Page 44 of My Secret Santa Dallas

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 envyyou 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.

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