Wait for It

I never thought the day would come where I would be excited to go to work, but after almost three weeks of taking time off, my body was so ready. I had tried picking up shears twice in the last week, and it was a little iffy and painful, but I couldn’t take being home any longer. My bank account couldn’t either. So, hand hurting or not, that Wednesday morning, I was pumped beyond belief.

So pumped Josh was steadily scowling at me through the reflection in the rearview mirror.

“Why are you so happy?” grumpy britches muttered his question.

“Because I’m going back to work,” I sang back to him, earning a bigger scowl. I really enjoyed my job on a normal basis, but after so long, I was ready to love it again in a way that only time and space was capable of.

“I’ll be happy next week when we get off from school for Thanksgiving,” the grump muttered.

Shit. I’d forgotten about Thanksgiving. “Did you guys decide what you want to do?” The Larsens were going to Louisiana and my family was staying in San Antonio, so I’d given the boys the option to choose whom they wanted to spend it with. Last year, we’d all stayed together at my parents, but I couldn’t be greedy and keep them if they wanted to see the other side of the family. Either way, I had to work the day before, half the day of, and the following day, too.

“No,” was the same reply they’d given me when I first brought up them going to Louisiana.

I sighed. “Well, you better decide soon or,” I sang, “you’re stuck with me.”

“Stop, please,” Josh pleaded.

“I like the way you sing,” Louie piped up, earning a dirty look from his brother. “You sound like a cute kitty.”

I didn’t think that was as much of a compliment as he meant for it to be, but I’d take it.

“If we stay, will Mr. Dallas eat turkey with us?” the five-year-old asked.

I glanced at him through the rearview mirror, letting myself think about how nice he’d been this past weekend at Josh’s game and how he’d given me a hug while he walked us to our car that night at the end of the tournament. He’d even apologized for having to skip dinner, but he’d left Miss Pearl alone at home all day and thought he should spend some time with her since she was staying with him and all.

I’d accepted it. I was madly, crazy, stupid in love with this guy.

The problem was that I didn’t know what to do with it. With him being more affectionate and saying the things that he said… but not doing much else. I mean, he could kiss me and that would make a statement. Or tell me he liked me… if he did. It seemed like he was dropping hints, or I don’t know what, but I wasn’t sure whether to interpret his messages or let them go.

So I was going to let them go for now and settle for what he’d been willingly giving me.

“I don’t know, Goo. He has family too. He might have plans to spend it with them. I haven’t asked him,” I explained.

“I’ll ask him,” he offered.

“Can I get a new game this weekend?” Josh asked out of the blue, making that the second time this week he’d tried.

I told him the same answer he’d already heard. I could applaud his effort, but that’s all he was getting from me. “Not anytime soon, J. Maybe for Christmas.”

“Why?”

“Why? Because I don’t have the money right now.” I’d barely been able to pay the mortgage and the water; I’d put the light bill on my credit card along with the cable bill.

“Why?”

“Why don’t I have money? Because I haven’t worked in weeks, J. I know you guys think I’m pouring money out of my ears, but I’m not. Sorry.”

He grumbled so much I shot him a dirty look through the rearview mirror that had him stopping the moment he saw it. “Okay,” he muttered.

“That’s what I thought,” I whispered to myself, trying to hold on to my optimism and excitement about getting back to work with two hands. I’d gone in to the salon the day before to try and start arranging my schedule again, and managed to get most of the day booked up.

“Tia, do you think Santa will give me a bike for Christmas?” Louie asked.

“As long as he doesn’t hear about all your criminal activity over the year, I think he might,” I told him, laughing when he let out a disgruntled noise as I pulled the car up to the school. “All right, have a good day at school, you menaces to society. I love you.”

Louie slipped out of his car seat just as Josh pecked me on the side of the forehead with a kiss that was more of a brush of lips—the end was coming one day for that, but it hadn’t yet. Lou did the same on my cheek, hollering, “Bye!” right before slamming the door shut.

For one moment, I glanced at my hand again, the skin pink and tight and a lot more tender than I wished it would be, but it was going to have to be good enough. I needed to work.

* * *

“D, we got a walk-in asking for you,” Ginny informed me with a sly smile as I closed the door to the break room.

