Catching Calhoun

“Don’t take your mask off, Momma,” Minnie said. “Guess who’s come to watch your act?”

Her heart sank. He’d spoken the exact words she’d imagined him speaking. And his husky voice sent chills down her spine. Truly, this cowboy was a player at the master level.

“Minnie,” she said, her voice warning her daughter to remember the rules—no cowboys. “Go sit in the stands, please.”

“Now it’s just the two of us,” he said. “Clever of you to think of a way for us to be alone.”

She ripped off her mask, ready to dispel his overwhelming appeal. The huge grin on his face stopped her.

He winked, slowly and sexily.

Her breath caught inside her chest.

Oh, no. She’d told the kids about cowboys. She’d told herself.

And this man might be the best reason she’d ever met to keep saying no to cowboys…if she could.

Mason (38), Maverick and Mercy’s eldest son
—He can’t run away from his own heartache or The Family Problem.

Frisco Joe (37)
—Fell hard for Annabelle Turnberry and has sweet Emmie to show for it. They live in Texas wine country.

Fannin (36)
—Life can’t be better than cozying up with Kelly Stone and his darling twins in Ireland.

Laredo (35), twin to Tex
—Loves Katy Goodnight, North Carolina and being the only brother with a reputation for winning his woman without staying on a bull.

Tex (35), twin to Laredo
—Grower of roses and other plants, Tex fell for Cissy Kisserton and decided her water-bound way of life was best.

Calhoun (34)
—Doesn’t want the family mantle passing to him.

Ranger (33), twin to Archer
—Fell for Hannah Hotchkiss and will never leave the open road without her.

Archer (33), twin to Ranger
—Talking with a faraway woman in Australia by e-mail is better than having a real woman to bother him.

Crockett (31), twin to Navarro
—Paints portraits of nudes, but never wants to see a woman fully clothed in a wedding gown saying, “I do” to him.

Navarro (31), twin to Crockett
—Fell for Nina Cakes when he was supposed to be watching her sister, Valentine, who is carrying Last’s child.

Bandera (27)
—Spouts poetry and has moved from Whitman to Frost—anything to keep his mind off the ranch’s troubles.

Last (26)
—The only brother who finds himself expecting a baby with no hope of marrying the mother. Will he ever find the happy ending he always wanted?

Prologue

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Chapter Eleven

Chapter Twelve

Chapter Thirteen

Chapter Fourteen

Chapter Fifteen

Chapter Sixteen

Chapter Seventeen

At exactly midnight, as a chilly November turned into a stormy, cold December, Mason Jefferson walked back into the main ranch house at Union Junction, wondering if he was ready to return home after being gone for so many months.

There were ten women in sleeping bags around the fireplace, where the fire had burned nearly to embers. His jaw dropped and he felt a sweat break out along the back of his neck. There were pretty faces, openmouthed faces, snoring faces, faces mashed into pillows.

Clearly nothing had changed around Malfunction Junction. Possibly the situation had worsened.

It gave a man pause about the reason he’d stayed
gone so long: Mimi Cannady, his next-door neighbor and wife to another man.

If women were so easily found around his fireplace, if they dropped easily into a man’s life like blossoms from a cherry tree, if there were always many unattached females hanging around the Jefferson ranch, then why couldn’t he get over the woman he
thought
he could only love like a meddlesome baby sister?

I came home too soon,
Mason thought.

A crash sounded upstairs and a baby wailed. Mason closed his eyes.
I stayed gone too long.

And after all his journeys he still had not a single lead on what had happened to Maverick, the father of the twelve Jefferson brothers.

“Hi, Mason.” One of the women raised her head. It was Lily of the Union Junction hair salon in Union Junction. He and his brothers had helped her and her co-stylists set up shop in town, after Delilah Honeycutt had to let them go from the salon in Lonely Hearts Station.

“Hey, Lily,” he said. “Go back to sleep. Didn’t mean to wake you.” He jerked his head toward the ceiling. “Think I’ll go scare my brothers and see whose baby they’re torturing.”

