Rugged Cowboy

by Elana Johnson

  Chapter Two

  Pain radiated through Jessica Morales’s body, and while she wanted to get up, she couldn’t. She was used to going and going and going, and she was strong.

  But her back was in control at the moment, and she was not moving.

  Anger flowed through her like river rapids, and she stared into the light gray eyes of a man she’d never seen before. “What were you doing?” she demanded.

  “There was chocolate on the floor,” he said, kneeling beside her. “Can you sit up?”

  “I think so.” She groaned again, wishing she wasn’t in the presence of a handsome man with such a noise coming out of her mouth. Her back spasmed, and she stilled.

  “I don’t have time for this,” she said. “I have to get out to the stables and get the horses ready.”

  “I’ll help you,” he said, putting his hand on the back of her elbow.

  “Who are you?” she asked.

  “Dallas Dreyer,” he said. “I’m a friend of Nate’s.”

  “If I don’t get those horses ready, the wedding will be ruined.” Another flash of impatience hit her. “Help me up. You’ll have to come help me. Do you know anything about horses?”

  “Not really,” he said, practically lifting her off her feet.

  “Great,” she muttered. She took in his appearance, and he wore a cheap suit. At least it was clean. His hair was cut short and spiked in the front, and if he stayed outside for longer than twenty minutes without a hat, he’d be fried under this intense sun.

  She didn’t care. Or maybe she did.

  Jess wasn’t entirely sure what was running through her body. Attraction? Could that be true?

  “Dad?”

  “Let’s go,” Dallas said. “You’ll have to lead us to the stables though.” He looked at Jess. “We don’t know where they are.”

  A boy that stood to his shoulder came to his side, as well as a little girl. Jess hadn’t even seen them in her haste to get out to the stables.

  These were brand new cowgirl boots that she’d bought specifically for the wedding, and they had no traction on the bottom. A wet floor had taken her down, and humiliation started to rise from the soles of her feet.

  She left the West Wing, already too hot so that when she took in a lung full of the September air, she almost passed out from heat exhaustion.

  “What’s your name?” Dallas asked, and Jess realized all of her good sense had fled the moment she’d slipped on the floor. Maybe she’d hit her head too hard. As if on cue, the back of her skull sent a dull ache toward the front.

  “Oh, uh, Jessica,” she said. “Morales.”

  “These are my kids,” he said. “Thomas and Remmy.”

  “Daddy, I can’t keep up,” the little girl said, and Dallas slowed down.

  Jess did not. She really had to get Marshmallow Crème and Texas Tyrant saddled and decorated for the wedding. Nate and Ginger weren’t doing anything very traditionally, including the casual lunch they’d had before the wedding, and they were riding horses down the aisle instead of having Ginger’s father walk her toward a waiting Nate.

  Jess had done horseback weddings before, and she knew how to braid manes and tails, weave in flowers, and balance crowns on the horse’s heads to make them a beautiful addition to the ceremony.

  She’d gone to town to get the flowers, and she’d missed most of the lunch. Thankfully, the flowers waited for her in a cooler in the stables, and she just needed to get there.

  She’d bathed Marshmallow and Tyrant that morning, and they still waited in the wash bay.

  “Hey,” she said to them, always better able to relate to horses than people. Her disastrous relationship with Spencer proved that. And the brief relationship she’d tried with a man named Preston before that. And the boyfriend she’d had before that? They’d only dated for a week before everything fell apart.

  Jess frowned at the track her mind took. She’d never dwelt much on the barren wasteland that was her love life. She didn’t like acknowledging and facing her failures, and the fact was, she’d failed with every man she’d ever tried to get close to.

  “I think there’s something broken inside me,” she whispered to the cream-colored horse. Marshmallow Crème had beautiful, long lashes and a supremely calm demeanor. Jess had loved her from birth, and she’d raised her the past three years for just this moment when she would carry Ginger down the aisle toward her happily-ever-after.

  “All right,” Dallas said, stepping to her side. “Tell us what to do.”