A walk-in asking for me? I didn’t have enough time between clients to do a color job, but I could squeeze another cut in. My palm was only hurting about a five on a scale from one to ten from holding shears. I couldn’t afford to say no. The day had been busy, busy. I had to go slower than I was used to because closing the shears quickly bothered the freshly healed new flesh too much, but I’d been doing all right. The salon was only open for two more hours. I’d make it.

I walked toward the front desk and stopped when I caught sight of a familiar brown head tipped down at the floor. Sitting there with his elbows on his widespread knees, hands centered between them with a cell phone in his hand, wearing his usual outfit of vintage jeans and a T-shirt that he had worn to work based on the shade of gray it was covered with, was Dallas. I’d seen him at practices over the last week and a half, but besides that, we hadn’t seen each other around the neighborhood. I knew Miss Pearl was staying with him, and I couldn’t say I didn’t think it was sweet he wasn’t leaving her home alone… even if I did miss having him come around the house.

The sound of my wedges on the smooth concrete floor had him glancing up from whatever he’d been looking at, and he smiled, wide, so beautiful I felt like an idiot for ever thinking the most attractive part of him was his body. “Hey.”

“Hey, Professor,” I said, even though in my head I was really asking: what are you doing here?

“Busy?” he asked, smiling a little and coming to a stand.

“Not for you.” Why did I say that and why was my heart beating so fast in my chest?

“Someone told me you don’t take new clients, but I was wondering if you’d make an exception for a friend,” he said, running a hand through what had obviously grown out to be about an inch-long hair where he usually kept it at half an inch.

Cut his hair? Get close enough to cut his hair? The tiniest bit of unease settled right in my chest, but just meeting his gaze reminded me of who he was. My friend. My neighbor. The man who had been almost nothing but kind to me, time after time. There was nothing to worry about.

Well, at least not physically. My heart was a different story.

The smile that came on my face was as easy and natural as it should have been. “Of course I can. Come on.”

He smiled and I turned into a puddle of goo, but by some miracle, I managed not to get all moony-eyed over him. That was the plan at least. “How’s your day been?” he asked as I waited for him to walk up to me.

“Pretty good. I get off in two hours.” I met those murky brown-green eyes. “You?”

“I finished a big tiling job. It was a good day,” he answered, brushing the back of his hand against mine.

This couldn’t be happening to me. Not with my neighbor. Not with this man who was technically still married and was Josh’s coach. It couldn’t be. I wouldn’t let it.

“One day when I have the money, I’ll ask you to give me a quote on redoing the floors in my house, but that isn’t going to be any time soon,” I told him.

“All you have to do is ask, Diana.” He looked down at me from over his shoulder. “We can do it together when you have the time off.”

“Together?”

“Together,” he repeated.

I hummed and eyed him. “All right. For free?”

That had him smirking. “Yeah. You get a special discount.”

“What? The single parent who feeds you discount?”

Dallas shook his head and smiled, but didn’t say anything.

All right.

“We’re going for a Mohawk then or what?” I made myself ask.

The expression on his face was that playful one that squeezed the shit out of my ovaries every single time he brought it out. “Maybe next time.”

He winked.

He winked right at me.

He had never done that before.

What the fuck was going on?

“Okay,” I practically choked out, awkward and weird and instantly internally cringing at how I should have kept the joke going but didn’t. Damn it. “Let me get my clippers real quick and lower your chair. I don’t get anyone over six feet tall in front of me very often.”

“Okay,” he replied.

“Same cut as always?” Pulling the drawer open, I kept my gaze down as I took out the clippers and set of attachments I had in there.

His voice was low. “Whatever you think looks good.”

Grabbing a cape, I slipped it over his shoulders and made the Velcro parts meet together. “You sure?”

“Sure,” he answered back, all raspy and hoarse. “I trust you.”

Why did he do this to me?

I turned my body away from him to let out a deep breath. Those hazel-colored eyes were on me through the mirror. I could see them out of my peripheral vision as I moved around him to plug the clippers in to the extension cord I had hidden beneath my station. “You’re the one looking at me more than anyone, do what you want.”

I sucked in a breath. “Okay.”

