Rugged Cowboy - Elana Johnson Page 0,28
gave a nervous chuckle.
“You wouldn’t have wanted to get in this thing a couple of hours ago. The kids eat in it every day, and wow, my children are slobs.”
Jess laughed with him, glad things seemed to be easy with him.
She quieted and as they left the ranch, he said, “I haven’t been on a date in a very long time, Jess,” he said. “I hope you’ll forgive me if I mess it up.”
“Dating is like riding a bike,” she said. “It’ll come right back to you.”
“Do you go out a lot?” he asked.
“I wouldn’t say a lot,” Jess said, glancing at him. She also didn’t want to talk about her romantic history on the first date. No need to get into the specifics of her failures and shortcomings so soon. No, she wanted to hide those for as long as possible.
“More than me,” he said. “I’d been married for fifteen years. Martha and I dated for a year before we finally got engaged.”
Jess didn’t like that word “finally” in there. She shook her hair over her shoulders, realizing that she’d forgotten to put on earrings. A flash of regret hit her, because she wanted to be and look her best tonight.
“How long…?” She let her question hang there, because she didn’t want to continue it. “You didn’t want to get married?”
He glanced at her, but Jess just played with the end of a piece of hair as if she didn’t care. But honestly, she did. If he wasn’t looking for a committed relationship, she might as well go back to the West Wing right now.
“Martha stalled for a while,” he said. “She wanted her father’s approval, and I hadn’t applied for medical school yet.”
Ah, so status was important to his ex-wife. “She didn’t file for divorce until you were about to get out?”
“Yes,” Dallas clipped out.
That made perfect sense to Jess, but she wasn’t sure Dallas had gotten the memo yet.
“Who’s the last guy you went out with?” he asked, his voice still on the outer edge of angry.
“Spencer,” she said.
Dallas looked fully at her, not bothering to watch the road. “Spencer from the ranch, Spencer?”
“Yes,” Jess said, her chest filling with a chill. “It didn’t really work out. He’s like a brother to me.”
“Did you kiss him?”
“Yes,” Jess said. “It was awkward and horrible.”
Dallas started to chuckle, the sound morphing into full-blown laughter. As he quieted, he said, “If it’s like that when I kiss you, just tell me, okay? I haven’t kissed a woman in a while either.”
Surprise moved through Jess. “Are you planning on kissing me tonight?”
“I don’t know,” Dallas said. “I guess that depends on how well the date goes.”
“It’s the first date,” she said.
“Yeah,” he said, clearly not getting it.
“Maybe I don’t kiss on the first date,” she teased.
Dallas’s cheeks took on a pinkish hue, and he chuckled again. “Good, that’ll take the pressure off me for a while.”
Jess crossed her legs in the front seat of his small sedan, wondering if he could see her yet. “I mean, I’ve been known to kiss on the first date, if I really like the guy.”
“Oh, boy,” he muttered. “Now I’ve got two standards to live up to.”
She laughed with him, and the moment he parked in the parking lot of Red Light Ravioli, she knew she’d kiss him that night if he even attempted it. He was easy to talk to, and real, and handsome, and no matter what Hannah said, Dallas was exactly Jess’s type.
“Tell me a little about prison,” she said as she took his hand and they went inside the restaurant to get a table.
Dallas just stared at her and said nothing. He waited until they had a table and had ordered drinks before he even looked her way again. “I don’t really want to talk about my time in prison,” he said.
“How long were you there?” Jess asked.
“Thirty months.”
Jess nodded, thinking of all she could do and had done in two and a half years’ time. She’d heard a couple of Nate’s stories from the River Bay facility, and she decided that if Dallas wasn’t comfortable sharing about it yet, she shouldn’t push him.
He winced as he shifted to get his phone out of his back pocket. “I set my kids’ notification to something special,” he said. “I hope you understand that I need to have this out sometimes.”
“Of course,” she said, admiring him and his devotion to his kids.
“Okay.” He took in a long breath and looked at her. “So,