Chapter 13
Chapter Thirteen
Blair
I ’d flown across the world in private jets, been on super yachts and helicopters, and been in limos and Ferraris, but I had never felt my heart beat this way at seeing two-horse open sleighs. How is it that I had never been in one?
I turned to Dallas, who looked like something had gutted him right through, and oddly, I giggled. “I think you know what I am about to ask.”
“I do,” He said.
“So, we’re going,” I said.
“What would happen if I said no?” Dallas questioned me.
“I’d tell you to suck it up and get in the sleigh,” I replied sweetly.
Dallas turned to the poor guy, who was trying his hardest not to laugh. “Where are we going? How much time will it take, and how much?”
The man’s smile didn’t drop, but his eyes moved to me before he returned to answer Dallas. “It’s a forty-minute loop through the park, and it's sixty bucks.”
I quirked an eyebrow, “Do you have somewhere else to be?”
He sighed long and loudly. “No. Why?”
“Then why do you need to know how long the ride will be?” I asked.
“Because I need to know how long before my brain starts to dribble out of my ears,” he said before he stepped up help me into the carriage. “It’ll probably freeze before it hits the ground though.”
“Did you just make a joke?”
He quirked an eyebrow. “If you tell anyone, I’ll deny it.”
“Of course, you will, because it fell flatter than a bad dad joke,” I replied. “C’mon, sleigh rides are supposed to be fun.”
He gave me a long look, his expression unchanging. “Yay,” he finally said in the most deadpan voice I’d ever heard from him, which was saying a lot since ninety-five percent of the time I’d been around Dallas, all I heard from him was dry wit and scathing sarcasm.
Once we were both settled, the driver turned and smiled. “I’m Wes, and there’s a blanket under the seat if you’d like it. Let me know if you have any questions about the town as we make our way around on the journey.”
Did he think we were tourists?
I shared a look with Dallas, who thought the same thing. Thankfully, he did not correct him and just sat in the seat, facing forward. We did a turn right there in the middle of the street on Wednesday. The turn was as slow as molasses, but if you saw Dallas grab at the side of the carriage, you’d think we were going at Mach 5 .
He was so clearly out of his comfort zone, I felt terrible for laughing. “You know you ride a horse daily, right?”
Dallas opened his mouth to answer, then closed it, did it again, and clamped his lips tight. Finally, he added, “I’m not used to relaxing. Doing things for leisure.”
“Not even once?” I asked.
“When I was twenty-one, I went to a club to relax,” he shuddered. “I returned to my shared apartment traumatized and had a headache from the bass for two days. Since I left, all I did was work. I had no one to rely on, so I had to be on the grind from when I woke up at four until went to bed at midnight.”
“Jesus,” I groaned. “Living on four hours of sleep is not nice.”
We entered the park, where the small playground had children slipping down slides and pushing off the swings. The late afternoon sun slanted through several tall pine trees just beyond the front clearing and the overgrown tufts of grass at the edges of the clearing where older kids stood talking.
The farther we journeyed into the park's depths, the thinner the crowd got, and soon enough, we were all alone, with only the snow and the twittering of birds around us. I reached for the blanket and wrapped the faux fur around us.
I leaned over to tuck the ends around us and caught a whiff of the intoxicating woody cologne wafting from his skin. I may have paused to inhale longer than I should have, I may have pressed myself into his side without his express permission—but Dallas didn’t push me away.
I needed to get my attraction to him under control before I did or said something inappropriate. Forcing my gaze away, I watched as the evening grew deeper. The lights from the standing lamps glittered over the fresh snow, turning the white banks into something from a fairytale.
“When you were a kid, did you ever do something like this?”
“Nope,” he said. “I don’t think these were things we did back then.”
I sipped my coffee. “Funny enough, I’ve seen these rides in Manhattan, near Central Park, when we went on official business, but never once have I thought of getting on one. I guess I never really had anyone to go with, either.”
He quirked an eyebrow. “No swanky boyfriend?”
“They’d probably put three towels down before they even considered staining their Marc Jacobs,” I snorted.
“God,” he grunted. “What kind of assholes did you date?”
I sensed that was rhetorical. “What kind of girls did you date?”
“Date is strong for a continuous stretch of one-night stands,” he said. “If I had difficulty relaxing, do you think I had time to date?”
“Did you have a dog back in Cali?”
“No, I didn’t have a dog, cat, or a plant,” he said. “I tried once, and I swear the bush wilted before my eyes. I don’t think you found your dates on the grimy club floor.”
My mouth twisted, and my expression must have been enough for him to read my mind, because he chuckled. “The last time I’d been somewhere with a dance floor was my sophomore year in a club in Boca.”
“Yeah, I don’t see you as the regular club-going type,” Dallas said as we rounded a bend, and snow began fluttering again. “You’re the country club type of girl, rubbing elbows with the rich and famous. Have you ever met a real-life prince? ”
“I’ve met four,” I replied. “England, Denmark, Sweden, and the United Arab Emirates.”
“And none of them swept you off your feet?”
“Eh,” I shrugged. “You meet one prince, you’ve met them all. They kind of have the same playbook. Flash cash, expensive cigars, fast cars, and ridiculously expensive wine. Except for the Saudi, he flashed a massive white tiger.”
Dallas laughed, full-throated with his head thrown back. It was a beautiful sight. My eyes dropped to the side of his neck, the muscle strained and his pulse kicked.
I wanted to press my lips against it and feel the sound of his laughter, to stick my tongue out and lick it. He caught me looking at him, and I did nothing to hide the emotion heating my blood. His laughter quieted, ending with a sharp intake of breath.
