Making A Texas Cowboy (Home at Last Texas #1)

Chapter Three

“O h, my God. Look, is that... who I think it is?”

Nicole Baylor swallowed her sip of Java Time’s luscious latte before she turned to look in the direction her friend Jessica was staring. She saw a couple of locals, the barber and the woman who was the hostess at Valencia’s restaurant, but neither of them would warrant Jess’s stunned reaction.

The only other thing she saw was the not unusual knot of people a couple of blocks up, next to the statue in front of the library—the towering bronze figure of Asa Fuhrmann, the iconic hero of the actual last stand the town was named for. Even the abbreviated version of the man’s actions that were written on the plaque on the base, about him making a run for more ammunition when the defenders were pinned down, a run that had cost him his life but saved the others, made for attention-grabbing reading.

Then, of course, there was the newer plaque just above the sizeable chunk taken out of the pedestal Asa stood on, explaining more heroics, this time of Police Chief Shane Highwater, who had pulled a survivor out of the flames of an engulfed vehicle that had been stopped from doing even more damage than killing two occupants only by the solid presence of that statue. Nicole had been here that April day, the day of town matriarch Minna Herdmann’s birthday, when practically every resident of Last Stand showed up to honor the centenarian-plus, who amazingly was still with them and likely would be for the town celebration of her birthday again this year. Her hometown was full of fascinating—and when necessary, heroic—people.

“It is,” Jessica whispered, which puzzled Nic because there was no one even close to them. “I swear it is.”

Those last words sent Nic’s gaze back to the three people at the statue as Jessica started walking that way. One was a little boy reading the plaques, a boy who looked painfully thin, as if he’d been sick or something. It was hard to be sure at this distance, Java Time was nearly two full blocks away from the statue, but she thought the woman was someone she’d seen in town occasionally, maybe somewhere else as well. She’d never seen her with a kid, though. And she had no idea why Jessica was so excited.

They crossed Ash Street and were nearly to Oak, now only a block from the statue, when her friend gasped, “It is him. It’s really him. And that must be his little boy.”

Finally, Nic shifted her gaze to the man beside the woman and little boy. He was looking at the child, not the statue, which she found interesting. Tall; she’d put him at at least a foot taller than her current student, the fifteen-and-a-half-hand palomino, so six foot plus. Nice build. Lean, but well muscled. He wore well-fitting black jeans, and a black canvas jacket that appeared to be lined in a blue-and-black plaid wool or flannel, a good choice on this chilly January morning.

She shifted her gaze to his face, now that he’d looked up from the little boy. He had a strong, masculine jaw, thick dark hair beneath a worn baseball cap with a logo she didn’t recognize. A little stubble, but not too much. He was wearing sunglasses, which seemed a little odd on this mostly cloudy, chilly morning, but there could be reasons. She found herself wondering what color his eyes were behind the tinted lenses, which was a bit odd in itself; she didn’t usually speculate about such things. It must be because Jessica seemed to recognize the guy, while she didn’t. All she could be sure of was he wasn’t a local, not because she didn’t recognize him, but because everyone in Last Stand could just about quote by heart the story on that plaque he was now reading.

“He’s even more gorgeous in person, isn’t he?”

“I have no idea, because I don’t know who you mean.”

“It’s Jackson Thorpe!”

The name rang a bell, but she didn’t know why. So she asked the obvious. “Jackson Thorpe?”

Jessica stared at her as if she’d just asked who Sam Houston was. “Jackson Thorpe? Austin Holt?”

Now she was confused. “Don’t know that name either. I think I’ve heard or seen the Thorpe name, but—”

“Are you telling me you still don’t watch Stonewall ?”

It fell into place then. Even she, who spent most of her free time in the evenings reading or watching old favorite movies, had heard about the television series that it seemed everyone but her was rabidly watching. She’d tried it once, just to see what the shouting was about, and because it was set here in the Texas Hill Country, but when the opening credits swept over a few hills with towering, snowy mountains visible in the background, touting it as a place fifty miles southwest of Austin, she’d clicked it off in disgust. She had no patience for Hollywood’s certainty that they could pass anyplace off for anyplace else. Places that really existed, anyway. She wouldn’t have cared if they hadn’t said where their fictional ranch was, but they had, and it ticked her off that it was so blatantly and obviously—to anyone who set foot out of their West Coast bubble—not just wrong, but insulting.

