Chapter 7
SEVEN
Interstate Love Song – Stone Temple Pilots
Dallas would always think of it as the hottest kiss of his life.
Maybe that would mean something.
I’m going to ruin you.
Dallas groaned and scrubbed his hand over his growing-in hair, wishing he didn’t get hard every time that ragged whisper rippled through his mind. Distracted, he scribbled on the pad before him, his attention nowhere near the Dispatch office.
Even with a sufficient amount of sexual experience, he’d never had desire catch like a brushfire and scorch everything in its path.
For fuck’s sake, he’d fingered her to orgasm in a closet off the choir room.
The memory hadn’t left him since—her kiss, the silk of her skin, the bite of her teeth against his neck.
And the scent of her pleasure on his skin? Let’s just say he’d taken the longest shower of his life that night.
The situation was dicey. Dallas got the impression she wanted to keep things light.
Or rather, that she’d never had much chance to explore.
Getting married at nineteen and having Sam right after had swallowed the years when she might’ve made other choices.
Reckless choices. Fun ones. There was no need to make it complicated now, not when he was out of here in less than two months.
Gabi wasn’t ready for anything real, and neither was he.
Maybe what they both needed was something exciting and sexy.
No promises. No pressure. Just delight.
He’d done that before; he was pretty good at it.
But he’d never shared anything with those women they couldn’t read in his bio. Then he went and spent ten minutes with Gabi Wilder and blabbed about being put on leave, something he hadn’t even dared tell his family. That look in her golden eyes—seeing too much, wanting to know more.
She wanted to know everything, which wasn’t uncomplicated at all.
Neither was wanting to tell her.
Lloyd Halpern snapped his fingers in front of Dallas’s face, bringing him rudely back to the present. “You’re not here, True.”
Dallas blinked at the random doodles. No. He was not.
His editor peered over his shoulder at the meager progress and plucked one suspender in disapproval.
Dallas glanced back with a frown. “You realize I’m a volunteer, right?”
“Story’s due today, Hotshot, no matter the specifics of employment.”
Dallas closed his eyes and let the sounds of the school assembly filter in, picturing parents’ faces lighting up as they watched their children perform. What it meant to have a supportive community behind you, everyone working toward a common goal. It had to feel good.
There was plenty there for a solid story.
“Don’t forget to add something about the fire alarm going off,” Halpern said, feeding copy into the fax machine.
“’Cause you were just about the only person around when Bob showed up.
He’s not the swiftest of sheriffs, but he’s reliable.
He never did figure out who pulled it, which isn’t a surprise. ”
“I was the only person.” He’d slipped out through the same door Gabi had, then positioned himself out front.
When the group of teens burst from the building, he’d pointed them toward the back parking lot—an easy escape across the football field—with a stern look he hated admitting he was old enough to pull off.
If they’d gone down the main drive, Promise’s reliable sheriff’s department of one would have seen them running and blamed the wrong offenders.
“Kinda interesting you were still hanging around,” his editor murmured, trying for idle curiosity and coming out somewhere near interrogation.
Dallas lifted his booted foot from beneath the table and flexed his ankle. “I still had the cast. Waiting on my ride.”
Halpern grunted. “Is driving advisable now, with that thing?”
Dallas traced his pen along the page, rereading what he’d written. Now his editor sounded like Justin, even though the trip from the cottage to the Dispatch office was three miles total, if that.
“Hey, almost forgot,” Dallas said, keeping his head down so Halpern wouldn’t see his smile. “About that editorial you had me review. Slight revision in the first paragraph: e.g., not i.e. You were giving examples.”
Halpern went still. “I know that. Simple error. I’ll fix it right up.”
Dallas hummed and kept writing.
Halpern turned and leaned back against the filing cabinet, hooking his thumbs in his suspenders.
“Hey, almost forgot. Gabi Wilder stopped by this morning, placing an ad for her food truck. Back when you worked here, she’d come in now and again with cheerleading bake sale stuff, and you’d get twitchy. ”
Dallas leaned back and cracked his neck. “I never got twitchy.”
When they both knew he had.
“Great girl. Woman, I should say.” Halpern rolled a sheet into the typewriter, though Dallas doubted the man had anything to type.
