The fact was while nothing had happened to me, something could have. And then what?
Then again… I would have jumped into a burning building for Mac. I understood where Miss Pearl had gotten the balls to ask for a hero.
Regardless, that guilt buried itself deep into the back of my brain, and I sensed my face going warm. Josh had already given me enough shit for only having been awake a few minutes. I’d never handled guilt well. “I’m fine. Mildred is fine. Your grandma is fine. If I could do it all over again—” well, I wasn’t positive I would have run in for Mildred again. “It doesn’t matter. Everything worked out all right. Miss Pearl is fine. I’m fine. Everything is okay.”
My words did nothing for the anger bubbling through his skin, eyes, and mouth. Dallas shook his head and his hands went up to his face in that same exact way they had the night before when he’d asked for my toolbox. Was he red? “If something had happened….” He trailed off, the sound in his throat anguished.
I reached toward his forearm. “You said your nana’s fine. You can’t think about what might have happened—”
“It’s not Nana I’m thinking about, Diana!” he exploded, his entire body leaning toward me. “You don’t have to save the entire fucking world!”
The breath left my lungs in a sharp inhale and I blinked up at the man radiating so much fucking fury, I didn’t know what to say or how to react.
“If something had happened to you—”
I choked. Me? He’d been worried about me too?
The hand connected to the forearm I’d been touching came up to my eye level. His fingers went to my chin, cupping it as he looked directly into my eyes. “If something happened to you, I wouldn’t be okay. I would never be okay,” he practically hissed.
Knowing I was an idiot asking for the pain of a lifetime, I still let myself lean forward into his touch, but I couldn’t look him in the eye. Instead, I focused on his nose even as I felt his stare centered on my eyelids. “The good thing is, you’re going to be okay because I’m fine.”
“Fine?” His snort had me glancing up at him. He raised a brown eyebrow in a completely smart-ass response that seemed so at odds with the calm, mature man I had started getting to know. “Lemme see your hand.”
Shit.
I kind of maneuvered it partially behind my butt, as if he hadn’t already caught a glimpse of the wrapping around it. “It’ll heal,” I argued.
He was getting pissed off all over again. I could sense it coming off his body. “Did it happen getting the cat?”
Him and the fucking cat. Jesus. “Why do you hate the cat so much? And no, Dr. Evil, it didn’t happen then.” During Mildred’s rescue, I had almost died from smoke inhalation, or at least that was what it had felt like in the moment. “It happened when I tried opening the door to her house. The knob was hot.” Okay that was the understatement of the month. I had a second degree burn from it, and I didn’t want to even begin to piece together what I was going to do with a burned hand and my job. How long would it take to heal? How long would I have to take off from work? Could I hold shears in my hand once it got a little better?
I had no idea, and that made me panic a little.
Okay, more than a little.
I didn’t have some huge savings account; I’d barely started getting my feet back under me after taking time off to visit Vanessa, and asking my family or Van for money seemed like a horrible fucking idea. I could probably get by without working for a couple of weeks, but that was it—and that was with me counting every penny and not wasting a single cent. There was money in the account I had set aside for the boys from Rodrigo’s life insurance policy, but I would never, ever touch it. It was the boys’.
His eyelids hung low over those hazel eyes, and I caught a flash of his teeth as they bit down on the inside of his cheek for a moment. I knew when he didn’t comment on me calling him Dr. Evil that he was genuinely really angry. He looked like he was mulling my words over… or talking himself out of yelling at me. From the murderous expression on his face, it could have been both. Then he swallowed hard. “It was stupid. Really goddamn stupid, and I don’t think you seem to realize that—”
“I do,” I argued.
He shot me this disbelieving look. “You have two boys, Diana—”
Guilt pricked at my chest, and I swallowed at the same time my eyes got teary. “I know, Dallas. I know. Josh already—” My voice broke and I dropped my gaze to the bottom of the wrinkled T-shirt he had on. It was a different one than he’d worn to the movies the night before. “He was so mad at me. I feel terrible I did that to him.”
The sigh that came out of him wasn’t even a slight warning for the hands that came to my shoulders and gave them a squeeze. It didn’t prepare me for the arms that went around them afterward, or the chest that came in contact with my forehead. He’d hugged me the night before, hadn’t he? I hadn’t imagined it? His voice wasn’t any less rough or mean as he said, “You scared the hell out of all of us.”
I had?
“I thought you were mad at me last night when you left,” I told him.
His sigh was so deep, it was choppy on the way out. The arms he had around me tightened, but the rest of his body relaxed. “I wasn’t mad at you. I swear. It was other things.” He gulped, and I’d swear one of his hands cupped the back of my head. “Look, I have to leave tomorrow for a couple of days.”
Why was he telling me this? “Is everything okay?”
“It will be. I have to go. I can’t reschedule it,” he explained, his breath so deep it made my head move. “Diana—”
A breeze hit the back of my legs as the back door opened and something poked me in the leg while I stood in Dallas’s arms. “Can you make me a sandwich?” Louie’s voice came from behind. “Please?”
I didn’t even freeze at getting caught. “Sure, give me a sec,” I answered him quickly.
