The Cowboy’s Secret Babies (The Careys of Cowboy Point #3)

Chapter Six

H e’d expected that stubborn chin of hers to come into play. He’d expected that she would frown at him in that way she did, that he’d noticed by now worked on the boys, too.

What he didn’t expect was for her clear blue eyes to go… a little bit foggy. And then, as he stood there watching her intently, that same gaze dropped to his mouth.

And Ryder was not made of stone.

He had never pretended he was.

He moved toward her and then, anticipating an objection, he put his palm over the nape of her neck and guided her with him to the other side of the kitchen. Then, because it was March and bitterly cold outside, straight into the pantry.

“What… what are you doing?” she asked, but Ryder didn’t answer her as he closed the door behind them.

Or rather, he did, but not with words.

He bent down, gathering that sleek body of hers against him, and took her mouth with his.

And one question was answered immediately.

Rosie was every bit as tempting as his memory had convinced him she was. She tasted like sugar and heat and he licked his way in, amazed to discover that he hadn’t over exaggerated the power in this at all.

This had been the problem that night.

Kissing Rosie felt like coming home.

In Texas, he had assured himself that feeling was simply because she was literally from his hometown.

But this was Cowboy Point. And everything was different now. That feeling of homecoming seemed to wrap itself around him, then draw him in deeper.

Better still, she kissed him back.

And Ryder knew her better now. Certainly better than he had after one night of flirting, a couple of cocktails with a little bit of food, and then that wild rush of heat that had haunted him ever since.

That ghost of her that he’d never managed to escape.

Had he come here that day to apologize—or to see if she still haunted him years later?

Either way, he knew her better now than he had then. That meant he could marvel even more at how she kept herself so contained, so polished in her everyday life. That sleekness like a weapon.

But when his mouth was on her, she went wild.

Her kiss was ravenous. Their tongues tangled and she reached up to grab handfuls of his shirt, pulling him closer to her.

The fire between them was instant. The burst of need, that blaze of longing, was close enough to overwhelming. It was a flame that seemed to reach higher and burn brighter than any he’d felt before—

There was a noise on the other side of the pantry door and Rosie jerked back, as if she’d suddenly been shocked by something electric.

“I swear I saw her come in here,” came her sister Matilda’s voice, perfectly audible through the door. “Maybe she went outside to get a little fresh air.”

“The air isn’t fresh, it’s freezing cold,” came another voice that Ryder recognized. Wyatt Stark.

“It’s the poetry in your soul that makes you so compelling and not at all off-putting,” Matilda replied. “Really.”

And then she laughed at whatever the notably unpoetic Wyatt rumbled her way, in a low voice that didn’t make it to the pantry door.

Inside, in the dark, Rosie tipped forward, pressing her forehead into Ryder’s chest. She was still gripping his shirt, but now every muscle in her body was tense.

When there were no more sounds in the kitchen, she blew out a breath. She pushed back and touched her fingertips to her face, as if looking for cracks. Or evidence of that fire that had raged so high and hard between them.

“Rosie,” he began.

She shushed him, but viciously. Her gaze snapped to his, and even in the dark of the pantry closet, he could see the expression she was shooting his way clearly. It was made of daggers, sharp and deadly.

“You will stay in this pantry,” she told him, her voice brooking absolutely no argument and backed up with that frown that made him want to apologize without knowing what his infraction was. “You will count to one hundred. I will go out there, make sure the coast is clear, and hope that people think that you’re the one that was outside in the snow, getting fresh air or dying of hypothermia.”

“I’m known for that,” he said, blandly. “Fresh, hypothermic March air is my favorite.”

And he was shocked beyond measure—and something like delighted, if he was honest about it, when she hauled off and punched him.

Right in the gut. And hard.

Then winced, because there wasn’t a lot of give in that area.

Rosie glared at him like he was the one slugging people. She shook her hand, and yanked it back when he went to take it in his.

“This is not a joke,” she hissed at him. “Our very small children are in this house. And who are they with? Oh, that’s right. Every single one of our family members. This is no time to be doing… this . In a closet .”

