Page 71 of Dahlia Made A List

ThewordsontheKindle blurred and disappeared. I blinked to bring them back into focus. To stay on task long enough to wrangle the letters into words and read along with Ms. Beck as she pointed out her favorite bits of the novel we’d read this week. With focus and attention and practice, I could bring the words to heel.

Something Wyatt couldn’t do.

He thought I’d pity him. I’d been thinking for weeks and weeks that I wasn’t good enough for him. The irony almost made me smile. He’d expected pity. For me to dismiss him. That’d been clear yesterday. Or he thought I’d be angry. Angry enough to push him away.

I couldn’t fathom his parents' reactions, being honest, but understood he’d come to expect such negativity because of his family.

What had Waylon called him at the drag strip?A parasite. Using his family connections to get by. But I’d seen none of that. If anything, he avoided interaction with his relatives. Ms. Minerva the blatant exception, of course. And the cousin Millsy he’d mentioned with a grin more than once.

He’d made a success of himself, he’d grown into a respectable, reliable man with a gorgeous chest and lips I wanted to suck on about every other minute. What more did his family want, a statue in the middle of the town square?

They’d certainly put a fear in him, bone deep and painful. Would he really let that fear end any kind of future we could have together? I despised that he’d put us in this position without ever giving me a say in the matter. That he had surprised me, too. He’d never stolen my agency before. But it seemed he was blind in this one particular area.

“Earth to Dahlia.” Ms. Minerva grinned from her spot in the leather chair.

Heat filled my cheeks. Busted.

“What are you thinking about so hard?”

I pushed a grin to my stiff lips. “The book, of course.”

“I need a refill,” Ang announced, shoving up from her spot on the floor and taking off for the kitchen. Her departure signaled a break and several folks trailed after her.

“I had an unusual conversation with my grandson last night,” Minerva said with a meaningful look.

The temptation to purposely misunderstand and ask about Waylon turned my grin from forced to authentic.

With her wicked scary mind reading skills, Minerva narrowed her pale blues at me. “My grandson, Wyatt, called me and asked what your favorite love story was. Said he was gonna find the audiobook version.”

“He did?” I straightened up in my seat, my glass tipping in suddenly nerveless fingers, my Kindle sliding away, forgotten. Maia caught my drink before I baptized the cream sofa, but my focus stayed on Ms. Minerva. “What did you tell him?”

“I was tempted to torture him with a shifter story. Something gritty and full of grovel. Cate C. Wells or something of that nature.” She smiled, soft and gentle. “But something in his tone of voice stopped me from teasing. I gave him that old historical you like so much. The one by Connie Brockway.”

My heart thumped in my chest, my pulse skipping. “As You Desire,” I whispered.

“That’s the one.”

My favorite book for years and years. Since I read it as a teenager. Featuring a male lead, Harry. Who suffered from dyslexia.

Oh, the irony.

What to say? My heart pumped, my pulsewhooshingin my ears.

Why did Wyatt want to know my favorite book, anyway? Did I dare feel hope? Could I stop the emotion from swamping my heart, even if I wanted to? I swallowed, looked for my glass of sangria, and found it in Maia’s hand. But she stared at something over my shoulder.

A tingling awareness raised the tiny hairs along the backs of my arms. The Readers who hadn’t headed into the kitchen for refills all looked over my shoulder. I didn’t need to turn to know who must stand there.

Ms. Minerva’s eyes locked on mine, the smile still ticking the corners of her mouth up. “Wyatt,” she said.

Slowly, carefully, I stood. My legs about as steady as over-cooked spaghetti, my heart pounding, near to thumping right out of my chest. I turned and faced Wyatt Weston, his broad shoulders blocking out the rest of the world. Pure temptation I’d never escape. “Wy?”

“Dahlia,” he said back. He ran an impatient hand through his hair, scrubbed the back of his neck and damned if he didn’t look nervous. But then he caught my gaze with his own and the burning intensity in his chocolate eyes riveted me.

My starling perked up, flapped her wings in my chest, and I sucked in a shaky breath. “What are you doing here?”

“I had a big plan. Stayed up half the night listening to your book. Fuckin’ dyslexic. Set in Egypt, with a fuckin’dyslexichero.” He pounded a white-knuckled fist to his chest. “I should have known. That’s what you meant yesterday, isn’t it? I should fuckin’ know better than to think you’d look down on me. That you’d hesitate even a minute. My problem’s nothing to you. Nothing.”

He was rambling, but I kept up. Because it wasn’t nothing, but I knew what he meant. It was nothing to what we could be. Nothing to what we could have.

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