Chapter Twelve
C onsidering how long it had been, Tucker thought the piano thing had been okay. He’d hit some wrong notes, but nothing jarring. Only to be expected, since he hadn’t practiced in ages, and hadn’t even been at a keyboard in he didn’t know how long.
And he’d actually enjoyed it, something he never would have expected back when it had been therapy, a way to get his hands and fingers working again.
At the time he’d nearly given up. He’d been feeling pretty sorry for himself.
Wasn’t it enough that it hurt to simply breathe, and that he’d be setting off metal detectors for the rest of his life?
But he’d fought on, probably too stubborn to just give up even if he wanted to.
Stubborn, after all, was what had gotten him through most of his life, especially after those uniforms had arrived at the door that night.
Well, that and ignoring some of the cautions people threw at him.
Like the doctor who said he’d be happier if Tucker would just avoid anything cowboy for the rest of his life.
He’d told him that was not going to happen, so the man had sighed and said just try to stay away from the ones that buck, then.
Tucker had followed that advice, sort of. He hadn’t been aboard a bucking bull or horse since, but he’d intentionally bailed off a couple, for film shoots. But that had been intentional and controlled, and the metal parts bracing his ribs had held up just fine.
So far, anyway.
He took another swallow of the beer the saloonkeeper—he still chuckled inwardly at the fact that he was the police chief’s brother—had insisted on giving him in payment for what he’d called a great four minutes.
Since several other people had made similar comments, he figured he hadn’t been too bad.
He caught himself scanning the room again, searching for the woman with those golden eyes. He’d never felt anything quite like the jolt that had hit him when, through the crowd, he’d seen her gaze fastened on him as he stood up from the piano.
He’d convinced himself they weren’t really that golden, that they were just light brown eyes like millions of people had.
But now he wasn’t so sure, he could have sworn he’d seen the glint of gold reflecting what light there was in the saloon, making them almost glow.
A glow that had somehow, even at that distance, warmed him.
He tried to laugh it off, telling himself he was being an idiot, but the feeling wouldn’t go away. She, however, did, seemingly having vanished moments after he’d spotted her. The crowd had moved, shifted, hiding her, and when the spot where she’d been was visible again, she was gone.
And that left him with a sense of disappointment that seemed all out of proportion to the short time he’d known her.
He heard the buzz of multiple greetings from the area near the front door of the saloon, and turned to see a lovely woman with long red hair tied back, bangs over her forehead coming in. She was accompanied by a tall, lean man with a touch of gray in his hair and a million miles in his eyes.
“Now that’s good to see,” Nic said from behind him. “Chance has come a long way since Ariel came into his life.”
The name rang a bell. “He’s the dog guy, right? Who saves the military dogs they write off, and gave Jeremy Maverick?”
“And trained Lobo and Emily to work together,” Nic said. “And time was you’d never see him show up for one of these informal gatherings. He was so isolated, we were all worried about him.”
And that, Tucker thought, was one of the things he was coming to like best about this place his best friend had landed.
He’d heard he phrase “a tight-knit community” before, but he’d never seen one up close before.
Amarillo, where he’d grown up, was a big city, the fourth largest in Texas.
He didn’t know what the population of Last Stand was, but if it was a tenth of that he’d be surprised.
But it had something a big city could never have. The kind of kinship he was seeing here tonight.
“And look who’s right behind them,” Nic said, grinning now. “The dog whisperer to the horse whisperer.”
That got his full attention. He’d seen Jackson’s sister when she’d come to the house that night, but the man who had changed her life had been out of town working another rodeo. He was always here in town for the Last Stand Rodeo, though, Jackson had said.
So now Tucker found himself, after a big hug from Tris, studying the man with her rather intently, not as the farrier he’d known before, but as the man who had brought a happiness back to Tris that Tucker had never thought to see in her again.
He knew from Jackson that he’d had an utterly hellish childhood—he supposed the source of that scar along the side of his jaw—that made his own look like paradise.
Since he’d been pretty much ignored by his mother in favor of her drugs after his father had been killed, he could guess at how bad Logan’s life must have been.
Sometimes being ignored was a better option.
The man smiled when Jackson started to introduce them. “I remember the famous Tucker Culhane. You’re the only man who ever got me to watch bulls instead of horses.”
Tucker laughed appreciatively. “I remember you, too. Getting that ornery cutting horse of Jack Parker’s reshod in three minutes between rounds.”
“He was a bucketful,” Logan said tactfully.
