Chapter 5

Chapter Five

D awson sat there and watched Caroline walk away from him. She had to be adding an extra sway to her step, because she hadn't walked like that as they'd gone toward the owls. Or maybe she just walked in this sexy way when she had perfectly even ground beneath her feet.

Either way, she was dangerously close to being swallowed by her house, and Dawson wouldn't see her anymore. Panic darted through him, because he didn't know when he'd see her again at all.

Without thinking, he jumped out of the truck, calling, "Caroline?"

She turned back to him as he rounded the hood of the truck in a jog, and he chastised himself. He didn't need to be an overeager puppy, or like Rocks, showing up with something shiny every time she left the house .

"Yeah?"

Dawson's hands felt like bricks attached to the end of his arms. His throat had turned to dust, and he coughed to clear the way for the words he wanted to say. "Uh, I was wondering…what are the next steps for the owl thing?"

She came toward him a couple of steps and stopped, once again becoming an angel in the midday light. "I already emailed you the paperwork. I'd look over that, and I'll bring out the fencing supplies and other things you need to protect the area."

She'd said all of this already, and Dawson hadn't been too blinded by rage to not hear her. He nodded and looked away. "That wasn't really what I was wondering."

She cocked her hip and then her head in the opposite direction, making her body into a slight S he found so attractive. "What are you wondering?"

"How busy are the owls making you?" He shifted his feet and focused on her again, trying to push down his nerves. He'd asked out women before, and he told himself he could do it again. "Maybe if you're not too busy with the owls or your sister moving in." He gestured toward the house, which sat in the mid-day silence. "We could go to dinner sometime."

Sometime was not good enough for him, but he didn't want to push for tomorrow or anything.

Caroline watched him, those pretty pink lips turning up into a smile. She laughed and ducked her head, and when she raised it again, she said, "All right."

Dawson's own grin finally burst onto his face. "All right."

She moved over to him, something stern entering her expression. "I have one condition."

The smile slid right off his face. "You do?"

"Yes, sirree, and I'm afraid it's a deal-breaker."

She could flirt all right, and something in Dawson's chest warmed that she was flirting with him again. "Lay it on me then."

"You have to smile when we go out," she said. "You can't act like you want to be back home by yourself or that you might blow up if they don't have the soda you like, or that you want to stab my cat when you drop me off."

He raised his eyebrows. "I would never harm a cat." He rolled his shoulders as she cocked her eyebrows at him, clearly challenging him on the rest. "I mean, they're not dogs, but I still wouldn't hurt one."

He quirked up one side of his mouth, the other following quickly. "I'll smile."

"Thank you," she said. "I mean, if you aren't happy to be with me, you don't have to, but otherwise, I'd like a sign that you want to be with me."

"Yes, ma'am." He tucked his hands in his pockets so he wouldn't grab onto her. "Should I text you for your schedule? "

"What about tomorrow night?" she asked. "I'm still not working until Monday, so I'm free."

Dawson nodded, wondering what it would be like to have a job with real vacation days. "Tomorrow night, then. Six? Seven?" He hated his tongue and vocal cords then, because he kept saying too much.

Caroline smiled at him again, this time putting her palm flat against his breastbone. "Six would be great. Is that enough time for you to get here?"

"I'll be here," he promised, already sifting through ideas for their first real date. Based on what he knew about Caroline, she liked eating out and specific foods were very important to her. Dawson hadn't spent a lot of time dating, but he had friends, and he could text Finn, Alex, and Link to get some ideas.

He nodded again, forgot to smile, and headed back to the truck. "See ya tomorrow," he said, almost imitating her when she'd gotten out of the truck.

He buckled in and looked at her, and still she stood there watching him, a somewhat incredulous look on her face. Or maybe that was annoyance. "Something not good," he muttered.

He left before she could break their date, though surely she could do that with a text any time between now and six p.m. tomorrow night.

"Lord, I've had a bad enough day already, okay?" he prayed. "She doesn't need to cancel the date and make it worse."

"Uncle Dawson!" The front door burst open with all the energy of a seven-year-old boy. "I lost a tooth! Uncle Dawson, look at my tooth!"

Dawson sat at the kitchen table with his brother, and they both looked over to Dallas, Duke and Arizona's youngest boy.

Two dogs came into the cabin next, followed by Dwayne, then April, and then Shiloh. The girls carried plates in their hands, and that only meant one thing: cookies.

"Has your mom been baking today?" Brandon asked, already on his feet to receive the nieces and nephews.

