Between Friends (32 page)

The auditorium lights went up as the panel left the stage and the tables and chairs were removed. Some people took the opportunity to shift about. Dallas located two empty seats and commandeered them for her and Maureen. She looked around, now seeing and recognizing any number of people she knew.

“What are you doing here?”

Dallas turned at the question and found herself facing Nona.

“Are you spying on me?” she said flippantly.

Dallas ignored the bait. “I was able to get more tickets. How’s the program so far? I just got here with a friend.”

Nona grinned. “Not with your boyfriend?”

“You mean Burke? No. He couldn’t have made it anyway.”

“Is that what he told you?”

Dallas frowned. “What do you mean by that?”

“I’m not trying to start anything, but some men you have to keep on a short leash.”

“Dallas …”

The two women turned their attention to Maureen as she reappeared, pushing her way through the milling crowd to reach them.

“Maureen, do you remember Nona? She works with me at—”

“Yeah, hi. Dallas, did you know that—”

Nona chuckled. “I don’t think she does. Excuse me. I don’t want to be around to see the fur fly on this. Bye.”

Dallas watched Nona walk away, and then frowned at Maureen. “I don’t get it.”

Maureen sighed and looked helpless. “You will. Are you sure you want to stay for this? If it’s all the same to you, Dallas, I’d rather go find someplace to have a drink …”

“Hi, Dallas. I was just asking … ooops.”

Dallas turned her head to the new person next to her. He was an actor she’d met through Dean, who’d tried to set up a date between them. Until Dean had found out that Bruce was gay.

“Bruce … hey,” she said. “I knew you’d be here. I just saw …” and she stopped.

Maureen sighed in annoyance. “Oh, shit.”

Dallas glanced over Bruce’s shoulder because she saw someone who was familiar. The body language and tilt of the head. The hand gestures. It was Burke. And suddenly Nona’s sly comment, and Bruce’s utterance, and even Maureen’s suggestion that they do something else began to make sense.

He was seated near the front of the theater with a very attractive black woman next to him. He had his arm around the back of her seat, his fingers amorously stroking her neck. They were in private conversation, unconcerned with others around them.

Which is what hurt most of all, Dallas decided. Not that Burke was obviously involved with the woman, but that he didn’t even have enough respect for her to be discreet among people who would know both of them.

Bruce cleared his throat. “Well … it was, er, nice to see you. I’ll be in touch,” he said, turning away into the crowd.

“Come on. Let’s get out of here …”

Dallas grabbed Maureen’s arm. “No. I want to stay.”

“Dallas, everyone is going to—”

“I know. And they’re going to do it whether I stay or leave. So, I’m staying. I have to show that this doesn’t matter. Burke and I don’t belong to each other. There was no commitment, no promises.”

“Are you telling me that you don’t care? The man is acting like an asshole,” Maureen exclaimed.

She did care, but that was not the point. “I know a lot of people here. Many of them also know Burke. If I leave, it looks like he won. I’m embarrassed. Put down. If I stay …”

“You win?” Maureen asked skeptically.

Dallas refused to look in Burke’s direction again. Sooner or later before the evening was over, someone was going to point out to him that she was there. She shook her head and prepared to sit down and finish out the program. Maureen reluctantly sat down next to her.

“I don’t win. But I don’t lose anything, either.”

On the news recently there was a report of a woman who had been arrested for the death of her four-year-old daughter. The mother was accused of having locked the little girl in a room for almost a year, denying her food and water until slowly, the child starved to death. We were spared accompanying photographs of the little girl, but I envision a child curled up on a floor, alone and neglected with no idea of what was happening to her. Or why. Unwanted and unloved, wasting away because her mother might have hoped that she would just disappear. We were shown the mother being led away in handcuffs; calm, blank, silent, and unremorseful. And we are told she has five other children and is pregnant with another. When asked how could she mistreat her own daughter the mother answered, because she didn’t like the child. That was the reason. That was enough to make her feel righteous. I couldn’t help but wonder why killing her little girl was so much easier to do than giving her up to someone else who might have cared for her. Why wasn’t
this
child worthy of love?

