The Deputy's Holiday Family

by Mindy Obenhaus

  See you next time,

  Mindy

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  Texas Christmas Twins

  by Deb Kastner

  Chapter One

  Miranda Morgan wouldn’t even know what hit her.

  He was here in front of her cabin, preparing to make certain of that. After he was through with her, the powers that be would want to name a tempest after him.

  Hurricane Simon.

  It didn’t matter that he hadn’t seen Miranda since high school, or even, as his best friend Mason’s kid sister, that she’d bared the occasional brunt of his pranks and mean jokes. In another situation, he might be considering how to make amends and not additional strife. He was a new man, a man of faith. The Lord had changed his heart, and now Simon’s goal was to change his life to match what had happened internally.

  But try as he might, he fell short of being able to forgive Miranda for ignoring her responsibility to the sweet nine-month-old twins now in her care.

  If this was a spiritual test, a trial in his bumpy new Christian life, it was a doozy.

  Miranda was an eminently successful celebrity photographer. But he couldn’t care less about movie stars and the la-di-da lifestyles of the rich and famous. He was a simple ranch owner and dog trainer and he liked his solitary country life.

  What he didn’t like was Miranda. She couldn’t even be bothered to fly home to Texas long enough to attend her own twin niece’s and nephew’s christening, and she was not only Hudson and Harper’s aunt, but had also been named their godmother.

  And yet she hadn’t managed to spare even one weekend for them.

  Even Simon had been in church that day, though at the time he hadn’t been a churchgoing man. He remembered feeling uncomfortable, but he’d been there. Simon was the twins’ godfather, and to him, it was a big thing, a sacred duty, a promise that he’d always be there for Hudson and Harper in any way they needed.

  Obviously, Miranda didn’t feel the same way. Family obligations clearly meant nothing to her.

  And now, through a cruel twist of fate, Miranda had been named the twins’ permanent legal guardian.

  How could that even be? The very thought of it was both confusing and infuriating.

  It was painful enough that Mary, Mason’s youngest sister, and her husband, John, had been taken from this world prematurely by the merciless act of a drunkard who’d made the deadly choice to drive while intoxicated.

  But for Mary to name self-serving, high-flying Miranda as the twins’ legal guardian, even after all she had done, or not done, for Mary and the babies—

  Well, that made less sense than putting a Border collie in a room full of cats and expecting him to herd them.

  What had Mary been thinking? How could she have considered her sister a worthwhile guardian, one with whom she could entrust innocent children? What kind of mother would a woman like Miranda possibly be?

  Inconceivable.

  Why hadn’t Mason and his wife, Charlotte, been named the twins’ guardians? They already had four children of their own with a fifth on the way. They were wonderful, experienced parents who had been there for Mary and the twins during every stage of their lives.

  Mary might have sincerely believed that two more children would have been too much of a burden on Mason and Charlotte, and that they had their own family to think of and provide for.

  But choosing Miranda?

  Mary might have been sincere, but she’d been sincerely wrong.

  However the future played out now that Miranda was the twins’ legal guardian, Simon’s determination to be a positive influence in his godchildren’s lives hadn’t changed one iota. They had always been a priority with him, but even more so now.

  If Miranda was anything like Simon imagined her to be, Harper and Hudson would need all the protection and stability they could get.

  He was going to step up for those two precious babies.

  Unfortunately, that also meant he would, by default, be in contact with Miranda. She would have to let him into her world, whether she liked it or not. And likewise, he’d have to learn to work with her. They didn’t have to be friends, but they would have to get along.

  For the twins’ sakes, he reminded himself as he removed his brown Stetson, combed his fingers back through his thick blond hair and knocked on the door.

  “It’s open” he heard Miranda call from somewhere inside the cabin, her voice muffled and distant.

  Feeling awkward at having to let himself into a cabin he was unfamiliar with, he opened the door and stepped inside. He didn’t immediately see Miranda, or the twins, either, for that matter.

  His attention was instead captured by the insane display of Christmas decorations, red and green, silver and gold, everywhere his gaze landed.

  It looked as if the North Pole had exploded in her living room.

  An enormous eight-foot Christmas tree stood in one corner, the flashing angel topper just barely clearing the ceiling. Presents wrapped in colorful aluminum paper were piled high underneath the tree.

  She’d arranged a large Nativity set, complete with a stable and an angel proclaiming Peace on Earth, on the end table.

  Shiny red and gold garland adorned every wall, with evergreen garland gracing the fireplace where the stockings were hung with care, as the poem went. Homemade stockings, with Hudson's and Harper’s names written in flourishes of red and green glitter glue.

  This woman was clearly obsessed with Christmas.

  And apparently, shiny things.

