Her Single Dad Hero

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“I see. Well, if you’re sure.”

“I’ll work till noon,” he told her. “Then we’d planned to grab lunch in town and go shopping after that. Sound okay to you?”

To his surprise, she nodded. “Sounds fine. Thanks. I’ll be ready.”

“Saturday it is,” he told her, turning away again. He climbed up into the cab and tried not to be too obvious about watching her walk back to her truck.

Something about the way a woman walked in a pair of jeans and boots, even ugly boots, made a man sit up and take notice. Like he hadn’t noticed before this. To his disgust, he’d noticed when she’d worn a softball uniform and cleats. Not that it mattered. The woman was engaged to be married, after all, and on her way back to Dallas and her hotshot career as soon as her dad could do without her.

Sighing, Dean straightened his sunglasses as his son ran toward him, hauling the heavy water jug by its handle. He reached down a hand for the water jug as Donovan shoved it toward him. He stashed the jug in a corner then helped Donovan scramble up into the cab of the harvester before following him and settling into the operator’s seat.

Donovan leaned against his back and said straight into his ear, “She sure is pretty, ain’t she, Dad?”

He meant Ann, of course. Donovan had been playing pint-size matchmaker since Ann had literally caught him with his hand in the cookie jar. For the past year or more, since he’d come to understand what going to school really meant, Donovan had gone on the lookout for a mom. Dean figured it was as much concern about him being on his own during the time Donovan would be in school as it was the boy’s natural desire for a mother. The boy didn’t realize that most husbands and wives spent relatively little time together and that almost no fathers were blessed with the almost constant companionship of their children.

Dean mentally sorted through a number of possible replies, everything from correcting Donovan’s grammar to playing dumb. In the end he chose casual honesty.

“She’s pretty.”

“And you like red hair, don’cha?”

“I do. But you realize that she doesn’t actually live here, right?”

“Huh?”

“She’s just visiting, son. Before long she’ll go on back to where she came from and stay there.”

“Huh. Is it a long ways off?”

“Yep. Afraid so.”

Only a few hours away by car. Worlds away by every other measure.

But then that had always been the way with him and Ann Billings.

Donovan couldn’t know that, of course.

Dean hoped that he never would.

Chapter Four (#uc6611ddc-0efd-54a8-a0cf-4149be4dfd66)

Jordan laughed when Ann told him about her boot-shopping experience, but not for the same reason that Dean had laughed.

“Why bother?” he asked during their phone conversation that evening. “You’re only going to be there a few weeks. It’s a foolish waste of money and time.”

“You wouldn’t say that if you could see the fields here. I can’t wear my good shoes in this red dirt. They’ll be ruined!”

“I suppose you have a point,” Jordan grudgingly conceded. “I don’t understand why the hired help can’t handle things there, though. You have an important job here, and your family ought to realize that.”

“Nothing is more important than my father’s health, Jordan,” she pointed out, “and the ranch hands work the livestock. They know little about the crops, especially now that Dad and Rex are moving into organic production.”

“And what do you know about it?” he demanded.

“Only what I’ve been told,” she admitted, “but someone has to give the orders, Jordan. I’m needed here. At least until Rex returns or Dad gets better. I thought you understood that.”

He made a gusting sound. Then he said, “I guess I just miss you. We didn’t have much time together before your brother’s wedding pushed everything forward.”

“The wedding didn’t push things forward that much,” she replied lightly before changing the subject. “Speaking of weddings, I’ve been thinking about a date for ours.”

“Oh, I have, too,” Jordan said briskly. “A date opened up here at the hotel for the last Saturday of July, and I think we should take it.”

Ann bolted upright on the leather sofa in the living room of the ranch house. “The end of July! But that’s...” She quickly did the mental math, torn between elation and panic. “That’s eleven days away!”

“Eleven days and a year,” he corrected, chortling. “Surely you didn’t think I meant this year? You said you wanted a traditional wedding, after all. That takes time.”

Ann blinked, feeling suddenly deflated. “Right. Of course. How silly of me.” She slumped back onto the sofa, frowning.

Her brother, Rex, and Callie had waited only a matter of days to marry. She’d thought their wedding a paltry thing compared to Rex’s first one, but she couldn’t deny that she’d never before seen the kind of joy on her brother’s face that she saw when he looked at Callie. She knew that he regretted the failure of his first marriage, and she thanked God that he’d been given a second chance with Callie.

“There’s always the possibility that the Copley-Mains wedding will be rescheduled and we’ll have to pick another date,” Jordan said. “I’m told that Samantha Copley changes her mind every other day.”

“Oh,” Ann mumbled. “Yes. I expect she’ll change her mind in the middle of the ceremony.”

“Well, we’ll take the date anyway, and if she changes her mind again we’ll adjust,” he said lightly before changing the subject to business.

