Rugged Cowboy - Elana Johnson Page 0,16

had taken them to get a couple of new outfits and real backpacks that didn’t hold their clothes. He’d gone to the bank too, and he’d splurged and taken the kids to lunch before finally stopping by the elementary school to get them enrolled.

Now, he simply looked at Dallas like he was the biggest failure on the planet. Dallas felt it keenly too, but he kept his gaze on the secretary.

“Oh,” she said, clearly surprised. “Are you homeless?” She looked at Thomas, as if the fifth grader would tell her or otherwise exhibit some sort of sign of homelessness.

“No,” Dallas said, grateful he could answer in such a way. “We just got into town yesterday, though, and we’re living at Hope Eternal Ranch.” She didn’t need to know it was a cabin out by some swampy areas. People obviously stayed there when they did the birdwatching or honey something-or-other Dallas hadn’t listened to that closely. All he knew was that it didn’t have a number on it that the USPS would recognize.

“Let’s look that up,” she said with a perky smile, and Dallas supposed someone should be glad to be in that school office. “I’ve got it right here,” she said a moment later. She read it off for him, and he wrote it on the form. He didn’t add the number of the cabin, though a big one had been nailed to the door. He could get his mail from someone in the West Wing, and his mind automatically went to Jess.

She’d definitely been frustrated or annoyed with him that morning, though he had no idea why.

He finished the forms, half of his mind on them and the other half on Jess. He turned them all in, and the blonde secretary said she’d get everything put into the system, and the children would have teachers ready for them in the morning.

Dallas nodded at her, put one arm around each of his children, and left the school. “Okay,” he said, breathing out a big sigh as they approached his car. “That’s done. What else do we need to do?”

Neither of the kids said anything, and Dallas looked at Thomas. “What’s wrong?”

Thomas shrugged and went around to the passenger door. Dallas opened the back door for Remmy and waited for her to climb in and begin buckling her seatbelt. He got behind the wheel and started the engine so the air conditioning would start.

“Come on, guys,” he said. “What’s wrong?”

“It’s just that….” Thomas started. He turned toward the window. “It’s nothing.”

“Remmy?” Dallas asked, looking at her in the rearview mirror.

“Tommy thought we’d be going back to Aunt Amy’s,” she said. “I’m just scared I won’t like my new teacher.”

Surprise shot through Dallas. “Why would we go back to Aunt Amy’s?”

“Because she has a house,” Thomas said.

“We have a house too,” Dallas said, his defenses flying into place. “I need to sell the one in Houston, and then maybe we can get a real house here in town.”

“Why can’t we go to Houston?” Thomas asked.

The answer to that was far too much for a ten-year-old to handle, so Dallas just said, “We can’t, that’s all.” He flexed his fingers on the steering wheel and backed out of the parking space. “And Remmy, I’m sure you’ll love your new teacher.”

“I hope so,” she said, and Dallas wished for simpler days, when he’d been six years old. All he’d thought about was going fishing, something his father had taken him to do every weekend and whenever they needed to de-stress and get away from the busyness of the world.

His heart beat in a strange way as he thought about his dad. He’d been so angry when Dallas had been indicted, tried, and convicted. Mad at the legal system. Mad at Dallas. Mad at the world. He’d never once visited Dallas at River Bay, nor had he ever taken one of Dallas’s phone calls.

His mother had, and Dallas vowed to figure out how long it would take to get from Sweet Water Falls to Temple, where his parents lived. Where he’d grown up, and where two of his siblings still lived. Greg had called Dallas at Amy’s the first night he’d been free. His sisters had texted, and he’d called his mom.

They hadn’t made plans to get together, and Dallas now viewed that as a mistake. He needed to speak to his parents, especially his father, and start to repair what had broken. Wasn’t that what he did for a living now? Make run-down and