Page 52 of Somewhere You Belong

“Hey, Dallas. Willow’s drink is almost empty. Why don’t you give her a refill?” Astrid suggests as she lifts up her tray and waltzes off, leaving the two of us alone.

And despite my desire to ebb my growing attraction toward him by staying away, the second he stands directly in front of me, my entire body comes alive.

Guess five days with no contact wasn’t long enough.

“You ready for a refill?” Dallas asks as he clears a few empty glasses from the bar.

“Uh, sure. Thanks.”

“No problem. You must have been busy this week. Haven’t seen you out and about much…”

Did he notice I was avoiding going out in public so we wouldn’t run into each other?

Or more importantly, was helooking for me?

“Oh, yeah. I’ve been busy.”

Leaning over the bar, his face comes within inches of mine. “Busy avoiding me?”

“No,” I lie.

The lift of his lips tells me he knows that. But then his face falls serious again, and he reaches out to tuck a strand of my hair behind my ear.

God. Why is he touching me and why don’t I want him to stop?

“You don’t have to hide from me, Goose.”

“I—I wasn’t.”

“I’m not so sure about that. In fact, I feel like you hide an awful lot from the whole world.”

My stomach twists in knots. I feel like he can see right through me, see the scars I keep hidden on the inside, see the pain that is resting right underneath the surface—pain that was buried deep until I traveled to this little town and started thinking about all the “what ifs.”

“I told you. I was busy,” I manage to croak out.

“Busy doing what?”

“Working.”

“And…” he draws out, waiting for me to continue.

“Uh, and working, Dallas.”

He eyes me skeptically as he stands again. “You’re telling me that all you did this week was work?”

The way the words leave his lips makes me feel as if I have some infectious disease or something. The truth of the matter is that I was actually bored out of my mind this week. I only had three calls with Katrina, and my email inbox is going through the longest dry spell it’s ever had. It might catch up to the dry spell my vagina has been experiencing as well. In fact, I kept refreshing it, making sure I hadn’t missed something.

And I hadn’t. Katrina and my team are proving to be the well-oiled machine I know they are which means I was bored this week. There, I said it.

And if it weren’t for the painting, I might have actually gone a teensy bit insane.

“What do you do for fun then, Goose?”

Glaring at him from his use of the nickname he coined for me, I reply, “Uh, I work, Dallas.”

“Your front yard is the ocean. You’re in a town that has plenty to explore. Did you at least make it down to the boardwalk?” he asks.

“Uh, no.”

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