The Cowboy's Triplets (3 page)

“Pete, I don't know how to tell you this,” Jackie said, and he tried to snap his focus back to where it needed to be. His little turtledove was awfully jumpy. Tonight was clearly going to be conversation-first night, and he
was okay with that. As long as he got to hold her, Jackie could talk all she liked. “Go ahead. I'm listening.”

“All right.” Jackie turned delicious dark eyes the color of pure dark cocoa on him. He watched her lips as she hesitated. God, he loved her mouth. If she wanted to talk for an hour, he'd just sit and watch with pleasure. As long as she let him kiss that mouth, he was a happy man.

“I think it's time for us to…”

He grinned. “To what, sugar?” He had a feeling he knew where this was going, and it couldn't be more timely.

“I'm so sorry, Pete,” Jackie said, taking a deep breath. “But I don't want to see you anymore.”

The jackass—he actually
laughed.
Jackie stared at Pete, all the tears she'd been trying not to cry drying up to nothing.

“Come here,” he said, reaching for her, “you're tired. You've had a bad day. Come tell big ol' Pete all about it.”

She squirmed out of his arms, though she never had before. “No. It's nothing like that. It's just time, Pete.”

He watched her, his dark-blue eyes wide with unspoken questions. Pete wasn't the kind of man who talked a lot. He wouldn't bug her to death about what she was thinking. In a minute, he'd shrug, decide the pastures were greener elsewhere, and off he'd go.

She just had to wait out this awkward moment.

Yet, as his gaze refused to release hers, she knew she'd not only caught him by complete surprise, somehow she'd also wounded him. She was shocked by that more than anything.

“Jackie, you mean a bunch to me,” Pete said.

“And you mean a lot to me.” Jackie reexamined her feelings for the hundredth time, and came to the same conclusion as before: It was time to end what was a non-serious relationship between them. Maybe these new feelings had started when Mr. Dearborn protested his
medicine—for the hundredth time. Perhaps it had been knowing that nothing was going to change about her life, not tomorrow or the next day, if she didn't stop going along with the currents that flowed in their predictable patterns in Diablo.

But when Darla had mentioned changing their entire livelihoods, Jackie had known she was being handed the only chance she might ever have to change her whole life.

Maybe it shouldn't have meant ending her relationship with Pete, too, but what she had with him was just as much of a road to nowhere as anything else. By the hurt expression on his face, she wondered if she was being selfish. But the bottom line was that she was in love with Pete Callahan, and he was not in love with her, and after fifteen years of loving the man and five years of sleeping with him, she knew their pattern was just as predictable as any other in her week. She would find him in her bed, he would ravish her, adore her body from toe to nose and then he'd depart before dawn to feed cattle and horses.

And she'd see him again—the next Saturday.

“I'm sorry,” she said to the pain she saw in his eyes.

And he said, “I am, too, sugar.” He stroked one work-roughened hand down her chin-length hair, then her cheek, put his hat on and left.

This should feel different,
Jackie thought.
My heart should be shattering.

But her heart had shattered long ago, when she'd realized there was no future for her and the hottest cowboy to ever walk Diablo, New Mexico. Oh, she knew the ladies were gaga about the five other Callahan men, but in her opinion, only Peter Dade Callahan made her
heart jump for joy every time she heard his name, saw his face, felt his hands on her.

Eventually, a girl had to move on with her life.

She grabbed her cell phone, dialed Darla. “I may run by and take a look at those papers again.”

“I was hoping you'd be tempted,” Darla told her.

“I just might be,” Jackie said, listening as Pete's truck pulled from her drive. “I'll be there in a few minutes.”

 

P
ETE THOUGHT HE WAS
pretty good at reading women. In fact, there were times he'd thought he could write a book on the vagaries of the female mind.

Jackie had caught him so off guard he wondered how he could have missed the signs. Had he not just loved her within an inch of her life last Saturday night? She'd cried his name over and over so sweetly he'd been positive he had satisfied her every desire.

Now he was left to scratch at his five-o'-clock stubble with some puzzlement. Last Saturday night had been the last time he'd seen Jackie. He'd hidden his truck around back, as he always did. She liked to keep their relationship private, a plan he agreed with, thanks to the Diablo busybodies. Nobody wanted the Books 'n' Bingo ladies fastening their curiosity on them—it was a recipe for more well-meaning intrusion than a man could stand.

