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

Chapter Twenty-Nine

N ic eyed the approaching clouds warily. They were big enough and dark enough for her to believe they were going to get their average of two inches of rain for February all in one go. It was unusual for a storm of the predicted magnitude to hit them this early in the year, but not unheard of, so they weren’t taking any chances.

She again ran through her mental list of things that needed to be done, to make sure she’d hit them all. She’d been running full tilt since the warning had come in from Cody Rafferty’s uncannily accurate weather drones that the storm had changed course and was headed their way. The youngest Rafferty brother was a tech whiz, and he had made ranch life in the Hill Country easier with this system and his fence monitoring system that not only warned you if you had a breach, but told you exactly where it was, which saved at least two or three days of work on the bigger ranches, where there were miles of fence line to ride.

Bigger, like we used to be.

She smothered a sigh. They were doing fine, better than they had for a while, since they’d sold that chunk off. She had reached the realization that, in the end, it had been a wise decision. And at least it had been sold to someone they trusted not to turn it into some overpopulated neighborhood of condos and expensive coffee vendors. Riley Garrett was a rancher to the soles of her worn boots, and ever would be, and had promised they could buy it back if they ever wanted to.

It was just that she dreaded ever facing that kind of decision again, when they might have to give up more, just to stay afloat. Or a time when the skills they had to offer were no longer valued. But for now, they were fine, even doing well, and she would just have to focus on that.

And the simple fact that she was head over heels for the guy who was helping make that possible by insisting on paying rent, even with all the work he did. Her cheeks heated a little as she remembered yesterday, when Dad had nearly caught them stealing a kiss in the tack room. It wasn’t that she was hiding this from them—in fact, she suspected Mom at least knew perfectly well what was going on, given that she had facilitated it—but she wasn’t quite ready to share it. Yet. After a week it still felt new, and somehow clandestine, because they had only the hours when Jeremy was with Mom to steal any time together. Which took today out of the mix, since it was Saturday.

Besides, they hadn’t told Jeremy yet, and it seemed to her he should be the first one to know, officially. Assuming, of course, it lasted long enough he needed to be told. After all, Jackson had already told her he couldn’t love her. She knew why, she even understood. But she couldn’t help wondering how she’d ended up feeling envious of a dead woman.

He couldn’t love her, and she didn’t want to love him. No, she needed some steady, ranch-loving Texas man who wasn’t above dedicating himself to what it took to keep a ranch going.

But isn’t Jackson doing just that?

She grimaced inwardly. Because he was doing that, she just wasn’t sure how long he’d be happy about it. And that thought conflicted with her insistence that she didn’t want to love him, which collided with the fact that he couldn’t love her. It was such a tangle, she didn’t know how to begin to sort it out.

But she did care, about both him and Jeremy. A lot. More than she could remember caring about any other man before. But it wasn’t love. It just wasn’t. It couldn’t be. Infatuation, maybe. That she could accept, but she couldn’t afford to give her heart away to a guy who might get bored with the life she loved at any moment.

She didn’t usually look for trouble, not when so much arrived on its own without her help, but as with so many things with him, this was different. She was different with him, and it rattled her.

Then the sound of distant thunder snapped her out of her useless meanderings.

Focus, Baylor. That thunderstorm’s almost here.

Once she was through her mental checklist and certain she’d done everything, that the livestock were in the more protected pastures, the horses secure in the barn—including Jeremy’s precious Pie—and everything battened down as best it could be, she headed in. And arrived just in time to see an expensive European sedan pulling away from the house.

“Who was that?” Nic asked as she watched the car head up the hill. Toward Jackson. She looked back at her parents, who were on the porch, also watching it go, and neither of them looked happy.

“That,” her father said flatly, “was some Hollywood bigwig who came to see Jackson.”

“To talk him into going back, you mean,” her mother said, her tone beyond sour.

Nic felt her stomach give a sudden churn. “Going back?”

“Yes,” Mom said. “He as much as said they’d given him more than a month to get his head right, and it was time for him to get back to work.”

And Nic had the sinking feeling that there was more than one kind of storm on the immediate horizon. What would he do? Had he found enough here to hold him? How could anybody in his position refuse such a demand?

Was she about to lose him, when she’d barely begun to learn all the facets of him?

The doubts she’d thought vanquished rose yet again; how could she, a simple ranch girl from small-town Texas, hold a man like Jackson Thorpe?

She was very afraid she knew the answer to that.

She couldn’t.

*

Jackson toed off his boots—which had become more battered in a month of real ranch life than they had in five years of portraying it, which he supposed told him something—and hung up his jacket. Nic’s dad had been anxious to get everything prepared for this massive storm rolling in to remind them, Richard had said, that winter wasn’t quite over yet. Between them they’d gotten everything loose at the barn under cover, the hay secured, all doors secured, and the generator checked, fueled, and tested. Nic had been out moving the last group of the Angus into the smaller, higher pasture, away from the creek that could flood if the rain stayed as intense as forecast, but she should be done by now.

For a moment he just stood there, staring at that spot just inside the door. He was still surprised at himself. It hit him every time he thought back over the week that had begun that first night with Nic. He’d never expected it to be so... much. So overpowering, so incredible.

He’d thought he’d feel guilty if he ever had sex again, with someone else, after Leah. Especially if he enjoyed it.

Enjoyed it? Hell, he’d about gone through the roof. Again, and again, as if he’d stored up all the longing and need of those years and let it loose all at once.

Or Nic battered down the walls and freed it.