“How exactly do you think that both of our families got so big?” he asked.

Innocently, he thought.

She looked like she wanted to punch him again, but thought better of it.

“Count to one hundred, Ryder. Quietly.”

Rosie moved around him and didn’t look back as she eased open the door, glanced out, then swiped a packet of something unidentifiable from the shelf beside her as she walked back into the kitchen.

He leaned back against the door that she shut behind her with what felt like a little punch of temper. While he was at it, he flipped the lights on. And wasn’t at all surprised to find that the pantry was as ruthlessly organized as everything else in this house.

Lines of cans, boxes neatly stacked. But he knew the truth that wasn’t immediately clear from that sort of evidence. Rosie was a good cook. She liked her ingredients organized so she could toss them altogether and find a kind of art in the making of things.

Kind of like Rosie herself. She kept herself pretty much ruthlessly organized too. Yet he had the pleasure of knowing that just like any one of those boxes of spaghetti staring back at him, she was rigid and unbendable… until she heated up.

When he eased his way out of that pantry, having obediently counted to the prescribed one hundred, the kitchen was empty. He walked to the entryway that led into the living room and paused there, because everyone he cared about was there.

Everyone he cared about and the Starks, that was, though he grinned even as he thought it.

Eli and Levi were cuddled in between Belinda and Zeke on the couch. Ryder caught the old man’s eye as he sat there, beaming down at his grandsons.

Zeke nodded. Ryder nodded back.

But inside, Ryder felt more than a little ashamed of the fact that he’d gone and yelled at his father in the workshop that night. He also understood that he was forgiven.

And for a moment, he got it.

This was the thing his father had always wanted. This feeling inside of him, that sat on him so heavily but didn’t feel smothering, was love.

He’d felt it immediately when he’d understood who the twins were. He felt it now, looking at his sons chattering earnestly to their grandfather, his father.

Ryder felt connected when that was a word, a feeling, he had really only ever associated with his twin. This connection was different. Bigger. It was a link to the world, and to his family, and to the march of humanity across the planet in ways that he’d heard people talk about before, but had always thought sounded made up.

He got it now.

And over in the corner, talking intently with Cat and Kendall, stood the reason why.

Rosie.

Rosie, who’d made this happen. And though he might have wished that it had happened in a way that hadn’t left her on her own with two babies, thinking that was how it was going to be for her forever, he couldn’t be sorry that it happened at all. How could he?

She looked up from her conversation and he didn’t understand how he could be the only man in this room who seemed to see that particular sparkle in her eyes. Surely everyone here could tell, just from looking at how her flushed cheeks were, that she’d had his tongue in her mouth not long before.

His phone buzzed in his pocket, and he pulled it out, not at all surprised to find that it was a text from Wilder though he sat across the room, seemingly paying attention to whatever it was Jack Stark and Harlan were talking about.

Weird how you and your baby mama disappeared from the party at the same time. I’m sure that’s coincidental.

Maybe one day when you have children , Ryder texted back, assuming you ever reach that level of maturity, you’ll understand why it is that sometimes, the grown-ups have to have a private talk.

He and Wilder texted like this all the time. Wherever they went, whatever they did. It was part of the lifelong conversation they’d always been in, and always would be in.

But it was particularly entertaining tonight, when he could stand across the room and watch his brother laugh when he read what Ryder had sent him.

I’m sure that’s it , Wilder texted back. I’m sure that’s not euphemistic at all.

That’s an awfully big word , Ryder replied. I’m the pretty one, remember?

And he had to consider the evening a win.

The routine he’d fallen into, here in this new phase of his life, took on a different shape after the boys’ party. He got up most mornings and tagged along with one or other of his brothers, getting a feel for the ranch again. Midmorning, he headed to Rosie’s, where the twins called him Daddy in their excited, high-pitched voice, and solicited his opinion on everything of importance to them that day, from their other brother’s perfidy, to the clothes they wanted to wear, to things the infamous Jacinta had said a nursery school. There were usually reports of any silly things their mother might have done.