Our eyes met as I stood up again and walked around to take in the cut of his hair. I could do it with my eyes closed and one hand behind my back. I reached up to touch my thumb against the hollow at the base of his head and moved the clippers around to where they needed to be. His face was peaceful as I shaved from the front to the back of his head, over that gentle curve of his skull, gentle, gentle, gentle not to cut him. I slowly moved my way around him until I stood in front. His knees hit my upper thighs as I paused where I was, and he let me move his head around without any resistance to get the spots I needed to reach.

I’d be lying if I said I didn’t let my fingers linger just a split second longer than necessary over the smooth skin of his forehead and his temple and that ultra-soft skin right behind his earlobe. I could feel his stare on me as I worked, but only let myself look him in the eye a couple of times, smiling each time like this was no big deal, when it felt like anything but. The clippers were loud between us, a distraction to the tension I felt in the pit of my stomach in reaction to how close we were.

“Sorry if I stink,” he apologized in that near-whisper voice.

“You don’t smell at all,” I said to him, forcing myself to keep my gaze on the very center of his newly trimmed hair. “I’m almost done. I just need to use my shears on a couple of spots.” Did my voice sound hoarse or was I just imagining it?

“I’m not rushing you. You doing this for me is a hell of a lot better than my usual barber.” God, how could a voice be so attractive? “I might have to start coming in every two weeks if you’re gonna be rubbing the back of my neck like that, Buttercup.”

I smiled, but it was off and my stomach was fluttering, and I’m sure my face was turning pink.

“Why you blushing?” he asked in that croon that sang straight to my ovaries.

“Because.” I laughed again, awkward and stupid, and why the hell was I doing this to myself? You know better, Diana. “You reminded me of something I heard. That’s all,” I said, rubbing my hand on my pants before moving around him.

He hummed. “You can tell me. I can keep a secret,” he said. “I don’t share.”

“Me neither,” I kind of mumbled before shuffling over to stand behind him, trading one tool for the other to catch a couple of super fine hairs right by his ears that I hadn’t been able to get. “It’s stupid. I’ll tell you another day.”

I spotted his Adam’s apple moving. I wouldn’t be surprised if he could hear my heart racing inside my chest. It only took a couple of minutes to finish up, to make sure the lines and edges along the nape of his neck were clean and straight. After brushing his bare skin off, I pulled the cape off him. I slowly shook it out as he got to his feet, avoiding the small pools of rich brown hair on the floor.

“How much do I owe you?” he asked.

I gestured toward the front desk area with my head, conscious that Sean and Ginny were nosey as fuck and still not done with their clients. “How about ten bucks?”

He touched the back of my hand again with his, and I knew without a single doubt, for one split second, his pinky finger hooked around mine before letting it go. “That’s how much I pay my old guy to cut me behind the ears and shove his sweaty armpit in my face. How much?”

He sounded just like Miss Pearl.

I kept myself from coughing and from glancing down at his hands, and somehow even rolled my eyes, trying to keep this light and playful even though it felt like something more. “Ten bucks. That took me fifteen minutes, tops, Dallas. It’s a friend discount, and don’t think about tipping me. I’ll sneak the money back in your bag during practice.”

“Yeah?”

“Yeah. You help me all the time. I can avoid shoving a stinky pit in your face and make sure I leave you without any cuts.”

“You sure? I know you charge like a hundred bucks for a haircut.”

I’d do it for free at my house if he wanted, but in that moment, that seemed like a dangerous idea. “I don’t charge a hundred dollars for a haircut. It’s like eighty, and it takes me over an hour to do that usually. Ten bucks. Cough ‘em up, Captain.”

That slow smile crossed his harsh features, lighting up my gut. “As you wish.”

I started grinning before I stopped. What did he just say?

Before I could ask myself if he’d really just said what I thought he said, Dallas added, “And it’s Senior Chief, Peach. Not Captain.”

Was I having hot flashes? Was I imagining things? I tugged at the collar of my shirt with my good hand and replied, “You got it, Senior Chief.”

He snickered and shook his head. As he handed over a ten-dollar bill from a scuffed leather wallet, he asked, “You putting me down for two weeks from now?”

I blinked and even my hands stopped moving. “You’re serious?”

