Page 16 of Camilla & Dallas
“Don’t move,” Dallas whispered.
She wanted to look up at him, to see his eyes, drink him in. If this moment was going to be her last, she didn’t want to spend it crouching down in the dirt before being taken out by the wolf that was only a few yards away. “Wh-what… do I do?” she whispered back.
“Just… don’t… move.”
She could hear the sound of Dallas moving. The petty part of her wanted to call him a hypocrite for doing whatever it was he thought was more important than staying still.
But then the sound of a shotgun echoed through the air. She startled, a scream nearly ripping from her throat. Ears ringing, she tore her gaze from the wolf to see that Dallas had a shotgun aimed in the direction of the wolf.
The animal had darted from the clearing at the sound of the shot, but Camilla couldn’t bring herself to rise to her feet. Herheart felt like it was beating a hundred miles a minute. Her legs shook and her hands trembled. There wasn’t a chance she’d be able to utter a single word to the man standing behind her.
She blinked up at him, shock drenching every part of her body.
With finesse, Dallas draped the shotgun at his back once more. She’d noticed the gun when he’d pulled it from the ATV, but she hadn’t questioned why he’d grabbed it. Her brothers frequently went hunting out in these woods—or rather, they used to before work got busy.
His ice blue eyes found hers, and for a moment they just stared at each other. There wasn’t a doubt in her mind that Dallas had saved her life. He’d acted quickly. And now, she was falling in love with him all over again for doing so.
Yet the only words that came from her lips were terse. “Youshotat him?”
Dallas’s sharp eyes cut to meet hers. If she wasn’t still shaking from her nerves, she might have laughed. The look of pure confusion written in the lines on his face was such that she almost wanted to take back what she’d just said.
He stared at her for a moment, then gestured wildly in the direction the wolf had run to. “Of course not. It was a warning shot. But good to know that you were more concerned for that wolf’s well-being than your own.” He let out a huff. “To be perfectly clear, if he’d charged at us, it wouldn’t havejustbeen a warning shot. And I wouldn’t be losing sleep over it whatsoever.”
Camilla couldn’t help the way her eyes rounded at his confession. The side of her heart that loved animals of all kinds didn’t like it one bit. But the self-preservation that demanded to be dragged to the forefront of the situation was having serious heart-eyes for the man in front of her—the man who’d probably saved her life.
Their gazes remained locked as the rush of adrenaline in her system tapered out. She’d never seen a wolf up close, especially not one that saw her as a threat. It was probably thinking they were in its territory.
Dallas’s soft voice shook her out of her reverie and a chill coursed through her body. “Are you okay?”
She blinked, nodded, then accepted his offering when he held his hand out to her. The zing of electricity between them only increased when he tugged her upward and she nearly collided with his body.
Uneven footing was the least of her problems as she allowed herself to continue her stare. Once upon a time, this man had made her fall head over heels for him with nothing but a smile and wit. He’d been her everything. If he’d asked her to run away with him, she couldn’t say for certain that she wouldn’t have done just that.
Once upon a time?
She’d been in love.
She’d had everything.
And she’d believed they could conquer the world as long as they stuck together.
But that reality felt like a lifetime ago.
The tension between them continued to mount as Dallas’s whisper fanned across her face. “Camilla, I?—”
She nearly leaned into him, nearly allowed herself to go back in time to the reality she still loved to visit in her dreams. But then she blinked and her logic returned. Gently tugging her hand free from his grasp, she cleared her throat and then wiped her hands on her pants. “Let’s see how far out we are from the property line. I think I can use my GPS to get a good idea. If nothing else, I’ll drop a pin so Mateo can see it. I don’t think it’s a good idea to go trekking out right now.” Her eyes flitted to his only briefly, but it wasn’t short enough for her to miss thecrease that formed between his brows—the crease she was all too familiar with—the crease that told her exactly how he felt.
He was hurting.
Camilla shoved that inkling aside. He’d hurt her first. While she didn’t like seeing him hurting, this was the bed he’d made for himself and she wasn’t responsible for fixing it.
She’d made her own bed when it came to Dallas Thorton. They’d never be getting back together, no matter how much her heart seemed to like that idea. She swallowed hard, forced a smile, and turned away from him. After her pin had been dropped and they were on their way back to the house, she allowed herself to finally breathe again.
“Mateo is such a jerk!I can’t believe he made you go out there.”
Camilla sipped on her lemonade as she sat beside Cheyenne on the porch swing. She’d made it a point not to tell her best friend that her brother had also saved her life from a hungry-looking wolf. It would only make matters worse. “Yeah. Not cool,” she murmured absently, her thoughts straying to the way Dallas had looked at her far too easily.
“I mean, I love my brother and all, but you deserve to have your space. Hehurtyou. Doesn’t that count for anything?”
