Page 38 of My Secret Santa Dallas

I handed the cell back to Santos. “Thanks. Warrick will be back soon.”

“Yep. He told me too,” he slid the cell into a saddlebag and then nodded over my shoulder. “So, what's going on with her?”

Craning my head over my shoulder, I saw Blair sitting pretty on her mare, hair down under a beaten brown hat I’d found in the stable. For a moment, she looked like a proper cowgirl— if that cowgirl had posed for Vogue.

“What do you mean?” I asked.

“Oh, come on,” Santos drawled. “You know what I mean. Are you hitting that or what?”

“No,” I lied.

“So, I can hit that?” Santos added.

The possessive growl that left my throat sounded like abear over his kill. Laughing his head off, Santos added, “That is what I thought.”

I was pissed that I’d allowed my true self to slip through the cracks, even when it was the best for everyone that no one knew about me and Blair.

“Don’t worry,” Santos said, zipping his mouth shut. “I won’t say a word.”

Blair was rounding the post and heading to a spreading elm, possibly to wait out the now fluttering snow, her hair fluttering on the wind. Only, she did it at the worst possible time. A bull, a big-ass Longhorn bastard with wicked horns, while shaved down, they were still wicked, headed her way for no foreseeable reason.

Was it her hair?

Was it her unfamiliar scent?

Was it the horse?

It didn’t matter— I had to get in between them.

“Hey, bull,” I shouted, racing between them to cut him off his path to Blair. “Over here, bull.”

With a tight grip on my reins, I circled his perimeter, drawing his eyes from her to me. It was enough to distract him, but now he knew he was about to be penned, and the bull pawed a hoof, and I reached for my lasso. It’d taken about five minutes on the ranch days ago for muscle memory to kick in and for me to remember my bull-wrangling chops.

The asshole turned on his heels and charged right at full speed, making a break for Blair. He made it within six feet and ran, and with fear now, a block of sharp ice in my chest, I spun the horse, and the lasso whipped through the air, snagging a horn.

In seconds—these things happened so fast, and I couldn’t put them in chronological order, Frankie andanother ranch hand, Lucas, were roping the bull too; Blair flung herself to the ground, curling up in a fetal position, or did that happen before we men had the bull roped?

My arm felt like it was about to rip out of its socket— but I could not allow her to be injured. Their ropes were around his neck, and one on his back left hoof, but damn, the ornery old bull was too stubborn to go down without a fight.

I dug my heels into Sweetie, and so did she, locking her legs and heaving to the side as I held on to the saddle’s horn and kept my seat. The bull bellowed with fury and shook his head, trying to break free.

Sweetie stood steady, keeping up with the bull but leaving enough space between us; between the three of us, we finally got that nasty beast down, and I looked over to Blair, who, smartly, had not moved an inch. That would have been disastrous, as it would have only egged the beast on.

“You got this?” I shouted over to the three.

Lucas gave me a tight nod, his arms bulging as he held the bull down, and I rode over to Blair, leaping off the horse in record time.

“Blair!” I was about to be sick. “Blair!”

When she sat up, her face was as white as death. Her face was scratched, and her wrist looked twisted the wrong way. I gently eased her up. “Are you all right?”

She looked over my shoulder, and I could only imagine her seeing the men hog-tying the bull before she looked at me. “Have you ever seen your life flash before your eyes?”

“A couple of times, yeah,” I said. “Are you hurt?”

“I—” she cradled her hand to her chest. “I think I may have sprained something.”

“I’ll take you to the medical center,” I said, gently pulling her to her feet. “C’mon.”

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