As if reading her mind, Dillon told her, “Anything between Maura and me has long since died. But that doesn’t change the fact that I am Julie’s dad and Julie wants a chance to get to know me. Maura is just going to have to find a way to deal with it,” he said with finality. “I guess,” Dillon continued after a moment, “getting kicked in the teeth that way at seventeen permanently destroyed any tendency I might have had to view romance with any sort of a positive, rosy attitude.”
She knew what he was telling her. That he wasn’t able to open himself up and care for her the way she wanted him to because he’d been permanently scarred at a young age. She fought the urge to tell him that she wasn’t like Maura, but she sensed that he had already opened himself up far more than he had intended to and that she shouldn’t push it. So she refrained.
Instead she said, “Not everyone is like Maura.”
“No,” Dillon agreed, “they’re not. But putting myself out there and possibly setting myself up for a fall is just too painful. Besides, since Julie is in Fort Lauderdale, my place is there if I ever hope to form any sort of relationship with my daughter.”
He took a deep breath and looked directly into Hailey’s eyes. “What I’m trying to say is that I’m not free to start anything that would lead to a relationship between us. I can’t promise you that I’m going to stick around,” he said flatly. Dillon took her hands in his. “As a matter of fact, I can probably promise you the exact opposite.” He looked at Hailey seriously. “I’m not about to give up on Julie.”
“I wouldn’t ask you to,” Hailey replied in total sincerity.
Dillon knew she thought she meant that, but things had a habit of changing. There was a time he could have sworn that Maura loved him, but he had turned out to be wrong.
“That’s what you say now,” Dillon began, “but—”
Hailey placed her finger to his lips, stopping him before he could say anything further. “Why don’t we just take this one day at a time and see where it leads?” she suggested.
In his heart, he welcomed that because he really didn’t want to just walk away from Hailey. Not while they could still see each other. But he did have his doubts about the arrangement.
“You’d be okay with that?” Dillon asked her in surprise.
“Yes,” she answered with a smile. “Look, I know we’re in Texas, but I’m not about to throw a lasso over you and hog-tie you so you can’t get away. Listen,” she continued, “I wouldn’t want you if you were uncomfortable being in this relationship just as you wouldn’t want me if I was uncomfortable.” Then she added what she felt was the clinching argument. “Just as you let Maura go because she said she wasn’t comfortable being in a relationship with you.”
He looked at her for a long moment. Hailey was making a valid point and it was definitely something for him to think about. But he still knew in the back of his mind that he was going to have trouble putting his fears to rest. Like the very real fear that, if he suddenly decided to stay and opened up his heart to Hailey, something might still happen to make her abruptly change her mind and terminate any sort of relationship that was growing between them.
Once burnt, twice leery...
Still, for now, Dillon felt himself relenting...just a little.
“Like you said, one step at a time,” he replied, nodding his head.
Last night had shown her that Dillon knew exactly how to set her world on fire. If he couldn’t just leap headlong into a relationship with her without looking back, she was just going to have to find a way to live with that, Hailey told herself.
Live with it and hope for the best. She was going to show Dillon how steadfast she could be and, more importantly, that she was nothing at all like the woman who had crippled his heart.
Chapter Sixteen
Dillon and Hailey continued seeing one another during any free time they could find and stitch together. It was a tall order between his construction projects and her work at the spa. The latter was currently deemed to be another success for Callum and the company, but that didn’t mean she had the luxury of dropping the ball either figuratively or literally. She worked exceeding hard, which made any free time she spent with Dillon that much more precious and sweet.
However, whenever they did find small islands of time to spend together, Hailey couldn’t shake the feeling that they weren’t really alone. The specter of Maura and Dillon’s failed romance was always there with them in the background, like a nebulous prophesy of doom.
And then, after what had been a promising start, their relationship stalled like a manual transmission stuck in second gear.
Try as she might, Hailey couldn’t seem to convince Dillon to loosen up and really take a chance on them.
Added to that was another concurrent problem. Maura continued to throw a wrench into any headway their relationship could have made by refusing to budge on the subject of Julie. The woman was determined that Julie just wouldn’t have any sort of a relationship with Dillon.
Ever.
All this made Dillion leery of beginning a new romance. The only time he’d fallen in love, he’d made a mess of things. How could he expect a different result now?
He hadn’t expected his twelve-year-old daughter to indirectly provide a solution by finding a way to work around every roadblock Maura