  Annoyance sang through Jess, but she had barked at him to help her. “If you’ll grab that cooler, I’ll start braiding.” She looked at him, which bordered on dangerous. He was extremely good-looking, and though Jess had just bowed out of a relationship with Spencer a couple of weeks ago, she wondered if she could ask Dallas to dinner.

  He has two kids, she reminded herself as she turned Marshmallow around. Not that she didn’t want children. But she barely knew how to take care of herself, and she’d never had a relationship for longer than two months. So the thought of getting to know Dallas and two children was so far outside of her realm of reality.

  She tethered Marshmallow and moved back to her tail.

  “What are you going to do?” Remmy asked, and Jess smiled down at the little girl.

  “I’m going to braid her tail,” she said, starting to part the hair. “And we’re going to weave in ribbons and flowers. She’s going to carry the bride for the wedding.”

  It was all so romantic, and Jess longed for a horseback wedding of her own. She’d have to figure out how to have a boyfriend for longer than a couple of months, though.

  So it was probably hopeless to even think about something like riding a horse toward her anxious groom.

  She focused on her work and asked Remmy for the flowers when she needed them. Dallas fed them to his daughter, and she didn’t go more than a few feet from Jess’s side.

  Jess eventually relaxed, and she’d dressed both horses in record time with the help of Dallas and his kids.

  “All right.” She reached up and wiped the back of her hand across her forehead. “It’s hot.”

  Something was definitely wrong in the stables, and Jess had just realized it. “The air conditioning isn’t working.”

  “You air condition the stables?” Dallas asked.

  “Yes,” Jess said. “They’re temperature controlled, because it can get so hot here.” She sighed and turned around. “I need to check it.”

  “I’m really handy with machines,” Dallas said. “I’ll come with you.” He started to say something to his children, and Jess took a few steps away to wait for him.

  “They’re going to wait here,” Dallas said. “Lead on.”

  Jess took him down the aisle to a locked door and fitted her key into it. “This is the control room.” The door swung open, and a burnt, mechanical smell met her nose immediately.

  “Oh, something’s burned up,” he said, stepping past her. He went straight to the air conditioner and started fiddling with the front panel. A moment later, it came off, and Dallas coughed.

  “Do you have any tools?”

  “There’s a toolbox on the shelf there,” she said, pointing.

  Dallas followed her finger and found it, pulling it down with authority. He came alive as he rooted through the box and emerged with a wrench.

  Jess sure did like watching him, as he had a lot of confidence now when he hadn’t before. He moved with precision, and only five minutes and a couple of grunts later, he swung the whole front of the air conditioner open.

  “Yep, you’ve got a belt here that’s come off and burned up.” He looked at her. “I don’t suppose you have spare belts?”

  “I have no idea,” Jess said.

  “Do you have a ranch mechanic?” he asked. “Maybe someone we can call?”

  “No,” Jess said, though Ginger had talked about hiring someone to maintain their equipment. “I’ll call Ginger.”

  She real
ly didn’t want to, but Ginger loved the horses as if they were her own offspring. She wouldn’t be happy they didn’t have the temperature controls they were used to.

  “I’ll look on the shelves,” Dallas said, and Jess took a few steps away to make the call.

  “What’s wrong?” Ginger asked when she picked up Jess’s call.

  “How do you know something’s wrong?”

  “You said you’d see me with the horses unless there was a problem.” In the background, Jess heard Ginger’s sisters bickering about something to do with Ginger’s hair.

  “The air conditioner in the stables burnt out a belt,” she said. “Dallas has it open and he can fix it, if we have another belt.”

  “Dallas?”

  “Yeah.” Jess continued to walk down the aisle, but she lowered her voice anyway. “He seems to know exactly what he’s doing with it.” He’d been a natural with a wrench in his hand, and Jess wished she didn’t find that quite so attractive.

  “I know Nick bought spare parts,” Ginger said. “I’d look on the shelf.”

  “He’s doing that,” Jess said.

  “He’s really mechanical?”

  “Seems to be,” Jess said, shrugging though her friend couldn’t see her.

