Page 40 of True Ruin

“What’s that about?” Of course, Justin was first in line. Nosy bastard.

Dallas felt the color hit his cheeks and didn’t dare look up, focusing instead on turning down his collar. The last thing he needed was this group seeing anything. “It was Fontana. Art lesson at the Children’s Center. Sam’s sick. I gotta go get him.”

Ransom sputtered what sounded too much like a laugh.

“Why you?” Campbell asked. When his wife could have demanded he come, but she was too busy playing matchmaker.

Dallas shrugged and shoved the stuff he’d been working on into his backpack, then slung it over his shoulder. “How should I know?”

“Didn’t you say Gabi’s touring her space at the mill?” This from Justin.

“No phone there yet. No way to reach her.” Campbell.

“That legal? Calling someone who isn’t a relative to get a kid?” Ransom. “Would never happen in New York.”

Dallas counted to ten in French and headed to the door, paused, remembering.Shit. “Can I borrow someone’s car?”

He turned, no way to avoid it now.

They were grinning, every last one of them, even Halpern, who hadn’t smiled this much since Nixon resigned. Four different kinds of smiles, every one of them meant to sting.

“Could be his ballgame you went to Saturday,” Campbell offered. “Making everyone get ideas, I mean.”

“Library with Sam on Tuesday.” Justin.

“Don’t forget that showy motorcycle spectacle with his mama last weekend,” Halpern mumbled around a cigar he had, thank you,God, not lit. “Whole town’s been talking about it. Like something outta—what was the one with the motorcycle?—Top Gun.” He stabbed the cigar in Dallas’s direction. “Why not call you if the little fella’s sick? I think it’s just fine. Just fine.”

Sure he did, because falling in love and marrying Gabi Wilder, a fantasy, would keep him here.

Dallas realized he was doing the brooding thing again, proving what everyone said about him. Black moods and such. Aloofness, every editor he’d ever worked with liked to call it. Well, he wasn’t aloof withher.

“Keys,” he said, snapping his fingers.

It was Justin who came to his rescue, as always, now that Dallas thought about it, tossing him his.

“Be careful,” his brother said before Dallas reached the office door.

He meant more than picking up Gabi’s son. Dallas just knew it.

Sam didn’t seem evena little sick.

Slightly flushed, maybe. Sweaty, his Goosebumps T-shirt sticking to his chest. But otherwise, normal. He’d talked a mile a minute about a thousand different topics on the ride home. How could he remember so much trivial information?

“Where’s your thermometer?” Dallas asked, shoving Sam’s scuffed Reeboks in the rack by the door so Gabi didn’t trip over them on the way in.

Sam pressed his hand to his forehead. “I’m cool as a cucumber,” he announced, earning a chuckle Dallas should have kept hidden. Sam cut his tawny eyes his way, ones so like Gabi’s that it made Dallas’s chest ache. As if he needed another mental keepsake. “But I’m hungry.”

“This seems like a scam,” Dallas whispered, heading to the kitchen.

He tried not to stare on the way there. Tried not to see her everywhere. In the bright throw pillows on the sofa, theBake Memug by the sink, the romance novel beside a vase of fading zinnias. In the cookbook left open on the counter, the dusting of flour near the sink, the pastry box folded flat beside the trash. In the half-finished puzzle on the table, only sky and corner pieces done.

Tried not to smell her, the enticing fragrance that haunted his dreams.

He failed on every front.

“I told Miss Fontana you’d come get me,” Sam added, climbing into a chair at the table and searching through puzzle pieces. He attempted to fit two unsuccessfully before quitting. “We sometimes eat in the living room. On that big coffee table, since this one doesn’t have any room left. I get to watch fifteen minutes of TV if it’s been a good day. Which means I didn’t get any warnings for talking too much or pulling Tabetha Carmicheal’s ponytail again. I got a green for behavior. Green is the best. Red isn’t. And yellow is a big, fat maybe.”

Told Miss Fontana you’d come get me.