He put his plate down on the coffee table and then put cheese and bread on one for me. It was excellent, especially with the apple chutney.
As I sat and listened to the conversation, I noted how Jackie was watching Thad and Dallas as they talked. Her expression was so hopeful, and the light that infused her face was beautiful. I had to wonder what Dallas and Thad’s conversations normally looked like.
I was talking to a couple who wanted to know what I planned to do while I was in town—they really wanted to take Dallas and me golfing—when Dallas put his hand on my leg and did what was fast becoming his habit, gripping the inside of my upper thigh.
“So, Dallas,” Gina, Callum’s wife, began, leaning forward in her chair. “Do you think I could talk you into coming to visit my fourth-grade class for career day? I would totally win if you showed up.”
He grinned at her. “Win? Really, Gina?”
She put her hand over her heart. “They’re just so—ugh.”
“And by ugh, she means the other teachers,” Callum chimed in, grinning. “It’s a bit cliquish at that school.”
“I see,” he told her, and his smile made those dimples of his pop. “I’ll wear a suit, and the badge on a lanyard, and I might even shave.”
“I don’t care if you come after an all-night stakeout; you’re always gorgeous.”
“Sitting right here,” Callum groused at her as she tipped her head and smiled at Dallas.
“You should let us take you and Croy out to dinner to this new Italian place we found off the Strip,” Callum suggested. “They have these amazing meatballs.”
“I would love that,” Dallas told him, and I watched his stepbrother nod happily.
When we all got up for dinner, everyone helping to carry the dishes back into the kitchen, Law tapped my shoulder and asked if he could speak to me a moment. I followed him to the bar, and once we were there, he rounded on me.
“You’re not just some random guy, are you? He’s serious about you?”
I squinted at him. “I’m sorry?”
“No, wait,” he backpedaled, stopping himself, shaking his head. “I didn’t—please, let me start over.”
I crossed my arms, waiting.
He exhaled sharply. “A year ago, Dallas met Evan at some frou-frou wildlife fundraiser. Dallas was there because—you don’t care why he was there, and it doesn’t matter, but the point is, they met and hit it off, and they were together. They were dating exclusively, until Dallas brought him here for dinner, and he and I met.”
Dallas’s reticence in coming to his mother’s house was starting to take shape. I didn’t really understand, because clearly everyone was crazy about him, but this, now…it was starting to make some sense.
“And you know how, when you meet someone, and everything works almost seamlessly, so it’s hard to tell whether you’d be walking away from what could be your life, or what might be nothing more than an awkward Sunday dinner?”
I waited.
“It was terrible of me…”
I knew where this was going, and yes, it was. “You pursued a relationship with Evan behind Dallas’s back?”
Heavy sigh. “Yes.”
“Why?” I asked automatically, even though it was none of my business.
He cleared his throat, taking hold of my bicep. “Evan really liked being with Dallas, and he wasn’t ready to let that physical side of things go.”
That made sense. My guess was that anyone who’d ever been in bed with the man had more than enjoyed the experience. He was a very giving lover, though I had to wonder how that had been for Dallas, as Evan didn’t strike me as a top, and Dallas had not once suggested that he wanted to be inside of me. By the same token, looking at someone and assuming what they liked in bed was always a mistake. I would need to talk to Dallas as soon as we were alone to make sure I wasn’t depriving him of something he wanted. I preferred to top. I liked the control and the lack of vulnerability. But if this was going to work, we had to be open and honest and equal in all things.
But there had to be a caveat here. Dallas struck me as the kind of man who, if you said you were interested in someone else, would walk away. The answer was easy to discern.
“So,” Lawrence continued, squeezing my bicep. “It started off poorly, and then when Evan decided that he wanted to build a life with me, and not be just the guy Dallas saw when he wasn’t working––that’s when Evan broke up with him.”
And I got that. Dallas worked long, hard hours, and coming home to someone at the end of the day was one of the best parts of a relationship. That was one of the things I was most worried about, not being there to hold him when he came home from a day filled with blood and pain. Being in a relationship with Dallas Bauer was going to be fraught with landmines. The travel back and forth, alone, would be daunting. But could I give up the chance that he and I could be the real thing just because it was going to be hard? I could not. More importantly, I would not. I had never been hit by a lightning bolt in my life, I suspected they did not come around often, and I was not prepared to walk away from a challenge, or from Dallas. Perhaps Lawrence had felt the same way about Evan.