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Tris touched his arm, and he shifted his gaze to her, saw in his sister’s eyes that she understood. Then she turned back to Jeremy.
“Would you like to see where it actually happened?” she asked the boy. “There are bullet holes and everything.”
That got her a startled look, and again Jackson felt that hope. This was the most Jeremy had reacted to anything in nearly two years.
“It’s right down there,” she said, pointing up the street past what a sign said was the municipal courthouse. “Just across the street.” She bent down to say in a whisper that was loud enough for him to hear, “It’s in a saloon, and usually someone your age wouldn’t be allowed in, but because it’s history, they’ll let you, as long as you don’t ask for a beer.”
Jeremy laughed. It was short, weak, but definite, and in that moment, Jackson could have kissed his sister. Would have, if he wasn’t afraid it would derail the moment.
“Let’s go,” he said. “Real bullet holes from almost a couple hundred years ago? I wanna see this.”
He held out a hand to Jeremy, and after a moment, the boy took it. Just the connection caused that hope to surge yet again, and he nearly shuddered under the impact. He didn’t even mind when two women walking toward them on the sidewalk gaped at him. Well, one of them did, as she not so surreptitiously brought out her phone, probably for a photo. The other woman just looked at her companion, and somehow he knew she was rolling her eyes. Maybe it was her body language.
And that body speaks a language any man would understand...
He almost stopped in his tracks at the shock of that thought. Would have, if it hadn’t been so important to keep moving with Jeremy. He hadn’t gotten a message from that aspect of his life in... well, in two years. He’d thought that part of him had died along with Leah on that awful night. If it had never reawakened, he would not have been surprised. He’d adored Leah, and had never once strayed or even thought about it, despite the fact that he’d worked with women some considered the most attractive in the world.
They got closer, and he made himself look away before they made eye contact. But the image was so vivid in his mind, it was almost as if he were still staring at her. About a half a foot shorter than him, with long hair in a braid that reached halfway down her back. Hair that was the color of the sand on the beach that day that had, in essence, started all this. And blue-gray eyes almost the color of the ocean that had lapped at that sand. Dressed in snug, well-broken-in blue jeans and a matching denim jacket, he couldn’t tell much more than she was slim and looked and moved as if she were quite fit.
Cowboy boots. She was wearing a pair of cowboy boots. Or would it be cowgirl boots? He didn’t know. But they lookedworn, also well broken in. Instinctively, he looked for the sign Tucker had told him to look for, the band of worn leather on the inside edge.
“If someone’s really a rider,” his best friend and stuntman had told him, “the stirrups will wear that part smooth and dark.”
Since Tucker Culhane had been a rodeo cowboy here in Texas before he’d come west, Jackson figured he knew whereof he spoke. And on this woman, the signs were there.
At least he didn’t get caught staring at anything but her feet.
Even as the thought went through his mind, he wondered about those feet, if they’d be sturdy and calloused, or slender and arched.
And just when did you develop a foot fetish?
He shook his head sharply and managed to give her companion a faint smile as she not-too-subtly snapped a picture with her phone. The woman looked as if she wanted to stop, to approach him, but the woman he had to work to keep from staring at stopped her with a touch on the arm and a couple of whispered words.
There had been a time when he would have paused, maybe chatted a little, and taken a selfie with her if she’d wanted it. But not now, he couldn’t now, not when Jeremy was tugging at his hand as if he weren’t moving fast enough. And in that moment, he shot the woman who had so caught his attention a look he hoped she would see as thankful.
For just an instant their gazes locked, and he stared into eyes that seemed as deep as that ocean he’d likened them to. He’d been lauded a lot for his own eyes, which had been called everything from dark blue to bottomless, but he found her lighter-blue eyes with that touch of gray much more appealing.
And the sooner he stopped thinking things like that about this total stranger who was likely to stay that way, the better.
Besides, he doubted he’d been mistaken about that flare of animus that had shown on her face in the moment before she looked away.
When they reached the white stone building on the next corner, he saw there was another plaque commemorating the actual battle that had taken place here. He read the story of how a small group of locals had taken refuge in this, the only stone building around, when a swath of Santa Anna’s troops had swept through during the Texas Revolution.
“Wow,” he murmured, looking at the deep pits in the wall. “Look at that one, Jeremy. The bullet’s still in there, from all those years ago.”
The boy had to get up on tiptoe to see it, but he did. He reached into the hole, as if trying to reach the deeply buried chunk of metal, again showing more interest than he had in anything in far too long.
“This is where that guy”—Jeremy looked back the way they had come, toward the statue—“brought the bullets back to?”
“It is.”
The voice came from the doorway, where a tall, dark-haired man with a short, neatly trimmed beard stood leaning against the doorjamb, his arms crossed over his chest as he smiled at Jeremy. He looked up at Jackson, and there was a flicker of recognition in his eyes. But he didn’t say anything, and Jackson relaxed a little.
“You’re Mr. Highwater, aren’t you?” Tris asked.
“Slater, please. My brother’s the Mister of the family.”
Tris looked at Jackson. “He’s the police chief, the one on the second plaque on the statue. And he’s definitely a Mister. Or a Sir.”
