Chapter Two
L ogan Fox leaned on the corral railing and rubbed the muzzle of the buckskin horse who came up amiably to greet him. The TV star horse, who had been ridden by the man who’d started this enterprise. It said a lot about Jackson Thorpe that when he’d learned they were going to dump the animal, he’d immediately bought him and brought him home, just as he had for the sorrel they’d probably been ready to send off to the knackers because he spooked at all the equipment and noise of a television production. He’d seen the video of Jackson rescuing the animal when its fears had gotten it trapped in a mud flat.
He also didn’t doubt that home was what Last Stand was for the actor now. He and Nic were a great match, and you could practically feel the chemistry bubbling between them. Not to mention that Jackson’s son had blossomed.
Nic told me it’s okay for me to be happy, ’cuz that’s how Mom liked me best.
He remembered the boy’s words, said so earnestly, when he’d come to the ranch the first time to check all the new horses added for the therapy program, which, Jeremy had added, was to help kids who felt like he’d felt.
The buckskin snorted lightly and nudged his hand, since the rubbing had slackened with his thoughts. Thoughts that he admitted were hunted down to keep him from thinking about what had just happened.
Didn’t it just figure.
He’d escaped into the barn to avoid the crowd and ran smack into the one person he wanted to avoid most of all.
He’d of course known she was here. He’d seen her the moment she’d arrived, been watching as she sat in her car for nearly a minute, hands still on the wheel, as if she were having to steel herself to get out. He knew that feeling well enough to recognize it when he saw it.
Too bad he was oblivious about everything else. Hell, he hadn’t even known she was Jackson Thorpe’s sister until her husband had died and it had been in the story about his passing in The Defender , the Last Stand local paper. It had been a big deal, because of the man’s contribution to the town in his redesign of Creekbend High School. As a graduate of the place himself, he’d been able to compare the changes the man had made, and at the unveiling had walked the grounds, more out of curiosity than anything, and been impressed by both the obviously useful changes and the workmanship.
And that, he remembered with a grimace, had been the first time he’d seen Trista Carhart. Trista Thorpe Carhart.
She had the same remarkable blue eyes her brother had, but instead of near-black, her hair was a glorious blend of reds and browns that fairly glowed in the Texas sun that day. He didn’t remember much else, except that she was wearing a blue dress that outlined a lovely shape.
But all of that was overshadowed by a single certainty. He’d never seen a woman so proud of her husband. So supportive of him. So utterly, totally in love with him. It was what had driven him, much later, to violate his usual habit of silence and speak to her that day, when he’d encountered her after hearing of David Carhart’s battle with cancer.
That she’d remembered the encounter surprised him. That she’d remembered exactly what he’d said boggled him. What she’d said it meant to her left him…he wasn’t sure what. Except that it seemed for once in his life he’d found the right words at the right time. A rarity, since most of his communication was with horses, not people. And he liked it that way.
Although talking with Trista Carhart had warmed him in an entirely different way than talking down an excitable horse.
He nearly laughed out loud, wondering how Mrs. Carhart, Jackson Thorpe’s sister, would feel about the comparison. Although he had to say, watching her today, seeing her with her brother and nephew, knowing she’d made a trip into the barn just to visit Pie here, he thought she might understand.
I was just looking for Pie to say hello. And hiding.
It was the way she said it, as if it were a confession, that had driven him to admit he, too, was hiding. But he doubted it was from the same thing. For him it was people in general, people who, he knew, thought him a bit strange. For her it was probably all the happy out there. It had been years since her husband’s death, but the kind of grief that radiated from her the few times he’d glimpsed her after that first encounter was not something that faded quickly. Or easily.
You were a lucky man, Carhart. I hope you knew it.
He groaned inwardly at the realization he’d just called a man who had died a long, agonizing death lucky. No wonder he avoided social events. He wasn’t fit to be around actual people. Better he stick to just reading about them.
The buckskin nudged him, rather urgently.
“Reading me, huh, boy?” he murmured.
He knew it was true, that the horse had sensed his unsettled feelings. People called him a horse whisperer, and he couldn’t deny he had a bond with them, was usually able to reach even the most recalcitrant of them, but what people didn’t seem to get is that it went both ways. As if it truly was some kind of bond or link between them, and they could sense his unease or worry as much as he could sense theirs.
This ability had garnered him a lot of work, if only because he was able to shoe horses that normally wouldn’t tolerate it. But as word had spread, he now often got calls to simply deal with troublesome animals. He didn’t mind it. And if he wanted to make a business of that alone, he knew he could. It was amazing what people were willing to pay for that knack of his. Especially since he’d been hesitant to take money for it at all, in the beginning.
