Page 32 of My Secret Santa Dallas

“Christ,” I braked at the red light. “And I thought my extra math lessons and helping with the ranch were tough. Did you have a childhood, or was it pre-adulthood preparation?”

She fingered the plastic cup with perfectly manicured nails. “Coming from the money I’m from, childhood was evenings at the tutor’s, Saturdays at the court or on the yacht, and Sundays at the country club.”

I swore under my breath. “I am starting to feel sorry for you. Kids should be free to play and have cereal with Saturday morning cartoons. Not be stuffed in tap shoes and trotted out like puppets for mama or daddy’s social clout.”

“I’ve never seen a Saturday morning cartoon,” Blair replied.

For some reason, I was more pissed at her parents than I had any right to. A child should enjoy what childhood means, not be a mini adult from day one.

“You’re pissed at my folks, aren’t you?”

“Yes.”

“How badly?”

“Like what? From a scale of one to ten?”

“Yep.”

“A nine,” I said as we pulled up at the diner. “And a half.”

She was silent for a moment, and I expected her to say something about different classes having different expectations or that life isn’t the same for those in the one percent as those in the working class.

Instead, she asked, “What responsibilities did you have on the ranch before you left?”

“I was on the go from dawn to dusk,” I replied. “Back then, Grandpa had a chicken coop, and we had a couple of sheep. I’d care for them, get eggs, feed them, the whole nine yards. I’d muck out the stalls for the horses, exercise them, and feed them. At fifteen, I shot up two feet in two months, and I was on the ranch, wrestling bulls into place. The smaller ones, not the ones that would stomp your face in half.”

“You did what you had to do for your family,” Blair said quietly. “I think that is the same thing I did with mine. Only mine had us meeting Supreme Court judges and Senators over the dinner table and get-togethers. We never thought it was out of the ordinary. I suppose an ‘ordinary’ childhood is not that ordinary after all.”

And fuck, I had to agree.

Chapter Nine

Blair

By the time we stepped into the diner— Dallas tugged down his hat while I thought he’d take it off—as things were almost ready to start. I found a seat in time for servers to round the room with cups of coffee, and while Dallas took one and dropped the minimum amount of sweeteners in it, I sipped from the cup I still had.

Dallas perplexed me; at one time, I’d considered him a cut-and-dry, black-and-white, stubborn soul who didn’t bend for anyone. Now, I was seeing sides to him that I doubted he had shown to anyone.

Sure, he was still plagued with guilt and regret for how he had dealt with his brother, this town, and the people who had once known him. Dallas was whip-smart; he knew his business, knew himself, and decided on what he wanted and didn’t want. He was a you-get-what-you-see kind of guy.

I liked that.

He was bold, bossy, and didn’t pussyfoot around any issues, not like some corporate schmucks I knew who could be bought and sold for a coin and a compliment. He didn’t have an ego that needed to be stroked, and he didn’t have anything to lose or gain by not being himself.

Not to mention, he rocked my body like a localized earthquake.

“Is everybody here?” Miss Betty said while entering the room, her eyes skimming over the crowd. “Well, almost everyone, I suppose. It will be enough to get the word out. Tom, do you want to take it away?”

A man, tall and broad-shouldered with short-cropped hair and piercing blue eyes, stepped up. He wore the green pants and khaki button-down uniform a sheriff wore, and the badge shining on his lapel told me I was right. He cocked his thumbs in his belt loops and rocked back on his heels.

“Glad to see you all,” he said. “I don’t need to go on a long spiel about this. We’ve been doing this song-and-dance for as long as I can remember, so no one should be surprised how Secret Santa works.”

“It’s two weeks before Black Friday, so we need to get everyone participating signed up to do the shuffle after Thanksgiving. I assume all of you here will be participating, but we have sign-up sheets to pass around for those who are not. Get as many as you can so we won’t miss anyone.”

“And we mean no one,” a lady with graying auburn hair came to stand by him. “Sheriff Callahan is right. Last year, we missed three people, and it was not pretty.”

“Thanks, Laura,” the sheriff said, nodding. “From the drawing on Black Friday to Christmas Eve, you have ample time to find the gift for your person. We have no idea what your budget will be like, but please put some thought intothe gift. Consider what the person likes and what might make them smile. For example, you know I love hiking, so a pair of boots wouldn’t go amiss.”

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