The Perfect Homecoming (Pine River #3)

“If you want to go, we should go,” Jackson said. “There’s a front coming through later and we’ll lose light.” He started for the front door, as if it had all been agreed.

What the hell? Cooper looked again at Tag, but Tag merely gazed back, unsurprised. Cooper couldn’t think of a time he’d ever gotten into a car with someone he didn’t know, especially a guy who dressed like a male fashion model. Not that he thought he had anything to fear . . . and he did want to see that canyon. So Cooper followed Jackson Crane out.

Jackson was standing next to a four-wheel-drive Jeep that had been jacked up on a big-wheel suspension. Another surprise—that was not the vehicle Cooper would have guessed Jackson would drive. Tag, maybe. But Jackson looked more like a Prius.

Jackson was busy clearing off the passenger seat when Cooper joined him. He glanced at Cooper and smiled a little before strolling around to the driver’s side and stepping up and into the vehicle.

Cooper hesitantly put himself in the passenger side. “Who are you again?” he asked as Jackson started the Jeep.

Jackson laughed. “I’m a lawyer here in town. Sort of. I mean, I am a lawyer, but there’s not much practice up here, other than the occasional divorce and a few wills. Oh, and Buck Ritchie’s ongoing defense for cattle rustling.” He looked at Cooper sidelong. “The dude can not stay out of trouble.”

“I know the type,” Cooper said. “I’m Cooper Jessup.”

“Welcome to Pine River, Cooper,” Jackson said, and gunned the Jeep, burning a little rubber on the main road out of town. “I hear you’re in town to see Emma Tyler.”

Startled, Cooper jerked his gaze to Jackson.

Jackson waved off his concern. “I had breakfast at the lodge this morning and Dani told me.”

“Can’t imagine why she’d have a reason to mention it,” Cooper said, taken aback.

“You’re right,” Jackson readily agreed. “Other than there’s not a lot going on right now, and she knows that I know Emma.” He glanced at Cooper as he shifted gears. “Chill. It’s a small town with nothing to do and not much other than Buck Ritchie to talk about, especially in the dead of winter.”

That didn’t exactly ease Cooper. He didn’t like the idea of the town talking about him and his reason for being here, and hoped the music he was suddenly hearing in his head wasn’t the theme song from Deliverance. “So,” he said, trying to muscle his thoughts back to familiar ground, “you know Emma?”

“I wouldn’t say I know her,” Jackson said. “But we are acquainted.”

Cooper imagined that everyone who came into contact with Emma could say the same thing: met her, didn’t know her. “She’s from here?” he asked curiously.

“Here? No, she’s from Southern California. Her dad lived here. That’s how I know her—I worked for Grant Tyler for a few months. Right after I came on board he got sick and wasn’t given much time. Talk about a mess,” he said with a shake of his head.

“Oh yeah?”

“His finances, his love life, his kids, all of it,” Jackson said. “He wasn’t much of a dad. He had these daughters scattered here and there, and they didn’t know about each other, and he sure as hell didn’t have much contact with any of them. Emma’s sister Libby tried to be a daughter to him, she really tried, but Grant wasn’t interested in being a dad. However . . . he did want to try and do right by them once he knew he didn’t have long. I mean, as much as Grant was able to do right.” Jackson chuckled at that. “Let’s just say virtue wasn’t Grant’s strong suit.”

“So he left them the ranch,” Cooper said, filling in the rest of the story.

“It was all he had left,” Jackson said. “Once his ex-wives and the government and his creditors got their cut, Homecoming Ranch was it. And he was upside down on the mortgage to boot.”

“In other words, not much of a legacy.”

“Not much of a legacy, in need of repair, and really complicated overall,” Jackson said. “I was the lucky one who got to deliver the news to the girls. I flew out to Los Angeles to talk to Emma. That’s where I met her.”

Jackson looked away, out the driver’s window. There was something about his demeanor that made Cooper think that meeting hadn’t gone well. “Did she know he was sick?” he asked.

“No,” Jackson said, and suddenly downshifted, pulling off the main road onto a bumpy dirt trail. “They hadn’t had contact in years, and honestly? She didn’t seem that affected by the news, you know? Like she didn’t care. I don’t know what happened between her and her father, but there was definitely some bad blood there.”