  “Are we still on schedule?”

  “The horses are ready,” Jess confirmed. “I’ve got ten minutes, right?”

  “If I don’t kill Sierra,” Ginger whispered, probably because her sister was hovering and wanting to change something Ginger didn’t want changed. “The sooner, the better.”

  Jess laughed and said, “I’ll do my best.” She turned back toward the mechanical room just as Dallas poked his head out of the doorway.

  “Got it,” he said. “You want to see?”

  “You found a belt?”

  “Yep,” he said. “And fixed it.” He wiped his hands on a towel that was probably dirtier than his skin.

  “And fixed it?” Jess didn’t believe that, but as she walked into the room, the air conditioner kicked on with a resounding click.

  She met Dallas’s eyes, and with that smile on his face, a charge filled the air surrounding them that left Jess’s bones vibrating and desire filling her.

  “Thank you,” she said. “Will you please help me get the horses over to Nate and Ginger?”

  “You bet,” Dallas said, and they went to retrieve Marshmallow Crème, Texas Tyrant, and his kids.

  Ten minutes later, Jess delivered the horses to the preparation tent, and helped Ginger into the saddle. She went around Marshmallow and pulled out the train so it lay exactly right.

  Nate sat in the saddle by then, and he looked tall and regal and absolutely amazing in his tuxedo and deep black cowboy hat.

  Jess’s emotions clogged her throat again, and she nodded to Ginger. “Give us two minutes to find a seat, and then you’re set.”

  “Thank you, Jess,” Ginger said, smiling. She seemed softer today, and Jess was glad. Ginger had so much to be in charge of around the ranch, twenty-four-seven. She had to wear the stern expression and ask the hard questions.

  But not today.

  Jess hurried into the main tent, where thankfully, the misters and fans had the temperature at a tolerable level. Hannah and Michelle had saved her a seat in the front row, and she heard Dallas’s footsteps behind her as Ted had saved him and his kids seats there too.

  So she sat down next to Hannah with a whispered, “She’s beautiful,” and her skin tingled as Dallas sat right beside her and drew his daughter onto his knee.

  She glanced at him, that electricity between them still crackling. She wondered if he could feel it too. Spencer had, and they’d tried going out several times. He’d even tried to kiss her—and it hadn’t been horrible.

  It just hadn’t been memorable. By then, the snap, crackle, and pop between them had fled.

  Jess had no reason to think this attraction between her and Dallas would last longer than it took for Ginger and Nate to say, “I do,” so she faced the front, determined not to make a fool of herself again.

  Chapter Three

  Dallas wasn’t sure why his heart was bumping quite so violently in his chest. Maybe it was because the last half an hour had been a lesson in how to rush through things to be on time. Maybe it was because he’d picked up a wrench and done something useful for someone else for the first time in a long time.

  He got to work on cars in River Bay, but he didn’t know who they belonged to. His time in the mechanic bay was limited, mostly to when he taught his weekly classes to other inmates.

  Maybe it was the magnificent sight of Nate atop a gorgeous, gray horse, his hand clasped in Ginger’s as her creamy white horse pranced perfectly beside the gray one.

  The crowd stood and Dallas slipped Remmy into his arms as he joined everyone on his feet. His legs ached, and his back twinged with pain, reminding him of his first major interaction with Nathaniel Mulbury.

  He’d saved him from a gang fight. Broken it right up as if Nate wore the badge of the warden. Dallas hadn’t seen anything like it, but the other men—even the rougher ones—respected Nate. So when his face had hovered above Dallas’s and asked, Are you going to lay there all night? Dallas immediately wanted to get to his feet.

  He hadn’t been able to, and Nate leaned closer, his mouth hardly moving as he whispered. Don’t let them see you like this. I’ll help you stand up. He’d put his hand out, and Dallas had used the man’s strength to help him do everything after that.

  Stand. Walk inside. Get cleaned up. Get his bunk and trunk set up. All of it. He hadn’t left Nate and Ted’s shadow for longer than it took to shower and use the bathroom for the first three months of his prison term.

