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

Chapter Eighteen

O f all the things she might have expected, that wasn’t one of them. Nic hoped she wasn’t gaping at him, but she wasn’t sure she wasn’t.

“You bought him?”

He nodded. Then, with a wry smile, he said, “They thought I was crazy. It was the first season, we didn’t even know if there’d be another at that point, and it wasn’t like I was rolling in money at that stage.”

So he’d spent money he at that time couldn’t spare, to save a horse he’d apparently bonded with. And now that he was likely raking it in, he’d walked away for the sake of his son. Yes, she had most definitely misjudged the man.

“What did you do with him?” she asked, genuinely curious.

“He’s boarded at a rescue place at the moment. Someone my friend Tucker knows runs it. I pay them, and that helps them keep the rescue going.”

Somehow she knew he was paying more than what a standard boarding fee would be. And that she was certain of this told her just how much her opinion of the man had shifted.

As they headed out, she had to admit he could ride. She could always tell when a rider was new or nervous. They were very aware of what they were doing. There was a certain tenseness in the way they sat, the way they moved. Jackson showed none of that. He was relaxed, with an easy posture and perfect minimal tension on the reins. Beyond the occasional pat of approval he gave Shade, which she herself often did when riding a new-to- her horse, she would have thought he and the gray were old friends.

Maybe it was that that made her decide to head out to her favorite spot on the ranch. She didn’t take everyone there. Her mother joked that she hoarded it for herself, and perhaps she did. When they’d been in negotiations to sell off that big chunk of land, once she’d resigned herself to the necessity, her only demand had been that this spot stay theirs. And her father had stuck to his guns on that point, declaring it nonnegotiable from the get-go.

As they rode, she noticed he had the look of someone soaking things in. He didn’t just look around, he studied. And, she guessed, absorbed. She had the odd thought that perhaps he was analyzing how the terrain they were portraying on Stonewall was so very different from the terrain they were crossing now. Which made her glad she’d decided to bring him here.

They headed up the slow rise, and she found herself mentally timing their progress, because she wanted to be sure she was watching him when they reached the top. She wasn’t sure why it was important to her, but it was.

They crested the slope, and he immediately—and gently—reined in Shade. He stared out over the vista before them, the long, rolling undulation of the hills, with the glint of the Pedernales River in the distance. She saw his lips part and his chest rise as he took in a deep breath, as if the air were scented with some sweet scent he couldn’t name.

“Whoa,” he whispered, so low she wouldn’t have caught it if she hadn’t been looking at him.

He stared out at the hills, as if he’d never seen anything like this before. And Nic realized that, if this had been a test, he’d passed with flying colors. And perhaps it had been a test, a very personal one for her, because how someone reacted to this, her favorite place, meant a lot to her.

And told her a lot.

“In spring that’s covered with bluebonnets as far as you can see,” she said quietly. “And if you time it just right, at sunrise, they’re the same color as the sky, and it’s like you’re in some endless tunnel of blue. There’s a video on the Bluebonnet Festival website one of our local guys did with a drone at the exact right moment, and it’s amazing.”

He looked at her then. “You love this place. And I don’t mean just this particular spot. You love this land.”

“I do.”

“I always had a... different sort of feeling when I came to Texas, that there’s a... spirit about the place.”

She liked the way he’d put that. “There is. And if it speaks to you, you’ll never want to leave.”

He looked back out over the hills. “I’ve never felt that way about a place.”

“I’d say any spirit that was once there has been pretty well stomped out of California.”

His gaze shot back to her face, and he gave her a wry smile. “I could not and would not argue that. Except to add that if you let it, it’ll suck your own spirit right out of you.”

She had never expected him to be so... aware. Somehow she’d always thought of people in his business as feeding on the kind of energy the place held, a kind of energy that might be powerful, but was fueled by actions and decisions she didn’t much care for.

“Do you think maybe that’s part of what happened with Jeremy?”

He nodded. “That’s one reason I wanted him out of there. So after he said he wished the ranch on the show was real...”