That was closer to the truth. From the moment she’d stepped inside that first night and kissed him, it had been full speed ahead. It was clear once Nicole Baylor made up her mind, she didn’t second-guess. They hadn’t even made it to the bed until the third time. If she hadn’t had a training session and he hadn’t needed to check on Jeremy, he could have easily and happily spent the entire day in bed with her. Now, after a week of stolen hours together, it was just as hot, just as amazing. More, actually, as they learned each other.

And he still got that tightness in his throat and chest when he watched her with Jeremy. This, at least, he knew Leah would approve of. She would be for anything that was good for their precious little boy. And Nic was very, very good for Jeremy. Even now, when he was used to it, watching his son laugh when Nic got him going, watching his pride in his riding skills as she nurtured them, never failed to reach him, deeply.

So now the boy was no doubt still down in the barn where he’d left him to finish up on his brushing Pie yet one more time, even though the little pinto pony was already gleaming. The last time he’d walked by the stall, Jeremy was talking to the animal about next week’s riding lessons, which Nic had promised him would be outside the corral, learning how to adjust for going up and down steeper hillsides, and fording the creek.

He’d told Jeremy to head up here as soon as he was done, but now realized he should have been more time-specific, because if the kid had his way, he’d never be done with that pony, who seemed to have decided the adoration was mutual. Jackson was pondering going down to get the boy into the house before the storm hit when he heard the sound of a car pulling up outside. His first thought was Nic, but then it usually was. But it wasn’t her truck. No, this had a quieter, more civilized sound to it, and when he looked out the window, he saw why; he hadn’t seen one of those since he’d left L.A. The sleek European sedan looked out of place, but he didn’t have time to dwell on that when he saw who was driving it.

Felix Swiff. Head executive producer and backer of Stonewall . The big guy. The money and power guy. A guy who didn’t make casual trips just to visit. If he was here, it was only for one reason. He was going to put the pressure on.

Damn.

For a moment he actually considered not opening the door. Pretending he wasn’t here. Maybe the big storm heading in would drive the man back to L.A.

Now that’d be a great example for Jeremy, wouldn’t it?

He headed for the door.

“Quaint place you’ve got here,” Swiff said the moment he opened it.

He was sure Swiff thought so, given the sharp-edged, uber-modern mansion in the Hollywood Hills the man lived in. He had nothing really against Swiff, only that he represented the money side of the business that Jackson, perhaps foolishly, didn’t want to get into any more deeply than he had to. Well, that, and his fairly autocratic ways.

Jackson lifted a brow at him. And didn’t move aside for him to come in. “Shouldn’t you be out playing golf or something?”

“I’m not here to talk about where I should be, but where you should be. We’ve stalled and tap-danced around it for as long as we can, Jackson. You need to come home.”

The moment Swiff said it, Jackson felt a jab as if the man had tried to punch him. And the only words that fit the feeling were, I am home .

Somehow that gave him the strength to step aside and—intentionally, rather grandly—wave Swiff inside. “Come on in and say your piece, Felix.” Even though it won’t do you any good.

Swiff started with flattery. “Look, I’ll admit it. The show isn’t doing well without you. The ratings have, frankly, tanked since we had to send Austin Holt away on some fictional mission. Especially when viewers know at least some version of the truth, that you walked away.”

Jackson knew this from Tucker, but Jeremy was his priority, and the change that he’d seen in his son since they’d come here outweighed anything Swiff could possibly say. “I understand and I’m sorry, Felix. But I was losing my son. I had to get him out of there. And this was the only place he wanted to be.”

“And I understand that,” Swiff said, although his total lack of a relationship with his own now-adult children made Jackson doubt if he really did. “But think about all the other people, and their kids, that you’re hurting, Jackson. There are people depending on you, not just the other actors, but the crew, the wranglers, the stunt team, including your friend, Tucker.”

And that was Jackson’s weak point, because those were the people he most didn’t want to hurt. But he had to put Jeremy’s welfare above all else. Right now, painful though the thought of other damage he was doing might be, nothing mattered more than his little boy.

Finally, Swiff went to the big gun, the thing Jackson had been expecting. He suspected it was coming when Swiff started pacing the floor. When he finally stopped—although oddly, Jackson thought he heard another couple of steps even after Swiff had stopped moving—it came out in grim, flat tones. “You’re under contract, Jackson.”

“I know that.”

“That means legal ramifications if you insist on this.”

“You do what you have to do.”

“I don’t want to have to force you. This could cost you a great deal, including your entire future in this business. You have no choice. You have to come back.”

Jackson heard that sound from the porch again, the wind no doubt, as the storm got close. But he ignored it as Swiff delivered the ultimatum in a flat, brook-no-denial kind of tone. And in that moment, Jackson considered yet again what he was giving up. Weighed it against the change in his son, from the child who never even smiled to the joyous boy who grinned widely as he rode that pony. Who even came home from his lessons excited and eager to talk about all he was learning.

The scales leaned so far to one side, there wasn’t really any decision to make.

But Swiff took his silence in a different way, saying briskly, “Good. I’ll make the arrangements for your return and tell the writers they can bring Austin back. And I’d better call the publicists, they’ll need to get started. Welcome back, Jackson.”

Jackson opened his mouth to correct Swiff’s misapprehension; he wasn’t going anywhere. He knew what he’d be bringing on. There was no way the businessman could understand walking away from a gold mine like Stonewall . He’d erupt. And it just might cost Jackson everything. Lawyers that dealt in this kind of thing didn’t come cheap.

He might well end up having to ask Richard Baylor for a real job here. And belatedly, it hit him that that would put him and Nic in an entirely different kind of situation. The pressure built in him. He knew what the easiest thing for him to do would be. He also knew he couldn’t do it. He couldn’t—

An explosive crack of thunder rattled the windows and made his ears ring.

The storm was here. In more ways than one.

He turned back to the autocratic money man and unleashed his own thunder.