Chapter 11
Chapter Eleven
Blair
I t was a whirlwind from the ground on the ranch to the interior of Dallas’ truck and a medical clinic's clean white interior. The clinic building was clean and neat, with wide windows and glistening white tiles.
A mother and her baby were waiting there, but the place was pretty much empty, and Dallas gently led me to one of the chairs. These chairs were not simple plastic stuff; they were black padded chairs, and to the left, there was a tea and coffee station. I’d imagine this place was well-maintained and more hospitable than any clinic.
“Can you get something?” Dallas asked worriedly. “Tea, coffee, water?”
“No,” I gave him a small smile.
Cradling my hand in my lap, I thought back to the last hour; the man had damned well saved my life. When he rescued me today, it was like something out of a movie; when he’d jumped and lassoed the bull like a real cowboy, I’d been holding my breath the whole time .
I’ve never seen anything so sexy or so dangerous in all my life. I’d thought for sure that bull was going to turn around, charge him, and trample him to death.
“Hello?” A lady came into the room. She was about medium height, five foot five, with a white lab coat, a slender build, short brown hair, and a warm smile. “I am Doctor Susan Harper. Normally, my nurse would be here to triage you, but she’s out today. How can I help you?”
“There was an accident—” Dallas began, but I dropped a hand on his thigh, quieting him.
“I fell and landed on my wrist wrong,” I told her.
“Ah, I see,” she nodded. “Come into my room. I’ll examine you further. Will your husband want to join us?”
A strangled sound came from Dallas, and I tempered a smile. “Yes, he will.”
“Blair—”
“Come on, sweetheart,” I said facetiously, getting to my feet, then looked at the doctor. “You have to excuse him. He hates the examination room. Turns into a big baby.”
She laughed. “I’ve heard that a time or two before. Please.”
Half an hour later, I was diagnosed with a stage-one sprained wrist. The ligaments were overstretched but had no tears. I had a wrap on and had sucked down some Tylenol 3, so the pain was manageable. The doctor said it could have been so much worse, but I had to rest it for a while and not overwork it.
Dallas helped me into the truck, rounded it to the driver’s side, and jumped in. He cocked his hat up. “If you weren’t injured, I’d make you pay for that husband comment.”
“Oh, come on,” I lolled my head back. “It was funny.”
“This town has three hundred people with a hotline gossip line,” he grunted. “By dinnertime, half the town will be thinking something else.”
“We’ll figure it out.” I said, “Now, can we go to that diner? I am craving that fried okra.”
He got the truck humming, but someone knocked on his window, causing our eyes to flitter to it. A man stood there, his graying hair and dark blue eyes with crow’s feet at the corner. He was probably in his late fifties or early sixties, but the white square of his clerical collar peeking out from his dark outfit told me he was a priest.
I knew he recognized the man from the tick in Dallas’ jaw.
When he rolled down the window, Dallas said, “Reverend Clark.”
“Dallas Donovan,” the reverend said kindly. “I never believed it when they said you were back in town. But I am so glad I was wrong. How are you doing, son?”
“I’m doing all right,” Dallas replied. “It’s good to see you too. You weren’t so gray the last time I saw you.”
The reverend laughed. “That is very true. I’d like to see you back at the church if you have an hour to spare. There is something important I needed to speak to you about, something your father charged me to speak to you about if you did return.”
Before he replied, Dallas turned to me and then returned to the priest. “I don’t think this is the right time, Reverend. Maybe another time?”
“You don’t need to defer for my sake,” I told him gently. “I am all right. We can go with him. He said it was important.”
Dallas didn’t look comforted, but he turned to the man of the cloth and replied, “Well, the lady has spoken. ”
“Lovely,” Reverend Clark smiled. “I hope you remember the way to the church.”
“I do,” Dallas nodded and put the truck in gear.
It didn’t take us long to get to the church, which looked simplified, constructed with a hipped roof and red clay bricks. It did have two awe-inspiring spires at the front and a belfry to the side. I kept my eyes forward when we passed the black iron fencing encircling the graves stretching out the back.
Inside, the altar, pews, furnishings, and communion rail were plain wood, but the window behind the altar held some stunning stained-glass art of Madonna and her child, the wise men blessing baby Jesus, and, in the middle, an effigy of the Lord on the cross.
“Wow,” I whispered.
The priest, who had driven behind us, entered later enough not to hear my awe-inspired whisper. Reverend Clark circled the pews and looked at the glass before turning to Dallas. “From what I hear, you were in California.”
“I was,” he replied.
Clark rounded a pew and tapped a part of the edge. “This is where you and your family would sit Sunday mornings. Halfway through the sermon, you’d fall fast asleep only to wake up by communion.”
I smothered a laugh at the visuals: chubby Dallas sipping wine, or did they give kids grape juice instead? I didn’t know anymore— and wasn’t that a shame for a Southern girl?
