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as she met it with her own startled stare. Nope. Not mocking. It looked like seduction, if anything.
    Whoa. Gabe Dawson was putting the moves on her? There must be snowballs flying every which way in Hell at this very moment.
    A frisson of delight rippled through her before memory caught up with it. Memory of fear and weakness and helplessness at the hands of a man not so very different from this one. A rich, privileged, handsome man whom women fawned over and society adored.
    She stared down at her fingers, twined so tightly in her lap, they ached. A waiter came in to take their orders, but she hadn’t even seen a menu. Gabe murmured that they would have whatever was being served at the chef’s table tonight.
    The waiter left and Gabe sighed. “Will you please talk to me? What are you thinking? I can’t read you.”
    “I was thinking about how society loves you.”
    That earned her a disbelieving grunt. “Hardly. I have committed not one, but two, unforgivable sins according to your people.”
    Her people? Hah! They were her mother and father’s people, but not hers. She’d tried to break away from high society. To be a normal person. A kindergarten teacher, for goodness’ sake. But her father kept forcing her to come back. Insisting on political appearances. And dates with the sons of Dallas’s richest and most influential families. It had been nothing short of mortifying.
    Gabe continued grimly, “Not only did I have the gall to get rich and not stay on my own side of the social tracks, but then I’ve repeatedly declined to marry some vacuous, shallow bitch and make her one of the richest women in Dallas.”
    Amused in spite of herself, Willa tsked. “Scandalous, Mr. Dawson.”
    He grinned and all but knocked her off her chair with that megawatt smile. His sex appeal had only magnified over the years, and it had been off the charts a decade ago. If only she were more experienced. More savvy about men. Maybe then she wouldn’t feel so out of her league around him. It wasn’t that their twelve-year age difference was so great, but she’d lived a sheltered, awkward social life. And he... Well, he hadn’t.
    The waiter brought their first course, and she looked over it at Gabe. “So what have you been up to with your life besides getting filthy rich and shunning the good ladies of Vengeance, Texas?”
    “Work, mostly. Exploring for oil has taken me to every corner of the planet. For some reason, oil always seems to come from boiling-hot or freezing-cold places.”
    “Favorite place you’ve visited?”
    “While looking for oil? Malaysia. While just traveling? Gotta go with Paris.”
    “Paris, huh? I didn’t peg you for a romantic.”
    That earned her a cynical look. “My ex-wife stripped out what little romance there was in my soul a long time ago.”
    “Is there any news about her? A ransom note from kidnappers or something?”
    Gabe’s facial muscles tightened in stress. “No. Nothing.”
    He clearly cared deeply about his former wife. Willa’s natural empathy bubbled up in spite of her reservations about this man, and she reached across the table to lay her hand on top of his. “I’m sorry.” But then shocking heat scalded her palm and she jerked her hand away.
    “What have you been up to since you grew up?” he asked carefully.
    She rolled her eyes. She wasn’t a snot-nosed kid any-more, thank you very much. “I graduated from the University of Texas with a degree in elementary education. I’m a kindergarten teacher.”
    “Kindergarten? So you have a death wish?”
    She laughed. “Five-year-olds are actually pretty great as long as you draw clear boundaries for them and stick to them. I love my job.”
    “Are you on a leave of absence from teaching right now?”
    She sighed. “I am. And the school year was just getting started, too. But there was so much to do to arrange the funeral, and I’m the executor of his estate. I have no idea how I’m going to wade through all the business