Page 13 of My Secret Santa Dallas

Dallas and I shared a look before he replied, “We appreciate that. Thank you.”

“My pleasure. Now, I’ll be taking off.” Mayor Treeve nodded to his car. “I’ll see you around.”

Lifting a hand, Dallas replied, “Same here.”

With the mayor gone, I turned to him, “Coffee after the diner. I am so hungry, I feel like I could eat a horse.”

He snorted. “We don’t do that around here. Beef, yes, horses, no.”

“I want to punch you,” I told him flatly. “You know what I mean.”

“I do,” Dallas replied as we strode off to his truck and he pulled out my door for me. “But I don’t care. As a matter of fact, I’ll even let you take the first shot.”

Halfway down the road to the town, I asked, “You don’t really want to go to the diner, do you?”

“No,” Dallas said.

“Because…?”

He shot me a look, then faced the road again. “Ms. Smarty-pants hasn’t deduced that yet?”

Drumming my fingers on my lap, I said, “I have some ideas, but I would like you to spell it out for me.”

“With the way I left this place, I feel like I will be repeating myself a million times,” he said gruffly. “I’ve hurt a lot of people, not only my brother, and I know a lot of people aren’t going to be happy to see me.”

I bit back my words, knowing they would immediately snap the tentative peace we had between us.

He had prejudged the town as already condemning him.

He had not forgiven himself for leaving.

I wondered if he blamed himself for Warrick’s accident.

“Oh,” was all I could only utter. “Maybe you’ll be surprised.”

Dallas gave me another look, his gray eyes steely like the sky before a storm. “Don’t be a smartass.”

“I’m always smart, and I’ve got a great ass,” I said cockily.

A laugh burst from him, low, rough, and smoky. “Smartass.”

We hit Main Street, the heart of the town, and instantly, my head snapped to the windows. It was not even Christmas yet; hell, Thanksgiving had just passed, but the place looked like a Winter Wonderland— without the snow.

The square’s lampposts and storefronts were draped with twinkling red and green Christmas lights, and I could only imagine how warm the glow would look on the soon-to-be snow-covered sidewalks.

“By the time it gets to the week before Christmas, there is going to be a massive tree there,” he said, clearly referringto the square. “All the kids come out, they get a bunch of ladders, and they decorate it with homemade ornaments.”

I looked in the rearview mirror on my side, “This really is a small town. If we did this in Atlanta, there would be scaffolds and harnesses and a line of laws to make sure the city didn't get sued if one kid got a scrape on their face.”

“Those kids need to get out and touch some grass,” he said as we pulled into the diner’s parking lot.

The lights with the diner’s name were blinking above the door. We stepped in, and I felt thrown back into the sixties; the place actually had checkered tile and red vinyl booths. The air in the place automatically had me salivating; I smelled spices, buttermilk chicken, cheesy mac and cheese, and downright country cooking.

“I know this isn’t your scene,” Dallas said, “But it’s good.”

I breathed deep again; I could almost smell the chicken and dumplings. Then, there would be fried okra and a hash brown casserole, and I hoped to get some extra cornbread. Cocking a brow, I asked, “What do you think we eat in the South?”

“The souls of the damned?” He asked flatly.

---