The Cowboy's Texas Heart (The Dixons of Legacy Ranch 3)

“Need me to come get ’im?” He tried to temper the rough edge to his voice, and shut the truck door, though it was a paltry barrier between him and Heather, because the windows were cranked down.

“No, they’ve apologized to each other, right, Seth?” She said this clearly to Seth sitting nearby listening. A long pause, where Seth was probably shrugging or nodding sullenly. “But because we have a three-warning rule before expulsion, and he’s on his second warning already, that and he had to go to the medic for an ice pack, we’re required to call the parents.”

“Second warning?” He felt his words rumble, unable to stop it this time. Seth had only been gone for a few days and he was already on his second warning?

“Yeah, but the first one didn’t warrant a phone call.”

He nodded once, wedging a hand under his pit and resting his elbow holding the phone upon it and scuffed the dirt, watching the tip of his boot swirl up a cloud.

“Put ’im on the phone. Please,” he added. Ever since Seth had shouted at him that he acted like a drill sergeant, he’d tried to remember to tack those little niceties onto everything he said.

His pops had always sounded like a drill sergeant. He didn’t want to become Harold.

A muffled scraping of a chair in the background as someone got up, and shuffling as the phone was handed off ensued, then Seth’s breath exhaled hard into the receiver with the biggest, most put-out, sigh.

“Yeah?” Seth said, his voice hard and unyielding.

“Seth McClintock Dixon. You better start talkin’. What’re you doing, man?”

“What do you care?”

“I care ’cause I’m your daddy. You been going to this camp since you were six. And you’re just gonna shoot yourself in the foot and get yourself expelled?”

The loud bass speakers rumbled from the neighboring car who’d cranked it so loud, it sounded like it was going to blow, as a dinosaur roared and foliage was smashed on the screen. He couldn’t escape the sound and didn’t want to get back into the truck and roll the windows up. Heather would hear him. And did he want her hearing kid drama? Would it turn her off of him? Reveal all his dirty laundry?

“What am I supposed to do when some dumbass is running his mouth?” Seth argued, like this explained even a hundredth of what had happened.

“Did you start this fight? Son, if you started it, I’m coming up there to get you whether she says you can stay or not.”

“Figures you’d take their side,” Seth grumbled, as if whatever the problem was, was obvious to Tyler.

“I don’t got a side to be on. I don’t even know what happened,” Tyler replied.

“Where’re you at anyway? Sounds like crap’s being blown up,” Seth deflected.

He eyed the movie. Guilt sliced through him. He was out having fun, and his kid was struggling. But he didn’t know what to do. He’d started sending him to a counselor. He’d somehow, in all his wild amounts of spare time running a multi-million-dollar operation and parenting alone and taking the occasional legal case to keep his skills sharp, found time to volunteer as Seth’s rec flag football coach each fall, had become Stevie’s den leader in Scouts, to be more involved.

Where was Deborah Ann-Michael Dixon when he needed advice? Or just a blasted boost of confidence that he was doing the right thing and not inadvertently fucking up his kid? Advice on what he was doing wrong? Why his son was slipping through his fingers the tighter he tried to hold?

“At a movie with a friend,” Tyler bit out.

“At a movie with a friend? You just shuffle us off to this mosquito hell so you can get us out of the way?”

That guilt pulsated harder. He had no business feeling guilty. He’d given up his whole life, his whole future, for these boys, and he wouldn’t change a damn thing about it. But it had been since college, with Isabella and her round, pregnant belly, that he’d last gone to a movie that wasn’t a Disney flick for his kids. Over twelve years ago, to be exact. Still, the guilt didn’t stop cutting like barb wire on soft skin. He glanced back at Heather, whose face was impassive, her eyes fixed on him then quickly flitting back to the screen. He should never have flipped up Heather’s skirt and sunk into her. He should have known it was a mistake and a distraction to let her lure him out dirting, lure him out to movies, lure his libido with her raw beauty and bold take-on-the-world attitude, because his attention was needed right here, on the home front, to fix what was broken.

“We’re talkin’ about you throwing punches and trying to drown one of your friends at camp, not whether or not I’m at a movie with a girl—”

“Drown him? You would think I’m an attempted murderer—wait, did you say a girl? As in girlfriend? You? Mister girls-are-a-distraction-so-don’t-touch-’em?”

Tyler took a steadying breath. Eyed Heather again, who was watching him with rapt interest now. She’d heard him say that, too.

“Not a girlfriend, son. Just a…friend.”

A pinch of hurt captured Heather’s brow. She looked back to the screen.

“And we’re talking about your friend at camp. Not mine.”

But Seth was on a roll, now. “He ain’t a friend,” Seth seethed accusingly. “He’s a backstabbing piece of crap. Friends don’t talk the shit he was talkin’.”