Chapter 2

The next several days mostly passed in a blur for Dallas. She was so intent on making sure everything around the ranch was running smoothly, she was exhausted. During the scorching days and well into the evenings, her time was spent fixing things around the ranch, fences, cattle pens, horse stalls and numerous other odds and ends.

In the evenings, she spent several hours going over the ranch books and logs, making sure every bill was paid on time, invoices were logged properly and lists were made for the next day. When she wasn’t spending time in her father’s office, she was cleaning every square inch of the house. By the time she was finished, there wasn’t a speck of dust to be found. The windows were smudge free, the shelves and wooden fixtures were polished and smelling of lemon. Each and every carpet had been steam cleaned and all the linens had been washed and hung out in the sun to dry. Every night she fell into bed completely exhausted and drained.

While she kept