The Cowboy's Triplets

by Tina Leonard

  They went silent again. The wind howled outside, picking up a violent sound. Pete wondered if he should drag one of his brothers out with him to check on the cattle and the horses. The wind whipped so hard over their bunkhouse that it reminded him of crying ghosts, something he’d always wondered about when he was a child. He’d always felt that ghosts lived just as freely at Rancho Diablo as the Callahans did.

  Maybe the ghosts hung around because they liked it here. Pete was determined to feel positive about anything he could concerning Rancho Diablo.

  “Let’s make a pact,” Sam said suddenly. “One of us—whoever can do it first—will get married. Try to have kids. The rest of us will be hellaciously good uncles.”

  Everyone stared at Sam.

  “Since you’re only twenty-six,” Jonas said, his tone wry, “that almost makes your suggestion a bit callous.”

  Sam shook his head. “I might have my eye on a gal. You don’t know.”

  Pete sighed. “He may have a point. Only one is needed for sacrificial-lamb status, as long as everyone agrees that once Fiona has given the ranch over to us, we formally split ownership in a lawyer’s office.”

  “It’s a bad idea between brothers,” Judah said. “Not that I don’t trust all of you, but Fiona is trying to play us off against each other. No telling what rabbit she might pull out of her hat next.” He looked at Pete. “Besides, you seem to know more about her than the rest of us. These secrets she’s keeping that you’re hinting at—are they as much of a hairball as her marriage-and-kids plot? ’Cause while I trust everyone in this room, I’m not sure if you deserve trust, Pete, considering.”

  “He’s right,” Jonas said. “You seem to have information that could affect the rest of us.”

  “No,” Pete said, “I mean, I just know her too well. Fiona works constantly on our behalf. All I meant was that she…she keeps things to herself.” He was uncomfortable under his brothers’ laser scrutiny. There wasn’t a whole lot of trust being beamed at him.

  “Can you give us an example?” Creed asked. “I’m getting mighty pissed about all the secrecy surrounding what should be my life.”

  “I don’t know what all she keeps under her hat,” Pete said, becoming defensive and somewhat hostile himself. “The only thing I know for sure is that she and Burke are married. And that’s not such a big secret, is it?” Pete looked at all his brothers for confirmation that the bombshell he’d just dropped was, in fact, just a tiny one.

  Five faces glared at him.

  “Fiona is married to the butler, and you didn’t tell us?” Jonas demanded. “Are you insane? When did this happen? You don’t think this affects our futures?”

  “Not really,” Pete said, feeling his hackles rise. “They did it about a hundred years ago, for crying out loud. I found the marriage certificate when I was digging around in the cabinets in the basement.”

  “Holy crow,” Sam said, “you should’ve been a spy.”

  “You sorry sack of crap,” Creed said, “why’d you keep that under your hat?”

  Rafe looked shocked. Judah looked as though he might take a swing at something, chiefly Pete.

  “Look,” he said to Jonas, feeling that his eldest brother was the only one in the room who might defend him, “it was none of our business if she didn’t want us to know.”

  “I don’t know,” Creed muttered, “seems like you’ve appointed yourself the keeper of the family secrets.”

  “Not so much,” Pete said, “considering we’ve never known that much about our family anyway.”

  Chapter Five

  After a few moments of stunned silence, Jonas said, “We’ve done enough talking, at least in my opinion. We’re just getting mad, and we need to be focused on what to do about Fiona.”

  Obviously, any discussion of their family history was off the table. Pete was okay with that. He hadn’t wanted to talk about Fiona anyway. Or their troubled family tree. “Suits me, if anybody has a game plan.”

  “No,” Sam said, his voice quiet. “We can’t do anything until we talk to Fiona.”

  “No,” Pete said. “We can’t let her know that we’re on to her. She works so hard to wrangle us in the direction she thinks is right for us. And you know, a lot of times, that little aunt of ours has been right.”

