Rugged Cowboy

by Elana Johnson

  Dallas wanted to start some better traditions for his kids; memories they could take into their adulthood too. They’d gone out to the ranch in the afternoon, and Dallas had eaten Christmas dinner with everyone at Hope Eternal.

  Emma, Jill, and Hannah had put together a feast for anyone who didn’t have family to go visit on Christmas—and anyone else who wanted to come. Dallas had felt like he belonged on that ranch, with those people, but there was one extremely important person missing.

  Jess.

  He’d called her, and she’d seemed upbeat and happy in Montana. She’d been back for over a week now, and Dallas still hadn’t managed to take her out, just the two of them. There was so much going on with New Year’s celebrations and then the planning for this party.

  Martha hadn’t shown up on his doorstep, and he called every other day to check on her. She couldn’t talk to him, and in a lot of ways, her drug treatment program was worse than prison. He’d at least gotten phone calls in and out of River Bay.

  He could ask if she was still there or if she’d left the program. So far, she was still there. Dallas prayed for her every day, and he hoped the worst of her withdrawals had come and gone. Now, it was about learning how to live a regular life without the drugs once she got released.

  Dallas knew exactly how this felt, and he’d written her a long letter about his feelings surrounding getting out of prison after thirty months. He’d had no idea how to lead a normal life, but he’d figured it out.

  She could too.

  He’d told her he wanted her in their children’s lives, and they’d sent her cards and drawings for Christmas.

  The guy in front of him finally made a left turn, and Dallas was able to speed up. He pulled through the drive-through of the taco joint where he’d ordered the food for Remmy’s party and was given two long, covered trays.

  The scent of seasoned meat and corn tortillas filled his nose, and his stomach roared. Before Christmas, he and Jess had usually spent their lunchtime together, but he hadn’t seen her once since she’d come back from Montana.

  Something was wrong.

  As he pulled back onto the street, he tapped a button on the steering wheel of his SUV and said, “Call Jess.”

  The car dialed for him, and he listened to her phone ring and ring. She hadn’t answered his calls for a solid week now, and pure irritation rose within him. “What did I do?” he muttered to himself.

  In his opinion, they’d had a sweet interchange before she’d left for the holidays. “Something must’ve happened with her family.”

  He hated it when she went silent, and he ended the call without leaving a message. He immediately called her again, and when she still didn’t answer, he said, “Jess, I’m just double-checking that you’re still bringing the cake to Remmy’s party. She’s excited to see you.”

  He paused, wondering if he should bubble-wrap his heart so it didn’t get shattered by this woman. “I am too,” he said anyway. “I feel like we’ve lost touch, and I’m hoping everything is okay with you.”

  He turned to get to the street where he lived, only a couple of minutes late now. “Will you at least text me so I know if I need to go buy a cake for my daughter’s birthday?” His voice carried some of the frustration boiling in him, and he quickly ended the call before he said something else that gave away too much.

  Sighing, he pulled into his driveway, which didn’t have anyone waiting for him. He still had a bit of fear every time he turned the corner, as if Josh or Adam would be waiting for him on the front porch. He hadn’t seen either of them in weeks, and every day that passed added a little more comfort to Dallas’s mind.

  He got out of the truck and went around to the other side to get the tacos. “Daddy!” Remmy’s voice filled the air, and he turned around to find her running across the neighbor’s lawn. He grinned at her and raised his hand to Mrs. Clyde, who’d taken the kids after school today.

  Thomas approached much slower, carrying both his backpack and Remmy’s. He smiled at Dallas too, and he balanced the big trays in one hand and forearm as he gave his daughter a side-hug and then tousled his son’s hair. “How was school?”

  “Good,” Thomas said.

  “Daddy, we got to watch this video on polar bears.” Remmy said. “They have paws as big as your head.”

  “Is that right?”

  Remmy continued to chatter about literally everything that had happened at school that day as they went inside the house.

  Dallas noted the fresh scent of flowers and pine, glad he’d hired a one-time maid service to make sure the house would be clean for this party. He should’ve told them to come tomorrow too, because he had a feeling this princess party was going to be the death of him.