Jackie had cooked him dinner, and then, because she'd worked all day, he'd rented a movie, a chick flick. As the movie rolled, and guy got girl, Pete had massaged Jackie, starting with her shell-shaped toes, the delicate arches of her darling feet, then had even bent over to plant tender kisses on her ankles. The flower-patterned sofa in front of her TV was soft and puffy, a veritable haven of girlieness, and he loved sitting there on Saturday nights like an old-fashioned date.

Then he always carried Jackie into her white-lace bedroom, his angel ensconced in gentle frills and woman's adornments, and he made love to her with a passion that he felt from the bottom of his heart.

In his mind, there was nothing better than Saturday nights with Jackie. It was so much a part of his routine—their routine—that he wasn't sure how he could live without it.

Apparently, she thought she could.

His heart felt as if it had been kicked.

He parked his truck and went inside the house. Aunt Fiona looked at him, her Cupid's-bow mouth making an O. “You're home quite early, Pete.”

“Change of plans,” he said, not about to share any details. Anyway, there was nothing to share. No one knew about him and Jackie, so there was nobody he could tell about the breakup, even if he wanted some sympathy, which he damn well didn't.

He wanted a handle of whiskey and a quiet room in which to nurse his pain.

“Did something happen?” Fiona asked.

“Like what?” he asked, rummaging through the liquor cabinet. Damn if he knew where Burke kept the goods.

“I don't know,” Fiona said. “I just don't think I've ever seen you home at this hour on a Saturday night. Probably not in five years—ohhh.”

He stopped moving bottles, pulled his head from the cabinet again. “What ‘ohhh'?”

“Nothing. Nothing at all.” Fiona went back to crocheting something that looked like a tiny white Christmas stocking.

He stared at her creative project, perplexed. “Are you making a
baby bootie?
”

She shoved the white thing into a basket at her feet. “Pete, if you're going to come home early on a Saturday night, that's your choice. But that doesn't mean you have the right to poke your nose into my business.”

His jaw went slack. Nosiness wasn't something he'd been accused of before. He was known for being close-mouthed, secretive, even aloof. If Fiona was making baby booties, it was none of his business.

Yet, perhaps it was. Baby booties meant that Fiona had a taker for her plan. And that was a problem for him, because he wanted Rancho Diablo, and the woman he'd figured was a surefire deal had just given him the brush-off.

“Who are you making it for, Aunt Fiona?”

She cleared her throat. Got to her feet, sending him a cool, none-of-your-business stare worthy of a general. She took her basket and disappeared down the hall.

Pete lost his desire to drink. He shut the cabinet, then after a moment, left the house.

He felt lost in a way that he never had in his entire life. His woman had just left him; what would he do if he lost his home as well?

There was only one thing to do: He had to drive to Monterrey and watch the rodeo. Gamble a little, sing some karaoke, maybe let a sweet cowgirl calm his broken heart for the night. Chat with some buddies, go to cowboy church tomorrow morning—and then maybe this terrible problem would have gone away.

Maybe.

 

“C
OME TO BED, MY
I
RISH KNIGHT
,” Fiona said two hours later when Burke came into the bedroom they shared clandestinely.

“My wild Irish rose,” Burke said, taking off his long coat and cold-weather cap. “I've been thinking.”

“Think quietly, husband,” Fiona said. “Pete came home tonight. We don't know where he might be lurking.”

Burke glanced up as he stripped off the corduroy trousers he wore to oversee the locking-up of the old English-style house. A manor, her brother Jeremiah had wanted, just like the ones he'd seen in England before he'd had money. So that was what he'd built.

Jeremiah hadn't lived here long.

“Why is Peter here?” Burke asked.

“My uncomfortable suspicion is that he and Jackie may have had a wee falling-out.”

Burke put on a robe made of Scottish wool and sank into his comfy leather armchair in front of the fireplace and directly across from the bed where his wife looked darling in her frilly white nightcap and flannel nightgown. “He said nothing?”

“No. But Pete's been the soul of discretion about his Saturday nights for so many years.” Fiona sighed. “He wouldn't be here if something unfortunate hadn't occurred between them.” Fiona hoped her pronouncement about the ranch hadn't stirred some sort of disagreement between them. Privately, she'd had her money on either Pete or Jonas to be the first to the altar. Stubborn Jonas had shocked her by walking away from the deal stone-cold. Now Pete might not be in quite the position she'd hoped he was in for a small nudge toward marriage. That left Creed and Rafe, Judah and Sam—none of whom she'd put a long bet on.

