Home on the Ranch: The Colorado Cowboy's Triplets (Cowboy SEALs Book 8)

by Laura Marie Altom

In fact, a more probable scenario was that guilt from abandoning Camille or his mother with his three little responsibilities would eat him from the inside.

  Camille opened the front door, unwittingly revving his pulse with her smile and half wave. Damn. She’d grown infinitely hotter.

  “Good, you’re back. Since everyone’s snoozing in the den, I figured now would be the perfect time to sneak out to cook dinner for Gramps.” She ducked back inside to take her purse and keys from the entry hall table. “I’ll bring back a plate for you.”

  “No need.”

  “What do you mean?” She froze midway out the door.

  “I can make a sandwich. There’s no reason for you to come back till morning—maybe not even then.” Because I underestimated how much I actually do need you—still want you. But I’m a SEAL. If I’m able to take out entire city blocks of terrorists, I can damn well tackle infant care on my own. As for letting you back into my life, my heart? Considering how long it had taken to get over her, that was a hard pass on letting her back in.

  “Why are you trying to get rid of me?” Arms crossed, she made zero attempt to hide a frown.

  “That’s the last thing I’m doing.” Without hurting her, how did he make her understand that this sudden one-eighty in plans for them to work as a team was all about his personal hang-ups—not her? “If anything, I’m giving you a much-needed break.”

  “Thanks,” she said, with an annoyed jingle of her keys. “But considering how much downtime I’ve had while caring for my grandfather, who’s perfectly capable of caring for himself, I’m happy for the distraction. See you in a couple hours.”

  Without waiting for his reply, she brushed past him to leave the house and march across the porch.

  His body hummed from where she’d brushed against him.

  Pressing a hand to his oddly out-of-rhythm heart, he bowed his head and sighed. Too bad his training hadn’t covered how to get rid of a woman he very much wanted in his life.

  * * *

  “If Grams saw you sit down to dinner covered in dirt and dust, she’d make you take your plate outside to eat with Earl.” Earl was Gramps’s best friend and mule.

  Camille’s grandfather winked. “Then I guess it’s a good thing she’s no longer with us—bless her gorgeous soul. I loved that woman something fierce, but Lord almighty she could be a harpy.”

  Ignoring that last comment, Camille kissed the crusty top of his head before delivering him a cold beer, then joining him at the table.

  To say she was exhausted would be the understatement of the century. It wasn’t even a good exhaustion earned from an extra-hard workout or cleaning the garage. More like a deep-down ache that reached all the way inside her bones, squeezing with enough pressure to make her hurt, but not enough to warrant stopping. Even if it had, it’s not like it would’ve mattered. Jed needed her help with the babies and her grandfather needed a hot meal.

  She’d been right to come home. At least this was her temporary home. Her mom wanted her back in Miami, but Camille didn’t see any practical way that could happen. Not with all she’d been through. She’d see a palm tree and it would remind her of the toddler she’d seen—no.

  Bile rose in the back of her throat.

  She’d left Miami for the specific reason to not have those types of memories pop up. She needed them forever banished, along with the anguished mothers’ chaotic mix of horrified screams and sobs.

  Camille squeezed her eyes shut, following the department shrink’s advice to deeply inhale, then count to three before releasing a long, slow exhale.

  “You okay?” her grandfather asked, with a bite of chicken fried steak held close to his mouth. “Your mom told me... Well, let’s just say I know I’m charming, but you didn’t come all this way just to see me.”

  “True...” Camille looked to her plate, forcing herself to eat, though she wasn’t the least bit hungry. She’d fed the babies on and off all day but couldn’t remember the last time she’d eaten.

  “You ever want to talk about it, your grams always said I was a crap listener, but better than talking to Bonkers—remember him? That old mule we used to have before Earl?”

  “The one who ran in circles every time it stormed?”

  “That’s the one.”

