Jenna's Cowboys

by Laura Jo Phillips

  “Jenna, Doc told us that when you went to see him the first time, you said you’d do anything to save your child.” She nodded. “We need you to understand that these babies are just as important to us as they are to you. There’s more we wanna tell you about that later, but it can wait.”

  “I’m trying. It’s hard, but I am trying.”

  “Of course it’s hard. After what you went through, and after we treated you so badly, how could it be anything but hard? We were first class assholes, and we know it. For now just please try to remember we want them, too.”

  “Okay, Dillon,” she said, frowning slightly. Something that he’d said was bothering her but she wasn’t sure what it was. She needed to think on it but she was so tired it was hard to concentrate.

  Dillon reached for the television remote and handed it to her. Once he was sure she was comfortable he left to help Cole unload the truck after getting her agreement to stay put, which she’d readily given.

  The forty minute drive from the hospital to Sparx in Dillon’s truck had been exhausting, but she’d managed to doze off leaning against Cole’s shoulder for part of it. The thirty minute drive from Sparx to the ranch on mostly gravel roads had been a nightmare. Every little bump had increased her pain level until her entire body was knotted up with tension. It hadn’t helped that she’d had to sit up the entire time, either. As hard as she’d fought, eventually she’d been unable to hold back the tears.

  She’d finally accepted a couple of the Tylenol that Doc ordered her to take even though she preferred not to subject her babies to more chemicals. They’d started to kick in not long before they reached the ranch and while she still hurt, they’d taken the edge off enough for her to start to relax a little.

  She turned the TV on but had no interest in it and turned it off again a few minutes later. Instead she took a good look around the room she was in and the immense covered patio beyond an entire wall of glass. The house was beautiful. Very big and open with high wood beam ceilings, expensive wood, leather and glass furniture, and an enormous stone fireplace. The sofa she was lying on was one of a matched pair arranged at an angle so that they both had a good view through the wall of glass. The biggest redwood burl coffee table she’d ever seen sat between them, and she came from an area known for making them.

  Until that moment she hadn’t known the Howards were rich, and that troubled her. In her experience the more money people had, the more arrogant they became, and the more determined they were to take whatever they wanted.

  The babies started kicking so she rubbed her stomach in slow circles to settle them down, letting her mind wander through all that had happened over the past five and a half months. As difficult as those months had been, she’d never regretted her night with Dillon and Cole. It had been a wonderful night for her. The best of her life despite knowing the whole time it was all she’d get.

  Even knowing how much they wanted a family, she was still surprised that they’d spent so much time with a woman they didn’t like, who drank and did drugs, and who made them completely miserable, all because they believed she was pregnant. They’d obviously wanted the baby badly enough to put up with whatever she did.

  And now here she was in Lyssa’s place, in their big fancy home, half an hour from town and the small handful of people she trusted. After months of absolute silence, with not one single word from either of them, they’d rushed around all day long to get her here. Because she was pregnant.

  Her head went up. Her brow creased. Her immediate reaction when she’d seen them in the hospital and realized they knew she was pregnant had been terror. But she’d misjudged them. Again. They really did want these babies, just like Dillon said. A lot.

  Her eyes widened as her heart skipped a beat in fear, then began to race before a giant fist wrapped around it and squeezed. The pain was so intense that she had to focus all of her will just to breathe. When the pain eased several minutes later, she looked down at her stomach and ran her hands over the big bump that held her precious babies, not even noticing the silent tears streaming down her face.

  “Jenna?” Dillon asked when he returned to the living room and saw her lying on her side facing the back of the couch. She didn’t respond, and for a moment he thought she might be sleeping. Then he saw that her hands were moving in slow, gentle circles over the babies, and stepped closer, wondering why she hadn’t answered him. He leaned over the couch, saw the tears pouring down her cheeks and felt his stomach knot up.

  “Jenna? What’s the matter?” She flinched when he wiped the tears away with gentle fingers, but she didn’t look up at him or otherwise respond in any way.

  “Dammit Dillon, what’s wrong with her?” Cole asked, joining him at the couch.

