Kip bit back whatever he wanted to say to his little sister, fully aware of his audience.
Too many things going on, he thought, fighting his frustration with his sister and this new, huge complication.
“I’m going now,” Nicole said, her voice quiet, well modulated. She gave him a tight smile, then pulled her briefcase off the trunk of the car. “I’ll wait to hear from you.”
Without a second glance, she got in, started the engine and roared away from him in a cloud of dust.
Kip pushed back his hat as he watched her leave, frustration clawing at him.
Please Lord, don’t let my family be broken up, he prayed. Don’t let her take my boys away from me.
And please don’t let me lose it with my sister.
He stepped into the house just as his mother wheeled herself into the kitchen. Her long, graying hair was brushed and neatly swept up into a ponytail, her brown eyes sparkled, and the smile on her face was a welcome respite from the resignation that had been his mother’s default expression since her surgery.
“Where did Nicole go?” his mother asked, sounding happier than she had in a while. “She seems like a lovely girl. I’m looking forward to having her around to help out.”
Kip glanced at the clean countertop and shining sink. When he first saw how clean the house was he couldn’t believe that businesslike woman had done all this. Now he knew she was simply trying to weasel her way into his mother’s good graces.
“Where’s Isabelle?”
“In her room.”
“When did she leave the ranch?”
Mary Cosgrove tapped her finger against her lips. “About one.”
Three hours to pick up one bag of groceries. He was so going to talk to his little sister. Leaving his mother alone with a stranger, even if she had come here because of an advertisement, was irresponsible.
Not only a stranger, a woman who had come to completely disrupt their lives.
“I’m so glad you decided to take on a housekeeper,” his mother continued, sounding hopeful. “She seems so capable and organized.”
Kip hated to burst her bubble. “I still think Isabelle should learn to pull her share of the housework.”
His mother sighed. “I know, and I agree, but it’s so much work to get her motivated and Nicole seems so capable.” Mary looked past Kip. “Where is Nicole now?”
“She left.” Kip blew out his breath and dropped into a chair across from her mother. “Truth is, she didn’t come for the housekeeping job. She came…” he hesitated, glancing up at his mother, who seemed more relaxed than she had in months. Scott’s death had been devastating for her. This new piece of information wouldn’t help. “Nicole, apparently, is Tricia’s sister.”
His mother frowned. “Tricia? Scott’s girlfriend?”
“Yep. The mother of the boys.”
Mary’s fingers fluttered over her heart, her eyes wide in a suddenly pale face. “What did she want?”
Kip wrapped his rough hands around his mother’s cold ones. “She claims she has a will granting her custody of Justin and Tristan.”
“But the boys’ mother…Tricia…” Mary squeezed her son’s hands. “Where is she?”
“She’s dead.” The words sounded harsh, even though he’d never met the woman. But she had been the mother of his nephews.
The nephews that Nicole claimed didn’t belong to Kip’s family. Kip’s heart turned over in his chest.
There was no way he was telling his mother that piece of information. He didn’t believe that fact for one minute anyhow. Scott had loved those boys. Doted on them.
Since Scott died, Kip had fought to keep this family together, but lately he felt as if everything he worked so hard for was slipping out of his fingers.
There was no way he was letting Nicole take his mother’s only connection to Scott away. No way.
Chapter Three
“I found them. I found the boys.” Nicole tucked the phone under her chin as she sorted through her clothes. The motel room held a small dresser and minuscule closet she could hang some clothes in. She had packed a variety of clothes, unsure what she would need.
She closed the closet door and glanced around the room. It was the best, supposedly, in Millarville, and she guessed it would do. She hoped she wouldn’t have to stay here long. Staying here resurrected memories she had relegated to the “before” part of her life.
Before the Williams family took her in.
“Are they okay? How do they look?” Her father sounded a bit better, as if the news sparked new life in him.
“They’re fine.” Nicole thought of Justin and Tristan, and her heart contracted.
She knew the Cosgroves wouldn’t simply hand over the boys to her as soon as she had arrived. From what she had discovered, the boys had been at the ranch since Scott took them away.
Kip’s family was the only one the children knew. A family, she discovered, which included Kip’s mother, a younger sister and a married sister with six children.
Nicole couldn’t stop a nudge of jealousy at the thought of Kip’s large family, then quashed it. She’d had a full life with the Williams, and she owed her adoptive parents more than she could ever repay. That Brent’s natural daughter was the one gone only increased her guilt.
“Is the family treating them okay? Do they seem to have a stable home life?”
“The farmhouse is a bit of a wreck,” Nicole said, thinking of the worn flooring, and the faded paint. “It looks as if no money had been spent on the house in a while.”
Yet in spite of the mess, when she walked into the spacious kitchen of the Cosgrove house, she felt enveloped by a sense of home. Of comfort and peace.
Something she seldom experienced in her father’s cavernous house.
“They’re well taken care of.” She tucked the phone under her ear, pulled her laptop out of the bag and plugged it in. Thankfully, she would be able to do much of her work for the family’s foundation while she was here.
“You sound like you think they should stay.” Her father’s voice held an accusatory tone.
