The Twins' Rodeo Rider

by Tina Leonard

  His wife needed to have nothing on her mind except recuperating and bonding with their babies. “We love our new daughters. I really think I see the seeds of greatness in those girls,” he said happily. “I’m anticipating them to be just like their mother.”

  “Peace Corps workers?” Suz teased.

  “I’d be very proud.” He sat on the hospital bed next to her. “Now rest. Don’t think about anything. I’m going to take very good care of my wife.”

  Suz smiled at him, and his whole world lit up. “I love you, Cisco.”

  What man didn’t want to hear that? Life just couldn’t get any better than it was right now. Daisy was gone, off to bother Branch in Montana, obviously having given up on her dreams of seducing Cisco. Squint was going to be viscerally annoyed with him, but maybe love wasn’t meant to happen between his buddy and the wild woman of Bridesmaids Creek. Not my problem. Squint will have to suck it up.

  “Did Cosette and Jane seem like they were in a hurry to leave to you?”

  Of course they’d been. Their brains had clearly gone into overdrive at the news Robert had delivered, which would entail plans being hatched. He shrugged. “They’re always going ninety to nothing about something. But the only thing I plan on thinking about for the next twenty-one years is you and raising my daughters to be independent women like their mother. After that, I start Phase Two of our lives, which is keeping my shotgun rack full and primed for our daughters’ suitors.” He tried not to think about his daughters’ one day being romanced by any Tom, Dick or Harry who decided to toss a heated glance their way. “I’ve got plenty on my plate without worrying about Cosette and Jane.”

  “Robert’s announcement caught them totally by surprise. I don’t see how he could have offered to buy treasured BC land without the town council’s okay. Wasn’t that part of the deal Jade struck with him? That he was never to do anything again without the council’s permission, and nothing at all that wasn’t beneficial to BC?”

  Suz looked at him, searching for answers he didn’t possess. “Why would he go back on their agreement? And clearly he has, because the gifts that Daisy gave the babies foreshadowed her father’s announcement. She brought water from Bridesmaids Creek and dirt from Best Man’s Fork, and called them mementoes. As if they weren’t going to be here forever.”

  “This is true.” Cisco got up, paced to the window. He, too, had been unpleasantly surprised by Robert’s change of heart, especially as he knew Donovan spent plenty of time out at Jade and Ty’s place with his granddaughters. They were the apples of his eye. “We don’t have enough info to do anything right now. He made his announcement today for a reason, knowing we were too unsettled with new babies to make his life miserable.”

  “I can’t wait to take our daughters home.”

  Cisco grinned. “I guess I’ll go house shopping so I’ll have a place to move my ladies to.”

  Suz looked at him. “What do you mean?”

  “Can’t raise a family in a bunkhouse.”

  “But I— Oh.” She nodded. “Of course. I won’t be living at the Hanging H anymore.”

  He sat on the bed next to her. “We’re a family now. No more living apart.”

  “Yes.” She smiled. “That makes even Robert’s troubling news seem unimportant. Our first home!”

  He nodded. “With us under one roof.”

  “It’ll be very strange not to be living at the Hanging H. But I suppose if Robert has his way, it won’t be the Hanging H much longer, anyway.”

  It wasn’t a good thought. Cisco took Suz’s hand in his. “Have any ideas where in town you’d like to live?”

  “With you.” Suz closed her eyes. “That’s my dream come true.”

  He loved the sound of that. Cisco patted her hand. “Get some rest. I’ll do a little asking around about available properties.”

  “As far away from the Donovan place as you can get us,” she murmured.

  Cisco pondered that as he got up to leave—and then it hit him: Robert Donovan was exactly the man with the right idea.

  * * *

  CISCO WAS WAYLAID by Cosette and Jane as soon as he walked through the doors of The Wedding Diner.

  “Sit here, Cisco.” Jane steered him to one of the white vinyl booths, which was far away from any diners who might overhear. “I’ll get you a plate of something.”

  Cosette slid in across from him, her gaze directly on him. “There’s a meat loaf special today.”

