Rugged Cowboy - Elana Johnson Page 0,82
try to come get her. The dude’s in prison now, and you and Emma are free to raise your family together. It will never be like that for me.” If Martha stayed clean, she’d want to see the kids, and Dallas would let her. She’d be involved in his life, and his children’s lives, and that meant Jess’s life, if she chose to be with him.
“Maybe this is my second chance,” Dallas said. “That’s all I’m saying. I’ve got my kids. I have a great job that I like. I can get a house that’s my own, and Thomas wants a dog, and I don’t know.” He shrugged and went back to flipping channels. “Maybe I don’t get the happily-ever-after too.”
Ted and Nate didn’t argue. They didn’t say anything, and Dallas found an NBA game and turned up the volume slightly. The three of them sat together, and it was comforting and serene.
An alarm on Nate’s phone went off, and he groaned as he stood. “I have to get Connor to that birthday party.”
Ted got up too. He took the box of doughnuts into the kitchen and turned to follow Nate. They both paused at the front door, where Dallas had waited to say goodbye to them.
“Slate’s out in a couple of months,” Dallas said. “He asked me to come pick him up. I think we should all go.”
“When?” Ted asked. “He got his release date?”
“April sixth,” Dallas said.
Nate and Ted both started swiping on their phones, and Ted answered first with, “Everything should be done and over for the wedding and the honeymoon.”
“I can go,” Nate said. “I’m going to have Ginger call about getting Luke to the ranch too. He’s within six months, and maybe he can do the same program Teddy and I did.”
“That’s a great idea,” Dallas said.
Nate clapped him on the shoulder and smiled. He took a step and then stopped. “Dallas, everyone has the chance for their happily-ever-after. The only way you’re not going to get yours is if you don’t take a chance and go after it.”
Dallas didn’t know what to say. Nate nodded and left, leaving Dallas to face Ted. “Is he right?”
“I have no idea,” Ted said. “But Nate usually is. I got Emma a teacup piglet and M&M cookies. It wasn’t fancy, but it meant something to her. All I had to do was show her I knew her, and I loved her. Everything else you can work on together.”
Dallas nodded and held the door while Ted left too. He watched them go next door and get their kids—neither one of which actually came from their blood—and get loaded up in Nate’s truck. He watched them back out of the driveway, and he waved to Connor through the back window.
“Daddy, look,” Remmy said in her girlish drawl. “Mrs. Clyde showed me how to make banana bread today.” She skipped toward him with two loaves, one in each hand, and pure joy on her face.
He blinked and saw the love on Jess’s face while she’d interacted with Remmy yesterday. He’d seen it in Jess’s eyes when she spoke with Thomas too.
“That’s great, baby,” he said, reaching for her as she came up the steps. “Bug, what’s one of Jess’s all-time favorite things?”
“Horses,” Remmy said without even looking at him.
“Horses,” Dallas echoed, wondering what in the world he could do with that to win her back. It certainly wasn’t as easy as baking some cookies and buying a piglet.
Chapter Twenty-Two
Jess made sure she didn’t cross through the riding pavilion in the afternoons again. She didn’t need a repeat of the encounter with Dallas or Remmy. She held them both close to her heart, because she didn’t know how to make them go away.
They simply wouldn’t go away, and Jess knew she’d have to address that sooner or later.
She also knew what day she and Dallas had taken Martha to the treatment facility, and she should’ve been released by now. Jess’s curiosity crept up a little bit more every day, but she didn’t ask anyone.
Not Ted or Nate. Not Ginger or Emma. No one volunteered any information about Dallas, and Jess kept her mouth shut and her head down and did her job. The end.
A few days after Valentine’s Day—where she’d worked in the stables until night started to fall and then she’d gone to the West Wing and eaten steak sandwiches Hannah had brought back from town—Jess woke with the sun, as usual.
She thought about Hannah, and how Bill had been gone