Rugged Cowboy - Elana Johnson
Chapter One
Dallas Dreyer breathed a silent sigh of relief as he saw the city limits sign for Sweet Water Falls. He’d been driving for hours, and he was so ready to be out of the car.
At the same time, the temperature gauge on the dashboard told him not to get out of the car unless he wanted to be instantly incinerated. How Nate could get married in weather like this, Dallas didn’t understand.
Why Nate wanted to get married at all eluded Dallas. Bitterness gathered on the back of his tongue, and it was new and hard to deal with.
He’d had no idea Martha was so unsure about their marriage. She’d been coming to River Bay for over two years—every week—and she’d brought the kids many times.
Her departure from their life had surprised him. Shocked him, actually. Rendered him speechless.
He could clearly remember when he’d gotten the news, and that he’d sat on the bottom bunk where he’d been sleeping for twenty-seven months and just stared.
Even when Slate had come to tell him it was time for dinner. Even when Luke had gotten him a special pass for an extra hour in the library without anyone there, Dallas had just stared at it.
He didn’t know what life would be like on the outside as it was. And without Martha? Dallas didn’t know how to function.
She’d been in Louisiana for the past three months, and her sister had been taking care of his two children. Martha had left them behind too, and Dallas honestly didn’t comprehend her behavior.
He’d been released five days ago, and Amy had been kind enough to come pick him up. She’d brought Thomas and Remmy with her, and Dallas had held his children tightly for several minutes right on the sidewalk outside the River Bay Federal Correctional Facility.
He glanced to Remmy, his six-year-old asleep in the backseat of the used sedan his brother-in-law had helped him purchase.
Dallas had money from before his time in prison, but not a whole lot. Enough to buy new clothes and this car and food and gas for the trip to Sweet Water Falls.
He’d stayed with Amy and Brent for a couple days to get the essentials in order, and then he’d set his app to direct him to Hope Eternal Ranch.
He would not miss Nate’s wedding. The man had done more for Dallas than anyone else on Earth—save Martha. But now that she was gone, Dallas’s only fall-back was Nathaniel Mulbury.
Ted Burrows was at the ranch too, and Dallas couldn’t wait to see his friends. The pull to them was all he had left, and he’d embraced it. After they’d come for Family Weekend and treated him exactly like one of their brothers…Dallas got choked up just thinking about it.
“Turn right in a quarter mile,” the cool female voice of his navigation app. Dallas started to slow down, and his son lifted his head from his game machine.
“Almost there, bud,” Dallas said, surprised at how chipper his voice came out.
Thomas nodded and powered down the game. Dallas felt like he didn’t know his ten-year-old. He’d missed all of his eighth and ninth year on the planet, and though Dallas had seen his son start to grow in his permanent front teeth and he’d gotten emails with attachments of the boy’s art, it was completely different than being with the child day in and day out.
Dallas had never considered the fact that he might be a single parent one day. Martha had been the perfect surgeon’s wife, and she’d charmed hospital administrators, kept the house tidy and the bills paid, and the children in appropriate, wholesome activities. Dallas had loved coming home to her and the kids, and until the lawsuit that had diverted his life onto another path, he’d been blissfully unaware of any of the things he was currently dealing with.
He made the right turn, and the road started to wind out of town. Dallas glanced at his new phone, the weight of it heavy in his mind. He’d used smart phones before of course; he’d only been in prison for thirty months. But he’d gotten used to short, clipped calls, only at appropriate times. To make a call whenever he wanted, for however long he wanted was a bit novel to him.
“Just a couple more miles,” he said more to reassure himself than Thomas.
And just a couple more miles and a few more minutes down the road, Dallas made the right turn onto the road that had Hope Eternal Ranch at