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The new tension that had come into Jackson’s voice and posture made her reach out and run a finger over the hand that was holding his coffee mug. “Have I said no to anything yet?” she asked huskily.
She’d have sworn she could feel heat shooting through him, as if that slight connection of her finger on his skin was enough. It took a moment for him to go on.
“This is... different. Nothing to do with... us, really. I mean it is, because we’d both have to work at it, but...”
And, she realized, he was having trouble getting it out. She hadn’t seen him like this in a while. He’d built not just a home for him and Jeremy here, he’d built a life. He’d put his name on the list for the phone tree, and twice already, had responded when someone had called for help. Once when a car driven by a grandfather with his three toddler grandchildren had broken down a mile away from their gate, and once when one of the wild horses neighboring rancher Jessie McBride rehabbed and found homes for had gotten loose. In fact, it had been Jackson who’d found and wrangled the recalcitrant colt and brought him safely back home. Word had gotten around after that one, and Last Stand had not just accepted but adopted him as one of their own.
She waited patiently until he drew in a deep breath and went on. “I wanted to ask if you’d do what you did for Jeremy for other kids, kids in the same boat. Teach them to ride, I mean, give them something outside their grief and fear to focus on.”
She hadn’t expected that. “What exactly do you have in mind?”
“A... haven of sorts, for bereaved kids.” It came in a rush now, telling her just how hard he’d been thinking about this. “I’d buy back the land you sold, so it would have a separate entrance. With an easement for your friend if she wants it, of course. Most of it would revert to the ranch, but we’d keep a few acres down near the road and set it up there, with an office and a small stable and corrals. With your expertise and my name—while it still means anything, at least—to promote it, I think we could do some good.”
It was all Nic could do to blink back the moisture in her eyes. How had she ever doubted this man? Because this was who Jackson Thorpe was at the core—a good, decent, caring man... who just happened to be the sexiest guy around.
“We could call it Thorpe’s Therapy,” she said with a grin, despite the urge to cry at the same time. “We’d have to buy some suitable horses, maybe even another pony or two.”
“Was that . . . a yes?”
“That was an ‘I’d love it.’ Almost as much as I love you.”
He kissed her then, and it was a long time later that he asked, while lazily stretched out in their bed, “Did you ever wonder what I talked to your folks about that first day you moved in here?”
Surprised, she drew back. “I thought you were... arranging things.”
“I was. In a way.” He propped himself up on one elbow. “I asked them if they’d ever had a wedding up here on this hill.” Her breath caught in her throat, but he gave her no chance to react, just went on, as if it were the most casual thing in the world. “Your folks said no, they hadn’t.”
A whisper was the most she could manage. “And you said?”
He looked at her then, and all the casualness had vanished from his demeanor and voice. “I said, ‘Good. We’ll be the first.’”
She stared at him, her eyes stinging with moisture. “Yes,” she said, putting everything she was feeling into her own voice. “We will be.”
He turned then, reached out and gently grasped her shoulders. “You do know I was never going to leave? I never even considered it. I was worried about how I was going to get disentangled from them, but it never entered my mind that I wasn’t going to stay. Here, with you. This is... home. The kind I never thought I’d find again.”
She enveloped him in the strongest hug she could give. “Welcome to Last Stand, Jackson. You are home now.”
*
Jeremy wielded thebig scissors with obvious glee, and with the golden retriever, Maverick, at his heels, headed for the big, red ribbon strung between the new corral and classroom building. Jackson watched his son, overwhelmed by emotion and the tightness in his chest. His son had come so far, thanks to this place, this family, this town. Jeremy—hell, him too—had been hanging on by a thread, and now, three-and-a-half months after making the desperation move to come here to Last Stand, here they were, amid a crowd of townsfolk and visitors alike, cutting the ribbon on Thorpe’s Therapy Horses.
The idea he’d broached had met with great success from the beginning, when Nic’s friend Riley Garrett insisted on only being paid for the land going back to the ranch; the easement and what he was building was more than enough compensation for the new site.
For one of the few times in his life, he’d been glad of his fame, glad even for the uproar his departure from the show, now on hiatus, had caused. Not only did they have several kidslined up for the sessions with the horses—which he and Nic had had such fun finding and choosing, gentle, happy creatures with an affinity for short humans—donations were rolling in so fast, they’d had to hire staff just to handle it all. And fronting that staff was the dynamo who one day soon would be his mother-in-law, not in her chair but aboard her horse, taking particular care that the children in sad situations saw how well she rode.
So now here he was, amid a crowd that had accepted him, watching his happy child, standing next to the woman who had brought them both back to life, and all amid the incredible spring explosion of the bluebonnets that carpeted the hills. Last Stand hadn’t only accepted him and Jeremy, they had made the launch of this endeavor one of the highlights of the annual Bluebonnet Festival for which the town was famous.
And Tris kept smiling at him, with thatTold ya solook in her eyes. His sister had been right about this place from the beginning.
He was aware of the looks he was getting, both openly and surreptitiously, but he didn’t care. He was beyond content with this life he was building here, he was happier than he’d ever thought he’d be again. And he didn’t care how many of the sizeable crowd was here because of who he was. He only cared about the kids clustered around Jeremy as his son proudly introduced them to the horses. Especially the one who’d started it all, Sorry, the horse Jackson had pulled out of the mudflat. And who had, to his surprise, taken perfectly to his new job, that of carefully handling his young riders.
Buck had adapted well to the change also, seeming to be glad to be rid of all the gear and equipment and noise and fuss that being a TV star of sorts brought along. And the selective animal had taken to Nic right away, which, he’d drawled out to her as she stroked the buckskin’s neck, pretty much made them family.
Jackson grinned when Maggie Rafferty got up on the platform Nic’s mom used for mounting up, which they had temporarily converted to a stage of sorts. Grinned because you could immediately tell the locals from the out-of-towners by who immediately shut up and turned to pay attention, himself included in that latter group. Not only was the woman a force of nature, but her open acceptance of him had hastened his inclusion as a Last Stander.
She spoke first of Last Stand and her love of it, and what made it special. About the mindset it took to really become part of this unique town founded by the survivors of the actual last stand. Then of people who truly fit in, not only because they had the heart and way of thinking necessary, but because they didn’t assume they could just roll in and belong.
“Some,” she said with a grin, “even have the class not to wear a cowboy hat because they don’t think they’ve earned it. Including the man behind this marvelous organization we’re opening today.”
