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

Chapter Sixteen

“I owe you an apology.”

The man’s eyes widened, as if those were words he’d never expected to hear. Or at least, never expected to hear from her. And that told her a little too much about how she’d been acting around him. It was embarrassing, how she’d let her presumptions dictate her actions, and she didn’t like having to admit she’d done it. But she had, and she needed to make what amends she could.

Not only that, she wanted to get this out of the way fast, because she hated lugging around this twinge of guilt. She wasn’t usually like this, and it was not a good feeling.

She heard a whoop from the boy riding the pony in the corral and glanced that way to be sure all was well. It was. Jeremy had really taken to riding and was learning fast. Even Pie acted as if he was having fun. The picture they made brought a smile back to her face and let her control those tangled emotions she was wrestling with.

When she looked back, she saw the man beside her had looked toward the sound as well. But she saw something else too. Saw that there’d been a relaxing of his tension as he watched his son. The love was still uppermost, but she hadn’t realized quite how wound up he’d been until it had eased up a little. There was absolutely no doubt that he was also worried.

“He’s a great kid,” she said.

“Yes.” It was barely a murmur, but she could still hear the emotion in it.

“And that’s why I should have known.”

He looked at her then. “Known what?”

“That a kid like that couldn’t have the kind of man I assumed you were as a father.”

He just stared at her, and suddenly she didn’t have a clue what he was thinking. And so she stumbled on.

“I also talked to my friend Hannah, who works at Yippee Ki Yay. She told me what you said. About not wearing a cowboy hat.” She smiled wryly. “One of my dad’s favorite sayings, that I’ve heard since I was his”—she nodded toward Jeremy—“age is, ‘The hat don’t make you a cowboy.’”

He laughed, and it somehow sounded as wry as her voice had. “Truer words,” he said.

“Hence the apology. I made some assumptions, including that you were the type who thought the opposite, that all you had to do was dress up and play the part, pretend to be a guy with a Texas name, to earn the title. And I’m sorry.”

There, it was done. She’d said what she had to say. And he was still smiling. Sort of, although it looked a bit rueful now.

“Believe me,” he said, “I know full well the difference between the fantasy and real ranch life, and that I’m ill-equipped to deal with the latter. I don’t have the knowledge. Or, I suspect, the endurance.”

That open, honest admission changed her relief after making the apology to gladness that she’d done it. In fact, if she were going to be honest with herself in turn, she’d admit that she found his openness about it rather... endearing. And that was something she never thought she’d be feeling about Jackson Thorpe, of all people.

“Ah, there you are.”

Her mother’s voice from behind them almost made her jump. Strangely, she hadn’t even heard her approach. She was usually always tuned in for the sound of the chair on the track her father had built. She wasn’t, however, surprised that her mother was here. She’d figured she wouldn’t be able to resist the opportunity to meet the man.

As she often did when someone met her mother for the first time, she watched him for his first reaction to the woman in the chair. In a smooth, easy motion, he crouched down until they were at eye level. More points to him, since her mother hated when people bent over her.

And she knew from the glint in her mother’s eye that she’d also noticed. And approved.

“Mrs. Baylor?”

Nic somehow liked that, too, that he didn’t assume. “Mr. Thorpe,” her mother said, smiling so widely, it pleased Nic even more. She had to remember her mother was meeting someone famous that she admired.

But his next words startled her. “Am I late?”

“Not at all. I just finished my last session a little early.”

“Good,” he said with a crooked smile. “I’d hate to start off wrong-footed.”

“You sound like you’ve had some experience with that.”

“Sometime I’ll tell you about my high school history teacher. The terror of the entire school district.”

Mom laughed and looked up at Nic. “Sounds like Mrs. Valencia, doesn’t it?”

“Yes,” she said, acknowledging the now-retired teacher’s ability to strike fear into anyone who took her subject lightly—but who’d also had the knack to inspire her students to greater heights than even they had ever imagined they could reach. Including her. She had gone from near-terror that first day to near the top of the class, to her own shock.

Mom turned back to the man she clearly admired. “Shall we go inside? I’m sure you’d like to see where it all happens. And we can discuss a plan.”

