The Cowboy's Twins

by Deb Kastner

  Jax whirled around so suddenly that she nearly walked into him.

  “Faith, before we go in and get the babies, I—I just want to tell you—” He paused and swept in a ragged breath, his Adam’s apple bobbing. “That is, I—”

  His lips were on hers before she knew what was happening. Soft, warm, sweet. His reassuring scent wrapped around her senses, a heady combination of leather and the countryside that was uniquely Jax.

  His fingers threaded through her hair, drawing her nearer, while his other arm stole around her waist. He groaned her name and slanted his head, deepening the kiss, and she wrapped her arms around his neck, welcoming him into her heart.

  After a minute Rose’s babble became a wail, and Jax broke off the kiss, leaning his forehead against hers, their breaths mingling.

  “I have to—” he started, then kissed her again.

  She smiled into his lips. “I know. Go. I’m right behind you.”

  He brushed his palm down her cheek.

  “No,” he whispered softly. “You’re not behind me, sweetheart. You’re right by my side, and for that I’m eternally grateful.”

  Chapter Seven

  Sunday morning, Jax attended church with his family. Faith was there, but she stayed chatting within a crowd of single women until the service was ready to begin, and then she sat on the opposite side of the sanctuary.

  Little more than an awkward smile had passed between them the whole morning. The atmosphere wasn’t companionable between them as it had always been before. She wouldn’t even look him in the eye, and he had no doubt she was avoiding him.

  He just didn’t know why.

  Thanks to Susie’s inopportune visit, the celebratory dinner had been a little less animated than it might have otherwise been. His mother, Faith and Laney had tried their best to redirect the atmosphere and the conversation, mostly citing all the exciting things that were happening at Untamed—the repairs on the outbuildings, Faith’s ever-growing herd and Jax’s success gentling Fuego.

  Jax appreciated the women’s efforts to make things better, but he couldn’t shake his myriad thoughts, which were traveling at the speed of light with a variety of emotions tagged to their backs.

  He’d known Susie would return some day, asking for the kids, but he hadn’t been prepared for it to be so soon. Susie was a loose cannon. He would never know when she might appear to shoot things down again. He was just getting used to having his daughters here, and Susie could potentially ruin that.

  And now he feared Susie had somehow damaged his relationship with Faith. Or was it the kiss they’d shared that was the reason she was avoiding him? But that left a lot of questions, and he knew the only way to get answers was to go to Faith and ask her straight-out what was bothering her.

  Whatever she was feeling, he wanted to reassure her that last night’s kiss wasn’t a fluke. He needed time to put his head and heart in order, but if she was willing to wait for him, he’d like to see what they could have together. Would she be willing to wait? Was she even interested?

  As soon as he got home from church, he asked his mother if she could watch the twins. He threw together a turkey sandwich and headed out to saddle his favorite mount, a blood-bay mare named Calamity, who’d earned her name with more than one fiasco over the years.

  He took off down the trail at a gallop. Riding usually helped him clear his head. He could communicate with horses without the strain of lipreading and guessing at human body language. With people, he was always wondering if his responses were appropriate to what had been said. He always knew if his horses understood him or not.

  Today the tension didn’t leave him, no matter how hard he rode. Calamity could feel his anxiety and was skittish, throwing her head and bucking when he reined her in.

  He ran a gloved hand down her neck. “Easy, girl. It’s not your fault I’m antsy today.” He dismounted and slid the reins over Calamity’s head to lead her on foot.

  “Maybe I can walk off some of this pent-up energy instead of making you do all the hard work,” he told the horse, who nickered in response. “No sense transferring all my worries to you, right?”

  How had his life fallen apart so quickly—and just when it was starting to make a little sense for once? He could only hope that he was misreading Faith’s signals.

  But could he really ask her to get in the middle of his mess of a life? She’d already done so much for him. How could he ask her for more?

  He wasn’t foolish enough to believe he’d seen the last of Susie. She’d get drunk or high and forget what a disaster last night had been, forget that he’d forbidden her to return until she got her life together. She’d pop up whenever and wherever she wanted.

  He felt confident he could protect the twins while they were still babies, but what would happen later, when the girls were old enough to interact with her?

  How would he be able to protect them then?

  The alternative was taking legal measures, but he wasn’t sold on that avenue, either, not when there was the possibility of the courts giving Susie custody. They couldn’t see what he saw. There was just too much at stake.

  His boots were giving him a blister on his ankle. In total opposition to the country song that suggested otherwise, his boots weren’t meant for walking—at least for the distance he had gone today. He had to be several miles outside Serendipity town limits by now.

  He groaned. Walking away from his problems wasn’t going to make them go away. He needed to turn around and face them like a man—and in this case, a very special kind of man.

  A daddy.

  He mounted Calamity and turned her back toward town, letting her pick an easy gait and giving her her head. She knew the way back to the ranch without him directing the way. Slumped in his saddle and lost in thought, he didn’t realize where Calamity had taken him until he saw the brand-new sign proudly marking Untamed Mustang Refuge.