D
ALLAS HAD ALREADY FIGURED
out this was
not
a date. It was more like she was just along for the ride to even out the numbers. Ross was one of the most even-tempered, good-natured men she’d ever met, but he didn’t seem the least interested in her beyond pleasant dinner companionship. Dallas felt exactly the same way. And she had never dated a white man before.

In any case, for the moment she wasn’t interested in dating anyone. Dallas swiveled her head from one person to another as the conversation was carried on around her. But she did not participate and knew she was probably terrible company. Her mind kept drifting back to earlier in the week and the revelation of Burke with another woman. Dallas had no idea how she felt about it. The only thing she knew for sure was that she was tired of trying to figure out what Burke wanted from her.

Dallas realized that she’d been studying the pattern around the edge of Valerie’s dinnerware. She glanced up quickly to see if anyone had noticed her silence, and met Alex’s steady gaze. After a brief second of looking at one another, Dallas averted her eyes. She forced herself back to the moment.

Dallas turned her attention to Ross, who was in the middle of one of his anecdotes of a dive adventure with him and Alex.

“Well, the instructor waited until my partner here had an armful of these weights. Then he comes up behind Alex, cuts the air hose, and pulls off the face mask. Now, I figure I could buddy-breathe with him until we hit the surface. But I check my gauge and see I don’t have enough air for both of us to make it. So what does Alex do? Does he head topside? No. He grabs the instructor and arm-wrestles with him for
his
mouthpiece.” Ross chuckled at the memory.

Dallas couldn’t help smiling. Ross told funny stories. She hazarded a surreptitious look at Alex, who sat with a grin on his face.

Valerie’s smile was uncertain at the punch line. “I don’t think that was so funny. My God … you could have drowned,” she said to Alex, turning to look at him with concern.

Alex shrugged. “If I drown it’s because I panicked. If I panic under tough conditions, then I deserve to. It was called ‘pool harassment.’ It’s part of the training. We can’t expect perfect conditions all the time when we’re underwater. We have to be able to think fast and come up with alternative solutions. Our lives depend on it. Or someone else’s,” he added quietly.

Dallas noticed that his jaw began to tighten reflexively and the smile slowly disappeared. She turned to see Ross’s reaction and found him thoughtfully rubbing his thumb on the side of the wineglass.

“Maybe it wasn’t so funny after all,” he conceded wryly.

“I think it’s stupid and cruel,” Valerie complained.

Ross nodded at her, his smile amused but understanding. “Stupid? No. Cruel? I suppose. Because your enemy is going to be cruel and worse. He’s going to do his damnedest to take you out. A lot of guys never make it past the first week of SEAL training. Alex went the distance.”

“And you,” Dallas included him.

“It was a great challenge,” he admitted.

“Just to show how macho you are?” Valerie asked.

Ross turned his attention to her and paused for a long moment before answering. He shook his head slowly. “It’s not about being the best or the toughest. It’s about determination and teamwork.”

“Then how come you quit? Why did you leave the service if it was so great?” Valerie asked Alex and Ross.

Neither answered right away, and the hesitation caught Dallas’s attention. For the first time since she’d met Ross, he didn’t have a quick and irreverent answer. And Alex just seemed pensive, as if he was considering a response, but wanted to be careful how he did so.

“I outgrew my usefulness,” he murmured cryptically.

“We’d served our time,” Ross added. “After a while, the losses and victories didn’t add up.”

“Have you lost many friends?” Dallas asked.

“Even one is too many,” Alex admitted.

Ross cleared his throat. “Alex’s swim buddy, Crosby, bagged it when we were in Kuwait. He blames himself.”

“How did it happen?” Valerie asked.

“The technical term? Oxygen toxicity. Simple language? He drowned,” Alex explained.

“The ability to breathe is inhibited and there’s an onset of dizziness, tingling in your limbs, blurry vision.”

“The body starts to convulse, like a seizure,” Ross picked up. “What happens is the diver can lose control of his mouthpiece under those conditions. He simply drowns.”

“But I thought SEALs are so highly trained,” Valerie commented.

“We are. Sometimes”—Ross exchanged glances with Alex again—“things go wrong.”

“This doesn’t help, I know, but I’m so sorry,” Dallas murmured.

“We had to move on. Get a life.”

“So you start a business dragging the river for junk?” Valerie questioned.

