The Cowboy Comes Home (Home at Last Texas #3)

Chapter One

T ucker Culhane sat looking at his phone. Not engrossed in doomscrolling as so many around him were, but as if he could will it to ring just because he wanted it to.

Be honest, Culhane, you need it to.

But even if it did ring, what were the chances it would be the one person he wanted to talk to?

Slim, he admitted. Face it, Jackson Thorpe hadn’t just left behind this crazy business, he’d left Hollywood and everything connected to it behind.

He didn’t blame the guy who was like a brother to him.

He’d been through hell. And now…well, now he was happier than Tucker had ever seen him since Leah had been killed.

As was little Jeremy. And he knew that unlike many, Jackson would pay a much higher price than walking away from the hottest show on TV for the sake of his son.

And heading for that little Texas town where Jackson’s widowed sister had lived for years had obviously paid off, for both of them.

Hell, from what he’d last heard, for all of them.

Jackson was engaged, his sister had found a new love…

while he was still sitting here in the ruins of what had once been a career beyond any he could have built by himself.

The career his best friend had helped him build.

The favor he’d done by getting Jackson hired onto the wrangling crew had ended up being the best thing he could have done for his own stunt career.

Who would have ever guessed that the delivery man he’d met shortly after he’d moved to L.A.

would turn out to be not only his best friend but also the door to a better livelihood than he ever would have hoped for, once his first one had been destroyed.

He wanted to punch in Jackson’s phone number, but he didn’t.

He’d been bugging him too much. At first it had been to find out when he was coming back.

After a couple of months—and some tirades launched by the most arrogant of Stonewall ’s producers, Felix Swiff—he began to think maybe what Jackson had told them wasn’t just a bargaining tactic.

That maybe he really wasn’t coming back.

That maybe Stonewall really was done for, because although they’d been limping along, the modern-day western was lost without the star who had made it work.

And now, six months later, he knew for sure that Jackson wasn’t coming back.

He also knew that if he did call, Jackson would answer and help if he could.

Because he was that kind of friend. Problem was, Tucker didn’t know exactly what kind of help he needed.

He only knew he felt like he was spinning his wheels here.

He set the phone down on the kitchen counter of his small apartment.

It wasn’t that he was broke. No, Jackson had seen to that.

While he could do and had done most of his own stunts, when he got to a status where he had some pull, he’d insisted that Tucker be his stand-in for any stunt that the insurance company threatened to cancel coverage over.

So he was financially fine now, and since he’d never been reckless with money—spending years dirt poor would do that to you—he was set for a comfortable while.

No, money wasn’t the issue. In fact, he wasn’t really sure what was.

He only knew he’d been lugging around this crazy kind of ache inside for a couple of months now.

And he’d tried everything he was willing to try to ease it, which meant booze.

But it was getting to be a habit. Again.

He could almost feel himself teetering on the edge of falling back into his wilder days.

The days when the aches from his injury flared up, and he’d turned to the only medication he was willing to take.

The days when he’d been drunk far too often, days when he’d had to face the precision work he did with a fierce hangover.

It was Jackson who had put an end to that.

Jackson who had told him he would have that demand for him as his sole stand-in put into his contract, but only if Tucker quit the drinking.

When he’d finally stopped, because that was too amazing a deal to pass up, he’d realized he’d gotten past the worst of the pain.

Not that it didn’t still flare up now and then, but never as bad as it had been, and nothing a few over-the-counter pain relievers couldn’t dampen enough for him to function.

In the end, lack of energy had lingered a lot longer than the pain had.

Much later he’d risked a beer or two, and found he had no trouble stopping. But that was his limit, and he stuck to it, always wary.

He supposed that readiness to turn to alcohol stemmed from his fear of the drugs, given his addict mother had OD’d. So drugs were number two on the “don’t try that” list. He’d seen the damage done, and too much more of it here in L.A. That was why, by comparison, alcohol had seemed a better course.

As for number one on that list, he’d go through a twelve-pack of beer in one go—which wouldn’t happen because he’d pass out before he finished—before he’d try for that again.

Romance just wasn’t in the cards for him, and he’d given up looking for it in any hand he was dealt.

He’d had more than enough of women who wanted to hook up with him simply because of the industry he worked in, or worse, because he was a friend of Jackson’s.

It had been a bit heady in the beginning, but once he saw how shallow it—and they—were, the interest in casual hookups faded.

He’d finally had to admit he didn’t much like the women he kept running into here.

Give me a smart, feisty Texas girl any day.

The irony of it almost made him laugh out loud. Here he was, born and bred in Amarillo but stuck in L.A., while Jackson, born and bred in the suburbs of L.A., was living his best life in Texas. It was almost—

The phone in his hand rang. Startled, he picked it up again.

Jackson.

He blinked, wondering if somehow he’d known. Then, hastily, he answered.

“Hey, I was just thinking about you.”

“How sweet,” Jackson drawled, and he sounded as native Texan as Tucker’s own father had.

Tucker laughed, and it felt like the first time in days. He jokingly told his best friend where to go and what to do when he got there, and Jackson laughed in turn. And that quickly they were back to the old, familiar banter.

“Hey, tough guy, I think you need to get on a plane,” Jackson said after the routine of finding out he, Jeremy, and now Nic and her family were fine.

Tucker blinked. “A plane? To where?”

“Here,” Jackson said. “You might as well take advantage of the downtime. You need to meet Nic. And her family. And Jeremy’s pony, and his new dog. And my sister’s new love.”

“That’s a lot of ands,” he joked.

“It’s a lot of people a lot happier than you remember,” Jackson said.

“That alone would be worth the trip,” Tucker agreed.