Tucker hesitated, then said simply, “Thank you.”
“For what?” Fox asked.
“Tris is like a sister to me, too. And just seeing her now, smiling, happy…it’s worth a lot.”
A smile flashed across the serious-looking man’s face. “Worth more than anything, to me.”
And Tucker knew in that moment that his de facto family had just grown by one.
Which led to the rather amazing realization that he’d only been here for five days, as of tonight.
Five days, and he already felt as if he had a family, a safety net of sorts, not just Jackson and Tris, but Nic and Logan Fox, too.
It felt good, which surprised him. He hadn’t felt particularly alone before, when they were in L.A.
, but compared to how this felt, that had been a black hole.
Smiling to himself, he worked his way over to the bar. “I hear you make a pretty wicked lemonade,” he said to Slater, who smiled.
“Local peaches,” he said, pouring a large glass mug and refusing Tucker’s proffered payment. “That—” he nodded toward the piano “—was worth a lot more than just a beer.”
Tucker took the frosty mug. “Been a long time. And it showed. Or sounded. Whatever.”
Slater laughed. “Believe me, it sounded a lot better than anybody else who’s tried the thing so for.”
“Thanks.” He took a sip, swallowed, and his gaze shot to the other man’s face. “Wow. That’s…amazing.”
“It’s been a hit. I was just messing around a while back, figuring out something to help push the local peach growers—it was kind of a new thing at the time—and hit on this.”
And that, Tucker thought, seemed pretty typical of Last Stand.
Locals helping locals. He turned to lean back against the bar as he scanned the crowd, trying to match names with the ones he’d met tonight.
He figured he was at about eighty percent when his gaze snagged on a woman with her back to him.
Not because of the nicely snug jeans she wore, although any other time that would have slowed his scan down, but because of the silken tumble of golden-brown hair that went halfway down her back in long waves.
Now that, he thought over another swallow of the luscious concoction in his mug, was what he’d imagined a certain cop’s hair might look like, if she ever let it down.
Just like that. Shiny, thick and gorgeous. It—
He nearly choked finishing up that big swallow. Because the woman had turned to speak to someone on her right.
It was her. It had been her he’d seen before.
Last Stand Police Officer Emily Stratton.
He was moving before he thought, and by the time his mind sent the order to think twice, it was already too late. She had heard him coming and turned her head to look. And smiled.
That did it. Before, when she’d not only been in uniform but on duty, he’d been able to pretty much keep it reined in.
But now, as she stood there in those jeans, and a golden, shiny top that seemed to both skim and cling at the same time, with her hair even more amazing than he’d imagined, he couldn’t.
The moment their gazes locked, he felt an odd, snapping sort of tingle, as if he’d touched a live wire.
“Hi,” she said, almost shyly.
That slight hesitancy almost undid him right then and there. Was the official, working demeanor just an act? A front she put on? Maybe had to put on? Or was this something else?
Keep thinking, idiot, and you’ll convince yourself she felt that snap, too.
“Hi,” he said back. “I thought I saw you. Before, I mean. But you disappeared.”
“I was here,” she said. “In time to hear you play. That was…amazing.”
He felt another, stronger snap. “I’m pretty rusty.”
“Nic told me why you started playing.”
He looked down at his hands, straightening his fingers, then curling them again. His right seemed to want to tighten into a fist, which he knew had nothing to do with nerve damage, just nerves. He made it relax.
“It worked,” he said.
“Obviously. So you kept playing? I mean, when you didn’t need it anymore?”
“A bit.” He could feel his smile was a little crooked. “I think I was afraid if I stopped I’d lose what ground I’d gained.”
“I would have thought you kept doing it just because you were so darned good at it.”
He didn’t know what else to say, so just said an awkward “Thanks.”
“Slater’d probably hire you to play Friday nights, after how you had the whole place spellbound.”
He let out a bark of laughter at the idea. “Playing to a crowd all the time? No, thanks.”
“Had enough of being the center of attention in your rodeo days?”
“Yeah.”
I wouldn’t mind being at the center of yours, though.
If he could have kicked himself without it being obvious he would have.
“At least,” she said, smiling widely at him now, “you don’t have the monster ego a lot of rodeo guys have. Or Hollywood guys, I suspect.”
That smile about did him in. He thought he could almost hear the crackle of that electric…whatever it was.
And it suddenly hit him that what he was feeling was what he’d seen already tonight. Between Jackson and Nic. Tris and Logan. Slater and his librarian wife.
The electric current of…connection.