“Fine mother, too. That waste of an ex-husband shows up when it suits him, leaves her to carry the rest. She even volunteers at the Children’s Center with your cousin Campbell and his missus. Nice person, that one.”
Dallas swiveled his chair to face him, folding his hands over his stomach. “Chief, if there’s advice you’re circling, say it straight.”
Halpern grinned, setting the paper against the drum.
“Family can be a good thing. Grounding for a roving soul such as yourself. Justin lives here now. Campbell, too, after getting tired of that fancy career that had him jetting all over the world taking photographs. William’s been home an awful lot lately.
Maybe he’s the next to move back, unless you beat him to it. ”
Pushing his glasses up, Dallas rubbed his eyes. “Ransom hasn’t been called William since Reagan was in office. And he’ll never leave Brooklyn. I’m just saying.”
“Well, I’m just saying, you could do a lot worse than Miss Wilder. And since my ambitious visions for you more than came true, she could do a lot worse than you.”
“I’m begging you, Chief, please don’t say this to Kit when he’s working with me.”
“Can’t help that my advice’s as outstanding as your stories, Hotshot.
” Halpern cleared his throat and gave the typewriter carriage an unnecessary turn.
“There’s something else I should tell you.
Well, you see, I might retire soon. Mabel’s been talking about getting an RV and traveling around the country, spending more time with the grandkids in Virginia and whatnot.
I’m not getting any younger, but Promise needs a newspaper, same as any small town.
Like I always taught you, it’s a community lifeline, but there isn’t—”
“They offered me Cairo,” Dallas interjected before Halpern could finish his heartbreaking plea. His breath slid out in a ragged rush. “Deputy bureau chief.”
Halpern rocked forward, his chair squealing beneath him. “Bureau chief.”
“Deputy,” Dallas said, because it was a significant difference, a full rung lower.
Still, he didn’t want Halpern thinking he considered the Dispatch beneath him. To Dallas, journalism was journalism. He would always be grateful for the time and training he’d received in this office.
And Halpern was right, Promise needed the Dispatch.
As the silence dragged, same as it had with Gabi after he’d shared things he usually kept locked down, Dallas wished he hadn’t said anything. Honesty made him feel exposed. He was only used to that on the page.
“Cairo changes things,” Halpern said solemnly.
Dallas should have said yes, it changed everything.
It was the promotion he’d been waiting for.
Working toward. A dream job with less risk—not gone, because peril never disappeared in his line of work, but reduced.
Deputy bureau chief meant someone thought he’d earned the right to make the call instead of chase the call. It was huge.
Traitorously, he thought of Gabi Wilder’s laugh and his brothers at breakfast this morning, joking with him over scorched toast and runny eggs. Of how this office smelled like stale ink and home.
He didn’t know what scared him more: the panic when he considered staying or the flicker of elation running beneath it.
Dallas True looked like a rock-star professor.
Gabi stood at his cottage’s back door and peered through the kitchen window, her smile growing despite the nervous energy running through her.
He had a floral dishrag tucked into the waist of his standard faded jeans while he sang softly to something—she couldn’t hear the song, but she could see his lips moving.
His T-shirt—charcoal-gray, with No Comment stamped across the chest—had a hole near the hem and another on the shoulder.
Half-turning, he grabbed a Coors and took a slow pull off the bottle.
He had really nice lips, the top almost as full as the bottom.
And his glasses…
She hadn’t known those were a turn-on until they were. Very Clark Kent.
The setting only made the night feel more like a secret.
Moonlit and tucked at the edge of the True family’s barren cotton field, the cottage had been vacant before Fontana restored it and turned the place into something enchanted, a gingerbread house with ferns, azaleas, and violets crowding the gravel paths.
She wouldn’t have said it matched Dallas’s restless, sharp-edged energy.
But seeing him standing before a stove littered with pots and an iron skillet, singing softly to himself, she had to admit she’d rushed to fill in the blanks too soon.
She’d held on to the rumors, the stereotype of the rebellious teen who’d left for bigger dreams, while missing the reality of the man who’d returned.
The man who’d gotten her off in minutes. Who’d read her body like one of those books tucked in his back pocket.
Gabi exhaled and shifted from one boot to the other, accepting the slow pulse of desire between her legs. Dallas had known exactly how to touch her—while her ex had needed directions and a flashlight.