Chapter Seven
“Y ou’re really gonna stay?”
Jeremy asked it excitedly, ignoring the milk dripping down his chin as he tried to talk and chew his breakfast cereal at the same time. Jackson had just told him Tucker had agreed to help out, temporarily.
Maybe temporarily.
“For a while,” Tucker said carefully. “The summer, at least.”
His nephew by choice considered this for a moment. “That’s a pretty long time, isn’t it?”
“Months,” Tucker said.
Jeremy grinned. “Okay, then.”
The boy happily dug back into his cereal while Tucker scooped up the last bite of delicious hash browns that Nic had fixed to go with Jackson’s familiar scrambled eggs. His own contribution had been limited to toast and coffee, since they’d insisted he was still a guest.
“Until after the morning therapy session anyway,” Nic said, laughing. “Then we give you the worker tour, as opposed to the visitor tour.”
He smiled back at her. It was hard not to—that happy laugh was infectious. And he would have anyway, if only for the change in his best friend. He hadn’t quite realized how beaten down Jackson had been by Leah’s death until he saw him now, almost three years later.
And he hadn’t quite realized how despondent he himself had been, with the shutting down of Stonewall and suddenly being out of work.
He’d been offered a couple of temporary jobs, filling in for an injured crew member, and that had held him for a while, but it wasn’t the same.
On Stonewall he’d been part of something huge, something that had dominated the popular culture of the entire country.
Sure, it had been largely fake, with chunks of California filling in for his native Texas, but it was fiction, entertainment, not a documentary.
Or maybe he’d just been gone too long, had started thinking of himself as a West Coaster instead of an Amarillo boy born and bred. He nearly laughed aloud at the thought.
But he understood why Texans could be a bit peeved, as Nic had been, about the facade the show had presented.
He smiled inwardly as he remembered Jackson telling him how Nic had hated him in the beginning, because of how she felt about the show.
Nic, who right now was leaning over to plant a sloppy kiss on Jackson’s cheek, making his friend grin almost goofily.
“We embarrassing you?” Nic asked teasingly when she straightened back up and saw him watching them.
“No,” he said quietly. “Making me happy for you.”
Nic’s playful manner vanished. Very serious now, she reached across the table and put a hand over his. “Thank you, Tucker. That means more than I can say, coming from you.”
“They kiss a lot,” Jeremy observed with no apparent unease as he set down his now empty milk glass.
“Do they?” Tucker asked, smiling again.
“All the time,” Jeremy said with a bored wave of his hand. “Well, almost.” He shifted his gaze to his father. “Can we go now? I want to go see Pie.”
Jackson glanced at his watch. “You’ve got just enough time to brush your teeth. Get.”
The boy scrambled out of the chair, started to run down the hall, stopped, came back, grabbed his cereal bowl and glass and carried them into the kitchen and put them in the sink. Then he spun on his heel and dashed back in the direction he’d started.
“Wow. Housebroken even,” Tucker said.
“He’s happy again,” Jackson said, relief echoing in his voice. “He still misses his mom—”
“As well he should,” put in Nic.
“Yes, but he’s not drowning in it anymore.” Jackson looked at the woman who had helped bring about the change. “Neither am I. I’m happier than I ever thought I’d be again.”
“Hey, I’m just getting started,” Nic said, planting another kiss on his cheek as she got up to deal with the meal preparation debris.
Tucker watched his best friend watch the woman who had first upended, then changed his entire life, and that of his horribly wounded little boy. Nobody deserved it more than Jackson, who had walked away from a life most could only dream of for the sake of the child he loved.
On the thought Jeremy came running—he rarely just walked anywhere here, it seemed, another big change—back down the hall, a tiny bit of toothpaste lingering in one corner of his mouth.
Tucker gave him a pointed look and swiped at the corner of his own mouth.
Jeremy picked up on the cue immediately and the trace of white vanished.
They started down the hill, Jeremy running ahead as they walked down the hill to the Thorpe’s Therapy Horses facilities. It wasn’t too far, he could see it, but it wasn’t next door, either.
“I’m surprised you’re not riding down there,” he said.
“We would, but this is good exercise,” Nic said.
“And time to talk, plan out the day, make sure we’ve got it all covered,” Jackson added.
Tucker looked from his friend to the facilities, then back. “Don’t miss the limelight?”
Jackson let out a half laugh, half snort. “The slimelight, you mean?”
Tucker couldn’t stop his short, sharp laugh at the word. “Yeah.”
“Nope,” Jackson answered happily. “I miss the crew, and the work, and the story we were telling on the show, but the rest? Not so much.”
“I won’t even ask if you’re ever going to come back, not when the answer is here—” he gestured around them, including Nic and Jeremy in the sweep “—all around me.”
“Sorry,” Jackson began, but Tucker stopped him with a shake of his head.
“You had to do it. Just looking at Jeremy now, you had to do it.”
Nic spoke then. “And I have to apologize.”
Tucker blinked. “What?”
“I was afraid you would be trying to talk him into going back.”
Tucker looked around again, taking in this Hill Country that was quickly latching onto his heart and soul. “No. I think he’s right where he—and Jeremy—belong.”
“Maybe you belong here, too.”
She said it with a warm smile that left Tucker in no doubt she meant it. He smiled back, because he couldn’t think of a darned thing to say. They reached level ground, and Tucker could see a couple of cars and a van already parked in the visitors’ area, with a few people milling about.
“I thought I was overdoing it, with the size of the barn,” Jackson said wryly as they neared the large, newly constructed building. “And now it’s full and we may need more room.”
“We have kids coming in from all over, all the way from Houston and Dallas even,” Nic said proudly.
“And my son,” Jackson said, a world of pride and emotion in his voice, “has appointed himself the personal ambassador. He greets every one of the kids, so they know there’s someone here who understands.”
“Takes after his father,” Nic said, sounding just as proud.
Yes, Jackson had found a home here. And Tucker knew that there was nothing Hollywood or its minions could come up with that would tempt him back to life there.
A rather enthusiastic whinny turned him around in time to see Sorry, saddled and ready for his small soon-to-be rider, near the closest fence and staring right at them.
“He’s really settled that much, that little kids can ride him?” Tucker asked.
“Logan helped him a lot, when he first got here,” Nic explained. “In addition to being a great farrier—”
“And sister wrangler,” Jackson put in with a grin, confirming Tucker’s recollection that this was the new man in Jackson’s sister Tris’s life.
“—he’s a horse whisperer,” Nic finished.
Tucker pulled back slightly. He remembered Logan Fox from his days on the rodeo circuit. They’d even spoken a couple of times. But he’d never heard of this aspect of the man’s talents. “I’ve never been sure those really exist.”
“Ten minutes of watching Logan work will convince you,” Jackson said.
“Come say hi, Uncle T!” Jeremy yelled. “He’s been missing you.”
He found himself grinning as he took off at a trot toward boy and horse. And Sorry indeed greeted him with an enthusiastically bobbing head and a couple of softer nickers. He stroked the sorrel’s nose, and knuckled him under the jaw as the big horse liked.
“Sorry, no treat with me,” he said.
“He doesn’t mind,” Jeremy explained. “You’re the treat.”
“Now that’s something I’ve never been called before,” Tucker said with a laugh.
“Well, that’s hard to believe.”
He spun around at the sound of the amused, rather luscious voice from behind him.
And found himself staring into the golden eyes of Officer Emily Stratton.