  “I’m not picky. I haven’t had a good home-cooked meal in months.” He frowned. “I can’t remember when the last time was.”

  “You need a place of your own.”

  “Suz and I just talked about that very thing.”

  Jane brought back a plate of meat loaf, mashed potatoes and green beans large enough to feed a platoon, and three slices of coconut cake, which she put in front of each of them. A waitress followed her with three glasses of tea and three of water. Cisco grinned, delighted with steaming hot food. “This looks amazing. Nobody cooks like you do, Jane.”

  “I do,” Cosette said, “but not meat loaf. No one can beat Jane’s meat loaf. Now crepes and truffles, I can do. Although I’m getting out of practice with no husband.”

  Cisco hesitated in the act of forking up a huge, gravy-laden mouthful of fluffy potatoes. “How are you doing? And Phillipe?”

  “We would be better had Robert Donovan never darkened the door of this town.” Cosette shrugged. “But more to the point, we want to talk to you about his wild daughter.”

  “Daisy has given your daughters inappropriate gifts,” Jane said. “Gifts that intend unhappiness.”

  “What?” He put his fork down. “Like a curse? I don’t believe in curses.”

  “And you don’t believe in Bridesmaids Creek shtick, either,” Jane said. “Which is one of the reasons we’re all in this boat we find ourselves rowing.”

  He put his fork down, studying his friends. “You’re saying that everything that’s happening in BC is my fault?”

  “Isn’t it?” Cosette’s gaze stayed on him, and Cisco blew out the breath he’d been holding.

  “You make a fair point, I suppose, as BC legend and lore goes.” He shifted the Saint Michael medal at his neck under his shirt, the one that Squint had given him fresh out of BUD/S. The medal heated his skin. He moved it again, frowning, and dug into the meat loaf. “But it’s not like talking to Donovan is going to do anything to take the heat off.”

  “No.” Jane watched him tear into his meat loaf with a smile. He was too famished to eat more slowly, but neither of the ladies seemed to mind. They just watched him, waiting. Eventually, he put down his fork. “Not that I believe in that woowoo bit, but exactly how do you think Daisy put a curse on my daughters?”

  “It was in the soil and the water of BC that she gave them. Which is why we took it,” Cosette said. “We’re not going to let anything happen to those precious bundles of joy of yours!”

  “Look, this is all too Sleeping Beauty for me.” Cisco had learned not to doubt everything in BC, but this was crossing a line, no matter how much he wanted to humor the darling elder ladies who’d always been so good to him. Maybe they were getting a bit on the loony side. Probably was understandable after a lifetime of living around questionable phenomena, which the Best Man’s Fork run and the Bridesmaids Creek swim certainly were. “I’ll talk to Squint and Sam to see if we can come up with any ideas of how to fix the land problem with Donovan. There has to be a way to stop his purchase of vast parcels of BC. Someone owned them for them to have been on the market. He just can’t acquire town land that’s not for sale.”

  “Donovan has friends in high places who see Bridesmaids Creek as the perfect place to plunk down their nefarious plots for a nuclear waste dump.” Jane’s eyes were huge.

  “What?” Cisco couldn’t hav
e been more astonished if she’d said that a Ripley’s Believe It or Not would be the next venture put into Bridesmaids Creek. “That can’t be right.”

  “It’s what we hear whispers of.” Cosette looked completely distressed. “And where there are whispers, there are problems.”

  Cisco forbore to say that there were always whispers of one kind or another in BC. “I’ll go find Squint and Sam right now, start working on a plan of some kind. We need to do something.”

  “Squint’s gone again,” Cosette said, and Jane nodded.

  “Gone where?”

  “After Daisy.” Jane shrugged. “He’s planning to waylay her on the road before she gets to Montana, tell her how he feels about her.”

  “That’s a terrible idea.” Cisco felt all hollowed out inside. “I wish he’d told me.”

  “He didn’t want you to know. He knew you’d try to stop him,” Jane said. “That’s what he told Justin Morant.”

