Chapter 16

Dallas was pretty sure that his life had turned perfect. He couldn’t help the smile. In fact, he’d probably be smiling like an idiot for the rest of his life.

Rosie was everything he wanted and more… so much more.

Right now, she was in the kitchen wearing nothing but his shirt and finishing the steaks that she’d started an hour ago. While they ate, they were going to watch the first season of Farscape.

Sex, steak, and a sci-fi marathon. What more could a man ask for?

The world around them was washing away. People had been hurt, lives and property had been lost, but here in their little bubble, life was wonderful.

He wanted to tell Rosie that he loved her, but it was too soon.

Was it really though?

Didn’t women want to hear “I love you”? Plenty of women had told him that they loved him and had cried when he hadn’t said the words back. Now he was on the other end of the situation—what if Rosie didn’t say it back?

Yep, it was too early to tell her. Besides his mother, he’d never said those three little words to a woman. Now that he thought about it, he’d never said that phrase to anyone outside of his family. And he could probably count on one hand the number of times he’d said it to them.

He was definitely not an “I love you” slut. Maybe he should make that clear to Rosie before he told her. Otherwise, she might think he used the words “I love you” like hipsters used the word “like.”

How exactly was he supposed to show her that he didn’t take those three little words lightly?

Love was turning out to be way more complicated than he’d thought.

Talking to women had never been his problem. Worth, on the other hand, overthought everything, which led to shyness. Dallas was the verbal twin, while Worth was the mechanical twin. That had always been their roles, at least until Rosie had come along and turned Worth into a silver-tongued devil.

She walked into the bedroom with a plate and silverware in each hand. She set the plates down on the nightstand. “I’ll get the wine.”

“Wine?” He could stand to spend the next million nights just like this one. “I thought there was only white wine in the fridge.”

She walked back in holding two wine glasses in one hand and a bottle of Rowdy’s Rustic Sauvignon Blanc in the other. “Don’t tell Rowdy that we’re having white wine with red meat. I’m not sure he could take that news.”

“I never discuss wine with my older brother. He throws out terms no regular person would know, which makes me feel inferior, which makes me angry, which makes me deck him.” Everyone in the family knew not to discuss wine with Rowdy. It wasn’t worth the hassle.

“You and all of your brothers punch each other a lot.” She set the glasses next to the plates and poured the wine.

“It’s how we communicate. I like to think of it as a love beatdown.” Crap, now she’d think that he punched everyone he loved. “I don’t punch everyone I love, only my brothers.”

He reviewed that last sentence in his mind. Yep, it made sense.

“My sisters and I don’t punch each other, but we do argue loudly.” She laughed. “The first time Hugh came over for dinner with my family, he put his hands over his ears because we were all being so loud.”

“The Rose clan has been known to get a little boisterous at times.” He watched her walk over to the other side of the bed.

He handed her a plate and one set of silverware and then took the other plate and set it in his lap. “Do you want me to keep your wine on the nightstand, or do you want to balance it in your lap?”

“On the nightstand is fine.” She glanced at the empty space next to her side of the bed. “I thought two nightstands was one nightstand too much, but I can see that we really need two in here.”

It sounded like she was taking mental notes.

“Then it’s good that we’re testing the room out before the B&B goes live.” Right after the words left his mouth, he wanted to thunk himself on the forehead. This was the only room left of her B&B.

“Well, now we have lots of time to test things out.” She sighed long and hard. “I’m choosing to see this as an opportunity to fix all of the things we did wrong.”

“Like what?” He couldn’t imagine that there was much that Rosie did wrong. She didn’t need do-overs because she planned everything to within an inch of its life.

“No idea. We didn’t get far enough into things to have problems.” She cut a dainty bite of steak and brought it to her mouth.

“Sorry about your B&B.” He watched her carefully. He could see that she was retreating inward. It seemed that in times of crisis, she looked inward. Or maybe she just wanted to hide from the pain of it. He hadn’t meant to make her sad. “Let’s talk about something else. Hugh was so excited to be handing out flan.”

A wide smile spread across her face. “I love that kid. He used to come and stay with us when Justus was out of town and her father and stepmother were also out of town. We never had a little brother, so my sisters and I didn’t know what to expect. He charmed every one of us into doing whatever he wanted.”

“Four women to wait on him hand and foot. Every man’s dream.”

Rosie punched him playfully in the arm. “Justus always said that it took a good two weeks to beat the Gomez out of him because we spoiled him so much.” She shot Dallas an I’m-sorry look. “Without a doubt, Hugh’s my most favorite male in the whole wide world.”

“Hey now, I’m pretty awesome.” He tried not to sound like a whiny baby, but Hugh was moving in on his girl. To be fair, Hugh had been there first, but still.

“Again with the needy.” She stabbed a green bean and popped it in her mouth. Her face blanched and it seemed all she could do not to spit it out. She chewed and chewed and finally swallowed it. “Sorry, those are terrible. I didn’t have much to work with.”

