Promise from a Cowboy. C.J. Carmichael

long to talk to Jackson about this. Or maybe it had taken this long for Jackson to be ready to talk. “It must have been hell.”

      Again Jackson nodded, his gaze fixed despondently on his boots.

      “What can I do to help?”

      “What can anyone do? I just go on, getting through each day best as I can.” He picked up his beer can, looking at it as if it were something strange that he’d never seen before. “Sometimes I wonder, though....”

      “What?”

      It wasn’t easy to get Jackson to open up and talk about himself. Now that he’d cracked a chip in his foster brother’s armor, B.J. had to do his best to keep him talking.

      “I just wonder if I shouldn’t be moving on.”

      “Work somewhere else, you mean?” B.J. didn’t consider himself a sentimental person, but he had to admit the idea was disconcerting.

      “I brought it up to Corb once. He took it like some sort of personal insult. It isn’t as if I’m not grateful for what your family did for me. I just can’t stand feeling like I’m some sort of fill-in for Brock. Living the life that he was meant to have, instead of doing whatever it was that I was intended to do.”

      “Hell. I’m sure Mom and Corb never meant to make you feel that way when they offered you Brock’s job.”

      “Not Corb, for sure,” Jackson agreed.

      But maybe Olive? B.J. wouldn’t put it past her. He suspected that his mother did somehow blame Jackson for Brock’s death. Olive had never warmed up to Jackson. Even when everyone else treated him like part of the family, she’d maintained an air of cool distance.

      He could see how hard this must be for Jackson to handle in the wake of the accident.

      “It hurts me to say this, but if you want to leave, then that’s what you should do.”

      “I’m glad to hear you say that. The perfect opportunity just opened up for me, but there is a catch. I’d need to start right away. And you know it would take a while to find a replacement for me here. And even longer to train him...”

      That was all true.

      But there was one solution.

      It would require a commitment that B.J. wasn’t sure he was ready to make. But didn’t he owe Jackson this much? Jackson, who had shouldered such a burden for this family all on his own this past year?

      “I know someone. And he doesn’t need any training.”

      “Really?” A spark of hope lightened Jackson’s dark brown eyes.

      “Yup.” B.J. nodded. “Me.”

      Chapter Five

      After a fitful night spent worrying about Regan, it was a relief to go to work the next morning. Regan and Murray had taken off on their road trip before Savannah had got out of bed. She’d heard them rustling around in the kitchen, then shutting the back door and starting up Regan’s Honda Civic.