Page 78 of The Cowboy Comes Home

He stared after her as she went, feeling a bit like he’d just been swamped by a tidal wave.

He should be thinking of tracking down Nic, cornering her and asking her what the hell she thought she was doing, setting him up like this. Or of finding Jackson and asking if he’d known about this.

But all he could think about was a certain golden-eyed woman with long hair the color of Hill Country sand, and how she made him feel. How she made him wish for things he’d never had, and never expected to have. But could he really stand it, knowing she was out there risking herself, every day?

“Lily found you?”

He spun around to stare at Jackson as he came toward him. “So you were in on it?”

Jackson threw up his hands in denial. “I only knew Nic had called her after the fact, bro. But I also thought maybe it might help. Because I know where your head’s at right now.”

“You do, huh?” He said it sourly.

“Yeah.” Jackson hesitated, then said, “I’ve never seen you as happy as you’ve been this past three weeks. Or as…alive as you’ve been since you met Emily.”

He winced inwardly, just at the mention of her name. “Nice while it lasted,” he muttered.

Jackson frowned. “You saying it’s over?”

“I’m saying what I said before—we’ve got nothing in common.”

“Neither did Nic and I, and it doesn’t matter.”

He looked at his best friend then. “You did have something in common. You went through hell with losing your wife. Nic went through hell nearly losing her mom and having to adjust to the changes afterward. And I…”

“And you went through hell twice,” Jackson finished for him. “What does that have to do with Emily? She’s fine, Nic said.”

“She is. Back to work, even,” he said, managing to let only a bit of how that made him feel creep through. “But that’s it, man. She’s had such a…normal life. She grew up loved, still has her parents, has never had to deal directly with that kind of hell.”

“So are you saying she doesn’t understand it?”

“No, she does,” he said with a shake of his head. “She has to handle it all the time, as a cop.”

“But she hasn’t had to live it. Not like you have.”

That made him sound kind of petty, and he didn’t like the feeling. “Yeah, sort of.”

“So you’ve been through all kinds of personal hell, but she hasn’t. Then maybe,” Jackson said, in that tone that worked so well when he was playing that powerful character on screen, “she’s your reward.”

His head snapped up, and he found Jackson’s eyes fastened on him in a way that told him not only that he was deadly serious but that this mattered.

“Reward? What the hell did I ever do to deserve a reward like…like her?”

Suddenly that thing Emily had said, when she’d been so angry, that three C’s thing, rammed into his mind. For so long he’d carried that guilt, that he could have, should have done something to save his mother…but Emily had gutted that as thoroughly as a trout.

“You got through what you did in life—twice—and stayed a good, decent human being. You didn’t turn bitter or sour or cruel, like many would have. You just kept going.”

Tucker stared at him. “When did you become such a philosopher?”

Jackson grinned suddenly. “Trying to keep up with Nic.” Then, seriously, “She’s made me a better person. Just like Emily does for you. So you’d better think about it long and hard, bro. That’s not something to just walk away from.”

The sound of lighter, rapid footsteps made Tucker look. Jeremy, Maverick at his heels, was running toward them. The sight of the golden dog made him think of the black one he had bonded with so quickly and completely, and his gut clenched all over again.

“Hey,” Jackson said, ruffling his son’s hair.

“Whatcha talking about?” the boy asked.

“Whether your uncle T should be with Officer Emily.” Tucker winced at the blunt assessment.

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