They spent the next hour talking about hotel issues before someone called Jordan away to handle something unexpected. Something unexpected was always coming up. That was why the manager lived on-site. Ann had tried to maintain a separate residence at first but had quickly realized the futility of it.

She went to bed that night feeling uneasy, though she couldn’t say why. She and Jordan were a good match. She loved him, and Jordan was eager to marry her. Wasn’t he?

Of course he was! He’d made that abundantly clear. She smiled, telling herself that she was going to dream about her wedding.

Instead, she dreamed about a dog performing tricks and protecting a freckle-faced little redhead on command. And the tall, blond, blue-eyed trainer who so obviously devoted himself to that little redhead. She woke in the morning both dreading and looking forward to the shopping trip to come.

No doubt, Callie would have offered to make lunch for Dean and Donovan, but Ann hadn’t had much experience in the kitchen. She could open a can, build a passable sandwich and operate the microwave, but she’d followed a recipe only a few times in her life, with mixed results. Meri was more domestic, having spent more time with their mother while Ann had hero-worshipped their older brother and done her best to compete with him.

Nine years her senior, Rex had always been patient with her—to a point, and Ann had always pushed to keep up with or even surpass her big brother. Only later did she realize how unattractive men found women who could and did compete with them. No matter how often she prayed that God would help her suppress her masculine traits, no matter how hard she tried to be more feminine, she just couldn’t seem to overcome these undesirable tendencies. Still, she felt compelled to try.

Thankfully, Jordan seemed not to see that side of her. He knew her deepest, darkest secrets, and they didn’t seem to matter to him. He valued her as a competent manager and organizer, and he obviously found no fault with her looks. They had much in common when it came to their careers and lifestyles. He’d seemed unconcerned when she’d told him that she wanted to wait till they were married to be together as man and wife, and had said that he wasn’t currently a man of faith, but was open to Christianity, and promised that they could discuss it later when they had more time. She’d told herself that was a good sign.

Dean knew her from before, though. She already had a deficit to overcome with him. She couldn’t risk spoiling lunch. So, after a longer than usual run and a light breakfast, she took her time dressing. She styled her hair with hot rollers and carefully applied makeup. She chose a pale floral lace tank top with skinny jeans and vanilla, leather spike heels. Once convinced that she appeared as feminine as possible for the task at hand, she went to the office and waited, going over the books and internet articles that Rex had left for her.

She heard footsteps on the porch at a few minutes past noon and was at the front door when the first knock sounded. Opening it the next instant, she greeted Dean with a smile. He wore a clean chambray shirt with the cuffs of his sleeves rolled back and the neck open. The blue heightened the gem-like color of his eyes, and the pale straw of his hat looked very much like the color of his blond hair. He was an amazingly attractive man, even in faded, dusty denim.

Next to him, Donovan wore a blue-and-green striped shirt, baggy jeans and a big smile. He looked up at her and proclaimed, “You look real pretty!”

Ann found that little-boy smile more and more difficult to resist. “Thank you, Donovan.”

Dean looked her over and said, “Especially like the shoes.”

She narrowed her eyes at him, pretending that she was not very much pleased. “They just aren’t too good for tramping across fields.”

“Exactly. I am extremely impressed that you can walk in them, though.” He shot her a cheeky grin, flashing those dimples at her. “Ready to go?”

Rolling her eyes, she reached over and took her small handbag from the half-moon foyer table. “I am now.”

“Did you remember to bring socks?”

Socks. Of course. “Uh, one moment.”

Turning, she hurried up to her room, where she snatched a pair of clean socks from the dresser. She had long ago gotten rid of sports and school memorabilia, leaving only the purple, tailored bed coverings and drapes. Before she left here this time, though, she was going to repaint this dresser and the shelving unit across the room. What had possessed her to paint all the drawer fronts and shelves different colors, anyway?

She rushed back downstairs, socks in hand. Dean and Donovan had stepped inside. “Thanks for reminding me,” she said to Dean.

“Voice of experience,” he told her, opening the front door.

She went out first, checking to be sure that she had the key before hitting the lock and pulling the door closed behind Dean, who followed Donovan. Her dad rarely locked the house, but her years in Dallas simply wouldn’t allow her to walk away from an unlocked house. Dean’s slight smile told her that he found the precaution unnecessary, but she would never forgive herself if she returned to find her dad’s TVs and computer missing, not to mention her own electronic devices.

Of course, the horses and cattle could be taken by anyone bold enough to pull a trailer onto the place, though Wes had installed some motion detection devices at vulnerable spots along the fence line. He had an alarm panel set up in the office, and occasionally a coyote or bobcat set off one of the motion detectors. He’d warned her not to get upset if the alarm woke her, just to check the security screen, and if she saw nothing suspicious take a look at the recording in the morning. Rex, who was apparently some sort of expert on such things, had set up the recording component and arranged for cloud storage, but that security arrangement did not include the house, which seemed shortsighted to Ann.

