He didn’t have to tell me twice. I got up and followed him, setting one arm on his shoulder and letting him take my other hand in his. He grinned as he took a mini step away from me with a wink.
“I don’t feel like dying tonight,” he explained, like that made any sense.
“Who’s going to kill you?”
“Dal.” He peeked over his shoulder for a moment before glancing back at me with a smile that reminded me of a little boy who knew he was doing something bad. “I give him two minutes before he’s over here.”
“He’s with one of your relatives right now. They were asking him about Miss Pearl,” I explained.
I’d gone over to Dallas’s house two days before to give the old woman a haircut. She’d acted like normal, didn’t call me Miss Cruz once, and then all of a sudden, in the middle of trimming her hair, she’d announced, “I’ve thought about it, and I wouldn’t mind some tan great-grandchildren someday.”
What the hell did I respond with? “Okay?”
Tan grandchildren. Oh my God.
My white-haired neighbor turned in her chair just enough to see me with one of those rheumy eyes and then said, “He looks out the window to check on you every night. I tell him to call you and quit being a stalker, but he thinks I’m going to listen in on his conversations.” She huffed. “I have better things to do with my time.”
All I’d managed to do after that was just nod. Obviously, Miss Pearl was doing just fine after losing a lot of her things in the fire.
“I still give him two minutes.” Trip raised his eyebrows at me as he turned us, bringing my attention back to the present. “So you two finally, huh?”
“Finally?”
“Yeah, finally. It’s only been, what? Three months?”
“No.” I narrowed my eyes. “Really?”
“You sweet, sweet, blind child.” He chuckled. “I told him he was an idiot for waiting until his shit had been settled, but he‘wanted to do it right’—”
“Go find your own girl to dance with,” came a voice from behind me.
I’d bet my life that Trip’s easy acceptance was a sign of how much he cared for his cousin and that was why he backed away so quickly. He still winked at me before telling the man behind me, “Just warmin’ yours up for you, brother.”
“I bet you were,” Dallas said. He came around me and slipped so fluidly in front of me, placing my hands where they needed to go, I didn’t react until his chest was an inch or two away from mine. Those brown-green-gold eyes hovered above my own. I didn’t even watch in what direction Trip had gone I was so sucked in to the man in front of me. “There’s my one and only.”
I blushed and pinched my lips together. How was it that I had no idea how to act around him anymore? It was dumb. “Your one and only,” I muttered. “There’re lots of pretty girls here to dance with too,” I said like a complete idiot, even though my stomach started hurting immediately afterward.
His eyebrow arched upward as his hand curled over my shoulder, touchy, touchy, touchy. “Are there?”
“Yeah.”
“That’s nice for everybody else,” he said, drawing me toward him.
The sigh that came out of me was long and probably showed how confused I felt.
“What’s that sigh for? They don’t do me any good.” That broad palm of his went to the small of my spine, the other led our hands to the corner of his chest and shoulder, settling there as he dipped his face closer to mine. His eyes were steady and even, staring right into my own. “I already have the one I want right here,” he said.
“Dallas,” I groaned, ducking my head. What was I doing?
“What?”
Our talk at the salon a couple of days ago hadn’t eased my worries much. Talk was talk. Anyone could say they were Batman, but not everyone couldbeBatman. “There’re a million other women in the world who would love to be with you—”
“You want me to go find them?” he asked with way too much humor in his voice.
I glanced up at him. “No, but I can’t do casual. I don’t think you get that.”
His mouth went to my ear. “What gave you the idea that’s what this would be? The last thing I feel for you is casual, Diana.”