Lou said nothing; he just stood there, not moving. I could sense him.
I sighed, my mouth inches from Dallas’s sternum. “Goo, quit being nosey and give me a second, please.”
There was a hum and then, “Can I have a hug too?”
Dallas’s arms flexed and I swore I heard him laugh lightly before one of them dropped from around me as he took a step back. “Have at her, buddy.”
It was then I finally glanced down at Louie to find he’d moved to stand beside my hip. The kid blinked and edged closer between us. “No, you too,” he said so effortlessly it made me want to cry. “Sandwich.”
Just like that, Dallas crouched and scooped Louie up. One of those little arms went around my neck, and I would bet my life the other was around Dallas’s. The only other thing I knew for sure was that an arm too brawny to belong to a five-year-old wrapped low around my back. The side of my head went to a shoulder and one half of my chest was crushed against a much harder one.
“This is nice,” Louie muttered somewhere close to my ear.
I couldn’t help it. I laughed, and what I was sure was the hand connected to the arm around my back, stretched wide and covered part of my belly, the tips of long fingers touching my belly button. I sucked in a breath.
“Can we do this more?” Lou continued on.
“We will,” the voice above my head agreed.
What was I going to do? Say “no thank you”? I could do this more often. I could do this every day.
But Dallas was married, and we were just friends. I couldn’t forget that.
What I couldn’t forget either was that he wasn’t going to be married forever.
And that didn’t necessarily mean anything good for me.
Chapter Twenty
The thing about being neighbors with your nephew’s coach and your boss being related to said neighbor/coach was that if something happened to you, everyone they knew was going to find out your business.
And that was exactly what happened to me.
In those couple of days after the fire, Trip called and came by the house. A few of Jo
sh’s friends from baseball found out, and their moms dropped off food. I got text messages from other parents on the team who had never given me more than a wave, letting me know that if I needed anything to give them a ring. Doing a good deed didn’t go unnoticed. Maybe I wouldn’t have money to pay the cable bill, but I’d have people willing to watch the boys or mow the yard. It was an outpouring of love I wasn’t familiar with that came at us—this time from people who were practically strangers.
Which was fine, because when I’d called my parents to let them know about how I’d burned myself—because I knew how much worse it would be if they found out another way—my mom had passed off the phone to my dad. I was used to her calling me an idiot, but the silent treatment was worse. The last person who needed to bottle things up was that woman.
I spent those first couple of days going to the salon to reschedule my appointments and talk to Ginny about what she could do while I was out for a while. A while. Best-case scenario seemed to be three weeks. Come hell or high water, I was going to be back at work in three weeks. I couldn’t afford to take off a week, but I absolutely couldn’t take off more than three.
When I wasn’t at the salon or moping around at home, holding my burned hand up high and cussing at it, I went to visit Miss Pearl at the hospital, who was being held there because of all the smoke she’d inhaled and she’d gotten a few burns too.
“How are you doing, Miss Pearl?” I asked the elderly woman after I’d set the vase of flowers I’d bought her at the grocery store on the table in front of her bed.
In a faded mint-green hospital gown, and with her hair limp and flat against her scalp, she’d blinked those milky blue eyes at me and sighed. “Half my house burned down, but I’m alive.”
Well, that wasn’t the positive statement I’d been expecting to get.
But she’d kept going. “You saved my life, Diana, and I never told you thank you—”
“You don’t have to thank me.”
She rolled her eyes. “I do. I’m sorry for messing up your name. You’re a good girl. Dal says I’m bored and like to push people ‘cause of it. I don’t mean any harm.”
Damn it. Sitting down in the chair beside her bed, I reached up and placed my hand over her cool one. “I know you don’t. It’s okay. I’m pushy too.”
That had the old woman smirking. “I heard.”
Before I could ask who she’d heard that from, she continued on. “Dal left, but he’ll be back by Wednesday, he said. That’s when they’re letting me out of this joint.”
He’d already warned me of that on Saturday when he’d woken up at my house and then went ahead to spend half the day with the boys and me, hanging around before he took off to visit Miss Pearl at the hospital.
But he hadn’t told me where he was going, and so I kind of snuck in, “Is he okay?”
You’d figure I would know you can’t bullshit a bullshitter, and Miss Pearl had a lot more experience bullshitting than I did. By the smile she gave me, she knew I was fishing, and the old woman said, “Oh, he’s fine. Just great.”
And that was all she’d given me. Damn it.
So a couple of days later, when I was lying on the couch with a glass of milk on the table and a smores Pop-Tart in one hand, watching television and wondering how the hell I was going to survive two more weeks without working, I was startled by a lawn mower roaring to life.
It took a couple of seconds for me to realize that the loud sound was coming from close by. Really close by. Was someone at my house?
Swinging my legs over the edge of the couch, I peeked over the back of it to look through the window at the side of the house. I saw nothing. I checked my phone as I stood up to make sure my dad hadn’t called and said he was coming over, but there were no missed calls.
Pulling up one single blind on the window, looking out toward the front lawn, I paused, let it drop, and then raised it again. At the same time I was doing this, goose bumps broke out along my spine.