  She couldn’t help but smile at the memory. He’d been a sweetheart. A part of her life she referred to as her Camelot years. Old enough for major, epic make out time with Jed, yet young enough to still be too stupid to realize the two of them as a couple would never last.

  Her and Jed’s fathers had both still been alive. Their grandmothers, too. Emily and Chase, a happy couple even back then.

  Cupping his hand over hers, her grandfather said, “I’m glad to see that Monroe boy back home.” After dropping that conversational bomb, he dug into his mashed potatoes and the white gravy she’d cheated in making, by mixing milk with a store-bought packet.

  “He’s hardly a boy, Gramps.”

  “For the way he trampled your poor little heart, he’ll always be a boy to me—unless he steps up and does right by you. Which I fully believe he will. Takes some longer than others to recognize their ass from a hole in the ground.”

  “Gramps!” She dropped her fork onto her grandmother’s Blue Willow china with a clatter. “Geez, what’s gotten into you? I’m never getting back together with Jed. And it was just as much my decision to call things off.”

  He stopped shoveling peas long enough to shake his head.

  “And anyway, all of that is ancient history. I don’t think about it and neither should you.” Only that was a lie. Because since encountering Jed again, she’d done nothing but think about him.

  About them.

  About all the special and lousy times they’d shared.

  She and Gramps finished the dinner in somewhat companionable silence, with him thankfully losing himself in his favorite gold mining magazine, while she played Angry Birds on her phone.

  When he’d finished, he pushed his chair back. “Since you cooked, I’ll wash up.”

  “That’s okay,” she said. “I still need to make a plate for Jed, and you need a shower before tracking mud all over my clean kitchen floor.”

  “Your floor?” He raised his bushy gray eyebrows. “Damn if you aren’t sounding more like your harpy grandmother every day.” Tears shimmered in his pale blue eyes. “Look like her, too. Pretty as a picture good enough to frame.”

  “Thanks,” she said, even though she couldn’t recall a time in recent history when she’d felt less attractive. “I love you.”

  “Love you, too, peanut. I mean it about that boy. It’s good of you to help out the family. It might also be good for you to think about starting a family. He comes from good stock.”

  Cue eye roll.

  Since one of that afternoon’s hailstones had somehow lodged itself at the back of her throat, she ignored her grandfather to tackle cleaning the mess from supper.

  Camille finished scouring the white kitchen, with its honey-toned pine floors and blue calico curtains. Then she dished up Jed’s plate, put away the leftovers, and somehow made it up the stairs to her bedroom, which had been added on when she was a teen.

  She needed a shower, too.

  By the time she finished, toweled off, dressed and blow-dried her hair, golden sunlight shone through the wall of western-facing windows. The pine floors up here were covered in colorful rag rugs that warmed her toes on chilly mornings. Blue-and-white toile wallpaper made her feel as if she were stepping into the pages of a Jane Austen novel.

  The canopy bed added to the room’s whimsical charm.

  Her grandmother had been a huge PBS fan, and while the outside of the house might be log construction, on the inside, she’d designed it to look more like an English cottage.

  Calm and beauty ruled.

  So why was Camille’s puls
e racing and her stomach churning?

  Jed.

  She’d thought they were on the same team when it came to watching the triplets, but when he’d returned from checking on the animals, he’d seemed distant. When she’d suggesting leaving for her grandfather’s to make dinner, he’d been a little too enthusiastic about shooing her on her way.

  Had waking from their nap to find themselves essentially cuddling bugged him as much as it had her? Not that she hadn’t found it pleasant—quite the opposite. But considering how messy her emotions still were from all she’d been through in Miami, the last thing she needed was to toss a man into the mix.

  A man?

  Ha!

  Jed was hardly a generic guy she’d met via work or a dating app. Jed was the guy. The one who’d gotten away. And no matter how many other men she’d dated, none of them had ever made her feel one-tenth of the raw attraction she still did with Jed.

  Why? What was it about him that had always made her stand a little straighter? Made her heart beat a little faster?

