Page 26 of Destined for the Cowboy

“You can go inside both of them,” Nic told the boy. “We’ll come back and do that next time.”

Even Jackson seemed impressed. “I get the feeling it’d take a few trips to see everything here.”

“They have a lot of—” Logan glanced at Tris “—educational stuff, too, for kids and adults.”

Jeremy was so wound up by the time they got on the tram for the tour that would take them to the restored Apollo Mission Control center that Logan thought he might just go airborne himself. But he found he was looking at everything a little differently, just by watching the child take it all in. He might only be seven, but he recognized how old the equipment looked,technologically, and was more than a little awed at the number of people it had taken to do something he’d taken for granted as near-ancient history. They’d watched the movie and a couple of documentaries, but the boy said, “Seeing it for real is…different.”

And that alone, Logan thought, made the trek worth it.

But there was another aspect to this that hadn’t occurred to him. From the moment they’d arrived, he’d noticed people looking at them, but he hadn’t really put it together until he’d heard two women within earshot exclaiming in recognition as they looked at Jackson.

He’d already been recognized. And it struck him what a life it must be, to not be able to even take your son on an adventure like this without having people staring at you and probably eventually approaching you as if they had the right to some of what should be your child’s time. He hadn’t really thought much about this aspect of what Jackson’s life was like, and he didn’t like it.

Jackson was crouched down talking to Jeremy about what had happened here at the mission control room when the two now-giggling women made a beeline toward him. Logan wasn’t sure what made him do it, but he stepped into their path. He turned to face them, his arms crossed over his chest, and simply stood there, watching them steadily. They slowed immediately, looking at him warily.

“What are you, his bodyguard?” one of them asked.

“A friend,” he said simply.

“A good friend—” Tris’s voice came from just behind him “—who just wants to make sure he has time with his little boy.” She slipped a hand through his folded arms, but kept her gaze on the women. “After the tour, I’m sure Jackson would be happy to stop and say hello. Can you kindly wait that long?”

He saw the expressions on the women’s faces change as Tris spoke, from wary to understanding. “Of course. It was so sad, about his wife, and we just want to say how sorry we are.”

“He’ll appreciate that,” Tris assured them.

A moment later, after they’d walked back to where they’d been, Logan relaxed. “You’re good at that,” he said, sounding as inept as he felt.

“More practice,” she said. “But I couldn’t have done it if you hadn’t intercepted them first. And don’t think Jackson didn’t notice, because he did.”

He shrugged, not sure what to say to that. But he saw Jackson looking at him and turned his head to meet his gaze. Her brother gave him the briefest nod, but there was a world of thanks in it. She’d been right, he had noticed.

By the time they were back in the car and headed to Galveston, he was having second thoughts. If Jeremy had been so excited about the Space Center, would a classic old sailing ship hold any interest for him at all? But as he drove he could hear the boy from the back seat, now asking if it was like a pirate ship.

“Logan, help?” Jackson asked, laughing. He liked that about the guy—he had no problem admitting he didn’t know something.

“It’s the same kind of ship,” he said, “although theElissawas never a pirate ship. She probably would have been a good one, though, if some pirate had ever taken it in mind to steal her.”

Jeremy laughed, and it gave Logan a strange feeling of satisfaction.

Admittedly he was no real judge, but the boy seemed almost as excited at his first sight of the three-masted barque as he had been at the space shuttle.

“She’s pretty old, and most of her parts have been replaced or messed with in her life,” he said as they walked the fairly recently replaced decks.

Jeremy looked up at him, still smiling. “I thought those computers and stuff were old.”

Logan didn’t know what the concept of time to a seven-year-old was like, but Jeremy was awfully smart, so he gave it a shot. “Look at her, and think about those computers. Do they seem like different worlds?” The boy nodded. “Then think about this. She was built in 1877. We went from this—” he gestured to the boat “—to those computers and rockets and men on the moon, in less than a hundred years.”

The boy’s brow furrowed as he thought, but Jackson let out a low whistle. “Never thought about it quite like that. Wow.” Then he turned his head to look at his sister. “I see why you like him so much.”

Tris’s cheeks flushed, and she seemed to suddenly find the rigging of the old three-master fascinating. And he just stood there, words once more vanishing from his mind.

Chapter Fifteen

Tris pulled herworn, leather notebook out of her purse, and freed the pen clipped to the spine. She wanted to make some notes about the day, as she always did after one of her trips. Grimacing inwardly, she decided she would skip her brother’s teasing jab in her recounting.

Logan, behind the wheel as they made their way back toward Houston, glanced over when she moved, and when he saw the notebook lifted a brow at her.

“No electronic device?”

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