Page 25 of Love Songs (Harmony Lake #3)

“I’M PRETTY SURE it’s only been ten seconds since the last time you checked your watch,” Sam said, motioning toward said watch with his beer bottle.

We were sitting at our usual table in the back of Lucy’s Pub for our regular Friday night beers.

Just my besties and me tonight. Adam was under deadline working on a new book, Ben was still at the library, and Phillip was back in Germany for a couple of weeks.

But I was having a hell of a time sitting still.

My phone felt like the business end of a branding iron in my back jeans pocket, drawing near all my attention while I anxiously waited for it to vibrate with an incoming text.

“Yeah.” Haider rocked forward on his chair, the sheen of his pink collared shirt catching the light like a beacon. “What’s going on?”

I glanced around the table and shrugged. “Nothing?”

Ugh . I’d been going for nonchalant, but that pesky inflection ruined my whole playing it cool vibe. I mentally crossed my fingers, hoping they didn’t pick up on that.

Three laser-focused gazes locked on me.

Nope . They caught it.

“Was that a question?” Ryan asked after a few long and uncomfortable seconds. Then, grinning, he turned to Sam and Haider for confirmation.

Haider nodded, his curls bouncing. “Sounded like a question to me.”

“Yep,” Sam said, popping the p . “That was definitely a question.”

“You guys are assholes,” I sniped without heat. I flopped back in my chair with a huff and crossed my arms. “I don’t know how we’re still friends.”

“Because you love us.” Sam dug a peanut out of the nut bowl in the middle of the table and chucked it at me. It bounced off my biceps and fell to the floor. “Now spill.”

I blew out a resigned sigh. They weren’t about to let me off the hook.

“He’s back,” I said, not needing to clarify who I meant after my mini breakdown the other day.

They stared at me in silence for all of two seconds, and the ambient noise of the pub—conversation, laughter, clinking glass, fans cheering the baseball game on the TV—seemed deafening in those brief seconds.

“Then what are you doing here?” Haider gasped, breaking the silent standoff.

“It’s Friday,” I said, stating the obvious. We always met up on Friday, but also, Dallas hadn’t texted yet and there was no way I could wait at home by myself without vibrating out of my skin.

Sam and Ryan snorted while Haider stared at me in disbelief. “Every seventh day is Friday.”

“You know what I mean.” I flicked my beer coaster at him. He dodged it neatly and preened, puffing his chest out.

My jeans pocket buzzed, and I damn near spilled my drink in my rush to retrieve my phone. Ignoring the guys, I opened the text app to see a message from Dallas, and my heart did a funny little hop, skip, and jump.

Dallas: We’re at the inn, if you’d still like to come over .

Pfft. In what world wouldn’t I?

Dallas: We’re in the cottage suite .

I downed the last two gulps of my virgin tequila sunrise—I hadn’t wanted to drink anything alcoholic if I was going to be meeting Dallas’s daughter—and plunked my empty glass back on the table with a thud.

“Gotta go, guys.” I threw some bills on the table to cover my drink and launched from my chair so fast it threatened to topple.

Amusement flashed in Sam’s eyes. Ryan was grinning, and Haider snickered.

“We want to hear all the juicy details later,” Haider called out as I headed for the exit.

“I don’t kiss and tell,” I shouted over my shoulder.

Hearty laughter and Haider’s “Since when?” followed me out the door.

We’d always told each other about our exploits—most of the time—but Dallas wasn’t an exploit.

Being with him felt different. What we did, the time we spent together, had more meaning somehow—was precious—and I didn’t want to share that with anyone. Not even my best friends.

I made it to the Lakeside Inn as fast as the speed limit allowed and sat in my truck to collect myself for a minute while my heart raced and my pulse pounded like I’d run full tilt up the side of a mountain. I didn’t want to come across like one of his overexuberant fans.

Maybe thirty seconds later, because I couldn’t wait any longer, I climbed out of my truck, adjusted my shirt, and inhaled a deep breath before strolling across the parking lot and inside. I paused at the door to the cottage suite to wipe my clammy palms on my jeans-clad thighs, then knocked.

Did my knock sound shaky, or is that just me ?

The door opened and there he was. More gorgeous than I remembered with his long, blond-dipped hair and electric blue eyes and that breath-catching smile of his lighting up his handsome face.

My heart literally swelled in my chest, and the dark cloud that had settled over me after he’d left cleared.

Somehow, standing two feet from him, simply being in his presence, the world seemed to right itself.

“You’re here,” Dallas said, and I swear he purred. His voice was a low rasp and his eyes overbright.

