The Deputy's Holiday Family

by Mindy Obenhaus

  He chuckled despite himself.

  “So you can see why I’d be concerned about owning a dog. Fortunately, I don’t need a live animal to keep me healthy. I’m in good shape. I work out and eat clean, most of the time. Barring chocolate. Chocolate anything is my weakness.”

  She wouldn’t be concerned about her physical condition. She was in really good shape—objectively speaking.

  “You could use one for good therapy, then. Dogs make great listeners.”

  He didn’t know why he was trying to sell her on the benefits of owning a dog. He wouldn’t put one of his dogs in her care in a million years. She had more than enough responsibility with the twins.

  She laughed. “I guess we can all use a little good therapy from time to time, can’t we? I imagine a dog is far cheaper than a psychologist.”

  “And a therapist isn’t overjoyed to see you when you walk in the door at night like a dog is.”

  “Point taken.” Miranda helped the twins change their crayons to a different color.

  He didn’t want to like anything about this woman, but he had to admit she did already appear to have somewhat of a handle on keeping the twins occupied and happy. Much better than he’d thought she would have, in any case.

  “So tell me about your dogs.” She propped her chin on her palms.

  He raised a brow. Most people’s eyes simply glazed over when he tried to talk about his life’s passion, yet Miranda was urging him to do so.

  “My herding dogs are the way I make my main living,” he said. “I own a few especially well-bred Australian cattle dogs with excellent working lines, and between all my females, I manage several litters of puppies every year. I train them and sell them to local ranchers in Texas and surrounding states. I’ve developed enough of a reputation that I’ve got a waiting list for my puppies. That’s my bread and butter.”

  He didn’t know why he was telling her all this. He hated talking about himself and didn’t like to brag. But there was something about Miranda’s personality that pulled the words right off his tongue.

  Harper rolled over and stared up at him with her big brown eyes. He planted a kiss on her chubby cheek, making her smile and pat his whiskered face with her soft palm.

  “I have a dog rescue on the side, and that’s where my true life’s work lies,” he continued. “I take dogs from kill shelters and help them find forever families. That’s the name of my shelter—Forever Family. But some of the dogs I pick up have health or behavioral issues and can never be rehomed, so they stay with me.”

  Her eyes widened. She was probably imagining how many dogs he sheltered. She would be surprised when she knew the truth, because she was probably guessing too few.

  “I teach all my dogs—cattle dogs and rescues alike—to pass the American Kennel Club Canine Good Citizen program. That certification goes a long way into making the dogs more adoptable.”

  “How interesting,” she said, and sounded like she meant it. “All the shelters I know just keep the dogs in cages and walk them from time to time. It’s commendable for you to put in the extra effort to make them ready for their new adoptive families. And I imagine there aren’t too many people who would be willing to take on a dog that they knew at the outset they couldn’t rehome.”

  “No, I don’t suppose—” Suddenly, he clamped down on his jaw and lowered his brow. Why was he continuing to yammer on about his work? It made him feel vulnerable that he’d shared a part of himself that he rarely revealed to others.

  In general, he kept his thoughts to himself, and this—this was Miranda Morgan he was opening up to, telling her all about his life.

  His guard snapped up. He sure as shootin’ hadn’t come to visit her on a social call, much less to put himself in the hot seat—or underneath a makeshift tent with crayons in his hand.

  This was ludicrous. How was he going to turn the conversation around to the real reason he was here?

  “No, no, Hudson,” Miranda said when the boy started gnawing on the end of his crayon. “That’s not your snack.” She reached into a plastic bag she’d stored beside her and withdrew a hard cracker, replacing the crayon with the finger food.

  Simon didn’t want to be, but he couldn’t help but be impressed.

  Again.

  The woman had actually considered that Hudson and Harper might want snacks before she’d arranged the twins—and herself—in the tent.

  Miranda had been a single socialite and suddenly she was a mother. She couldn’t possibly have adapted to her new role as much as it appeared she had. He must be seeing something out of the ordinary, catching her in an especially good moment.

  But he had to admit she seemed to have thought of everything. He knew he wouldn’t have fared so well, despite having known and interacted with Hudson and Harper since their births. He would have gone in with nothing and would have had to crawl in and out of the tent every time the twins needed something else.

  He wouldn’t have even thought of the tent.

  He hated to consider the possibility, but apparently, despite that she’d just arrived in town and had only been the twins’ official guardian for a few days, there was something Miranda could teach him about caring for babies.

  Who knew?

  Miranda handed Simon a cracker and gestured for him to give it to Harper, who’d pulled herself to a sitting position and was manipulating a toy cell phone, pushing buttons that made beeping sounds.

  So Miranda had thought of toys, as well.

  Simon tried to give Harper the cracker, but unlike her twin brother, she completely ignored his offering.

  “What am I doing wrong?” Simon asked, his cheeks burning. He was glad his jaw was covered with a few days’ growth of whiskers to hide the fact that he was flustered by his inability to get Harper’s attention.