Based on her reaction, he was steering clear of the green beans. He cut into his steak. It was a perfect medium rare. He tasted it. It just about melted on his tongue. “This is wonderful.”

“Thank you. It is pretty good, if I do say so myself.” She popped in another bite.

“So tell me more about yourself.” He felt like when it came to her interests and her life, he’d only touched the tip of the iceberg.

She swallowed the bite in her mouth. “What do you want to know?”

“Everything. Start at the beginning.” He was ready to jump in to their life together.

“I’m going to need wine.” She pointed to her wineglass.

He handed it to her.

“There’s really not much. My childhood left a lot to be desired—you know that part. My mother died, and my much-older sisters took me in.” She downed half of the wine. “I started planning events in college. It turns out that I was really good at it. After graduation, I went into business as an event planner. At the end of my first year, I got the opportunity to plan a huge, high-profile wedding. After that, it was weddings all the time.” She sipped her wine. It didn’t go unnoticed that she gulped while talking about her childhood but only sipped when talking about life after childhood. She’d told him everything about her mother, and the woman had sounded pretty awful, but clearly it still hurt her to talk about her childhood. “That’s not strictly true. I did a few other events, but mainly I planned weddings.” She smiled. “For the most part, I enjoyed it.”

“Why give it up?” Not that he wanted her to return to wedding planning, since it would mean her leaving the ranch.

“It’s time. I’ve enjoyed it, but it’s time for a new challenge. Planning a wedding at Burning Man with absolutely no amenities, and now finishing my career with the wedding of the year for one of my best friends—I couldn’t ask for a better ending.” She was completely sincere.

“No regrets?” He just wanted to make sure. He would hate for her to leave a career that she loved.

She shook her head. “None. I would regret it if I didn’t try the B&B. It was my idea. I’m excited at the prospect of starting something new.” She rolled her eyes. “I was, I mean. And I guess I still am.” She opened her mouth to say more and then closed it.

“What?” He never wanted to leave things unsaid.

“I don’t… I mean, I feel…” She blew a stray lock of hair out of her eyes. “I feel like a whiny little baby because I’m upset about losing the B&B. In light of all of the devastation, I feel horrible that I’m sad about something that isn’t that important.”

“It’s important to you. It’s okay for you to feel a loss.” He’d never seen the vulnerable side of Rosie. She seemed softer, and it only made her more loveable.

“So many people have lost family members, not to mention their homes. It feels self-centered to mourn the loss of my business.” She held up a hand. “Rephrase. The temporary loss of my business. We’re insured and we’ll build again.” She gritted her teeth and shook her head. “It just feels petty.”

She handed him her wineglass, and he set it on the nightstand.

“It’s your turn. Tell me about you.” She popped another steak bite into her mouth.

“Not much to tell.” Compared to her, there really wasn’t much to tell. “Average childhood. Came home after college and started working for the family business.” He thought about it for a second. “I just noticed that I’m pretty boring.”

“Come on. There’s more to you than just that.” She folded her legs under her and turned inquisitive eyes on him. “You run the hunting and game side of the business and the exotic-animal ranch. From what I hear, you’ve built up a revenue stream that didn’t exist before. That’s impressive.”

“I guess. I’ve never really thought about it.” He worked hard. She was right. He had built something from the ground up. “You’ve been checking up on me.”

“I’m not going to lie. I might have done some research on you. Former volunteer firefighter and lover of animals… I might have seen a few articles online about you.” She reached for her iPad on the bed and then changed her mind. “Ugh, no internet. If we had internet, I’d show you.”

“You found articles about me?” Why in the hell would anyone write an article about him?

“What? You’ve never googled yourself?” She reached for her iPad again and then stopped herself. “I seem to be going through internet withdrawal. I’ve never really thought of myself as tech obsessed, but here I am whining about the internet.”

He covered her hand with his, brought her hand to his lips, and kissed her palm. “We’re a product of our environment. We can’t help but be dependent on the internet. What must it have been like before the internet? Back in the dinosaur age, when people had cellphones that only called other people.” He shook his head. “That’s just craziness right there.”

“I know. I vaguely remember life before high-speed internet. I think we had to use a modem—you know, that thing that calls the internet.” She set her fork and knife on her plate and placed it next to her. “Just think, in the future our children will sit and wonder how we made it through life with lowly old smartphones.”

He liked the sound of “our children.”

“I can’t even imagine what their world will be like.” He set his plate on the nightstand and pointed to hers. “Are you finished?”

“Yes.” She drew her knees to her chest. “Maybe all travel will be via transporter. It would be nice to hit a button and be able to have dinner in Paris and then be back at home, sleeping in my bed.”

Did he get to come along? He’d be happy sleeping in her bed too.

She rested her chin on her knees. “Who knows? Maybe everything will be virtual by then. You won’t have to leave your house to do anything. Just put on the VR glasses and go.” She wrinkled her nose. “Call me old school, but VR doesn’t interest me. Unless it’s the holodeck like in Star Trek. At the touch of a button you could be back in the Roaring Twenties or become a rock-and-roll star. There’s some appeal in that.”

