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He turned back to excuse himself and saw Joey watching him while her husband was talking to someone he hadn’t met yet.

“She’s the real deal,” Joey said quietly enough that only he would hear amid the steady hum of the crowd. “Honest, loyal, generous, and as dedicated to the work she loves as you are. And it’s that you work so hard that matters, not what that work is.”

“That was . . . quite an assessment.”

She grinned. “I judge people by how they behave in the library.”

“Good a way as any.” His own returning grin faded when he asked, deadly serious, “But what made you think I needed to know that?”

Just as seriously as his own words had been, she said, “Because in all the years I’ve known her, I’ve never seen her look at a man the way she looks at you.”

He drew back slightly, tried to swallow past the sudden tightness of his throat.

“And,” Joey added, that impish grin returning, “at least you know it’s not some surface fan infatuation, not after the way she treated you when you first got here.”

He hadn’t thought about it quite like that, but she had a point. There had been no denying Nic’s opinion of him whenhe’d arrived. Or that it had changed over the course of the month—had it really only been a month?—he’d been here in Last Stand.

“Shoo,” Joey said, then went to join her husband.

And Jackson headed for Nic.

Chapter Twenty-Seven

She watched himstride across the room toward her, and people cleared his way as if he had some magical power. A ridiculous thought, but the first one that came to her. And in that moment, she could see him as any fictional hero she could think of, and making it work. Maybe that was why it worked, because at the core, he was who he was, and that didn’t change, just as it didn’t in the character he played. It was only the trappings that changed. The heart was pure hero.

She remembered what he’d said about never having played—or wanting to—a bad guy, and she could see now why. Because no one would ever believe this man was evil at heart. She’d been misled by her own assumptions, and it had kept her from seeing the man behind the role, the real man.

But she saw him now.

And when he suggested they get out of the crowd, she never hesitated.

They’d come in his rental SUV. He’d said he’d gotten to where he could find his way around in daylight, mostly, but nighttime was another experience altogether and he needed to learn.

“You actually have nighttime here,” he’d said. “I’ve forgotten how dark it is without a gazillion city lights to wipe it out.”

“Do you miss it?” she’d asked.

That was when, his hand on the gearshift, he’d turned to meet her gaze head-on. “Not. One. Bit.”

Whether it was the way he said it, each one-syllable word with such emphasis, or the way he’d looked at her when he did,she didn’t know, but she felt a flood of such warmth she quickly turned away, afraid of what might be showing in her face.

And now, as they drove through that darkness, she pondered. It was strange for her to feel so uncertain. She never had before. She tried to write it off to how she’d felt about him in the beginning, how she’d disliked him on principle. But now that she knew better... she didn’t know what to chalk the emotions he stirred in her up to.

Well, except for the obvious, of course. That she’d fallen in with a few million women across the country who were infatuated with actor Jackson Thorpe.

She gave him a quick sideways glance and shook off that thought easily now. Because when she looked at him, she didn’t see the actor who’d stolen hearts across the country. She saw the guy who had walked away from the kind of stardom others would kill for, for the sake of his son. The guy who had moved halfway across the country in the hopes it would help his son. The guy who, even though he could well afford to do nothing, hated the idea and essentially worked as a ranch hand, because he wanted to. And because it helped her father.

That was the man she’d fallen for.

Her breath caught as the words formed in her mind. Had she? Really?

She tried to put out of her mind who he was—or had been, before he’d come to Last Stand—and picture what it might have been like if she’d met him someplace like the feedstore. Or the bookstore, knowing him now. She was honest enough to admit that just his looks would have caught her eye. The voice would still have hit that spot deep down that set up an echoing vibration in her. And the eyes... well, she could admit those deep-blue eyes would have had her wondering what it would be like if they heated up looking at her.

And she could admit that, if he’d been a local, or a Hill Country guy, or even just a Texan, she would have been immediately interested. Very interested.

So what was she now?

When they arrived at the ranch, seeing that all the lights in the house were out, she gave a startled glance at the clock in the dash of the vehicle. She couldn’t quite believe it was after midnight.