  “You better go get changed,” he said to Remmy, sliding the tacos on the counter. “Thomas, Nate will be here in a few minutes to take you to the ranch. Make sure you have your backpack and everything for school tomorrow.”

  “Yes, sir.” He went down the hall after Remmy.

  Dallas listened to his daughter singing at the top of her lungs, and he couldn’t help smiling. He needed to shower and change, so he hurried into his bathroom, checked his phone to see if Jess had texted—she hadn’t—and got the job done.

  He’d just stepped into a clean pair of jeans when Nate called, “Hello? We’re here.”

  “Coming,” Dallas said, reaching for the T-shirt he’d just gotten out of his closet. He heard Thomas start to talk to Nate, so at least he wasn’t standing awkwardly in the living room. Dallas skipped putting on shoes or socks and padded into the main living area of the house.

  Nate, Ginger, and Connor had all come, and Ginger carried a box that had been wrapped in bright pink paper, complete with a purple and white frilly bow.

  “Wow,” Dallas said. “You didn’t have to get her anything.”

  “Yes, we did,” Ginger said, smiling.

  “Let me get her,” Dallas said, turning to go back down the hall. He was surprised Remmy hadn’t come out yet, actually. He found her in her room, a tube of bright red lipstick in her hand. “Whoa, whoa,” he said. “Where did you get that?”

  He hadn’t bought it, that was for dang sure. She’d done a terrible job of getting it right on her lips too, and she looked more like the Joker than Belle from Beauty and the Beast.

  Dallas gently took the lipstick from her as she looked up at him. “Where did you get this makeup?” She wore bright blue eyeshadow too, but it extended over most of her nose and way too far past her eyelids too.

  When she didn’t answer, Dallas grew uneasy. “Remmy,” he said sternly, sitting down on the bed with her. She had changed into the yellow princess dress, her bony shoulders barely holding it in place. “Tell me where you got all this stuff.”

  “Julia got it from her mom’s bag,” Remmy said, dropping her eyes to her bedspread.

  “Is Julia coming to the party tonight?”

  “Yes,” Remmy said. “I said if she’d let me take it home, I could get my makeup done, and then we could do hers at the party.”

  “Okay.” Dallas stood up and gathered up the eyeshadow palette too. “That’s not happening, okay? We have to give this back to her mother.” That wasn’t a conversation he wanted to have tonight, but Dallas did a lot of things he didn’t want to do.

  “Okay,” Remmy said miserably.

  “You don’t need the makeup,” Dallas said. “You’re seven. I’m going to get Ginger to come help you take it off.” He didn’t even know if water would do the job. “Ginger, could you come help me?” he called over his shoulder, and her strong, sure steps came toward him.

  “Yeah?” she asked, taking in the scene in a couple of seconds. “Oh, okay. Come on, sweetie. Let’s go get you cleaned up.” She extended her hand toward Remmy, who slid off the bed, still looking like a scary version of a miserable clown.

  Dallas took the makeup into the kitchen and put it all in a zipper bag. He really needed to know if he should send Nate for a birthday cake o
r not. There was still time, because the girls were eating first, and then doing a couple of games before cake and ice cream. The whole thing would take ninety minutes, and Dallas hoped he could endure it.

  Ginger had put the gift on the dining room table, and Dallas moved it so the kids would have somewhere to eat.

  “What’s goin’ on back there?” Nate asked, nodding down the hall.

  “Oh, Remmy got her hands on some makeup,” he said, lifting the lid on the tray of tacos. “Ginger is helping her clean up.”

  “Mm.” Nate reached for a taco, and so did Dallas. He handed his to Thomas, and the three of them crunched through the delicious shell while standing there in the kitchen.

  The doorbell rang, and Dallas’s eyes flew to the clock on the stove. Six-twenty-five. “Could be Jess,” he said. Perhaps she’d been driving while he’d called and texted her, and she hadn’t wanted to answer.