  “And Justin didn’t try to talk sense into him?” Cisco felt horrible for his buddy. Daisy was going to give him the smackdown of his life. What had gotten into Squint that had made him so head over heels for the wild brunette?

  “There was no stopping him,” Jane said. “In fact, he swore Justin to secrecy until he’d been gone six hours. That way, Squint knew he could make a clean getaway. And the only reason he told Justin is because—”

  “Because Justin’s boss man at the Hanging H,” Cisco filled in. Well, Mackenzie and Suz were the real “bosses” but Justin did an excellent job overseeing the ranch and the hands. In fact, he’d pretty much singlehandedly brought the Hanging H back from the disrepair it had fallen into.

  “And Sam, well, you won’t be able to talk to him very much, either,” Jane said. “He’s gone camping!”

  “Camping?”

  The ladies nodded. “He’s gone into survival mode at Bridesmaids Creek. Says they’ll have to blast him out of there before he’ll let Donovan dam it up and drain it.”

  This was bad, really bad. His buddies had gone rogue without him. They wouldn’t have come to him with their plans, not now, not while he and Suz had just had twins.

  And as the ladies had so pertly pointed out, everything that was happening really could be laid at his door. Somehow he could have handled Daisy differently, let her down more gently. Not gotten caught up in the Bridesmaids Creek escapades. Not participated in their silly lore in the first place. “This is bad.”

  Cosette nodded. “It’s definitely deeper cow chips than we normally find ourselves in.”

  “And we’re such a peaceful, quiet town,” Jane said, and Cisco didn’t detect any irony in her tone. “I’d give anything to go back to the days where we used to wish for a little excitement!”

  Cisco stood. “I’d better head back to Suz. I didn’t mean to leave her alone this long.”

  “I’ll wrap up your food. And I’ll send an extra meal over for Suz. What a homecoming we’re planning for her and the girls!” Jane said, getting up to make a to-go basket.

  Once the basket was put into his hands, Cisco kissed the ladies on their cheeks and headed off.

  He and his wife had a lot of things to discuss.

  * * *

  “HOW DO YOU FEEL?” Cisco looked at his wife with some surprise, as she tried to cross the room. “Should you be doing that? You look like you’re in pain.”

  “I am in pain. And yes, I should be doing this. I want to go down and see the girls in the nursery. It doesn’t feel right to carry those babies for so long and not have them right here with me.”

  That was part of what worried him. Suz wasn’t going to want to take time to rest, not when she wanted to spend every moment with their girls. He debated for a moment not telling her the news he’d learned at The Wedding Diner—realized what a terrible mistake that would be if Suz learned it from someone else. They’d discussed being totally honest with each other, hadn’t they?

  “It’s going to work out. By Christmas, we’ll all be together.” A smile lit her face, and Cisco felt like he’d helped his wife a little.

  She moved back toward the bed, sinking down into it. “I’ll be ready to go home. Well, to the Hanging H. Then we can start looking for a house.”

  “Speaking of looking for homes, we may have to stay at the Hanging H for a while.” Cisco pulled a chair up next to her bed. “Squint and Sam have taken off.”

  “Taken off?”

  “To various destinations.” For now he wanted to gloss over the Daisy angle. He was still reeling over the notion that all the recent bad luck in BC could be parked at his door.

  “Without saying goodbye? Without seeing the babies?” Suz was surprised. “That’s not like them!”

  He rubbed his chin, wondering how much to tell her. “You’ve heard of Yosemite Sam? We have our own Bridesmaids Creek Sam right here. Sam’s staked out the creek to keep Donovan from damming it up and pouring concrete over it.”

  “Concrete!”

  “There’s a thought process that Donovan’s scooped up all our favorite haunts and they’ll soon be nuclear waste sites.”

  Suz started laughing. “That’ll never happen.”

  He perked up. “No?”

  “No. You underestimate the good people of this town.” She smiled at him. “Come sit by me. And then I’ll let you leave and release the knight from his bondage.”

  “Sam? Bondage?”