  “Hell if I know, but she’s tearing my heart out,” Dillon said in a choked voice. “She’s just lying there crying without making a sound. I don’t think I can take much more but I don’t know what to do. I don’t wanna upset her more than she already is.”

  “We can’t let her keep on crying like this,” Cole said. “She’s gonna make herself sick.”

  Dillon nodded, then reached down and plucked Jenna off the sofa and into his arms. He cradled her gently and sat down so that Cole could drape a throw blanket around her. Not once did Jenna look at them, or even acknowledge that they were there. He wiped the tears that leaked from her eyes with a tissue, but they just kept coming.

  When she began gasping and jerking with deep, silent sobs they began to grow frantic. Dillon pulled her tighter against his body and rested his chin on her head, his own tears wetting her hair as he hummed softly to her, a barely remembered tune their mother had sung to them when they were little. Unable to take any more, Cole got up and left the room, returning a few minutes later with a mild sedative Doc had given them for emergencies. It took a few tries to get it down her since she still didn’t seem to know they were there. Twenty minutes later her body relaxed and, a little while after that her eyes closed and the tears finally stopped.

  They both sighed with relief and watched her sleep for a few minutes. “I’ll go see how much longer those men’ll be with that intercom,” Cole said. Dillon nodded, then leaned back on the couch with Jenna in his arms. He felt an actual pain deep inside of him at the sight of her tear stained face and the tiny lines of worry between her delicate brows that hadn’t relaxed even though she was asleep.

  “They’re gone, everything’s installed,” Cole said, crossing the room toward them a little while later. “How’s she doing?”

  “Okay now that she’s sleeping,” Dillon said, letting Cole take Jenna from his arms. “I wanna clean her up and put her in bed.”

  “Yeah, good idea,” Cole said, carrying Jenna out of the living room and up the long hall to the master bedroom. “Everything’s locked up and Peter’s got the ranch in hand. We don’t have to do anything but take care of Jenna for however long we need to.”

  Cole handed Jenna to Dillon, then went back into the foyer for the box of toiletries and an old duffle bag of clothes Meg had packed up for Jenna. He left the duffle in the bedroom, carried the toiletries into the bathroom, then stripped. Dillon passed Jenna over so he could do the same, then Cole sat down on the edge of the big tub so they could take off the oversized t-shirt, sweats, and socks Jenna had worn from the hospital.

  “She’s so damn beautiful,” Dillon whispered, running one hand lightly up her arm. Her breasts were perfect globes, a bit fuller and with slightly darker nipples because of her pregnancy. Her stomach was a rounded taut bump that they now realized looked larger than it really was because she was so small, and so thin.

  Dillon couldn’t help but lay a gentle hand over their babies, wishing they’d kick so he could feel them. When he glanced up, he saw that Cole was staring at the scar on Jenna’s left breast that began just over her heart with tears in his eyes. Dillon looked back down, this time focusing on the scar that he remembered being the worst of them. It had started above her naval and stretched to her
hip in a jagged angle but now, with her tummy stretched with pregnancy, he saw and understood what that scar represented. His heart ached for Jenna, and the innocent child that had been so cruelly and violently taken from her. He leaned down to kiss her tummy right where the scar began, then wiped the tears from his face as he stood up. They weren’t there to fondle her. They were there to take care of her. “What do you think, Cole?” he asked around the enormous lump in his throat. “Bath or shower?”

  “Shower,” Cole said, not sounding much better. “But turn off the shower heads. We’ll use the hand sprayer so we can keep the bandages on her arm and knee dry.”

  “Give me a minute,” Dillon said stepping into the shower. He turned off all of the shower heads in the extra-large shower, picked up the hand sprayer, then turned the water on and adjusted the temperature. When he was satisfied that it was warm enough, but not too warm, he got Jenna’s body wash, shampoo, and hair conditioner from the box on the counter.

  “Ready,” he told Cole, who got up and stepped into the steamy shower with Jenna still sleeping in his arms.

