Chapter 4 #3
That left Dallas, the watchful one. The loner. Not withdrawn, exactly, but intensely present, his attention deliberate—the sort that slid over a woman and lingered, making her feel seen in ways that were anything but innocent.
Gabi burned where his gaze touched her. That had to mean something. Because he’d barely glanced at anyone else.
He was the only man in Promise she couldn’t look past.
Her mouth went dry as she remembered the strip of skin above his hip, the brief, unfair flash that had stolen every sensible thought from her head.
His skin had a slight olive cast, that small slice paler where the sun hadn’t reached it, and she wondered how that long, lean strength would look tangled in her cream sheets.
Cropped dark-brown hair. Glittering green eyes.
Stubble shadowing his jaw. Those adorable glasses sliding down his nose while his hands did things that would make her forget every practical reason to be careful.
She was tired of being careful.
With another man, she might have suspected strategy.
Some calculated move deployed for maximum damage.
That had certainly been Theo’s game. But Dallas didn’t seem to have a clue.
As far as she could tell, he was walking around with George-Clooney-ER levels of hotness and absolutely no idea women were trying to survive it.
And his slightly rusty voice made promises her imagination was more than willing to collect on.
Honestly, she wanted him to make good on the look in his eyes and pin her against the nearest flat surface.
In the privacy of her own head, Gabi dragged his shirt over his head, then let her gaze fall to the faded button-fly of his jeans, a detail she had absolutely no business noticing and every intention of remembering.
“Mom!”
With a gasp, Gabi bumped the table, sending recipes tumbling to the floor.
Sam stood in the kitchen’s arched doorway, a book in his hand and mischief on his face. Snickering, he darted across the room, clambered onto the counter, and stretched up to rummage through the “snack cabinet.”
“You were lost for a second. Like, gone. In space,” he mumbled around a bite of Pop-Tart.
“Long day,” she said, crouching to gather the recipes. If her knees were weak from a daydream, what would the real thing be like? “But exciting, right? Soon, you’ll be able to come to the café after school and help out.”
He tore into a bag of Oreos she hoped would last the night. “I can’t wait. The mill is super cool.”
“Only two, okay?” She glanced up, and her heart gave a quiet maternal tug.
Sam was growing up so fast—his new pants were already hitting his ankles.
High-waters, they’d called them back in the day.
Thankfully, if somewhat begrudgingly, Theo shared expenses.
It was his time her ex didn’t share. His attention.
The easy, everyday love a child shouldn’t have to chase.
Teaching him to play baseball, building forts in the backyard.
Gabi would never understand that choice. She’d put Sam first from the beginning, when she’d only been a kid herself.
“Three,” he said, bargaining, shoving one Oreo into his mouth and two into his pocket for later, then leaving the package forgotten on the counter as he hopped down. With the book back in hand, he dragged a chair out from the table, climbed into it, opened to a page, and began to read.
Gabi slid a cinnamon roll recipe out from under her shoe, eyeing him suspiciously. “Are you doing homework? Without me having to bug you?”
Sam shrugged, dragging his finger across the page. “I’m gonna win the contest.”
Gabi rose with a groaning stretch, wondering if frozen pizza would pass for dinner tonight. She needed a hot bath, a glass of wine, and the latest episode of Friends, and she needed them now. “What contest?”
With an eye roll, Sam fished an Oreo from his pocket.
“I told you about it on the way home. If I read more pages than Dallas this week, I get to work with him again. Doing drywall, whatever that is. He’s a big reader, like a book or two a week.
” Sam looked up, her adorable scamp, clearly aware he was about to ask for something.
“I’ll clean my room, too, if you let me go to the mill again. ”
“Deal,” Gabi said, realizing Sam’s idea of cleaning his room involved shoving dirty clothes under the bed. But she wasn’t arguing with progress.
While Sam read, she sorted recipes into neat piles across the Formica table—tarts here, muffins there, scones beneath her palm—while her thoughts kept circling back to Dallas.
Which was inconvenient.
The way he’d been with Sam was danger on top of sexy. He’d been good with him. Really good. Kind. Patient. Interested without being performative, which mattered more than it should have.
She knew the difference.
Theo had never bothered to play the devoted father in public, but other men had tried that particular trick on her.
One man in particular—a friend of a friend from Little League—had spent an entire practice helping Sam with his pitching grip, crouching behind him with endless patience and praise, acting as if he found her son fascinating.
Later that night, he’d walked Gabi to her car, tried to push her against the door, making it clear he considered the whole fatherly performance foreplay.
She’d gone home furious at the way being a single mother meant some men saw Sam not as a child to care about, but as a locked door they could charm their way through.
Dallas hadn’t been like that. He hadn’t seemed to be trying to impress her at all.
He’d spoken to Sam like he was a person. A funny, bright, sawdust-dusted little boy with chalk on his fingers and a serious opinion about where invisible walls should go. He hadn’t used him to sway her. He’d simply been decent.
God, decent was devastating.
Gabi tossed a danish recipe onto the wrong pile and frowned down at it.
She wasn’t used to this Dallas. The confident man with a scar on his temple, a cast on his ankle, and that deliberate way of looking at her, as if he knew exactly what made her tick.
In her mind, he still belonged half to memory: a skinny, sharp-boned teenager, pretending not to care whether anyone noticed him.
Now everyone noticed.
Especially her.
“Dallas’s mom died,” Sam said suddenly, with no sense of the weight behind the words.
Gabi’s hand stilled over the recipe card.
Sam didn’t look up from his book. “He told me. Not in a sad way. Just because I said you make me do homework and eat vegetables and stuff. He said he wished he’d had that.”
Her throat tightened. “He did?”
“Yeah.” Sam turned a page, casual in the brutal way children could be. “He said I was lucky to have you.”
For a moment, Gabi couldn’t move.
The kitchen blurred around the edges: the turquoise table, the bag of Oreos left open on the counter, the folder of contracts waiting for her signature, her son sitting with one leg tucked under him, close to entering a world she wouldn’t be able to control.
Dallas had lost his mother young. Gabi had known that, of course. Everyone knew pieces of everyone in Promise, but knowing a fact was different from hearing it passed through her son’s small voice, stripped of gossip and history, made tender.
He thought Sam was lucky to have her.
Her heart did something foolish and painful.
“Mom?”
“I’m okay.” She cleared her throat and reached for another recipe, because baking was always safer than feeling. “And you still only get three Oreos.”
“I know.” He paused. “But this one broke, so technically it’s pieces.”
“Nice try.”
He grinned and went back to his book.
Gabi stared through the small window above the sink as dusk deepened toward night, the sky streaked with crimson and gold as far as she could see.
How could she get to know Dallas without falling for him?
That was the problem, not whether she wanted him.
Wanting him had become a fact, practically notarized by every ridiculous thought she’d had since leaving the mill—maybe since the first second she’d spotted him at the festival.
The problem was that he came wrapped in too many treacherous things: history, intelligence, tenderness, grief, sex appeal, and a way of looking at her as if she mattered.
No one had ever made her feel quite so seen without a word spoken.
But…maybe she didn’t have to get to know him.
Maybe that was the trick.
Men separated sex from emotion all the time. They practically built entire civilizations around the concept. Surely she could manage one discreet, mutually satisfying arrangement with a man who would leave soon enough anyway.
No promises. No future. No letting him get close enough to matter.
Just want. Just heat. Just yes.
Gabi pressed her palms flat against the table, breathing through the sudden reckless lift in her chest. The next time Dallas asked, she wouldn’t step around the offer.
She’d let herself have this.
And she’d make sure it ended there.