  It took him a moment to focus and find Miranda. He supposed he’d expected to find her changing a diaper or two, or feeding the twins their bottles—or whatever it was that nine-month-old babies ate—as the reason she couldn’t answer the door. Instead, she was right there in the middle of the living room, stretched out on her stomach underneath a card table that she’d draped with sheets, holding a flashlight she was beaming on a picture book as Harper and Hudson cuddled on either side of her.

  Of all the crazy, unexpected scenarios, this one took the cake.

  Or the Christmas fruitcake as the case might be.

  The tent was ingenious. She’d used stacks of hardback books to fasten the edges of the sheet to the sofa on one side of them and an armchair on the other, with the card table holding up the structure in the middle.

  Lying on her stomach, jammed under a table only a few feet high, couldn’t possibly be comfortable for her, with her tall, lithe frame, and yet she had an enthusiastic smile on her face and didn’t look the least bit put out by the awkward position. He suspected her feet might be protruding out the back, although he couldn’t confirm that from his current vantage point.

  She shined the
flashlight at his face, momentarily blinding him, and he held up a hand to block the light.

  “Simon?” she questioned, surprise lining her tone. “Simon West?”

  He was astonished she recognized him. He’d added a few inches to his frame in the years since they’d seen each other last, not to mention a few pounds. He’d stayed at the outskirts of John and Mary’s funeral and hadn’t spoken to anyone but Mason and Charlotte.

  “Uncle Simon,” he corrected her tersely, nodding toward the twins. “It’s an honorary title.”

  Of which he was very, very proud.

  “Well, Uncle Simon, you’re more than welcome to join us.” She shifted herself and the twins to the side to make room for him in the tiny strung-up tent.

  “I’m welcome to—” he repeated. He’d walked into her house out of the blue. She had no idea why he was here, and yet she’d immediately offered him the opportunity to join in their...adventure.

  “What are you doing here, by the way?” she asked curiously.

  “I—er—”

  Her offer completely threw him off his game, and for a moment he was fairly certain he was gaping and couldn’t remember his own name, much less why he had come.

  Eventually, he shook his head. There was no way he was going to get his large frame under that small table, no matter how hard he squeezed. And honestly, he didn’t even really want to try.

  “We can make it work,” Miranda insisted, clearly not taking no for an answer. “I’m sure the twins will love spending quality time with their uncle Simon.”

  She couldn’t possibly know it, but she’d just touched on his weak spot. He hadn’t been spending as much time as he should have with his godchildren. If she’d been trying to give him a guilt trip, those words would have done it, especially given the reason he was here.

  “Grab another sheet from the linen closet in the hallway, and grab a few more books from the shelf,” she instructed. “Oh, and get a chair from the kitchen. Drape the end of your sheet across the card table and onto the chair. That’ll give us all a bit more wiggle room. Believe me, these two are regular squirmy wormies.”

  By the time he’d followed all her instructions and lengthened the makeshift tent, she was fully absorbed reading the twins their book. He stood before them, wondering how he was going to get where Miranda wanted him to go.

  She flashed the cover of the book at Simon, as if finding out what she was reading would somehow convince him to crawl in.

  “We’re reading Little Red Riding Hood. Hudson likes the wolf, don’t you, buddy?” she asked the baby, making a growling sound and tickling his tummy.

  Hudson squealed and giggled happily.

  “Tell Uncle Simon you want him to come on down,” she said to Harper, giving her the same affectionate tickling treatment Hudson had just received. “I think he’s being a little bit stubborn, don’t you?”

  Simon balked at her words. He wasn’t being stubborn. He was being practical.

  And this was definitely not how this confrontation was supposed to go. He hadn’t envisioned anything of the sort when he’d first knocked on her door, but then, how could he have? This whole scenario was mind-boggling.

  He was losing his momentum by the second and he couldn’t seem to do anything to stop it.

  “But this is—” he started to say.

  Ridiculous.

  Humiliating.

  Mortifying.

  She raised a jaunty, dark eyebrow. There was no question about it. She was outright daring him to make a fool of himself with the twinkle in her pretty hazel eyes.

  This was nuts. He was crazy just to be thinking about it.

  There was no way he was going to get out of this with his dignity intact. But he’d never been the type of man to walk away from a challenge.

  Not now. Not ever.

  Grumbling under his breath at the ignominy of it all, he dropped onto his belly to army crawl into the mixed-up files of Miranda’s imagination makeshift dwelling.

  “Pirates or spaceships?” she queried as he settled himself in. Grinning, she passed him a handful of crayons.

  “Uh—spaceships, I guess.” Not that he had any real preference for one over the other. He’d honestly never given it any thought.

  “So in your most secret heart of hearts, you long to be an astronaut and not a cowboy, right?”

  Absolutely not.