  “Unbraid her hair so we can wash the blood out,” Cole said. Dillon pulled the elastic from the end of the braid and loosened it, then grabbed the hand sprayer. He adjusted the spray so it was soft and gentle before wetting the long, silky curls. Cole sat down on one of the built-in seats, balanced Jenna across his lap to free one hand, and took the hand sprayer so Dillon could open the bottle of shampoo. He knelt on the floor of the shower and squirted a generous amount into his hand. He and Cole both smiled as the shower filled with the warm, earthy aroma that they associated with Jenna.

  “I sure have missed that smell,” Cole said after inhaling deeply.

  Dillon turned the bottle around and looked at the label, then laughed as he handed it to Cole. “Jenna,” Cole read. “I bet all of her stuff is scented.”

  “I like that she has a scent no one else has,” Dillon said as he applied the shampoo to her hair and began working it in with gentle fingers, being especially careful around the knot above her ear.

  “We’re awful big fools, Dillon,” Cole said, handing the sprayer to his brother so he could rinse her hair. “We spent months waiting for our chance to be with this woman, the woman we knew was meant for us, then we risked it all by sleeping with Lyssa. I’ll never understand why we did that.”

  “Me neither,” Dillon said. “I wish I did. All I can come up with is we were drunk, we were horny, and we were stupid.”

  “We’re not kids any more,” Cole said shaking his head. “There’s no excuse for us to be making stupid fool moves like that.”

  “I know, but as bad as that was, it’s harder for me to think about us walking away from Jenna the way we did. I still can’t believe some of the things we said to her, or the names we called her. We’ve never treated a woman like that before. Not even Lyssa. What the fuck is wrong with us?”

  “No other woman has meant so much to us,” Cole pointed out. Dillon looked at his brother thoughtfully.

  “That’s true,” he said. “If we didn’t love her so much, we wouldn’t have gotten so hurt and angry.” Dillon handed the sprayer back to Cole, then reached for the conditioner. He applied a generous amount and patiently worked it in, all the way to the ends of the long strands. “That explains why we got so mad. But it doesn’t excuse it.”

  “No, it doesn’t,” Cole agreed. “We need to stop making knee jerk decisions, Dillon. And we need to stop letting our emotions make choices for us. We’re going to be daddies in a few months, and if we’re a whole bunch luckier than we have any right to be, we’ll be husbands, too. We have to start using our heads before we open our mouths, and we have to think about the consequences of our actions before we do things we can’t take back later.”

  “I agree,” Dillon said, picking up the bottle of body wash and a clean washcloth. He lathered it up, then began to wash Jenna’s body while carefully avoiding scrapes and bruises. “If we can’t manage that much, we might just as well give it up right now, take Jenna back to her apartment, and hire people to take care of her.”

  “I meant it yesterday when I said we don’t deserve her, Dillon,” Cole said sadly as he looked down at the shadows under Jenna’s eyes. “But we can’t let her go. We love her too damn much.”

  “We have to do what’s best for her, Cole.” Dillon swallowed hard. “If she can’t be happy with us, then letting her go is exactly what we’ll have to do.”

  Cole’s eyes blazed as he met Dillon’s gaze with his own. “Then I guess we’ll just have to find a way to convince her that she can be happier with us than without us.”

  ***

  Jenna opened her eyes, yawned and started to stretch before the pain reminded her what a bad idea that was. “How you feeling, honey?”

  She turned her head to see Cole sitting in a chair next to the bed she was lying in, staring at her with worried eyes. She remembered the conclusions she’d drawn in the living room earlier, but she didn’t want to talk about that right now. She knew better than most how useless it was to go up against rich people, so there was no sense in letting herself get all upset again. It wasn’t good for the babies, and as long as they were still inside of her, they were hers to care for, and she’d do the best by them that she could. She deliberately turned her mind away from the subject and tried to think of something to say. “You look tired.”

  “Just worried about you,” he said with a faint smile.

  “I’m fine. What time is it?”

  “A little after six,” he said, checking his watch before rubbing his hands over his face. “You hungry?”