“Come with me for a moment,” the reverend indicated a room behind us, probably his office, and I shot a look at Dallas, silently asking him if I should go with them. I was happy to wait in the main room while they had privacy .
He jerked his head to the room, telling me to come with them, so I did. His office was decent-sized but plain. A row of hooks was on the walls with rosaries dangling from them, and a framed painting of a cottage on the seaside was on the wall. While we took seats, the reverend went to a cupboard and pulled out a box. It looked like an old shoebox.
What was that?
“I know you don’t know this, but your father didn’t hate you for leaving,” Reverend Clark said. “Yes, he was upset, unsure, and hurt that you’d left the way you did. He told me he would have much preferred if you’d met with him and told him your frustrations about the ranch, but with the years going by and your cards, he came to accept your decision.”
Clark nudged the box. “He wrote to you, and these are the letters he asked me to keep in case you returned.”
Cautiously, Dallas flicked the top over and inside, packed full of letters stacked on each other and tied down with twine. At best guess, there were about fifty letters in the box, and I bit my lip; he’d have a long time reading those.
“I—” Dallas swallowed. “I didn’t think he’d do something like this.”
“Your father loved you dearly,” Reverend Clark replied. “I can show you where their graves are as well.”
I expected him to decline, but Dallas nodded after skimming his fingers over the letters and closing the box. “I’d like that, thanks.”
We left the room with Dallas resting the letters on a pew before exiting the church's side door and crossing to the cemetery near the building. Neatly trimmed graves were only indicated by a plaque on the ground and decorative flowers planted here and there. My phone buzzed in my pocket as Dallas knelt at one of the two. Slipping it out, I returned to the church.
Wentworth flashed on the screen, and instantly, my good mood disappeared.
I swiped it open. “What do you want?”
“Hello, dear sister, good to hear from you too,” Wentworth said, his smarmy voice irritating me. “How are you doing in the wilderness?”
“What do you want?” I echoed.
“Nothing but to catch up,” he said.
“Bullshit,” I replied. “You never call me to catch up. You only contact me when you want to learn what contract I am heading on and try to sabotage or poach the client.” My eyes flickered to the stained glass. “I probably shouldn’t curse in church.”
“You’re in church?” Wentworth sounded scandalized. “What the hell are those hillbillies doing to you? Are they domesticating you, dear sister?”
A headache was beginning to bloom at my temples, and any fear of being struck by lightning evaporated. “For the last goddamned time, what do you want?”
“Fine, fine, Father wants you back home for Thanksgiving,” he said. “You know we have a round of social engagements at this time: the hospital gift-giving, the soup kitchen plug-in, and the estate dinner.”
I ground my teeth; he knew how repulsive I found those corporate publicity stunts; they made us look good for the public when we all knew it was simply to get a tax write-off. “No.”
He was silent. “I’m sorry, I misheard. When did you say your flight was coming in?”
“I said no, Wentworth. I am not returning to the estate for that dog and pony show,” I said. “I am sure you can handle the glitz and glamour by yourself. I have no interest in battling with your ego for four days.”
“How about two?” he asked blithely.
“Not even that,” I said while looking out the window. Dallas had his hand on one grave. He whispered something before he got to his feet and spoke to the reverend. “Enjoy the holidays. I’ve got to go.”
Without a by-your-leave, I hung up on Wentworth just as Dallas stepped back into the church. He looked troubled. “You okay?” he asked.
“Ah, yeah,” I said. How could I complain about family trouble when Dallas was the sudden poster boy for family trouble? “How are you?”
“I— I don’t know what to feel,” he said, taking the box from the pew. “I’m more confused than a blind fox in a fucking henhouse.” His eyes flickered up. “Er, sorry, big man.”
I laughed. “It caught me too.”
“The diner?” he asked. “And we must take another trip to the construction site.”
We rode in silence for a while. Every so often, Dallas would glance over at me, sitting there quietly, watching the snow fall out the window. Bulbous dark clouds hung in the sky, and when we got to the diner, a chilly wind threatened to freeze off our fingertips.
After a tasty dinner, we headed to the Silver Spur for a nightcap. Dallas was slamming back a dirty whiskey while I nursed another Irish coffee. I didn’t want to break the silence before he did.
“It's funny,” Dallas said quietly. “Dad wrote so many letters to me but never sent them. While I cannot count the hundreds of times I picked up the phone to call them, I never pressed the last digit. I suppose Dad and I were stubborn alike.”
“Maybe he thought he was at fault for holding you back when you wanted to go,” I offered. “And you thought he’d hate you for absconding on them. That is a zero-sum game if I have ever seen one.”
He did that annoyingly stimulating thing with his middle finger circling the rim of his glass, and I squirmed in my seat. “I don’t know if I can read those letters,” he admitted.
