19

An entire month passed. Dallas kept herself busy, getting the hang of the added responsibilities, hiring and training two new people, and generally pretending that things were as they had always been.

Avoiding Taker was pretty simple. She didn't even try. He kept himself to himself. And when he had needed a hand, he'd gone through Michael. That was fine with her. Right up until she crawled into bed at night. She was either so exhausted from the new activity she barely remembered getting in bad, but more often she had been restless, tossing and turning, unable to sleep for more than ten minutes at a time.

The funniest part of the whole mess turned out to be Lisa. She was a bit of an airhead, and a perpetual man eater, but she had some sort of odd sixth sense when it came to relationships. She'd shown up a couple of weeks after Taker's blow off, picked up her schedule, and looked at Dallas for a long moment. Without a word at first, she had turned and closed the conference room door. Then she sat down across from Dallas with a concerned expression on her face.

"Who is he, and what happened?" Lisa cut right to the chase.

And Dallas, after being prompted, found herself spilling everything. To Lisa. Someone she had never really trusted or liked. Lisa had listened, had nodded and patted her hand in a gesture of understanding, and did not attempt to offer any advice. Dallas felt better for a while after unloading everything, and Lisa seemed to understand that she needed that.

But things crept back again.

She still thought about him. Often. And fought the urge to track him down almost daily. And why? Because she missed him. At first she'd told herself it was the sex she missed. It had been great, and it hadn't happened nearly often enough, so yes, she did miss the intimacy. Slowly, she started to realize other things. Like that look – of which she still thought of as his 'woman, please' sort of exasperated expression – she found herself thinking about it every time she said something obvious. And his weird and mostly subdued sense of humor. She even missed his random forays into being a complete and utter bastard.

Another hilarious thing. Dallas and Taker could not avoid each other forever. She understood that. She wasn't going to give up a job she actually loved just because she had to look at some guy every now and then. And while he had not attempted to approach her, or talk to her in any way, she had still caught him looking at her. Sometimes thoughtfully. More often than not though, his expression was unreadable. She always felt so strange after it happened, mainly because there had been a time when she'd thought herself pretty adept at reading these people she'd practically lived with for the past several years.

Dallas printed off the calendar she'd been working on for the past hour and glanced over it. She had changed how they ran the assistants, mainly in how the schedule was done. Craig was a week-to-week person, but Dallas hated that sort of last minute thing. So she had mapped out a month ahead, and for some of the guys, six weeks or more.

It had worked smoothly so far. Dallas had assigned one of the new hires, an older and very grandmotherly woman named Kim, to Cena on a semi-permanent basis. No one worried that Kim had any sort of designs on Cena. In fact, she treated him the same as she had her son before he'd joined the Army. Kim was a widow, in her fifties, and could have been a drill sergeant herself. Cena oddly enough really seemed to like her. So that took a lot of worry off her shoulders. He was still their busiest guy on the roster, and keeping one person on him for a while meant that the confusion would be les.

And Dallas still PA'd when needed. Unlike Craig, who seemed to find ways to stay in the office, she actually liked being an assistant. And she liked being busy.

That particular flaw came back to bite her in the rear.

It was the week before a pay-per-view. Most of the guys were doing a four day tour of Mexico, something that happened usually once a year. The rest were here taking care of house shows, and doing personal appearances to promote the show on Sunday. Lisa and Kim had gone to Mexico for the week, so it was Rachel and the other new hire, Chris, taking care of things around the arena.

It was early in the morning on Monday when Rachel called Dallas. Her voice was so hoarse she could barely understand her.

Dallas glanced at the clock, noted it was not yet six in the morning, and sat up with a yawn. It had been one of the good sleep nights. So much for that now. "Ok. Hold on. You're sick, I get it."

"Sorry…" Rachel spoke in a near whisper. "I should have paid attention last night when my throat was scratchy…now I can't talk, and my throat is killing me. It woke me up. So I'm going to call a doctor and get seen this morning. Can you handle it without me for a few hours?"

Dallas laughed, feeling a little slow. "I think we'll get by. Hope you aren't contagious."

"Yeah. You and me both." Rachel coughed and groaned. "Ugh. I'll call and let you know what the doc says. Taker wanted to meet up at seven-thirty in the lobby after his workout to go over his stuff for the week."

"Taker?" Dallas was sure she'd heard wrong.

"Yeah…Oh. Right. He's doing some auction thing tomorrow for charity, so Michael wrote him into the house shows and…" Rachel's voice cracked and faded.

Dallas got up and paced around the bed. Taker had been scheduled for the tour, not the house shows. In fact, Lisa was supposed to be PA'ing for him. "So who is Lisa taking care of now?"

"Oh…they sent Glen down, so we traded. But not a fair one since Glen's just stepping into Taker's place there, and Taker's doing his own thing here."

"Ok. I'll handle it. You just…try to get better. And don't forget you need to get the doc to fill out the forms for insurance."

"Yes, Mom. I'm going to print it out now. And email you what I have of the schedule so far. Thanks Dallas."

They said goodbye and Dallas sat down with her phone in her hand. She could conceivably fob Taker off onto Chris, the other new hire. But Chris already had his hands full with Randy and Show. It wasn't often any of them had to PA for two wrestlers, but the two of them were doing some promo work together and their schedules matched. So it worked.

"Damn it." Dallas got up and went toward the shower. Ok. So she would deal with it. She really did not have a choice. Hopefully Rachel wouldn't be gone all day, and all Dallas had to do was give Taker his schedule. She could do that.