“And payment, of course,” he said, straightening up. And Nic noted he’d never wobbled or complained, just stayed in that crouch the entire time.

“What,” she finally asked, “are you two talking about?”

“You didn’t tell her?” Mom asked, looking at the man who was glancing once more at his son, who had stopped Pie for some apparently required patting of his neck.

He looked back. “We... hadn’t gotten to that yet.”

Nic sighed. “I was busy apologizing, Mom.”

“Oh,” her mother said. “Good. I’m sure you needed to.” Then, briskly, she went on. “We’re going to discuss my possibly tutoring Jeremy. Bring him in, in about a half an hour, will you?”

“I... sure.” Her mother was going to tutor Jackson Thorpe’s son? And this meeting had clearly been planned ahead of time. How had she missed this?

Too busy hating on the guy you didn’t even know?

She started out watching them go back toward the house, but found herself appreciating the way he moved and the way his jeans fit a little too much, and turned around to watch Jeremy and Pie trotting around the corral.

When she took the boy inside at the requested half hour later—when it was officially work-related, and her mother said half an hour, that’s what she meant—she found both of them laughing. And she noticed that when Jeremy saw his father laughing, he relaxed a little and smiled.

“Thank you, dear,” Mom said.

“Come on in,” Jackson—she was thinking of him that way now—said to the boy. “I think we’ve got a plan you’ll like.”

“I will?” the boy asked.

“It’ll mean you have to come here every day during the week, though,” his father said.

Jeremy lit up. “Really?”

He sounded so excited it warmed a part of Nic she rarely heard from, the part that occasionally thought about having kids to pass her love of this place and this life on to.

“It’ll be like school, but you’ll have it all to yourself. Mrs. Baylor’s a teacher, like Aunt Tris, but she only takes one student at a time.”

The boy looked at Mom a little warily. “Why?”

“It’s more fun that way,” Mom said, with that wide, warm smile that never seemed to fail to charm.

“Oh.”

“Especially when there’s a reward right away,” she added.

“There is? What?” Jeremy asked.

“Riding lessons with my daughter.”

The boy’s gaze snapped to Nic. “You’ll keep teaching me, so I can ride like that someday?”

Jeremy pointed to the framed photograph on the wall, a dramatic shot of her state championship run, her and Jet leaning hard into the last barrel, ready to explode into the straight run back to the gate.

“Someday, if you stick with it,” she said. She glanced at her mother, who, in essence, had just volunteered her without even a consult. But she found she didn’t mind, not with a kid who clearly loved horses this much. She’d find space in her schedule. Fortunately, her regular clients, the four-legged ones, didn’t go by a clock for classes.

“All right then,” Mom said briskly. “Jeremy and I need to get acquainted, so why don’t you two”—she waved them off—“go on a ride yourselves.”

It hadn’t been a suggestion as much as an order to vacate, and Nic knew better than to resist. Besides, it suddenly occurred to her that she would like to see firsthand just how well he handled himself around a horse.

“You and my mother reached an agreement?” she asked as she headed back outside. He came along as if he’d recognized the command as clearly as she had.

“Yes. She’s a powerhouse, and I think that’s just what Jeremy needs.”

He couldn’t have said anything she liked more than that her mother was a powerhouse, because it was absolutely true.

“Shall we take that ride she suggested, then?”

He closed the door behind them, then turned to face her.

“Absolutely, Ms. Baylor.”

She tilted her head as she looked at him. “Do you do that to annoy me?”

“What?”

“Call me Ms. Baylor.”

His brows rose. “I call you Ms. Baylor because you haven’t said I can call you anything else.”

She suddenly remembered when she’d told Jeremy he could call her Nic. And the boy had, but not his father. She realized now that he hadn’t interpreted the permission she’d given his son as permission for him to do the same. How very... old-fashioned of him.

It was a bit of a jolt for her to realize she liked that.

He held her gaze, and it was unsettling. She’d always thought they must use filters and such to get his eyes to look that startlingly blue, but now she knew better.

“My mistake,” she finally managed to say. “Please, call me Nic.”

“My pleasure,” he said, and the way he said it sent a tiny frisson of just that through her.

Pleasure.

This was going to be . . . interesting.