Page 52 of Love Songs

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 thep. “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 thetext 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.

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