Cowboy's Triplet Trouble

by Carla Cassidy

  “Doesn’t that worry you?”

  A small, humorless smile lifted the corners of his mouth. “Everything Justin has done since the age of about ten has made me worried.”

  “Sounds like me and my sister.”

  “She a handful?” he asked.

  “Definitely.” Grace frowned as she thought of her younger sister.

  “How did your parents deal with her?” He picked up his drink and took a sip, then returned the glass to the end table.

  “They didn’t. I mean, Natalie and I never knew our fathers. My mother was an unusual woman. She never wanted a man in her life on a permanent basis.” Grace felt herself begin to relax, grateful to talk about anything except what had happened earlier that day.

  “I’m not sure why she had Natalie. I’m not even sure why she had me. She certainly wasn’t mother material. She was wealthy and beautiful. She was also cold and distant and loved to travel. By the age of six I pretty well knew I was on my own. When Natalie came along I was the one who raised her, and I think sometimes I was way too indulgent with her.”

  “Welcome to my club,” he replied drily. “Only in our case it wasn’t a problem of a cold and distant mother, it was an issue of a tough, tyrannical father who thought a beating a day made a better kid. It didn’t take long when we were kids to realize that most of his rage for some unknown reason seemed to be directed at Justin. Of course, Justin was good at stirring up trouble.”

  “What about Jeffrey?”

  Jake flashed her a smile that warmed every cold spot her body might have held. “The middle child. He was good at being invisible, especially when Dad was in one of his rages.”

  “And what about you?” she asked. She told herself that her interest was only in learning more about the family where her children’s father came from and nothing personal as far as Jake was concerned.

  “What about me? I got through it just like Jeffrey and Justin did. I was tougher than them, tried to protect them when I could. My mother died a year before my father. She got sick, and I think she just died to get away from him. But we all survived and here we are.”

  Grace had a feeling there were plenty of scars beneath the surface in all of the Johnson men. She couldn’t help remembering Kerri saying that Jake was the alpha dog. She wondered how many beatings he’d taken on behalf of his brothers.

  She’d certainly had more than her share of sleepless nights where Natalie was concerned. There were times Grace wondered if Natalie was doing drugs and hanging out with the wrong kind of people. Grace tried to be a good sister, a good mentor, but there was no question that since their mother’s death the relationship between the two sisters had gotten worse instead of better.

  “So, what do you do in your spare time, Grace?” He smiled ruefully. “I mean, before the babies came when you had spare time.”

  “Nothing very exciting,” she replied, grateful for the change in subject. “I enjoy cooking and food. I used to really enjoy going out to dinner, trying new restaurants and food experiences. I like to read and go to the movies. My life was fairly quiet before the girls came along. What about you? What do you like to do?”

  “Enjoying good food is right up there at the top.” He seemed to be relaxing also. Some of the tension that had been in his body language disappeared and the stern lines along the sides of his handsome face relaxed. “But I’m definitely happiest on the back of a horse riding the pastures and dealing with the ranch. You ride?”

  “I took riding lessons when I was younger. It was one of those wild hairs my mother got. She decided her daughter should know how to ride. The lessons lasted about four weeks and then she had me quit and take tennis classes. But I enjoyed riding for the brief time I got to try it.”

  “I guess having the triplets changed your life considerably.”

  She laughed. “That’s the understatement of the year. I’ve definitely had to sacrifice some things, but any sacrifice has been worth it. I’ve never known the kind of joy and love they’ve each brought into my life.”

  She sobered and met his gaze seriously. The conversation had been going too light and easy. She almost hated to mention his brother’s name again, but she wanted Jake to understand exactly where she was coming from.

  “I’ll be fine without Justin. We’ll all be fine without him. When my mother died she left both me and my sister a bit of an inheritance and then left the bulk of her estate to the triplets, so I’ll never have to worry about college funds or buying cars or any kind of financial burden where they’re concerned. I just didn’t want them to grow up without a father like I had to. Little girls need daddies.”