Lily smiled. “Welcome home.” She put her head down and Mason saw her eyes close. Sighing, he headed up the stairs.

In the second-floor family room, there were five brothers and a baby. A sweetly chubby baby, maybe a year old, he guessed, from the three tiny blond
curls on the back of her head and her consciously erect posture. The brothers were arranged in a semi-circle, all of them flat on their chests staring at her as she stared back at them. It was like a Mexican standoff, and the baby was winning, clearly bemusing her older companions.

It wasn’t worth wondering whose baby it was. What mattered was that it seemed nothing had changed around Malfunction Junction. Still fun and games. “Howdy.”

His brothers looked up and stared at him. Calhoun was the first to jump to his feet. “Mason!”

Mason tossed his hat onto the sofa. “I wasn’t gone long enough for any of you to have a baby.”

The other brothers halted, midrise.

“True,” Calhoun said. “And this is not our baby, per se.”

The baby turned her head to look up at him, and Mason felt his heart stop inside his chest. He would know that baby in a field of children; he could pick her out with ease. Fair, fine blond curls, big blue eyes that were her mother’s, the sparkle of mischief in her expression as she’d enjoyed commanding the attention of her covey of “uncles.”

“It’s Nanette,” Bandera said. “We’re helping Mimi out ’cause she’s been cooking for all of us and the ladies downstairs.”

“Heat went out over the salon. Been out for three days,” Last said. “Seemed the right thing to do to bring Lily and her crew here.”

Crockett nodded. “They stood it as long as they could. We found out they weren’t telling us, and had Shoeshine bring them over here in his bus.”

Mason ignored his brother’s blabbering, bending instead to scoop up Nanette and hold her to him. She didn’t cry out at the chill in his fingers. Instead, she touched his face, patting it with curiosity, though he told himself she touched him because she recognized him.

“Been a long time since I held you,” he murmured to her, so that his brothers couldn’t hear. “You can sit up now. When I last saw you, you were just a tiny potato. I didn’t know you would grow so fast,” he said, nuzzling her. “You weren’t supposed to grow up without me. I
missed
you.” She patted his face again, and his eyes welled up with tears he wouldn’t let his brothers see. “I shouldn’t have left you.”

The softness of her skin and her instant trust of him shattered his barely healed heart. Being gone hadn’t solved a damn thing. He still loved Mimi, in a way he knew he should not. And he loved her child, the child he’d helped deliver, as if she were his very own.

In his heart, she
was
his very own.

Mason gruffly cleared his throat, aware that his brothers were uncomfortably silent. “What else did I miss?” he demanded.

The brothers glanced at each other. Last looked ill.

“How about we talk later?” Calhoun asked.

“We can talk now,” Mason said.

“Not really,” Calhoun said, glowering. “We’ve been amusing twelve months of dynamite. We’re
torn between using pacifiers, sippie cups, back rubs and guitar lullabies as good-luck charms to ward off the displeasure this child seems to feel at being out of her element. She doesn’t like us, and quite frankly, we’re beginning to wonder why babies aren’t stored in pods until they ripen.”

“We’ve had some ripe occasions,” Archer said. “That one, delicate flower that she may be, can put forth some really ripe diapers.”

“What we’re trying to say, Mason,” Bandera said, “is that we’re tired. We’re actually ragged. Let’s get one thing straight from the start. You left. You took your bad moods and your broken heart and you deserted us. We’ve handled everything while you were gone. Now, we’re of no mind to have you walk in here demanding answers.”

“That’s right,” Crockett said, “we get first shot at Answer Number One.”

Calhoun stood tall, crossing his arms. “Exactly. And
our
first question is, what in the hell do you think gave you the right to disappear like that?”

Mason stiffened. He’d had no right; it was just something he’d had to do. But he couldn’t explain that to his brothers. What did they know of broken hearts, except when they were haphazardly doing the breaking?

Calhoun looked at him curiously. “Yeah, and while you’re thinking of the answer, Mr. Wandering Foot, you might be interested to know that Mimi’s filed for divorce from Brian.”

Mason instantly went cold.