He chuckled because he was relieved and jerked his head toward the stairs. “It’s in the garage.”
“Great. I’ll be right there.”
He went down ahead of her, and she put on a robe and came to join him.
He held the door going into the garage for her to come through. Then he pointed at the giant box that contained his mother’s fourteen-foot artificial Christmas tree, which already had the lights on it. “It’s that beast right there.”
Her eyes went wide. “Wow. That’s bigger than I expected.”
“That’s what I thought when I first saw it.” He rested his hands on his hips. “You still game to give it a try?”
“Of course. Why not?”
She got on one end, he on the other, and they managed to lift it. From there, he did his best to bear most of the weight as she helped carry it inside. “You okay?” he asked as they struggled to squeeze it through the door.
“Fine. You?”
“I’m happy I’m not trying to do this on my own,” he admitted.
They both blew out a sigh and dusted off their hands once they’d maneuvered the tree into the living room and put it by the window where it could be set up. “Thanks,” he said. “Now...what would you like to eat?”
“How extensive are your cooking skills?” she teased.
“I live in my van half the year, so keep that in mind.”
“Not a wide repertoire, huh?”
“I typically eat greens and beans. As long as I get enough protein and vitamins, I don’t care too much about the taste. I’m definitely no chef.”
“An omelet?” she queried.
“That I can do.”
She went up to remove her robe while he returned to the kitchen.
“Any word from Tommy?” he asked when she was back and pouring a cup of coffee from the pot he’d put on as soon as he got up.
“Nothing yet,” she said. “I checked as soon as I rolled out of bed. I’d really like to hear what he has to say. Maybe he was aware of Ethan’s hidden camera. It’s possible I’m not the first woman Ethan ever recorded. If Ethan made a joke about filming his sexual exploits, or Tommy saw him purchase the equipment or found the packing material in the trash, it could make a big difference in my case.”
“It’d be awesome if he ran across the camera months ago.”
“Wouldn’t it?” She added a dash of cream to her coffee. “My attorney would be so excited. He called me this morning. He plans to file the paperwork tomorrow.”
“So only one more day before Ethan and the station learn that you’re coming after them?”
“Yup.” She took a careful sip. “And I’m a little scared. I haven’t blocked Ethan’s number. Since I didn’t get anything useful out of him last night, I’m hoping being served with a lawsuit will set him off, make him say something he wouldn’t have said otherwise.”
The ding of the microwave signaled that the bacon was done. As Dallas got it out, he could easily imagine how angry Ethan might get. “Are you sure you should even answer if he does call?”
“I have to. He won’t say anything on voice mail. He knows I could play that for someone else, but he doesn’t know I’m recording our conversations. I’ll have a much better chance of having him go ballistic and screw up if I answer.”
“True. Last night, I got the impression he’s really torn. He wants you back, so he’s tempted to play nice, but he’s angry that you don’t want him, which makes him act badly instead. I just... I hate to think of what he might say to you.”
“That’s exactly how it is. When we first broke up, he alternated between bringing me gifts, telling me he loved me and sending flowers to making me think he might explode. And as things progressed, and he realized I really wasn’t coming back, he got nastier and nastier.”
Finished cooking her omelet, Dallas brought it to the table. “How nasty did he get?”
“Called me every name in the book, said I’d never amount to anything without him, that I’d come crawling back on my knees, that I wasn’t good in bed anyway—you name it.” She carried her cup to the table and sat down. “He hurled every hurtful thing he could at me. Then, as if that wasn’t bad enough, I came out from work one day to find a dog pile in the driver’s seat of my car.”
Dallas had already started to make his own omelet. “You’ve got to be kidding me.”
“No.”
“And you think it was him?”
“Had to be. I almost always lock my car, but I was running late that morning, the parking lot was fenced and we had a security guard at the door of the building, so I didn’t bother digging out my key fob.”
He hesitated while chopping more onion. “But the security guard didn’t see anything?”
“No. That’s another reason I think it had to be Ethan. The security guard would recognize Ethan’s car, so I doubt he’d bother to watch him from the moment he parked to the moment he walked into the building. It would be easy for Ethan to leave that ‘smelly bomb’ for me as he passed my car.”
Dallas dabbed the last of the bacon with a paper towel. “Does Ethan have a dog?”
“No. Which is why he claimed it couldn’t be him. But when the dog pile thing happened, he was pretty angry. The day before, I refused to let him come over, and I saw this weird look in his eye. It was like he suddenly hated me. He was embarrassed that I would break up with him, didn’t want anyone to think he couldn’t have me or any other woman he wanted, but I’d had enough. By then I’d realized he’s not a nice person.” She finally took a bite of her omelet and chewed slowly before saying with complete conviction, “I know in my gut that it was him.”
Dallas used a spatula to turn his own