  “Well, you remember that Daisy’s gang tied Squint to a tree. Stands to reason that Sam might think of something equally dramatic. Lashing himself to a tree to thwart Donovan’s bulldozers.”

  “It’s not a bad idea.” He sat next to his wife on the bed, longing to hold her. “If you want to give me some more comforting words, you can tell me that it’s totally laughable that Squint has gone after Daisy.”

  “That’s more serious.” Suz considered that for a minute. “Can’t you stop him?”

  Cisco was surprised. “Why would I want to?”

  “A woman doesn’t want a man who chases her, when she’s already turned him down.” Suz looked sad for Squint.

  “I could catch him, I suppose. But then he’d be mad at me, and frankly, I’ve already got the rest of the town sort of annoyed with me.”

  “Who?” Suz frowned. “No one should be annoyed with you!”

  “There’s a theory that I didn’t play by the rules, and therefore we find ourselves in deep Donovan doo.”

  “That’s silly.”

  “It’s BC.”

  “Don’t think about it,” Suz said. “Go unlash Sam from his post, for heaven’s sake. Tell him we appreciate the manly effort, though. We really do.” She thought for a moment. “He’d make such a nice prince, if he was of a mind to be one.”

  There was no point in discussing that angle. Suz seemed certain that Sam wasn’t interested in the altar, and one thing Cisco had learned was that he could trust his wife’s intuition. “Squint’s cruising for a bruising.”

  “You can’t feel responsible for him. He’s convinced Daisy’s the one. She’s convinced he’s not.” She wrapped her fingers through his. “That story could have been ours.”

  “No, it couldn’t have. You are not Daisy.”

  “What if you’d fallen for her?”

  He shuddered a little. “Well, none of this would be happening. Life would go on, happy and blowing unicorn-shaped bubbles in the land that time forgot.”

  Suz giggled. “Poor Daisy.”

  “If I was their only game plan, they made a mistake not having a backup plan.” Cisco kissed his darling wife, lingering over her lips for a moment. “I guess I’ll go let Yosemite Sam know he can leave his post.”

  She smiled. “Thank you for bringing me dinner.”

  “Tomorrow, I take you home. Our first real day together as husba
nd and wife, and parents, under one roof.”

  “Well, along with Mackenzie and Justin and their four babies. But you’re handling this awfully well.”

  “I am, aren’t I?” He winked. “Good night, beautiful.”

  “Good night.”

  He left her dinner close by for when she was ready to eat. He strolled to the nursery to take a peek at his daughters, who were snuggled up like pink-wrapped, pink-topped angels. He was a father. Those were his daughters. Cisco felt himself swell with pride.

  Life didn’t get better than this.

  * * *

  LIFE WAS DEFINITELY stranger than fiction, and Cisco realized he was looking at the strangest slice of life yet when he found Sam at the creek, with a guitar and a basket of food, singing along with Daisy’s gang at the top of their lungs.

  From a musical point of view, it was pretty hard on the ears. Cisco winced and sat down on the Native American blanket next to his friend, eyeing Daisy’s gang of five rowdies with some approbation. “Brother, that’s not pretty. You’re gonna kill wildlife. Owls and bats and things with sensitive hearing. Or forever damage them psychically with your caterwauling.”

  Sam twanged one last riff and put his guitar down. “There’s no one to hear but us.”

  “Yeah, but even your shadow’s in pain. You never told me you were such a bad singer.” He couldn’t figure out why Daisy’s gang was suddenly the equivalent of an off-key band with his friend, but a couple of bottles lying around gave him an idea.

  “I’m pretty sure you knew I wasn’t a pop star in Afghanistan.”

  Yeah, but they’d all been hard-pressed to carry a tune over there, and no one had cared, anyway. “I just thought you wailed like a girl for grins.”

  “I was just warming up. If you’d arrived thirty minutes later, the rough spots would have been out of my voice.”

  Cisco doubted that. “So, listen, I hear you’re down here to save the town, buddy.”

  Sam looked at him. “Just trying to make a statement.”