He was dead serious. I could tell from the expression on his face. I’d seen it before. And he confirmed it. “I’m serious. Put me down.”

“Why don’t you just come over to my house and have me cut your hair there?” I offered, whispering. I could do it. I could keep my hands to myself.

“I like having an excuse to come see you,” he replied in a low voice that went straight to my chest.

I eyed him and nodded, slipping the cash into the register before reaching over to take the computer off sleep mode. “Is Monday fine?” I managed not to croak.

“Sure, baby.”

I was not going to make a big deal about the “B” word. And I didn’t. Words were just words sometimes, with no special meaning at all, and Dallas and I had been through some stuff together. Trip called me “honey” all the time too. Maybe Dallas was just practicing terms of endearment on me? Yuck. “All right.”

“You got me down?” he asked before I’d even saved the date.

“I’m about to.”

“Good. Make me your six o’clock from now on. Any day you want, I’ll make it work.”

My index finger hovered over the mouse for a moment and I held my breath. There was something about this that felt different. Heavy. “For how long?” I asked slowly.

“For as long as that calendar will let you.”

* * *

“That whore.”

Ginny let out a laugh from her spot across the salon where she was cleaning out the sinks we used to wash customers’ hair. “Your tip was that bad?”

The fact she knew why the insult was called for didn’t even register to me. We’d been working together for so long doing this, we were both well aware that there were only a handful of reasons we would call our customers names. It was either they missed an appointment, complained about a haircut they specifically requested even though we tried to talk them out of it, or we were tipped like shit. Under normal circumstances, we didn’t usually complain about our tips. I mean, shit happens; sometimes people have less money than they do at other times, but in this case…

“She just finished telling me she got promoted at her law firm. She left me five dollars, Gin. Five dollars. It took me half an hour to blow out her hair after I cut it. My hand hurts like a son of a bitch from holding the dryer.”

Her laugh exploded out of her, because that kind of shit happened to all of us on a semi-regular basis. Some weeks were better than others. It was why I never tipped waiters badly. While Ginny paid us based off a fair commission structure compared to other salon owners I’d worked for in the past, every penny still counted, especially when you had bills and kids. Today alone I’d had six stingy customers. On the other hand, I’d had to cancel her original appointment because of my hand. Her roots had been pretty brutal.

“Ugh,” I groaned. “It’s just been one of those days.”

“Aww, Di.”

I sighed and dropped my head back before shoving the five-dollar bill into my wallet. “I need a drink.”

“I don’t have the kids today,” she mentioned slyly, earning a look from me.

“You don’t?”

“No. Their dad called last minute and said he’d keep them for the weekend.” She glanced up from her work at the sink and raised her eyebrows repeatedly. “Mayhem isn’t that expensive.”

“I probably shouldn’t be spending money when I have a perfectly good bottle of wine at home,” I said. I hadn’t been back at work long and my checking account was still crippled.

“I’ll buy you two drinks. One of my guys left me an extra good tip as a wedding gift, and I’m not having a bachelorette party. Let’s do it. You and me, one last time before I become a married woman again.”

I knew where she was going with this and I approved. “Two drinks, no more?”

“Only two,” she confirmed.

To give us credit, we were both straight-faced as we recited the greatest lie ever told.

* * *

“One more!”

“No!”

“One more!”

“No!”

“Come on!”

My face was hot and I’d hit the giggly level two drinks ago. “One more, and that’s it! I’m not kidding this time!” I finally agreed, such a total fucking sucker.

What was this? Drink number four? Number five? I had no clue.

Watching as Ginny leaned over the bar and asked the bartender, who had been very attentive to us tonight, for two more whiskey sours, I wiggled out of the soft button-down shirt I’d put on over a lacey camisole for work that morning. I was hot. So damn hot considering the November temperatures had dropped. The bar was packed. It was Friday night after all, and we’d fought for our two spots at the counter, smashed in between two burly men with motorcycle club vests on and two guys we’d learned a drink ago who worked at Ginny’s uncle’s garage.

What happened to our two-drink limit? Ginny’s uncle happened. The most weathered-looking man I had ever seen in my life had come straight for us the second we sat down and told the bartender the drinks were on him tonight. The man, I learned moments later, was named Luther, put a hand on the back of the chair I was sitting on and said to me, “I heard what you did for Miss Pearl. You’re good here anytime you want.”

