Rugged Cowboy - Elana Johnson Page 0,14

and to add even more confusion to his ragged soul, he knew he wasn’t over Martha. He couldn’t start a real relationship with Jess right now, and he should’ve said so last night.

Instead, he’d asked her about ice cream, he remembered that. They’d talked about the job a little bit, and he’d signed the paperwork that morning with Emma. He had his old bank account, but there wasn’t a branch in Sweet Water Falls, so he needed to get a new one open here.

He’d promised he’d call Amy and Brent too, and he hadn’t done that.

His to-do list grew and grew, and the weight of it started to press down on him.

“Okay?” Jess asked, and he realized he’d zoned out again.

“Okay,” he said anyway. “Got it.”

“And back here,” Nick said, leading him toward a hallway Dallas didn’t want to go down. At River Bay, he would’ve never stepped foot down this hall—it was too dark and too narrow. Anyone could’ve been waiting for him in the shadows, and Dallas’s heartbeat thumped loudly in his ears.

“We have our secret passageway to the main shed,” Nick said, his voice getting muted as he entered what seriously looked like a tunnel. They hadn’t gone down any steps though, so Dallas didn’t really believe the hallway was underground.

He ducked his head, though he didn’t need to, as he followed Nick. Jess pressed into the narrow alley behind him, and that only sent Dallas’s pulse into a faster sprint.

“We have everything you need in here,” Jess said, her voice echoing a little bit.

Nick opened a door right when Dallas thought he might start gasping for breath, and a bright rectangle of light filled the hallway. Relief filled him, and he didn’t even care that the equipment shed smelled halfway between a gym full of sweaty socks, last night’s dinner, and hot metal.

The shed was made of metal, and a special kind of heat filled the whole thing. “Wow,” he said, looking up to the blue arched ceiling of the metal building above him. “This place is huge.”

“It’s so hot,” Jess complained, already fanning herself with a folded piece of paper she’d tucked into her back pocket a while ago.

“Well, Dallas can fix air conditioners,” Nick said, beaming at him. “And I’d literally sacrifice one of my favorite goats if you could get Red Mama to run for more than ten minutes at a time.”

Again with the nonsensical words. “Red Mama?” Dallas asked.

“She’s the swather,” Jess said as she rolled her eyes. “Nick and Spence name everything around here.”

“Ted said he had to name the dogs,” Dallas said. “So that’s not entirely true.”

“All the tractors and stuff,” Nick said. “Ginger names every horse. And yes, Ted named the blue heelers. They love him.” He reached down and patted Ursula, who hadn’t had a problem walking through the secret passageway to the equipment shed.

“Is that the only entrance?” Dallas asked, starting to wonder if he shouldn’t have signed the paperwork until he’d gotten the full layout of the job.

“Of course not,” Jess said, and she seemed so annoyed with him. He looked at her, not sure why she would be. In his eyes, they’d had a great conversation last night, and she’d even smiled and said hello to him earlier that morning.

So what had changed?

“There’s a big door over there,” she said. “We usually have it open, as the tractors and trucks use it.”

“And a door on each end,” Nick said pleasantly. “And two on each side too.” He pointed to them. “Let’s go into the office, and I’ll show you what Bill has been doing.”

“All right.” Dallas cast one more look around, counting the vehicles he could see. Eight. Maybe ten. This really was a full-time job, especially if none of them ran for longer than ten minutes at a time.

Worry started to eat at him. When would he have time for his kids? How was he supposed to raise them by himself and work around the ranch? In fact, he wasn’t even sure how to do either of them singly, and a new kind of panic started wailing in his gut.

Nick led the way into a corner room that had no right to be called an office. Dallas had enjoyed an office in the hospital, and it could easily hold six of these rooms. It had been bigger than the cabin he’d stayed in last night too, and that moment brought crystal clarity to how different his life was now.

“Okay,” Nick said with a sigh,