The Cowboy SEAL's Triplets

by Tina Leonard

  “I’m going to marry Daisy.”

  “I know you are.” Cosette looked surprised. “I told you before, you don’t need me for that.”

  “But Daisy wants a wedding that you’ve dredged up from the mysteries of your eccentric little BC-beating heart.”

  She pursed her lips, disgusted. “Is that any way to talk to a matchmaker?”

  “I’m too desperate to mind the niceties. Cosette, you’ve got to fire up your skills one last time. Daisy needs you. I need you.”

  She looked doubtful. “It has to come from you.” She tapped his chest, and John felt light-headed. Then stronger. Cosette gazed at him closely. “Everything you need is right here. It always was. Even when your parents took you from town to town, you were learning the things you needed to know. What did living on the road teach you?”

  “To appreciate constancy. And variety. And people. Most of all, people. Everywhere we went, I met the most amazing people. I’ve met jugglers, puppeteers, ventriloquists, men who could fiddle like mad and women who could raise hell and a family at the same time.”

  “So, everything you see in Daisy.”

  “I hadn’t thought of that, but yeah. She’s amazing.”

  “So the answer will come to you. You can’t rush the answer. Inspiration is the magic.”

  She floated out the door and John escorted her to her car. “Thanks for coming by. I know it means a lot to Daisy. And me.”

  “I know. It will all work out.” She drove off, and John went to find Daisy.

  Daisy waved him over. “See—my first victim is Carson. I’ve got just the woman for him.”

  John eyed the hat, which still contained several slips of paper. “Are those victim names on those papers?”

  “Don’t ask. Matchmaking secrets.” Daisy pointed to her list again. “Once I get Carson married, I move on to Gabriel.”

  He cleared his throat. “As much as I’d like to see your gang settled, I thought you’d be busy planning a nursery? Picking out baby names?”

  “We’ll do that together. Where’d you go earlier today, anyway?”

  There was no reason to tell. He didn’t know exactly what he was looking for. Cosette had him worried, though. “I just checked on some things.”

  “You seem bothered about something.”

  “I’m not. I’m fine.” He sat on the edge of the sofa, picked up her hand. “That’s not exactly true. I’m worried about you. I wish you’d rest.”

  “I have plenty of time to rest.”

  “But this project,” he said, pointing to all the materials on the table.

  “Is nothing for you to concern yourself with.” She blew him a kiss. “If you don’t stop worrying and get close enough for me to really kiss, that’s all you’re going to get, I’m afraid.”

  That was an invitation he wasn’t about to pass up. He got as close to Daisy as he could, loving the feel of her lips against his as she smooched him a good one. “I love you, Daisy. I hope you know how much.”

  “I love you, too.”

  He smiled, then realized she wasn’t smiling back. “What?”

  “I’m just worried that you’re going to be bored here after a while. That you’ll miss the lure of the open road.”

  “What about you? I don’t imagine your motorcycle stays parked forever.”

  She laughed. “Have you thought about how we’re going to handle getting the children around?”

  He looked at her. “Side cars?”

  “No.” She laughed again.

  “Not their own motorcycles.” The thought was pretty dazzling with its own worrying consequences. He could see the next generation of Daisy’s gang growing up, his sons on their own tiny motorbikes, following their mother into town. John gulped. “I can’t think about that.”

  “I meant a van,” Daisy said. “We’re going to need to think about buying a van.”

  “Oh.” He relaxed a little. “I hadn’t thought that far ahead.”

  “We could have Dad send the limo to get us home from the hospital after the babies are born, but—”

  “I’ll get a van.” John looked at her. “Daisy, that’s a bigger issue we need to discuss. Eventually, we have to move you out of the family compound.”

  “Dad owns property everywhere. We’ll find something.”

  “No.” He kissed her hand. “I mean, we’ll need to move into something that I own.”

  “Would you want to own a home?”

  “What do you mean?” She didn’t reply, and it hit him what she was asking. “You think I’m going to pack the boys up and hit the road with them? Buy a family trailer and travel Mathison style?”

  “It’s not a wholly unappealing life,” Daisy said.

  “But not for you.”

  “Not for me,” she said carefully. “I hope you understand.”

  “It’s not for me, either.” John hesitated. “Of course every young boy wants to rodeo, Daze.”

  “What if these don’t?”

  He shrugged. “They at least have to learn how to ride horses.”

  She nodded. “So we’re getting our own place?”

  “I think we have to.”

  “Is that a completely horrible thought?”

  He shook his head. “Has it ever occurred to you that, of the two of us, you’re much more likely to miss life on the road than I am?”

  “I want you to be happy. Not stuck.”

  “With you, you mean.” He gazed at her. “Daisy, I don’t feel stuck at all. Do you?”

  “Stuck? My parents were sort of stuck with each other. Strangely, I don’t feel stuck. I feel like I should have swum faster in that second race and beaten Suz Hawthorne. I could have, you know.”

  He perked up. “Yeah. You could have. And I was a helluva prize.”

  “I just didn’t see that like I should have.”

  “It’s okay.” He touched the Saint Michael medallion at his neck. Suddenly, he felt a sense of destiny wash over him. “Everything always works out for the best.”