“So get yourself back here. And make it in time for the Last Stand Independence Day rodeo. It’s on Wednesday this year, so Nic says the whole week is a party. Jeremy wants to go, and you’re the expert.”

Tucker laughed at the reference to that part of his life that felt like ancient history these days. And suddenly that inner ache he’d been carrying flared to full life, and he knew what the cure for it was.

He needed to go home to Texas.

*

It was almost disheartening to discover just how little he had to do to prepare for a trip halfway across the country.

When had his life gotten so…simple? He knew there were people who clamored for a simpler life, but somehow he didn’t think they meant an apartment you could barely turn around in, a closet with color variations on one outfit—jeans, T-shirts and sweatshirts, plus one jacket he dragged out for the rare dressier occasion—and a refrigerator he didn’t even have to worry about emptying because there was so little in it to begin with.

Maybe he was taking this frugal bit a little too far.

He shoved another pair of socks from his clean laundry pile into the duffel on the bed. That should be enough for the week he was planning, although Jackson had suggested he stay longer.

“You can stay in Nic’s old place, next to the main ranch house. As long as you want, buddy. Just be warned, Jeremy’s got this riding thing down now, and he’ll be ponying down there on Pie all the time to see you.”

Tucker had smiled at the thought. Jackson had sent him pictures of his son aboard the little black and white pinto.

He’d stared at them for a long time, because it was like seeing a different child than the one who had left L.A.

six months ago. And Tucker knew up close and personal what a miracle that was.

He’d been about twice Jeremy’s age now when his father had been killed, and he remembered vividly how long it had taken him to even start to process the loss.

The difference, he supposed, between having that parent for only five years as opposed to thirteen.

They had eventually agreed on playing it by ear, Tucker deciding not to assume these people he didn’t even know wouldn’t mind him moving in for who knows how long. No matter how nice Jackson said they were.

He’d gotten a flight out of Burbank into Austin, deciding the hour layover in Phoenix wasn’t bad, and made a heck of a lot more sense to him than flying nonstop to Dallas and then driving the five-plus hours Jackson said it was to Last Stand.

Besides, next to Dallas was Fort Worth, and he didn’t want to get sucked sideways into revisiting the past. Not that it hadn’t been great most of the time, it had.

He’d loved it, and besides, his days of rodeo fame had begun there.

And ended there, in a humiliating way. Smashed against a fence by a bull you’d already ridden to the buzzer twice, because you didn’t know he’d learned a new trick.

The nearly one-ton Charbray—half Brahman and half Charolais—had discovered the arena fence was a weapon, and proceeded to use it.

He shoved aside the old, worn thoughts, and managed not to move his hand to touch the scars over his ribs. Sparing only his usual moment to thank that particular doctor for being around to try the relatively new rib-fixation surgery, he went on with his packing, such as it was.

He was just zipping up the duffel bag when his phone rang. When he saw it was Jackson, his mouth quirked. He was probably going to nag him again about staying longer. And maybe he would. It all depended on how things went.

But the moment he heard his friend’s voice, he knew there was something else going on. There was a note of tension in it that reminded him of the old Jackson, on set and working.

“What’s up?” he asked, a little warily.

“Listen, I don’t know if you know yet, but…I got a call from Miles this morning.”

Miles Flint was one of the producers of Stonewall , the one Tucker had always thought of as the only really sane one, uninfected by the bluster and ego and phoniness that was Hollywood.

He was also the only one Jackson would willingly deal with.

Others he could tolerate, for brief periods.

Except for Felix Swiff, of course, the arrogant jerk who thought he owned them all because he’d had the money to put into the show back in the beginning.

Tucker had always suspected he pulled the wings off butterflies in his spare time.

Fortunately for him, as a mere stuntman he rarely had to deal with the upper echelon.

“Great,” Tucker muttered sourly, pretty sure he already knew what about. Ironic that it would be Jackson who’d tell him, long distance. Otherwise it would probably take hours if not a couple of days to filter down to his lowly level.

“I don’t know how to say this,” Jackson began.

He sighed and saved his friend the trouble. “Let me guess. We’re shut down.”

“Yeah, afraid so.”

He let out a long breath. “No surprise. I knew it was coming.”

There was a moment of silence before Jackson said, the ache in his voice obvious even to him, “I’m sorry, Tucker. I was hoping this wouldn’t be the final result, that maybe they’d figure out—”

“You had no choice, man. I know that. It was Jeremy or the show, and there’s no question the right person won that one.”

“But it hurt a lot of good people in the process. Including my best friend.”

“I don’t blame you. Given the circumstances, nobody blames you. Well, maybe except Swiffer,” he said, using the nickname most of them used for the particularly loathed money man. “But then, who cares what he thinks, other than himself?”

He heard Jackson chuckle and was glad. He didn’t want him blaming himself for this, even though it was the inevitable—in Tucker’s view, anyway—result of him walking away.

He really had had no choice. And Tucker also knew Jackson had never quite believed Stonewall ’s survival depended solely on him.

He just didn’t have that Hollywood-sized ego so many had.

He’d started out working alongside Tucker and the rest of the horse crew, and he’d never forgotten that.

Which was also why Tucker considered him his best friend. Jackson had never, ever even hinted that he saw himself as above or more important than his friend, and had made it clear in words and actions that he would much rather spend his free time with the guys on Tucker’s level than Swiff’s.

“I’ll be there in Austin to pick you up,” Jackson promised.

“You can show your face? Won’t you get mobbed by fans?”

“Only if they want to punch me out for killing the show,” Jackson said, rather sourly. Then, with an audible exhalation, he added, “And I don’t blame them, either.”

And that, Tucker thought, was why Jackson Thorpe was the heart and soul of Stonewall .