"Yep," Shiloh said as she reached the counter and slid the plate of cookies onto it.

"Uncle Dawson, look." Dallas arrived in front of him, pressing in so close, Dawson had to back up to see him properly. He pulled down his lip to show Dawson the gap in his teeth, and then he held up the lost tooth.

"Holy hole in your mouth," Dawson said, his smile in full force whenever the kids came over. "What are you gonna do now? You won't be able to eat those chocolate chip cookies your momma made."

"I will too." Dallas grinned at Dawson. "I had two of ‘em this morning."

"What are you gonna do with that tooth?" Dawson asked, glancing up as April put a couple of cookies in front of him. "Thanks, missy."

She grinned at him, and Dawson's heart expanded with love. April was Duke and Zona's second child, and she had a wild streak that probably stemmed from both of them. It gave her parents fits sometimes, and she'd come to work with Dawson on the ranch anytime any of them needed a break.

She flirted with a lot of boys, which worried her parents, and she hated homework, reading, and doing anything her momma and daddy asked her to do. Dawson hadn't been old enough to understand why Duke had left the ranch for over fifteen years, but he knew his half-brother had run into some trouble—the kind that had driven him from town, from his family, for years.

Zona could be all smile or all thorns, so it wasn't all that surprising that the two of them had a daughter with all the same qualities as they did.

She pulled out the chair beside him and sat down. "Can I go out and see the owls with you?"

"In the morning," he said. "After my run, I'll stop by and knock, and by the time I'm ready, if you're here, you can."

She nodded and bent down to pat Ruffin while Brandon exclaimed over the lost tooth and what the Tooth Fairy might bring for Dallas that night .

"Can I take Ruffin out to throw the Frisbee?" April asked.

"Of course." Dawson got up with her, took his cookies, and followed her back to the front porch. She collected the Frisbee from the mat beside the front door, and Dawson moved over to the small table where he kept his pocketknife and whittling wood.

Since it was a holiday, they'd done their skeleton chores and nothing more, and his hands itched to get a really beautiful piece of wood and shape it into something special. But he had texts to send, and Dawson was nothing if not dutiful.

So while April laughed and praised Ruffin every time he caught the Frisbee and brought it back, Dawson tapped out the news that they'd found the threatened burrowing owls on the ranch.

Lincoln Glover lived just north of the Rhinehart Ranch, and he'd become the junior foreman on his family's much larger piece of land earlier this year. Finley Ackerman had a one-man operation north of Three Rivers, and Alex Baxter's place sat the furthest from where Dawson and the blasted owls lived.

You've got to be kidding , Link sent back almost instantly. I'm coming down there in the morning. Whereabouts are they?

West side , Dawson told him as a couple of messages came in from Finn and then Alex .

Unbelievable , Finn said. I guess I'll have to really keep my eyes out now.

What do you have to do? Alex asked.

The owls had been sighted at a couple of other ranches, but further south, not anywhere near Three Rivers. Until now. So it wasn't surprising that no one in his friend group really knew much about them.

Perhaps Duke would have more experience and wisdom, and the men he worked with and collaborated with might know a lot more too. They'd been farming and ranching in the Texas Panhandle for a lot longer than Dawson, but as the rising generation, he had to learn what they already knew.

He spent the next several minutes telling them what he had to do, including the paperwork from Caroline, and the fact that she was bringing "supplies" to the ranch tomorrow to basically keep them away from the owls so they could have their habitat.

I'll send pictures , he said. Maybe it won't be so bad.

My daddy isn't going to like it no matter what , Link said.

Dawson smiled, because no, Bear Glover would not like the owls encroaching on his land. And the west side? he sent, chuckling now. Can you imagine if Cactus finds those owls first?

Link sent a long string of laughter, though annoying Cactus Glover was not an activity any of them would do willingly .

April's boots thunked against the porch as she came toward him, and she looked as sweaty as Ruffin. If dogs could sweat. "I let him in to get a drink." She sighed as she sat down at the only other seat at the table.

Dawson flipped his phone over and set it on the table next to his pocketknife. He watched April for a moment, and she reached up and finger-combed her hair back into a ponytail. She used a tie from around her wrist to secure it and looked over to him.

He cocked his eyebrows, and she rolled her eyes.

"Oh, so it's something," he said.

April heaved the biggest sigh ever heaved by a human being on the planet earth. Dawson worked hard not to chuckle, because he could only imagine Duke's reaction to his daughter. He ducked his head and focused on keeping his expression as neutral as possible. If she sensed any danger at all, she'd shut down. Rather, she'd stomp away in a fit, and Dawson wanted to be a safe place for her.

