“There.”
He stood up and looked at his hard work, a sense of pride moving through him. He’d felt like this after stitching up the arteries leading to a heart too, and after getting all the parts in the exact right spot to rebuild a motorcycle engine.
“I’m so late,” a woman said, and Dallas turned toward a tall, dark-haired woman he hadn’t seen in the brief time he’d eaten a sandwich earlier. “Excuse me.”
She ran toward him, her cowgirl boots making loud, slapping noises on the floor. He backed up, an alarm sounding in his head.
“The floor is—”
She yelped as she slipped, and time slowed into terrible bursts of motion. The woman flailed her arms.
“Wet,” Dallas finished.
He reached for her.
She grabbed onto his forearm.
But she was going down.
He blinked, and he was bending over, her hand still gripping his arm in a painful way.
She groaned, her eyes staring straight up as she was now flat on her back on the floor.
“I’m so sorry,” he said. “Are you okay?”
She blinked a couple of times, and a brand new fire entered those dark eyes. Dallas felt sure he was about to be burned, and he actually found himself welcoming it.
Sneak Peek! Rugged Cowboy 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 though, 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 the stables 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.
“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 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 horses’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 washed 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 future.
“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 two 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.