Page 127 of Unmasking Mr. Crown

“Cross my heart, she never said a word. I never gave her a chance though. Once I figured out your plans, I got busy with my own.”

“Yeah, I’m sure she’s too exhausted to play double agent. Colt’s taken her out every night⁠—”

“Wait, what? Your stepbrother and my sister are dating?”

Dash laughed. “You mean to tell me I know something about Kate’s love life that you don’t know?”

She gave his arm a playful pinch. “Hey, don’t rub it in.”

“You should have seen the two of them in the limo on the way to the restaurant. She was practically sitting in Colt’s lap … and he’s the most relaxed I’ve ever seen him.”

“That doesn’t surprise me. Kate’s never been afraid to go for what she wants.”

“You’re okay with it, right? Your sister, getting hot and heavy with my stepbrother?”

Okay with it? It’s what I’ve prayed for ever since Malcolm died.

Natalie smiled. "I’m more than okay with it. I hope Kate’s as happy as I am at this very moment."

A week earlier, everything in Natalie’s world had come crashing down. The truth about Hart. Discovering Dash’s true identity. Her dreams and her life savings going up in flames. The showcase had consumed her whole life, but wasn’t destined to be the end goal. The showcase, it turned out, had been the launching pad for love. Call it luck or kismet or just plain honest living; somehow, she and Kate had both found happiness in the most preposterous and unlikely way.

Miranda was right.

The universe does indeed find a way … as long as we keep fighting for what we want.

“Can I make a confession?” he asked.

“Of course.”

“Since our night, I had to stop listening to Willie Nelson.”

Natalie’s lips pursed in confusion. “What? Why?”

“Remember lying in my bed? We were wearing robes and listening to Willie?”

“Oh, I remember.”

“God, you had no idea just how sexy you looked that night, which made you even more sexy,” he whispered.

“Can I make a small confession? I had this idea that you had a closet full of robes. Like, maybe you were this big playboy type who always had a fresh robe for a different woman every night of the week.”

“Not even close. You wore my robe that night and I wore Colt’s. Miranda gave us those for Christmas one year. And here’s something you don’t know. I didn’t wash my robe for weeks. Your scent was all over it. One day, our cleaning lady threw it in with a load of towels and washed the last of you out of my life. I was pretty hot, but of course she had no idea what she’d done. I got rid of it after that—the robe, not the cleaning lady.”

“You’re not serious.”

“I’m dead serious. I lived in that robe for weeks. Ask Colt. He’ll tell you.”

Natalie’s eyes lit up. “So, you pined for me?”

“As hard as the Ponderosa Forest.”

Natalie laughed, but Dash squeezed her hand, a serious look on his face.

“That night in your bedroom? I meant what I said. You changed me, Natalie. My ex burned me to the point that I swore off relationships. Keeping things brief and fun was a way to control potential damage.”

“I’ve been protecting myself too, thinking I had to choose between a relationship and a career, all because my ex crushed my soul when he wrote my career off as a hobby.”

Dash fell silent for a minute, then said, “God, why were we dating such assholes?”