  Apparently, he’d been unconsciously directing the horse, after all.

  He reined in, hesitating. Faith hadn’t seemed too keen on seeing him this morning. She hadn’t even come over to say hi to him. Of course, he hadn’t approached her, either, having felt the unspoken tension between them.

  He didn’t get it. Last night they’d seemed so close. Now he felt as if there was a chasm between the two of them and neither of them knew how to cross it. He certainly didn’t have a clue what had changed. The aisle that split the church sanctuary might as well have been the Grand Canyon.

  Now that he thought about it, she’d started acting peculiar just after they’d stolen that moment together. She’d been gracious to a fault and genuinely appeared to enjoy interacting with his family. She’d even handled his brothers’ teasing remarks about all the forks, giving every bit as good as she got. She’d insisted on helping clean the dishes, even though Alice had protested heartily that she was a guest in the house.

  But she’d avoided being alone with him again. He’d had every intention of walking her out to her truck, where he hoped he might steal another kiss, to re-create the emotions he’d felt the first time. He didn’t know where it would lead, if anywhere, but for the first time in years he’d seen a glimpse of something positive in his life.

  First the twins.

  And now Faith—except that she’d skipped out on him when he’d gone to change Violet’s wet diaper. He was out of the room for no more than two minutes, but when he returned, Faith was gone. She’d left without giving him as much as a wave goodbye. He thought he deserved that much, at least, for all they’d been through together that evening.

  Then again, maybe he was imagining the whole thing and he was the one creating the tension and the chasm. Maybe he was making a big deal out of nothing. He was probably being hypersensitive because seeing Susie again had brought back all of those bad memories.

  The ph
ysical pain. The horror. The shame.

  But that was the past, and the past was over.

  Sitting here at the entrance of Faith’s ranch wasn’t going to do anybody any good, least of all him. He wouldn’t know how Faith was feeling until he asked her. He needed to stop hesitating and start acting like a mature man instead of a brainless teenager.

  Even though it was a day of rest, Jax knew he wouldn’t find Faith in her still practically unlivable house. Ranch work didn’t take a Sabbath, and though he’d helped her hire a couple of responsible teenage wranglers to assist her, she wasn’t the type of person to delegate everything to someone else.

  No—she’d be in the barn or the corral or the meadow, or maybe riding her gelding Alban around her thousand acres checking her fences for breaks. Even if she had nothing pressing to do, she would want to be out with her horses. They were her happy place.

  He looped the reins back over Calamity’s neck and led her out to the pasture to graze, then turned back toward the barn.

  He’d reached the entrance and was waiting for his eyes to adjust to the dim interior when a shadow came whirling like a Tasmanian devil out from around the corner of the door.

  Faith was walking backward, hauling heavy buckets of feed and overcompensating on the weight. Before he knew what was happening, her back had collided with his chest.

  He reacted instinctively, wrapping his arms around her waist to keep her from falling, but he could do nothing about the buckets of grain she was carrying.

  The aluminum buckets clanged to the dirt, and the oat mixture exploded into the air as if it had been set off by a detonator.

  Faith shrieked in alarm and turned on him, a hand over her heart and her face flushed pink with exertion.

  Or maybe anger.

  “What do you think you are doing here?” she demanded, glaring up at him. “You nearly scared the life out of me. And just look what you’ve done to my feed!”

  So—it was anger, then.

  “I was getting ready to call out for you,” he said, grabbing one of the buckets and crouching to scoop the oats back into it. Most of the feed was salvageable, although some of the grain would be lost in the dirt. “I was just letting my eyes adjust to the darkness first.”

  She harrumphed and grabbed the other bucket, scooping up the nearest pile of grain and tossing it inside.

  “I apologize, Faith. Really. Come on. I didn’t mean to startle you.”

  “No biggie.” She didn’t meet his gaze. Instead, she tossed more oats into her bucket with a little more fervor than was strictly necessary.

  Jax sat back on his heels and braced his hands on his thighs. He waited for her to stop her frantic activity, but it was almost as if she didn’t see him there.

  Except he knew she did.

  “Faith,” he said, reaching for her elbow. “Will you just stop for a second?”

  She brushed her hair out of her eyes with the back of one hand and finally met his gaze. “What?”

  “Why are you mad at me?”

  She stood and shook her head. “I’m not mad. You startled me. That’s all.” Her eyes narrowed on him. “Why are you here on a Sunday, anyway?”

  Jax sighed inwardly. Stubborn woman. He wasn’t talking about their little run-in in the stable just now, and she knew it.

  “You were avoiding me in church this morning. Do you want to tell me what is going on with you?”

  “No, not really.”

  She stood and grabbed Jax’s bucket from him, striding off to the corral. He followed close behind, jamming his hands into the front pockets of his jeans so he wouldn’t give in to the sudden urge to throttle her.

