Loving Dallas by Caisey Quinn Read Free Book Online Page A

knowing half smile. I’d never said much about my personal life, but one drunken night in my office a few days ago I poured most of my heart right out. All over the place.
    “How about Drew and I handle the tear-down? See you back at the room?”
    I glance up at the stage, where Jase is performing his last number. I should stay. I should stay and schmooze because it’s my job. But I just . . . can’t.
    I haven’t told Katie about Dallas’s enticing pancake offer and I’m not going to. Because I’m not meeting up with him tonight.
    “Are you sure?”
    Katie nods and shoos me with her hand. “Get out of here. Drew and I have everything under control.”
    “You’re positive?”
    “We are.” She nods at me again. “Pinky swear. We’re going to check out what Denver nightlife has to offer anyways. Don’t wait up.”
    “Don’t forget we have an early flight tomorrow. I’ll take a cab and y’all can have the rental car to haul the display in.”
    “Got it,” Katie says. “Now, go, before Wade struts out here and tries to lure you onto his bus of dirty debauchery.”
    I giggle as I leave, but the sad truth is, I can’t even remember what dirty debauchery looks like. My mom got sick while I was in college and taking care of her plus landing the internship at Midnight Bay took up a lot of my time. Even once my mom was healthy, I was hired full-time at the distillery so I threw myself into my job—attending every event, catering to the needs of every potential celebrity endorser, and sitting in on strategy meetings that ran well past the hour the company was named for. I haven’t had a lot of time for dating, much less debauchery.
    It will all be worth it one day. At least that’s what I keep telling myself. Sacrificing my social life for my career will pay off eventually. Once I’m settled into my plush corner office, I will find time to get a life if it kills me.
    As I ride back to my hotel in a cab, I hear my mom’s voice in my head.
    “Robyn, have you eaten? Are you getting enough rest? Have you lost weight?”
    I take decent care of myself. I jog three miles every morning. I make healthy food choices. I get as much sleep as my job allows, which, okay, isn’t a ton. Surely I’ll live long enough to see the fruits of my labor. Despite my mother’s constant concerns.
    But then there’s another voice in my head.
    My dad’s.
    Before an accident on the oil rig where he worked took him from us my senior year of high school, he had these little sayings. He loved Yogi Berra, used to quote him all the time. I didn’t know much about Yogi except that he played for the Yankees. But after my dad died, I online-searched him. Like my dad, he had this charmingly innocuous way of giving advice.
    “You have to be careful if you don’t know where you’re going, Pete. You might wind up someplace else.”
    My dad also called me Pistol Pete because I was kind of a wild child when I was little. I blame the red hair. As I got older he dropped the Pistol and just called me Pete. I can’t even count the number of times I had to explain that when I had a friend over.
    With my dad, well, Yogi’s advice constantly in mind, I set my goals for myself extremely high. In high school, I was the valedictorian on my way to college. In college I was president of Pi Beta Phi and made damn sure we won the award for the most community service. I worked my ass off to get the marketing internship with Midnight Bay and once they hired me full-time I set my sights on a promotion.
    That’s my thing. I know where I’m going.
    “ There’s Robyn Breeland, ” people say when I walk down the street. “ That girl knows where she’s going. ”
    Okay, so maybe they don’t say it out loud, necessarily. It’s enough that I know.
    Or at least, I usually do.
    When the cabdriver pulls up to the Hyatt Regency, I don’t get out right away. I weigh my options.
    Pancakes with Dallas or lying in bed staring at the ceiling all night wondering