One morning she looked frazzled when he got there, unusual for the polished Rosie Stark, so he got the boys ready for their nursery school himself. He led them out the door to her car, which he used to drive them down into Cowboy Point because she was the one who had the car seats. He was going to have to upgrade his truck.

After he dropped them off, with a bland smile at the raised eyebrows of the nursery school teacher who met the boys at the door, he decided the car itself was a disaster. And he had some concerns about how it was running, so he drove it down to Marietta, sweet talked his way into a mechanic’s shop since he happened to know the guy in charge from back in high school, and washed and cleaned it out himself.

When he came back to Rosie’s house, she was less frazzled, but more irritated.

“Where have you been?” she demanded, standing there in her front doorway, letting all her heat out into the cold, gloomy day.

“Your car was a disaster,” he told her. “I fixed it.”

“What do you mean, you fixed it?”

He sauntered toward her, aware on some level that he really shouldn’t find these moments of domesticity so much damned fun, but he did. “You know, I really question each and every one of your cousins, not to mention your brother, that they’ve been letting you drive around in that thing.”

“ That thing is an incredibly dependable vehicle that has stood the test of time,” she shot back, hotly. Like he’d insulted her honor, her family, and her first born.

“Well, now it will stand it even better,” he drawled as he reached her at the door. “You’re welcome.”

And she was scowling at him, but she was so cute with her hair pulled back and that confection of a pink sweater that she was wearing today. Not to mention a pair of jeans that never failed to do a number on him, so he really had no choice at all but to pull her into his arms and kiss her until she forgot that she was mad at him.

Sometimes he came back in the afternoon when she was done with her job, so he could see the boys when they got home and hang around for dinner, too. Other times he went home and had dinner at the ranch, with whatever configuration of family was around of an evening. Still other times he spent time with Wilder and Cat, playing the card games they seemed to love so much.

“Dangerous prospect, playing cards with a Lisle,” he said to Wilder. Pretty much every time.

“He likes it when I cheat,” Cat said with a wink. “He thinks it’s hot.”

“Ryder doesn’t have an opinion on your hotness,” Wilder told her, shaking his head, though his mouth twitched. “Do you?”

He didn’t even have to look at Ryder as he asked it. Ryder kept his gaze on his cards. “What’s hot?” he asked. “Anyway, I’m blind.”

“As a bat,” Wilder told his wife. Then he threw his cards on the table. “And also, enjoy this royal flush.”

Ryder liked each of these different sorts of evenings in their own ways, and far more than he would have believed he could if he’d tried to tell any past version of him that this was his future. He’d always maintained that what he loved was the road, but it turned out that letting himself settle into what he already had felt even better than another new, temporary city and nothing to think about but bull riding and, if he didn’t break anything, a little companionship on the other side.

It was funny how little appeal that kind of night held now. Usually he felt restless after a weekend anywhere, and yet here he was over a month back home and he didn’t have even the faintest hint of that usual itch.

And of all the evenings he got to have here, the ones he loved the most involved him lying in a narrow little twin bed in the boys’ room, with each of them pressed up tight beside him as he read them one book, then another.

He loved the ease of their affection, uncomplicated and trusting, pressing into him like they were a part of him in ways that transcended biology.

Another thing that would have panicked him to contemplate a year ago—hell, even two months ago—and these days, made him feel something perilously close to the happiest he’d ever been.

Because he liked to read them stories, and he liked the way they listened so intently, and corrected him as he went. But what he really liked was to look up toward the doorway to find Rosie standing there with her heart in her eyes once more.

Every time he did, it shifted things inside him.

The more time he spent with his new little family, the more he questioned himself about the ways that he’d operated in his own family all his life. Because this instant family deal of his was great. He loved these kids. They fascinated him and entertained him. They were their own little people, and it was something like awe-inspiring to see the way they learned their way in such a big world all around them. He and Rosie would put the boys to sleep, then he would follow her downstairs. And then, if Matilda wasn’t around, the two of them would end up stretched out on that couch in her living room, driving each other crazy.