  The tension lines were back in Jake’s face as he reached for his drink once again. “I can’t make him be what you need him to be.” There was genuine pain in his voice.

  “I know. I just want you to know that whatever happens I appreciate the hospitality you and Kerri and Jeffrey have given us here.”

  “You’re welcome. And you should have your sling on,” he said with a touch of censure in his voice.

  But it wasn’t the tone of his voice that made her feel the absence of the cumbersome sling, rather it was the quick slide of his dark gaze down the length of her body that suddenly made her feel half-naked.

  Tension crackled in her head, in the very air between them, and Grace recognized it for what it was—a sexual awareness, a heady whisper of desire she hadn’t felt for any man in a very long time.

  Just that quickly it felt more than a bit dangerous to her, to sit here in the middle of the night with him, to be exchanging bits and pieces of their personal lives with each other. She was all too aware of her lack of clothing, and her body felt fevered despite the lightweight nightgown and robe that she wore.

  She wondered what it would be like to kiss him. His mouth would taste of the Scotch he’d been drinking, and she knew the kiss would be heady and hot. She had a feeling he’d kiss with the same intensity he did everything else, that it would be an experience difficult for a woman to ever forget.

  His cell phone rang, shattering the uncomfortable silence that had sprung up between them and the risky direction of her thoughts.

  He pulled his cell phone from his pocket and answered. A deep frown slashed across his forehead as he listened to whoever was on the other end of the line. “Yeah, okay. I’ll be right there.” He closed the phone and dropped it back in his pocket with a weary sigh.

  “My brother has finally put in an appearance. He and a couple of his no-account friends showed up at Tony’s Tavern, a bar in town. They were all drunk and disorderly and Sheriff Hicks is holding them at the jail.” He got up from his chair and she rose from the sofa. “You should probably get some sleep. I’m sure I’ll have some news about Justin first thing in the morning.”

  She walked with him to the bottom of the stairs. She felt the need to say something, anything to ease the worry lines on his face, to rid him of some of the tension that held his shoulders so rigid. But what could she say?

  It was possible Justin and his friends were the ones who had gotten drunk and shot at her. It was also possible Justin had spent the afternoon getting drunk with his friends and had been nowhere around when the shooting had occurred.

  In either case it was obvious Jake had his hands full with the brother he obviously loved, and Grace could relate to that because of her often difficult relationship and worries about Natalie.

  “I’ll see you in the morning,” he said. Once again his gaze slid down, lingering briefly on the exposed skin of her collarbone, the curve of her breasts beneath the silk material. “Good night, Grace.”

  “Good night, Jake.”

  As he went out the front door she began to climb the stairs, the heat of his gaze still warming her stomach.

  How was this even possible? How could she be so attracted to Jake? The answer wasn’t so complex—because he was hot and stable, because he’d been kind to her and seemed to be everything opposite of the man who’d already let her down. More
important, because when his gaze had slid over her she’d sensed with a woman’s instinct that he definitely felt something for her, too.

  Once her shoulder was well enough she would leave here and probably never see any of the Johnson triplets again. One of them had already let her down and might have been responsible for trying to shoot her, and she’d be a fool to allow another of the hot, handsome triplets to get close to her in any way.

  Jake gripped the steering wheel tightly as he headed toward Cameron Creek and the sheriff’s office, which had become far too familiar in the past couple of years.

  What he didn’t want to think about was Grace in that sexy robe that had wrapped around her slender body just tight enough to display all the curves she possessed—and she possessed plenty.

  He liked her. It wasn’t just the way she looked in her sexy black-and-red robe with her hair slightly tousled. He liked the warmth of her smile, the way she loved her children. He liked the strength she obviously possessed, a strength that had seen her through a rough childhood and had buoyed her up as she’d become caretaker for a younger, obviously troubled sister.

