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

Chapter Ten

W hy on earth had he vomited all that out?

Jackson tried to focus on the GPS map, but he didn’t really need it now that they were on the edge of Last Stand. The town’s layout wasn’t all that tricky, mostly a square grid once you were inside the limits.

“Dad?”

He glanced over at Jeremy, and memory rushed over him, nearly swamping him. It had taken weeks after Leah’s death to get the boy into a vehicle without screaming protests. He understood it. He was a bit paranoid about it himself. In those early days he’d almost taken Miles’s offer to have someone pick him up and get him to wherever they were shooting that day, but that idea was at war with the thought of surrendering what little control he had left in his life. Nor would he let anyone else drive the protesting Jeremy, not just because of the boy’s distraught state, but because he didn’t trust anyone else to be as hyperalert as he would be with his son in the car.

“What?” he asked, pulling himself out of the memories with what was still an effort, even after two years.

“Can we come back tomorrow?”

“Ms. Baylor said you could.”

“Yeah, but I didn’t know if you would. And why do you call her Ms. Baylor?”

He gave Jeremy a sideways look and a rather lopsided smile. “Because, unlike you, she hasn’t given me permission to call her anything else.”

“Oh.” The boy’s brow furrowed. “Why?”

“You’ll have to ask her, but I suspect she doesn’t like actors much.”

“Is that why she doesn’t watch Stonewall ?”

“Again, you’ll have to ask her.”

Although those last questions hadn’t been comfortable, it was better than stewing about why he’d poured half his guts out in front of this woman who didn’t even like him. It had to have been in reaction to seeing Jeremy actually having fun for the first time in two years. He would have done much more than spill a chunk of his sad story for that.

“I will,” Jeremy said solemnly.

He almost wished he hadn’t said it, because he could imagine the way that would go.

Nic, why don’t you watch my dad’s show?

Because he’s a fake cowboy, Jeremy.

And the weirdest part was, he couldn’t blame her for that. She lived the life. She was the real deal, and no doubt knew many actual, genuine cowboys. Why would she care about Hollywood’s idea of them?

“So . . . we can go back tomorrow?”

“Why don’t you ask your aunt if she’d like to go? Since it’s Saturday.” And maybe I can avoid it altogether. Something about being with someone who so clearly didn’t like him or what he did for a living was surprisingly draining.

Although he had to say she was wonderful with Jeremy. Understanding, kind, welcoming... just not with him. But then, he didn’t need it. Jeremy did. And that was all that mattered.

As it turned out, Tris said she’d love to go. “I’ve heard about Nicole often, usually after the rodeo, when she’s trained half the horses who compete. And I’ve seen her around town occasionally, but I’ve never really met her.”

“Rodeo?” Jeremy asked, that reborn curiosity of his showing in his face. “A real one, like Uncle T did, with bucking horses and roping cows and stuff?”

“Exactly. Last Stand has one of the biggest in the area, every July.”

“July? Oh.” Jeremy looked suddenly crestfallen. Jackson caught his sideways look before the boy said in a tone that matched that look, “We’ll be back home so I can’t go.”

“Things can change,” Tris said gently. “You never know.”

It was later, after Jeremy had gone to bed, that she asked, “I gather you would rather not go with us tomorrow?”

“It’s more, she would rather I didn’t.”

Tris lifted a brow. “You really believe that?”

“That she doesn’t like me? Yeah, I do.”

“Or is it your profession she doesn’t like?”

“Right now, that’s all it takes,” he said, his tone a bit sour.

“Hmm. It’s not like you showed up in boots and a cowboy hat.”

He let out a short, sharp laugh at that. “As if I’d dare, here in real cowboy country.”

“But that’s the point. You know that would be a mistake. Unlike some, who do just that and then wonder why Texans roll their eyes.”

Jackson studied his sister for a long, silent moment before saying, “You truly are a Texan now, aren’t you?”

“David was, and he taught me. I like to think I learned well.”

“You did.” He hesitated, then added, “And he was a good teacher.”

“The best,” she said. “I work hard to be half as good as he was in my classroom.”

“I don’t need to see you in your classroom to know that you are. I just watch you with Jeremy.” He sighed deeply. “I’m sorry I wasn’t there for you the way I should have been when he died. The way you were for me.”

“You had a newborn to worry about. And after Leah’s rough delivery, she needed a lot of help. I understood.”

“But once she’d recovered, I should have—”

She held up a hand to stop him. “By then you had another newborn to deal with, a newborn TV show. The chance of a lifetime, bro. A career-maker.”

The smile she gave him was one hundred percent pure love and understanding. It struck him then, the connection he hadn’t yet made. His loving sister’s gentle kindness with Jeremy, and he himself, from the day Leah had been killed until now, had been a revelation to him. And the way Nicole Baylor had been with Jeremy took it a step further, the concept that when people are hurting, you help, even if they aren’t your family.

And for Jeremy’s sake, he would let her help, no matter what she thought of him.

*

Nic focused her attention on the boy on the pony, not just because this was only his second time riding the little pinto, but because it helped her ignore the fact that she’d been almost sorry when Jeremy had turned up with only his aunt today.

She’d been walking Pie on a lead around the perimeter of the corral for about fifteen minutes now, and both pony and rider were doing well. He quickly got the idea of reining gently, coordinating hands and heels, and moving with the animal.

“You ride like you’ve ridden before,” she said to him.

“I have. Dad let me, and Uncle T helped teach me.”

“Uncle T?”

“His name’s really Tucker, and he’s not really my uncle, not like Aunt Tris is my aunt, but he’s Dad’s best friend. And his stuntman.”