Was that what had started this? A simple wish for the impossible, that had made this man come as close as he could to making that wish a reality? And never mind what it cost him personally?

“But . . . there have to be contracts, right?”

He shrugged. “They could nail me for that,” he agreed. “At this point, to see Jeremy like he’s been since we came here, I don’t care.”

It was real. He really was this man, not some lightweight pretender. And for some reason that made her a little giddy. “There’s the start of a good, long, straight run just down this rise a bit. Want to give it a try?”

Those famous eyes brightened. He lifted the reins slightly and Shade’s head came up. “Maybe you should ask him.”

“Oh, he’s always ready,” she said with a grin.

She spun Sass around on his hind legs and started down the narrow track. When they reached the bottom, the wider trail rolled out in front of them.

“Now?” Jackson asked as Shade danced beneath him, knowing what was coming. He sat it easily, calmly.

“Now,” she agreed, and put her heels to the eager horse.

*

“You know, you could teach Jeremy to ride yourself.”

Jackson paused in his brush down of Shade after the ride that had taken them twice as long as he’d expected, because she’d shown him most of the ranch. He knew she was unhappy that it was smaller than it had once been, but he laughed inwardly when he thought of the suburbs of L.A., where people bought a house on a couple of acres and called it a ranch. The romance of the lifestyle—or at least a pretense at it—was powerful even now, and even in places it was unsuited for.

He looked at Nic over the back of the gray. “No, I couldn’t.”

“You could,” she insisted. “You ride more than well enough. Better than I expected.”

“I get the feeling you didn’t expect much.”

“True,” she admitted, but with that flicker of a grin that made him feel... he wasn’t sure what to call the little jolt it gave him. “But it’s obvious now that I’ve seen you ride that you’re more than adequate. A lot more.”

“I think I’ll have that etched on a plaque for my desk. ‘More than adequate.’” He made sure he was grinning back at her when he said it.

She arched a brow at him, exaggeratedly. “You have a desk?”

He laughed, and the moment he did, so did she. He had to give her that much—when she changed her mind, she did it thoroughly. What would have been a genuine jab just a couple of days ago was now obviously a joke. This was the kind of lighthearted repartee he’d never thought to have with her.

Face it, you never thought you’d have it again with any woman, unless it was scripted for you both.

It was true he’d done scenes of this kind of teasing back and forth, sometimes with an actress who helped make it feel almost real, and sometimes with someone who made it a chore. But not since Leah had it come... naturally. Not from lines written on a page by someone else, but out of his own mind.

Maybe he was just relieved she wasn’t jabbing at him and meaning it anymore. It would be hard to bring Jeremy here every day and put up with that. Of course, he could just drop him off, but he didn’t want him out of his sight for that long just yet.

It occurred to him to wonder what he was going to do if this worked out. What was he going to do while Jeremy was with Mrs. Baylor? Not like he could expect Nic to go riding with him every day. She’d already arranged her schedule—she was quite in demand as a trainer, and obviously more than worth what he’d be paying her—so that she could teach Jeremy. But the appeal of even the thought of spending long rides with her startled him, and he had to rein it in harder than he had to rein Shade in all afternoon.

He’d been so focused on Jeremy, and once he’d seen how the boy seemed to blossom here, been determined to stay as long as necessary, that he hadn’t really thought much about what he himself was going to do here. He needed to think about that. He thought about how fascinated Jeremy had been by the statue at the library and by the saloon building. Maybe he should spend some time scouting out other places like that, with historical significance.

Wouldn’t hurt you to learn a bit either.

He’d thought he’d done that when he’d come to Texas twice before to get the feel for the show. But he’d been more focused on the people—how they acted, what their interests were—to try to bring life to the character of Austin Holt. But now, here in this small town, he was feeling the pull of the land itself, and the incredible things that had happened in this state that had once been a country of its own.

So he would learn. Not for the role or the show, but because now he wanted to. And he had a sneaking suspicion it wasn’t only for Jeremy’s sake.