Love Thy Neighbor by Sophie Wintner Page A

may have thought she’d had good sex before, but Dallas knew he could push her beyond her limitations and take her someplace she’d never gone before.
    He caught himself. Be real, man. Who’s kidding who? He couldn’t do that to someone like Nikki. She wasn’t the “hit it and quit it” type. And he wasn’t the type of guy to stick around. He knew he shouldn’t have kissed her at the door when they got home last night, but he couldn’t help himself.
    He was dying for this girl, and he was sure now that it wasn’t because he knew he couldn’t have her. Up until last night he’d worried about his motivations, and he didn’t want to be that guy. The one who’d pull an asshole move like that on a girl like Nikki. He was relieved that his feelings were genuine.
    Even if they did scare the shit out of him.
    Still, he’d have to exercise more restraint from now on. He wouldn’t play with her head or her heart. Not when she was the kind of girl you romanced and fell in love with. The kind you made your girlfriend and then your wife.
    Wait —Dallas wiped the sleep from his eyes— did I really run all that through my head? That was a shocker. What was this girl doing to him? And what was the point of fantasizing about her when he knew how it would all play out?
    How many times had he met a woman, turned on the charm, turned on the romance, and turned up the heat only to have it snuffed out a day, a week, or a month later? He wasn’t a relationship guy. And as much as he longed for something intimate, longed to open his heart to a woman, in the end, it always clamped shut on him.
    Any number of his exes could have told him why. Wasn’t it Cheryl who said, “Abandonment issues.” And Susan, who said he was a textbook commitment-phobe. Rhonda had begged him to go see a therapist, to which Dallas laughed, Yeah, like that’s ever going to happen. He didn’t need a therapist to point out what he already knew.
    When your mother ups and leaves when you’re six years old, but takes your kid brother, it’ll do a number on you. If your own mother can walk out on you, a girlfriend could do the same thing. If your own mother didn’t love you enough to stay, what woman ever would? That’s why he was always the first to leave. Make a preemptive strike. Don’t ever set yourself up to be left behind again.
    Even those few times when he’d thought he’d met someone he could truly care for, even when he initially fought that urge to up and leave, it was always a matter of time before his emotions shut down and he had to make his escape.
    “Do you want to be alone forever?” one woman had asked him.
    The answer was no. Of course not. He would love to have a woman, a woman like Nikki Norris. Forever. He could picture her in his bed, asleep beside him, cuddled up against his body, her hair sweeping across his chest. Her warm, sweet breath on his neck.
    It was easy to imagine himself getting up, trying to be quiet, hoping not the wake her as he’d go downstairs to make the coffee and fry up some eggs and bacon. He’d bring it all upstairs to her along with the Sunday paper. They’d lie in bed and work the crossword puzzle together and make love until they were too spent for more. He could envision an easy afternoon on the couch, watching a movie, or the two of them reading in front of the fireplace, making dinner together, and later, making love some more. That was his idea of a perfect day. His idea of a perfect relationship. But he knew that was just a far-fetched dream because dammit, he could also picture Nikki Norris walking out the door forever.
    He glanced over at the clock. It wasn’t even eight o’clock yet, but he couldn’t lie in bed all day fantasizing about a woman who wasn’t available to him. Dallas flung off the covers, stepped his naked, still semi-hard body into a pair of jeans, and jogged down the spiral staircase. He walked through his loft and went to get the Sunday paper.
    When Dallas opened the