That startled her, that someone of Jackson’s stature in the business would have a mere stuntman as his best friend.

“So he’s the one that makes your dad look so good on horseback?” She made sure her tone was light and teasing, since she didn’t want the boy to take offense on his father’s behalf.

The boy half shrugged in the same manner she’d seen that father do. “Dad can do most of it, but then Uncle T wouldn’t have a job. So he tells them he can’t.”

She blinked. Jackson Thorpe could do his own stunts, but didn’t, so his best friend would have work?

“And where did your dad learn to ride so well?”

“Uncle T, mostly. He used to be a rodeo guy.”

The combination of the name and this bit of info tripped something in her memory. “What’s your uncle T’s last name?”

“Culhane.”

She stopped dead. Pie stopped immediately beside her. Jeremy looked surprised, but didn’t wobble in the saddle. “Your father’s best friend, your surrogate uncle, is Tucker Culhane?”

Jeremy gave her a rather puzzled look. “Don’t know what sur-gate means, but yeah.”

Tucker Culhane had been the biggest thing in rodeo for four years running, until he’d been pinned against a fence by a literal raging bull. He’d been hurt badly enough to retire from the circuit, although she’d seen he’d gotten back on his feet fairly soon, through what the article she’d read said was pure, stubborn Texas determination.

That had been, if her memory served, about a year before Stonewall had hit the air and almost instantaneously taken off. So he’d gone from riding bulls to doing stunts for Hollywood? She’d missed that part of his story.

After another half hour spent trying the boy aboard Pie at a trot, the most difficult gait to ride, she let him urge the pony into a slow, easy lope. By the time they’d made the first circuit of the corral, Jeremy whooped happily. Any instruction she gave, the boy followed, and Pie was always calm, so she felt confident in letting them off the lead. And when she finally did—with stern instructions about just how fast he could go—he whooped again.

She walked back to the fence, where his aunt was sitting on the top rail, watching.

“I cannot thank you enough,” the other woman said. “I was afraid we’d never see him happy again.”

“You’re more than welcome. It does me good to see him like this, too, even though I’ve only just met him.”

“You’re so good with him. Like you’ve done this before.”

“Not me. If you want to see the one who’s really good at this, you should see my mother. She’s done some riding therapy with kids. Nothing like a kid mired in grief seeing a woman who can’t walk, get in the saddle and go.”

Tris gave her a surprised look. “I’m sorry. I didn’t realize.”

“No reason you should. She’s been a wheelchair user for a decade now, since a car accident damaged her spine.”

“But she still rides?”

“She does,” Nic said, always happy to express her pride in her mother. “Dad made some adaptations to her favorite saddle, a seat belt of sorts, and what she calls, with a laugh, tie-downs for her legs, since otherwise, they’d just flop around loose. And we worked with her horse until he understood all commands would be coming from hands, weight shifts, and voice from now on.”

“By we, do you mean you?” Tris said with a smile.

Nic smiled back, but refused to take all the credit. “It took both of us, because that horse adores her. And Dad did his part.” She nodded toward the side of the barn, where there was a setup of a long ramp with an easy slant up to a platform, and beside it a set of freestanding steps. With just enough room between for a horse to stand. “The steps were already there, for when I was too short to climb aboard, but the ramp is for her. Hand built.”

“He constructed that whole thing?”

Nic nodded.

“You know,” Tris said, with an approving nod in turn, “that’s what I love about Texans. See a problem, come up with a solution.”

Nic smiled widely. She liked this woman. Truly liked her. Enough to say teasingly, “It’s a good thing she wasn’t home when your brother was here yesterday. She probably would have been all over him like some rabid fan.”

“He’s very good with fans,” Tris said. “Believe me, he understands they’re why he is where he is.” She paused, frowned. “Or rather, was where he was.”

Her words reminded Nic of the article she’d read last night, when she was trying to get to sleep after an... interesting day. It seemed to her a weird quirk of the world, or of human nature, that suddenly, she kept seeing stories about him. She knew they had to have been there before, but he wasn’t on her radar before, so she hadn’t even noticed them. But now that his name had slammed into her brain, it seemed like they were everywhere.

The article had been speculating on the rumors running rampant. She remembered the lead line on the article vividly.

Rarely in Hollywood has anyone hit it as big and then vanished as fast as Jackson Thorpe.

She had almost stopped there, and before two days ago, before she’d met him in person, she would have. But now she didn’t seem to have the self-discipline to ignore the rest of the online piece.

Thorpe’s modern-day western television series set on a fictional ranch in Texas— but filmed mostly elsewhere, she had muttered aloud while reading —is the hottest thing going, so hot he could write his own ticket. Once he was riding high, both at work and at home, where he has often said his wife and young son kept him balanced.

But now, after Leah Thorpe’s tragic death, friends and workers on Stonewall say he has never been the same. Is that the reason he seems to have disappeared? There had been rumors of heavy drinking, but they seem to have faded away, just as Thorpe now has.

Production has been halted, although the official word is that this is only temporary. My not-so-official sources say the writing room is scrambling, with one rumor being they’ve been tasked to write Thorpe out of the show. So will the season currently being shot end in tragedy for Austin Holt? Check back here, and you’ll know as soon as we do!

She remembered scowling as she closed out the article, wondering how she’d gotten sucked into what was so obviously a trashy gossip site. She might not like the guy, but he’d been through a painful kind of hell and didn’t deserve to be treated like this. As if all that mattered was the damn show, and not the fact that his wife was dead and his child motherless.

The child he so obviously loved.