Rugged Cowboy - Elana Johnson Page 0,30

in Sweet Water Falls.

The check arrived and Jess quickly pulled out her card. She had to get out of there. She didn’t see where Dallas had gone but it hardly mattered.

While she waited for her card to process, she dialed the one person she knew would come get her no matter what. No matter where.

“Spence,” she said when her best friend picked up. “I need you to come get me in town.” She stood up and shouldered her purse, sticking the card in her back pocket when the waitress returned with it.

Sweetheart.

Martha.

“What a fool you are,” she muttered to herself as she wove through tables and toward the exit. She definitely wasn’t going to get her kiss, and she thought back through her relationships, trying to find one that had ended before the night had.

She couldn’t think of one, and just when Jess had thought she’d experienced it all in the dating pool, she could now add the humiliation of having her date answer a phone call from his ex-wife with the words, “Hey, sweetheart,” to her list of misfortunes.

Disasters.

Follies.

Unluckiness.

Or maybe, just maybe, she had really bad taste in men, and she should never trust her own feelings again.

Chapter Nine

“No, Martha,” Dallas said as firmly as he could. She’d often told him that he spoke in a rough, rugged voice that made her feel like he was angry with her. She’d coached him for a decade to have a better bedside manner. So he knew he could definitely add some bite to his tone. He sincerely hoped she could hear it right now.

“Dallas,” she slurred, and he severely regretted taking this phone call. He turned and looked down the street where he’d been slowly walking. The restaurant was only one storefront down, so he hadn’t gone too far. “I just need a little to tide me over.”

“You’re drunk,” he said, not for the first time. “We’re not talking about money until you’re sober.” His pulse fired in his chest, because he knew exactly what Martha was like when she drank too much. It wasn’t pretty, and he was beyond grateful his children didn’t have to be with her right now.

Guilt stung him right behind his lungs. He should be home with his children, making sure they were okay and well cared for. Helplessness filled him, but it didn’t change his mind. “Besides, Martha, I have no money. I’ve only been out of prison for a couple of weeks.”

“But you sold the house in Houston,” she said, and in that sentence, she sounded almost normal.

He cocked his head to the side. “How did you know that?” The house was in his name; she wasn’t anywhere on the title or contract, so she hadn’t had to sign anything.

“Josh told me,” she said, adding a giggle to the words. “He takes good care of me, Dally. Like you should.”

Ice ran through his veins, because he knew Martha was on something stronger than the wine she liked with dinner—and sometimes for a long time after eating. She only called him by that ridiculous nickname when she was completely wasted.

He had no idea who Josh was, but everything in Dallas’s life started to collapse. For some insane reason, he’d actually thought he and Martha could fix things between them. Ridiculous, he knew. Crazy. He had no right to hope for such a thing, when she’d abandoned their children, and he’d signed the divorce papers.

Did he really think they’d get remarried?

The pinch that started in his chest said yes, he’d thought that. It grew and grew until a deep, dark hole had taken the place of his stomach and lungs. His heart struggled to beat against the foolishness and pain pouring from that hole, and the only things keeping him from swearing at his ex-wife, hanging up, and leaving town was Jess inside the restaurant, and his children waiting for him back at the ranch.

“I have to go, Martha,” he said with as little emotion as he could.

“You owe me some of that money,” she said. “That was my house—”

Dallas pulled the phone from his ear and jabbed at the red phone button to hang up. He still heard her say, “—too, and I deserve—” before her voice muted.

“You deserve what, Martha?” he asked bitterly. “You don’t deserve anything. You abandoned our children at your sister’s house without a word to me. No conversation. Nothing. You’re a coward who ran away. You care more about yourself than anything and anyone else.”

His chest heaved, and a storm