The Rancher's Unexpected Twins--A Clean Romance

by Trish Milburn

  As they exited the barn, Sunny looked around, trying to figure out some way to get the kiddos to stop crying before they returned to the house.

  “How about we take them for a walk down by the river?” Dean said. “The sound of running water is calming, right?”

  She looked up at him, squinting since the sun was behind his head.

  “Were you a nanny in previous life?”

  He snorted. “I seriously doubt that.”

  “I don’t know. I’d say odds are at least fifty-fifty.”

  Dean shook his head and started walking toward the river. Sunny smiled and followed, pointing out everything from cows to birds flying in the air to Liam in an attempt to cheer him up.

  It took a few minutes but after they reached the rocky riverbank and Dean showed the twins how to stack little flat rocks that had been smoothed by the continual flow of water, Lily’s and Liam’s tears ceased.

  “Yep, you were definitely a magical nanny in a previous life.”

  “Careful or I might catch a fish and chase you with it.”

  Sunny leaned down next to Lily and pointed at Dean.

  “See that man, Lily?” she faux whispered. “Don’t trust him. He has nefarious intentions.”

  They joked a bit more before falling into companionable silence. Sunny leaned her head back, closed her eyes and inhaled deeply of the fresh air with tinges of pine, sunbaked earth and river moisture.

  “Looks like the twins aren’t the only ones enjoying this spot,” Dean said.

  Sunny opened her eyes and took in the picturesque scene painted with the river in the foreground and the mountains in the distance.

  “I always thought it would be nice to have a gazebo here overlooking the river.”

  “Did you wish for that all those times you sat down here doing homework or reading?”

  She nodded. “I imagined it having a table where I could eat or work, a comfy chair, a hammock.”

  “That’s one crowded gazebo.”

  She smiled. “True.”

  They were quiet for a few moments before Dean pitched a pebble into the river.

  “I told your dad I bet he could bring in some more income if he built a few cabins along the river and rented them out.”

  “That’s a great idea. Diversification is helping a lot of ranches survive when they might otherwise fold.”

  “Unfortunately, your dad doesn’t agree with you.”

  She couldn’t say she was surprised. Jonathon Breckinridge was the definition of set in one’s ways. The task ahead of her seemed even more monumental now that she was back on the ranch than she’d allowed herself to admit while in LA.

  “What’s wrong?”

  Sunny turned to sit facing Dean.

  “Can you keep a secret?”

  “If you ask me to.”

  Sunny fiddled with some pebbles in front of her, unsure how to approach the topic. If she was this agitated telling Dean about her plans, how was she going to broach the subject with her dad?

  “I have another reason for coming back for a visit other than helping Dad out with the twins.”

  “Oh?”

  Was it her imagination or was there hesitance in Dean’s response, as if he wasn’t sure he wanted to hear anything further?

  “I think it’s time for him to sell the ranch and he and the twins come to live with me in California.”

  She glanced up from where she’d been stacking her own little pile of stones and was surprised by the look on Dean’s face. If she was forced to describe it, she’d say he looked as if he’d taken a powerful jolt from an electric fence.

  CHAPTER THREE

  DEAN WAS SO stunned by Sunny’s revelation that he didn’t know how to respond. He couldn’t imagine the Breckinridges not owning the Riverside Ranch. Well, yes, he’d imagined it, and him being able to make it his own, but those were just pie-in-the-sky thoughts whenever Jonathon shot down one of his ideas for improving, updating or diversifying the ranch.

  He honestly couldn’t believe Jonathon would ever agree to leave this land while he was still breathing. There were too many memories here, too much family legacy. Had Sunny been away so long that she’d forgotten what her father was really like? The incredible stubborn streak?

  But what if for the sake of the twins Jonathon agreed with her? Dean might never see her again.

  He mentally scolded himself because he didn’t have the right to miss her if she left for good. After all, he’d never done anything about his crush, never told her, never given her the opportunity to say whether she could feel the same way about him. First his concern for his father’s job had kept Dean’s mouth closed about his feelings. Then how excited she’d been to go to college. And finally the fact that she had made a life she obviously enjoyed a thousand miles away. If she hadn’t stayed in Jade Valley for family, she certainly wouldn’t stay for him. And so he kept his feelings to himself, not wanting to potentially ruin the friendship they had even if they didn’t talk that often anymore.

  Maybe if all of the Breckinridges left for good, he’d finally be able to let go of what had started as a youthful crush. Perhaps that’s all it continued to be now, a holdover from when they were still kids.

  Sunny waved her hand in front of his face.

  “Have I shocked you into incoherence?”

  “You could say that.”

  She sighed and fiddled with the rocks scattered on the ground between them.

  “I know he’s going to be resistant.”

  “More like as movable as those mountains,” he said, pointing toward the impressive peaks in the distance.

  “I have to find a way to get him to agree though. It would be a full-time job to keep up with the twins as they grow, and Dad isn’t getting any younger. Add the limitations caused by his injury and the fact that I have to get back to work, and selling and moving is the only thing that makes sense.”

