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“She’s from here,” Nic interrupted before Jessica could start pouring out a flood of celebrity gossip that would only irritate her further.
Jessica frowned, looked almost disappointed. “She is?”
“I don’t know her, but—” She broke off as it suddenly fell together in her memory bank. She had seen the woman around, but she’d also seen her picture inThe Defender, the local paper, some years ago. A picture taken at the funeral of David Carhart, a Last Stand native who had been instrumental in updating and remodeling Creek Bend High School. She remembered he’d been young, barely thirty, and that it had been some fast-moving cancer.
“Wait, his sister moved here. I remember reading that!” Jessica said suddenly, her excitement rekindling. “So it must be her with him. That would make sense, that he’d visit her. They’ve both lost somebody,” she said with a sigh that, had it been any deeper, would have been over-the-top dramatic.
“I know she lost her husband,” Nic began.
Jessica nodded. “And he lost his wife, the little boy, his mother. So sad.”
“Let me guess. Another Hollywood star he met on set and who left her husband for him, or some such Tinseltown drama?”
Okay, that was sour even for her, especially about a dead woman, and she didn’t blame Jessica for giving her a shocked look. “Actually,” her friend said, rather coolly, “she was atherapist. Kind of like you are for problem horses, only for children with special needs.”
Now she really felt bad. “Sorry,” she said with a grimace. “That was nasty and uncalled for.”
As was her way, Jessica immediately forgave her. “You’re just worried about your dad.”
She couldn’t deny that was true. Her father insisted he was fine after the mild—was there such a thing?—heart attack he’d had last summer, but she lived in constant fear of another, worse one.
And here you are mocking someone who’s actually gone through what you feared, the loss of someone so close. Not to mention an innocent child.
“It does have me on edge. He’s trying to do as much and work as hard as he did before. Especially since Clark retired. Even though we hired a couple of regular hands to pick up the slack.” Their ranch manager had moved to Florida to be near his kids after working for the Baylors for over two decades.
“He just wants things back to normal,” Jessica said. “You know your dad.”
“Yeah, I do.” She stifled a sigh. “He just won’t ease up.”
Jessica looked back toward the statue, where the three people still stood. The little boy reached out to touch the toe of Asa’s boot, where many others had done the same, so many that the spot was a burnished gold rather than the dark bronze of the rest of the figure. But what caught her eye was the man’s expression as he stared at the boy. He’d pulled off the sunglasses now, as if he hadn’t been certain of what he was seeing. She saw then how tired he looked and felt even worse about her smart-ass comment.
Something about the way he was staring at the child—his son, if Jessica was right, and she probably was—grabbed at her. His expression seemed an odd combination of disbelief andhope. And in that moment she knew that, Hollywood or not, this man genuinely loved that boy.
“Can we go say hello?” Jessica asked hopefully.
“Hoping for a selfie?” Nic asked, but lightly, all her earlier snark vanished.
“Maybe,” Jessica admitted with a grin.
Nic looked back at the trio. “He looks pretty serious right now. Do you want to intrude?”
“And now you’re protecting him, the epitome of the Hollywood you hate?”
“I don’t hate Hollywood. With a few exceptions, I mostly just ignore them. I was thinking more about the kid.”
“Good point,” Jessica said with a sigh. “Let’s just head that way then, and what happens, happens.”
“Or doesn’t,” Nic cautioned.
“That too,” Jessica agreed.
At least her friend was less frenzied now, Nic thought, as they started walking toward the library and the statue in front of it. Inwardly, she was shaking her head at Jessica’s obvious infatuation with some Hollywood hunk who’d probably never even been close to a horse before he had to be.
But then she remembered that look on his face and decided anyone who loved his son that much couldn’t be all bad.
Chapter Four
Jackson tried totamp down the hope that had erupted almost painfully in his chest as Jeremy showed the first real interest he’d shown in... well, anything, since the day Leah’s car had been launched off a bridge by a car that had just been jacked by a couple of L.A. thugs. Two people had died that night, including the owner of the stolen car, and Jackson had always felt bad for the family of the man whose name was barely mentioned because of the headline value of his wife’s death. In the end, it only made him hate the media more than he already had, which was saying something.