Rosie insisted they stay dressed. Ryder, happily, had always been a creative thinker.

Every night it seemed to get hotter, better, in a way that really should have alarmed him.

But it didn’t.

It was like he’d been waiting for this his whole life.

One typically frigid morning, he and Wilder sat in Wilder’s truck, bumping around through snowy pastures. until Ryder found himself something like emotional as he gazed out at the splendor of this place. Snowcapped mountains in every direction. The sweep of this land that had been in his family’s hands for generations.

It all felt like it landed in him differently, now. He could imagine taking his own boys on a tour like this, making sure that they knew that they were connected to the sky so big, the mountains so tall and watchful, and the sheer courage and grit it took to carve out a life in between the two.

“You must be clawing at the walls,” Wilder said. When Ryder only lifted a brow, his twin laughed. “Last time you stayed in Cowboy Point this long, you had a calendar on the bedroom wall where you marked off each day like you were in prison.”

At first Ryder had no idea what he was talking about. Then he laughed, too. “I was a teenager.”

“It’s not like you stuck around when you weren’t a teenager any longer, though, is it?”

There was no heat in that question, no guilt trip or underlying attempt to shame Ryder one way or the other. Maybe that was why it resonated the way it did.

“Things are different now,” Ryder said after a moment or two. “There’s Dad, first and foremost. That’s why I came back.”

Wilder only shook his head at that, his mouth flattening out. “I still find it hard to believe.”

Ryder couldn’t go there. “I don’t want to believe it. Maybe I think the longer I stay here, the longer he’ll live, because he’s always complaining I only come home for the big things. Weddings. Funerals.”

They both laughed, sort of. Funerals weren’t very funny anymore.

The truck slid over an icy patch, and Wilder let it, then had them bumping along again when the patch of ice let them go.

“Do you know you’re going to do?” he asked.

Ryder was fully aware that this was the same sort of question that his brothers had all been waiting to ask him that day that he’d done an end run around their little intervention. He’d had to deal with each and every one of them individually after that, but he thought he’d gotten the better end of the deal by not having them come at him in a pack.

Individually, they’d all pretty much said the same thing. Harlan had expressed surprise, but also concern, for both Ryder and Rosie. Wilder had been outraged that Ryder had never told him that he’d seen Rosie down in Austin. He wanted to know what else Ryder had kept from him, desecrating the twin bond , as he put it. And he hadn’t liked it much when Ryder had rolled his eyes.

So Ryder had rolled them even more.

Boone had been gruffly concerned about the rumors he’d heard in town, all of which, he was quick to tell Ryder, he’d been certain to correct. Because I know you’re no deadbeat dad , Boone had said with that quiet intensity of his. And now they know it too.

It was Knox who had looked at him curiously, and then asked, Do you want to be a father?

Like it was a choice.

But the unspoken part of all of his conversations was the inevitable truth that Ryder would leave again. That this was a break he was taking to look after Zeke. Or at least to be around while Zeke was declining, because it wasn’t like the old man let anyone take care of him in any real sense.

The Ryder they all knew had never resisted the call of the road. None of his brothers even thought to question the possibility that he might be done with it.

In point of fact, he hadn’t actually thought that himself, until this moment.

Until his twin asked him what he was going to do, out here where the sky was too big and the mountains too tall and every breath felt like eternity.

“I could do another tour,” Ryder said, feeling it out as he said it. “But I’m already the old man in the mix. Every ride I take increases my chance of serious injury and the older I get, the less likely I am to recover well.”

“You’re telling me things I already know,” Wilder replied, lazily. “What I don’t know is how you lasted this long.”

“Spite,” Ryder drawled, but he smiled as he said it. “Sheer stubbornness.”

His twin laughed, but there was something darker in his gaze. “Because coming back home would be a fate worse than death, got it.”

Ryder thought about that a lot later that night. He had dinner with his father, alone, because Belinda had gone out to one of her club meetings. Garden club, book club, wine club, it was hard to say. Belinda was a woman of many passions.