  He supposed he had imagined exchanging his cowboy hat for a space suit when he was a child—but his childhood had gone by in the blink of an eye, almost as if it had never really existed at all.

  Reality was reality, and he was a cowboy.

  Sort of.

  “Yeah. I guess I did. When I was a really little tyke. Maybe three years old.”

  Back before his mother—a single mom herself—had gotten thrown into drug rehab one too many times. Before social services had gotten their hands on him and he’d been tossed into the pitiless foster system and left to sink or swim. His childhood dreams had morphed into a nightmare that he couldn’t wake from.

  “Coloring is another way of dreaming, you know.”

  Simon scoffed softly. He knew better. He had dealt with far too much reality in his life for him to imagine anything past the trials of the day. Scribbling on paper wouldn’t change a thing.

  And dreaming? That was a fool’s errand.

  He was a responsible man now. He colored black-and-white, inside the lines. But when Harper batted her hand at his coloring book and babbled her baby nonsense at him, he took a blue crayon and started filling in the page before him.

  “So, you’re not an actual, live spaceman,” Miranda said with a mock frown of disappointment. “What do you do for a living, then?”

  “I breed and train cattle dogs,” he explained as he switched a blue crayon for red.

  “I don’t know why, but I assumed you’d grow up to be a rancher like Mason.”

  He shrugged. “I’m not really cut out to be a rancher,” he explained. “I can ride a horse and rope a cow, but I didn’t grow up in the country. I didn’t live on a ranch until I was sent to the McPhersons in Wildhorn when I was a teenager. Training dogs is a better fit for me than herding cattle.”

  Dogs were reliable. They loved unconditionally. Not like people.

  He didn’t give his trust easily. Bouncing from one foster family to the next as a kid had taught him to depend on only himself. He wasn’t much in the relationship department, either. He’d never really learned how to make a relationship work out. He was broken. Like the Tin Woodman in The Wizard of Oz, he was fairly certain he didn’t have a heart.

  It was hard enough to learn how to rely on God, never mind people.

  He paused. “I do own an acreage with a few head of cattle, and I like the hat.”

  That wasn’t exactly a rarity. Nearly all the men in Wildhorn, Texas, wore cowboy hats, from the time they were old enough to sit in a saddle until the day they were laid to rest. Even the local florist sported a Stetson.

  “I remember when you moved to town,” she admitted, her cheeks coloring under his gaze. “You were in tenth grade. I was in seventh.”

  He couldn’t imagine why she would recall that, other than that he and Mason were such best buddies. He’d never been a popular kid and hadn’t had many friends. The truth was, he hadn’t made much of a mark in Wildhorn, then or now, and what he had done he wasn’t proud of. He had a lot of ground to make up for.

  “I never had a dog, even though I grew up on this ranch,” she said thoughtfully, referring to the Morgan holdings, on which her cabin rested. “We only kept ranch animals. We had a couple of herding dogs and a mean-spirited barn cat, who never let me anywhere near him. Once I started my photography career, I was traveling too often to consider a pet.”

  “That’s a shame. Th
ere are many reasons to have a dog, the least of which is that they are good for your health. And they are the perfect companions. They’re easy for anyone to care for.”

  He probably sounded like a commercial, which he kind of was, since dogs were his life’s passion.

  She grinned. “Trust me, I’m the exception to that rule. When I was about ten years old, my mom put me in charge of the garden for exactly one season.”

  Why was she talking about plants?

  “Nothing grew but weeds. No vegetables thrived, and hardly any of the flowers bloomed. I took my mother’s beautiful, colorful garden and murdered it.

  “When I lived in my loft in Los Angeles, I experimented again and tried keeping a cactus. You know—the kind that don’t need a lot of attention. Mary helped pick it out. She was the real green thumb of the family. She told me plants helped clean the air.”

  She stopped and swallowed hard. He didn’t need her to tell him what she was struggling with, how fresh her grief must still feel for her. It was written all over her face, and tears glittered in her eyes.

  Immediately, his innate masculine protective instinct rose in him, but he didn’t trust female tears any more than he did the crying woman so he quashed it back.

  Still struggling to speak, Miranda cleared her throat.

  “Mary assured me a cactus was the easiest to keep and that even I couldn’t fail, but I managed to strangle the life out of the poor thing within a matter of months.”

  “You forgot to water it?” He managed to keep his voice neutral, but he couldn’t help but be concerned. If she was afraid of owning a houseplant or a pet, how was she going to get on with twin babies?

  “Sometimes. I’d go weeks without thinking about it at all, and then I’d suddenly remember and overwater.”

  Her face flamed.

  “Anyway,” she said, taking a deep breath and swiping a palm across her cheeks to remove the lingering moisture, “at the end of the day, I destroyed it. What’s the opposite of green thumb? Black thumb? That’s me.”