  “Selling this ranch, is that what you really want?”

  “No, I want my brother to still be alive. I want things to be like they were before the accident, but I can’t have that no matter how much I want it.”

  Before he thought, Dean reached out and took Sunny’s hand.

  “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to upset you.”

  She shook her head. “You didn’t.”

  “I think I did.”

  “No, it’s this whole situation. None of my options are perfect.” She paused, as if gathering scattered thoughts. “Dad’s fall scared me. What if he’d been more seriously injured...or worse?”

  Dean squeezed her hand, reminding himself that he was offering her comfort when she needed it and nothing more.

  “He’s fine. Sure, a bit banged up, but your dad is the toughest guy I know.”

  He’d had to be because he’d been left to raise two teenagers alone while all three of them were grieving. And to lose his son and daughter-in-law as well was more than anyone should have to bear. But bear it he had. Sometimes Jonathon’s stubbornness served him well.

  But it wasn’t going to make Sunny’s goal easy to reach. Might even make it impossible.

  “You know I’m here to help out. So are other friends like Maya. And your dad can hire someone else now that Judy is leaving.”

  Sunny shook her head.

  “This isn’t your or anyone else’s responsibility. They’re my family, the only family I have left. This is for me as much as them. I want to be close to my dad in case he needs me. I want to watch the twins grow up each day, not in six-month intervals when I can take vacation time.”

  He couldn’t argue with her reasoning because it all made complete sense.

  “How are you going to approach him with the idea?”

  “I don’t know. I can’t keep putting it off, but I want to enjoy my visit a bit first.”

 
Trying to shift his focus in a more positive direction, Dean decided to put forth a possible win-win scenario.

  “Something that might help is him knowing the ranch would go to someone who loved the land and wouldn’t divide it up, who would keep it as a working ranch.”

  “That’s a good idea,” she said, nodding. “Do you know of anyone who fits that description?”

  He took a breath and sat up a bit straighter.

  “Me.”

  Sunny’s eyes widened.

  “You? You want to buy the ranch?”

  “Why is that such a surprise? You know I love it here.”

  “I...I mean, I knew you seemed to enjoy the work.”

  “I don’t want to be a ranch hand my whole life,” he said. “I respect that my father was a good foreman for this place, but I want more. I don’t want to depend on someone else for my paycheck. I want to be in charge, make the decisions.”

  Sunny tilted her head a fraction as she looked at him, as if she was seeing a person who looked familiar but whom she didn’t actually know.

  “Don’t look so surprised. I might be offended.”

  “I’m sorry. It’s just...you know we’ll have to get a good price for the ranch so that Dad and the twins are set financially, right?”

  Dean released her hand and crossed his arms. “My receiving a paycheck doesn’t mean I’m living paycheck to paycheck. I’ve been saving since you left for Laramie.”

  “Really?”

  “Yes. I might not have been as good in school as you were, but I had plans too.”

  “Dean, I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to offend you. But you can understand why I’m surprised, right? You’ve never said anything about being a ranch owner, a businessman.”

  The fact was he could understand. When the two of them had last seen each other every day, she’d had to help him pass English so he could graduate. That didn’t exactly scream future business owner.

  “A lot can change over the course of a decade. I didn’t imagine seeing you post to social media from Helsinki or Brussels or Tokyo back when we were in school either.”

  “I guess that’s true. Those places might as well have been on a different planet back then.”

  Liam started to crawl toward the river, but before Sunny could reach for him Dean had already grabbed him and placed him in his lap.

  “Good reflexes,” she said.

  “Comes from years of dealing with cows and horses.” One hesitation or wrong move could be disastrous when dealing with animals of that size. While babies were tiny in comparison, he wasn’t about to let anything happen to them. Granted, he was no relation to the twins, but they’d grown on him nonetheless.

  “Or maybe it’s that past-life nanny thing.”

  He shook his head. “You’re impossible.”

  Sunny smiled and the sight of it did inconvenient things to his heart.

  “So, when do you think you’ll bring everything up with your dad?”

  “I probably should do it no later than tonight. Like you said, he’s going to resist and I’m probably going to need the rest of my time off to convince him.”

  “Want me to go with you?”

  She shook her head, and Dean wasn’t sure if he was relieved or disappointed.

  “If you change your mind, call or text me.”

  “Thanks. Well, I better get these two back to the house for diaper changes and maybe a nap.”

  Dean stood and extended his hand to her. She didn’t hesitate taking it the same as how she’d not reacted when he’d held her hand a few minutes before. That, perhaps more than anything, told him that she didn’t think of him in a romantic way. It obviously hadn’t even occurred to her.

  Before she could retrieve both babies, he picked up Liam.

  “I can take them both,” Sunny said as she lifted Lily to her hip.

  “I’m going back anyway.”

  And so they walked side by side, each with a twin. Thankfully the babies didn’t cry at leaving their little rock piles as they had when they’d left the kittens.

