When she had to ask him for a favor, it was. When she had to ride with him for twenty minutes at the speed of a snail, it most definitely was awkward. She couldn’t think of a single thing to say, and Spencer certainly wasn’t helping to ease the tension in the tractor.
As he approached Sheila, he said, “You need to get a new truck,” and glanced at her.
“Yeah,” she said with a sigh. “You’re probably right.”
“My cousin has a dealership,” he said. “We could go in one night after work, get some dinner….”
Shock moved through Jess. “Oh, uh, Spence, I don’t think….”
“Yeah,” he said. “I know.” He came to a stop and looked at her fully. “I miss you.”
“No,” Jess said. “You miss having a girlfriend.”
“No, I miss talking to you like we used to,” he said. “We were friends, Jess, and now I’ve lost that.”
She studied his face. He was a handsome man, and he shouldn’t have any problem getting a date. In fact, in the past, he hadn’t. She’d known about all of them, because they had been friends. “Okay,” she said. “You’re right. We should be friends. You used to tell me all about the women you were dating.”
“Yeah,” he said. “And you’d tell me about those British mysteries you love, and how you were going to get a corgi mixed with a poodle.” He smiled at her then, and everything relaxed between them.
“I am going to get a corgidoodle,” she said, smiling. “That’s happening.”
“Oh yeah?” Spencer challenged. “When?”
Jess looked away. “I don’t know.”
“I’m sure you’ll make it happen,” he said. He opened the door and got busy hooking up the winch to the truck. Conversation filled the ride back to the ranch, and Jess talked about the wedding and a colt she saw on the livestock board earlier that week. If Spencer had a weakness, it was horses, as he loved them almost more than life itself.
“I saw that one,” Spencer said. “Too much leg.”
“They always have too much leg,” she said, teasing him. “Until they’re three years old. You told me that.”
Spencer grinned and shrugged. “Yeah, well, I just had a feeling looking at him.”
“A feeling.” Jess shook her head and said, “Take it to the big shed. Our new mechanic is going to look at it for me.”
“Heaven help that man,” Spencer said, and they laughed together. Jess was glad they’d been able to move past their awkwardness, because she had missed Spencer too. They walked back to the ranch together, and she waved to him as he continued toward the Annex.
She entered the West Wing, glad this day was done, but knowing that another one that would be just as busy and just as hot was coming tomorrow. A sigh filled her body as she went inside and found Hannah and Jill sitting at the counter, bowls of ice cream in front of them.
“Peanut butter cone crunch,” Hannah said. “The Swann’s guy came.”
Jess wasted no time getting out a bowl and a spoon for herself. “I bet he did.”
“What does that mean?” Hannah asked.
Jess looked at Jill, the two of them exchanging a look that said a lot. “It means you love Steve the Swann’s man, and you order from him just to see him.”
A scoff came out of Hannah’s mouth. “I do not.”
“And he won’t ask you out, so you just keep ordering ice cream.”
“It’s good ice cream,” Hannah argued.
“You’ve got to be more obvious about what you want,” Jill said, joining the conversation. “Like, he obviously has your number. Maybe next time he comes, you can say something like, Would you like to use that number to take me to dinner?”
“That doesn’t even make sense,” Hannah said, gaping at Jill. “How would a phone number take me to dinner?”
Jess started to giggle, and so did the other two women. Before long, they were all laughing. Jess didn’t honestly care if Hannah liked Steve and that was why she ordered super expensive ice cream from his truck. It was delicious ice cream, and it helped soothe Jess after a long day.
Her phone buzzed, and she flipped it over to catch Dallas’s name at the top. She swiped and read the full message.
Thanks for the job.
A glow filled her, and she wasn’t paying attention to Hannah or Jill as she quickly sent back, Glad to have you. Can’t wait for you to get started.
She’d taken him out to the cabin in a ranch truck, and they’d made a plan to get started the next morning. Bill was going to meet them in the equipment office and go over everything with Dallas, and Jess was simply tagging along to introduce the two of them.
