Page 40 of Destined for the Cowboy

Chapter Twenty-One

“So, can youdo it? Sorry to ask, but now I’ve got this deal in Austin, and it was your idea after all.”

Tris sat at her kitchen counter, her coffee and toast forgotten, wishing she hadn’t answered her phone. But she couldn’t imagine anyone in Last Stand ignoring a call from famous artist in residence Rylan Rafferty.

“I…”

“Besides,” Rylan added, “you’re the only one I know who knows where his place actually is and how to get there.”

She shouldn’t have told him that, either.

But she had, which left her in the awkward position of having to say yes to his request or come up with some excuse she knew would sound beyond flimsy. Because it would be.

After the call, and her agreement to come by and pick up the sketch and notes he’d made and would leave with his mother at the main house, she sat silently for a long time. Thinking. As she should have thought when she’d been talking to Rylan that day, when she’d suggested Logan for this new task.

She had never planned on getting so…involved in this when she’d made the suggestion. But when Rylan had mentioned the idea he was wrestling with—of custom-designed buckles for his famous belts—the image of those drawer pulls had popped into her head and she mentally pictured them tugged into the shape of a buckle.

Well, hadn’t she been looking for a reason to talk to Logan again? And what better place than on his own home turf, where he might feel safe enough to talk? He might feel safe enoughto tell her that story, as Lark had suggested. Not that he had to tell it to her, specifically. It wasn’t like she thought she was someone…special to him, but she had the feeling Lark was right. He needed to tell someone. He’d spent a lot of years with all that old pain bottled up inside, and while he’d obviously built a good, stable life for himself, it could be even better, if he could get rid of that old poison.

At least, she thought so. But what did she know? Who was she to decide that for him? But she hadn’t really, it had been Lark who’d suggested it. Lark, who did know. So it wasn’t really her, coming up with this idea. It was on the advice of an expert, wasn’t it? Maybe she should just—

She cut herself off mid thought, wondering when she’d turned into such an indecisive, hesitant creature. True, this was delicate territory she’d never trod before, but what was the worst that could happen? Logan would get mad and not want anything to do with her? So life would just continue the way it had been before. Six-plus weeks ago.

Only six weeks? She’d known him, at least by name and a casual nod of recognition, much longer than that. You couldn’t be in Last Stand long and not know about the horse whisperer. But somehow that day she’d bumped into him in the barn at the Baylor ranch seemed lodged in her mind as the start.

The start of what? You deciding you have to be the one to draw him out? Out of a shell it seemed he’d carefully built for himself? Draw him out when maybe he was better off left alone to live in the way he needed to?

Or the start of realizing maybe you weren’t as dead inside as you assumed?

And there it was, in so many words. Logan Fox had awakened her in ways she’d never expected to feel again. As usual, she shied away from the thought, much as one of the skittish horses he dealt with did.

She laughed out loud at herself, short and sharp. Had she really just likened herself to a spooked horse, needing to be calmed by one special human with some kind of mystical power?

Then again, Logan did seem to have a powerful effect on her. It just wasn’t calming. No, it was unsettling as hell, and she didn’t like the inward churning that went with it.

So maybe she did need to be…what, whispered?

That made her laugh again, and that in turn got her up and moving. But she still found herself thinking, about things she had avoided for a long time. Too long, probably. They’d told her at the time David had died that she, too, would feel as if her life was over. That it was a normal response.

But they’d also said it would pass, eventually. So why did she feel as if it hadn’t? Why had her brother managed to get through the same hell, and end up happy again, with Nic, while she seemed stuck in neutral at a never-ending stoplight?

She went and rinsed out her coffee mug, watching the water circle the drain and feeling a bit as if her life was in the same pattern. If Jackson could do it, why couldn’t she?

She stared down at the mug. With an effort she reached over and put it in the dishwasher rack. In the moment before releasing it and leaving it there a thought hit her, fast and hard.

Maybe you just haven’t let go.

She stared at the mug in the rack, feeling a little stunned. Maybe she hadn’t. She’d gone through the motions, taken most of the advice about moving on, but inside, in this hidden part of her brain that had just jabbed her with this thought, maybe she hadn’t let go at all. Of any of it. David, Leah…maybe she was still fighting the idea of their deaths.

Or denying it.

She did not like that idea. Did not like thinking she had shut herself, her true self, off that much for that long. And the factthat she disliked it so much told her that she needed to face it. And do something about it.

Feeling as if she’d made some major resolution, she grabbed up her keys from the tray she kept on the counter for the purpose. She paused at the door that led into the garage, looking at the light jacket that hung there, but today seemed to be a portent of what was to come, already being over seventy degrees. Soon they’d be in the eighties pushing to and past ninety almost every day of summer. With luck they wouldn’t spend too many days over a hundred this year.

Rylan had already left for Austin when she got to the Rafferty place.

“A meeting with the Arts Commission,” Maggie said. “There’s a push to make him a Texas state artist.”

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