She followed the Pryors to Dean’s somewhat battered, white, double-cab, dually pickup truck. At least she supposed it was white under that thick layer of orange-red grime.

As if reading her thoughts, Dean said, “Hope you don’t mind if we wash the truck before we head home.” He opened the front passenger door with one hand and the backseat door with the other.

“We had to unload ever’thing so we could,” Donovan informed her as he scrambled up into his car seat. “Gotta get out all the tools and stuff afore you can wash it.”

Dean chuckled as he buckled Donovan into his seat. “Quite a job, isn’t it, bud?” He glanced at Ann, who had yet to slip into her seat. “Donovan earned some extra money to buy school gear by helping me unload the truck bed this morning.”

“I’m gonna get some cool stuff!” the boy exclaimed excitedly.

Ann smiled and stepped up into the surprisingly comfortable bucket seat. She was buckled before Dean slid in behind the steering wheel.

“War Bonnet Diner okay for lunch?”

“Is there any place else?”

“Not if you’re hungry.”

“I’m starved!” Donovan declared from his car seat in back.

“That makes two of us,” Dean said, glancing into the rearview mirror as he pushed his sunglasses into place on his nose.

For a starving man, he didn’t seem in much of a hurry. He drove in a leisurely fashion that had Ann setting her back teeth. In Dallas, where everyone was in a hurry all the time, he’d have been run off the road. The trip into War Bonnet covered fewer than six miles, but it seemed to take forever. They pulled into town, stopped at the blinking red light just past the Feed and Grain on the edge of town, far longer than required to determine that no other vehicle could possibly impede their pathway, and rolled on.

Dean waved as they passed the gas station then tooted his horn at a madly grinning middle-aged woman in the grocery store parking lot.

“My aunt Deana,” he explained.

Every other driver they passed waved or called out a greeting. War Bonnet boasted only a single city block of business buildings, including the town hall, bank, post office, a junk shop that billed itself as a collectibles store, a pair of empty spaces and the café. The school and athletic fields lay on the southwest side of town, beyond the four or five blocks of houses that comprised the remainder of War Bonnet, along with the small church on the southeast side. Her family had attended that church for most of her life, but her parents had switched to Countryside Church after she’d left home.

With tornadoes an ever-present danger in Oklahoma, the joke around War Bonnet was that a good-size dust devil could wipe it off the map. The little whirlwinds routinely whipped up red clouds of dust that danced down the streets, lashed the blooms off flowers, spattered windows with grit and stung eyes. One had even disconnected the electricity to the tornado siren near the school. After that the cable had been buried.

Dean found a parking space in front of one of the empty storefronts, and they walked up the sidewalk to the little café, which bustled with activity. The undisputed social center of the community, the café featured a long counter with eight stools, two booths in front of the plate-glass window and five tables, for a total capacity of thirty-six diners. Donovan begged to sit at the counter, but there were only two stools open, so Dean steered him toward a table in the back corner near a jukebox that hadn’t worked in over a decade.

After escorting the boy to the bathroom to wash his hands, Dean ordered a hamburger and onion rings. Donovan asked for fish sticks and fries. Ann decided to try the fruit plate and chef’s salad. It was better than she’d expected, but Dean’s thick, fragrant hamburger made her mouth water. She’d forgotten how good a simple hamburger could smell. When Donovan offered to trade her fries for grapes, she gave him the grapes and declined the fries then accepted onion rings from Dean.

The moment she bit into the crisp ring, memories swept over her, fun times spent in this place with school friends and family. After she’d gotten her driver’s license, she and her friends had hit this place after school, loading up on milk shakes, fries and onion rings before heading off to whatever commitments claimed them. She’d found such freedom in that. No more school buses to catch, no adults around to police their behavior—not that they’d misbehaved really. None of her group had drunk alcohol, used drugs or even dated much. They’d been too busy with school, sports, church, chores and getting their livestock ready for the county fair. True, they’d teased and gossiped and gotten loud, even broken out with the occasional short-lived food fight, but essentially they’d been harmless.

“Ann Billings,” said a female voice, jolting her out of her reverie. Opening her eyes, Ann stared at the small, rounded, older woman. Something about her seemed familiar, but the short, curly, iron-gray hair and thick, owlish glasses brought no one to mind. Then the woman cupped her hands together and clucked her tongue, saying, “First your brother, now you. Will all the prodigals return to Straight Arrow Ranch?”

“Mrs. Lightner!”

The old dear smiled and held out her arms as Ann rose to her feet and bent forward for her hug. When she straightened again, she said to Dean and Donovan, “Mrs. Lightner was my Sunday School and piano teacher.”

“Dean, Donovan,” greeted the older woman, nodding at each. “I’m surprised to see you all together.”