  She’d have to be strong to get through what had probably been a difficult pregnancy and the first ten months of raising those girls all alone.

  If that wasn’t enough, the smoky green of her eyes drew him in, the whisper of her perfume muddied his senses, and yet the very last thing he wanted in his own life was a woman and three children. Justin’s problem, he reminded himself.

  He just needed to get Justin home and sobered up and find out if he had anything to do with the attack on Grace that afternoon. There was nothing that would make him believe that Justin had been a part of the shooting unless he heard those words from his brother’s own mouth.

  Justin was thoughtless, irresponsible and showed poor judgment most of the time, but he wasn’t a mean man. He didn’t have the cruel streak that their father had exhibited over the years.

  If any of them had that capacity it was Jake at this moment, who would like nothing better than to wrap his hands around his brother’s throat and squeeze a little bit of sense into him.

  Grace and the babies might go back to Wichita, but that didn’t mean they just went away. Somehow, someday, Justin was going to have to face his daughters. He could do it now with love and support or he would do it later met with bitterness and recriminations from three young women who would have hard questions about where he’d been all their lives.

  Jake desperately wanted his brother to make the right choice now and save those little girls a lot of heartache and tears down the road.

  The sheriff’s station was located on Main Street. It was a small, unassuming brick building with a couple of jail cells that were rarely used in the basement.

  For a moment Jake remained in his car, staring at the building where he’d spent far too much of his time lately. Justin liked to drink, and when he drank he got stupid.

  Jake had bailed him out of jail or talked Sheriff Hicks into just letting Justin go more times than he could count, and here he was again, riding to the rescue. Wearily he got out of the car and headed for the front door.

  Lindsay Sanders sat at the front desk and gave him a rueful smile as he walked in. “We’ve got to stop meeting like this,” she said, a slightly flirtatious glint in her dark eyes.

  Jake didn’t bite. He never did. “Hicks in his office?” he asked.

  She nodded, as usual a hint of disappointment in her eyes as he refused to flirt with her. “He’s waiting for you.”

  As Jake walked down the hallway to the sheriff’s inner office, he thought of Lindsay. She was an attractive single woman who more than once had let him know she was available.

  Maybe he should bite, he thought. Then he realized the only reason the idea had crossed his mind was because he thought it might get the scent of Grace out of his head, the memory of how she’d felt in his arms out of his brain.

  He gave one short rap on Sheriff Hicks’s door and then opened it, catching the older man with his feet up on his desk, his chair reclined and his hat over his eyes.

  “I should be home in bed with my wife,” he said without moving. “I should be dreaming about a native woman named Lola feeding me fresh mango on an exotic island.” He pulled his feet off the desk, shoved his hat to the top of his head and sat up. “You know I’m only still here because it’s you.”

  “I know, and I appreciate it,” Jake said. He sank down in the chair opposite the desk. “Did he tell you where he was at the time of the shooting out at my place?”

  Hicks snorted. “He told me that, along with intimate details of his relationship with Shirley and every other woman he’s dated, and some crude jokes that made his two friends laugh like the drunken hyenas they are. He told me that he and Shirley had fought earlier this morning and he’d dropped her off at her place, then he hightailed it over to Elliot Spencer’s house, they called J. D. Richards to join them there and they proceeded to get trashed. Elliot’s wife confirmed that the three were there all day until they left late this evening.”

  “So he couldn’t have been at my place firing shots at Grace.” Jake hadn’t realized how tight the knot had been in his chest until this moment when it eased somewhat.

  “If you’re to believe the two drunks that are with him and Elliot’s wife—and I’ve got no reason not to believe Darla. She never lies to cover for her husband. According to them, they were all at Elliot’s place until about an hour ago when they thought it was a good idea to show up at Tony’s. The bartender called me, said they were out of their minds drunk and he was afraid there might be trouble. So I rounded them up and brought them here more for their own safekeeping than anything else.”

