Page 56 of The Cowboy Comes Home

“Good idea,” he muttered, getting out of the car himself.

He found himself watching Lobo, wondering if the dog had some sort of canine sixth sense about trouble pending. The animal was alert, and looking at the trio of boys, but didn’t seem wound up or tense.

There was no sign of Jeremy yet, but they were a couple of minutes early, so they stopped outside the front doors to wait. Emily wasn’t blatantly watching the boys, but he had the feeling she knew perfectly well where they were, and that they were slowly, casually—too casually?—walking toward them.

“What are you thinking?” he asked quietly.

“Cocky, smart-ass, but not necessarily aggressive,” she said.

A little to his own shock, he laughed. When she gave him a sideways glance, he shrugged. “So, me at that age,” he said.

She smiled at that, widely. And that made him feel…he wasn’t sure he had a word for it.

The boys stopped about four feet away, and after a cautious glance at the still-alert but not tensed Lobo, one of them looked at him and said, “Hey, you’re that rodeo guy who got crunched.”

Tucker winced inwardly but kept his tone even. “That’s one way to put it.”

“That had to hurt. Does it still?”

“Not much.”

A sort of glint came into the kid’s eyes, something that made him think again of Emily’s assessment. Cocky and smart-ass he could see. He just hoped she was right about the not aggressive part. Not so much for his own sake, but the kid’s, with Lobo right here.

“What if somebody punches you there?” he said, gesturing at Tucker’s chest.

“Then he probably breaks his hand.” At the kid’s startled look he added, “Thinking of trying?”

“No, man. I just… Why would his hand break?”

“Titanium ribs.”

The boy’s brows shot upward. He looked from Tucker’s chest back to his face. “Seriously?”

“Seriously.”

The entire attitude of all three kids seemed to have shifted. “That’s cool,” one of the others said.

“You’re like…Titanium Man,” said the third.

He decided to go with the new flow. “Hey, somebody’s got to step up, now that Iron Man’s gone.”

When the trio, all still grinning, walked away, he risked a look at Emily. She was smiling almost as much as the kids were. “Nicely done.”

He shrugged. Reached down and gave Lobo a scratch behind the ears. “I figured I had backup if I needed it.”

“You didn’t need it. And he knew it, so he just watched.”

“What if I had? There were three of them.”

She never hesitated. “Lobo’d have taken one. I’d have taken number two. And the little guy probably would have run.”

As he’d suspected, she’d had it all planned out in her head. “Is…everything like that? You plan out what you’d do, if?”

She shrugged this time. “I call it ‘just in case’ mode.” He didn’t think his expression changed, but she went on. “Think of it like driving. You’ve always got to be aware of other drivers, and what you’ll do if they do something stupid.”

Somehow when she put it like that, it seemed less forbidding. More reasonable.

Less worrying.

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