“Maybe not at once,” I suggested again. “One at a time, maybe? It looks like they are arranged in chronological order.”
Cocking an elbow on the table, he rubbed his forehead. “I just cannot believe I fucked up this badly.”
“If it is any consolation, my family is a bag of showboating hypocrites,” I said. “Well, my brother is. He’s like one of those mythical snakes, you know, you cut one head off and he grows three in its place, and all his fangs are venomous.”
“Is that why you distance yourself from them?” he asked.
“That and the fact that he was chosen to run the business instead,” I admitted. “Yes, I am salty about it, but you know what, I realize I’d have gone stir-crazy working with the family company. You know what they say, familiarity breeds contempt.”
He shook his head. “We’d better get back to the ranch. I want to sleep for a week.”
I eyed his drink. “Are you okay to drive?”
“I only had two,” he said dryly. “I’m six foot three and two hundred and seventy-five pounds. Do you think two four-ounce drinks will tank me? Frankly, I am astounded you’re coherent. You’ve been sucking down those Irish coffees like they’re gonna disappear tomorrow while you’re a buck twenty soaking wet.”
I did not want to tell him about the buzz I had going on.
“Well, I am not the one driving,” I shrugged.
Snorting, he dropped a couple of dollars on the table for a tip, and we left. The snow was coming down hard now, and as we passed by the general store, we spotted Hank shoveling the snow into heaps.
We went to the ranch to find the snow that had piled up near the front walk, almost half a foot high, and I couldn’t resist. While Dallas locked the truck, I grabbed a handful and packed it tight. The moment he turned around, I smacked it in his face.
I stood still while the snow slowly slipped down his nose and dripped off his face before he collected his wits and wiped the rest away.
His eyes narrowed. “What the heck was that?”
“Snow looks great on you,” I replied.
He stepped forward. “What the hell was that?”
I dove for more snow and didn’t even have time to pack it; I just flung it into his face. I was getting my snow legs under me while he wiped that handful away, too. I didn’t think I would get away with this for long; Dallas would either go full caveman on me, grab me from the pile, throw me over his shoulder, and walk us inside.
What I didn’t expect was a tight ball of snow cracking me on the chest or another hitting my gut. Was he going to engage in this snowball war with me? I saw him tossing a ball of snow in his hand with a pointed look at me. “Your move.”
“I’m gonna win,” I said, grabbing a handful of snow and ducking a barrage of snowballs that whizzed by my ear .
I replied in kind, and between ducking flying snow and lobbying handfuls of mine, I was running around the front of the house like a madwoman. Dallas was using the truck as a shield, gathering his ammo behind it, while I used the house's corners as shields. A cold wind whistled as I flung a doubleheader at him and lurched for more.
Fired up by the sight of the cowboy standing at the end of the walk, I flung snow like my life depended on it. Ducking behind the corner of the house, I peeked around to check how my opponent was doing, but I got a face full of snow.
I would not go down to that arrogant cowboy and switched on the afterburners! Snow flew to the left; snow flew to the right. I gasped for breath and kept going. Almost there— except I was out of snow. Dammit.
Dropping to my knees, I crawled out to get some ammo— and got yanked up into stiff arms. “That’s it, missy. Playtime is over.”
“No, let me down,” I squirmed. “I was winning.”
“No, you weren’t,” he kicked the front door in and trudged inside, stopping to stomp the snow from his boots. “But you can think that if you want.”
He set my feet, and I shook my head, dispelling the sudden dizziness. I huffed, “You could have let me have it.”
Dallas slapped my butt. “I think you’re drunk. Bedtime for you, missy.”
I wanted to disagree with him, but he was right. Today had been long, and I suspected he wanted time to spend with himself. I know I would if I’d gotten the same bombshell that had been dropped on him.
I swayed. Maybe I was getting drunk. “Good night, kiss?”
The few sizzling-hot kisses we’d shared came to mind, causing a slow burn in my belly. Dallas’ big hands were framing my face now, cupping my cheeks as he drove his tongue inside my mouth. The dark, spicy taste of his whiskey lingered on his tongue, and I sucked on it as I looped my arms around his neck and tangled my fingers in his hair, urging him to deepen the kiss.
I nipped at his bottom lip, scraping across it with my teeth, and he pressed my body flush with his, and a tidal wave of need welled up inside me. Before things got too out of hand, Dallas smartly pulled away to rest his forehead on mine and tried to catch his breath.
“You’ll be the goddamn death of me,” he murmured, stepping back.
I honestly didn’t know if that was a good thing or not.
I knew he needed space, so I fetched my things from where I’d dropped them on the snowy ground and went inside the warm interior and up the stairs. I stopped on the third step, pivoting to see him carry the box of letters in.
He isn’t going to sleep tonight, is he?