Page 22 of The Cowboy Comes Home

If, of course, he were to stay. As in permanently.

They snagged one of the last spots—this was apparently the happening place on Friday nights—and got out of the car.

“You’ll get to meet Chief Highwater’s brother,” Nic said as they started to walk around the building after she’d insisted he had to come in through the front door this first time. “He owns the place and bartends on Friday nights.”

Tucker gave her a sideways glance. “The chief of police’s brother runs the saloon?”

She grinned. She did a lot of that, he’d noticed. But then, so did Jackson, now. As if the happiness was just too much to contain. He sighed inwardly.

“He does,” Nic answered. “He’s also brilliant.”

“And he has a quote for every occasion,” Jackson added.

He filed this away with all the other information he’d been given on this founding family. All told, it was a bit…intimidating, for someone who hadn’t really had a family since his father had been killed.

They had reached the front door and paused for him to read the plaque beside it. It told the story of the heroic last stand the town was named for, and when he leaned in to look at the pockmarked wall, he found one that, astoundingly, seemed to have the original bullet buried deep.

“Wow. After nearly two centuries?”

“Yes,” Nic said. “We don’t forget.”

“And I have a feeling when that two centuries mark rolls around,” Jackson drawled, “there’s going to be a heck of a party in this place.”

As far as Tucker could tell, there was a heck of a party going on right now. The place wasn’t packed to where it was uncomfortable, but it was full. He looked around, saw the photos that he’d check out later, and the framed drawing on the wall behind the bar that looked like a charcoal or pencil sketch of this building, standing alone. In the aftermath of the famous fight? He’d have to ask.

There was an old-style jukebox against one outer wall, and back in one corner at the far end of the bar was an alcove that held a pool table. No one was playing at the moment, but Nic promised there would be later.

“Wait until Slater’s wife gets here,” she said. “People will be lining up to take her on.”

“And they’ll lose,” Jackson put in. “Just like I did. For a librarian—and a new mom—she’s a heck of a pool shark.”

Tucker gave his friend a startled look. “Wait…she’s married to the saloonkeeper, is a pool shark…and a librarian?”

Jackson grinned once more. “Welcome to Last Stand.”

Welcome to Last Stand, Tucker Culhane.

The words spoken in Emily Stratton’s husky, warm voice spun through his mind, and he wondered if she would be here tonight. Or was she on duty, and would maybe be hanging around in case anybody too drunk to drive tried to?

“And if you get bored later, there’s that,” Jackson said, gesturing toward the wall opposite the pool alcove. “Slater just brought it in a couple of weeks ago.”

Tucker looked and saw an old but apparently well-kept upright piano over near a window. Automatically his fingers curled as his mind shot back to the days after his rodeo career ended, when after a long haul he’d recovered from the crush injury enough to worry about other things. Like the fact that his right hand didn’t work quite the way it used to. It had been the third therapist he’d been sent to who had sat him down on a bench in front of a piano that looked a lot like this one and told him to make up a song using only his right hand.

He’d never even touched a piano key before, and thought this was the craziest idea he’d ever heard. But the guy had insisted, and Tucker had started to plink, as he called it. And it had worked. He’d gotten so distracted by trying to make up a tune that didn’t sound totally discordant that it wasn’t long before he was thinking more about that than his hand movements. And that had been the corner he had to turn, to where now he only rarely remembered that first day he’d reached for something and dropped it because the signal wasn’t getting through.

And he’d gotten pretty decent on those keys.

Nic had apparently taken upon herself the task of introducing him to everybody in the place, so the next hour or so was a bit of a blur. Everybody seemed to know everybody, so he thought they must all be locals. He wondered if he’d remember who even half of them were, after tonight.

Some people stood out, though, besides the bartender. Some remembered him from his rodeo days, which never ceased to amaze him after all this time. But in particular he was interested to meet Chance Rafferty, who was there with his wife Ariel, who now helped him runThey Also Serve. He thanked them for matching Maverick up with Jeremy, and told them how much good the dog had done the boy.

“And vice versa,” Ariel said with a smile.

“I met one of your other successes, too,” he said to the tall, rangy ex-military man. “Lobo.”

That got him a wide smile from Chance, who had seemed fairly consistently solemn with anyone other than his wife. He looked at her the same way Jackson looked at Nic.

“Now that’s a good story. I didn’t know if we were ever going to get him to come around. He was deep in a hole as dark as his fur is.”

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