Chapter 12
Chapter Twelve
Dallas
A fter a screaming hot shower and a glass of whisky, I settled downstairs, back in the TV room, with the lamplights on and the box open. I took the six piles of letters out and saw the dates on the yellowing paper— a year after I’d left.
Dallas,
I tried to find the words to say to you when I saw the note you’d left on your pillow Thanksgiving morning, and I found too many. I am disappointed in you, Dallas. I felt pained about how you left, and while I know you are a strong, capable person, I am beside myself with worry, knowing you are alone. I am afraid you’ll get tricked and go hungry on the road. I am so scared you are all alone and have no one with you.
But most of all, I feel sorely disappointed in myself with the creeping suspicion that I have failed you somehow. I feel that I’d pushed you to think this ranch was your only future or that I’d disparage your desire to pursue another interest. Worst of all, I think you think I’d hate you for not following in the footsteps your great-grandfather, grandfather, and I have followed for years.
None of that is true, Dallas.
Yes, I would have been upset, I would have doubted your mind, and yes, there would have been some questioning and pushback, but ultimately, I would have let you go. I would not have ever forced you to stay. That would have made you resent me more than anything.
As I write this letter, I keep staring at the note you had left on your bed, praying that you are okay. I don’t know if you are aware, but I tried to follow you but lost your trail. By this time, I hope you are wherever you are, safe, sound, and ready to tackle your dreams.
I can only hope that one day you’ll return, and we can work on tractors with you, be at a Super Bowl party together, or listen to you gripe when your Mom volunteers for the church bake sale.
I miss you, Dallas, but believe me when I say there is no bad blood between us. I wish you all the good things in this world, and if the evil days come by, I wish you’ll weather them and push forward, too.
All the love,
Dad.
If I hadn’t known how to feel about this before, I sure didn’t know what to do about it now.
With the subsequent three letters, I tracked the same forgiving feeling coming through the pages from the first letter; Dad sometimes rambled, like the stream of thoughts in his head was coming through his pen. But he had never blamed me or told me I was at fault.
It still felt like a gut punch and a cauterizing brand at the same time. Dad may not have been able to reach me by phone, snail mail, fax, or hell, skywriting— and I was at fault for that, too— but he’d reached into my heart with these letters.
Training my gaze out the windows, I looked out into the night. It was moonless, but that didn’t stop me from seeing the snowfall; it was getting thicker by the minute. By morning, I guessed we’d have about a foot and a half of snow on the ground, and the town would torpedo into Christmas mode.
I heard the creak of the steps behind me, but I didn’t turn around to look, not even when I heard the kitchen cupboard open. Marie was probably putting something to brine or marinate, as the guys never came into the house beyond nine. It was one in the morning.
Dropping the sixth letter, I reached for my glass of whisky only to find it empty— but then saw a slim hand drop a glass of whisky on the table and pluck the empty one away.
Before Blair could walk away, I grabbed her wrist— my hand was comically large around her wrist. My thumb ran over her inner wrist, and I felt her shiver. I didn’t know what to do when I pulled her in to brush my lips over hers.
At any other time, I’d want something else, but not now. I just wanted some simple comfort, and the small kiss I got from her was just that. I didn’t need sex. Not now.
“Why are you up?” I asked.
“I’m working on another proposal,” Blair said. “And I can’t sleep. So, when I can’t sleep, I work. And no, before you get on it, it’s not to lowball anyone. It’s the Portman charity run for New Year's.”
“Oh,” my head quirked. “Who would want to run on New Year's Morning? Shouldn’t they be in bed, recovering from near alcohol overload? ”
She laughed and cocked her hip on the back of the couch. “Some do. Have you ever been to Georgia at the peak of winter? January? Men are jogging in the rain shirtless.”
“Insanity exists.” I snorted. “Do you participate in these things? Do you run?”
“Nope.” Blair shrugged. “I do give the winners their medals, though.” She then nodded to the letters. “I’ll leave you be.”