  “Cammy!” Her grandfather trudged up the stairs. “Cammy! Where’re my Rolaids?”

  After forcing a deep breath and smoothing her hair back into a ponytail, Camille left her room to meet Gramps in the hall.

  “Cammy! I really need—oh, there you are.”

  She kissed his cheek. “Your Rolaids are on the side table next to your recliner.”

  “Nope. Already checked.”

  “Let’s check again.” Mostly, he was 100 percent capable of caring for himself, but his eyesight wasn’t what it used to be, nor was his memory.

  “Okay, but I’m telling you I already...”

  By the time he finished his speech about how he had a steel trap mind, she made it to his recliner’s side table and back. Bingo. His antacids were right where he’d left them, behind his Vick’s ointment, tissue box and the TV remote.

  She’d snatched them up, then backtracked to meet him at the base of the stairs. “Here you go. Don’t take too many.”

  “Don’t tell me what to do.” He was supposed to have only two, but being an ornery old goat, he took three. “Where’d you find ’em?”

  “On the kitchen counter. You were right.”

  “Always.”

  Because she wanted him to think as highly of himself as she did, she swallowed the little white lie. After her grandmother died, he’d told Camille that he wished he’d gone first so he wouldn’t be left without her. The notion had broken her heart. But in some ways the sentiment had been a compass for her own life. If she didn’t love a man enough to feel as if she’d rather die than lose him, what was the point?

  The only guy who’d even come close to stirring that strong of an emotional bond had been Jed. Considering how that relationship had ended in disaster, Camille vowed that from now until he returned to California, she’d keep her shields up where her mishmash of feelings for him were concerned.

  “Mmm... That’s better.” Gramps smoothed his hand across his chest. “Say, you never did tell me how things are going between you and Jed. He hasn’t tried any hanky-panky, has he? I’m all for him courting you, but it’s too soon for that.”

  “My virtue is safe.” But I wish it wasn’t.

  Turning her back on her grandfather, Camille covered her superheated cheeks with her hands.

  Chapter 6

  With Camille out of the house, Jed finally felt as if he could breathe.

  A long time ago, she had been family.

  Now, he couldn’t begin to identify what he felt for her, and he was too tired and grief-stricken to care. Only that wasn’t entirely true, or she wouldn’t still be in his head. Teasing and tormenting and reminding him of happier times when all their loved ones had still been alive.

  He released a long, slow exhale.

  In the kitchen, he made two roast beef and Swiss sandwiches, wishing he could wash them down with a beer. But with his nieces’ nap time ticking away like a time bomb, he figured his night would be best spent sober.

  He took his plate, a bag of potato chips and a Coke into the den, where the fire had died to glowing embers.

  When setting his meal on the coffee table in front of the sofa, he missed the table’s edge and the soda rolled onto the carpet. He plucked it up, righting it next to his plate, added a few logs to the fire, then checked on the babies.

  Allie had kicked off her blanket and Sallie hugged a stuffed pig. Callie startled him when he found her wide-awake, staring at herself in the reflection of the hanging brass fireplace tools.

  Trying to buy himself enough time to eat, he slowly backed away before she saw him.

  Too late.

  Spooked, she lurched, then let loose with a mighty wail.

  Callie’s cry launched a chain reaction with her sisters, and ten seconds later, all three were screaming at the top of their tiny lungs.

  So much for his sandwiches...

  Lord, he needed that beer.

  Sitting on the floor, he managed to fit all three babies on his lap for a cuddle. After a few minutes of rocking and off-key singing, they quieted.

  “This is exactly why I call you guys—or I guess that would be gals—the three tenors.”

  Three pairs of eyes stared at him in wonder.

  “Not sure who they are? Well, your grandmother Barbara loves opera. Remember meeting her the day you were born?”

  They gave him their rapt attention.