  He pulled open the door to find a woman standing there with a little girl wearing a pink dress. It had a picture in a button on the front, but Dallas wasn’t sure who it was. He hadn’t had time to watch Disney movies in prison.

  The woman smiled at him as if they’d be best friends. “Hello, I’m Melissa, Ingrid’s mother.” She held out her hand, and Dallas shook it.

  “Dallas. Remmy’s dad.” He stepped back and let them inside. He hadn’t specified on the party invitations that parents could just drop off their kids, and it looked like Melissa was here to stay. “This is Nate,” he said, introducing his friend. “He’s taking my son for the night.”

  “So there’s no Mrs. Dreyer?” Melissa asked, and as Dallas turned back toward her, time seemed to slow to a stop.

  He didn’t know what to say. She wore a look of interest in her eyes, and shock cascaded through Dallas like a waterfall.

  “No,” Nate said, barely smothering a laugh as he met Dallas’s eyes. “Well, there’s an ex-Mrs. Dreyer.”

  “And you have custody?” Melissa asked, ignoring Nate.

  “Yes,” Dallas answered, because that one was easy. He really didn’t want to air his family gossip right now, and thankfully, the doorbell rang again, and Ginger brought Remmy down the hall.

  The little girls squealed and laughed as Dallas let in another mother and her daughter. Oh, boy, he thought.

  “We’ll get out of your hair,” Nate said with a smile. He thanked Ginger and held the door for them as they left.

  “Be good, Tommy,” he called after his son.

  “I will, Dad.”

  Dallas didn’t close the door, because another woman was walking down the sidewalk, this time with two little girls. He put on his happiest smile and welcomed them to his home.

  “Oh, this is nicer than I thought,” the woman said, and Dallas did his best not to roll his eyes.

  “Moms,” he said. “You really don’t have to stay. My girlfriend will be here any second, and you can come get your girls at eight.” He made sure to enunciate the word girlfriend, and Melissa apparently got the hint. She left, taking both of the other moms with her.

  Jess did not arrive in the next second, but two more girls did. The count was up to six, and Dallas’s ears were already paying a hefty price. They’d only invited nine girls, so there couldn’t be too many more coming.

  He really just needed Jess to come.

  Remmy started answering the door, and Dallas’s eyes never left it. He pulled out his phone when the eighth girl arrived and texted Jess. Again.

  Are you coming? Should I call Nate to go get me a cake? He watched the text to make sure it went though. It did, but he had no way of knowing if Jess had read it or not. What he knew was that his time was running out.

  The last girl arrived, and Nate lifted both hands above his head. “All right, princesses,” he said in a loud voice. They all giggled and looked at him. “It’s time to eat. And do you know what princesses eat?”

  “Tacos!” Remmy said, clapping her hands and jumping up and down.

  “That’s right,” he said. He put the tray in the middle of the table, and opened the second one as he said. “Tacos. There are tons of tacos, and black beans and rice.” He put that in the middle of the table too. “I can help anyone get what they want. Come sit down, all proper and perfect like princesses.”

  They clamored to do that, and Dallas thought seven-year-olds were the perfect age. Thomas had been seven when Dallas had gone into prison, and he still sometimes thought of his son as that little boy who was still losing his front teeth.

  He wasn’t that boy anymore, and he’d be eleven in March. Dallas wasn’t sure where the time had gone, but he knew it had a funny way of passing.

  He dished up tacos and beans and rice onto paper plates—pink, with all the faces of the princesses—and let the girls eat. His stomach twisted, and he ate a taco to try to soothe it.

  Just as he put the last bite in his mouth, the doorbell rang again. It had to be Jess. It just had to be.

  He crossed the room quickly and opened the door. Relief flooded him when he saw Jess standing there, a three-tiered cake in her hands. “You made it,” he said, almost breathless at the sight of her.

  She flashed him a tight smile—the kind he’d seen before when she was annoyed with him. He still had no idea what he’d done wrong, and he didn’t want to have a serious, adult conversation with her during his daughter’s birthday party.