“Who texted?” Hannah asked.
“No one,” Jess said quickly, flipping her phone over.
“Oh, yeah, seems like no one,” Hannah said. “Look at her, Jill. She’s turning purple.”
“Stop it,” Jess said, though the heat had rushed into her face. She did turn a shade of purple because of her naturally darker coloring, and she hated that her embarrassment stained her face so easily.
“A new guy?” Jill asked.
“No,” Jess said. “How would I meet a new guy?” She rolled her eyes. Sometimes she felt chained to the ranch, but at the same time, she didn’t want to be or do anything else.
“Lots of men at the ranch for the wedding today,” Jill said. “In fact, I got the number of one of Nate’s friends from White Lake.”
“You did not,” Hannah said, shock coloring every word.
“I did,” Jill said, giggling. “It’s only twenty minutes from here. Eighteen if I take a back road.”
Thankfully, the conversation moved on, and the heat drained from Jess’s face. Her fingers itched to turn the phone over when it buzzed again, but instead, she ate her ice cream as fast as possible and made a hasty departure from the kitchen so she could text Dallas in private, all the while wondering why she had to be alone to read and respond to his messages.
Chapter Five
Once, Dallas had been able to handle a lot of things thrown at him. In surgery, any number of things could go wrong, and while a team of professionals all talked and gave statuses, he could focus on the veins and arteries on a screen. Nothing bothered him.
Prison had been the complete opposite of a heart surgery, and Dallas hadn’t hated the slower pace of life behind bars. The boredom could get to a man, though, and though River Bay offered classes for its inmates, and Dallas had taken some, he wasn’t what he would call overwhelmed or even that intellectually stimulated.
He walked around the ranch with Jess and a man named Nick, though she’d originally said Bill was coming. Apparently the other cowboy had been called out to a field with a couple of other men to address a broken sprinkler pipe.
No matter who he was with, Dallas felt like he’d landed on a different planet. Not only that, but neither Jess nor Nick spoke the same language he did.
Yes, he understood the words “horses” and “cattle” and “agriculture,” but he wasn’t sure how all the pieces fit together here at Hope Eternal.
Thankfully, he didn’t have to know that. Nick, who was Ginger’s nephew, would be running the ranch while she and Nate were on their honeymoon, and he didn’t seem perplexed or stressed at all. He couldn’t be more than twenty-five years old, and Dallas found himself marveling at Nick’s calm demeanor.
He had a pretty German shepherd name Ursula with him, and Dallas found her intense and intimidating and welcome all at the same time.
He’d left his kids in the cabin he’d been given, because Jess had said the tour would only take “an hour or so,” and the cabin was far enough away from everything and everyone that Dallas didn’t think anything would happen to them. Not only that, but Remmy hadn’t even been awake yet.
As soon as he finished this tour, Dallas needed to get the kids and take them to get registered for school. They’d need more clothes, and school supplies, and the dollar signs just kept flashing in his head.
“Did you get tha
t?” Jess asked, and Dallas swung his attention toward her.
No, he had not gotten anything. He glanced around to see where they were, and they’d entered a small shed that smelled like gasoline and wet cement. “Tell me again,” he said.
“Our ATVs are on a rotation for scheduled maintenance,” Nick said easily. Jess looked a bit perturbed, but Dallas ignored it. He’d texted with her last night for over an hour, and he wasn’t even sure what they’d talked about for so long. He’d told himself several times to stop messaging her, but then he’d send another text. She responded too, and he actually found her much easier to talk to when he didn’t’ have to look at her.
What that meant, he didn’t know.
He had no idea what the feelings inside him were saying, and to add even more confusion to his ragged soul, he knew he wasn’t over Martha. He couldn’t start a real relationship with Jess right now, and he should’ve said so last night.
Instead, he’d asked her about ice cream, he remembered that. They’d talked about the job a little bit, and he’d signed the paperwork that morning with Emma. He had his old bank account, but there wasn’t a branch in Sweet Water Falls, so he needed to get a new one open here.