“Is work really what’s gotten you up?” I asked. “Today, at the church, you looked upset.”
The corner of her mouth tightened. “My brother was pissing me off, telling me that I had to come back home for our annual ball and hospital drive. I told him I want no part of that circus, so he can go and kick rocks.”
I snorted. “What is your brother’s deal?”
“He’s a pseudointellectual sciolist narcissist,” Blair shrugged.
“Translation?”
“He’s a pretentious prick who doesn’t know what the fuck he’s doing.”
Snorting, I waved to the letters. “Well, it seems you were right. There is no tribe coming with the torches and pitchforks. I still have a ways to go, but at least the guilt is lessening.”
She slid her fingers into my hair. “Good.”
My head lolled back, arching into her touch. “Are you prepared for the town tomorrow? I can guarantee the townspeople have spun the Christmas dial to a thousand. It's Christmas crack on steroids.”
Blair grinned. “Good. I can observe the natives in the wild. ”
“You’re something else,” I snorted. “Go to bed before you lose fifteen hours of beauty sleep.”
She glared. “I’m not a cat.”
“The scratches on my butt will disagree with that,” I told her, with one brow near my hairline.
Her soft laugh lingered in the air as she went to the stairs, and I sagged back onto the couch, telling myself that I wasn’t smiling— but damn if I didn’t have a grin on my face bigger than the state of Texas.
When I got up again, everything was white at about nine— thank you, whiskey. The snow was trickling down, but it had come down with a fury between one a.m. and six this morning. I already knew school had been canceled, the playground was filled with kids, and the tourists were out in their numbers.
Did I need to go anywhere today? Blair had asked about seeing how the town ran with such snow. By then, I was dressed and on the ranch with the guys, herding the bulls into the widest pasture with tons of tree cover and getting the foals back into the wide barns to keep them out of the cold.
“So, is the little lady sticking around for Christmas?” he asked while tipping his hat up to shield himself from the snow.
I peered at him. “Are you hoping to get her for Secret Santa?”
“I would,” he said. “I’ve got some passes to a lux spa. After all this, she’ll appreciate a day of doing nothing.”
“She’s a workaholic,” I said. “I don’t think she’ll do well doing nothing. ”
He peered at me. “How do you know that?”
While watching a bull that might become problematic, I absent-mindedly admitted, “About one in the morning, she was telling me that she was working on some charity run for her boss.”
The silence coming from Frankie only connected when I realized— five minutes after I’d said those words, that they could be interpreted a million ways from what I wanted them to be. “For god’s sake, it's not what you think.”
He laughed. “And what am I thinking? Are the two of you not knocking boots? Because that ain’t happening! We have all seen how you two look at each other when the other one is not looking. The jury is still out on whether you want to shove the other off a cliff or decide when the best moment to jump into bed is.”
I growled. “We’re not?—”
“Save it,” he laughed harder. “Do you know that Marie’s room is two feet away from yours? She spilled the beans on you two but swore us to secrecy.”
My gut fell. “That was a night of temporary madness.”
“Really now?” His tone reminded me of trying to lie way out of sneaking cookies at midnight when I knew my Mom had already caught me. “Then why did Isaac have to wait forty-five minutes before the barn mysteriously unlocked itself? He had a snapped saddle girth and went to get a replacement. I have to say, you might have mentally scarred the kid with the noises coming from inside that place. Was that temporary madness, too?”
Fuck.
We were so screwed.
I sighed. “We’re just having some fun.”
“Hey man, no judgment here.” Frankie nudged his horse to avoid colliding with mine. “You should know I envy you a lot right now, and I am glad for you at the same time. I don’t know which one is winning.”
Shaking my head, I checked my watch. “I need to go back. We’ve got to go to the site for a while.”
“We can handle things around here,” he said. “It seems the cold has cooled the testosterone in these big bastards.”