“No. I don’t,” Nicole assured him. “But we can’t simply remove them immediately.” She knew she sounded practical, however, her feelings were anything but.
When she saw the boys, a feeling of love, almost devastating in its intensity, bowled her over. She wanted to grab them, hold them close, then run away with them. She couldn’t understand or explain the unexpected power of these feelings. The only time she’d experienced this before was when she saw her little sister, Tricia, for the first time.
“It was what your sister wanted,” her father said, a hard note entering his voice.
“I know. It’s what I want as well, but we have to proceed carefully. The boys don’t remember their mother and they most certainly don’t know who I am.” She highly doubted Kip would tell them in the next few days.
“I should be there,” her father said, his voice harsh. “I should be meeting with that lawyer.” This was followed by a bout of coughing that belied his insistence.
“You know yourself that once lawyers get hold of things, the process grinds to a halt.” She ignored a sliver of panic at the thought. When she arranged to come here, she had given herself three weeks to bring the boys back. Sure, she could work here, but she also needed to spend time with the boys so the transition from here to Toronto wouldn’t be so difficult.
“Who do the boys look like?” Brent asked, a thread of hope in his voice.
“They look exactly like Tricia.” Nicole pressed her fingers to her lips, restraining her sorrow.
“You have to bring my boys back, Nicole. They are all I have left of Tricia. Those boys don’t belong there. They’re not even blood relatives.”
Nicole knew her father spoke out of sorrow, but his words struck at the foundations of Nicole’s insecurities. Tricia was Sam and Norah’s natural daughter.
Nicole was simply the adopted one.
“Tomorrow I’ll see Mr.
Cosgrove’s lawyer,” Nicole said, opening her laptop and turning it on. “We’ll have to take this one step at a time.”
“When you talk to that lawyer you make sure to let him know that James Feschuk is working for us. His reputation might get things moving a bit. I also want a DNA test. If they don’t believe us, then we’ll get positive proof that Scott Cosgrove was not the boys’ father.”
“How will that happen?” Nicole asked.
“James told me that you can get DNA tests done locally. He suggested one called a grandparent’s test. Get that grandmother to get tested and we’ll find out. I’ll get tested too. Then we’ve got some teeth to our argument.” His voice rose and Sam started coughing again.
“I’m saying goodbye,” Nicole said. “And you should go to bed. Make sure you take your medication and use that puffer the doctor gave you.”
“Yes, yes,” Sam said. “I’ll get James to phone that lawyer. Tell him we insist on a DNA test. Give me his name and I can take care of it.”
Nicole pulled out her cell phone and called up the name and number and gave that information to her father. “I’ll let you know the minute I hear anything.”
Nicole said goodbye. She turned back to her computer, but only sat and stared sightlessly at the screen, her work suddenly forgotten as she thought of Justin and Tristan. Tricia’s boys.
Seeing them had been heartwarming and heartrending at the same time.
Again she felt the sting of her sister’s betrayal when Tricia had left without a word those many years ago. Nicole had hoped and prayed for an opportunity to talk to her face-to-face, to apologize. But the only letter in the envelope was one to her parents pleading for forgiveness. Nothing for her.
Nicole glanced around the room as memories of other evenings in other motel rooms crowded in.
Nicole tried to push the memories away, but the emotions of the past day had made her vulnerable and her mind slipped back to a vivid picture of herself, sitting on a bed in a motel room, a little girl of five, waiting while her aunt smoked and strode back and forth, watching through the window.
When Nicole’s natural mother died, her father, a long-distance trucker, put Nicole into the care of his sister, a bitter, verbally abusive woman.
Whenever he came into town, Nicole’s aunt would bring her to a motel where they would meet her father. She would stay with him for a couple of days and then he would be gone.
That evening they waited until the next morning, but he never came. His truck had spun out of control and he had died in the subsequent accident.
After six months, her aunt had her moved to an already-full foster home.
Four years later, she was adopted by the Williams family at age eight, and her life went from the instability of seven foster homes in four years to the stability of a wealthy family. She was told enough times how blessed she was, and she knew it.
Yet each night as she crawled into her bed, she would wonder when it would all get taken away. People had always left her. It would happen again.
Then something magical and miraculous happened to her and the Williams family. Norah, who was never supposed to be able to conceive, became pregnant. When Tricia was born, Nicole bonded with this little baby in a way she couldn’t seem to with Norah and Sam. Tricia became as much Nicole’s child as her parents’.
Nicole took care of her with a fierce intensity. She stood up for her in school, listened to her stories of heartbreak and sorrow. Defended her to Sam and Norah whenever Tricia got into yet another scrape. She was Tricia’s confidant.
Then Tricia turned thirteen. She withdrew. Became sullen and ungrateful. She started hanging around with the wrong crowd and staying out late. Nicole had tried to reason with her, to explain that she was throwing her life away.
But Tricia kept up her self-destructive lifestyle. Finally, in frustration, Nicole fought with her.
Then Tricia, too, left and never came back.
Nicole got up, grabbed her purse and walked out of the motel. She walked down the street, then up it again. She let the cooling mountain air soothe away the memories. She bought a sandwich, returned to her motel room and dove into her work. A few hours later she took a shower and crawled, exhausted, into bed. She needed all the rest could she get.
