Page 35 of Destined for the Cowboy

This he could handle, he thought. Tris was talking quietly with Mrs. Baylor, which meant she was turned partly away from him. He could deal with this.

Nic came out of the house with a tray of what looked to him like sandwiches big enough to feed twice this number. He could already smell the tang of the barbecue sauce that he’d heard so much about.

“We keep trying to get Dad to bottle this stuff and sell it,” she said as she set the tray down in the center of the table.

Mr. Baylor snorted. “No thanks. Some things shouldn’t go beyond family.”

Then why am I here?

He groaned inwardly at his own thought. Sometimes his gut reactions annoyed even him. They’d invited him, in fact insistedhe stay, so clearly they didn’t mind sharing the secret sauce, as it were. He just wouldn’t get the recipe if he asked. Which he wouldn’t.

He reached out for a slightly smaller sandwich he guessed was for Jeremy, and handed the plate to the boy. Tris had taken her own, so he took the one that was left on that side. Everybody else was already digging in, so he took his first bite. Chewed. Slowly, his eyes widening.

Then he swallowed, looked down at the sandwich in his hand, then across the table at Mr. Baylor. “Wow,” he said.

The other man grinned at him. “That’ll do.”

He couldn’t even begin to isolate the number of flavors he could taste. The natural taste of tomato, the perfect touch of spice, some honey sweetness, and a dash of something deep and smoky. It made already delicious beef impossibly luscious, which was not a word he used often.

“Told ya it was good,” Jeremy said, oblivious of the trickle of sauce down his chin.

“And you were right,” Logan told the boy, liking the way Jeremy smiled at him even while chewing. He focused on his own chewing until, with a speed that surprised him, he was wiping his fingers on one of the pile of napkins.

“Hand me one of those, would you?”

Tris’s smile as she asked him made him feel entirely different. He reached out and grabbed the top napkin, realizing she’d have had to lean across him to get one herself. And realizing, he wasn’t sure he’d have minded. He handed it to her, and her fingers brushed his as she took it, thanking him more warmly than he thought the simple act deserved. It was all he could do not to jerk back and away at the contact. It wasn’t that he didn’t like it. It was that he liked it too much.

He shifted his gaze to the man across the table, sitting next to Nic. Tris’s brother. The famous, fawned over and gossiped aboutJackson Thorpe. Even after he’d walked away from a career most actors would kill for, he was still headline news, for Thorpe’s Therapy Horses if nothing else.

As if he’d felt Logan looking at him, Jackson tore his gaze away from the woman beside him. “Been meaning to thank you,” he said. “Sorry is doing great with the kids.”

Logan smiled at that. The sorrel horse that hadn’t been cut out for Hollywood work, with a little coaxing and explanation, had turned out to be the perfect horse for the therapy project. And that Jackson had rescued the horse when he’d been dumped after the powers that be on the show,Stonewall, decided he wasn’t worth saving, told him all he really needed to know about the man.

But never in a million years would he ever have expected to be sitting down having lunch with the megastar, let alone talking with him so…easily. It was unsettling.

Almost as unsettling was the unmistakable sense of love that fairly radiated between all of these people. Nic, her parents, and now Jackson, Jeremy and Tris. They were so clearly, so obviously already a family, and the wedding he had no doubt would be forthcoming soon would only put the official seal on it.

Odd, he supposed, that he who had never really had a family, could recognize one so easily. Odder still that he could still feel the faint echo of that long-ago ache, the ache he’d felt as a child even younger than Jeremy, for what he was missing.

For what he would never have.

Chapter Nineteen

She’d needed this.This end of the school year—which came a couple of days later at her school than at the public school district—had been chaotic, as usual. She’d been working many extra hours to make sure everything was done, and done correctly, paperwork filed, grades turned in, and she was, as usual, a bit burnt out. And so on this quiet Sunday morning she’d headed into town, to walk up and down Main Street, looking at the familiar sites and clearing her mind.

When she saw Lark Leclair, soon to be Lark Highwater, coming out of the bank, she almost heard the zing of realization. Of course. Here she was spending far too much of her time thinking about and trying to figure out Logan Fox, when someone who could have all the answers was right here in Last Stand. Someone she’d actually consulted once before, over a girl in one of her classes who had had issues that were right in Lark’s wheelhouse.

Lark, who worked for a local private adoption group, had cut her teeth in Child Protective Services, but had left the government agency some time ago, for a variety of reasons, many of which Tris knew and agreed with. But Lark was far too smart to have discarded what that painful time had taught her. She would have answers.

And thankfully, she was kind enough to say yes when Tris asked her if, for the price of a Java Time latte, she could pick her brain.

“I’m trying to figure someone out,” she said.

“Aren’t we all?” Lark said with a smile and a laugh.

“Probably,” Tris agreed. “This is someone who grew up in the system and is now a…loner. I get the feeling—and it’s only that, I have to say—that he’s uncomfortable even among friends. Or doesn’t like it when there’s more than one or two he knows well.”

“Sounds like a classic introvert,” Lark said.

---