5. Dallas Looks Good on Her （Damn It）
DALLAS LOOKS GOOD ON HER (DAMN IT)
Brock
The drive to Dallas takes four hours.
Ariel spends the first forty minutes with her nose in a veterinary journal. The next thirty staring out the window like the flat stretch of West Texas highway personally offended her. The last hour pretending to sleep, which I know because her breathing never slows down.
I don't say anything. Neither does she.
That's fine. That's good. The silence means we're both being smart about what happened last night. The thing neither of us has named. The thing I can still feel in my hands if I let myself think about it.
I don't let myself think about it.
"The gala starts at seven," I say, when we're twenty minutes out. "Cocktail hour first. I'll need you visible during the program."
She doesn't look up from the journal. "Visible. Got it."
"Marcy booked you a suite at the Adolphus. There's a dress."
That gets her attention. She turns, one brow lifted. "You bought me a dress."
"Marcy bought you a dress."
"On your card."
I don't answer.
"Brock." She closes the journal. "I have clothes."
"You have scrubs."
"I have other?—"
"Ariel, work with me." I keep my eyes on the road. "There will be cameras. It's a two-thousand-dollar-a-plate fundraiser with half of Dallas's oil money in one room. Wear the dress."
She's quiet for exactly four seconds.
"What color?"
The Adolphus is everything Midland isn't. Marble floors, brass fixtures, the kind of quiet that costs more per night than most people make in a week.
My penthouse suite is on the fourteenth floor. Ariel's is two floors down, which Marcy arranged and which I have not thought about once.
I'm in my tux by six-fifteen, jacket on, glass of bourbon untouched on the bar. Cami runs through my talking points on the phone, donor names, table assignments, which board members are nervous after the arena clip.
"Holcomb will bring it up," she says. "Guaranteed."
"Let him."
"You say that now?—"
"Cami."
"Holcomb gets three drinks in and starts performing, and you get that look?—"
"What look?"
A pause. "The one that made the VP of acquisitions cry at the Permian Basin conference."
"He was out of line."
"He was annoying. There's a difference." Clicking through something. "Dr. Hart is confirmed for your table. Marcy wants you to arrive together. Front entrance, six fifty-five."
I check my watch. "Fine."
"Brock." Her voice shifts. Just slightly. "Be nice."
I hang up.
Six fifty-three.
I'm in the lobby when the elevator opens.
Ariel steps out in a dress the color of deep burgundy.
Fitted through the waist, off the shoulder, ending just below the knee.
Her hair is up, a few pieces loose around her face.
She's wearing heels she clearly isn't used to, because she takes the last step off the elevator like she's deciding whether to trust it.
She spots me and straightens.
I don't move.
The dress fits her like it was made for her specifically, which maybe it was, Marcy's good at that. I get exactly three seconds of the full picture before I make myself look somewhere else.
Three seconds is enough.
The collarbone. The curve of her waist. The way the heels shift her weight so she stands differently than she does in boots. Less ready to bolt. More like she's decided to stay.
I look at the elevator doors.
"Before you say anything," she starts.
"I wasn't going to say anything."
"You had a look."
"I don't have a look."
She crosses the lobby toward me. I stay exactly where I am, hands loose at my sides, because the alternative is something I already decided I wasn't doing again.
Last night was last night. This is Dallas. This is work.
"Marcy has good taste," she says, stopping a foot away. Her chin comes up, that thing she does, chin-first into every room she isn't sure of.
I've noticed she does it everywhere. The boardroom, the barn, my guesthouse.
I shut that down.
"She does," I say.
Ariel waits, like she expects something else.
I offer her my arm instead. "Let's go."
The Petroleum Club. Twelve floors of glass, a valet line three deep, and enough Steele Oil money in the room tonight to fund a small country.
Ariel slows at the entrance. Just for a step. Takes in the chandeliers, the marble, the dressed-up crowd spilling through the lobby.
Then her chin comes up and she walks in like she owns the place.
I've earned my seat at this table. I've never once enjoyed sitting in it.
Tonight might be different.
The gala is exactly what I expected and exactly what I'd pay money to skip.
Four hundred people in black tie, most of them here to be seen rather than to give. The Steele Oil foundation does real work, clean water infrastructure, vocational programs, rural school funding, but you wouldn't know it from the cocktail hour.
Ariel stays close without being instructed to. I notice that too.
