Page 79 of Simon Says

Finally, he felt like he might get some real insight into the elusive Dakota Dream.

“When I was seventeen, I ran away from home.” Her fingers curled into his shirt. “Talk about stupid. I don’t know what I was thinking.”

“You were seventeen, just a kid. And kids do things they later regret.”

“I was a thoughtless, spoiled brat.”

He stroked down her back to her hip, and back up again. “I find that hard to believe.” She said nothing. “Was there a reason you ran away?”

“Yeah.” She squirmed around and got comfortable on him. “To marry Marvin Dream and live a fairy-tale life.”

Marvin Dream. “So that’s how you got the name?”

“The name and a whole lot more.” She rubbed her cheek against him. “My mom didn’t like Marvin at all. When she found out that we’d been hanging around together, she refused to let me see him. He was so much older than me, or at least, at the time, it seemed that way.”

Simon stared up at his kitchen ceiling. When he’d set out to have Dakota, he hadn’t imagined anything like this. His ballsy, outspoken Dakota giving confessions on the kitchen floor. It boggled his mind. “How much older?”

“Five years.”

So when she was seventeen, he was twenty-two. “A big gap at that age. He was a man, and as you said, you were a kid.”

Dakota shifted, moving to sit up beside him. She kept one hand on his abdomen, and with the other she tucked her hair behind her ear. “I can do this better if I’m looking at you.”

She could look all she wanted, as long as she kept talking. “Do you want to stay here, or go to the living room?”

Looking around at his floor, the toppled chair, her mouth slipped into a sheepish smile. “I guess a couch would be more conventional, huh?”

Stretched out on the tile, at his leisure, Simon reached out to touch a long lock of her hair. “Doesn’t matter to me, honey. Wherever you’re most comfortable.”

“You are the oddest man.” She pushed to her feet and offered him a hand up.

She was less than half his size. She’d been through an attack. She was now black and blue, and swollen. She had something horrible in her past.

And she wanted to help him off the floor.

One novelty after another, Simon thought, and took her hand.

Dakota had strength, both physical and emotional. Keeping hold of his hand, limping only a little, she led him back to his living room and then plopped down on the couch. She’d left the ice pack in the kitchen, so she rubbed absently on her thigh.

Simon eased down close beside her.

“Barber says I should get counseling, but I don’t have time for that mumbo jumbo.”

So Barber already knew all about it. Simon stewed over that.

“There’s no point anyway.” She met his probing gaze. “Since I don’t date, it usually isn’t an issue.”

“Is this a date?”

She grinned. “More like me chasing you down at a party I wasn’t invited to.”

“I’m glad you showed up.” Simon meant it. “I’m damn sorry you got hurt, but seeing you in that dress and heels was…interesting.”

“Interesting, huh?”

And enlightening and provoking, but he saw no reason to share all that. “I also enjoyed hearing you sing. You’re good.”

Accepting the compliment without modesty, she said, “Thanks.”

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