For the second time in such a short amount of time, I said something else stupid that I didn’t realize until hours later. “Look, I appreciate you looking out for me, but I’m a grown woman. I can take care of myself.”

“Maybe you can take care of yourself, but have you thought for one single fucking second that maybe somebody else might want to take care of you too?” he growled.

And in that split second, every thought, every emotion, left my body. Just poof. Disappeared.

“You… what?” Was I drunk enough to not understand what was coming out of his mouth? It wouldn’t be the first time, but I didn’t think I was on that level yet.

He reared back, his expression all “are you fucking kidding me?” “Being your friend has been the hardest fucking thing I’ve ever had to do.”

Wait. “It has?” I asked, torn between his comment a moment before and the one that had just come out of his mouth. I’d thought he was trying to say he wanted to take care of me, but now…

“You are the most ridiculous fucking woman I have ever met in my entire life, Diana. Half the time I want to shake you and the other half of the time….” He trailed off, glaring right into my eyes.

In the second that followed that fraction of time, that muscular arm that had slashed across my chest to keep me in place moved. His hand, that long-fingered, callused hand, slid behind my neck, and Dallas kissed me. His lips touched mine, gentle, barely a brush, a whisper of a warm mouth and breath over my own.

And then he went for it. There was no hesitation, no warning peck. That fuller upper lip went over the top of mine, those blunt, white teeth caught my bottom one… and then he was kissing me.

Over and over again. Softer, then softly, then just soft.

Then I didn’t hesitate. I opened my mouth and caught his top lip the instant my brain caught up with what was happening. His mouth slanted over mine, his tongue sliding into the slight opening I’d given him. One tongue against the other, one hand covering the back of my neck while the other clutched at my hip. My hands? They might have been on his ribs, or they might have been on his thighs, I had no idea. All I could think about was Dallas. Dallas, Dallas, Dallas. How much I wanted this. How much I wanted this more than I’d ever wanted just about anything.

My hands kneaded. His hands kneaded.

His lips drifted away from mine, skirting my jaw, sucking an earlobe briefly before he trailed his damp, warm mouth down my neck like he was hungry, like the world was going to end if he didn’t kiss me everywhere with everything in him. His tongue grazed the skin on my throat, his lips skimming before his teeth made contact. And God help me, all I could do was move closer to him, almost climbing on to his lap. I started leaning forward when it hit me.

What the fuck was I doing? He was married. Separated. Same shit.

“Oh my God,” I hissed, rearing back so fast, he was still where I’d left him when his hooded eyes opened. I pointed at him, the blood I usually had in my head going down. “You’re married.”

Dallas blinked slowly. His Adam’s apple bobbed and the hand he had on my thigh stayed exactly where it was as he focused those amazing eyes on me, looking only slightly dazed. “Diana,” he said my name like he’d never said it before as his thumb slipped over my knee. “My divorce was finalized.”

Chapter Twenty-Three

“He’s finally divorced?” Vanessa’s voice was as close to excited as her normally pretty even-temperament allowed her to be. “Since when?”

“Yes!” I, on the other hand, was not so even tempered. I’d been dying to tell her what the hell I’d found out two days ago, but the instant I was up the next morning, I went straight to making breakfast, feeling more than a little like shit from how much I’d drank the night before, and headed right to the salon. By the time I got off work, all I wanted to do was pass out on the couch. I’d fallen asleep two hours after getting home. “A few weeks.”

A few weeks. I still couldn’t wrap my head around that. Weeks. Since right after the fire. When he’d left for a few days.

“What did he say after that?” Van asked.

How could I explain the look he’d given me after he said he wasn’t married anymore? Or how his hand had slid further up my thigh and squeezed my leg like he owned it? There wasn’t a way to. All I had managed to do was sit there looking at him while my heart ran a marathon inside my chest.

“Nothing, I just sat there and stared at him and he stared back at me, and then he drove us home. He parked his truck at his house, walked me home, and all he said was ‘Goodnight, Diana,’” I relayed the information back to her.

“Did you say something to him?”

“I told him thank you for the ride and goodnight?” It hadn’t been my finest moment. I hadn’t even looked him in the eye, but I didn’t tell Van that.

Either way, she still went with “What a chicken.”

“Chicken? Coming from you? Really?”

Vanessa scoffed. “What are you talking about?”

Did I really need to remind her about her non-relationship with her now-husband years ago? “I like him. I don’t know what to do, wah, boohoo,” I recapped.

Her response was a grunt. “Shut up.”

“It’s all right, Chicken Little. Don’t give shit if you can’t take it. At least I told him I sort of liked him before.”

“Now that you mention it, I seem to remember you telling me to quit being a pussy.”