Because on my lawn wasn’t a stranger, especially since he’d let me just about bawl my eyes out in front of him more than once. It also wasn’t just Dallas cutting my lawn like it was no big deal.
It was Dallas on my lawn with his shirt off, pushing his lawn mower.
It was Dallas on my lawn with his shirt off.
More goose bumps rose all over my body. He wasn’t sweating yet, but even that wouldn’t have made him more attractive than he looked in that moment. He didn’t need anything to look more attractive than he did right then and there. A thong or nudity was absolutely not necessary.
Because my eyes saw everything they needed to see; what they had last seen months ago. Everything they would ever need to see. They took in the faint V-shape of muscle right where the elastic band to his sweat pants rested. They took in those cube-shaped, ridged muscles above his belly button that extended into neatly stacked rectangles. Then there were those shoulders that were just perfect. And those arms and forearms.
I loved forearms. Loved them. Especially his. I could even see the veins lining his from my window.
Most of all though, I took in every single inch of tattooed skin covering him. This was my payment for burning the shit out of my palm from the looks of it.
The brown ink I’d seen by his elbow was part of a wing that wrapped around his entire biceps, stretching out onto his chest. Right between his pectorals was the head and beak of an eagle. Another wing seemed to sweep around his opposite arm, almost a perfect mirror of the first one I’d seen.
God help me. The view was even better the second time around.
Was I going to go out there specifically to catch an up-close look of the details of the eagle’s wings? No way in hell.
But was I going to go out there to offer him a glass of water despite the fact he could easily walk across the street to get a drink from his own house? I damn well was.
For one brief moment, I thought about putting on something other than pajamas, but… what was the point? It would be obvious if I did, and despite him being a wonderful friend, person, and neighbor, he was married. Getting a divorce. Same thing.
And he’d disappeared for days somewhere.
There was no harm in using my eyeballs on him. Repeatedly. I just wouldn’t look at his butt or junk. That was crossing the line. Anything from the waist above was fair game, I reasoned.
Leaving my hair loose around my shoulders, I opened the door and stepped out just as he finished a pass down the lawn away from me, turning the mower at the last minute. I must have caught his attention immediately because he looked up from his focus on the grass to gaze at me, and I waved, smiling too wide at someone who wasn’t mine and couldn’t be.
When he didn’t shut off the machine, I made a drinking gesture toward my mouth and he shook his head.
Okay. What was I supposed to do now?
I watched him for a moment, noticing there was something different about him, but I couldn’t figure out what. His lawn mower was bagged, but he had to empty it out. By the time I heard the motor putter to a stop, I had already made it out to the shed to grab a couple of the big, black bags we used for the leaves and opened the gate that led to the front. Dallas was busy taking the bag off the back of the machine when I came up to him.
“What are you doing here?” I asked, telling my eyeballs they better not backstab me right then and there by straying somewhere they had no business going.
“Morning,” he said in that low voice. “Did I wake you?”
“No.” I used my chin to point toward the bag in my hands. “I can hold it with one hand, can you pour and hold the other side of the bag, too?” He nodded and did it, setting the attachment back to the mower while I shook the clippings so they settled at the bottom. “So, can I ask what exactly you’re doing?”
“It’s called mowing a lawn,” he informed me, his attention still centered on the red-painted machine. “I’ve seen you do it before.”
And people thought of me as a smart-ass. “I’m being
serious. What are you doing, Professor X? I was planning on laying a guilt trip on the boys so they would do it on their own.”
He eyed me with those golden-brown irises before focusing back on the trash bag in front of him. “I have hair, and your lawn needed mowing. Your hand is fucked. I just got back and don’t have any work scheduled for today.”
“You didn’t have to do anything—”
He stood up to his full height and stared me down. “Accept the help, Diana.”
I blew out a breath and kept watching him, still trying to see why he looked different.
He crossed his arms over his chest, and it took every single ounce of strength I had to not glance at the eagle head. “Is it everyone or just from me?”
Pinching my lips together, I brought my hand to my chest and watched as he glanced at it. I’d swear a tendon in his neck popped. But I told him the truth. “You, mostly. I don’t want to take advantage of you. I’m not shy about asking for things.”
“I didn’t think you knew how to be shy.” He raised an eyebrow. “You’re not taking advantage of me. We talked about this already.”
“Fine, but I don’t want to make you feel weird either.”
His reply was low and steady. “I’ve seen you in your underwear and combed nits out of your hair, baby. I think we’re past that.”
I focused on one thing and one thing only.
Baby?
Me?
I was still thinking about his word choice when he asked, “How’s your hand?”
What hand? There was something wrong with my hand?
“Your burned hand,” he said, raising both his eyebrows, a slight smile playing at his lips.
Jesus Christ. I’d lost it. I swallowed. “Same old. It hurts. I’m taking some pain medication when it gets really bad, but not a lot. I have to rubber band a bag around my hand to shower. I cut myself shaving. I haven’t shampooed my hair in five days. It takes me longer to do everything with this thing, but I’ll live.” Poor and in pain, but it could be worse. “Can I help you with anything?”
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