“You really don’t have to do that,” I told this man I’d never even seen before.

His intense attention didn’t budge for a second. “My grandson is in love with you. You’re good,” he decided.

Oh my God. Dean.

The man named Luther continued on, “Ginny, I can’t afford your drunk ass. Consider tonight a wedding gift,” he drawled, patting his niece’s shoulder as she choked on a laugh.

And then, just like that, the Alcohol Fairy was gone. And Ginny and I silently said “fuck it” and decided to take advantage of it, which was why and how I found myself five drinks in to an evening at a biker bar, laughing my ass off with someone I loved.

I was fanning myself when Ginny turned with two glasses of the yellowish concoction. Reaching back, I started tying my hair up. “Is it hot or is just me?” I asked.

“It’s hot,” she confirmed, sliding the drink over the counter in my direction. “Last one and we’ll go home.”

I nodded, smiling at her, my facial muscles feeling pretty tingly. “Last one. Seriously.”

“Serious,” she promised.

The much older man to my right, the big biker Ginny and I talked to for half an hour earlier, turned in his seat to look down at me. His bushy gray beard was long and in definite need of a trim. “What’cha drinking now?”

“A whiskey sour,” I replied, taking a sip.

He scrunched up his nose and looked back and forth between Gin and me. “That’s an awful lot of liquor you’ve had for being so small.”

“I’m okay,” I told him, taking another sip. “I’m just going to call a cab.”

He looked horrified. “Honey, that sounds like a bad idea.”

“Why?” Ginny piped up from her spot next to me. She’d been talking to him too over the course of the last couple hours we’d been at the bar.

“Two drunk girls in the car with a stranger?”

Well, when he put it that way…. We’d taken a cab the last time and it was fine. Plus, how many other times in the past had I done the same thing?

“Ginny, have Trip drive you two home. I know his ass hasn’t drunk that much tonight. He’s upstairs dealing with club shit. I’ll go get him for you, or shit, call Wheels. He’ll come get you. No problem.”

She shook her head. “He’s asleep. I don’t want to wake him up.”

“I can take y’all home,” a man sitting on the other side of Ginny, one of the two mechanics, offered.

I didn’t need to look at my boss and friend to know that, though the guy seemed nice enough, we weren’t idiots. We’d learned not to get into cars with strangers. Shit, we’d taught our kids not to get into cars with strangers.

“No. I’m taking you both home,” a new voice claimed from somewhere behind me unexpectedly.

I felt the two arms come down on either side of my chair before I saw the twin columns of heavily muscled forearms cage me in. It was the beautiful brown and black lines of a bird’s wing stamped onto the inside of the biceps by my face that told me who was in my space. I didn’t have to look up to know who was talking. It was Dallas.

I’d like to think it was all the alcohol that led me to drop my head back as far as I could. “Hi.”

Dallas tipped his face down to look at me, his expression harsh, no-nonsense even through my hazy brain. “Diana,” he said my name solidly without a single trace of the familiar affection we’d grown for each other.

“I didn’t know you were here,” I said, still looking at him upside down.

He might have blinked, but his mouth was drawn so tight I couldn’t look past it. “I’ve been here the entire time.”

I swallowed and only managed to nod, my face getting hot all over again. Even in that position, I could see his eyes flick over my face and my throat and some other place I couldn’t confirm. “You could have come said hi. We’re friends. We can sit next to each other in public.” And that was how I would later on know I was drunk. What the hell was I thinking saying that?

“You’ve been busy,” he stated in that same detached, almost mean voice.

“What?”

“You’ve had enough to drink,” Dallas said. “I’m taking you both home.”

“But we just got this drink!” Ginny protested.

“I’ll give you the ten bucks. Let’s go, now,” he demanded. Without warning, the arms on either side of me moved, his hands going to the handles of the stool I was on right before he jerked it away from the bar, making it scrape against the floor.