  After that, the leader of the gang who’d beaten him got released, and everything in Dallas’s life had improved. Apparently, the guy’s sister had been impacted in the medical malpractice suit that had ultimately landed Dallas at River Bay.

  He’d been married, with a family. Some men lost all of that when they went to prison, and Dallas had counted himself as one of the lucky ones whose wife stuck to his side, brought the kids to see him, and held everything together while she kept her head high.

  In the end, though, he had lost everything the day Martha had filed for divorce, dropped the children at her sister’s, and fled Texas.

  Nate and Ginger arrived at the altar, which had seemed so big to Dallas when he’d first sat down. But now, it made sense. The pastor climbed a few steps and stood at their level, his face smiling and beaming first at them, and then out at the crowd.

  Even Texas couldn’t ruin this wedding with her wickedly hot temperatures, still breezes, or buzzing insects. Inside the tent, the fans and misters had managed to keep things relatively cool, and Dallas glanced at Jess as everyone started settling back into their seats.

  Maybe his pulse had started to skip because of her. He frowned at himself and faced the altar again. He felt the weight of Jess’s eyes on the side of his face, but he refused to look at her.

  He wasn’t anywhere near ready to start another relationship, he knew that. He’d spoken to Martha every day since his release. Always in private. Always for only a few minutes, because she didn’t seem able to do more than that.

  Guilt gutted him as the pastor started speaking, and if Dallas were being honest, he never wanted to get married again. He simply wanted to find somewhere for him and his children to build a home and a life together.

  Beside him, Jess texted, her fingers flying across her screen. Annoyance sang through Dallas, and he supposed he’d learned a few good things behind the fences and walls of the federal correctional facility where he’d lived. Number one was that he knew he didn’t have to respond immediately to every message or text. Inside River Bay, such a thing was impossible, and Dallas found he really liked being unplugged from his phone, his laptop, his tablet, and the Internet.

  He’d found himself slipping back into the same obsessive need to answer a text the moment he got it—the way Jess wa
s.

  He adjusted Remmy on his lap and glanced at his son, who sat on his left side. Thomas looked utterly bored, but he hadn’t pulled out anything to entertain him. Dallas needed to tell him more about Nate, because the man was so exceptional on so many levels.

  Looking back up to the altar, he listened as Ginger recited her vows to Nate, her auburn hair almost braided in the same way as the horse she rode. Dallas could only see Nate’s profile, and he wished he could see his whole face.

  “I promise to love you forever,” Ginger said. “I don’t have much else to offer you, but the day you came to this ranch changed everything for me.” She smiled at him, and Dallas thought he caught a glimpse of what heaven must be like. Shining, angelic faces, with joy streaming around a person. Not necessarily from them, but almost like her happiness and love for Nate was a bubble where only she could exist, and she was trying to make sure everyone knew how she felt about him.

  “I can’t wait to be your wife and build our life together.” She looked back at the pastor, and he turned slightly to Nate.

  “Nathaniel has also prepared his own vows for Ginger.”

  Nate’s horse shifted slightly, but Nate barely moved. He started speaking in the slow, deep, rich voice Dallas had heard him use in prison, though he did carry more of a cowboy lilt now than he had in the dormitory.

  Dallas smiled, though the words sort of flowed in and around his ears. He could feel the love Nate had for Ginger, and Dallas wondered if he’d ever be able to feel like that about a woman again.

  When he pictured the love of his life, she had dark blonde hair, dark blue eyes, and the name Martha.

  At the same time, his eyes flitted back over to Jess—a brunette with only dark features and smattering of freckles across both cheeks. She was still texting.

  “Can you stop that?” he hissed out of the corner of his mouth. “It’s really distracting.” And his best friend was saying his vows, for crying out loud.

  Jess looked up at him, shock in her eyes. They glinted dangerously in the next moment, but she turned her phone over and laid it in her lap. They looked back up to the altar simultaneously, just in time for the pastor to say, “I now pronounce you man and wife.”