Page 40 of Lone Star Country Protector
Without thinking, or in her case overthinking her next move, she’d waved him over and told him that she wouldn’t mind the company if he wanted to eat with her. Eating at home alone every night was one thing. She was used to it. All she had to do was turn on the TV for background noise, and she was just fine. But eating out in public alone had just felt sad to her. The pity party she was having for herself had made her mad enough to ask a stranger to sit down. Daltonhad thanked her and then told the hostess that he wasn’t going to need to place a to-go order after all.
They’d made an agreement not to discuss work or anything too personal. But the night flew by. She couldn’t even remember what either of them had said, but she remembered thinking,This man is far too beautiful to be sitting here with me.
The only information she’d divulged on a personal level was that she’d spent too many years in school but that she liked her job, so the long semesters spent with her nose in a book had turned out to be worth it after all.
He’d asked what her field of study had been. She’d laughed.
He’d asked if he could guess. She’d laughed.
He’d asked if he could walk her back to her hotel. She’d smiled and decided to take a chance.
After all, what was the harm in being escorted back to her hotel, considering she could see it from the restaurant? They’d sat in the lobby for another hour before she’d done something she never had before…invited him upstairs.
The next morning, he invited her to breakfast at the house he’d rented. “Were you on a stakeout when we met?” she asked him as the elevator dinged, indicating they were on the ground floor.
“No,” he responded. “That would have been unprofessional.”
She stepped out of the elevator and followed him through the first-floor lobby and to his truck. “Then what were you doing in Galveston?”
“It was work related,” he said as he opened the door for her. She climbed in the passenger side and lowered the seat back to hide her face from view as much as possible.Dalton smiled approval at the move, and it gave her stomach a little flip.
He rounded the front of the truck and then reclaimed the driver’s seat. “I was waiting for a felon to show up. We had good intel that he would be there any day, so we spread out and set up shop.”
“How many of you were there?”
“From the Marshals office? Just me,” he said. “But there was a task force on this one because he was on the most wanted list.”
Blakely had been eating in a restaurant possibly with one of the worst criminals in America, and the man could have walked right past her and she wouldn’t have known it. “Whoa. I’m guessing he never showed.”
“You guessed correctly,” he said. “In fact, he ended up on one of the cruise ships as staff two weeks later.”
“So you wasted your time,” she pointed out.
“Spending the weekend with you could never be considered a waste of time as far as I’m concerned,” he said so low that she almost didn’t hear him. Those words, though, sent more of that warmth circling through her, settling inside her thighs. Her body remembered his touch, craved it even now.
Where was logic when it came to matters of the heart?
Blakely cleared her throat. She couldn’t think about how much she’d missed his touch in the weeks since. She couldn’t think about how many times she’d had to force this man from her thoughts, especially at night when she tried to sleep but images of him kept popping into her mind. And she couldn’t think about how right she’d felt in this man’s arms and how safe, even if it only lasted a short time.
Blakely couldn’t afford to give someone her safety. Besides, she’d gotten by fine on her own all these years. And she’d be fine moving forward.
So why did it feel like such a lie this time?
Chapter Fifteen
“Did you call the security company that patrols your neighborhood to let them know you’d be by this morning?” Dalton asked his now-quiet passenger. She’d been silent for longer than he was comfortable with. What was going on in that brilliant mind of hers?
“I should do that,” she said, reaching for her cell. “I have a number that I can text so everyone will get the message. I’ll let them know that we’re on our way.”
A few seconds later, she dropped her phone inside her purse again before leaning her head back.
“Did you sleep okay?” he asked.
“Sure,” she said. “In fact, once I was out, I didn’t open my eyes again until this morning. How about you?”
“I got in a couple hours of shut-eye,” he said. “I don’t need much.” He hoped the small talk could keep her mind off returning to her house. Her body language had tensed once the subject came up. Talking had always calmed his sister and cousins when they had to face a scary task. He hoped the distraction would work for Blakely too.
“I’m normally an eight-hour girl,” she said. “You don’t want to talk to me before I’ve had my coffee either.”
