He didn’t miss a beat, just held on and started walking away.
“Wait. You’re Walt’s date?” Monica asked.
Dakota shook her head. “Nawh, it’s just drinks. Right, Doc?”
He laughed.
Heat and humidity always accompanied Florida. The forced air conditioning of the hotel really didn’t let those inside understand the oppressive weather outside the doors.
Gray clouds blocked out the sun, but didn’t drop the temperature below eighty.
“Feels like a storm,” Trent said behind them as they ducked into the comfort of the air-conditioned bar.
“I’m glad we’re not flying,” Monica said.
“I love a good storm. We don’t get enough of them in California.”
“Is that where you’re from?” Glen asked Mary.
“Yeah. We haven’t had rain in so long even the tumbleweeds are becoming extinct.”
They found a table big enough for all of them and staked their seats. Walt pulled out Dakota’s chair and the gesture told her two things. One, he did think of this as a kind of date, and two . . . his mother taught him how to treat a lady.
Mary reached for a bar menu and started flipping through it. “I hope they have something other than fried food. I’m starving.”
“You haven’t eaten?”
“Convention food.”
Monica laughed. “Cheese, crackers, and fruit if you get in line first.”
“Exactly,” Dakota said.
Monica glanced at her husband. “I wonder if Jack is open to suggestions on convention menus. I know he doesn’t deal with them directly, but there has to be something better than cheese and crackers.”
Mary reached for the peanuts on the table, cracked a shell. “Who’s Jack?”
The question sat on the tip of Dakota’s lips.
“Morrison. Jack is my brother-in-law.”
The connection didn’t click immediately.
Walt leaned forward. “Jack Morrison, as in the owner of the hotels.”
Dakota found herself holding her breath. “Seriously?”
Monica confirmed with a nod while one of the servers approached the table.
After they ordered drinks, the conversation picked back up. “So where do all of you live?” Dakota asked.
Trent, Monica, and Glen lived in the Northeast, and surprisingly Walt lived about thirty miles from Dakota’s Orange County condo.
“How do you know each other?” Dakota asked.
“I used to work with Walt in Pomona. We both volunteered in the relief effort in Jamaica, which is where I met Trent.”
Dakota had an overwhelming desire to find a pen and start taking notes. Something triggered a memory . . . a story . . . “Fairchild and Morrison. Wait, are you the two who were trapped and thought dead?”
“That’s them,” Glen told her.
She’d read the story, heard about them on the news. A nurse and a local went missing, their names famous because of their connection to the hotel family and some airplane charter company.
“I remember the news. Wow, you guys are lucky to be alive.”
Monica grasped her husband’s hand. “We are.”
“They survived and eventually married. That’s a romance novel right there,” Glen said.
“Romance is everywhere,” Dakota reminded her friend.
Their drinks came and a live band slowly trickled in and started to set up.
Dakota was incredibly intriguing to watch. Walt could practically hear the computer in her head typing away a new story while she learned about the lives around her. She talked about herself, but only briefly, even though Monica attempted to pull more information from her.
At first, Walt had been disappointed that their party of two turned into a party of six. But here, he could learn much more about her because of the curiosity of others. She became a writer “because it was the only thing she was good at.” Yet the more he listened, he knew she was probably omitting certain truths, or simply downplaying her success.
She was confident in a way few women achieved, but most wanted.
Hot! She was so sexy in her red slim-fitted dress with stiletto heels, dark almond-shaped eyes that sat against tan skin only achieved by someone living in a sunny climate, that he had a hard time sitting still. She didn’t look at you . . . she absorbed you with a glance, devoured you with her eyes, made you hers with a stare.
Dakota Laurens was the kind of woman he most definitely wanted in his bed, but didn’t dare go there. Walt always considered himself a strong man . . . self-sufficient, well respected . . . a damn good doctor. This woman could consume him. He knew that fact instinctively. No memo needed.
Yet he knocked back another drink and listened to her colorful tale of airport police and smelly cop cars.
“Wait!” Glen held up his hand. “You two are the reason I had to circle Miami for almost an hour instead of landing?”
Dakota giggled when she drank, and the South blossomed in her voice. “Blame Blondie here. She’s the one who yelled bomb.”
Mary had a hard time containing her smile. “I didn’t yell.” She lowered her voice and tried again. “I didn’t yell, Glen. Just so happened a little ol’ lady overheard us at that very moment.”
“We were in the back of a squad car for over an hour. I thought they were going to strip-search us.”
“It wasn’t funny.” Mary was laughing. “It wasn’t.”
“It was kinda funny.” Dakota continued to laugh until everyone at the table joined her.
The band hit the stage, welcomed the room that had managed to fill in the hour it took them to set up. Their first song brought a few people to the small dance floor and drowned out most of the conversation.
Walt pushed his chair closer to Dakota’s, leaned in since conversation with everyone else wasn’t possible with the volume in the room.
“I hope drinks with friends is working for you.”
“Your friends seem like good people.” She looked behind her and they both noticed Mary laughing at something Glen said in her ear.
The band hit a higher note, and Monica and Trent moved from the table and joined the dance floor.
The song swiftly changed and Walt noticed Dakota tapping her foot. He nodded toward the floor, and she agreed with a smile.
Dakota liked to dance.
He loved the smile on her face. Loved the way she closed her eyes, felt the music, and embraced it.
For over two hours they drank, ate . . . danced. None of the dances were slow, which probably was for the best. The crowd didn’t seem the type to sway on the dance floor, though Walt would have loved an excuse to hold something other than Dakota’s hand.