Might as well get it over with. She forced herself to step over the threshold, found a duffel bag in the floor of his closet, was surprised to find a pair of sneakers lined up next to what must be his dress boots. She tossed them into the duffel, knowing that boots might be beyond him for a while. Besides, his work boots—the ones he wore all the time—must've been on him when he crashed. He probably had them in the duffel he'd carried out from the hospital.
She rushed through pulling clothes out of his drawers, knowing he must hate that she would see his underthings. Everything was neatly folded and in its place. Even the socks were separated by color, white on one side and dark on the other.
It made her smile through her discomfort.
There was a small dish on top of the dresser. A glance in it revealed spare change and other odds-and-ends. Was there anything here he needed?
Something glinted.
Curious, Iris pushed aside the coins and picked up...the sterling silver cross pendant she'd give him for his nineteenth birthday. He'd kept it?
Old grief swamped her.
And then, lying face-down on the dresser was a framed picture. She picked it up and found a photo of a woman with a fall of straight, honey-colored hair. This must be the boys' mother.
Sharp hurt choked her, and she set the frame back where she'd found it and backed away.
It was a cold reminder that he'd lived his life without her. Logically, she knew it was true. He had kids, for goodness sake.
But...she'd meant the promises she'd made to him. She'd meant it when she'd said she loved him.
She couldn't do this to herself.
She pushed into the bathroom and swept everything off the counter into the open bag. Toothbrush, razor, she didn't even see. He could make do.
She rushed back through the house in a daze, only pausing to lock up the front door.
Her hand was shaking as she dragged the key from the lock. She had to get ahold of herself. She'd told Callum she was helping him out of friendship. What would he think if he picked up on her emotions? That she wasn't over him.
And she was beginning to think that maybe, he'd be right.
She'd managed to hide her emotions through Jilly's bad days, the days she worried her sister's body wouldn't hold out through the treatments. She could do it again. She raised her head and pasted on a smile like nothing was wrong.
And if she kept her face toward the front, so that Callum couldn't see the sheen of tears in her eyes, she might survive.
5
The next morning was Sunday, and Callum had forced his aching body up to attend church.
Iris drove the stupid minivan again, this time with Jilly beside her in the passenger seat, requiring him to have his casted foot on the floor between them.
He felt almost sacrilegious in a pair of gym pants and a polo shirt, but it was all he could get over his cast, and then only because he'd unsnapped one pant leg at the bottom.
He'd slept poorly after an evening at the ranch that rivaled the hospital in interruptions. After being up for only a little while in the car and then getting settled in his bedroom, he'd been exhausted and wanted to sleep. It had been a relief to be secluded in Joe's old downstairs office. But the boys were worse than nurses, coming in every hour to check on him.
Brandt had brought his favorite teddy to share. Levi and Tyler had sung a get well song, composed of mostly gibberish, until Iris came and gathered them up.
These past three nights had been the first time—since that day—that he'd been away from the boys at nighttime. He hadn't even been able to marshal the energy to tuck them in last night.
So he'd dragged his sorry butt out of bed this morning and clomped to the minivan on crutches, surprising Iris and her sister. Jilly had treated him to chilly silence so far.
The boys had chattered nonstop, oblivious to adult tensions.
"Daddy, will they sing 'Jesus Love Me'?" Tyler's quiet question cut through the noise inside Callum's head.
"I don't know." He reached over to ruffle his son's hair. Tyler sat in the bucket seat next to him, while the two other boys were in the back seat.
"My favorite song is 'This Little Light of Mine'," Brandt chirped from the back.
Callum shifted his leg as his discomfort grew.
"Mine is 'O Holy Night'," Iris added from the driver's seat, not taking her eyes off the road.
"Isn't that a Christmas song?" he murmured.
From the rearview mirror he saw her wrinkle her nose at him in an expression so familiar his eyes stung.
"What about you, Levi?" Iris asked. "What's your favorite?"
Callum's eyes slid back to Iris. Had it been a good guess on her part as to which one of the boys hadn't spoken? Most people couldn't tell them apart.
She'd spent two days with them, but still...
"'Trust and Obey'." Levi bounced in his seat, so excited at being included that he kicked Callum's seat.
Iris did it again after she'd parked the car and was helping unload the boys. She'd somehow known that Brandt would be the one to leap out of the car, and she'd caught him midair and kept him from scuffing the knees of his jeans on the pavement.
"You okay?" Jilly asked when Iris straightened with a hand at the small of her back.
Iris nodded, not looking in his direction, but he thought he could see small pain lines radiating from the corners of her eyes. What was that about?
And when Brandt and Levi raced ahead into the sanctuary bustling with voices and crowded with people, she took Tyler's hand, leaving Callum hobbling behind on his crutches.
It was as if she already knew his boys.
And it bothered him.
He wrangled his way through the crowd, surviving a near-miss with a small girl careening through the crowd, keeping Iris's head in sight and hoping she was keeping up with his kids.
When he joined their pew, he found she'd saved him the edge, and he settled his cast on the outside. Pain vibrated through him in waves, but he gritted his teeth against it.
