone wants to look at a dead-grass colored building.
 

What did Doctor Kat mean when she said Delaney didn’t know Jake as well as she thought she did? Did she know something Delaney didn’t know?
 

The idea of calling Jake horrified her. Mortified, more like. Something in the deep recesses of her mind told her she
should
call him. But what was she supposed to say? It had only been thirty-six hours, but for the past few weeks they hadn’t gone more than thirty-six minutes without talking or texting.
 

Delaney pulled into a narrow parking spot and rubbed her hands over her face, hoping to do something about the blotchiness she’d caused by crying while belting out sappy love songs with the easy listening station. She dragged herself out of the car and blinked as her eyes adjusted to the cavelike lighting of the store.

“Wow. You look like death.”
 

She recognized the voice instantly. Mitchell. Why did he keep popping up everywhere? He was like that stupid gnome that showed up in everybody’s vacation pictures. Only not nearly as cute.
 

“Thanks,” Delaney said.
 

“Are you okay?”
 

Why hadn’t she ever noticed the hair sprouting from his nose? Or maybe he’d trimmed it the few times they’d dated.
 

“I’m fine,” she snapped, then she softened and added, “Thanks.”
 

“What do you need?”
 

“I didn’t know you worked here. I thought you were a waiter.”
 

His eyes darted to the left, then back to meet hers. “Just started.”
 

She glanced at his nametag.
Mitch. Team member for 4 years.
 

When she looked at his face again, he shrugged. “Off and on. Just started back up again.”
 

Why did she have to choose such scum? Working at the cell phone place was one thing, but lying about it? She had serious doubts about his claim that he finished law school. And to think, she’d slept with him. Why euphemize? She’d had intercourse with him.
Scum. Liar.
 

Had Jake lied to her? No, he hadn’t. Doctor Kat said to call him, but Summer and Josie told her not to. They said it was over. Although she didn’t blame the girls (they didn’t really know Jake like she did – or like she thought she did – and he’d definitely been too close for comfort with that girl at the rodeo dance), she wanted closure. Or did she? What if she confronted him and he said something like, “I’ve been meaning to tell you, Delaney, I’m taking you off the roster.”
Or, what if he kisses me senseless and tells me everything’s perfectly fine?
She could practically feel his lips, his sexy stubble, his hands on her face.
 

“Delaney?”
 

Mitchell.
 

“Hm. Okay. Well, I need a new phone. I lost mine.”
 

“Do you want the same phone you had? I’m pretty sure we have it in stock.”
 

He remembers which phone I had.
 

“Sure.”

She watched him walk back to the stock room and for the first time noticed the bald spot and comb-over. Why didn’t she see it before? It wasn’t a deal breaker, but it usually knocked a couple points off the rubric.
 

Was she having a transformation? Finally? Had The Dating Intervention removed the veritable and apparently semi-permanent beer goggles she’d sported for the past several years? Not that she was drinking all the time. But the concept was the same.

Was she finally seeing things as they really were? Or had she become more critical than ever? Or,
drumroll, please
, was she just finally learning to listen to her intuition?

“Delaney?”
 

She didn’t answer.

“Everything okay?” he simpered, all concern.
 

“Yes,” she said brightly. “It’s great!”
 

A few minutes later, having noticed Mitchell’s clammy hands and his irritating habit of scratching his nose at the end of every sentence, Delaney walked out of the store with her new phone.
 

The internal debate continued as she got in the car. Doctor Kat had given her an hour, and only half of that had passed. She had plenty of time to call Jake. Or maybe she should just stop by. His face would tell the real story.
 

He’d shown her the
hockey
movie. Didn’t that mean something?
 

She had to know.
 

She slammed the car into reverse, backed up wildly and hit the light pole between the parking lot and the sidewalk.
 

“Shit. Shit, shit, shit.”
 

Instead of getting out to survey the damage (it was done, anyway, wasn’t it?), she cranked up the radio to blast Shania Twain’s “Man! I Feel Like a Woman!” and drove straight downtown, where she parked, tires screeching, along the curb below Jake’s apartment building.
 

***

Most of downtown Juniper’s shops opened at ten or eleven, so it was still quiet. Nevertheless, a few people craned their necks when they heard Delaney’s car pull up at the curb in front of Jake’s apartment building. Not to be deterred from her mission, she got out, slammed the car door and marched the half-block to the alley. When she began to stomp toward the metal staircase leading up to Jake’s front door, though, she stopped mid-stride.
 

The girl, the lanky, silky, model-pretty girl who’d been giggling so heartily with Jake at the rodeo dance, was coming down the stairs. In pajama bottoms and a sweatshirt. Was it Brittany? In a split-second, Delaney noticed the girl still looked pretty – no,
hot
– even in her pajamas. The girl noticed Delaney, too, and she paused at the bottom of the stairs.
 

