Rugged Cowboy - Elana Johnson Page 0,43

Jess slipped them on. They were perfect, and she thanked Hannah.

“What about you and Bill?” she asked. Their plan of attack had worked, and he’d asked her out last week.

“First date is Saturday night,” Hannah said. “You’ll be doing my hair, so don’t forget.”

They laughed together, and Jess promised she had not forgotten about doing Hannah’s hair for her first date with Bill.

At precisely six-thirty, she went outside to find Dallas and his kids. They came walking down the road from Ted’s, and Jess watched them talk to each other. Remmy looked up and caught sight of Jess. In the next moment, she started skipping toward her, a huge smile on her face.

“You’re so pretty,” Remmy said, and she came right over to Jess and hugged her, the way she had after riding lessons.

“Thank you,” Jess said. “You’re beautiful too.” She peered down at the little girl, seeing only pieces of Dallas in the child.

“Good evening,” Dallas said, his voice deep and welcome in Jess’s ears. He looked at Thomas, who rolled his eyes.

“You look nice, Jess,” Thomas said in a deadpan.

“Thank you,” Jess said, finding something so funny about this exchange. She tried to smother her laughter, but it came bubbling out anyway. Dallas joined in, but Thomas obviously didn’t get the joke. Remmy just looked back and forth between her father and Jess.

Dallas embraced her and whispered, “You don’t look nice, Jess. You look like a million bucks.”

She giggled and ducked her head, feeling warm from head to toe with his compliment. In that moment, she knew dinner with his children would go just fine and that she would have more than this one opportunity to get to know his children and allow them to get to know her.

The weekend passed in an unbearably slow way without Dallas around. Jess spent Friday night with the women in the West Wing, and it almost felt like old times. Ginger made her famous cowboy caviar dip, and Emma pulled out all the stops with a smoked beef brisket. Her daughter made cookies, and as they played card games and talked, Jess told about her date with Dallas and his kids.

Everyone listened and supported her, and while Jess sometimes felt on the outside of the women at the ranch because she’d rather spend time with horses, that night, she didn’t. She felt loved and accepted.

Saturday passed in a blazing haze of horseback riding lessons that seemed to go on and on, and then flat ironing Hannah’s hair until she wanted to scream. Sunday morning dawned early for Jess. She had a buyer coming to look at two of her horses, and she wanted to get them cleaned up, fresh on all the commands, and ready for the ten o’clock appointment.

“All right,” she said to Prancer and Buttercup. “He’s coming to see you today. You have to show him how good you are.” She put them both in the ring and walked them around and around. She startled them with plastic bags and a slamming door, and they both barely looked up.

They were two of her best riding horses, and the man coming to see them that day wanted them for tourist riding. They had to be calm and gentle. They had to be patient. They had to be perfect.

She put them in the wash bay and gave them each a bath, combing the water from their hair and then drying them completely in the air walkway. She put a bow in Buttercup’s hair and told Prancer how handsome he was.

She’d just put them in the pasture and run back to the homestead to greet Bruce Washburn when she saw a truck pull into the gravel lot in front of the house. Trepidation moved through her, because she hated being late.

Jess increased her pace, though she still had a least a couple hundred yards before she’d reach the far lawn surrounding the house.

A man got out of the car, but it wasn’t Bruce. She’d sold horses to him before, and Hope Eternal had bought some from him too. He ran a horseback riding tour of the Texas Hill Country, and though it was a few hours away, most people in the horse business knew one another.

Jess frowned as she realized she should’ve known the truck didn’t belong to Bruce. There was no horse trailer attached, and he always came prepared to purchase.

This man had a head full of dark hair, and he wandered to the fence that separated the gravel lot from