Tension suddenly crackled between us. Dallas licked his lips, pressing them together briefly before clearing his throat. “What?” he asked.
“Do you know how handsome you look when you laugh?” I asked. “You don’t look like the grump we know you to be.”
“Don’t say a word about that,” he murmured. “I’ve got a reputation to uphold.”
This part of the park came to the east end of Silverwood Lake, and God, it was beautiful. “Wes, stop a minute, please.”
“Sure,” the driver slowed the horses, and they stopped at the perfect lookout point.
The vista of the lake was laid out in front of us; a thin veneer of frost hid the deep blue of the water, the sparkling from the twilight sun made the ice look like faceted diamonds, the hills stacked beyond the north end, giant snowy peaks shooting skyward in the distance. I could only imagine what moonlight would look like over the water.
With its rustic, simple charm, this was the most romantic moment I have ever been in.
My heart twisted.
“You okay?” Dallas murmured.
“No,” I whispered, turning to him. “I want to kiss you.”
I couldn’t stop myself from leaning in, but I waited until he caught on, and his eyes flickered to my lips as the tip of his tongue came out to wet his lips. I leaned in, pressing my lips to his as softly as possible. Before I could dream of deepening it, Dallas’ hand came up to hold the back of my head, and he slanted his lips over mine more deeply.
This time, there was nothing soft about this kiss. It was deep and damned well rocked my soul. My brain short-circuited, and I lost all remnants of rational thought as Dallas’s tongue swept through my mouth, making the entire fucking world outside of him cease to exist.
I couldn’t hear over my thundering heart and the blood pounding in my ears; my body was on fire, and I tried my best to run my hands over every inch of skin available to me.
“Want you,” he said, his voice low and rumbly against my ear.
They were the words I’d heard many times from the men I’d dated, but never like this. Now, he was the only one I’d wanted to hear them from.
I pulled away, panting softly. “Home?”
“Home,” he said. “But let’s finish this ride.”
Somehow, I managed to survive the other twenty-three minutes back to town, and in forty minutes, I’d managed to get another look into his mind. When Dallas hopped down from the carriage, he thanked the driver. We paid and walked to the café .
The town was in full Christmas mode; fairy lights were up on every business awning, and wreaths were on the doors. The scent of roasting chestnuts and sticky sweet apples in caramel was faint in the air while laughter and merriment rang out from every corner of the streets. We passed the square where adults held ladders for kids and teens decorating the massive twelve-foot fir with baubles and tinsel.
I couldn’t deny it; this tiny town charmed me.
Plucking up my phone, I switched it on to see seven messages and two missed calls from Wentworth. Instantly, my good mood vanished. “This asshole,” I swore.
Dallas shot me a look as we got to his truck. “Something wrong?”
“Wentworth has been bugging me since last night,” I dropped the cell and massaged my temple. “He wants me to come back for Thanksgiving and Christmas, and I told him, in no uncertain terms, that I won't be doing that. Now, he’s sent me a million messages and tried to call me for the same thing, I’d imagine.”
We turned off onto the ranch road, with Dallas notably quiet. “You don’t want to go back?”
“Not if you paid me.”
Again, he was quiet as we drove up the lane. “Maybe you should go. If he tried to get a hold of you that much, maybe it would be important. I mean, the plant is going to be down for a while. Why not see what he is bugging you about?”
I felt as if he’d jabbed a hot knife in my heart.
I don’t know if I’d made a distressing sound in the back of my throat or something, but Dallas must have picked up on my recoil. He parked and yanked the e-brake up with more force than he needed .
“For God’s sake, Blair, don’t do this,” he said.
“Do what?”
“Make it look like I don’t want you here.” he turned. An hour ago, his gray eyes and hand had been liquid smoke, and now they were as hard as steel. “Nothing could be further from the truth. If your family needs you, you go and see what is happening. You can come right back if it’s not anything you want to be a part of. No one is kicking you out.”
The sting began to soothe. “I don’t want to go and listen to the bullshit he’s got.”
“I get it, but you’re an adult,” he said. “Unless your brother has run the business into the ground or banished your parents to Switzerland, there is nothing to keep you there.”
I slumped. “I just don’t want to?—”
My phone rang— fuck. It was Dad. If I’d thought I could blow off my brother, there was no way I could brush off my Dad.
“Hello, Dad,” I said, my teeth grinding, knowing that Wentworth was behind this call. “How are you?”
William said, “Doing well. I’d do much better if you told me why you are refusing to talk with Wentworth.”
“I told him I am on a job and couldn’t make it,” I said. “Besides, I don’t think there is much of anything for me to go back to. I mean, we do the same thing every Thanksgiving and Christmas. Why do you need me?”
“Because we have a family image to uphold,” Dad said sternly. “It's only a few days, sweetheart. Surely your boss can give you the time off.”
Translation: get on the nearest plane and come home—now.
Thanksgiving was in three days. I wasn’t planning on leaving now. “I have a choice for you. I can come home now but not for Christmas, or I can come for Christmas and not now. I can’t do both.”
He paused. “I suppose the most important thing would be Christmas.”
Relief washed through me. “I’ll be back on Christmas Eve then.”
I knew he wasn’t happy, but I didn’t want to leave the town yet. “We’ll see you then.”
Dallas had kept quiet all this time, and when I hung up, he smiled at me. “You’re sticking around, then.”
“Yeah,” I said. “You’re stuck with me a little while longer.”
Dallas wrapped an arm around me, pulling me into a warm embrace. “So, cranberry jelly or cranberry sauce?”