He’d promised he’d call Amy and Brent too, and he hadn’t done that.
His to-do list grew and grew, and the weight of it started to press down on him.
“Okay?” Jess asked, and he realized he’d zoned out again.
“Okay,” he said anyway. “Got it.”
“And back here,” Nick said, leading him toward a hallway Dallas didn’t want to go down. At River Bay, he would’ve never stepped foot down this hall—it was too dark and too narrow. Anyone could’ve been waiting for him in the shadows, and Dallas’s heartbeat thumped loudly in his ears.
“We have our secret passageway to the main shed,” Nick said, his voice getting muted as he entered what seriously looked like a tunnel. They hadn’t gone down any steps though, so Dallas didn’t really believe the hallway was underground.
He ducked his head, though he didn’t need to, as he followed Nick. Jess pressed into the narrow alley behind him, and that only sent Dallas’s pulse into a faster sprint.
“We have everything you need in here,” Jess said, her voice echoing a little bit.
Nick opened a door right when Dallas thought he might start gasping for breath, and a bright rectangle of light filled the hallway. Relief filled him, and he didn’t even care that the equipment shed smelled halfway between a gym full of sweaty socks, last night’s dinner, and hot metal.
The shed was made of metal, and a special kind of heat filled the whole thing. “Wow,” he said, looking up to the blue arched ceiling of the metal building above him. “This place is huge.”
“It’s so hot,” Jess complained, already fanning herself with a folded piece of paper she’d tucked into her back pocket a while ago.
“Well, Dallas can fix air conditioners,” Nick said, beaming at him. “And I’d literally sacrifice one of my favorite goats if you could get Red Mama to run for more than ten minutes at a time.”
Again with the nonsensical words. “Red Mama?” Dallas asked.
“She’s the swather,” Jess said as she rolled her eyes. “Nick and Spence name everything around here.”
“Ted said he had to name the dogs,” Dallas said. “So that’s not entirely true.”
“All the tractors and stuff,” Nick said. “Ginger names every horse. And yes, Ted named the blue heelers. They love him.” He reached down and patted Ursula, who hadn’t had a problem walking through the secret passageway to the equipment shed.
“Is that the only entrance?” Dallas asked, starting to wonder if he shouldn’t have signed the paperwork until he’d gotten the full layout of the job.
“Of course not,” Jess said, and she seemed so annoyed with him. He looked at her, not sure why she would be. In his eyes, they’d had a great conversation last night, and she’d even smiled and said hello to him earlier that morning.
So what had changed?
“There’s a big door over there,” she said. “We usually have it open, as the tractors and trucks use it.”
“And a door on each end,” Nick said pleasantly. “And two on each side too.” He pointed to them. “Let’s go into the office, and I’ll show you what Bill has been doing.”
“All right.” Dallas cast one more look around, counting the vehicles he could see. Eight. Maybe ten. This really was a full-time job, especially if none of them ran for longer than ten minutes at a time.
Worry started to eat at him. When would he have time for his kids? How was he supposed to raise them by himself and work around the ranch? In fact, he wasn’t even sure how to do either of them singly, and a new kind of panic started wailing in his gut.
Nick led the way into a corner room that had no right to be called an office. Dallas had enjoyed an office in the hospital, and it could easily hold six of these rooms. It had been bigger than the cabin he’d stayed in last night too, and that moment brought crystal clarity to how different his life was now.
“Okay,” Nick said with a sigh, stopping just inside the room. Honestly, he couldn’t go in much further, but Dallas crowded in behind him, and Jess came in too, bumping into Dallas as she squeezed by him. Even Ursula came into the office, her ears perked up and her nose working overtime.
Something definitely smelled in here, and Dallas looked around, his skin starting to crawl. This whole place needed a thorough cleaning, and he was suddenly thankful for how tiny the office was.
“Bill’s left notes.” Nick handed him a yellow legal pad with black writing on it. Dallas looked at it, once again thinking that he’d left Earth in favor of some foreign planet far across the solar system, because this was definitely not English.
“What in the world?” he asked.