She and Jilly had bookended the boys, who sat with legs swinging, heads twisting in all directions as they took in the crowd and the sanctuary.
He fought the desire to duck his head. He had every right to be here.
Iris slapped a bulletin-slash-order-of-worship against his good knee, and he moved reflexively to catch it before it fell to the floor. Looked like worship was the same as he remembered from his childhood. The kids would join with the adults until the sermon, when they would be dismissed for Bible class. Good. The boys could last twenty or thirty minutes, but an hour or more sitting still was beyond them.
He shifted as unobtrusively as he could, but apparently not enough.
"You should've stayed home and rested," she hissed as the worship leader called them to stand. Her shoulder brushed his and sent a zing through him as she took to her feet.
Brandt tried to stand on the pew, but Iris gently settled him on the floor.
She was good with the boys. It wasn't a surprise. Jilly had been older, but whenever they'd interacted with children in the past, they'd flocked to Iris.
Not that it mattered. He was in her life for a couple of weeks, then he'd be on the road with the harvest crew. Hopefully with a nanny on board so the boys could come along with him.
Iris's sweet soprano lifted, stirring to life memories he didn't want to face.
She and Joe had roped him into attending with them, back when he and Iris had first started their friendship. He'd gotten plenty of stares from the starched worshipers at first, the boy from the wrong side of town, trying to be one of them.
He'd never been one of them, but he wanted their acceptance for his boys. And some of these people might be his clients. He needed to make friends.
So after the closing song, he stood and greeted those around him, shaking hands. He was surprised at the smiles and welcome he received. Maybe this wouldn't be as difficult as he'd thought.
* * *
Late that nig
ht, the pain was bad, and Callum readjusted in the recliner Iris had lugged into Joe's old office in the front corner of the house. The room was roughly the size of his ten-by-ten bedroom in the double-wide, with all of Joe's years of junk and paperwork from the ranch still here.
Windows in the corner looked out over the prairie and must've been the reason Joe had built the place like this all those years ago. Starlight shone down on the fields out there. The site, coming back to his roots, probably should have comforted Callum. It didn't.
With his head spinning and sleep avoiding him, he couldn't seem to keep his thoughts off Iris. She had been too quiet. She'd chatted with the boys and quizzed Jilly over some doctor's appointment during dinner. She'd been polite but distant to him.
The girl he remembered had never shut up.
He knew he'd hurt her. He was a little—a lot—surprised that she hadn't mentioned Champ or that night. Was it possible her dad had never ratted him out for his part in the horse's death?
And if that were so, was there really a chance of salvaging a friendship?
With how he'd left things, he didn't deserve her friendship. He had one goal: get his leg healed and move on with his life, with his boys. Make the life they deserved.
That's what he had to focus on. Not the mess he'd made of everything with Iris or the smallest grain of hope that had lit inside him when she'd appeared outside the window of his truck.
He'd finally found a position with his leg propped up that was remotely comfortable and had just drifted off from the cyclone of his thoughts when he heard a cry from upstairs.
Brandt.
For all his son's lively and outspoken behavior, of the three, it was usually he who woke up with night terrors.
In a strange house, Brandt would need comfort before he could go back to sleep.
A second cry rang out.
Callum got his good leg out of the chair and stood, struggling to get the crutches under his arms while his broken leg screamed in agony. He stumbled to the doorway, crashing his shoulder into the frame.
The house was dark with only a vague blue glow emanating from the kitchen. A shadow moved in the living room, then separated from the couch.
"I'll go to them," the shadow said. Iris.
Why was she sleeping down here?
Thoughts of the triplets taking her room—he hadn't asked and she hadn't said—swam in his head, but the boys' cries pushed those thoughts out.
She rushed into the hall, and he heard the tread of her footsteps climbing the stairs as he maneuvered with difficulty in that same direction.
He heard her soft voice, but the boys' cries didn't stop.
They needed their daddy. He was all they had.
He struggled toward the hall and the stairs, knocking his crutches against a couple of pieces of furniture on the way, tweaking his ankle. He stifled the cry by locking down on his molars.
He paused at the foot of the dark, narrow staircase. Was he really going to do this?
Over his loud, labored breathing and the cries of the boys, he heard a new sound. A soft, female voice. Singing.
Iris was singing to his boys.
He couldn't make out the words, but that didn't stop his heart from pounding hard against his sternum.
He lifted his good foot onto the first step and dragged the crutches with him. They pressed hard into his armpits, but he kept on.
The boys weren't calmed by Iris's singing. If anything, they got louder. He gritted his teeth and tried to move faster.
It took three times as long as it normally would for him to climb the staircase. At the top he leaned his shoulder into the wall, breathing as hard as if he'd run several miles in his cowboy boots.
Soft light came from a half-open doorway in the center of the hallway. This part of the house was unfamiliar to him. He'd never been up here when Iris had been a teenager. He leaned forward and pushed himself toward the light.
She must've heard him coming, because her head turned toward him before he had a chance to say anything at all.