  They digested that. Jonas poked at the fire again. Sparks erupted with a pop and a log crashed to the bottom of the grate. Judah squatted in front of the fireplace to toss in a couple of logs. Overhead a fan swirled in a lazy motion, keeping the air stirred. Family photos lined the mantel, mostly black-and-white memories of the brothers. Fiona loved to take pictures of them. She was good with a camera and had captured their growing-up years with skill. Under the sofa, a hand-worked rug by a Native American artisan warmed the stone floor. Other decor they’d picked up on jaunts into Santa Fe graced the large, beam-ceilinged room, mementoes of what Fiona called family getaways. She’d bought a van, the biggest one she could find, and all the boys and Burke would pile in while Fiona drove them all over the Southwest once a year. She’d been a great parent. Pete swallowed. He didn’t want her feelings hurt. “Look, let’s just forget about it, okay? None of us want to get married, not really. So it doesn’t matter.”

  “Yeah, so what happens to the ranch if something happens to Fiona?” Rafe asked. “She said she hasn’t been feeling well.”

  Jonas sat up. “I’ll check on her tomorrow.”

  “Rafe’s right.” Creed brought the coffeepot and a plate of cookies Fiona had left in the kitchen over to the table. “Anything could happen. We’re going to have to ask her.”

  “You ask her, Jonas,” Pete said.

  His older brother shook his head. “No. We’ll have a family meeting at the appropriate time.”

  “In the spring,” Pete said. “It doesn’t matter right now, does it? Christmas vacation doesn’t seem like the time to bring up family issues.”

  “It’s the third of January. Technically, vacation is over. And she started the discussion,” Sam reminded him. “She brought in the fortune-teller.”

  That was true. There was no defense Pete could offer. “I wish I hadn’t said anything.”

  “You know what I wonder,” Sam said, ignoring Pete’s doubts, “is where our parents really are.”

  All six brothers sat like stone statues, cookies left on the tray, seconds ticking loudly on the mantel clock. Pete felt hair stand up on the back of his neck as regret washed over him. He’d opened up a box of trouble with his tale of Fiona’s plot to make them family men. “Our parents are buried somewhere in a graveyard, Sam.”

  Jonas looked at Sam. Sam stared back at Jonas.

  “Go ahead. Say it,” Sam said. “I know what you’re thinking.”

  Jonas jumped to his feet, paced the room. Turned away from the brothers. Scrubbed at his chin, took a deep breath. Pete wondered what the hell was going on. He felt deep waters eddying around them and hoped they weren’t all going to drown. Something was going terribly wrong in the family—and it had to do with Rancho Diablo.

  “I’m not so sure our parents are buried anywhere,” Jonas said, as he turned back around. “We’ve never seen their graves.”

  Judah blinked. “Did we ever ask?”

  Pete shook his head. “I didn’t. Why would Fiona tell us they’d died if they hadn’t? Why did she and Burke come from Ireland to raise us if they weren’t gone?” A bad feeling wrapped itself around Pete, a question that had always been at the back of his mind but which he’d ignored. Wanted to ignore still.

  “What Jonas isn’t saying,” Sam said, “is that I came later. And he remembers it.”

  They all looked from Jonas to Sam. Pete felt a snake of worry start in the pit of his stomach, pulling tight.

  “So that’s why he thinks our parents might not be deceased,” Sam said. “And that’s why he’s suspicious about Fiona cooking up a plan to have us compete for the ranch.” Sam looked at Jonas. “Right? That’s why you really followed Madame Vivant?”

/>   Pete crossed to the window, staring into the darkness, feeling the cold pane against his forehead. Nothing good was going to come of this night, and he wished he’d kept his big mouth shut. He and his brothers had always been close but reserved, keeping to themselves a lot.

  He felt further apart from his brothers than ever.

  There was a cauldron of family secrets stewing away—they all kept them. It protected them somehow from the underlying sense of not-quite-normal that surrounded the ranch. He glanced up at the moon—a fat, round harbinger of time. No one had yet mentioned the old Navajo who arrived like clockwork every year on the night before Christmas. He and Fiona went to the basement and stayed for an hour, and they had no idea why. Burke always sat with the brothers in the library, keeping them busy with conversation and cookies when they were young, and later with whiskey and a list of items he said needed to be conquered at the ranch. They’d always thought of this as their yearly Burke business meeting, their chance to help out Fiona and Burke with the running of the ranch. Now Pete realized Burke had merely been keeping them busy, away from the real business which was being conducted underneath the house.