“Is that him?” An exuberant female voice called from deeper within the suite, and a second later, a pink-streaked blonde-haired head poked in between the door frame and Dallas’s shoulder.

I grinned when I saw the young girl who could only be Dallas’s daughter.

“So . . . You’re Conor,” she said with a blinding smile and mischievous blue eyes as electric as her dad’s. “The hot firefighter.”

Ohh , she was a little troublemaker, this one. I liked her already.

“Jay . . .” Dallas groaned, flashing me an apologetic look as a light blush bloomed into his cheeks.

He was adorable. She was adorable. And I might’ve fallen a little in love just then.

“The one and only,” I reached my hand out to shake hers, but she tugged me forward and gave me a hug. “And you must be Jaylin.”

She let me go and grinned. “The one and only.”

“Oh my god. I think introducing you two is a mistake,” Dallas teased as he opened the door wider and waved me inside.

The three of us stood there for an extended beat, grinning while looking at each other.

All I wanted to do was pull Dallas into my arms, press him up against the wall, and kiss him breathless, but I didn’t think that was proper in front of his teenage daughter.

Not when she was staring at us with her gaze bouncing back-and-forth between me and her dad, and her smile growing wider.

Until Jaylin snorted and broke the moment.

Dallas seemed to jerk out of his daze with a chuckle. “I’m glad you’re here.”

“Wouldn’t be anywhere else,” I said honestly.

We fell into another silent lull of awe that Jaylin broke yet again.

“So,” she dragged out, her gaze settling on Dallas, and the corners of her peach-pink lips curled into a grin. “I’m hungry.”

“You two haven’t eaten yet?” I asked, raising my eyebrows. I hadn’t had dinner either, just nibbled on some snacks at the pub, but that was only because I’d been too amped up to eat while waiting for Dallas to arrive.

“No.” Dallas shook his head. “We had some pastries from Mabel’s Bistro when we got into town earlier, but nothing since lunch.”

I bit back a frown at learning they’d been down the road from Lucy’s Pub while I was there and wondered why he hadn’t texted me then.

“Well then,” I beamed at Jaylin, quashing my wounded ego. “Let’s get you fed.”

Dinner was a whole lot more relaxing than I’d thought it would be.

Jaylin was charming and regaled me with stories of her school friends, what it was like having a famous rock star for a dad, and the horse she rode in upstate New York, where she stayed when Dallas toured.

She didn’t mention her mom, and I didn’t want to pry.

Loss was hard. I’d sure as hell seen a lot on the job, felt some of it personally, too, and everyone dealt with it in their own ways.

When Jaylin yawned, Dallas chuckled and said, “Well, I guess it’s time to get this one to bed.”

Jaylin snorted. “It’s not even that late.”

I glanced at my watch, shocked to see that it was close to ten in the evening. How had the time flown by that fast?

“It is for growing young girls,” Dallas said, and Jaylin rolled her eyes at him.

We walked together to the lobby, the three of us side by side while my stomach roiled with a tendril of dread that this was it. I didn’t want to say goodnight. I didn’t want to go home. Didn’t want to leave Dallas.

We stopped, and that charged silence wrapped around us once again.

“I’m not going to crash out if you two kiss or something,” Jaylin giggled.

With a roll of his eyes at his daughter, Dallas stepped forward and pulled me into his arms. I held him tight in my embrace, reveling at the feel of his body pressed against mine, and I swear my entire being sighed in relief from his touch.

“Give us twenty minutes and come up,” he whispered into my ear. His warm breath sent a shiver down my spine.

I gripped him tighter, nodded once, and stepped back.

“It was nice to meet you, Jaylin,” I said, receiving another bear-like hug from her.

“You too,” she said and waved while Dallas watched with a soft smile. “See you around.”

“See you, Jaylin,” I replied, my voice sounding subdued to my ears.

She tucked her arm into the crook of Dallas’s elbow, then she and Dallas crossed the lobby and disappeared down the hall.

I shoved my hands into my pockets and rocked on my heels. Waiting was hard. Even though he’d just left, waiting to see Dallas again was even harder. I puffed out a breath of pent-up air and sat in one of the comfortable leather chairs in the lobby.

After the longest twenty minutes of my entire life, I rushed back to the cottage suite like I was being chased by the hounds of hell. Instead of knocking when I reached his door, I pulled my phone from my back pocket and sent Dallas a quick text, letting him know I was there.

A second later, the door opened and once again, my stomach swooped at the sight of Dallas standing there. With a heart-melting smile and fire in his eyes, Dallas silently took my hand and led me through the suite and into his bedroom.