  As they approached the house, Dean spotted Jonathon and Tom sitting on the front porch.

  “Would you look at that,” Tom said, pointing toward Dean, Sunny and the kids. “Jon, you remember when we were that young and good-looking?”

  “Speak for yourself, old man,” Jonathon said. “I’m still a looker.”

  Dean smiled at the familiar back-and-forth between best friends.

  “I see you two haven’t changed a bit,” Sunny said as she climbed the couple of steps up to the porch.

  “Why would we change when we’re perfect?” Tom extended his arms. “Give me one of those babies.”

  Dean handed over Liam, and Lily toddled on shaky legs to her grandfather, who scooped her up with an enthusiasm that would make the unknowing think he hadn’t seen her in months rather than about an hour.

  “What have you all been up to?” Jonathon asked, directing his question toward Dean and Sunny rather than the twins.

  There was something a bit off about Jonathon’s expression, as if he was actually asking something he wasn’t. That was odd. The elder Breckinridge typically said exactly what he was thinking with no filter.

  “We played with kittens then stacked little rocks down by the river,” Sunny said, evidently not detecting anything off about her dad’s expression.

  Maybe she was too wrapped up in figuring out how to approach him about selling the ranch. She might as well accept that no matter how she framed the idea, it was going to be received with about as much welcome as a swarm of hornets.

  “I should get back to work,” Dean said, feeling for some reason that he should make a quick departure.

  “Oh, before you go, a piece of your mail was stuck inside Dad’s.” Sunny headed inside before he could come up with the words to say he’d pick it up later, preferably when Jonathon wasn’t giving him strange vibes.

  “Must be good to have her home,” Tom said to Jonathon.

  “Yeah, maybe I should have broken my leg sooner.”

  Dean stared at his boss, wondering what was going on. Jonathon had always been proud of everything Sunny had accomplished, had even been mad when she’d suggested coming home for good after Jason’s and Amanda’s deaths. He and Sunny’s mom had always encouraged her to make the most of her intelligence and hard work, so why did it feel as if Jonathon was in the middle of an about-face? Was he realizing how difficult it was to raise two toddlers at his age?

  If that was his line of thinking, Sunny was going to meet more resistance than she’d planned for—just not the type she’d imagined. Instead of her dad being opposed to a move to California, was he going to reverse his opinion on her moving back to Jade Valley?

  While he could understand why Jonathon would want that, it wouldn’t be any fairer to Sunny to ask her to give up the life she’d chosen than it would be to ask the same of Jonathon. Like Sunny had said, there really was no perfect solution to their situation.

  Jonathon shifted his gaze to Dean. “It’s good Sunny has someone her own age to talk to here. Someone between babies who can’t speak yet and her old codger of a dad.”

  Dean didn’t know why Jonathon was making that point, as if Dean was some new, welcome arrival on the ranch. Not to mention that Sunny would get along perfectly fine even if Dean wasn’t a regular fixture on the ranch.

  “You’re far from an old codger,” he said. “Anyone could have taken that same tumble from a spooked horse.”

  Thankfully, Sunny stepped back outside and extended an envelope to him.

  “Hopefully, we’ve got all the mail properly sorted this time.” When she smiled, it was all he could do to not let his face reveal how much he liked the sight.

  Instead, he bid his goodbyes and forced himself not to run away from beautiful Sunny Breckinridge and h
er suddenly out-of-character dad as fast as his booted feet would carry him.

  * * *

  FOR SOMEONE WHO had a lot of experience in being persuasive and getting the bigwigs at large corporations to implement changes they might initially oppose, Sunny logically shouldn’t feel sick at the idea of enumerating to her father the advantages of selling the ranch and moving to sunny Southern California. And yet her stomach was in knots throughout the rest of the afternoon, as she then prepared dinner and as they all sat down to eat. Her atypical anxiety accompanied her as she gave the twins their baths and put them to bed.

  “Either of you have any great ideas of how to make this go more smoothly?” she asked her niece and nephew but only received baby gibberish in response.

  “Yeah, that will probably work as well as anything I’ve thought about saying today.”

  After soothing the babies to sleep with tummy rubs and a lullaby, she took a deep breath and ventured out of their room. The time for putting off the inevitable had come to an end.

  “What’s on your mind?” her dad asked as soon as she stepped into the living room where he was kicked back in his recliner.

  She noticed the TV remote was next to his hand but he’d not turned on the TV.

  “You’ve been wrapped up in your own thoughts all day,” he continued, “and you pushed your food around your plate at dinner as if you didn’t know what it was or what to do with it.”

  Resisting the need to place her palm against her stomach in an attempt to calm the upset there, she sat on the end of the sturdy coffee table facing her dad.

  “I have a proposal and I want you to hear me out before you say anything.”

  “Well, this sounds serious.”

  She didn’t confirm or deny, rather dove into one of the many spiels she’d rehearsed in her brain ever since she’d first had the idea of the move for her family.

  “Since your fall I’ve been thinking that maybe it’s time for a change that lets us all be together instead of so far apart.”