Page 7 of The Cowboy Comes Home

Tucker’s mouth quirked. Leave it to Jeremy to come up with that conundrum. “Now that,” he said with a barely suppressed chuckle, “is a very good question. But not,” he added, remembering the size and power of the dog, “one I’d want to test out.”

“Me neither,” Jeremy agreed quickly.

“I’d want that dog on my side.”

“Yeah. And her, too. The police lady I mean.”

“Yeah.” Tucker remembered those eyes, and again wondered about what her hair would look like released from its businesslike bun. “Her too.”

They were nearly to the Baylor gate when Jeremy spoke again. “Are you gonna stay, Uncle T? For good, I mean?”

There was such hope in the child’s voice that it both warmed him and made him tense. Because he had no idea what the answer to that question was.

He wouldn’t lie to this boy who’d already had too much awful in his life. “We’ll see how it goes,” he said cautiously. “But it is a possibility.”

Jackson had made it clear he was welcome as long as he wanted. And Nic’s parents, who were beyond nice, had also made it clear the attached rooms that had been Nic’s were his as long as he needed them. And the place was nice, at least twice the size of his little L.A. apartment, with its own private entrance, and within a two-minute walk up the hill to Jackson’s place.

Jackson and Nic’s place.

Sometimes he still forgot, although now that he’d seen them together he knew that forgetfulness wouldn’t last. Jackson and Jeremy had healed, and Nic had done that, so as far as he was concerned, they were a unit now. It would change things between them, but it also removed a huge worry Tucker had been lugging around since Leah had been killed. He hadn’t realized quite how worried he’d been about his best friend until he could stop. And that thought was confirmed when he pulled into the section of the Baylor ranch that was dedicated toThorpe’s Therapy Horsesand saw Jackson and Nic emerging from the back of the office looking a little mussed.

If they’d been a few minutes earlier, they probably would have walked in on one of their silver-screen-quality kisses. Nic was smoothing back a strand of hair that had escaped her long, blonde braid, and Tucker was suddenly thinking again about Officer Stratton’s slightly darker hair that he’d guess was almost as long.

“We met a police dog!” Jeremy yelped as he ran to his father and the woman who was clearly already very important to the boy. “It was so cool. And the police lady with him was cool, too.”

“That was likely Emily Stratton,” Nic said. “I heard she’d been working with Chance Rafferty on a dog.”

That was the E. Emily. Emily Stratton. Nice. I like it.

“His name is Lobo,” Jeremy chattered on. “And he liked me. I wonder if he’d like Maverick?”

“Speaking of whom, you’d better go explain to him why you smell like another dog,” Jackson said with a mock-stern look at his son. “He’s out in the little barn.”

Jeremy’s eyes widened. “Yeah. I better go tell him he’s still the best.”

The boy dropped his backpack where he stood and scampered off. Tucker watched him go, although he was also quite aware that both Jackson and Nic had their attention focused somewhere else.

On him.

“Emily’s really nice,” Nic said, her voice just a little too neutral.

“Seemed like it.” Something in that tone of hers made him a little nervous. And the way that “nice” word kept cropping up.

“She’s good people, too. Shane wouldn’t have hired her if she wasn’t.”

Nic sounded a bit too much like someone trying to close a sale. He tried for diversion. “Don’t you mean Chief Shane?”

Nic laughed. “He got special permission to use that name. But I knew Shane long before he was the chief, so I get special permission to use his name without the title.” Nic was grinning now. “Unless it’s at some official function, of course.”

“So where did you run into the police dog?” Jackson asked.

“And his gorgeous handler,” Nic added.

He supposed Officer Stratton—Emily—was as gorgeous as a woman in a police uniform could be. But he wasn’t about to react, because Nic had that gleam in her eyes that he’d already come to recognize. The gleam Jackson had warned him about.

If she ever gives you that look, watch out. It means she’s got her mind set on something. And Nic with her mind set is an unstoppable force.

He hadn’t doubted that from the moment he’d first met her. Normally it would have made him wary, but not after what she’d done for his best friend and the little boy he loved so much.

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