Rugged Cowboy - Elana Johnson Page 0,13
cabin in a ranch truck, and they’d made a plan to get started the next morning. Bill was going to meet them in the equipment office and go over everything with Dallas, and Jess was simply tagging along to introduce the two of them.
“Who texted?” Hannah asked.
“No one,” Jess said quickly, flipping her phone over.
“Oh, yeah, seems like no one,” Hannah said. “Look at her, Jill. She’s turning purple.”
“Stop it,” Jess said, though the heat had rushed into her face. She did turn a shade of purple because of her naturally darker coloring, and she hated that her embarrassment stained her face so easily.
“A new guy?” Jill asked.
“No,” Jess said. “How would I meet a new guy?” She rolled her eyes. Sometimes she felt chained to the ranch, but at the same time, she didn’t want to be or do anything else.
“Lots of men at the ranch for the wedding today,” Jill said. “In fact, I got the number of one of Nate’s friends from White Lake.”
“You did not,” Hannah said, shock coloring every word.
“I did,” Jill said, giggling. “It’s only twenty minutes from here. Eighteen if I take a back road.”
Thankfully, the conversation moved on, and the heat drained from Jess’s face. Her fingers itched to turn the phone over when it buzzed again, but instead, she ate her ice cream as fast as possible and made a hasty departure from the kitchen so she could text Dallas in private, all the while wondering why she had to be alone to read and respond to his messages.
Chapter Five
Once, Dallas had been able to handle a lot of things thrown at him. In surgery, any number of things could go wrong, and while a team of professionals all talked and gave statuses, he could focus on the veins and arteries on a screen. Nothing bothered him.
Prison had been the complete opposite of a heart surgery, and Dallas hadn’t hated the slower pace of life behind bars. The boredom could get to a man, though, and though River Bay offered classes for its inmates, and Dallas had taken some, he wasn’t what he would call overwhelmed or even that intellectually stimulated.
He walked around the ranch with Jess and a man named Nick, though she’d originally said Bill was coming. Apparently the other cowboy had been called out to a field with a couple of other men to address a broken sprinkler pipe.
No matter who he was with, Dallas felt like he’d landed on a different planet. Not only that, but neither Jess nor Nick spoke the same language he did.
Yes, he understood the words “horses” and “cattle” and “agriculture,” but he wasn’t sure how all the pieces fit together here at Hope Eternal.
Thankfully, he didn’t have to know that. Nick, who was Ginger’s nephew, would be running the ranch while she and Nate were on their honeymoon, and he didn’t seem perplexed or stressed at all. He couldn’t be more than twenty-five years old, and Dallas found himself marveling at Nick’s calm demeanor.
He had a pretty German shepherd name Ursula with him, and Dallas found her intense and intimidating and welcome all at the same time.
He’d left his kids in the cabin he’d been given, because Jess had said the tour would only take “an hour or so,” and the cabin was far enough away from everything and everyone that Dallas didn’t think anything would happen to them. Not only that, but Remmy hadn’t even been awake yet.
As soon as he finished this tour, Dallas needed to get the kids and take them to get registered for school. They’d need more clothes, and school supplies, and the dollar signs just kept flashing in his head.
“Did you get that?” Jess asked, and Dallas swung his attention toward her.
No, he had not gotten anything. He glanced around to see where they were, and they’d entered a small shed that smelled like gasoline and wet cement. “Tell me again,” he said.
“Our ATVs are on a rotation for scheduled maintenance,” Nick said easily. Jess looked a bit perturbed, but Dallas ignored it. He’d texted with her last night for over an hour, and he wasn’t even sure what they’d talked about for so long. He’d told himself several times to stop messaging her, but then he’d send another text. She responded too, and he actually found her much easier to talk to when he didn’t’ have to look at her.
What that meant, he didn’t know.
He had no idea what the feelings inside him were saying,