He swallowed hard. She wore a t-shirt and shorts and perched on the edge of the bed, one hand on each of Brandt and Tyler's heads. Levi was tangled in the blankets in the center of the two. Her eyes were soft with sleep. "You shouldn't be up here."
"I shouldn't be anywhere else," he argued quietly.
In the mellow light from a bedside lamp, he could see the boys' tearstained cheeks.
"Look, boys."
"Daddy's here," he murmured. Their cries began to quiet.
But much as he wanted to, he couldn't reach for them. His fingers flexed on the grips of the crutches. He maneuvered into the room, nearly tripping over a stuffed animal that had been left on the floor and falling face-first. Luckily, after wobbling dangerously, he caught himself and managed to stay upright.
He sat on the bed, the boys scooted over, and when he used both hands to bring his leg onto the bed, he found some relief. The tightness in his chest eased some, and he took a deep breath.
He got Tyler up close, almost buried in his armpit, and Brandt snuggled in next to his brother, both of them under Callum's arm. Levi rested with his chin on Callum's chest. They were all right where they belonged.
Iris hovered at the end of the bed.
* * *
Iris stood with her heart in her throat, watching the tough, independent cowboy snuggling with his little cowpokes.
"Your daddy needs to go to bed," she told the boys. She was sure the doctor hadn't meant stay off your feet as climbing a flight of stairs three days after surgery.
Levi shook his head vehemently. "No! Daddy, tell a story."
Callum sent her a quelling glance. "I'll sleep up here tonight."
Brandt hummed, snuggling closer to his dad.
"I'm firsty," Tyler whispered.
Her gaze met Callum's over Levi's head. A slight smile crinkled the corners of his eyes, and she was helpless to keep her heart from reacting.
"Daddy!" Levi's demand broke the spell between them.
Callum cleared his throat and ducked his head to lean his cheek on the boy's head. "Which story do you want to hear?"
"Bad wolf."
"I'll get a glass of water."
Callum's voice carried quietly as she left the room. "Once upon a time..."
The glaring lights in the bathroom made her blink hard. Jilly kept some disposable cups in the drawer, and Iris pulled one out. Her hands were shaking as she turned on the tap.
Meeting Callum's eyes...they'd connected. It hadn't been for long, but it had been almost tangible.
And it scared her. She couldn't afford to open her heart again, not with her emotions already raw. Watching Jilly's body waste away was killing her. Not only was she a major emotional support for her sister, but she had to deal with her own fears and worries. She'd lost her mother to breast cancer. She couldn't lose Jilly.
She took a deep breath, telling herself silently in the mirror to be calm and maintain her distance.
It wasn't so easy when, just a moment later, Tyler leaned close as she sat on the edge of the bed, his head lolling against her sternum. She couldn't help but let her fingers feather through his curly hair as he sipped the water. Her heart thudded loudly as he drowsed.
It didn't take long for all three boys to succumb to sleep. She carefully laid Tyler out flat, tucking the blanket around him.
"You need anything?" she whispered.
Callum only shook his head. His face was in shadow, outside the rectangle of light cast by the window, and she couldn't make out his features.
"I'm sorry I couldn't get them calmed down."
"I wasn't resting real well to begin with."
"Are you in pain? Do you need some more meds?"
She heard his soft sigh and imagined the muscle in his jaw ticking away. "I'm all right. You should go back to bed."
She would in a minute. But first... "Can I ask you something?"
He didn't answer, but she rushed on anyway. "What were
they like as babies?"
Callum exhaled again, and this time when he spoke, she heard the muted smile in his voice. "Smaller."
She huffed a whispery laugh. "I figured that part out."
"Brandt started rolling over when he was four months old, and Levi was quick to follow suit. After they got going, there was no stopping them. I'd turn away for a few seconds to answer the phone or something, and one of them would be halfway across the floor. They were into everything. And Tyler would just sit and watch."
She could see traits from Callum in all three of them.
"Was it difficult to be away from them while you traveled the circuit?"
"It was. And then after...the issue with Rachel's parents, I took them with me. I had a great nanny, an older woman who didn't mind staying in hotels with us."
She stifled her curiosity. She'd heard him tell the social worker that the boys' grandparents had tried to abduct them, but she didn't know the details. And it wasn't her place to ask, even if the curiosity threatened to eat her alive.
"What will you do with them in the fall?"
"The harvest will be over by then. They'll go to preschool."
She shifted on the edge of the bed. She should get up and leave.
He hesitated, then asked, "Why aren't you still dancing? Did you go to New York?"
She stood up and straightened her T-shirt. "I went. I got injured, and then Joe passed. And..."
She couldn't tell him about Jilly. It wasn't her place to share her sister's medical history. And besides that, the pain was too personal, too private to share with him.
But that didn't stop her from feeling his gaze boring into her back as she excused herself and trudged back downstairs to her little nest on the sofa.
6
Callum was still raw from the middle of the night scene with Iris when he made his way downstairs the next morning. He was in rough shape. Bristly facial hair covered his chin and cheeks, and he stunk from his exercise climbing the stairs the night before.
He would have to see about getting a shower later. Maybe he could sit on the lip of the tub and wash up.
Secondhand Cowboy Page 5