“Good,” I flexed my shoulder. “Because I don’t have the wrangling chops I used to have.” Turning the horse toward the house, I added. “I’ll see you guys later.”
When I arrived at the house, I realized Blair was nowhere to be seen, and I wondered if she was still asleep. In the latter's case, I made her a cup of coffee, grabbed some condiments, and headed to her room.
At the doorway, I knocked. “Are you up?” I didn’t hear anything for a moment, and then I knocked again. “May I come in?”
I heard sheets rustle. “Yeah,” Blair called out. “It’s open.”
Entering the room, I saw her sitting in bed, soft and sleepy, hair all over the place and the strap of her tank top slipping down one shoulder, highlighting what I was missing out on.
She rubbed her eyes and squinted at me. “What time is it?”
“Almost noon,” I said.
Act normal, I told myself, even though the heat was already starting to creep up my neck.
“I thought you were ready to take the town by storm with your binoculars around your neck and safari hat on,” I said, resting the cup and condiments on the bedside table. “ Skimmed almond milk, chocolate drizzle, and ten packets of Splenda, right? Just the way you like it.”
She stared at me. “That’s hot coffee.”
“I know,” I replied. “So, the town today or not?”
“For that, you’re buying me another cup when we get to town,” Blair said, reaching for the cup and waving her hand. “Now, go away, coffee boy.”
“Ten minutes?”
“Seventeen,” Blair corrected me. “It takes a while to straighten this hair.”
“Or you can let your hair down, literally,” I suggested.
“No chance, buster,” she said. “You’re eating up my time.”
Stifling a grin, I left her room and went for the truck, hoping it wasn’t buried in snow. As I scraped the windshield off, my cell rang, and I accepted Warrick’s call.
“Hey,” I said. “What’s up?”
“What’s up is this damned snowstorm that is blowing into DC, and everything is grounded,” Warrick sounded pissed. “We were supposed to be home yesterday, and with how things are looking now, we’ll be home in two days. Zara and I are at a hotel near the airport, hoping a flight might clear soon so we can get home before the Black Friday drawing.”
“That’s in five days,” I said. “Hopefully, you’ll be home soon.”
“Yeah,” he sighed. “I hope so too. So, how are things going?”
“If you mean with the plant, it's going well,” I kept an eye on the door. “It's snowing hard up here, so we’ll check with the builders and see what they’re saying.”
“I’d expect they would shut down for a while,” Warrick said as Blair stepped out the door, all bundled up and with her beanie on, inching her way across the snow. “Don’t get too frazzled about it.”
“I won’t,” I promised. “I’ve got to go, but I’ll call you if anything pops up.”
Warrick was quiet before he said, “Okay. Tell Blair I say hello.”
“Will do,” I said while dropping the phone into my back pocket. “Ready to go?”
She nodded. “Yep.”
After getting things squared away with the builders, who said they would be on break until January, we made sure the site wasn’t compromised. We’d headed to get her the coffee she wanted, and the moment we stepped into the Riverbend café, she ordered an iced coffee.
“Iced coffee…” I said flatly.
“Yes.”
“In winter.”
“Yes.”
“On the coldest day to date,” I said.
This time, her eyes narrowed. “Yes. So go and get my coffee, minion.”
I got her a large cup of sugar coma-inducing coffee and said, sliding it to her, “You know, I think I read somewhere that people who drink iced coffee in winter are psychopaths.”
We left the store and began walking along the waterway. “It’s possible,” she said. “Did they interview Dahmer on what he drank while seasoning his gall bladder and spleen? ”
“He never ate those,” I said. “I am scared that you know that.”
“I am scared that you know differently,” she slid me a look as we came across a young man, all bundled up, as he stood next to a sleigh and two horses while one drank from a bucket of water.
“Sleigh ride?” I asked with a big smile just as the snow began to flutter down, and damn if Blair’s eyes didn’t light up like a thousand suns.