  Something was going on, something that had to do with Fiona’s sudden desire that they settle down. Pete thought about Jackie, wondered what she was doing, debated whether she’d mind a late Saturday-night visitor, even though she’d just sent him away.

  He felt certain she hadn’t changed her mind in the few hours since he’d left her place. Probably she hadn’t, but as the snow swirled outside and his brothers mused about Callahan family problems, Pete made a break for freedom.

  “I’m going out,” he said, jamming his hat on his head and buckling up a long oilskin coat.

  “Bad night for it,” Sam warned. “Could be snow drifts as high as your ass.”

  “It’s okay,” Pete said, “I’m already in up to my ass. Can’t get any worse.”

  He hurried to the barn, checked the horses and saddled Bleu, a huge black stallion suited to riding over snow and ice. Didn’t panic easily. Kind of like Pete, who hated dark emotion and stress—he wanted nothing more at this moment than to get away from a rising sense of panic he couldn’t explain.

  HE TAPPED ON JACKIE’S front door after noting that her car was parked alongside the house. Dangerous, thanks to the snow. He’d advise her to put it away, or do it for her if she wanted.

  She came to the door, her expression curious and not necessarily pleased. “Pete! What are you doing here?”

  He wished he’d ignored his urge to see her at all costs—he felt unwelcome, worse than he had back at the bunkhouse with his brothers.

  “Come in,” she said. “Tie Bleu under the eaves.”

  Usually she said, Put Bleu in the barn, so there wasn’t a chance he was being asked to resume their comfortable Saturday-night routine. Bleu had been tied under the eaves before and he’d be fine, but it was going to be a quick visit, in this cold weather. “I won’t be long,” he muttered to Bleu, “so don’t give me that face.”

  The horse blew out his disdain for being treated like a common yard ornament. “Sorry,” Pete told him, “this is important.”

  He went inside, staying at the front door on the pretty floral rug. “You’re all dressed up,” he said, surprised that she wasn’t in her nightgown at this hour. Old routine, he reminded himself. Back when we were us. The black dress and boots she wore made him realize how much he was going to miss her in his life.

  Well, it didn’t take a dress and boots for Jackie to be hot, but he realized how many times he’d taken her out on a date. Zero.

  “What can I do for you, Pete?”

  He gazed into her dark-chocolate eyes, feeling as if he were drowning. Say you didn’t mean to send me out of your life. That it was all a mistake.

  “I’m not sure. I just wanted to see you.” That sounded so lame he frowned. “Wanted to check on you.”

  That didn’t sound any better. Jackie shook her head. “I’m fine, as you can see.”

  Great. Here he stood, a giant useless doofus, taking up her time when she clearly had some place to go. “Jackie—”

  “I’m sorry, Pete.” She did look regretful, which helped somewhat. “I have an appointment. You caught me just as I was leaving.”

  An appointment at eight o’clock at night? That was a polite way of saying she had a date. There was nothing else Jackie could be doing looking as hot as she did.

  Pete had no idea how their steady relationship had jumped the tracks as it had.

  “Okay. Thanks.” He drank in her heart-shaped face, the slight confusion that lifted her dark brows. She really didn’t understand why he’d come. Didn’t feel the same things he did. “Good night, Jackie.”

  “Good night, Pete.”

  She watched him go out the door and untie Bleu. He swung up into the saddle, glancing back at her. She stood under the porch light, her arms wrapped around herself, the way his arms wanted to be. Needed to be.

  He felt too helpless to do more than wave a hand at her to say goodbye. The gesture felt more like surrender. She waved back, and he rode away, which also felt like surrender.

  JACKIE WATCHED PETE disappear into the night, Bleu anxious to be off again as Pete gave him free rein. She closed the door, her heart heavy. Maybe she wasn’t making the right decision. Pete had been her guy for so long it was hard to think about him never holding her in his arms again.

  “Change is necessary,” she reminded herself. “We weren’t going anywhere.”

  A knock on the front door filled her heart with a sense of hope that shouldn’t be there—but it was. “Pete?” she said, opening the door.

