Rugged Cowboy - Elana Johnson Page 0,89
you get a sec, okay?
Cheesy, but Jess peeled it from her steering wheel and pressed it to her heartbeat. He’d been leaving little things for her around the ranch for a solid month now. When she went to get reins for Midnight, she’d find a mini candy bar tucked between the ropes and wonder how long it had been there.
Once, she’d gone back to the West Wing for lunch and found a yellow sticky note like the one she held on her leftover box from their dinner the night before. It had simply said, I love you, J. ~D
She liked that she was in his thoughts, and that she was so prevalent that those thoughts became actions.
She looked over her shoulder to see if he was walking toward her, but he wasn’t. She didn’t want all of these flowers to wilt in the heat, and they would if she simply drove them to her eye appointment. After scooping as many as she could into her arms, she bustled into the stable and put them in the sink they used to clean the bottles for the babies. She ran cold water over them and let them rest there. In the air conditioned building, they’d be fine until she could put them in vases.
After her appointment, she walked around the stables, picking up anything she could find that would hold a flower. She put the ones she’d rescued in calf bottles, empty water bottles, flower pots, an old boot she’d found, and even an empty and rinsed can of soup.
She set them around the stables on the shelves and the tops of fridges. That way, she’d be able to see them and think of Dallas every time she did. Not that she needed a reminder to think of Dallas. The man made her feel like a queen, and she was beginning to wonder if she should ask him to marry her.
He’d asked her little questions here and there over the past couple of months since they’d gotten back together. Things like, What ring size are you? or Would you even wear a big diamond while you work with the horses?
She knew he was thinking about marriage and proposing. She just wasn’t sure when that might happen. She understood Abi on a completely new level now, and as she left the newly decorated stables, she texted her sister.
How were you so patient with Huey? I feel like asking Dallas to marry me instead of waiting for him to get around to it.
Abi sent back a laughing GIF and then the words, You sound like Nia. She’s about ready to rent a sky plane and write JUST ASK ME ALREADY WALT above his farm.
Jess laughed, the sound free and easy. She hadn’t always felt that way, and she was grateful that today, she did.
She entered the equipment shed through the tunnel and headed for Dallas’s office, still engrossed in her texting conversation with her sister. Had she not been, she might have noticed how quiet the shop was today.
She finally did notice when she looked up and found Dallas leaning in the doorway to his office as if the frame needed him to hold it up. “Who are you talkin’ to?” he asked in a real Texas twang.
“My sister.” She pushed her phone into her pocket and looked around. “Where is everyone?”
“It’s Friday afternoon,” he said. “Ginger gave me permission to let them all off early.”
Jess gaped at him. “You’re kidding.”
“When you’re as organized and as caught up as we are, sometimes you get perks,” he said with a smile. He reached for her, and added, “Did you like the flowers?”
She twined her fingers through his. “Yes, they were beautiful. I spread them out in the stables.”
“I got you something else,” he said, nodding behind her.
She turned and saw a small truck sitting there. Jess pulled in a breath, because that was not an old, beat-up truck. It wasn’t new either, and it wasn’t huge. But the mid-size vehicle gleamed like ivory, as it was cream-colored and very clean.
“What do you mean, you got me something else?” She looked from the truck back to him, having to move in a hundred and eighty degree line to do it.
“Luke’s brother bought that truck, but he hates it. He gave it to Luke, but Luke doesn’t need it. He said I could have it if I had use for it, and I said I did.”
“So it was free,” Jess said.
“I acquired it for very little,” Dallas