Walt flashed a smile. “I like it when the South slips into your words.”

She laughed. “There are times I can’t contain it. If you go around talking like this all the time”—she let her accent fill every syllable—“no one would take me seriously.”

“And you want to be taken seriously.”

She sipped her drink. “I’ve worked hard to get where I am. I don’t want anyone trivializing my efforts because of an accent or a bias because of the genre I write.”

“I guess I hit your hot buttons when I called romance novels bodice rippers.”

Dakota narrowed her eyes and Walt sat back, tossing his hands in the air.

“I’m an educated reader now . . . I’ll never make that mistake again.”

She shook a finger in his direction. “If you know what’s good for you, you won’t.”

When she stopped laughing, she sat back in her plastic chair and sighed. “We have a lot in common.”

He lifted his glass. “To avoiding our parents.”

She could drink to that. “So when is this birthday bash for Dad?”

Walt rolled his eyes. “Two weeks.”

Dakota found herself groaning for him. “Will it be awful?”

“Oral surgery might be better. Birthdays bring out family.”

“You’ll get it from all ends.”

“Yeah. I’ll get off easy if my mother doesn’t set me up on a blind date.”

Dakota patted his hand. “Oh, Walt, that’s awful and deliciously funny at the same time.”

“My mother’s taste in women and mine couldn’t be further apart.”

“You have to give her points. If she sets you up with a local girl, you might just move back home and pick up the practice for your dad.”

Walt ran a hand through his hair, picked up his drink. “I was trying so hard to think she just wanted grandkids, but you’re probably right.”

“Not the grandkid guilt. Try being a woman. My mother thinks that if a uterus isn’t used before the age of thirty it’s going to shrivel up and fall out.”

Walt’s eyes instantly watered as the drink in his mouth turned into a coughing fit of laughter.

Chapter Five

       They never finished their game. They eventually moved to the diner across the street for coffee and pie. Conversation with Dakota never stopped. They snarked on their parents and moved on to those in the bowling alley who were shocked when they got up and walked away from the game.

Dakota didn’t have a filter. He liked that. She said it the way she saw it and didn’t seem to care if that pissed anyone off.

“You pulled what out of his ass?” she asked, her dark eyes glued to his.

“A cucumber, but I didn’t take it out. Poor kid needed to go under and the GI guy fished it out.”

“How old was he?”

“Sixteen.” Stories from the ER never did bore his friends who weren’t in the trenches with him.

“Wow. And his parents just stood there?”

“I don’t know who was more embarrassed, the kid or the parents.”

“That’s one crazy fun job you have there, Doc. Who knew?”

He eventually paid the bill and drove her home.

Five minutes from her condominium, she turned to him with a straight face. They were at a stoplight and he met her gaze. “What?”

“Why aren’t you married?”

His heart squeezed in his chest. Instead of answering, he turned her question back on her. “Why aren’t you married?”

“That’s easy. I’m outspoken, opinionated, and if you haven’t been told, I write porn. Which is either a complete turn-on for the wrong guys or turnoff for the right ones. Add to that I make more money than most of the guys I’ve dated and that either intimidates them or makes me wonder if they’re around just for the cash.”

The light turned green and he moved down the road. “You’ve given this some thought.”

She sighed. “Not really. That’s a practiced line I lay on my mom each time she asks.”

“A line based on facts?” Because from what he’d learned about her on this date, nothing she’d just said wasn’t a fact.

“Some. I guess. I write books where two flawed people meet, fall madly in love, and will do anything to be with each other. I’m not looking for that, not at this point anyway. I’m happy being single.”

He turned down her street.

“You didn’t answer my question,” she told him.

He took his time answering her, parked in her driveway, and opened her door. “I’m happy being single, too,” he told her as they stood outside his car.

The light from her porch bounced off her face. She leaned against the car and offered a nod. “No one to answer to.” Her words rang true in his head.

“No one to worry about when I have to fly off to third world countries.”

“No one to get upset when I’m up at two in the morning writing like a madwoman.”

“No one to wake me after a long graveyard shift.”

Her smile was weak and all Walt could see was her lips.

“No one . . .” she murmured.

He reached over and cupped her cheek. The warmth and softness of her skin had him stepping closer. Her lips parted and he took his first taste. Apple pie and coffee laced her kiss and mixed with him. When he melded his body to hers and felt her hand reach around him, the desire to have no one started to fade.