Ross slowly shook his head. “That’s not all there is to it. Besides … I do other things.”

“Megan said you both teach diving, and I remember Alex said there was a dive shop. Actually”—Dallas let her gaze sweep around the occupants of the table—“it sounds kind of exciting.”

“I like the way you put it. You ever been snorkeling or scuba diving?” Ross asked her.

Dallas chuckled. “I don’t know how to swim.”

“You don’t?” Alex asked in surprise.

“No, I never learned how. It wasn’t one of those things my parents thought I needed to know.”

“It’s not hard to learn. I could teach you,” Alex volunteered. “What if I take you out in the boat this summer and throw you overboard?” he teased.

Dallas sensed that Valerie too was waiting for her answer. She felt she had to sidestep the issue. “What makes you think I have any intentions of getting on your boat?”

“Oh-oh. Sounds like a challenge to me, Alex,” Ross murmured.

Valerie wrapped her arm possessively around Alex’s and leaned against him. “I don’t think Burke is going to be so hot on the idea. But a boat ride would be great. Maybe you’ll take me across the channel to Connecticut. Mystic has some wonderful seafood restaurants. We can go over for the day, or overnight.”

“We could do that,” Alex agreed. He looked at everyone. “We’ll all go. Take Megan and some of her friends, if she wants.”

“Alex,” Valerie whined. “I meant just you and me.”

Alex looked at her but didn’t respond. Ross emptied his wineglass. Dallas pushed her chair back. Now was
definitely
the time to cut out. “Valerie, why don’t I bring out dessert?” Dallas suggested into the awkward silence. She got up from the dining table and headed for the kitchen.

Valerie did not discourage her, and Dallas was glad to escape. Watching Valerie in action was starting to get on her nerves. She had obviously targeted Alex. But this time Dallas wasn’t sure she wanted to be pushed off to one side.

Dallas went into Valerie’s small kitchen and automatically started the coffeemaker. The evening had been more stressful than she’d imagined, with the need to pretend that she and Alex didn’t know one another very well.

Dallas was slicing a small chocolate torte when she heard someone come into the kitchen behind her. She looked over her shoulder expecting to see Valerie. It was Ross, with the stack of dinner plates and clattering silverware.

“Need a hand?” he asked, putting the plates down and starting to scrape the uneaten food into the garbage.

Dallas smiled at him. “No, I’m fine. You don’t have to do that. I can take care of it. Go back and talk with Val and Alex.”

He chuckled. “That’s not what you and I are supposed to do. Don’t you know this is the point in the evening when we make ourselves scarce so they can have some time together?”

Dallas turned to stare at Ross. She was embarrassed by his insight, as if she somehow had been party to Valerie’s plans.

“I’m sorry. It’s pretty juvenile of Valerie.”

“That’s okay. I’m not really cooperating.”

“You’re not?”

Ross placed the dishes in the dishwasher and came to stand next to Dallas, casually watching as she carefully arranged slices of the cake on the dessert plates.

“No. Alex doesn’t need me to help him with his affairs, and you shouldn’t let Valerie use you to distract me.”

She winced. “I’m not happy about it either. If I’d known what Valerie had in mind, I would have stayed home. No offense, Ross …”

He nodded. “None taken.”

He narrowed his gaze on her. “I’m going to be perfectly honest with you, Dallas,” Ross said seriously. “I think you’re very attractive. But there is someone else I’m interested in.”

Dallas nodded. “Valerie,” she stated flatly.

Ross arched a brow. “How did you know?”

“What man isn’t?” she responded. “I just wish she’d stop playing us all like chess pieces. And that we’d stop letting her.”

He signed. “You’re a smart woman. And a better friend than she realizes.”

“Are you mad at her?”

He crossed his arms over his broad chest and frowned at what she was doing. Slowly he shook his head. “No, I’m not. Just … disappointed.”

Dallas glanced at him. “Disappointed. Why?”

Ross pulled himself together, as if realizing that he’d spoken out of turn, or had said too much. Dallas was surprised to see the veil of annoyance that crossed his normally calm and open features. But it was quickly gone and he shrugged easily.

“I don’t like playing games. I’m getting too old for it. But I’m willing to wait a little longer for her to figure out that she’s on the wrong trail.”