It wasn’t a full halt like Delaney’s, but a contemplative break in her graceful descent. Like she was comfortable. Confident. Worse, her perfect mouth was spreading into a smirk. One with some classified information behind it.

Delaney measured her options carefully. Should she turn around, get back in her car and drive off a cliff like Thelma and Louise? Should she drive back to work and act like she’d never been here? Should she walk up to the dream girl and confront her? Punch her in the face? Or march right up the stairs and have a word with the man himself, who was probably just now lounging naked in bed waiting for his lover to return from a coffee run?
 

Before she could decide, the girl spoke. “Delaney, right?”
 

I could still run
.
 

But then she imagined the girl going back up to the apartment, sliding between the sheets with Jake and murmuring that she’d just seen Delaney outside.
 

Delaney nodded and noticed her mouth was hanging open.
 

“Finally! I’m just going for some coffee, want to join me?”
 

I knew it! A coffee run!
 

Delaney shook her head, snapped out of it. “No, thank you. I really don’t want any coffee.”
 

But now what?
Delaney searched her mind frantically for a scathing line about leaving the apartment in pajamas, or sex hair at the coffee shop. But she came up dry.
 

“Okay, then,” the girl said. “Well, Jakey’s upstairs. Still in bed. You know how he is. But I’m sure he’d love to see you. Goodness knows he’s been talking about you nonstop.”
 

She pulled her hair over one shoulder and began braiding it.
 

How
old
is this girl? Has she even graduated high school?
Delaney’s mind snapped back to what the girl had just said: “Jake’s been talking about you nonstop.”

“He has?”

The girl rolled her eyes with what Delaney could tell was mock exasperation. “God, yes. Can’t get him to shut up about you, frankly. It’s so nice to finally put a face to the name. I mean, usually, he doesn’t say anything about the women he’s dating.”
 

Delaney felt her jaw drop open again. Before she had the chance to think of anything clever to say (or to ask, like “Are there lots of other women?”) she heard Jake’s voice.

“Jenny! Who are you talking to
now
? I need my coffee, woman!”
 

She couldn’t quite see Jake from where she stood, but Delaney could picture him: bare feet, pajama pants and naked, chiseled torso. It took almost every ounce of her self-restraint to keep from pushing past this skinny Jenny girl and running up the stairs to touch his skin. Then she remembered she still hadn’t solved the mystery of whom, exactly, this skinny Jenny girl was.
 

“I’m just chatting with your girlfriend, Jakey,” Jenny said in a cheerful voice. “She just stopped by for some – well, what did you stop by for?”

Again, Delaney stared at her, at a loss for words. “I, uh –”
 

“Say no more,” Jenny said.
 

“She stopped by for some morning nookie, Jakey.”
 

Delaney’s eyes met the girl’s, which were sparkling with mischief. From his spot at the top of the stairs, Jake laughed. The sound made Delaney weak with desire. Then, Jenny laughed, too, and the pieces started to click into place.
 

How had she not noticed this girl had the Rhoades eyes? The laugh – a sound like a wind chime – was almost identical.
 

“You’re one of Jake’s sisters.”
 

Jenny stopped laughing. Jake laughed louder.
 

“You mean, he didn’t tell you I was his sister?”
 

Delaney shook her head, speechless. Jenny looked quite amused, and Delaney felt like a complete idiot for not having figured out the connection sooner. Of course. Of
course
! They had the same honey-colored skin, the same straw-colored hair. At the rodeo dance, he acted affectionate, not flirtatious.
 

Delaney heard Jake making his way down the stairs. The heat rose in her face. Of course it was his sister. Her intuition had been right. He
did
care about her. He
wouldn’t
just show up at the rodeo dance with someone else, especially knowing she was going to be there.
 

Then he was in front of her, exactly as she’d imagined him a few moments earlier, only even more delicious-looking. Bare feet, pajama pants low on his hips and his gorgeous stomach. She felt a little bit of drool at the corner of her mouth, and wiped it off with the back of her hand.

Jenny and Jake stood facing Delaney, side by side. Arms crossed, blue eyes delighted. Jenny elbowed Jake. He winced.

“Delaney, this is my sister, Caboose.”
 

She elbowed him again.
 

“I mean, Jenny. She’s the youngest, so –”
 

“—So they all insist on calling me Caboose. But seriously, it’s really nice to meet you. I caught a glimpse of you at the rodeo dance but then you disappeared. We texted you Sunday morning, but when you didn’t answer, Jake said you must be busy. I told him to keep texting but he didn’t want to. He said he didn’t want to bug you, but I could tell he was getting nervous.”