Chapter 1
ONE
No Surprises – Radiohead
Promise, South Carolina
The air smelled of kettle corn and spun sugar, sweet enough to coax up childhood memories Gabi Wilder knew better than to trust.
She locked the portafilter into the espresso machine and glanced across the square as a gust sent copper-and-gold leaves skittering over the pavement in the sharp October light.
Promise had gone all out for the first crisp weekend of fall.
Hay bales ringed the courthouse, a bluegrass band tuned up beneath the gazebo, and strings of lights were looped between the old oaks.
The Chamber of Commerce had rebranded the Harvest Festival as the Autumn Jubilee because apparently everything sounded better with a new name.
Booths crowded Main Street, including one the town gallery had sponsored for the high school art club.
Nearby, a pumpkin-decorating contest was guaranteed to leave the sidewalks slick with orange guts by nightfall.
This year, Gabi was here as a business owner, a fact that left her both thrilled and terrified.
She’d spent the past month running her café, Wilder Grounds, out of a leased food truck while the True brothers finished restoring her space in the old cotton mill.
All part of her plan to build a life that didn’t include her ex-husband and his bullshit.
The café was more than a business. It was hers, built from her passion for baking, the one quiet joy she’d held onto as everything else fell apart.
She wasn’t leaving town just because her marriage to Theo was over.
Her son had roots here—his school, his friends, the life they’d built—and a custody agreement tied her to Promise.
Gabi had already watched her father leave without a backward glance.
She wouldn’t uproot her son because another man had failed her.
Although trusting one was starting to feel like betting against the weather.
Sooner or later, the sky always broke.
Gabi brushed the coffee grounds from her palms, harder than necessary, as Lainey leaned in and murmured, “Tell me I’m wrong, but the QB’s hairline has retreated another inch. Somebody get that man a hat before he commits to a comb-over.”
Laughing, Gabi tamped the grounds and slid the handle into place, fragrant steam curling upward with a hiss.
Theodore Donnelly, with his thick, dirty-blond hair, had led the Promise Cardinals to the state championship two years running while she cheered from the sidelines.
Most days, she wondered what she’d been thinking marrying him.
He’d never been a good guy. Just the first guy.
Getting pregnant at nineteen had changed everything. Forced the rest.
Lainey, one of her new friends—the old ones having chosen Theo—propped a hip against the truck’s dented metal counter, looping a tattered dishrag around her fist. “I didn’t vote for him for homecoming king, though I guess everyone else did.
I never trusted that fake smile.” She bared her teeth in an exaggerated grin.
“Too big, like a gopher’s. Car salesman or what? ”
“I wish you’d told me,” Gabi murmured, knowing exactly why Lainey hadn’t.
The Style Council—named after the band—hadn’t included Lainey or her sister-in-law, Fontana.
They were Gabi’s people now. Both had been smarter than she was, marrying into the True family instead of choosing a man who treated fidelity like an optional clause.
“Oh, wow, he came after all,” Lainey whispered, nearly sloshing her cappuccino as she leaned out for a better look. “There’s your main event for the evening.”
Gabi turned, and her world fell silent.
The man sat on the lowered tailgate of a battered Ford, a bottle balanced on his thigh, his body arranged in an unthinking sprawl that snagged her eye before the rest of her caught up.
There was an easy grace to him—long, loose lines, the carelessly unhurried sweep of his gaze across Main Street—but something sharper lived beneath it, a flicker of restlessness that didn’t belong to someone simply killing time on a Saturday afternoon.
A Soundgarden T-shirt hugged his broad chest above faded jeans split along the seam to fit over the cast on his lower leg.
His crutches lay crossed beside him, abandoned as if he’d forgotten they were there.
He shifted, and his aviators caught the fading sun, throwing it back in a bright, hard flash. His dark brown hair had been shorn close, exposing a pink scar at his temple. When it grew back, she suspected it would be thick enough to sink her fingers into—and hold on.
Gabi’s pulse tripped as she ticked off the attraction boxes in her mind.
Broad shoulders. Beautiful mouth. A face sharpened by whatever had left that scar.
