Page 25 of Destined for the Cowboy

“—ask Logan about that.”

The sound of his name in her voice snapped him out of his effort to focus on anything but her. Realizing he had no ideawhat they’d been talking about, because he’d been trying so hard to not be glued to her every word, he had to look at Jeremy and say, “Sorry, I was figuring out how far we’d come. Ask me what?”

“How far have we come?” the boy asked, distracted from whatever his original question had been. Having grown up with a brain that frequently lost old questions to the momentum of new ones, he understood.

“I’m guessing about a third of the way,” he answered, “if you count all the way to Galveston.”

At the boy’s furrowed brow Tris said, “So if we’ve done a third, how much of the way is left?”

Logan could almost hear Jeremy’s mind working. “A third is when you divide it into three, right? So we have two more of those left?”

“Exactly right,” Tris said, grinning so widely at the child Logan felt that tug inside yet again. “Now, what was your question for Logan?”

The tug became a jab, simply at the sound of his name in her voice.

“Oh!” Jeremy exclaimed, and turned his head to look up at Logan. “Why do horses wear shoes but cows don’t?”

The simple question made him smile. “Actually, there are places where cows wear them, too. Oxen, anyway, which are the big ones that pull wagons and plows. But they’re very different, because they have two toes.”

Jeremy blinked. “Cows have toes?”

“That’s what a hoof is, in reality. Cow’s hooves are divided, but horse hooves aren’t.”

The boy looked boggled, then glanced down at his own feet in his now well-broken-in boots. Logan would have been willing to bet his toes were wiggling inside. “I didn’t know they were toes.”

“Amazing, isn’t it?” Tris said. “Horses have one, so they can run faster, cows have two, and so do giraffes and some others.Maverick has four, because dogs used to have five like people, but one has migrated up the leg over time.”

“We have five fingers, too,” Jeremy observed, holding up his hands. “Well, counting your thumb.”

To his own surprise Logan couldn’t stop himself from saying, rather teasingly, “Ah, that wonderful, opposable thumb.”

Jeremy wiggled his thumbs. “That’s what lets us grab stuff and pick it up.”

“Exactly,” Tris said.

“Ever notice,” came Jackson’s voice from the driver’s seat, which he’d volunteered for on this stretch to widen his knowledge of his new home state, “how even a car ride with my sister turns into a learning experience?”

“Never pass up an educational opportunity,” Nic said solemnly from the front passenger seat.

Logan thought they were teasing her, but he shot a quick glance at her face to be sure. She didn’t look upset, in fact was wearing an obviously exaggerated haughty expression as she said, “I seem to remember it getting you through a couple of history finals, brother mine.”

Jackson let out an audible sigh. “There is that,” he agreed, and they all laughed.

Logan said nothing. He wasn’t used to such familial teasing, and he didn’t quite know how it worked. Nic wasn’t technically part of the Thorpe family—yet—but she’d joined in easily, which told him he was the one out of sync. As usual.

He was glad when they switched off to him driving, pulling off the freeway toward the little town of Hedwig Village, which had caught Jeremy’s eyes because of the name shared with a favorite creature from a favorite book. Glad because he then had to concentrate on driving.

“You sure you don’t want to meet Houston up close and personal?” he asked Jackson as the other man climbed into the back seat. “No better way than trying to drive through it.”

“I’ll watch and learn,” Jackson said with a grin. “And be thankful,” he added with enough emphasis that Logan had to chuckle.

“All righty, then,” he said as he slid behind the wheel, trying to ignore the fact that Nic and Tris had indeed also changed places, just as Jeremy had ordained. “If it was just me, I’d be bailing now and picking up the 45 south of the city to head to the Space Center, but in this case you should get the full effect. Welcome to Houston.”

“At least it’s Saturday,” Nic said, rather glumly.

As it turned out, it was a light traffic day and they made it through the city fairly quick, with Nic pointing out things occasionally, and Tris explaining all the roads named after famous Texans. They reached the Space Center southeast of the city shortly after it opened at ten.

Jeremy was wide-eyed and slack-jawed as he looked around, gaping at the space shuttle replica mounted atop the original carrier aircraft.

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