Some reasonable part of Ginny’s and my brains must have recognized that we’d overdone the drinking, because neither one of us grumbled much at his order. Out of the corner of my eye, I noticed my boss pushing her chair back, not forced out of it like I had been. Turning the stool around so I could get out and grabbing my purse at the same time, I came face-to-face with Dallas’s body standing centimeters from my knees. Glancing up at his face, ready to ask him to back up so I could get down, I couldn’t help but smile at the scowl on his face.

“Hi,” I said again like I hadn’t just greeted him two minutes ago.

He wasn’t amused. In fact, I’m pretty sure he sounded more pissed than he had a minute ago when he spoke next. “Let’s go.”

I thought I narrowed my eyes at him. “Why do you sound so mad?”

“We’ll talk about it in the truck,” he said and gestured me forward, his tone still low, even.

“You sure you don’t want me to drive you?” the mechanic guy asked as Ginny slid out of her chair and came to stand next to Dallas.

Dallas didn’t tear his eyes away from me as he beat us to answer, “No.”

I’m pretty sure I heard the biker in the seat beside mine laugh.

My ankles betrayed me as I took a step forward and wobbled, my chest hitting Dallas’s, and I craned my neck back to give him a funny look. There were more lines at his forehead and beneath his eyes than I’d ever seen. What was up his ass?

“Bye, Diana,” the older biker called out.

Tilting my head to the side, forcing myself to look away from my neighbor—Josh’s coach—I waved at my new biker friend. “Bye. Be careful getting home,” I told him.

But before I could say anything else, a big, warm hand slipped into mine; the long fingers meshing through my smaller ones, and I lost my train of thought in less than a second. I knew those fingers. All I managed to do was look up at Dallas with a confused and shocked expression on my face before he was tugging me forward and through the bar and the mass of people inside of it. Distractedly, I looked over my shoulder to make sure Ginny was following, and she was. Shit. Taking her in right then, I noticed how flushed her face was.

We really had drank too much.

The night air was chilly, and I suddenly realized I hadn’t grabbed my shirt after I’d taken it off. “Wait!” I started to say before Dallas held up the hand not holding mine.

“I’ve got your shirt,” he said, taking a quick glance over his shoulder that landed directly on my chest.

I was a little drunk but not drunk enough to not notice how the tendons along his neck flexed. I was also pretty sure he muttered “Jesus” under his breath as he pulled me along behind him.

Could I have let go of his hand?

I flexed my fingers inside of his, linked together tightly, and decided probably not.

Not that I even wanted to, even though I knew I had no right. I knew this didn’t mean anything. Couldn’t mean anything. How many times had he made it apparent he wasn’t interested in me other than us being friends and because he’d had a single mom and related to me on that level?

Friends held hands when they’d had too much to drink.

This was nothing. Just one friend watching out for another. It wasn’t the first time I’d been around him in a bad mood. I had no reason to think too much about it. He probably just thought I was stupid for drinking too much and he’d be right. I was.

None of us said a word as we headed toward the double cab truck parked a block over at the same lot where I’d left my car. I had this strange urge to reach out and touch my beloved CRV, but the grip on my hand was too secure and I was steered right to Dallas’s passenger side door. I watched him shove his key into the lock and turn it, pulling the door open, and without meeting my eyes, he grabbed me by the hips and lifted me in—so quick I didn’t even have time to register his action until it was over.

I’d had too much to drink, but I could have gotten into his truck on my own. Couldn’t I? I’d definitely had way too much in the past and had never had a problem getting into a car… at least from what I could remember.

“Scoot over,” Dallas’s rough voice ordered.

He didn’t have to tell me twice. I moved over to the middle, watching as he crossed the front of his pickup, leaving Ginny to get into his truck on her own. His entire body looked strung tight, his jaw a straight line that reminded me of my mom’s when I’d piss her off as a kid and she was planning on putting me in my place the second we had some privacy. I looked around the inside of the cab and appreciated again that, while he didn’t take care of his house that well, he treated his truck like a baby.

“Why did you talk me into that third drink?” Ginny muttered as she settled in next to me, the side of her jean-covered leg and shoulder touching mine.

“What? You talked me into it,” I argued with her in a whisper.

All she did was shake her head.

“I’m never going out with you again.”

“We had fun. Don’t even try to pretend we didn’t.” I bumped my thigh against hers.

