The Cowboy's Texas Heart (The Dixons of Legacy Ranch 3)

Chapter Six

He hissed an inhale as Heart brushed past him, his muscles jumping.

“My God…”

This was no simple farmhouse. Heart stood in the foyer, double doors opening to what had once been a dining room with a chandelier in the center, but was now an office filled with rows of cherry bookshelves lined with pristine, gold-lettered law volumes. Harvard diplomas hung framed and proud over a wide desk, neatly organized, bearing the name Tyler Jacob Dixon.

Harvard? He’s no mere farmer.

She looked up at the lantern hanging over the foyer and polished, beveled banister, glinting warm light in refracted streaks through the glass panes. He stepped up behind her, filling the space with his presence, filling her with awareness that it was just the two of them, and settled a hand on her shoulder like he had done by her truck, as if they always stood in his foyer together.

“Wow. This is your home?” She glanced over her shoulder at his face so near to hers, then returned her roving gaze to the grand entrance, caressing the space with her eyes.

Wide floor planks, polished by time and the feet of generations, beautiful paneling.

Tyler stepped around her, leaving a cool space on her shoulder where his hand had just been, then toed off his farm-worn shitkickers into a rubberized shoe tray and nudged them straight with the side of his foot. He dumped his cell and keys in a dish on a sideboard, stacking the mail neatly beside it on a lace runner beneath an antique lamp, the glass design of the shade that of butterflies. She smiled. She loved these little reminders of Monarch. They always told Heart she was where she needed to be in the moment, like Monarch was looking out for her. Maybe this was why she liked tall, dark, and brooding Tyler Dixon. It certainly wasn’t for his swoon-worthy charm; although, she’d seen glimmers of his sense of humor, as if it vied for freedom when normally he kept it caged.

“Just a house. Four walls. Roof,” his drawl rumbled as he pulled a drawer open on the sideboard and grabbed a neatly coiled charging cable and untied the twist-tie holding it together. He then slipped her cell out of her backpack side-pocket without asking, plugging it in for her.

He paid attention to detail.

An old silver print of a 19th century man, woman, and baby, blown up to a 20 x 30 print, hung over the sideboard, a McClintock Farms wagon behind them. White blurry letters had been written on the photo in old-fashioned cursive: Here’s to the start of a legacy.

“No…this place is like a time capsule…” She stepped into the reflection of a round window over the staircase, cast upon the floor, edged in colorful stained glass, twinkling from the sunshine outside and spraying rainbows around her strappy sandals like fairy dust, and smiled. “It’s like magic, I love it.”

He looked down at what she was looking at. Then up at her.

A soft expression crossed his face. “My bros and I used to pretend that light could beam us up or somethin’ when we were boys. My kids pretend it’s some portal to the hobbit shire.”

She chuckled. Then furrowed her brow. Then her chuckling fell as the ramifications of what he’d just said sank in. He had kids? She swallowed.

“You have kids?”

He nodded once, but his lips thinned. “Two boys.”

He didn’t elaborate as his eyes skittered away, but now that she looked around, she saw evidence of them. Kids’ hoodies, one tie-dyed—she smiled—one bearing a proud Nike swoosh, and team jerseys hanging on hooks alongside the staircase paneling, nice and neat and in a row. Two pairs of soccer cleats side by side beneath them—hence the soccer ball outside.

She frowned, then backhanded his forearm. “Where are they? Are they okay?” Her eyes darted around, then horrified, she glanced at his ring finger. Empty. Thank God. “Unless…they’re with their mom?”

A storm brewed on his face, his eyes narrowing if only for a breath. Then he chuckled at her playful slap as if an afterthought. Another chuckle! He was becoming the king of mixed messages, and it was only flustering her. But his muscles bunched in his granite jaw, and he bent to straighten his boots in the tray further. She swore they looked exactly spaced apart.

“They’re at summer camp. They’re fine.”

She looked around. Come to think of it, his whole house was pristine. A white-glove test would come up dust-free. So he was one of those type A people? She was so not type A. It had pissed poor Monarch off to no end, who’d kept her room tidy, while Heart’s room had been a chaotic mess of passion and colors and wads of clothes and rocks and half-finished art projects and musical instruments.

“Will they be back this week? Will I get to meet them while I’m working? I love kids. I mean, they play soccer so they must be cool.”

Nope, she’d said the wrong thing. His jaw tightened at her smile. It was imperceptible. But she was so attuned to his body language already, so looming and stalwart, it made a shiver of discomfort ripple through her.

“They won’t be back.”

File that under things he didn’t want her doing: meeting his kids. An all too familiar feeling of inadequacy dropped in her stomach—Nope, life was easier when she owned that she wasn’t mom material. Fate, dudes, family, they all reminded her of her defectiveness.

She flashed the smile she knew grabbed his attention, moved to the lamp and traced the butterfly wings with her fingertip. Her eyes lingered on the wall ascending the stairs. Old tin-types, grainy prints, 1950s color portraits. “Are these your family?”

He nodded once.

“This place is special,” she added, irritation blooming at the oil company who needed her survey. “I had no idea there was something so historic sitting out here in the middle of nowhere Nacogdoches.”