Page 46 of My Secret Santa Dallas

“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.

Chapter Thirteen

Blair

I’d flown across the world in private jets, been on super yachts and helicopters, and been in limos and Ferraris, but I had never felt my heart beat this way at seeing two-horse open sleighs. How is it that I had never been in one?

I turned to Dallas, who looked like something had gutted him right through, and oddly, I giggled. “I think you know what I am about to ask.”

“I do,” He said.

“So, we’re going,” I said.

“What would happen if I said no?” Dallas questioned me.

“I’d tell you to suck it up and get in the sleigh,” I replied sweetly.

Dallas turned to the poor guy, who was trying his hardest not to laugh. “Where are we going? How much time will it take, and how much?”

The man’s smile didn’t drop, but his eyes moved to mebefore he returned to answer Dallas. “It’s a forty-minute loop through the park, and it's sixty bucks.”

I quirked an eyebrow, “Do you have somewhere else to be?”

He sighed long and loudly. “No. Why?”

“Then why do you need to know how long the ride will be?” I asked.

“Because I need to know how long before my brain starts to dribble out of my ears,” he said before he stepped up help me into the carriage. “It’ll probably freeze before it hits the ground though.”

“Did you just make a joke?”

He quirked an eyebrow. “If you tell anyone, I’ll deny it.”

“Of course, you will, because it fell flatter than a bad dad joke,” I replied. “C’mon, sleigh rides are supposed to be fun.”

He gave me a long look, his expression unchanging. “Yay,” he finally said in the most deadpan voice I’d ever heard from him, which was saying a lot since ninety-five percent of the time I’d been around Dallas, all I heard from him was dry wit and scathing sarcasm.

Once we were both settled, the driver turned and smiled. “I’m Wes, and there’s a blanket under the seat if you’d like it. Let me know if you have any questions about the town as we make our way around on the journey.”

Did he think we were tourists?

I shared a look with Dallas, who thought the same thing. Thankfully, he did not correct him and just sat in the seat, facing forward. We did a turn right there in the middle of the street on Wednesday. The turn was as slow as molasses, but if you saw Dallas grab at the side of the carriage, you’d think we were going at Mach 5.

He was so clearly out of his comfort zone, I felt terrible for laughing. “You know you ride a horse daily, right?”

Dallas opened his mouth to answer, then closed it, did it again, and clamped his lips tight. Finally, he added, “I’m not used to relaxing. Doing things for leisure.”

“Not even once?” I asked.

“When I was twenty-one, I went to a club to relax,” he shuddered. “I returned to my shared apartment traumatized and had a headache from the bass for two days. Since I left, all I did was work. I had no one to rely on, so I had to be on the grind from when I woke up at four until went to bed at midnight.”

“Jesus,” I groaned. “Living on four hours of sleep is not nice.”

We entered the park, where the small playground had children slipping down slides and pushing off the swings. The late afternoon sun slanted through several tall pine trees just beyond the front clearing and the overgrown tufts of grass at the edges of the clearing where older kids stood talking.

The farther we journeyed into the park's depths, the thinner the crowd got, and soon enough, we were all alone, with only the snow and the twittering of birds around us. I reached for the blanket and wrapped the faux fur around us.

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