  Even in a small town with its own mystical secrets.

  Chapter Thirteen

  The first chance he could get to sneak off from Daisy’s watchful gaze, John headed back to the cave. He’d missed something there, he was sure of that. And Cosette’s hints weren’t making him feel any better about it.

  His fiancée was being altogether too easygoing, even going so far as to claim she didn’t mind moving out of the enormous Donovan compound. It seemed the only thing John had to do was find them their own home, and buy a van, and life would be good for him and Daisy and their children—once they convinced Cosette that she still had her hot streak. Which wasn’t proving simple. But the answer supposedly was here, in this secret cavern.

  He glanced around, amazed by the shiny, sparkling crystals in the walls, and the beautiful iron sconces to hold candles. There was rough seating, and even a table in the center, where Jane and Cosette had once shown him some of the BC secrets.

  Jane appeared like a ghost, almost as soon as he thought about her. “Why are you here again? I thought when I rescued you here the other night, we agreed you wouldn’t come down here again alone.”

  Her mouth turned down. “Young man, I’ve been coming to this cave longer than you’ve been alive. I only agreed to that silly proposition of yours to make you relax. You’ve been quite tense lately. New fatherhood appears to be taking its toll.”

  “Not new fatherhood.” He pondered that for a moment. “I can’t get my girl to the altar. That’s got me tense.”

  “It’ll work out. I have faith in you.” Jane beetled off to the table. “I might ask why you’re here.”

  “I don’t know why.” He looked around. “Something keeps drawing me here. But it’s just a cav
e, isn’t it? And I suppose you three held your secret meetings here, you and Cosette and the sheriff, and created some kind of BC lore to keep the locals all stirred up.”

  Jane laughed. “Maybe. Maybe not.”

  Sometimes he wondered if this whole BC thing was just an elaborate gag to keep everybody in line. He wouldn’t put it past the sheriff and these two ladies, and even Phillipe, to pull the town pillars routine just to keep matters serene. To keep the town in its time warp of harmony and fund-raising efforts, which the Bridesmaids Creek swim and the Best Man’s Fork were: elaborate fund-raising efforts.

  He sat on a rock carved out to make a nice chair, and watched Jane messing around in the box she’d pulled from the center of the table. Jane didn’t look like she was in the grip of trying to orchestrate a huge ruse on the town. Her face was set in serious lines, her movements efficient. He watched her more closely, the way he’d once watched for enemy combatants.

  Whatever was in that box had her complete attention.

  “The town would go broke without the Bridesmaids Creek swim and the Best Man’s Fork run, wouldn’t it?” he asked, suddenly struck by intuition.

  “Most assuredly. Haven’t you noticed how small towns are dying off in this economy? And if not the economy, then time marches on. Large land parcels get eaten up by big conglomerates. We barely dodged Robert’s plans for this town. But we managed to pull the pin out of his grenade.”

  This grabbed his curiosity. “How did you manage that?”

  Jane smiled. “Daisy, of course. We always knew she was the key to our success. You have to understand Daisy is a daddy’s girl. All Robert needed was to understand how much it would mean to his daughter to have the right kind of man in her life. That man was you. And everything changed.”

  John wondered if he’d ever heard more malarkey in his life. “You didn’t know I’d be in the picture.”

  “That’s right. But when you came into the picture, and you were crazy about Daisy, we saw that with a little time, everything would work out for our wonderful, quaint town.”

  “There was no way to know that she would ever agree to marry me.”

  “Cosette said you were the dark horse to bet on.” Jane extracted a small ledger from inside the box. She leafed through some pages. “Yes. Exactly three years ago, Cosette wrote that the man who would rescue Bridesmaids Creek had arrived.”

  John came to look at the ledger, peering over her shoulder. “You’re not making this up. It’s right there,” he said, eyeing Cosette’s small, neat handwriting.

  “Indeed I’m not!” She glared at him. “What in the world would make you think I’d fabricate a yarn like that?”

  “I don’t know. I thought you and Cosette and the sheriff, and even Phillipe, made everything up to keep people in line. Make them hop when you want them to hop.”

  Jane gasped. “Are you saying that you think we’re fantastic storytellers? Just making this up as we go along?”

  “Aren’t you?”

  She gave him a light whap with the ledger. “Ye of little faith. You’re sitting in a secret cave that we’ve allowed no one else to learn of, and you have to ask?”

  “You let me into the club because I’m the—”

  “Yes, yes,” Jane said impatiently, “you’re the man who’s going to save Bridesmaids Creek.”

  He liked the sound of that, especially if it meant he’d finally get Daisy to an altar, but something was off in the story. “Save it from what, exactly?”

  Her eyes went wide. “Why, save it from itself, of course. Extinction.”

  “I thought Robert Donovan was the enemy, once upon a time.”

  “Does he act like an enemy now?”

  “No. He’d like to help as much as anyone.”

  “All right, then. Now you know.”

  He wasn’t sure what he knew. “I know that BC is a wonderful place to raise a family.”

  “Yes.” She put the ledger back in its box and slid it into the table. “What else do you know, Einstein?”