God help her, he was hot.
The sudden flicker of desire, after months of feeling dead inside, sent a traitorous thrill through her. She’d missed that pulse of need, that raw want. Missed it enough to fear it might be gone forever.
“Dallas True,” Lainey whispered.
Gabi went still.
No. It couldn’t be.
“The prodigal brother returned two nights ago, limped through our door without a word he was coming.” Lainey’s lips curved over the rim of her cup.
“Justin’s thrilled, of course, not that they’re really talking.
Hardheaded fools. Fontana and I are working on them, but it may take a while. Emotions run deep with those two.”
Dallas True.
Gabi’s mind drifted to the last time she’d seen him, during that restless summer before she left for Chapel Hill.
She stared, struggling to reconcile this man with the boy who’d written editorials for the school paper pointed enough to make the principal grind his teeth.
A too-thin teen, all elbows and attitude, with a face that had been a killer even then.
The town hadn’t known what to make of him, and Dallas hadn’t bothered to make it easier.
He’d walked into Promise as if he knew exactly who he was, as if he needed no one.
Now, Gabi wasn’t sure she trusted anything she’d believed back then. Because she’d been wrong about almost everything.
As she watched, he tipped the bottle to his mouth, the movement unhurried, a ghost of a smile curving his lips as he scanned the crowd.
His gaze passed over her without a flicker, though there’d always been one before.
And Gabi—newly divorced and interested for the first time in ages—spilled wet coffee grounds down the front of her sweater.
Fontana barked a laugh and reached for a stack of napkins, shoving a handful into Gabi’s grip. “That’s one way to get his attention.”
“Oh, my God. I’m an idiot.” Gabi dabbed at the spreading stain, mortification warming her cheeks.
“And I don’t want anyone’s attention. Where would I find the time?
I’m practically single-momming it while trying to launch a new business.
My biggest thrill is managing to catch an episode of Ally McBeal. ”
“Grew up good, didn’t he? The True men never fail to deliver, and I should know since I married the sexiest of the bunch.
” Lainey fanned her face with a Wilder Grounds menu.
After returning to town and rekindling things with her high school love, she and Justin were living in wedded bliss.
“Dallas says he’s only home to rehab a busted ankle.
But I think his boss didn’t give him much choice, though he’s keeping why close to the vest, like always.
Funny, I figured you’d heard, the way this town talks. ”
Gabi shrugged, tossing the crumpled napkins into the trash.
It was silly to wish she’d spent more time on her makeup or done something with her hair besides pull it into another lazy ponytail.
She was months overdue for a cut and highlights, too.
She brushed her knuckles across her chin.
Of course today would be the day she had a zit.
“He was two years behind me, so we didn’t exactly run in the same circles.
I’m hardly at the top of the gossipmongers’ update list.”
Because no one knew about the kiss that had gone from innocent to unforgettable between one breath and the next. A charged moment she still thought about, though she knew better.
Sparkle—the name he’d given her that night—skipped across her mind like a pebble over water.
Despite herself, her gaze drifted back to the man who looked capable of breaking a woman’s heart, then casually handing back the pieces.
The last thing Gabi needed. As if he’d heard the thought, Dallas frowned and scrubbed a hand over his cropped hair, the motion pulling at something deep inside her.
Dying sunlight flashed off the frame of his sunglasses, and for a split second, she imagined she could see his eyes behind the lenses.
Bottle green, they’d always seemed focused on nothing and everything at once.
Oh, did she remember those eyes.
As if the evening needed any help turning melancholy, the band in the square struck up an acoustic version of “Landslide.” She’d fallen hard for Fleetwood Mac that long-ago summer, when she’d found a forlorn boy sitting alone on the bleachers behind the high school, a book in his hand, the night thick with honeysuckle and possibility.
One of the few times in her life she’d acted on impulse, leaning in and kissing him.
The shy, brilliant teenager who’d written about the world as if his words mattered, at least to him.
Clearly, they had. He’d turned his youthful passion into something real, while she’d spent every day fighting not to disappear beneath the weight of everyone else’s expectations.