  Miranda chuckled. “That’s okay. Don’t sweat it. You aren’t doing anything wrong. Hudson will eat Harper’s cracker if she doesn’t want it. He’ll graze all day if I let him. Snack after snack between meals. I think he’s on a growth spurt.”

  “My godson’s getting to be a big, strong boy,” Simon said proudly.

  “Typical guy, right?” she teased. “Eating everything put in front of him and then some. But don’t worry. Harper can hold her own with Hudson,” Miranda assured him. “When she wants to.”

  Typical woman, Simon thought, but did not say aloud.

  “In general, Harper’s more easily distracted by books and toys than food. It’s one of the main differences I’ve noticed between the two of them. That and the way Harper babbles so much more than Hudson. She likes to look you right in the face and talk.”

  Also typical woman.

  Simon filed that information away in the back of his mind. He welcomed anything that would help him get to know the twins better.

  “How about you? Would you like a snack, Uncle Simon? Since we’re camping out, we don’t have as much variety as we would if we were hanging out in the kitchen, but I can offer you a cheese stick and a box of juice.”

  He grinned and shook his head, thinking she was teasing him.

  “Your loss.” She shrugged and handed Hudson and Harper sippy cups, then pushed a tiny straw into a box of juice and peeled a cheese stick for herself.

  He thought she must feel silly chowing down on a toddler snack, but she didn’t even appear to notice how incongruent she looked, gnawing on a cheese stick underneath a tent that was too small for her and then taking a long, noisy slurp out of a boxed juice.

  “The first day here, I bought the juice boxes for the twins. Turns out they weren’t quite ready, so this is my new go-to drink.” She saluted him with the juice box.

  It was as if she embraced her inner child or some nonsense like that. And yet there was something about her innocent actions that warmed Simon’s heart—and then s
ent it scrambling backward in retreat.

  Oddly, she made him feel like an old codger with his shirt buttoned all the way up to the neck, stiff and set in his ways.

  He yanked on his collar, even though in reality he wore his chambray with the two top snaps open.

  Her smile widened, as if she’d read his mind. “Sometimes I feel more like a kid than an adult.”

  She appeared to realize how that sounded the moment the words left her mouth. Her expression immediately turned apprehensive and she dropped her eyes so her gaze no longer met his.

  “Um—that probably wasn’t the best thing to admit, was it? Sometimes my mouth runs faster than my head.”

  He rolled to his side and couched his head in his hand.

  “Probably not,” he agreed as he schooled his thoughts to take advantage of this perfect opening. “We need to talk about that, actually.”

  Her gaze widened. “W-what?” she stammered, clearly taken aback, either by the sudden change in his mood or the way he’d narrowed his eyes on her.

  “I’d prefer not to speak to you in front of the children,” he said.

  The twins might not understand the words, but they would probably pick up on the tension, because he already knew he was going to get flustered and he doubted his ideas would go down well with Miranda.

  Her gaze widened. “Oh. I...see.”

  Clearly, she didn’t. But she’d picked up on his change of attitude and her shoulders had tensed.

  “It’s about time for me to put the babies down for their naps, anyway.”

  She switched her attention to the twins and her expression lightened.

  Harper snatched at the cracker Hudson was busy gnawing on, taking it away from him. Hudson howled in frustration. Miranda laughed and handed him another cracker.

  Harper let out an ear-piercing screech, as if someone had pinched her. The guilty party, cracker crumbs on his chubby cheeks, darted forward, right out of the tent. The kid army crawled faster than any soldier Simon had ever seen.

  Without thinking, Simon shoved his knees under him and went up on all fours, smacking the back of his head on the card table and sending it keening to the side.

  Stretching to his full length, he grasped Hudson by the waist and scooped him into his arms on a roll, landing on his back with Hudson flapping on his stomach.

  “Where do you think you’re going, little buddy?” he asked, planting an affectionate kiss on the baby’s forehead. “Did you pinch your sister? Gentlemen don’t pick on ladies, even when they deserve it.”

  “Simon?” called Miranda, her voice sounding oddly muffled from behind him. “Harper. Ow!”

  When he glanced back, it was to find the card table tipped completely on its side. Harper was sitting by Miranda, laughing and batting her arms as she pulled her fingers through Miranda’s long chestnut curls.

  Miranda couldn’t stop the baby from yanking and tugging, even though it had to hurt, because somehow, she’d managed to get completely rolled up, cocoon-style, in a couple of the white sheets that had only moments before served as a tent.

  “A little help here?” she pleaded around the cloth. She wriggled but only managed to wrap herself tighter and tighter.

  “Ironic, isn’t it?” he asked mildly as he placed Hudson next to Harper and started tugging at the sheets tangled around Miranda.

  With effort, he gently unwrapped her.

  “What?” Her brow narrowed in confusion when she noticed him staring at her.

  He paused significantly.

  “You’re a mummy.”

  * * *

  So not funny.

  At least, coming from Simon West it wasn’t. He’d been a callous teenager, and it didn’t look like he was much better now. His mood had gone as dark as a thunderstorm.

  After putting the twins down in their cribs for a nap, Miranda dragged her feet as long as possible before returning to the kitchen, where she was oddly certain a confrontation was going to take place. About what, she had no idea.