He knew what it was like to have nowhere to go, no one to turn to, and parents who meant well but simply didn't understand. In his eyes, at least.

"Momma says if I don't get my stupid grade up in algebra, I can't go to the Valentine's dance."

"Mm."

"It's really stupid. No one uses algebra."

Dawson was sure some people did, but he didn't say so. Someone like April? No, she probably wasn't ever going to use algebra. She wanted to herd cattle and wrestle goats out of the mud when the rain turned torrential and they needed help.

She'd gotten her love of the saddle, of horses, of dogs, of ranching, from both of her parents too. Her older sister, Shiloh, definitely had more feminine qualities, though she could saddle a horse and get a job done around the ranch too.

"What're you at now?" he asked.

"A C-minus," she muttered.

"And where does your momma want you?"

"B-minus."

Dawson didn't want to say that seemed fair, though it did. "Is that even possible to do before the dance?"

"I have to get it up before the end of January." She sighed. "Or she won't take me to buy a dress." She looked over to Dawson. "They're dumb anyway. Dresses."

He gave her a smile she didn't return. All at once, he knew why Caroline wanted him to smile when they were together. "Are you going to ask Aurora to make you something?"

"I think I could slay in a denim jumpsuit," she said.

Dawson laughed, straightening his back and letting himself relax into the conversation. "I'm sure you could, sweetheart." He got a grin from her this time. "Sounds like you better get your grade up to a B-minus."

"I can do it," she said with another sigh, this one not as pathetic and irritated as her previous one. "I have a test in a couple of weeks that'll do it."

"Do you need to come study with me in the office?"

"Maybe," she hedged.

"You could have your Valentine's dance date do it," Dawson suggested, trying to keep his voice casual. He was really asking her who she was going with, for he might agree with Zona about getting her grade up.

"Yeah, that would be a hard pass," April said. "Rusty is like, a genius. The last thing I need him thinkin' is that I'm stupid."

"Well, he could never think that," Dawson said. "Because it's not true." He gave April a pointed look, and she ducked her head.

"Okay, Uncle Dawson."

"Do you need to do the journaling? Or should we just talk through it?"

April didn't answer right away, and Dawson wouldn't let this go. Mental health was extremely important to him, as he dealt with some of his own issues. Even now, his fingers twitched to be doing something, and he forced them together to still them.

"I'm okay," she said finally.

"You sure?"

"Yes, sir." She took a big breath. "I can get my grades up, and Rory's gonna make me a denim pantsuit that is going to blow Rusty's mind." She grinned at Dawson. "Not that it matters. He's just a friend. "

"Mm hm," Dawson said. "In his eyes? Or yours? Or for your momma and daddy?"

April's face colored quickly, which happened when she got angry or embarrassed, and the hint of Zona's redheaded genes betrayed her every time.

Dawson laughed and held up his hand. "I don't want to know."

"She just doesn't like him because he's sixteen already."

"Well, that is a fair bit older than you."

"Daddy is like, a million years older than Momma," she said bitterly.

"Yeah, and they met when your momma was in her thirties," Dawson fired back. "And they dated forever. Totally different, missy."

She said nothing, which was her way of admitting that what Dawson had said was right. He didn't need to rub it in her face, so he stayed silent too.

"I have a date tomorrow night," he said, clearing his throat as his niece swung her attention his way. "Maybe you could tell me a hip place to go."

She grinned and grinned. "Uncle Dawson, don't say ‘hip.' You're too old."

"Ouch." He laughed, glad the mood had lightened. "She really likes potatoes in all their varieties. Seemed interested in a bit of Three Rivers history."

April was all-in now, as she did like hanging out in town. In fact, she'd complained more than once about how far away the ranch sat from where everything happened. "What are you thinking, Uncle Dawson?"

"I don't know, missy. That's why I asked you."

"I don't think the bowling alley or Wilde & Organic are for you."

"Wilde & Organic?"

"It's fun to walk around and find something to eat, then go back to someone's house and chill, watch movies, all that."

"Chill," he said, not even sure what that word meant. Asking his fourteen-year-old niece for dating help had been a very bad idea. He wanted that warm feeling in his chest while Caroline flirted with him, and he wanted that foamy, fizzy feeling flowing through his fingers once again when his hand touched hers.

So while they sat there in the evening stillness, only Ruffin panting at his feet to puncture the silence hanging in the air, Dawson prayed.

He figured if April couldn't help him on his first date with Caroline, the Lord could.