As she stared, twilight crept in, softening the square’s hard edges into blue-gray shadow, and Gabi’s thoughts strayed where they hadn’t gone in an eternity.
She had no interest in dating, but she was more than ready for sex.
Her vibrator did the job, but not like the real thing.
Her gaze fell to Dallas’s long fingers curled around his bottle, searching for a ring.
A single-girl habit. There wasn’t one. And he’d be gone soon, which made him the safest kind of temptation.
A temporary one.
Not that it mattered, Gabi told herself, as Dallas True collected appreciative once-overs from every woman who walked past.
He was out of her league now.
Bothered for no good reason, Gabi stripped off her sweater, grateful she’d worn a tank beneath it and stashed a spare Wilder Grounds sweatshirt in the truck. The breeze skimmed her bare shoulders, soothing skin still warm with a need she had no business entertaining.
“Do you ever wonder what life outside Promise looks like?” she asked Lainey, trying to steer her focus anywhere else.
“I used to. Until I stopped running.” Lainey’s gaze slid toward Dallas and back again. “Justin says his brother’s seen some hard things.”
Something about that tugged at her. “And somehow, he made his way home.”
Across the square, Dallas reached behind him for something on the truck bed.
A book, because of course he’d have one.
He flipped it open with the same distracted grace that used to drive teachers insane.
Who brought a novel to an outdoor festival?
He’d been like that in high school, unapologetically himself at an age when being different could get you eaten alive.
She hoped her son, Sam, would stay that true to himself when the time came.
A knot of men walking by the food truck caught her attention.
Theo and his squad, loud, grating, far too sure of themselves.
They wandered toward Dallas, tossing glances her way as they went, the kind that told her exactly what they were saying.
Gabi’s stomach tightened as her fingers closed around her sweater.
Everyone blamed her for calling it quits, not him for cheating.
Dallas didn’t look up from his book, but something in him shifted, like he’d caught the group’s intent, if not the conversation.
Seconds later, Theo said something sharper, and his friends snorted.
And Dallas moved.
He slipped off the tailgate and reached for his crutch, the motion smooth enough to look accidental.
As he angled forward, the rubber tip slid into her ex’s path.
Theo stumbled, catching himself with a hard, graceless step, nearly dropping to his knees.
Dallas shrugged and settled back against the tailgate with a bland expression.
His lips moved in what might have been an apology, but his insolent sprawl belied any hint of regret.
A provocation Theo would’ve once met without hesitation.
Bullies liked conflict, she’d learned, but only when they were sure they’d win.
But the man Theo confronted was no longer that lanky True castoff. The scar along his temple and the hard slant of his smile marked him as a man you might want to think twice about crossing. And Gabi was going to hell, because she loved it.
Anyway, it soon turned into a family thing.
Justin and Campbell had crossed the square at the first sign of trouble, stopping on either side of the truck.
They didn’t say anything. They didn’t have to.
They had his back, whether he’d asked for it or not.
A charged silence stretched between them as Theo glanced at his buddies, recalibrating.
Then he jerked his chin and walked away, not quite backing down but not stepping forward either.
Gabi let out a breath, realizing Dallas’s interference had likely spared her another pointless but public run-in with her ex. Co-parenting required enough contact already; she didn’t need Theo invading one of her rare nights of peace when Sam was at a sleepover.
At the exact moment she was silently thanking him, Dallas glanced over.
And this time, his slow smile told her he remembered.
Gabi stilled, the truck’s counter cool beneath her palm. She’d worn a ratty bra, fine under a sweater, but plainly visible through the thin tank. She should’ve pulled on that sweatshirt before Dallas looked over.
Dallas’s lips parted as he slowly hooked his sunglasses into his collar.
His gaze swept over her shoulders, down her arms, then back to her face in an unmistakable once-over.
Possessive, yet somehow not. The slow appraisal touched her like a fingertip, sparking heat low and bright, tightening her nipples for all to see.
The hot look confirmed one thing.
He’d known she was there all along.
And he remembered every second of their kiss.