Page 26 of The Cowboy Comes Home

“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.”

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