She talks to everyone. The servers. The florist adjusting a centerpiece in the corner. She crouches down to speak to a catering kid who can't be older than sixteen, points at something on his tray, and whatever she says makes him laugh and stand straighter.
I watch her from across the room and don't know what to call the feeling.
It isn't attraction. I know what that feels like, it's simple, manageable, burns clean and goes out.
This is something else. She moves through a room full of people performing wealth and she isn't performing anything.
She's just there. In a way that makes everyone else look like they're trying too hard.
The elderly woman near the window turns out to be the retiring director of the foundation's literacy program. By the time I find them, they've been talking for ten minutes. Ariel is laughing at something the woman said, head tipped back, unguarded in a way she almost never is around me.
Three different men look at her while she's laughing.
My shoulders tighten. I position myself at her shoulder without deciding to.
"Brock." She glances up and touches my sleeve, a reflex, not a choice, I can tell by the way she drops her hand. "This is Margaret Osei. She built the foundation's reading program from twelve kids to four thousand."
"I know Margaret." I extend my hand. "You're not retiring, are you?"
Margaret gives me a look that could strip paint. "Your PR department sent me a very nice fruit basket suggesting I might be ready to step back."
"I'll have them fired."
"I already sent the basket to the staff lounge." She pats Ariel's arm. "I like this one. She asked about the kids first, not the budget."
Ariel goes slightly pink. She covers it by sipping her champagne.
I file it away.
Dinner is where it turns.
We're mid-program, foundation video on the screens, polite attention from the tables around us, when Bret Mercer slides into the empty chair two seats down.
He's everything I've always disliked in a single suit. Too much product in his hair, the specific smile of a man who's practiced it, handshake energy even when he isn't shaking hands. He runs Westgate Energy. We've been competing for the same Permian Basin acquisition for eight months.
"Steele." He raises his glass. "Didn't expect to see you here. Thought you'd be back at the ranch playing cowboy."
"Bret."
His eyes slide to Ariel. Stay there a beat too long.
"And who's this?"
"Dr. Ariel Hart," she says, before I can answer. "Large animal veterinarian."
"Ah." Mercer's practiced smile doesn't shift. "The one from the video."
"That's me."
"Smart move," he says, looking at me now. "Bringing the help to clean up the optics."
The table goes quiet.
Ariel sets down her fork. Tilts her head at Mercer like she's diagnosing something. "I'm sorry — do you work in livestock? Because you have the instincts of a man who handles a lot of bull."
Mercer blinks.
Two seats down, someone covers a laugh with a cough.
I look at the ceiling for exactly one second, because if I look at Ariel right now I'm going to do something I can't take back.
"Excuse me." Mercer pushes back from the table.
When he's gone, Ariel picks up her fork again, calm as still water.
Red would've given her a standing ovation.
"That was unnecessary," I say.
"You're welcome."
"I didn't thank you."
"You were thinking it."
I pick up my bourbon and finish it.
The program wraps at nine-thirty.
I'm in a conversation near the bar when I hear my name, not from the room, but from the entrance. A woman with a press badge and a phone camera has gotten past the event staff and is moving toward the foundation display near the doors.
Toward Ariel.
I excuse myself.
By the time I'm close enough to hear, the reporter, young, sharp eyes, a local media badge I half-recognize, already has her camera up.
"Dr. Hart, can you speak to the animal welfare concerns at Steele Ranch? Some people online are saying the horse incident was worse than reported?—"
"The horse has a suspensory strain, confirmed on ultrasound. He's on a six-week rest protocol and doing well. There was no cover-up, no negligence."
"And your relationship with Brock Steele, would you say the on-site contract influenced how that incident was handled?"
"My contract covers veterinary care. My professional assessment doesn't change based on who's signing the check."
The reporter shifts the camera, getting us both in frame now, because I'm standing two feet behind Ariel and apparently didn't approach quietly enough.
"Mr. Steele." She pivots. "Is Dr. Hart here tonight in a professional capacity, or a personal one?"
The room hasn't stopped. People still talking, glass clinking, the band starting a low set in the corner. But the three of us exist in a separate pocket of the evening. The camera light is a small red eye between us.
I should say professional. It's one word. Clean, simple, true enough to end this.
Ariel glances back at me. Just for a second. Just long enough for me to see something careful in her expression. Waiting. Braced.
Three seconds pass.
The reporter's expression shifts. She's already got her headline.
I don't say a damn thing.