  A woman stood on her porch. She looked cold, her reddish hair shining under the porch light, her nose pink from the harsh conditions.

  “Can I help you?” Jackie asked, now wishing she hadn’t answered the knock.

  “I’m sorry to bother you this late,” her visitor said. Her green eyes expressed true remorse at the intrusion. Jackie held her breath as a strange chill passed over her. “This is awkward,” her guest continued, “but Fiona Callahan sent me.”

  Jackie blinked. “Why?”

  “She said you might want to talk to me.” The woman shrugged delicate shoulders that were covered by a black wool poncho. “My name is Sabrina McKinley. I’m a fortune-teller with the circus that just came through town.”

  “You don’t really tell fortunes?”

  “I tell people what they want to hear.”

  Why would Fiona send a charlatan to her? “I don’t need to hear anything. But thank you for stopping by.”

  She started to close the door, hesitating when Sabrina spoke.

  “Children are a blessing,” Sabrina said. “You have been blessed three times.”

  I don’t want to hear this. This woman knows nothing about my life. “I’m sorry,” Jackie said. “I don’t mean to be rude, but I have an appointment, and—”

  “It’s all right,” Sabrina said. “Can you tell me how to get to Bode Jenkins’s house?”

  “Bode Jenkins?” Jackie took a more thorough look at her visitor. “Why do you want to go there, if you don’t mind me asking?”

  “Fiona thinks he might need to talk.” Sabrina shrugged, the poncho moving gracefully as she did.

  Bode didn’t talk to anyone, not much anyway. He’d eat this tiny woman alive for showing up on his porch. Yet, it wasn’t her place to interfere. “Can I ask you a question?”

  Sabrina smiled. “People usually do.”

  “Oh. Right. No, I meant…did you tell something to Fiona?”

  “Client confidentiality,” Sabrina said. “I’m sure you understand.”

  “Absolutely.” Jackie didn’t. On the other hand, she wouldn’t want this woman talking about whatever she knew about her.

  Oh, baloney. This lady knows nothing about me. It’s all hogwash.

  Sabrina stepped away from the door. “It was nice meeting you.”

  Jackie stared after her as she
went down the porch steps and crunched off in the snow, leaving tracks with her small boots. Why was Fiona mixed up with a gypsy?

  “I—” Jackie told herself not to get involved. Yet a visitor could get lost around here when she didn’t know her way, especially with snow obscuring everything. She was going to be totally late to Darla’s, but did it matter? Talking about the wedding business could wait thirty more minutes. “If you follow me, I’ll take you by the entrance to the Jenkins’s ranch.”

  “Thanks.” Sabrina smiled. “The new business is a great idea, by the way. You should always follow your heart.”

  Once again, chills ran over Jackie that weren’t weather-related. She decided to ignore Sabrina’s words—maybe Darla had mentioned it to Fiona, who’d told Sabrina—but at the same time, she couldn’t help but feel that the wind was blowing just a bit colder. She hurried to the car. “I’ll drive slowly, so you don’t lose sight of my taillights.”

  Nodding, Sabrina got into her truck. It was an old one, a white Ford that had seen better days. Jackie shook her head and started her own car—and felt the strangest jump in her stomach. A flutter, like a butterfly moving across her abdomen.

  She glanced out at the horizon, and her breath caught. Black horses ran across the horizon, tails and manes flying. It was beautiful and mystical, and Jackie suddenly thought about the black Diablos. But it couldn’t be them. She was a good twenty miles away from Pete’s ranch. And though Pete swore they were real, everyone else thought they were a myth dreamed up by the crazy Callahans. Fey Fiona and her Irish tales.

  The wild hoofbeats she was hearing were nothing more than her own blood pounding in her ears.

  Chapter Six

  “She kind of wigged me out.” Jackie glanced at Darla thirty minutes later as she sat in her friend’s living room sipping hot tea. Their business papers were spread out on the table in front of her, but Jackie couldn’t stop thinking about Sabrina McKinley. “I’ve never talked to a fortune-teller before. I don’t know why it spooked me.”

  “I wonder at Fiona for sending her to your house,” Darla said. “No matter. You got her to Bode’s, and I feel bad enough for her having to pay a call on that troll.”