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.”