Rugged Cowboy - Elana Johnson Page 0,38

to talk to him alone….”

Chapter Eleven

Dallas grabbed as many bags as he could carry from the trunk, telling Thomas and Remmy to do the same. They’d been to the store three times that day already, and he was not going back for a fourth time. Whatever they didn’t have, they could survive the night without.

He never wanted to unpack another box, but he knew he had a lot more boxing, taping, and moving in his future. He’d signed the agreement to sell his house in Houston three weeks ago, and he only had eight more days before the buyer would close.

Ted and Nate were going with him to go through the whole house in just two days, and they were planning to get it done in a weekend. Dallas hadn’t exactly told them how big the house was, nor what condition it was in. The first item he knew; the second he did not. Martha could’ve packed everything they owned and taken it with her, but somehow Dallas doubted it.

She’d called him twice more since his date with Jess, and wisely Dallas hadn’t answered the phone unless he was alone. She’d asked for money both times, and Dallas hadn’t known what to tell her. He’d asked her where she was living; she wouldn’t tell him. He’d asked her who Josh was; and she’d clammed right up. He’d asked her what she was doing for a job, and she’d actually scoffed, as if working was far beneath someone like her.

Dallas heaved a sigh as he lifted the grocery bags he carried onto the countertop in the new house he’d rented for him and his kids. “Oh, boy,” he moaned. “That was a lot of cans.”

Thomas put his sacks up on the counter too, and Remmy came in toting a gallon of milk and a bunch of bananas.

“Let me, Smalls,” Dallas said, taking the gallon of milk from her before she dropped it. He’d seen what happened to the plastic containers milk came in when they hit a hard floor, and it wasn’t pretty.

He looked around the house, starting to feel like it was coming together. They’d brought over the majority of their stuff last night, and he’d let Thomas pick which bedroom he wanted. All three of them sat down a hall that dead-ended into a linen closet, and forked left into the master bedroom and right into two other, smaller bedrooms. Thomas had taken the one at the back of the house, and Remmy had come into Dallas’s room in the middle of the night, claiming to be afraid of being the closest one to the front door.

He’d let his daughter sleep in his bed with him, because it was a new place, and he could. In the end, Thomas had been in the big bed in the morning too, and Dallas didn’t know when he’d come in.

They’d spent today at school and work, and once Dallas had picked them up from school, they’d started shopping.

He started unpacking the groceries and telling Thomas what to put where in the pantry. He gave Remmy the things she could put in the fridge, his mind on Jess. They’d gone out twice more too, and his children had started horseback riding lessons with her as well. Dallas loved walking out to the corrals about five to watch them dismount.

Remmy especially loved the lessons, and she gave Jess a big hug around the middle every time she got off her horse—aptly named Princess. Remmy skipped everywhere on the ranch, and Dallas’s heart had started to heal a little bit with his daughter’s joy.

Hannah had offered for both of them to be in the after-school honeybee program, and Dallas had readily accepted. Any time he could keep the kids out on the ranch until he finished work was a win in his book. They seemed to enjoy the ranch even without an activity to do, and Dallas could often find them playing in the fields surrounding the homestead or in Ted’s cabin with Missy and Stockton.

“What do we want for dinner?” he asked as he started folding up their recyclable grocery bags.

“Pizza,” Thomas said. “Can you order, Dad?”

“Not pizza,” Remmy said, making a face. “We had that last night. There’s still some in the fridge.”

“Just the kind with nothing on it,” Thomas said, shooting a dark look at his sister. Dallas didn’t particularly want pizza again either, and he wouldn’t eat the plain cheese leftover in the fridge. He also didn’t want to cook, and