  He laughed. “Glad to see you’re taking this seriously. Well, these three guys sang like nobody’s business. They were a bit before my time, too, but your grandmother and great-grandmother Paulina—you never got to meet her—used to listen to opera every Saturday while baking. They’d bake bread for the week, and cookies and pastries. The whole time, they’d sing along with these three guys.”

  His eyes welled from the memory’s sudden intensity. How good the kitchen had smelled and how his grandmother had always looked the other way when he’d sneaked a handful of oatmeal cookies from the cooling rack.

  He ached for these innocents who would never know their parents. How fortunate he was to have spent time with so much family before they’d passed.

  “Anyway... You’re my three tenors because you love to sing. Only to me, opera always sounded a little like screaming. You’re especially good at that, too.”

  Allie blew a raspberry.

  Callie sniffed and huffed.

  Sallie gurgled and cooed.

  “When is the last time you ladies ate?” Cupping his forehead, he tried remembering. Had Camille helped him feed before or after the nap that had shattered his last remaining shred of cool where she was concerned?

  Before. Definitely before. Otherwise they wouldn’t have been able to grab that nap.

  “Since you’re all wide-awake, what should we do?”

  His question earned blank stares.

  What did it say about his exhaustion level that he’d halfway expected an answer?

  Spying the survival navigation guide he’d been reading before...

  He closed his eyes on a rush of the other night’s memories. His sister’s haunting last words. Dialing 9-1-1. The ambulance’s chaotic red and blue strobe. Pacing the hospital waiting room, assuming Emily would be fine, until learning the awful truth.

  He picked up the navigation guide, forcing his pulse to slow. “You ladies are old enough to learn how to find your way home, right?”

  He used his shirttail to wipe drool from Sallie’s chin.

  Tough crowd.

  He read in a singsong voice from The U.S. Navy SEAL Survival Handbook he’d bought online: “‘Stay proficient with your map and compass training. Too many people rely solely on a GPS and don’t know how to navigate using a map and compass. Everything mechanical will eventually break, and being under a triple canopy in a jungle, or not being able to
reach a satellite can cause you...’”

  All three babies were out.

  “I don’t blame you,” he whispered. “This thing was written for civilians, but since your uncle Jed was trained by a couple of the authors, I figured I should give it a mercy read. But one valuable nugget of info we’ve learned is that reading this manual is the perfect sleeping potion. Who needs lullabies when I’ve got this secret weapon?”

  Sleep deprived and inordinately proud of himself, Jed painstakingly placed his nieces back on their comfy quilt palette, pushed himself onto his feet, then crept back to the sofa and his abandoned sandwich.

  He sat, took his first bite, chewed and happily sighed.

  After swallowing, he reached for his Coke, popped it open, then cussed a blue streak when it exploded like a freaking sugar geyser.

  Worse than the syrupy mess coating his T-shirt, hands, arms, sofa and carpet?

  All three babies were once again screaming.

  * * *

  “How can I help?” Camille set Jed’s foil-wrapped supper on the entry hall table along with her purse and keys, then held out her arms to take Sallie. Or was it Callie? In the heat of the moment, with the triplets red-faced from crying, she’d forgotten the color code.

  “That thing I said earlier,” he called above the racket, “about how I don’t need you? Load of horseshit.”

  “Emily wouldn’t like you cussing around the babies.”

  “Then she shouldn’t have left them with me.”

  “Jed...” Camille’s voice was softer than he deserved. “I can’t believe your sister would have ever purposely left her babies. What happened was an accident. A horrible accident.”

  With all three girls bawling, Camille couldn’t be sure her words had even reached him, but if they hadn’t, their history, the love she used to have for him—maybe would always have—compelled her to settle the baby she held against her hip, freeing one arm to wrap Jed in a hug.

  An upward glance showed him crying, too, but the tears were silent, and she doubted he wanted her to see. He’d been through so much. But then so had she. They were both the walking wounded. As much as it hurt being with him again, it also felt right. As if they’d come full circle.