She giggled as the driver side door opened and, a second later, Dallas’s big body slid in behind the wheel, taking up all of the remaining space and more. So much more he was practically sealed to my side, gluing me to him like a conjoined twin I’d be stuck with forever. Just as I started to scoot over toward Ginny, he slid me a look at the same time his key went into the ignition, the low sound of country music cutting into the stinging silence. And there was something in that hard, uncompromising gaze that stopped me in midmovement.

His eyes, still somehow light-colored even in the dark cab, centered right onto me. “Seat belt.”

Dropping my eyes, I looked at my sides for the strap. I hadn’t been searching for it but maybe five seconds when that arm I’d become so familiar with over the course of the last few months reached over my lap—the palm of his hand cupping my hip for one brief moment in history—and grabbed it from where it was wedged beneath the seats almost like he’d planted it there. And slowly, with the backs of his fingers grazing across the band of my pants, going just above the zipper of my jeans, from one pelvic bone to the other, he clipped it in for me.

I held my breath the entire time.

And I wasn’t going to deny that I couldn’t help but glance at his face immediately afterward, feeling that electric heat from him searing every inch of exposed skin my tank top left out in the open.

What did I do? I smiled.

And for one rare occasion out of so many in the last few months, he didn’t smile back. Without breaking eye contact, he reached under the seat and handed me a bottle of water.

Okay.

“Where do you live?” he asked Ginny.

My boss and friend rattled off the address and directions with it.

None of us said anything as Dallas drove and I sipped on the water he’d given me, offering it to Ginny after each time. There were some country songs on the radio I vaguely recognized in the twenty minutes it took to drive to the opposite side of town where we lived. When he pulled in to the driveway of the new house in a new subdivision Ginny had bought a year ago, I hugged her before she got out and then watched as Dallas got out of the truck and walked her to her front door.

As he made his way back, I pulled my phone out of my purse and checked the screen, thankful that the Larsens had taken the boys to their lake house and I hadn’t missed Louie’s nightly phone call. I was just in the middle of putting my phone back into my purse when the door opened and my neighbor slid into the driver seat of the still-running truck. His hand went to the gear shift just as I reached to release the latch on the seat belt…

He covered my hand with his, stopping me.

“Are you okay?” I asked, keeping my hand where it was even as he reversed out of the short driveway, his chin over his shoulder as he looked out the back window.

His answer was cool and calm. “You’re asking me if I’m okay?”

I blinked. “Yeah.”

Moving his hand off mine and making me forget that I’d been about to move over, he put his truck into drive, his attention now focused outside the windshield. “You”—he still sounded normal, collected—“had too much to drink and spent the last three hours talking to men you don’t know.”

I wasn’t sure if it was the drinks or just that small part of me that hadn’t been able to come to terms with what I felt for him that led me to voice just about the stupidest thing I could have said. At least in hindsight, I realized how dumb it was. “So?”

That wasn’t something I hadn’t done a hundred times before. I knew the difference between being friendly and being a flirt, and I hadn’t been flirting with any of those guys at the bar.

But I learned pretty quickly that “So?” was obviously not the kind of answer that Dallas was looking for. I accepted that a moment later when he slammed his brakes, sending me rocking forward—his arm shooting out across my chest to keep me from smashing my face against the dashboard.

“What the hell!” I cried at the same time he shouted, “So?”

My heart was beating in my damn throat from thinking I was about to have to get reconstructive surgery to my face, but somehow I managed to pant out, “What is wrong with you?” I was awake then, the tipsiness disappearing as I tried to catch my breath.

“You don’t know those fucking guys, Diana!” he yelled. “One of them got accused of rape a couple of years ago, and you were sitting there becoming BFFs with him.”

I was that angry and upset that I let him using “BFF” go.

“The only reason I was there was because I was meeting up with my friend I told you about. I sat there watching you the entire time. Waiting for you to turn around and come sit with me so I could introduce you to him, but you’re so fucking unobservant—”

“I am not unobservant,” I argued.

“Then how the fuck did you not see me ten feet away from you for hours?”

“I…” Well, what the hell was I supposed to say? There wasn’t a good excuse or explanation for that. He had a point. I just wasn’t going to admit it. Ever. “Well, I don’t know. But I wouldn’t have gone home with them. Are you crazy?”

