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

Chapter Twenty-Six

“Got your head stuck up your ass, cuz? Since when did you turn into Seth on YouTube?”

Tyler glanced up from his one hundredth social media check at T.R.’s prompting, and pocketed the cell. Heat crept up his neck. His Facebook feed was filled with event day photos. His boys in tie-dyed event shirts with Daisy, Heart’s and Charlie’s assistants for the day, teaching the visitors on campus about their STEM experiment, his kids now made her personal poster children, and the photos, God, the photos.

And that last pic? The boys’ smiling faces, Stevie’s missing a tooth, mashed on either side of hers, pretend-screaming and angled so that the enormous T-Rex cutout looked like it was about to devour them in its toothy jaws. God, they were eating her up, and she seemed to adore them just as hard.

Checking this device was getting out of control. Where the hell was his impulse control?

“You got your line ready?” T.R. prompted. “We are raising a wall today, right?” he added with no small measure of snark, gesturing to the three-story high stud frame lying in the pasture, and ready to hoist up and anchor into place.

“Piss off, man. Heart’s had my boys twenty miles away since nine.” It sounded like the excuse it was. Because in truth, he just wanted to look at the pictures of the three of them that had been rolling in all day. “Just checking on them—”

“And they ain’t gonna evaporate ’cause you’re not there to smother the shit out of them, either. Let ’em be, or better yet, get the hell lost already and join ’em, ’cause clearly your mind ain’t here.”

It wasn’t. This farm operation wasn’t where his heart lay. The land was. The memories were. Yet the farm had been, in a lot of ways, a curse. But it was still his responsibility. T.R. scoured his face, then dropped his rope, the tautness releasing through the pulleys suspended from the rafters, and his other farmhands took the cue and relaxed the tension on their lines, too.

“The fact they’re at the science thing ain’t the reason you’re distracted. All week you’ve been on that phone with that stupid smile on your face. Each time it dings you draw like a sharp shooter. It’s got you trained like a dog.”

His cousin wasn’t wrong. He’d grown to count on Heart’s photos of the most ordinary things showing up in his feed or in his texts. A shaft of grass seed, a sunset over the escarpment, his boys’ grubby hands up close holding fossil fragments. Seth’s elusive smile, captured on camera, split lip healing, bruise fading. Stevie’s exuberant laugh, the way Heather laughed when she was completely amused. People were coming out of the woodwork, old connections liking and commenting on the photos she’d tagged him in, amazed at how much his kids had grown, asking who the woman was peppering his profile page in selfies with his boys. But today? His phone was burning a hole in his pocket.

God, his boys were smitten. And Heart was doing her best to include him by tagging him every other minute in some new photo or video.

They belonged with her. She belonged with them. And Seth…dammit, he felt mist in his eyes…Seth was happy. Seth had gone a week without dropping some wounding dig about his momma. Because right now, for the first time, he was experiencing a woman’s love. Dimples in full swing. Like a kid again. The vision of it through his social media app was both a pinch of pride to the heart and a swell of anguish to the gut that he was missing it because of all this other shit to do. His boys were coming alive with this crazy woman who was showing them the level of love they deserved and infusing their world with her personal brand of fun, just like—

“What’re you so afraid of?” T.R.’s accusation cut softly through his thoughts.

His phone dinged again and he reflexively reached for it, but stopped himself. Not before his cousin smirked. “Case in point, Ty.”

He scoffed. He wasn’t afraid, was he? Actually, he was damn scared. He was afraid if he stifled her, that she’d run. He was afraid if he revealed just how enchanted he was, she’d want to put distance between them. She said she loved being here, but he’d spied her list of upcoming jobs on her computer one afternoon, on a spreadsheet, no less, the rebel, and he’d realized, her entire life revolved around going where the wind took her. Would she itch to leave?

“Earth to Tyler. You gonna ask her to move in or what? Or maybe it’s time you finally open up another law firm and leave all this foreman stuff to your actual foreman? ’Cause I don’t think you’re going to be any use to us until you make some choices about what you really want instead of always doing what you think you must.”

Tyler cleared his throat, hit by a dose of reality from Thad’s sobering remark. His phone dinged again.

“Aw, to hell with it.” Tyler tossed down his rope and stomped off, descending the ladder to the floor of the barn. “I gotta pick up a bundle of records in town anyway!” he called up.

Thad and Heart were both right. He got a rush out of the legal stuff. He missed that part of his old life. But he missed home, too. Missed his brothers, as he watched his own sons grow up. Missed that family connection, when so often, he felt like he stood so far apart from his brothers. Toby had hinted at wanting him to join Dixon Cattle Co.’s legal team full time. Heart had mentioned living part time at her home in Marfa. His boys homeschooled, and no doubt would love being closer to their cousins, now that they had them. Maybe it was time he looked into his baby bro’s offer.

*

By the timeTyler, Heart, and the boys got home and they’d all pitched in to unload her boxes of supplies, Stevie was scheming how he was going to use her rolls of industrial paper and the tub of green glitter she’d used in her experiment that had busted on the rug and gotten on all of their socks. It was never going to come out completely. That shit worked its way into every crevice of a house and might turn up for years, and all Tyler could do was laugh it off so he didn’t cry.

The sun was setting, and Tyler prepped dinner on the grill while Heart kicked the boys’ butts in soccer. It almost felt like this laughter and sunshine could become the norm. Seth volleyed an insult from the goal box, drop-kicking the ball across the lawn. Heart caught it against her stomach and settled it before dribbling back toward his boys, where they both prepared to defend.

“Are you gonna help us, Dad?” Stevie shouted.

Seth jutted his chin, as if to indicate that he should come play. Tyler chuckled, glancing down at his cowboy boots. He hadn’t even had time to change before the masses had started whining about being starving. Still, he checked the burgers, set a timer, and discarded his Stetson; then he jogged out into the grass where his boys were sweating, ready to help them defend the goal against the adorable woman in tiny shorts with her hair falling from her knot swinging her leg back to strike.

The ball glanced off his boot, the toe sending it sideways. Seth groaned. Stevie threw his hands over his tipped-back face as Heart rushed them, ready to recover it.

Tyler swooped his arms around Heart’s waist and swung her out of the way.

“You’re cheating!” She threw her head back and laughed. “You really do suck at soccer!”

His boys whooped, happy to break all rules if it meant subduing Heart’s ruthless striker assault, when he planted his lips to hers, sliding his arms around her and settling her back on the ground in spite of Seth’s gagging sound and Stevie exclaiming, “Eew!”

But Tyler didn’t care. He was crazy about this woman, and so were his kids.