  She hung the buckets on a hook in the corral. Two black-and-white pinto yearlings huddled as far away from Faith as possible until she tapped her hand against one of the buckets.

  “Come on, guys. This is the good stuff.”

  She leaned her elbow against the corral fence and waited. Jax thought her posture was a little too stiff and was fairly certain he was the cause of it.

  He still had a pretty major learning curve where women were concerned, especially Faith, but he knew enough to know that now might not be the best time to mention anything posture or tension related. He didn’t have a death wish.

  The colts snuffed and snorted, but eventually the idea of a gourmet meal won out over having to eat it with a strange human standing next to them.

  “They’re beautiful,” he remarked when the horses were well into their dinner.

  “Aren’t they? It’s hard to believe they were considered expendable. Some cattle ranchers didn’t want the wild horses grazing on public land near their ranches. Grass guzzlers, they call them. So when new foals are born, it doesn’t go over very well with those ranchers. These two sweet colts were in what they call temporary holding, although it’s rarely temporary. More like a way to thin out the herd.”

  “They look like they’re in pretty good condition.” Slowly and smoothly, he moved closer to them to get a better look. One of the horses briefly pinned his ears back, but Jax’s presence didn’t stop him from eating. What was one more human in the big scheme of things?

  “They are. The vet gave them both a clean bill of health. I’m just giving them a little extra nutritional head start. I’ve been introducing them to the herd a few horses at a time while you were out working with Fuego. They’re doing well. Willow seems to have taken a special interest in them. I think they’re about ready to be able to taste full freedom, or at least as much as I can offer them.”

  Faith appeared to have lost the tension in her shoulders. She was breathing easier, and her hazel eyes were gleaming, a beautiful mixture of greens and golds, just as they always were when she talked about her herd.

  Horses.

  Jax realized with a sudden burst of inspiration that horses were their bridge to communication, the one thing they had absolutely in common. No matter what else was going on between them—and he was still completely in the dark as to what that might be—they had horses.

  “Look, I don’t want to push you, but—”

  “You already did, remember?” she said with a strained laugh. “You nearly knocked me down back there in the barn.”

  “Hey. You ran into me, remember?” he protested.

  “Only because you were looming in the doorway as silent as a mouse.”

  Jax smiled and relaxed a little. He’d never been compared to a mouse before. A monster, maybe.

  Anyway, if Faith was bantering with him, it couldn’t be all bad, could it? Did a man have room to hope?

  “Can I help you with your chores?” he offered. He figured he might as well stay on neutral ground, at least for the time being. Eventually the serious conversation would have to happen, but it didn’t have to be right this second.

  She shook her head, and Jax felt her refusal like a punch in the gut. She’d always been happy to have his help before. For her to turn it down now must mean that she had decided to push him away. The kiss last night, and the comfortable companionship they’d built over the preceding weeks—she’d decided she didn’t want that. Didn’t want him.

  Her rejection hurt. Really hurt. He never should have let himself become vulnerable to another woman. He shouldn’t have allowed her to get close to him. Hadn’t he learned anything from Susie?

  “Okay, well then, I guess I’ll—”

  “No—I mean, I’ve finished with all my chores for now,” she qualified.

  He let out a breath he hadn’t even realized he’d been holding, but it caught tight in his throat, giving it a ragged quality.

  “If you want to take Calamity’s tack off and give her a quick rubdown in one of the stalls, I’ll go up to the house and make us a pot of coffee.” She glanced up at the sky to the gray clouds rolling in. “It looks like it m
ight rain.”

  “A hot cup of coffee would be nice but...” He paused, unsure how he should frame his question without heading down the wrong path again.

  “But what?” She tilted her chin and regarded him calmly. There was no anger or frustration in her expression. In fact, Jax couldn’t read it at all. He had no idea what she was thinking.

  That was unnerving.

  He cleared his throat. “I was just wondering—why the sudden change of heart? Last night I thought we were—” He paused to find the right word. “Close. This morning I had the distinct impression you were avoiding me.”

  She sighed with so much emotion that all he could think of was how much he wanted to wrap her in his arms, tuck her head under his chin and hold her until the world went away.

  But he knew better than to try that right now, not when something was so obviously bothering her—something that involved him.

  So it was coffee, then. For now.

  She still hadn’t responded to his question, and he thought perhaps she wasn’t going to. She ran a hand across her cheek, leaving a tiny trail of dirt.

  Jax’s gaze seized on it, and he clenched his fists to keep from following the line with his finger.

  Finally, she spoke. “Ignoring this—problem—isn’t going to make it go away. We both live in the same town, attend the same church. You’re right. We need to talk. Now is as good a time as any.”

  Problem?

  So she thought he was a problem. Well, it wouldn’t be the first time. His chest tightened defensively over his heart. The emotional shields dropped into place.

  Faith might not care about his outward scars, but it sounded as if she was about to add to his inward ones. Even if she didn’t mean to, and even if she didn’t understand what she was doing, her words had the ability to pierce him straight through to his heart.