Rugged Cowboy - Elana Johnson Page 0,78
Jess said. “I bet it’s like riding a horse.”
“Yeah.” Remmy reached up and touched Jess’s cowgirl hat. “Why don’t you come for dinner anymore?”
“Oh, I’ve been real busy,” Jess said, keeping her smile in place. “We got this new horse, and he is so big and so wild.”
“Like a wild stallion?” Remmy’s eyes rounded, and Jess giggled with her.
“Yes,” she said. “Just like that.”
“Remmy.”
Jess looked up into Dallas’s face, lightning striking right behind her ribs. She straightened and nudged Remmy to go to her father. He nodded at her, ducked his head so the brim of his hat hid his face, and he walked his daughter over to her horseback riding lessons.
Jess fell back out of the way, hiding in the shadows near the stable door to watch him with his daughter. It didn’t matter what her father was worried about. Dallas was a good man, and a great father, and Jess loved his kids.
Go say something to him, she told herself. Don’t just let him walk away.
He helped Remmy into the saddle and waved to her as the lesson began. He didn’t turn to look for Jess. He simply walked away in the direction of the mechanical shed.
Jess released the breath she’d been holding. Twenty-nine days, she thought. It had been twenty-nine days since Remmy’s birthday party when they’d broken up.
She couldn’t dwell on all that she and Dallas could’ve been doing during those twenty-nine days. She’d told Remmy the truth—she was very busy right now. Dallas surely was too. Jess had to believe that, because she didn’t want to think that he had time to make things right between them and had simply chosen not to.
Chapter Twenty-One
Dallas wasn’t sure what had happened in January. The month passed in a blur of mechanical grease, math homework his ten-year-old didn’t understand, and therapy sessions for everyone in his house.
Himself included. He’d also decided to get Remmy in to see someone too. Out of the three of them, she was the bubbliest, and she definitely talked the most. But Dallas knew she’d experienced trauma too, and he wanted her to get the help she needed.
He’d seen his son re-emerge from the shell he’d been in when Dallas had picked him up in September, and that made his heart heavy with happiness.
He paused at the far corner of the stable, having just taken Remmy to her riding lesson. He’d finally seen Jess around the ranch. It was amazing to him that they both worked there full-time and yet never saw one another. Today, though, he’d seen her, and she was just as radiant and just as attractive to him as she’d always been.
His voice had fled, and all he’d been able to do was nod.
“You can’t have her right now,” he told himself sternly, and that was enough to get his feet moving again.
She’d been right, and he hadn’t been ready for a serious relationship with a woman. He did have a lot going on in his life, and he hadn’t been putting her first. His kids came first. His job came second. Providing some stability for all of them was extremely important to him. Making sure he could keep his children safe also sat very high on his priority list, as did making sure Thomas and Remmy could have a real relationship with their mother.
All of that had come out in therapy, and as Dallas had prioritized his life, he’d realized just how right Jess was.
He disliked it, but right now, there wasn’t much he could do about it.
“Ten days,” he muttered to himself. “Ten more days.”
Martha’s eight-week treatment program ended in ten days. He had not spoken to her since taking her to the facility before Christmas, but he’d be there on February fifteenth to take her away from that place too.
What happened after that, he didn’t know. He could see how unfair he’d been to Jess—and to himself. While he wanted Jess in his life, he simply hadn’t been ready.
He really wanted to be ready.
As he walked back to the equipment shed, he let his mind cast forward, something his therapist had asked him to do in their last session. “What do you see?” she’d asked. “Tell me where you are. Where you live. What your house is like. What you’re doing with your time. Who’s with you.”
He’d talked through where he was, and that was in a big house with a lot of land surrounding it. Trees and bushes and wild grass, with a nice, cultivated yard too.