  Greg reared back in his chair. “It appears J.D. and Elliot will be my guests and sleep it off for the duration of the night. J.D. has nobody who is willing to come and get him and Darla told me to keep Elliot until he’s sober. I’m assuming you’re here to take Justin home.”

  “Unless there’s some charges pending?”

  Greg shook his head. “Fortunately for them I can’t charge for stupidity, otherwise none of them would ever get out of here.”

  “Anything new on the drifter?” Jake asked.

  “Nothing, but I’ve got my men still looking for him. I’ll keep you posted.” He got out of his chair and Jake stood as well. He knew the routine. Together he and Greg would take the stairs down to the bottom floor where Greg would unlock the cell door and Justin would stagger out.

  It had been a long time since Jake had felt any kind of embarrassment over this situation. Weary resignation was what sat heavily on his shoulders as he followed Greg down the stairs that led to the cells.

  And if the current situation wasn’t tough enough, he had to face the fact that tomorrow Jeffrey and Kerri were leaving and that meant he’d be responsible for helping Grace with the three girls.

  Not going to happen, he determined. One way or the other he was going to sober up his brother and force him to take some responsibility, at least until Jeffrey and Kerri got back into town or Grace healed up enough to take her girls and head home.

  The cell area smelled like a brewery. J.D. was on his back, snoring loud enough to wake the dead, and Elliot sat on the edge of the bunk, staring off into space in an obvious drunken stupor. Only Justin was animated, staggering back and forth in front of the bars and muttering beneath his breath.

  “Hey!” His face lit at the sight of Jake. “There’s my brother. He’s the man. I knew he’d show up to get me out of here.” He stepped back from the bars so Sheriff Hicks could unlock the door.

  Justin stumbled out of the cell and threw an arm around Jake’s shoulder, the smell of booze seeming to seep out of his very pores. “You know I love you, man.”

  “I know. Let’s just get you home,” Jake replied.

  He got Justin loaded into his car and then headed to his brother’s apartment. There were a million things Jake wanted to say to Justin, but he’d learned a long
time ago not to argue or try to have a rational discussion with a drunk.

  Within minutes Justin had fallen sound asleep. By the time Jake arrived at the apartment building he had to help his brother out of the car and into his place.

  Justin went directly to the bedroom and fell onto the bed, passed out cold. Jake remained standing just inside the door of the one-bedroom apartment looking around in dismay.

  Pizza boxes and food wrappers littered the floor, along with beer bottles and other trash items. The place looked like a room after a frat party had taken place, but Justin was no college kid. He was a thirty-five-year-old father of three and somehow, some way, Jake had to figure out how to make him step up to be a man.

  Jake cleared a space on the sofa and sank down. He’d wait for Justin to sleep it off and then he and his brother were going to have a man-to-man talk that would get Jake out of the middle of this mess and away from the woman and the little girls he feared had the potential to make him rethink his desire to spend his life alone. And that would be the biggest mistake he’d ever make in his life.

  Chapter 6

  “You and Jeffrey are leaving today?” Grace stared at Kerri in stunned surprise.

  “We’ll only be gone for three nights,” Kerri said as she refilled Grace’s cup of coffee. “It’s kind of our honeymoon/anniversary trip. When we got married we never took a honeymoon. We both agreed that for our first anniversary we’d stay at The Bouquet Bed and Breakfast in Topeka. But it’s a really popular place and we had to book almost a year in advance.”

  Kerri rejoined Grace at the table. “If you’re worried how you’ll do without us, you shouldn’t. Jake will take good care of you and the girls. He’s perfectly capable of changing diapers and doing whatever else is necessary for you to get along just fine.”

  “It seems as though Jake takes care of everything and everyone,” Grace replied. There had been no sign of Jake since he’d left the night before to retrieve Justin from the sheriff’s office. “I imagine the last thing he’ll want to do is spend the next couple of days taking care of me and the girls.” Worry worked through her, along with a sense of dread at the thought of it just being her and Jake alone.