“Yeah, Bill’s handwriting can be hard to decipher,” Nick said, edging closer to him. “Once you get the lay of the letters, it’s not too bad.”
“Not too bad?” Dallas looked up. “I can’t read a single word.”
Nick took the top of the pad and leaned it toward himself. “Yeah, that top line says Gremlin oil change, six quarts, still leaking.”
Dallas marveled at him, his eyes wide. He looked back at the notepad, trying to find a G at all. “Gremlin?” came out of his mouth, because he’d never met anyone who named their ranch machinery. Of course, he’d never really interacted with all that many cowboys, and right now, everywhere he looked, that was all he saw.
“Gremlin is the big green mower,” Nick said.
Dallas shook his head slowly, his mind moving at ten times the speed. “I’m going to need a cheat-sheet,” he said. “For all the nicknames of your vehicles. And what type they are.” He had no idea what kind of tractor the Gremlin was, and he’d bet every last cent to his name that they didn’t have the manuals anymore. They would at least tell him how much oil such a machine held, and how often to change it. The manual would list part numbers for belts and spark plugs, tires and pistons.
“I’ll get Bill to come work with you on it,” Jess said. She stepped back into his personal space, and he couldn’t help catching a whiff of her sweet perfume. It was so different from everything else in this building, and Dallas looked up from the notebook again.
His eyes caught on hers, and while she had sparks shooting at him, he didn’t think they were entirely unfriendly. “We’ve got feeding starting,” she said. “You good here?”
Dallas’s stomach tightened. She wasn’t going to just leave him, was she?
Turned out, yes, she was. She left the office without even waiting for him to say yes, he’d be fine there. Nick grinned at him and said, “I’m so glad we’ve got you. Thanks for taking the job, Dallas.”
“Yeah,” left Dallas’s mouth, though he didn’t really direct himself to speak. Just like that, he was alone in the office, wondering what he was supposed to do now.
He took in the desk and noted there was no computer. He
’d definitely need one of those. Someone should be monitoring the stock too, as he couldn’t be running to town every day for the parts he needed.
Setting down the yellow pad, he went around the desk, which took up most of the space, and opened the top filing cabinet drawer. It squealed like nothing he’d heard before, and he flinched. Every folder and file and paper inside looked old, worn out, and grease-stained. What was all this stuff?
Sighing, Dallas closed the drawer and took a chance with his life as he sat in the chair behind the desk. It too protested being used, but he didn’t care. He looked down at the desk covered in papers and dust and grime. “What have I gotten myself into?” he wondered aloud. He tipped his head back and looked up to the ceiling. It was much lower here than out in the main part of the building.
“Dear Lord, what have I gotten myself into?”
“I don’t know my address,” he said later that day, a healthy dose of embarrassment moving through him. “What should I do about that?” He looked at the blonde secretary who’d handed him a packet of forms to fill out so he could register Remmy and Thomas for school.
Thankfully, they’d be at the same one, and it was only fifteen minutes from the ranch. Missy went there too, and Connor, Nate’s son, had started first grade a week or so ago.
Thomas had been unusually quiet all morning as Dallas had taken them to get a couple of new outfits and real backpacks that didn’t hold their clothes. He’d gone to the bank too, and he’d splurged and taken the kids to lunch before finally stopping by the elementary school to get them enrolled.
Now, he simply looked at Dallas like he was the biggest failure on the planet. Dallas felt it keenly too, but he kept his gaze on the secretary.
“Oh,” she said, clearly surprised. “Are you homeless?” She looked at Thomas, as if the fifth grader would tell her or otherwise exhibit some sort of sign of homelessness.
“No,” Dallas said, grateful he could answer in such a way. “We just got into town yesterday, though, and we’re living at Hope Eternal Ranch.” She didn’t need to know it was a cabin out by some swampy areas. People obviously stayed there when they did the birdwatching or honey something-or-other Dallas hadn’t listened to that closely. All he knew was that it didn’t have a number on it that the USPS would recognize.
Rugged Cowboy Page 4
