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

Chapter Fifteen

J ackson sat, staring at his phone screen. It hadn’t been hard to find the number. She did run a business, after all. And it had been that thought that had started his dilemma. Started the ricocheting of his brain as if it were a billiard ball he’d hit a little too hard.

She ran a business. Training horses. Not riders, horses. But she was obviously a very good rider herself, so would it be a huge step to train a rider? He supposed he could find an actual riding instructor, but Jeremy liked her. A lot, judging by the way he kept talking about her. And Pie. So the bottom line was he wanted Jeremy to be able to keep riding that pony. But it wasn’t right to take up her time and use her livestock and not pay her back.

He started to dial, then stopped. Maybe he should figure out his approach first. For Jeremy’s sake, he didn’t want to piss her off and have her say no.

He let out a sour, self-directed chuckle. He’d gotten quite spoiled in the last five years. Back home, he never had to think much anymore about whether someone would take his call. Not like the early days, when he and Leah had gotten married and had Jeremy, while he worked on the fringes, and only got those jobs thanks to Tucker.

He liked to think he’d at least paid Tucker back a little by making them a package deal. Part of his contract was that if a stand-in was needed, Tucker would be his. And thanks to Leah’s rather intense budgeting and clever investing, even if he had blown his career to bits now, they’d both be okay for a good long time.

He heard laughter from the living room, where his sister and Jeremy were watching a movie. Or rather rewatching, in Jeremy’s case; he loved the series with the aliens and the smart-mouthed raccoon.

He should be out there with them, not sitting here in the guest room, staring at his stupid phone because he couldn’t work up the nerve to make one simple phone call. All the people in his world, including beautiful women, who would be delighted to answer the phone and hear, “Hi, this is Jackson Thorpe,” but here he sat, fixated on the phone number for a woman even more beautiful who just happened not to like him much.

Disgusted with himself, he got up, shoved the phone back into his jeans pocket, and headed toward the sound of the television. He paused in the hallway opening to the main room, his throat suddenly tight again, as had happened so many times since they’d come here. It had been only four days, but the change in his son was marked and obvious. Right now he sat on the couch, cuddled up against his aunt, laughing at a snappy comeback his favorite character had made.

This is why I do it. Because it’s an escape some people desperately need.

He’d never really put it into so many words like that before, and he knew some would laugh at him for even thinking it. He didn’t care. He wasn’t out to change the world, he was in this business because sometimes people needed to forget about that world for a while. He had a knack for putting himself into a part in a believable way, and he used it.

Knack, my ass. You study like a crazy person, Thorpe, to figure out who your character is. That’s why they listen to you when you say he’d never do that.

Tucker’s words echoed in his memory, spoken the day that, to their shock, the director of the episode they were working on agreed with him and ordered a change in a fairly major scene.

“Wait, wait,” Jeremy exclaimed excitedly. Jackson refocused and saw Tris had the remote control in her hand and was aiming it at the screen. “You have to see the scene in the middle of the credits.”

He smiled at that and walked into the room. “Skipping the credits?” he asked his sister in a tone of mock outrage.

“Only because this is my third time through,” she said dryly.

He laughed and sat down next to Jeremy, who was still glued to the screen, awaited the admittedly funny outtake they’d put halfway through. When it finally did actually end, Tris suggested ice cream for all, and Jeremy agreed with some enthusiasm. Another change for the better, since the boy’s appetite usually required a lot of coaxing, to the point where he was at the bottom end of the scale of what he should weigh for his height and age.

“Oh, by the way,” Tris said as she came back with three bowls of their unanimous fave, rocky road, and Jeremy dug in fast, “I presume you’d be available to take Jeremy out to the Baylors’ tomorrow?”

He blinked. Sat there with the spoonful he’d just taken melting in his mouth. Swallowed it hastily. “What?”

“I called to see if they’d be okay with it.”

“You did?” The image of himself sitting in the other room, staring at his phone screen, shot through his mind. And here Tris had simply done it. Done what he hadn’t been able to do. Which, in a tangled way, said a lot more about him than her.

Tris tilted her head to look at him in that way that warned him she knew her brother all too well.

“And they said it was okay,” Jeremy exclaimed excitedly. “But I have to go to bed on time, so I’ll have lots of energy to ride Pie tomorrow.” With that the boy gobbled the last bite of his ice cream, scrambled down from the couch, and headed for the hallway and the bathroom. A moment later he heard water running as the boy brushed his teeth.

“Mrs. Baylor answered,” Tris said. “I’d always heard about her, but never actually talked to her before.”

“From what Ms. Baylor told me, she’s quite something,” he said, as neutrally as he could manage and, he hoped, without any emphasis on the formal name. “Adapting, never giving up.”

“Yes. But we talked more about the fact that she’s a private tutor.”

Jackson drew back slightly. “She is?”

“She was a teacher here at the middle school before her mishap—that’s what she calls what most would say was a disaster—but she said she finds she likes working with individual students much better.” Tris gave a wry smile. “I can see the appeal.”

He knew she had days when dealing with a roomful of kids felt overwhelming. But she was good at it, and he knew it was what had gotten her through the worst part of her grief after David had died. He, on the other hand... He tried to remember where she had been at this point, two years after the fact. He couldn’t really remember, but he knew it was likely better than how he was doing at that stage. Not that he hadn’t accepted it had happened, but he wasn’t handling it so well. If he had been, he would have brought Jeremy here a lot sooner, because the change in the boy in just days had been... well, remarkable.

“—do you think?”

He tuned back in, calling himself an idiot in his mind for tuning out yet again. “What?”

Tris looked at him as if she knew exactly what had happened, but kindly only repeated her question. “If you’re going to stay awhile, what do you think about having her tutor Jeremy? He’s not middle school age yet, but he’s smart enough, so it might be good for him. And she’d be willing to tailor a program for him.”

“You already asked her?”

“With the understanding that it was up to you, of course. You said you thought you’d stay awhile, but if it’s only awhile, then enrolling him in school here formally would be a problem. And he already wants to go there to ride, so I thought—”

“It’s okay,” he assured her. “And it sounds like the perfect solution.” Except for having to deal with Nicole Baylor regularly.

“She’s not cheap,” his sister warned.

“Neither am I,” he said with a wry smile.

“I know,” Tris said softly. “You’re always willing to pay people what they’re worth. And more.”

He shrugged. She rolled her eyes in that sisterly way of hers. “Anyway, you should talk with her tomorrow, see if you like her, and think it will work. And she said they could probably coordinate with some riding lessons for Jeremy, as a reward for hard work kind of thing.”

That caught his attention. He certainly wasn’t above that kind of bribery, if it got Jeremy back to caring about his learning, as he once had.

“And just think what an inspiration it would be for him, to see her get out of her wheelchair and onto a horse.”

He blinked. Remembered the ramp and the pathway he’d seen, but it had never occurred to him that she could still mount a horse. “Her mother still rides?”

“She does, Nic says.”

“Wow.” He tried to ignore that the fact his sister was allowed to call her Nic ate at him a little.

“So you’ll talk to her about it?”

“I think I’ll talk to Jeremy first, but yes.”

“Good call,” Tris said with a wide smile.

He gathered up the empty ice cream bowls and carried them to the kitchen. He stood at the sink for a moment, wondering what he’d gotten himself into. Doubt flooded him, despite all his big promises. Was he really going to stay here long enough for all this?

“’Night, Dad.”

The words turned him around, and when he did, his son threw his arms around him in an almost fierce hug. Something he hadn’t really done on his own initiative in... two years.

The question that had been in his mind vanished. For this, he’d do anything.