“He’s with one of your relatives right now. They were asking him about Miss Pearl,” I explained.
I’d gone over to Dallas’s house two days before to give the old woman a haircut. She’d acted like normal, didn’t call me Miss Cruz once, and then all of a sudden, in the middle of trimming her hair, she’d announced, “I’ve thought about it, and I wouldn’t mind some tan great-grandchildren someday.”
What the hell did I respond with? “Okay?”
Tan grandchildren. Oh my God.
My white-haired neighbor turned in her chair just enough to see me with one of those rheumy eyes and then said, “He looks out the window to check on you every night. I tell him to call you and quit being a stalker, but he thinks I’m going to listen in on his conversations.” She huffed. “I have better things to do with my time.”
All I’d managed to do after that was just nod. Obviously, Miss Pearl was doing just fine after losing a lot of her things in the fire.
“I still give him two minutes.” Trip raised his eyebrows at me as he turned us, bringing my attention back to the present. “So you two finally, huh?”
“Finally?”
“Yeah, finally. It’s only been, what? Three months?”
“No.” I narrowed my eyes. “Really?”
“You sweet, sweet, blind child.” He chuckled. “I told him he was an idiot for waiting until his shit had been settled, but he ‘wanted to do it right’—”
“Go find your own girl to dance with,” came a voice from behind me.
I’d bet my life that Trip’s easy acceptance was a sign of how much he cared for his cousin and that was why he backed away so quickly. He still winked at me before telling the man behind me, “Just warmin’ yours up for you, brother.”
“I bet you were,” Dallas said. He came around me and slipped so fluidly in front of me, placing my hands where they needed to go, I didn’t react until his chest was an inch or two away from mine. Those brown-green-gold eyes hovered above my own. I didn’t even watch in what direction Trip had gone I was so sucked in to the man in front of me. “There’s my one and only.”
I blushed and pinched my lips together. How was it that I had no idea how to act around him anymore? It was dumb. “Your one and only,” I muttered. “There’re lots of pretty girls here to dance with too,” I said like a complete idiot, even though my stomach started hurting immediately afterward.
His eyebrow arched upward as his hand curled over my shoulder, touchy, touchy, touchy. “Are there?”
“Yeah.”
“That’s nice for everybody else,” he said, drawing me toward him.
The sigh that came out of me was long and probably showed how confused I felt.
“What’s that sigh for? They don’t do me any good.” That broad palm of his went to the small of my spine, the other led our hands to the corner of his chest and shoulder, settling there as he dipped his face closer to mine. His eyes were steady and even, staring right into my own. “I already have the one I want right here,” he said.
“Dallas,” I groaned, ducking my head. What was I doing?
“What?”
Our talk at the salon a couple of days ago hadn’t eased my worries much. Talk was talk. Anyone could say they were Batman, but not everyone could be Batman. “There’re a million other women in the world who would love to be with you—”
“You want me to go find them?” he asked with way too much humor in his voice.
I glanced up at him. “No, but I can’t do casual. I don’t think you get that.”
His mouth went to my ear. “What gave you the idea that’s what this would be? The last thing I feel for you is casual, Diana.”
I groaned, feeling a warm sensation fill my belly. “Look, I just… I’ve really been trying hard to be an adult, and an adult would want someone like you to be happy. I care about you so much, and I’m a mess, you know that.”
“I know, baby.” He pulled me in closer to him with the hand on my spine. “It’s one of my favorite things about you.”
Heaven help me. Heaven help me.
I groaned again, trying to put my thoughts together. “You have a thing for single parents, huh?”
The hand on my back lowered, going over the curve before sweeping back up, teasing. “I got a soft spot for single parents. It’s tough. But I got this thing—you might know what it is, it’s red and it’s in the center of your chest—and that has more than a soft spot for hot aunts who raise their nephews. You can’t even call it a spot, really.”
I choked and felt his chin rest on the top of my head. “How big is this… spot?”
“It’s big enough so where I’d do anything for an aunt like that,” he told me.
“Anything?”
“Anything,” he confirmed.
I gulped and let myself swallow up the feel of his arms and hands around and on me. “Huh.”
“You can’t go around giving something that big and important to just anybody.”
I glanced at him, watching his face. “You’re going to give it?”
Dallas only cuddled me closer to his chest so that I couldn’t look at his face. “I gave it to you a long time ago, Diana. In little pieces and then bigger pieces, and the next thing I knew, I didn’t have anything left in me, so I hope it’s enough.”
I drew back and glanced up at him, and I swallowed. “I hope you know what you’re doing.”
“I do, baby. Trust me. I know exactly what I’m doing. You three feel like my family. It isn’t every day you look at your friend and two kids and know this is where you were supposed to be. Do you believe me?”
I didn’t even have to think about the answer. “Yeah, I do.” I shook my head at myself, trying to remind my brain that we trusted this person. That everything would be all right. “You’re never getting your big red thing back if I have anything to say about it. I want you to think about that. I want you to know what the hell you’re signing yourself up for, because nice Catholic girls who only go to church twice a year don’t believe in divorce.” I blinked. “You know, when the time comes.”
He smiled at me and I smiled back. Before I could take my next breath, Dallas dipped his head and pressed his mouth, closed and sweet, to mine. He pulled back and then pressed it again.
“God, you guys are gross,” came a voice I’d be able to distinguish in a crowd. It was Josh. “When can we go home?”
*