Tomorrow she would be seeing Kip Cosgrove again.
Tomorrow she would have other battles to fight.
“So she has some legitimacy?” Kip leaned his elbows on his knees, then frowned at the grass stain he saw on his blue jeans. He should have checked before he put the pants on. Of course he was in a hurry when he left the ranch. Of course he had to go through a mini battle to get Isabelle to agree to take care of her nephews while he was gone.
“As an aunt to the boys, she has as much right as you do,” Ron Benton, his lawyer, said, leaning his elbows on the desk. “As for her claim about Scott not being the father, unfortunately it’s a matter of her word against yours now that both the principals in this case are dead. We’ll need more information.”
“Tricia abandoned the boys, Ron. She left them with Scott. She was gone for three years.”
“Well, now we know she was dead for three years.”
Kip blew out a sigh of frustration at that irrefutable truth. When Nicole had told him that, he felt as if his world had been realigned. Ever since Scott showed up at the farm with the two boys, Kip had burned with a righteous indignation that a woman could leave these boys all alone. An indignation that grew with each year of no communication.
Now he found out she’d been dead and possibly didn’t know where Scott was.
If what Nicole said was true.
“The trouble is we don’t have a legal document that grants custody to you,” Ron said. “And it sounds like this Nicole might have one that gives it to her. Though you’ve been the primary caregiver—and any court would look at that as well—the reality is you don’t have legal backup for your case. As well, we don’t know why Tricia left.”
“I know what Scott told me.”
Ron blew his breath out, tapping his fingers against the sleeve of his suit jacket. “She and Scott got along? He never did anything to her?”
“Of course not.” Kip barked his reply, then forced himself to settle down. Ever since Nicole had walked into their lives, he’d been edgy and distracted.
He had too much responsibility. The words dropped into his mind with the weight of rocks.
How could he think that? He loved his nephews dearly. He wasn’t going to let Nicole take them away. Especially not after promising his dying brother that he would take care of them. There was no way he was backing out on that. Not after what had happened to Scott.
Guilt over his brother’s death stabbed him again. If only he hadn’t let him get on that horse. The horse was too green, he had told him, but Scott was insistent. Kip should have held his ground.
Should have. He shoved his hand through his hair. The words would haunt him for the rest of his life.
“Trouble is, we don’t have a lot to go on,” Ron continued. “Your main weapon is the primary-caregiver option. You’ve been taking care of Justin and Tristan. That’s what we’ll have to go with if this gets to court.”
“Court? Would it get that far?”
Ron lifted his shoulder in a shrug. “I’ll have to do some digging to see if I can avoid that, but no promises.”
No time. No time.
The words bounced around Kip’s mind, mocking him. He didn’t have time to fight this woman.
“Whatever happens, I’m not letting some high and mighty Easterner come and take the boys simply because she has some piece of paper and I don’t,” Kip said as the door to the office opened.
He stopped mid rant and turned in his chair in time to see Nicole standing in the doorway, the overhead lights of the office glinting off her long, blond hair and turning her gray-green eyes into chips of ice.
Chapter Four
Nicole glared at Kip Cosgrove, wondering if he could read the anger in her
eyes. She doubted it. He sat back in the chair, looking as if he was completely in charge of the situation and his world.
I’ve got a legal will, she reminded herself.
The boys are Tricia’s.
“Good morning,” she said, projecting pleasant briskness into her voice. She’d dressed with care this morning. Her tailored suit was her defense in the boardroom of her father’s foundation and it became her armor now.
Her gaze ticked over Kip and moved to the man sitting on the other side of the desk. He certainly didn’t look like any lawyer she had ever met with his open-necked twill shirt, blue jeans and cowboy boots. She was definitely not in Toronto anymore. “My name is Nicole Williams, but I’m sure you already know that.”
“Ron Benton.” He stood, gave her a slow-release grin and shook her hand. At least he looked friendly, which was more than she could saw for Kip Cosgrove with his deep scowl.
Ron sat back in his chair, his arms crossed over his chest. “I understand we have a problem that we need to resolve.”
Nicole shrugged as she set her briefcase on the floor beside her chair. “No problem as far as I can see. I have a will from Tricia Williams giving her parents, Sam and Norah Williams, full custody of the boys, Justin and Tristan Williams. Norah Williams has passed away, but Sam is very much alive.” Nicole took out a copy of the will and placed it on the wooden desk in front of Ron. “You can keep that for your records.”
Ron glanced over the papers. “This will hasn’t been filed with any legal firm, or put together with the help of a lawyer?”
Nicole shook her head. “No, but it is witnessed and dated.”
“By whom?” Ron kept his eyes on the papers, flipping through them as he frowned.
“I don’t know the woman. Apparently it was someone that Tricia lived with.”
Ron’s slow nod combined with his laissez-faire attitude grated on Nicole, but she kept her temper in check. She had to stay in control.
Then Ron sat back in his chair, his hands laced behind his head. “We could easily contest the legality of this will.”
Cowboy Daddy Page 3