  She’d never been the confrontational type. She preferred to keep the peace.

  Simon had been nice enough for a while, but his surprise visit, especially the whole we need to talk thing, definitely had the edge of tension around it.

  She serenaded the twins with an extra lullaby and lingered by their bedsides until they dropped into a tranquil slumber. She loved the sound of their deep breathing and cute little snores.

  Here in the quiet of the nursery it was nice and calm, and Miranda’s heart teemed over with serene warmth and love, the polar opposite of the crazy, uneven pulse-pounding her heart had taken with her surprising and unexpected encounter with Simon West.

  Simon, the boy Miranda had crushed on for every angst-ridden day of her teen years, was now a man whose once soft adolescent face had been hardened by life but was no less handsome for whatever trials the years had given him.

  Along with her brother Mason, Simon had picked on her incessantly when she was a soft-hearted, impressionable teenager, but that hadn’t kept her from crushing on him. There was one prank in particular that had stayed with her that had, in a way, informed the woman she’d become when she’d left Wildhorn to pursue a career in photography in Los Angeles.

  He probably didn’t even remember the hurtful incident that had so mortified her, and if he did, it was probably only as a humorous blip on his radar.

  She scoffed softly and shook her head. She’d just been a silly lovesick teenager. It had been a long time since high school, and she’d tucked her memories of Simon, both the nice and the not-so-nice, deep into her heart and locked them away for good.

  Or so she’d thought.

  Naturally, she’d known when she’d moved back to Wildhorn that Simon would eventually cross her path. He and Mason were still best friends.

  But she wasn’t in any particular hurry to see him again, and she definitely hadn’t expected the explosion of emotion she’d felt when he’d walked in the door of her cabin and she’d first met his sea-blue-eyed gaze. It was as if a boxful of fireworks had suddenly gone off in her chest.

  Oh, she remembered Simon, all right. So much more than she wanted to admit. She still recalled every detail of her high school years, every single time she’d lingered by his locker in hopes of seeing him, or stared up at the ceiling in her bedroom, listening to sad songs and pining for the boy in the next room playing video games with her brother.

  As an adult, she’d had her heart thoroughly broken by a man using her to further his career. She’d learned from that, and her trust didn’t come easily anymore. She’d sealed up her heart and intended to keep it that way.

  Which was all the more reason for this first encounter with Simon not to be an emotional explosion.

  She’d been so certain she’d prepared her heart for the eventuality of seeing him again, now that she was home. That any silly teenage emotions she’d felt for him were far behind her.

  Clearly not so much.

  And anyway—why had he mysteriously shown up at her cabin, insisting that he wanted to talk to her?

  She blew out a breath and straightened her shoulders. It wasn’t doing her any good to hide in the nursery speculating over what he might be doing here. The only way she would find out what Simon wanted was to talk to him.

  With a sigh, she gave the twins one last loving glance and quietly closed the door to the nursery behind her.

  The first thing she did when she entered the kitchen was grab the baby monitor and place it on the table between them like a shield as she slid into a chair across from Simon. She’d brewed coffee earlier in the day, and he’d taken the initiative to pour them each a cup and warm the brew in the microwave.

  “Cream or sugar?” Miranda asked, taking a fortifying sip of the hot liquid.

  He shook his hea
d. “Dark.”

  Kind of like the look he was giving her right now.

  “I’m going to come right to the point,” he said, moving straight past polite niceties and digging right in. “I have some concerns about Mary naming you the twins’ guardian when Mason and Charlotte clearly would have been the better choice.”

  She choked on her coffee.

  Of all the rude and unconscionable declarations he could have made...

  His words were so blunt they hit her like a sledgehammer. She scrunched her brow and bit the inside of her lip in a desperate attempt to keep him from seeing how much his statement had hurt her.

  “And this is your business how?”

  He lifted his chin and narrowed his now ice-blue eyes. “I have a vested interest in them and have every intention of protecting them. I expect to have the opportunity to spend time with them and really get to know them. I’m their godfather, which you would have known if you had bothered to attend Harper and Hudson’s christening.”

  “Wow. Judgmental much?”

  “Just telling it like it is.”

  Miranda’s first impulse was to argue with him, except for one tiny detail—

  He was right.

  She had missed the twins’ christening, something that she now deeply regretted. If she could dial time back...but she couldn’t. All she could do at this point was own up to her past mistakes and move forward from here.

  “You’re right,” she admitted softly.

  Simon looked as if he was about to speak, but then he cut himself short and stared at her openmouthed.

  “I’m sorry. Did you just say I was right?”

  Clearly that wasn’t the response he’d expected. For a man who didn’t know her, he certainly had his opinions about her firmly in place.

  She couldn’t help but be a little resentful, but she pressed back the prickly feelings in her chest and continued.

  “I wasn’t at the babies’ christening, and I should have been. With John’s schedule as a surgeon, Mary and John were only in Wildhorn for that one weekend. They couldn’t change their schedule, so I should have. No matter what my reasons, I let my career take precedence over my family, and there’s no excuse for that, so I’m not offering any.”