She came out of the bathroom twenty minutes later, towel wrapped around her. She turned her laptop on and sure enough, Rachel had emailed her the schedule. Dallas didn't have a printer handy, so she grabbed a notebook and jotted down that day's schedule for Taker. It was a start anyway. She glanced at the rest, and had to fight the urge to change anything too much. It was hard though. She was used to managing these guys to a fault, and doing it her own way.

Once she was done she stowed the laptop and got dressed. Dallas decided to just go ahead and go downstairs. The lobby had a coffee shop that opened early, so she figured she'd eat breakfast. She grabbed her key, notebook, cell phone, and wallet and headed for the door.

There were a couple of the guys in the lobby, talking quietly near the desk. Dallas waved at them and ducked into the coffee shop. And stopped in her tracks. Sitting in one of the small booths in the back was Taker. He was done with his workout early, apparently. He had a cup of coffee and a breakfast pastry in front of him. He looked about as bad as Dallas felt. She braced herself and went over to his table, nervously squeezing her notebook.

"Hey. Rachel's not feeling good this morning, so I have your schedule. Kind of." She jumped right in, not looking at him after he met her eyes briefly. He was doing that unreadable thing again and it made her uncomfortable.

"Kind of?" If he thought she was being abrupt, he did not say. Taker motioned to the empty seat across from him. "You wanna sit down?"

Dallas shrugged, hesitated, and slid into the booth. She set her notebook down in front of her. They were silent until the waitress appeared to take Dallas's order. She asked for a soda and a pastry, and when she looked back Taker was still looking at her intently.

"How have you been?" He finally asked, sounding at least civil. Dallas was surprised at that. She had expected a bit of anger, especially since she hadn't tried to fix whatever it was between them.

"Good. Busy." She opened the notebook and turned it sideways. She wanted to get this day over with. Because not only was she uncomfortable, and awkward, now she was feeling like crawling across the table to sit in Taker's lap. Which probably would have scandalized the entire coffee shop. "Unless Rachel comes back early and tells you otherwise, you might want to get to the arena a bit early. The charity people are going to call, and Michael wanted you available for that."

Taker nodded. He didn't bother looking down at her neatly printed itinerary. Instead, he kept his eyes on her mouth as she talked. It was rather disconcerting, especially considering that Dallas had done that to him on many occasions. The man had a sexy mouth on him. She couldn't help it.

Dallas cleared her throat and went on. "You don't have to be there until 9. The call is supposed to be 9:30. At 11, you've got the ring for about forty minutes." She pulled the pen from where it was clipped on the metal spiral of the notebook and jotted something down. "And since you're house-showing this week, you should probably know that at around 1-ish, there's going to be a group of fifth graders on a field trip traipsing through the arena. I don't remember exactly what it's about though – could be for gym class for all I know. Unless you want to have screeching 10 year olds hovering around you, you may want to consider that lunch time. I'm pretty sure that they already have the fed reps – since Cena is gone that fell on somebody else."

"I'll have to take that under consideration I guess." Taker finally said as the waitress came by with Dallas's pastry and drink. "Anything else?"

"Another ring time at five. Show wanted that one, and I guess Rachel went ahead and scheduled it just in case. Your match is going to be the main event." Dallas glanced at her watch. "If you want to book another night here, you have to let me know now. Otherwise I'll call about renting you a car. Rachel was going to do that this morning but I can take care of that."

"I'd rather drive on. I have that auction thing tomorrow at noon."

"Right. And that's the only thing on your schedule. Although last year, it was an all day thing when Glen did it. So you might want to take that into consideration."

"I will."

"Ok. I…err…Rachel or I will work out the rest of the schedule this afternoon." Dallas corrected herself and took a bite of the warm pastry. Taker finally reached over for the notebook and was reading over what was written as she ate. He picked up her pen and scribbled something along the side of the schedule she'd written out before closing the notebook and tucking the pen back into place. Dallas raised an eyebrow at that but said nothing as she finished eating.

"Are you riding with me?" He finally spoke as she sipped the last of her soda. Dallas paused in mid-swallow, not sure if that was such a good idea.

"I have a rental. I..." She finally shrugged and wiped her lips with a napkin. "I'll let you know what happens with Rachel as soon as I know something. And I'll drop your schedule off when it's finished." She flipped her wallet open and dropped some money on the table before he could do more than sputter in her direction. Dallas grabbed her notebook and slid from the booth, heading back toward the elevators and her room.

And she kicked herself mentally the entire ride to her floor and walk to her room. She had wanted to say yes. And she'd been on the verge of offering to turn her rental back over to the company to travel with him. When she wasn't PA'ing, she could set her own schedule, so riding along with him would not have been out of the question. But good grief, did that actually mean she was going to admit to wanting a relationship with the man, not just relations of a sexual nature? She was afraid to admit it even to herself.

She went into her room and began tossing things into her bag. She would be moving on when the show started, and if Rachel wasn't back then she would need to be prepared for anything. She tucked the notebook into her bag and hesitated.

Dallas pulled it out again. Taker had written something down, and while she felt like it was the equivalent of looking into a box full of snakes, she had to know.

She flipped through the pages and stopped, frowning a little. He'd drawn a line from the note she'd written about his next hotel, and had put a question mark. Under that…he'd simply written "I miss you, Dallas".

Dallas sat down on the edge of the bed and kept reading over the four word note. She felt like crying suddenly, and that was not like her at all. In fact, it sucked. Because she missed him too. Way too much to keep saying she was as unattached as she claimed.