“So, you want to be a rock star?” He couldn’t see it.

“No, thanks. I’m good. Fame has never appealed to me.” She snuggled up against him. “How about you? Do you secretly want the whole world to know your name?”

“I don’t know about people knowing my name, but I did have a brush with fame.” It was as close to fame as he ever wanted to be.

“Really? What did you do?” She rested her arm on his chest.

“Remember that volunteer firefighter’s job? We had a calendar. I was Mr. July.” He’d never felt more self-conscious than he had at that photo shoot. Well, until he’d met Rosie and lost his ability to form sentences.

“Really? I wonder how hard it will be to get my hands on a copy.” She looked up at him through her lashes. “I will of course demand that you sign it.”

“For you, I’ll even include a personal inscription.” He put his arm around her. “I might be able to fix you up with a copy. I hear my mother bought several hundred. I still don’t know if she did it because she was proud or she just wanted to support the local volunteer fire department.”

“Come on, she’s the proudest mother I’ve ever met. Her family is the most important thing to her.” Rosie played with a stray string on the comforter. “Why did you give up volunteer firefighting?”

“It turns out that the calendar worked a little too well. We made enough money to hire our first two full-time firefighters. The city kicked in some money and we got some state funding and now we have eleven full-time firefighters.” He hunched a shoulder. “It’s probably for the best. I was a terrible firefighter. Honestly, I did it for the girls.”

“What girls?” She did that one-eyebrow-up thing.

“I know this is shocking, but there are some women who are turned on by a man in uniform.” He didn’t think that applied to Rosie, but if it did—who was he kidding, it probably did—he’d scrounge together a uniform and wear it every single day.

“Do volunteer firefighters have uniforms?” She snuggled into his arm and rested her head on his shoulder.

“Yes, matching windbreakers and baseball caps count as a uniform.” Would he always be this happy just being with Rosie?

“That sounds like the neighborhood watch in the building where we used to live.” She laughed. “When I moved in with Louisa, I thought the people in the red windbreakers were a street gang. She pointed out that they were all over the age of seventy and carrying flashlights and not guns. She said that if they did start their own gang, they’d all break a hip while protecting their turf.”

“Louisa sounds interesting.” He couldn’t wait to meet her and the rest of Rosie’s sisters.

“She’s intense. There’s no denying that.” Rosie’s voice was neutral, so he couldn’t tell if that was good or bad. “I owe them a lot.”

“Why do you feel that you owe them?” He drew lazy circles on her upper back. She calmed him, and he hoped he did the same for her.

“They put their lives on hold to take care of me.” She obviously loved her sisters. Why did she think she owed them? Family took care of family, at least they did in his world.

“Have they ever mentioned to you that you owe them?” He continued the lazy circles on her back.

“No, but I feel that I do. They kept me out of foster care.”

“Have they ever made you feel that you owe them?” He hated to make her talk about something that upset her, but she needed to talk it out.

Not that Dallas was much of a talker-outer, but this was some heavy stuff she’d been dealing with, and he wanted to help her through it.

“No, I just know I do.” She thought about it for a second. “Don’t I? I guess they’ve never said anything about me owing them…”

She pursed her mouth, and he could tell she was doing some deep thinking.

“Suppose you had a little sister and she needed a place to live and you took her in. Would she owe you?” He wanted to help her to see all sides of the situation.

“No. I would be happy to take her in. I never thought of it that way.” She smiled. “I would have loved to have had a little sister.”

“See, I don’t think your sisters believe that you owe them.” He kept on with the lazy circles on her back. She didn’t seem to mind. “Does this have something to do with your mother?”

She stared off into space like she was sifting through memories. She took a deep breath and let it out slowly. “My mother used to look at me and say, ‘What have you done today to justify living?’ She always made me feel so small and useless.”

“Christ. She was awful to you. No one deserves that.” Too bad she was already dead. Was peeing on the woman’s grave insult enough? He couldn’t think of anything worse to do to her. “I don’t suppose you’d tell me where she’s buried.”

“We had her cremated. She wanted her ashes scattered over Lake Travis.” One side of Rosie’s mouth turned up in a smile. “Louisa tied a rock to the urn and tossed it off Red Bud Isle in Lady Bird Lake instead. I don’t know why.”

He wasn’t all that familiar with Austin, but he knew Red Bud Isle was where people’s dogs went swimming. There were dogs peeing on that urn. “This might seem like a weird question, but how did your mother feel about dogs?”

“She completely loathed them.” Rosie thought about it for a second before awareness kicked in. “Now I get why Louisa went out of her way not to respect my mother’s wishes.” She nodded against his shoulder. “Now that I look back on it, I love Louisa even more.” She looked up at him. “Thanks for making me see that.”

“You’re welcome.” He hoped this was just the first time of many that he would be able to comfort her.