Page 79 of The Cowboy Comes Home

“’Course he should,” Jeremy said with what Tucker had taken to calling his “grown-ups are crazy” eye-roll.

“How can you be so sure of that?” Tucker asked the child who was like blood to him.

“Because she makes you happy. Besides, Lobo thinks you should, ’n’ dogs are never wrong about people.”

Jeremy abandoned them for Pie then, going over to stroke the pony’s nose.

“The brilliance of the uncluttered mind,” Jackson murmured, staring after his son. Then he looked back at Tucker. “I’d take his advice, if I were you.”

Tucker’s jaw tightened. “I just…I don’t know if I could pay that price again.”

“I guess you have to weigh the very slight chance of paying that price against the guaranteed benefits. The bottom line has changed, bro. Happiness isn’t very often free.”

Dogs are never wrong…

Maybe she’s your reward.

She makes you happy.

Happiness isn’t very often free.

He rubbed his hands over his eyes, then moved to his temples. This was giving him a headache.

“Take a ride,” Jackson suggested. “Clear your head. Look at the country out there and ask it what the hell you’re supposed to do.” Tucker gave him a narrow-eyed look, and he shrugged. “Worked for me more than once.”

And so Tucker did what he’d been doing for years, and it oddly did feel like a step in the right direction.

He saddled up.

Chapter Thirty-Seven

Lobo trotted alongsideher borrowed horse as if he’d done it a million times. So Chance had seen to this as well, that the dog was comfortable around just about everything he might encounter in his new home. The animal stuck close to her, as if he sensed she wasn’t that secure aboard a horse yet, although Tucker had brought her out here to the ranch a few times for just this kind of ride, and she’d loved it each time.

Because you love him.

And she wasn’t one to give up easily, so Mr. Tucker Culhane had better be braced for a fight.

She rode slowly on. She had the image of her destination in her mind, the wide shelf of Hill Country stone and the stream of water that cascaded over it into a cool, calm pool, then eventually continued the journey, spilling over a low spot in the other end.

Tucker had told her that Jackson said it was the place where they’d gotten their deciding taste of life in Last Stand, and the sense of strong community the place had when half the town had turned out to search for his missing son. It had been, Jackson had said, what had made him sure that staying was the right thing to do.

She continued up the hill, wondering if Tucker felt the same way, that this and not the megalopolis that was L.A. was home. He’d hinted at it a few times, enough so that she’d dared to hope he would stay for good.

But now she needed to focus on just one thing. There was nothing more important than refusing to let him throw away what they had because one time in her eight years of being a cop, she’d come away from an encounter with a little scratch.

Even as she thought it, she felt a twinge as Nic’s horse Sassafras, whom she had entrusted her with, shifted to traverse an uneven stretch of ground. Okay, more than a scratch. A gouge maybe. Although it was healed enough that only when she moved wrong or stretched too far, did she feel it at all.

Like when you jumped Tucker and practically dragged him to bed?

She pulled her thoughts away from that. It was already hot enough on this August day. She didn’t need those memories adding to the fire that was a constant even when they were apart. And she refused to believe it was different for him. Surely the power of what they had found together was enough to overcome his fears? She understood, and after these last nights in her lonely bed she’d honestly faced how she would have felt if her own father had been an officer and had died in a shooting.

But the even worse thought had been how she would feel if Tucker hadn’t given up the rodeo and continued to ride those huge, bucking bulls even after his near-fatal encounter in Fort Worth. It was bad enough that he did what he did, stunts that could easily get him badly hurt all over again. Of course he wasn’t doing that now, thanks to his best friend’s decision to walk away. So she supposed that meant she was the lucky one, not having to worry about that.

Because she would worry. No matter what happened now, she would worry. Because she loved him. And if he couldn’t accept her own work and walked away from what they had, she would still love him.

And that was the part that gave her a chill despite the heat of the day.

An odd, low sound from up ahead snapped her out of the painful thoughts. Lobo, letting out a barely audible whine, as if he were puzzled about something. Or had found something he didn’t like but didn’t know what to do about without her to tell him.

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