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

Chapter Thirteen

...go look at how Jackson Thorpe was, as they say, discovered.

Nic was pouring over her message board, looking at the discussion threads she usually not just ignored but avoided. It was almost stunning to realize how much chatter there was about a TV show on this site supposedly dedicated to horses.

It took her a while to find the specific threads, since it had been mostly discussed back at the start of the show nearly five years ago. But someone linked to a news story, and she chose that to get the non-fan version. Or at least something that pretended not to be. But she had to admit after reading the story of one of the horses on a film in which Thorpe had been a wrangler and a background player, she felt... impressed again. First of all, it reminded her he was close friends with stuntman Tucker Culhane, the man she remembered as a rodeo champion here in Texas from some years ago.

But the story focused mainly on how, on location, a horse had been spooked and ran into a mud flat and been up to his withers fast. It had been Thorpe who had risked himself to go out there and keep the horse’s head above the surface, yelled out some orders to the others on the scene, and then dived down to put a strap around the animal’s ribs so the truck on dry land could pull him free. The panicked creature had initially kicked out, until Thorpe calmed him, and it was only the next day it was learned he had acquired a couple of cracked ribs in the process.

She found a phone video of the incident, and despite wondering about the mindset of someone who would stand by and do nothing but record, she found it mesmerizing. Jackson Thorpe may have been just a bit player on this production, but in this rescue, he’d been the star. Miles Flint had been there to see the whole thing and had decided then and there that he had the hero of his pet project, a modern-day western, to take advantage of the streaming culture that had developed.

“I just told Jackson I wanted him to take the man who saved that horse and put him on the screen,” Flint had said. “And he did.”

Nic went back to the original article and sat there staring at the photos, one a mud-encrusted figure who, because she knew, she could tell was hunched slightly to protect those ribs. The other was him in character on set, looking into the distance against a darkening blue sky the color of his eyes. The image made those eyes pop in the picture, but in person they were even... more. He was clad much as he had been today, in serviceable clothes, only with the inevitable cowboy hat, pulled down at the perfect angle to even further emphasize those eyes.

The hat don’t make you a cowboy.

She could hear her father’s voice in her head and couldn’t stop herself from grinning. No, putting on the hat didn’t make you cowboy, no matter how good it made you look. And she freely admitted her personal bias was pretty strong. She didn’t mind Texans who wore them when they had nothing to do with the work that had inspired the headgear, it was almost state-approved attire. It was the outsiders she was... okay, prejudiced against. Not in a nasty, name-calling way, but in requiring them to prove themselves before she’d give them the respect she’d give someone who did the work it implied.

No, the hat didn’t make anyone a cowboy.

But what Jackson Thorpe had done to save that horse just might.

*

“Where’d you get the car?”

Jackson looked at Jeremy, marveling at how even this simple question made him ache a little inside, but unlike the last two years, in a very, very good way. Because not so long ago, the question wouldn’t have occurred, or if it had, it would have taken too much of the boy’s emotional energy to ask.

“Remember the man who told us to go see Joey at the library?”

“The guy in the building with the bullet holes?”

Jackson smiled and nodded. “That’s him. I stopped by to thank him for sending us there, and he told me where I could rent a car. Since we’re going to be here a while, I figured we needed one. We can’t borrow your aunt Tris’s all the time.”

Jeremy had gone very still. Jackson immediately ran what he’d said back through his mind, searching for something he’d said wrong. Was it about not borrowing Tris’s car? Was he afraid this was somehow distancing them from his beloved aunt?

Finally, Jeremy said in a tiny voice, “We’re staying?”

That voice was so small he couldn’t even tell if it was with fear or hope. “I thought you wanted to,” he said carefully. “But if you’d rather—”

“I want to stay! I didn’t think you would.” Then, after a moment, he asked, “Don’t you have to go back to work?”

Jackson drew in a deep breath as he realized he actually hadn’t told Jeremy the whole truth yet. He’d only told him they were going to visit Tris.

He pulled off Main Street and into the parking lot of what was as close to a strip mall as he’d seen in Last Stand. There were parking spaces in front of the businesses, most of which appeared to be medical offices, but he left those alone and parked some distance out. He turned off the engine, then turned to look at his son. Even as he did, he saw fear enter the boy’s eyes, as if he was afraid of what was coming before Jackson even said it.

Why wouldn’t he be? You were the one who had to tell him his mother was dead.

Jeremy hadn’t even understood what dead meant at the time, he was so young. Jackson wasn’t sure he understood it even now, although the idea of never seeing her again was obviously creeping in.

It had taken a long time to convince the child it wasn’t something he had done that was making his mother stay away. The doctor they’d gone to had told him that was typical, normal. Just as it was normal that the then five-year-old didn’t have the words to describe how he was feeling, and Jackson would need to help him with that. And normal that the boy didn’t understand the concept of forever.

And all Jackson had been able to think at the time was that there wasn’t a damned thing about any of this that was normal. But there was one thing Jeremy needed to understand, one thing he needed to be certain of. That while he might only have one parent left, that parent loved him completely.