It had been Slater Highwater who had convinced him otherwise, during one of their lengthy, rambling discussions over his locally famous peach lemonade. Funny how if he went into the saloon, what he drank depended on if Slater was there or not. Because if he was, Logan knew sober was the only way to keep up with the man’s brain. And that was a challenge he always looked forward to.
Not that he drank much anyway. Or went into town much, for that matter. Only when he had to, and then he tried to hit everything in one day: hardware store, grocery store, and of course the library and bookstore. If he had time after that he sometimes stopped at the saloon, and even though he’d been there countless times, he always stopped at the entrance to marvel anew over the history literally shot into the stone of the building.
Thinking of the library made him think of Slater’s wife, Joey, who helped run the place. No matter how odd the match might seem to outsiders, the saloonkeeper and the librarian, everybody in Last Stand knew how perfect it was. Just listening to them bandy quotations back and forth was enough to make him grin. And congratulate himself if he knew half of the sources they were quoting when they so casually played their loving game. He tried to imagine either of them going on without the other, and the idea just wouldn’t work even in his mind.
Which brought him back to the subject he kept trying to dodge. That with the Widow Carhart—maybe he needed to keep thinking about her in that old-fashioned way, maybe it would help keep his head in the right place—he felt a spark of…something. Something he’d never felt with anyone else.
He slammed the door on that thought. He wasn’t ready to make that admission even silently to himself. He just felt bad for her, as he would for anyone in her place. That’s all.
He thought it decisively and gave the buckskin a final pat on the nose before turning around with every intention of, now that he’d put in an appearance, sliding out unnoticed.
“Thanks for taking us on.”
The deep voice came from so close behind him he almost jumped. He turned around to see the man of the hour, Jackson Thorpe, now wearing the dark-blue Stetson Last Stand’s unofficial matriarch Maggie Rafferty had presented to him a little while ago. He knew the town’s gift had been in response to the actor’s respect for what it signified, and his refusal to don the symbol until Last Stand had decided he’d earned it.
And earn it he had; Logan’s respect for the man had done nothing but grow since he’d first met him, the day Jackson had hired him to keep the therapy horses in good shape, both hoof-wise and psyche-wise.
“Nic swears you’re a miracle worker,” he’d said.
“Hardly,” he’d answered with a grimace. “I can just kind of sense what’s got them acting out, and sometimes I can fix it.”
Jackson Thorpe had grinned at him, reminding him exactly who he was talking to, the hottest thing in Hollywood. Or at least he had been until Hollywood had become too toxic for both him and Jeremy and they’d escaped.
“Sounds like a miracle worker to me,” he’d said.
They’d had a longer discussion about compensation for his work—it didn’t seem right to him to charge a nonprofit—and had finally settled on his standard rate for the shoeing and maintenance, since it would have to be done anyway, but the rest, the time spent with any horse that needed a little polishing to be safe for the children, would be his donation to the cause.
“You’re doing a good thing here,” Logan said now with a shrug.
“I hope so.”
“You are,” Logan said firmly. Then, because Thorpe didn’t seem in a rush to move on and work the crowd as he’d been doing, he asked, “I hear you’re buddies with Tucker Connelly.” Logan had met the one-time rodeo star several times back when he’d been active, because he had been and still was the blacksmith on hand at many area rodeos.
Thorpe grinned. “I am. The guy saved my sanity in that town more than once. And he’s still running interference for me, sending warnings when necessary.”
Logan blinked. “Warnings?”
“That they’re coming for me.”
That was an aspect of the man’s decampment that Logan hadn’t really thought about. “Can they?”
“Oh, they can. They have. It may get even uglier than it already has. Don’t care.”
“Dad?” The call came from the open barn doorway, where this man’s sister had yet to emerge.
“And that,” Jackson said with firm satisfaction, “is why I don’t care.”
Logan couldn’t help smiling at the man. He didn’t even pretend to know how it felt to have a child you loved that much, or even how it felt to have a father who loved you that much, since he hadn’t had one at all. But he could imagine the fortitude it had taken to walk away from everything for the sake of that child.
“Not many people I both admire and respect, but the number just grew by one,” Logan said quietly.
Jackson held his gaze, and his slow smile showed Logan that the compliment had registered, and that this man had an idea of just how big it was.
“Over here, Jeremy,” he called out and the seven-year-old, dressed to the nines in cowboy gear for the occasion, ran toward them full tilt. His smile a full-on grin now, the man opposite him bent and swept up the child in his arms as if his hundred or so pounds was nothing. Jackson Thorpe was as strong in reality as the character he played appeared to be.
The boy’s grin matched his father’s, and Logan felt a tug inside he’d thought long ago vanquished as he watched something he would never, ever have.