  “Come in.” He got out of the way so she and the cake could come inside, and an uproar of tiny, female voices filled the air as he closed the door behind her. She’d gone straight to the table and put the cake down in front of everyone.

  Dallas hung back, watching. The cake had been decorated in pale purple frosting on the bottom, and it circled up into white, and then pink on the top. Little figurines of the Disney princesses had been stuck into the tiers, and they were all waving.

  Some of the little girls started waving back, and Dallas envied their innocence. He went back into the kitchen to be with everyone, and he said, “There’s plenty to eat, Jess. Do you want any?”

  “No, thank you,” she said, the formality of it increasing his worry. Just get through the party, he told himself. Hopefully he could talk to her in private later.

  He did make it through the party, and by the time the last princess left with her queen-mother, Dallas was silently vowing to never have another child’s birthday party again. He sagged against the closed door and looked at the mess in his house.

  “Go get your pj’s on,” he said to Remmy. “Then come help me clean up all the tissues, okay?’

  “Okay, Daddy.” Remmy skipped down the hall, leaving him and Jess alone. She started stooping to pick up the tissues he was going to leave for Remmy.

  “You don’t need to clean up,” he said.

  “I don’t mind.”

  He glanced down the hall. Remmy would probably be a few minutes at least. “Jess?”

  She hadn’t looked at him fully once during the party. She’d been all smiles and loads of fun for the girls as she led the party games and painted nails and lit candles. He’d done a couple of the girls’ hair, and cut the cake and dished ice cream. They’d worked well together, and Dallas really wanted her in his life without all the awkwardness and frustration.

  “Yeah?” She still didn’t look at him.

  “Did something happen in Montana?” he asked. “You’ve been…we’ve been different since.”

  “Not really,” she said, stuffing more unused tissues into a recyclable shopping bag. “It’s about a hundred degrees below freezing there. We went ice skating once, and I dang near froze.”

  He chuckled though she didn’t add her laughter to the conversation. He didn’t know what else to say, and Remmy returned to help Jess. She started telling her about the crown she’d gotten to wear that day, and how she got to be line leader even though it was Christopher’s week.

  Jess giggled and conversed with Remmy easily, and there was no awkwardness there at all. So it really was just him.

  The three of
them worked together and got the house cleaned up in only twenty minutes. “Bedtime, bug,” he said to Remmy, scooping her up and into his arms. She squealed and laughed, and Dallas tickled her as he took her down the hall to her bedroom. He got her all tucked in and leaned down to hug her. “Did you have a good birthday, Remmy?”

  “Yeah,” she said with a sigh. “I think seven is going to be such a great year for me, Daddy.” She looked so earnest about it too.

  Dallas laughed and clicked off her lamp. “I’m sure it will be, bug. Go to sleep, okay?”

  She didn’t answer, and Dallas paused in the doorway. “I love you, Rems.”

  “Love you too, Daddy.”

  His heart melted as he pulled the door closed. Back down the hall, he found Jess shrugging into her jacket. “You’re leaving?”

  “I have a meeting for the horse show at six a.m. in the morning.” She zipped her jacket closed, and Dallas felt her running from him. He quickly crossed the room to the front door and blocked her escape.

  She collected the cake platter her concoction had come on, and she didn’t see him until she was on her way toward him. She stopped, her dark eyes blazing now.

  “Something’s wrong with us,” he said. “I think we need to figure out what it is, so I can fix it.”

  “I don’t need you to fix it,” she said.

  “What did I do?”

  Jess sighed and looked away. The motion almost made it look like she was rolling her eyes, and Dallas’s exhaustion morphed into further irritation.

  “It’s nothing,” Jess said. “Can I just go?”

  Dallas didn’t want to make her life harder. He really didn’t. Lord knew he didn’t need more complications in his life right now either. He stepped to the side and opened the door. “If you’d just tell me,” he said quietly. “I could make it right.”

  Jess took a couple of steps toward him, and she hesitated close enough to him now that he could smell the sugar on her. The scent of fresh air and horses. Their eyes finally met, and the same powerful pulsing that had always run through Dallas when he was faced with Jess still existed.