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“If you don’t want to divorce me,” he said, that blue gaze boring into her, “then my next question would be—do you want to stay here?”

Ruthie knew the answer immediately. It was a flash inside of her, deep and hot. There was no prevaricating. There was no room for deliberation.

“And if I do?” She tipped her head to the side as she looked at him, like the weight of what she was saying—admitting—might knock her off her chair if she wasn’t careful. “Is there room enough in this tiny little town for whatever it is we have between us?”

“If you want to stay here, good.” Dallas didn’t seem to notice the laughter that went around the table, as all the rest of his siblings shared some joke that Ruthie couldn’t bring herself to track. All she could see was that dawning light in Dallas’s beautiful eyes. “And if you don’t want a divorce, well. Then I might ask you if you could see your way clear to dating me.”

Of all the things she thought he might say, it wasn’t that. She felt her whole face change, as a helpless sort of grin took her over. “You want to date me?”

“We never did much of that,” he said, gruffly, though she was sure the tops of his ears were looking a little pink. “I wonder if we had, if things might have ended up different.”

“Dallas.” She shook her head, still unable to stop smiling. “What do you think we’ve been doing?” When he only shook his head, she continued. “We have at least two meals a day together. We usually drive in and out of town together. We sit in the lobby every night. Also together. We talk. We share our lives. Together, Dallas. I don’t know what you think has been going on, but I’m pretty sure that we’ve been dating for a while.”

Wilder said something from the other side, and Ruthie’s attention got pulled away. Wilder and Cat stood up so they could go over and spend some time at the big, boisterous Carey table, and Ruthie realized Colton Dean had gone too, and there were pizzas on the table already. She hadn’t noticed any of these things.

She hadn’t seen anything but Dallas.

And there didn’t seem to be an opportunity to find her way back into that moment. When dinner was over, everyone bundled up and spilled out onto the road. Ruthie found herself walking with Helena, who had also parked down the road a ways, near where Ruthie liked to leave her car, in front of High Gully Yarn.

“What’s the story with that Colton Dean?” Ruthie asked as they walked.

“He’s awful,” Helena said at once. She smiled when Ruthie looked at her. “He is. So grumpy, so dour. Left to his own devices, I think he’d be a hermit who climbed up a mountainside, dressed in animal hides or something, and became one with the rocks.”

“That’s…very specific.”

“He has that vibe.” Helena waved a hand. “He’s just so…mean.”

But Ruthie thought that maybe Helena didn’t find that as repellent as she was pretending.

The snow was coming down harder now, and she wasn’t surprised that as she drove the RAV4—that Dallas had liberated one day and taken down into Marietta to get it fitted with appropriate snow tires and chains—up the hill toward the lighthouse, Dallas was waiting in his truck. At the bottom of the hill, so he could go up behind her. So if there was any slipping off the road or crashing into trees, he’d be there to handle it.

Speaking of ways to make a girl feel shivery.

At the top, they both parked and then walked quietly into the lobby together. Then, not looking at each other, they stripped off their outer layers. They hung them up neatly on the hooks by the door. And then they were both standing there, as the sconces on the walls set light shimmering all around them and everything inside Ruthie felt like a fever.

“About what we were talking about earlier,” Dallas began.

“We’ve been dating. Or I thought that’s what it felt like to me.” That wasn’t entirely true, since she’d been so busy telling herself they were friends. But it took all of five seconds to think otherwise. To see it for what it was. “What about you?”

“Ruthie…”

Ruthie didn’t want to hear her name said like that, like she was a problem. Like all of this was a problem.

He wasn’t standing far away from her. He never was.

So she moved closer, watching the hunger bloom in his eyes. And this time, she didn’t stop. She didn’t try to say clever things, or joke around with him. She kept going until she could slide her hands onto his chest. Dallas liked to wear those flannel shirts, and she could feel the heat of him pumping from beneath this one.

That meant she had no choice at all but to stand on her toes, track the stark need on his face, and press herself against him so that they could both feel the way their bodies were made for this.

The way they weren’t friends at all.

And then she licked her way into his mouth, and kissed him, deep.

Ruthie kissed him again and again, and she heard that low, hungry noise he made in the back of his throat. She could feel that same greed explode through her too—pulsing, molten hot, and sinking deep into every single part of her.

“We’ve gone on a lot of dates now,” she whispered against his mouth. “If it’s all the same to you, I think it’s time to take it further.”

“Ruthie,” he said again.