  “Yes,” she said, her stomach rumbling uncomfortably at the thought of food. She sat up carefully, gauging the pain as she moved. Once she was upright she breathed in slowly, then exhaled, repeating the exercise a few times until she had a good handle on the pain before she looked up at Cole, pushing her hair back with her good right arm. “Why’s my hair damp?”

  “We washed it when we gave you a shower,” he said. “We thought it’d make you feel better.”

  Jenna felt her cheeks heat, but Cole just smiled and leaned down to kiss her on the forehead before lifting her into his arms. “We’ve seen you up close and very naked, baby,” he said. “There’s nothing to be shy about. Especially now. I’ve never seen a more beautiful sight in my life than you pregnant with our babies.”

  “It’s not about being shy,” Jenna said evenly. “It’s about my right to privacy, and your assumption that just because I’m in your house you can do whatever you want with me.”

  “We don’t feel like that, Jenna,” Cole said. “We just wanted to take care of you.”

  Jenna sighed and, once again, let it go. She’d had more than enough emotional upheaval for one day. “Where’re you taking me?”

  “Bathroom,” he said, pushing a door open with his hip and carrying her into the biggest bathroom she’d ever seen. He set her down and her bare feet sank into a thick, soft rug that lay over a white tile floor in front of a mile long granite countertop.

  “This is beautiful, Cole,” she said, suddenly nervous. She hesitated, reconsidered what she was about to say, but decided there were just some things she couldn’t take. “I don’t want to sound ungrateful or anything, but I’d rather not stay here. I could sleep on the couch for tonight and then I think it would be better for me to go home in the morning.”

  “Home?” he asked, startled. “I don’t understand, Jenna. Is the bed uncomfortable or something? Cause if it is, we’ll get you a new one. Whatever you want.”

  “No, it’s not that,” she said. “It’s just…I’d rather not sleep where Lyssa slept. I’m sorry.”

  “Jenna, we’d never do something like that to you,” Cole said indignantly. “This is the master suite and you’re the first and only person to ever sleep in that bed, or even in this room. We put her in a guest room on the other side of the house and as soon as she was gone we had it stripped down to the flooring and redecorat
ed. We even put new fixtures in the bathroom.”

  Jenna was a little taken aback by that. “Um, okay.”

  Cole pulled something from his pocket and held it out. “See this?”

  She nodded, looking at the white plastic object in his hand. It was a little larger than a quarter with a button in the center of it, strung on a long cord. He slipped the cord over her head, lifting her hair up to settle it against her neck. It was long enough that the plastic thing hung down between her breasts, making her realize suddenly that she was wearing her favorite sleep tee and shorts. The knowledge of how they’d gotten on her made her blush.

  Luckily Cole was too interested in the little plastic thing to notice. He turned it button side up and laid it in his palm so she could see it. “We’ve had an intercom system installed that lets us talk to each other from anywhere on the ranch,” he said. “You press this button here, and it’ll turn red.” He pressed the button and it glowed, then he pressed it again and the red light went off. “Dillon and I both carry one,” he said, showing her an identical object around his neck. “You need us for anything at all, you press this button and just talk. That’s all you gotta do. Okay?”

  “Do I need to hold it down?”

  “No,” Cole said. “Just press it so it glows. When we’re done talking, you can turn it off by pressing it again. You’ll know it’s off when the light goes out. It’s got a built in speaker and microphone, and a GPS locater.” Jenna resisted the urge to roll her eyes. Did they think she was gonna go on walkabout?

  “I’m gonna leave you alone now, but you have to promise me that when you’re finished, you’ll call me so I can carry you out.”

  “Okay, Cole, I promise,” she said. They were certainly taking Doc’s orders seriously. She didn’t want to think about why at the moment.

  “Thanks,” Cole said, kissing her again before leaving the bathroom and pulling the door shut. She sighed, wondering how she was going to get them to stop doing that without making them angry. Setting that problem aside for later, she approached the toilet. It wasn’t any easier here than it had been in the hospital, but she managed. After washing her hands she spotted her toothbrush and toothpaste on the counter next to the center of three sinks and brushed her teeth. A quick look around told her that her basic toiletries had been set out. She’d have to remember to thank Meg.