“I’m not going back to work,” he said.

Jeremy stared at him, brow furrowed in puzzlement. “Huh?”

He took in a breath and said firmly, “There is nothing in my life more important than you. And right now, we need to be together. We have to make a life without your mom, Jeremy, and I don’t think we can do it back home. We’ve tried for two years now, and it’s not working.”

His son was staring at him now, wide-eyed. “I don’t understand. Are we going to... live here now?”

“I don’t know,” he admitted. “But I thought we’d stay for a while and see if we like it.”

His focus on the “we” seemed to be working, because Jeremy calmed a little. “Stay with Aunt Tris?”

“For a while,” he repeated. “But we should look for a place for us too.”

Jeremy lowered his gaze, but then gave him a sideways look. “What about school?”

“We’ll figure that out.”

“Aunt Tris is a teacher,” the boy said.

Jackson found himself smiling rather crookedly at the almost sly note in that observation. “Yes. Yes, she is, and we can talk to her about what to do about getting your royal smartness back to learning. You’ve got some catching up to do.”

He wasn’t really worried a lot about that. He knew Jeremy was a very smart kid, and he was already ahead of most others his age in reading and math, and probably other things too.

Like the hard realities of life. And death.

After another moment of silence, Jeremy asked, “Where’re we going?”

Jackson hesitated, then decided to risk the joke. “You mean you don’t want to go into that doctor’s office over there?”

Jeremy’s eyes widened as he looked the direction Jackson had nodded. “No! I don’t wanna go there. I’m not sick. I’m just... sad.”

Jackson thought his heart was going to shatter. “I know,” he said, barely able to manage a whisper. “So am I.”

His son’s gaze snapped back to his face. “You still miss her?”

He reached out then, because it felt like the only thing to do. The therapist had told him it would take many repetitions of the same answer to convince the boy. He clasped Jeremy’s shoulders in both hands and gently squeezed as he said, letting the ache he always felt into his voice, “I will always miss her, Jeremy. Always.”

That declaration of shared pain soothed the boy, at least to where he nodded as he blinked back the sudden tears Jackson knew all too well.

“So, where are we going?”

Sensing the moment had passed, Jackson shrugged. “Your aunt had some papers to grade, so I thought we’d just drive around a little, look at stuff.”

“Okay.” He sounded interested enough. But then he asked, “Can we go back to Nic’s? I really want to ride Pie again.”

He should have expected that. Cautiously, he said, “Eventually. But it’s Sunday, so I think we give Pie the day off, okay?” And me the day off from dealing with the woman who, if she doesn’t hate me, doesn’t like me much.

“Oh. Okay.”

The boy seemed to accept that easily enough. As he pulled out of the parking lot and back onto Main Street, Jackson had the thought that the conversation they’d just had would never have happened back home. And that alone told him this had been the right thing to do.

They drove past the library and the statue, and Jeremy asked if they could go back and see Joey again. Jackson immediately agreed to that. They went by the courthouse and then, across the street, the saloon. He smiled inwardly at the juxtaposition again, wondering if it was intentional. They stopped at the park and walked around, and at the south side, he saw Jeremy looking across the street at the elementary and middle schools that faced it. The boy didn’t speak, but Jackson couldn’t help thinking that he was wondering what it would be like to go to school here.

Finally, he pulled in behind the western wear store. Jeremy stared at the sign at the back entrance, which portrayed a saddle bronc rider aboard a horse in full buck, completely airborne.

“Is that what Uncle T used to do?” Jeremy asked, a little wide eyed.

“Yes, but on a bull and without a saddle,” he answered. “Even scarier.”

“I’m glad he doesn’t do that anymore.”

“So’s his entire body,” Jackson said. “So, what do you say we go in and get you some Texas-style stuff?”

Jeremy lit up, something he rarely did anymore, and Jackson was grateful once more for the impulse that had brought them here.

“Could I get some cowboy boots? Nic said it’s easier to ride in them.”

“I think we can manage that,” he said, his voice a little gruff because his throat had tightened up on him again.

“Welcome to Last Stand, you two!”

The woman just coming out of the western wear store smiled broadly at them, but somewhat to Jackson’s surprise, left it at that and continued on her way. He liked that she’d included Jeremy, though.

In fact, everyone they’d encountered today seemed to be in the same mode—acknowledge, but don’t intrude. Apparently Lily Highwater had been right about the Last Stand grapevine, both in its speed and responsiveness to a Highwater request.

“People are nicer here.”

Jeremy’s quiet statement as they went into the store was unusual. The boy usually didn’t comment on things like that. And Jackson couldn’t argue with the truth of it, he just didn’t like thinking that it was so noticeable, even to a seven-year-old. Or that his son had been at the mercy of too many not-so-nice people. Not that he’d ever been mistreated, but Jeremy was very good at sensing sincerity. Or the lack thereof. Probably better than he was.

The people of Last Stand seemed completely sincere to him, and Jeremy apparently agreed. He was beginning to think there was something to the old small-town warmth vs. big-city chill debate. And in that moment, he was very glad they’d left Hollywood behind.