“Then I may have other bad news,” Burke said, taking out his pipe carved from burled Irish wood. “All the other boys are in the bunkhouse.”

“All the boys?” Fiona sat up straighter. “They're never home on Saturday nights! This is our night!”

“Be that as it may,” Burke said, “they're engaged in a game of poker in the main bunkhouse.” He drew with satisfaction on the pipe, then leaned over to stoke the fire.

“Burke! How can you be so calm! They're supposed to be competing against each other for Rancho Diablo!”

Burke smiled. “You've done an admirable job with the boys, Fiona. Now it's our turn. As I said, I've been thinking.”

“Thinking about what?” Fiona didn't want to take her mind off her charges—although they weren't really her charges anymore, she supposed. They were full-grown men, responsible for their own happiness.

Still, the only way a man was happy—truly happy—was with a woman. Look at Burke, after all. He was the happiest man she'd ever met. Fiona smiled with satisfaction. Of course, he'd always said he preferred his creature comforts of home and hearth.

Her nephews didn't seem to share that opinion. They were more the type to fly the coop. Where had she gone wrong with them? Had she not been the best mother figure she knew how to be? And Burke…well, Burke had done as she'd asked. He'd remained a butler, not a stand-in father figure, which she thought the boys might have resented. They'd kept their marriage secret in order that the boys would always know that they were first priority for her, first in her heart. That she had done for her younger brother, Jeremiah, and his wife, Molly, a promise kept she'd never regretted.

“Let's renew our vows,” Burke said. “I ask you, my love, to marry me in front of the whole town. Your Books 'n' Bingo ladies can be your bridesmaids.”

Fiona stared. If Burke had suggested that the answer to their dilemma was for her to sprout wings and fly, she couldn't have been more shocked. She'd be more likely to sprout angel's wings because the man was about to give her heart failure.

Burke looked so earnest, with his bright-blue eyes and ruddy cheeks framed by very un-butlerish longish white hair, that she didn't dare stamp on his romantic tendencies, however much she felt that he wasn't thinking about her problem very seriously.

“Burke, we can't do that. You know I promised Jeremiah and Molly that I would see their boys to adulthood.”

“And you've done that admirably.” Burke smiled at her. “Sometimes I just sit and chuckle about how skillfully you've played your hand with those ruffians, Fiona.”

“But they aren't married. They have no children. And have you forgotten, most importantly, that Rancho Diablo is going to be sold?”

This was the part that frightened her the most; the nightmare that kept her awake at night. She had failed Jeremiah. The castle of his dreams, the home where he and Molly had imagined raising their sons, wasn't really hers to raffle off to the brothers as she'd claimed. “Burke, they simply have to focus on their lives.”

“Fiona,” he said, getting up to lie on the bed with her, cradling her head to his chest, “they
are
concentrating on their lives.”

“They'll hate me for losing the ranch.”

“No.”

“In a year, when it's all over, and the Callahan name is nothing but synonymous with a joke and pity—”

“Fiona, you sell these boys short. Anyway, they're not
even boys anymore. They're full-grown men. Why not just tell them the truth, instead of forcing them to find brides they may not want?”

“And the secret at the bottom of the stairs?” She looked up at her husband. “What do we do about that? And about their parents? Do you suggest I tell them that Jeremiah and Molly are still alive as well?”

Burke laid his pipe on the nightstand tray next to him and stroked his wife's head. “You worry too much, Fiona. It will all work out.”

He'd always said that. She wasn't convinced this time. Rancho Diablo was in trouble. She could tell the brothers, see if they could raise enough money to somehow buy it back. Once they found out she'd put it up as a guarantee for a deal that had gone south, they might be able to do something. She probably owed it to them to tell them what had happened.

She couldn't. They couldn't help, she knew. And Jonas already had his eye on another property due east of here. He said he wanted his own place. Sympathy was her last card—community sympathy against that evil Bode Jenkins, their neighbor, and the scurvy bounder who'd convinced his daughter, the Honorable Judge Julie Jenkins, to cast their ranch as payment for the deal she'd greatly underestimated. Plus she owed a fearsome amount of taxes on a property that wouldn't be theirs in another year.