She knew hers wasn’t the typical reaction, but she was Texas born and bred, as were her father and his father and his father before him, and she did not take kindly to either the lies or the myths someone who’d never lived here propagated about her beloved home state.

“You don’t.” Jessica was staring at her now. “The hottest thing on TV, and you don’t even give it a shot?”

“A show filmed in California claiming to show Texas? Darn straight I don’t.”

“But it’s the story that matters,” said Jessica. She glanced toward the statue again. “Well, that and the gorgeous star.” She sighed. “I suppose that’s a girlfriend, although I don’t remember—”

“She’s from here,” Nic interrupted before Jessica could start pouring out a flood of celebrity gossip that would only irritate her further.

Jessica frowned, looked almost disappointed. “She is?”

“I don’t know her, but—” She broke off as it suddenly fell together in her memory bank. She had seen the woman around, but she’d also seen her picture in The Defender , the local paper, some years ago. A picture taken at the funeral of David Carhart, a Last Stand native who had been instrumental in updating and remodeling Creek Bend High School. She remembered he’d been young, barely thirty, and that it had been some fast-moving cancer.

“Wait, his sister moved here. I remember reading that!” Jessica said suddenly, her excitement rekindling. “So it must be her with him. That would make sense, that he’d visit her. They’ve both lost somebody,” she said with a sigh that, had it been any deeper, would have been over-the-top dramatic.

“I know she lost her husband,” Nic began.

Jessica nodded. “And he lost his wife, the little boy, his mother. So sad.”

“Let me guess. Another Hollywood star he met on set and who left her husband for him, or some such Tinseltown drama?”

Okay, that was sour even for her, especially about a dead woman, and she didn’t blame Jessica for giving her a shocked look. “Actually,” her friend said, rather coolly, “she was a therapist. Kind of like you are for problem horses, only for children with special needs.”

Now she really felt bad. “Sorry,” she said with a grimace. “That was nasty and uncalled for.”

As was her way, Jessica immediately forgave her. “You’re just worried about your dad.”

She couldn’t deny that was true. Her father insisted he was fine after the mild—was there such a thing?—heart attack he’d had last summer, but she lived in constant fear of another, worse one.

And here you are mocking someone who’s actually gone through what you feared, the loss of someone so close. Not to mention an innocent child.

“It does have me on edge. He’s trying to do as much and work as hard as he did before. Especially since Clark retired. Even though we hired a couple of regular hands to pick up the slack.” Their ranch manager had moved to Florida to be near his kids after working for the Baylors for over two decades.

“He just wants things back to normal,” Jessica said. “You know your dad.”

“Yeah, I do.” She stifled a sigh. “He just won’t ease up.”

Jessica looked back toward the statue, where the three people still stood. The little boy reached out to touch the toe of Asa’s boot, where many others had done the same, so many that the spot was a burnished gold rather than the dark bronze of the rest of the figure. But what caught her eye was the man’s expression as he stared at the boy. He’d pulled off the sunglasses now, as if he hadn’t been certain of what he was seeing. She saw then how tired he looked and felt even worse about her smart-ass comment.

Something about the way he was staring at the child—his son, if Jessica was right, and she probably was—grabbed at her. His expression seemed an odd combination of disbelief and hope. And in that moment she knew that, Hollywood or not, this man genuinely loved that boy.

“Can we go say hello?” Jessica asked hopefully.

“Hoping for a selfie?” Nic asked, but lightly, all her earlier snark vanished.

“Maybe,” Jessica admitted with a grin.

Nic looked back at the trio. “He looks pretty serious right now. Do you want to intrude?”

“And now you’re protecting him, the epitome of the Hollywood you hate?”

“I don’t hate Hollywood. With a few exceptions, I mostly just ignore them. I was thinking more about the kid.”

“Good point,” Jessica said with a sigh. “Let’s just head that way then, and what happens, happens.”

“Or doesn’t,” Nic cautioned.

“That too,” Jessica agreed.

At least her friend was less frenzied now, Nic thought, as they started walking toward the library and the statue in front of it. Inwardly, she was shaking her head at Jessica’s obvious infatuation with some Hollywood hunk who’d probably never even been close to a horse before he had to be.

But then she remembered that look on his face and decided anyone who loved his son that much couldn’t be all bad.