The way he glared at me almost had me checking my eyebrows to make sure they hadn’t been burned off. He bared his teeth in an expression that was nowhere near a smile. “You’re damn right you wouldn’t have gone home with them.”

He was breathing hard and it had taken me too long to notice that he was just as riled up as me. This normally calm, patient man was resembling a dragon hell-bent on destroying a town. That town being me.

“I would have dragged you out by the ear if you had tried, just like my mom used to do to me. And God help me, if you’d taken a fucking cab—”

“What’s wrong with a cab?”

I would swear on my life this sweet, passive man snarled at me, so I sat back in the seat. “Don’t ask me stupid questions right now, Diana. I’m not in the mood for it.”

I blinked at him, suddenly feeling overwhelmed. “Why are you being so mean to me?”

He blinked. “You think I’m being mean to you?”

“Yes! I had too much to drink. I didn’t do anything wrong. That wasn’t my first time going out, you know. I wasn’t going to do anything wrong, but you’re here, yelling at me—”

The hand he had closest to the window went up to scrub at his short hair. “Because you worried me! You think I want something to happen to you? I can’t read your mind. I don’t know what the hell you’re planning on doing,” he explained, at least it seemed like he was trying to explain, but there was still so much anger in his voice, it didn’t totally seem that way.

For the second time in such a short amount of time, I said something else stupid that I didn’t realize until hours later. “Look, I appreciate you looking out for me, but I’m a grown woman. I can take care of myself.”

“Maybe you can take care of yourself, but have you thought for one single fucking second that maybe somebody else might want to take care of you too?” he growled.

And in that split second, every thought, every emotion, left my body. Just poof. Disappeared.

“You… what?” Was I drunk enough to not understand what was coming out of his mouth? It wouldn’t be the first time, but I didn’t think I was on that level yet.

He reared back, his expression all “are you fucking kidding me?” “Being your friend has been the hardest fucking thing I’ve ever had to do.”

Wait. “It has?” I asked, torn between his comment a moment before and the one that had just come out of his mouth. I’d thought he was trying to say he wanted to take care of me, but now…

“You are the most ridiculous fucking woman I have ever met in my entire life, Diana. Half the time I want to shake you and the other half of the time….” He trailed off, glaring right into my eyes.

In the second that followed that fraction of time, that muscular arm that had slashed across my chest to keep me in place moved. His hand, that long-fingered, callused hand, slid behind my neck, and Dallas kissed me. His lips touched mine, gentle, barely a brush, a whisper of a warm mouth and breath over my own.

And then he went for it. There was no hesitation, no warning peck. That fuller upper lip went over the top of mine, those blunt, white teeth caught my bottom one… and then he was kissing me.

Over and over again. Softer, then softly, then just soft.

Then I didn’t hesitate. I opened my mouth and caught his top lip the instant my brain caught up with what was happening. His mouth slanted over mine, his tongue sliding into the slight opening I’d given him. One tongue against the other, one hand covering the back of my neck while the other clutched at my hip. My hands? They might have been on his ribs, or they might have been on his thighs, I had no idea. All I could think about was Dallas. Dallas, Dallas, Dallas. How much I wanted this. How much I wanted this more than I’d ever wanted just about anything.

My hands kneaded. His hands kneaded.

His lips drifted away from mine, skirting my jaw, sucking an earlobe briefly before he trailed his damp, warm mouth down my neck like he was hungry, like the world was going to end if he didn’t kiss me everywhere with everything in him. His tongue grazed the skin on my throat, his lips skimming before his teeth made contact. And God help me, all I could do was move closer to him, almost climbing on to his lap. I started leaning forward when it hit me.

What the fuck was I doing? He was married. Separated. Same shit.

“Oh my God,” I hissed, rearing back so fast, he was still where I’d left him when his hooded eyes opened. I pointed at him, the blood I usually had in my head going down. “You’re married.”

Dallas blinked slowly. His Adam’s apple bobbed and the hand he had on my thigh stayed exactly where it was as he focused those amazing eyes on me, looking only slightly dazed. “Diana,” he said my name like he’d never said it before as his thumb slipped over my knee. “My divorce was finalized.”