  He looked into her eyes. “That you’re handing the wands over to Daisy and me. That we, and our friends you’ve recently dispatched to the altar, are the future.”

  “Now you’re getting somewhere.”

  That was the key. The town had to stay young, in order to grow. Stay vibrant. Daisy and he would take over important roles, and their children would grow up steeped in the lore. “But how do I get her to finally say I do? She’s all worried about Cosette getting her magic back. So worried she won’t get married until Cosette feels like she’s had a hand in running it.”

  “Do you expect Daisy not to want the magic for herself?” Jane looked at him steadily.

  “No. She wants everything BC that every other bride has had.”

  “Can you blame her?”

  He shook his head.

  “Then my suggestion is you give her that very thing. And then you’ll have Daisy Donovan, and everything will be all right.”

  Jane marched to the front of the cave. He followed, thinking to walk her to her vehicle, but she was nowhere to be seen. She’d just vanished, like some kind of spirit.

  A delicate spirit with plenty of sass.

  He thought for a moment, then walked back inside the cave and pulled out the ledger to look at it for himself.

  It is early morning here in Bridesmaids Creek. There isn’t much but dusty, barren fields. We rode here by wagon, and my family back home said they can’t see why we’d choose this place to settle.

  —Eliza Chatham

  John flipped to the front of the ledger to look at the hand-drawn family tree. Eliza Chatham’s name was at the top, the first resident of Bridesmaids Creek, and Jane’s great-great-great-grandmother. John saw that there had been a Hiram Chatham, but whatever had happened to him had been rubbed out. Or had faded. Hiram wasn’t on the same line with Eliza; she was accorded the top spot. Beside her name was written Founder of Bridesmaids Creek.

  John flipped through some deeds that had been filed, all in Eliza’s name. There were pages and pages of notations, each filled out in neat handwriting. He took the ledger over to the light to settle in for a good read. Then the ledger shut tight, snapping closed with a click. He tried to open it again, but it was sealed, somehow stuck fast.

  He went back to the table, to the seat where Jane had been sitting, taking the closed ledger with him. It stayed clam-like and stubborn, and though John would have once thought that was impossible, now he knew that Bridesmaids Creek simply wasn’t ready to give up all its secrets to an outsider.

  Not yet. He wasn’t one of them, even if he’d been handpicked to become an unmatchmaker, whatever that was. A newer version of dusty, history-loving Phillipe.

  Maybe he wasn’t cut out for this type of steadfast responsibility. Taking on this role would mean he’d be forever tied to one place, a keeper of a town flame.

  The worry passed as fast as it had come, extinguished by the sudden vision of Daisy and his future children that popped into his head. He smiled, loving the picture. Maybe Daisy was right: maybe he hadn’t seen himself spending his life exactly tied to one location, one way of life.

  But he could see himself bound to Daisy, and the binding would feel wonderful every day of his life.

  First he had to get the magic to accept him. Allow him to take Phillipe’s place.

  “No doubt the only way to do that is to marry Daisy, since this is a wedding-happy town.”

  The ledger stayed locked in his hands, resisting him. John realized he’d been expecting it to fall open, once he uttered the magic verbal key. There was something else he was missing, but whatever that was, it seemed determined to elude him.

  Daisy was eluding him, too.

  He put the ledger securely back into its hiding place and went to find the most beauti
ful, motorcycle-riding mother of his children a man could ever hope to have.

  And he did hope to have her. Soon.

  * * *

  IF THERE WAS something magic about Bridesmaids Creek, it appeared that John wasn’t going to experience it. He spent the next two months assisting the town with rebuilding the jail, and helping put Cosette’s shop—actually Daisy’s gang’s dating-service cigar-bar thing—back together, and still John didn’t have the epiphany he knew he needed. Daisy was much bigger now, staying very still when he was around, though he knew that was largely for his benefit. When he wasn’t with her, he could guess that she kept the mansion pretty active, like a beehive. She hadn’t changed a bit from the woman he’d chased up to Montana, and that was one of the things he loved most about her.

  She had her gang coming by, and Cosette, and sometimes the sheriff. Cosette had found time to knit baby booties, three pairs of blue ones that were so small they could probably only fit on a doll. Reality smacked John in the face as he realized his boys were going to start out very tiny, and he went a bit weak in the knees.

  He went home to see Daisy, tell her that magic or no, it was time.

  “Marry me,” he said as she lay on the sofa.

  She smiled at him. “I thought you’d never ask.”

  He stopped. “Just like that?”

  “Of course just like that. If you’ve finally made up your mind—”

  “Hey!” He went to sit next to her, looking at the burgeoning mound that was his fiancée’s stomach. “My mind has been made up for years. Years.”

  They sat together for a few minutes, and he stroked her hair. “How are you feeling?”

  “The nurse came by today to check my contractions. Tomorrow I go on some kind of drip.”

  He sat straight up. “Is there a problem?”

  “No. Not really. The drip will help the babies stay inside a little while longer. Longer is better.”

  He took that under advisement. “I guess you shouldn’t have a whole lot of excitement.”

  She giggled. “What did you have in mind? Dad and Barclay are out looking over a property, and I could—”