Page 17 of So Wrong It Must Be Right

She slid her purse onto her shoulder and headed to the back. She’d go home and work all night if she had to, studying Carter Trask’s life untilsomethinggave. She’d been going too easy on herself the past few days, indulging in too many fantasies.

That was over. Time to kick her own butt. She walked through the bustling back hallway next to the kitchen and exited through the back entrance. The employee parking lot was packed for the Friday night crowd, and Dinah didn’t think anything of the man standing next to her car. A lot of times employees smoked out here even though they weren’t supposed to, and she assumed it was just any other waiter on his break.

Until she got close enough for the lights of the parking lot to highlight the dark beard around his mouth. It was crazy that her heart did a little jitter and her stomach a little flip. Not dread or fear or anything other than excitement.

“You know we have cameras if you’re planning on kidnapping me, then getting rid of me,” she offered as dryly as her all-too-excited nerves would allow.

“That should have been the plan, come to think of it,” Carter said in that dark, gravelly voice of his that surpassed any fictional voice she’d ever made up for him. “But thanks for the warning about cameras. I’ll keep it in mind should my intentions turn nefarious.”

She shouldn’t want to smile. It wasn’t funny, but more importantly, he was the enemy. She couldn’t think about him as C anymore. He had to be Carter Trask, the man she had to break.

But there was a certain bleakness to his expression tonight that reminded her a little too much of what she’d seen in Kayla’s eyes. Dinah had to swallow against the need to ask if everything was all right. Even if it wasn’t, even if he was having his own personal crisis, that had nothing to do with her.

“I have written you about ten emails.” He said it in a whoosh, as though he hadn’t meant to confess that.

Dinah went to pull her phone out of her purse, but he shook his head. “I deleted them all before I sent them.”

“Oh.”

“The other night . . .”

“We agreed the other night didn’t exist.” She had to force her legs forward so she could grab her driver-side handle, but Carter stepped in the way, blocking her from her car.

Yes, she had slept with this man, and she had written one million messages to him. But the bottom line was she didn’t know him, and there should be some sense of fear about the way he was blocking her from her vehicle. Except he wasn’t touching her in any way. He wasn’t threatening her. He was just standing in front of her. Looking a little too intensely lost.

“The other night when you came to my place, you were having a crisis, right?” he persisted.

“I guess you could call it a crisis.” Which she shouldn’t have said. She should have told him no and gotten in her car, but she stood there, desperately forcing herself not to reach out and touch him.

“My grandmother died,” he said in another rush. “I knew it was coming. She’s been in the nursing home for a while. I’ve spent three days trying to wrap my brain around her not being here anymore. And I can’t. I can’t get out of my head. I am in crisis, and all I wanted to do was email you. Which is sick and pathetic, I get that. Trust me.”

Her chest hurt. It ached. She was surprised she had tears for a man she barely knew and for his grandmother whom she’d never met. She should turn around and disappear back into the restaurant. She should tell him that it didn’t matter what crisis he was going through, they couldn’t come back to C and D.

But she could remember the words he’d written about his grandmother’s garden, how she’d taught him to make a special sauce he’d never made for anyone, but wanted to make for her.

They were there, unbidden, in her head, in her heart, and she wanted to give him what he’d given her last week. She shouldn’t, but shedid.So she reached out and touched her fingertips to his chest. “When you lose someone you love, I think sad and pathetic is what you get to be.”

His desolate gaze met hers, and she could feel a shudder move through him. So she slid her hand up to his shoulder, rubbing up and down in what she hoped was some sort of comforting gesture.

She promised herself she wouldn’t do this again, but weren’t these extenuating circumstances? She would just be a comfort to him while he grieved for his grandmother. That didn’t mean she wasn’t still planning on getting his land, or that she’d given up on convincing him he was wrong. It just meant that, for a few hours, one more time, she got to be D instead of Dinah.

She could be the kind of woman a man would go to when he needed comfort. The kind of woman a man could lean on. For just once in her life, she could be the soft woman inside of her that she was always afraid to let lead.

It wasn’t so wrong. It wasn’t so bad. It was just a few hours of make-believe and pretend. That was all.

“I can follow you home.”

“As D?”

It was her last chance to come to her senses. Her last chance to remember everything she’d just decided inside of that restaurant.

But something about this man eradicated all that sense and all that determination. It crumbled the foundation of her drive and reminded her she was someone outside of Gallagher’s, outside of her goals. All of those things were so exhausting, so tiring.

It was just too much to resist that for a few hours she wouldn’t have to worry or think too hard. She wouldn’t have to be perfect or have all the answers or save anyone.

She could just be her, and he could just be him. That fantasy between them could give them what they both needed.

“D. Just D,” she returned, her voice soft, everything inside of her soft and wanting, so the opposite ofDinah.

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