Zeke and he talked about sports, the weather, the ranch.

They did not discuss health. They didn’t even stray close to the topic. Maybe a better son would have pushed, Ryder thought—but he only knew how to be the son he was.

After they ate, they cleared away their dishes and neatened up the kitchen because it was that or face Belinda’s wrath—and no one wanted to deal with Belinda’s wrath, or even the faintest hint of her annoyance. She was not the sort of woman who kept her feelings inside. Standing there in the sparkling, clean kitchen, Ryder thought to ask his father a question that never would have occurred to him to ask before.

“I can’t remember why I was so determined to leave this town when I did,” he said, looking at one of the pictures of him and Wilder on the wall. He had no idea which one of them was which, since they had dressed as twin cowboys for Halloween that year. “Can you?”

Zeke smiled, though there was something sad about it. “Your mother died here. Don’t you remember?”

“That she died?” Ryder shook his head. “Yeah, Dad. I remember that.”

“When she died, you and your brother got it in your head—”

He shook that off, but Ryder knew what he meant—or he thought he did, anyway. He didn’t think he or Wilder had ever talked about it with anyone else, but the fact was, they’d been six years old and hard to handle at the best of times, and they had likely caused their mother more stress in her final days than she needed.

There was no point talking about it, that was just the way it had been.

The way Zeke looked at him now made something in him think good and hard about shivering, though he fought it off. “You told me once, around that time, that this was a bad place. When I asked you why, you said it was because it took her.”

Ryder felt that land. So hard and so intense it was as if Zeke had picked up a crowbar and plunged it straight through his ribs.

The worst part was that his father’s gaze on his was kind. And knowing in the way Wilder’s had been, too, like the only mystery here was the stuff Ryder insisted on not letting himself see. About himself.

“I always thought,” Zeke told him quietly, “that you figured if you ran around hard enough, fast enough, and long enough, you’d find a way to outrun death.”

Ryder thought he would prefer it if his father had picked up one of the cast-iron pans and whacked him in the face with it.

He made it out of the ranch house and into his truck, but truth be told, he wasn’t sure he really paid any attention to what he was doing until he was off Carey land and making his way up that hill toward the lodge.

On the other side, he didn’t think. There was no one else on the road so he pulled out his cell phone and texted Rosie.

When he got to her house, she came outside to meet him with a heavy coat wrapped around her but not zipped up. She peered in his window, frowning.

“What’s going on?” she asked. “Why did you want me to come out here?”

“Are the kids okay? Is your sister home?”

Rosie’s frown deepened. “Yes and yes, but—”

“Get in.”

He belted out the order and he watched her blink, take it in, consider telling him what he could do with his order—and then decide to obey him anyway.

And it was a fine thing, it turned out, to know a woman well enough to see the things she didn’t do right there on his face.

It felt like another intimacy he hadn’t known enough to understand he was missing, because it had never occurred to him that friendship and family could go along with heat and sex and longing. He had seen those smug expressions on other men’s faces and he’d thought they were nuts. Poor fools , he’d thought, to get themselves locked down like that when there was a whole world out there.

He hadn’t gotten it.

He never would have gotten it, but now there was Rosie.

And there were so many worlds in this one woman.

Too many worlds.

A man could spend a lifetime and not explore the half of them.

She walked around his truck, climbed in, and sat there in silence as he pulled back out of the driveway. He didn’t head back toward the lodge, but took the road that wound its way in and around the trees that dotted the mountainside. He kept going until he found an old lookout he vaguely remembered from high school.

He pulled in, turned his truck’s lights off but kept the engine running, and then he turned to her.

“Ryder. Are you okay? What is happening?”

“There are rules in your house,” he said, his voice low. He unbuckled himself from his seat belt and reached over to unbuckle hers. “I’m sick of the rules, Rosie.”

Then he pulled her across the bench seat, dragged her over his lap, and got his mouth on her, where it belonged. While he was at it, he got his hands beneath that coat and the turtleneck she wore beneath it.

And he decided that if he was going to experiment with all these worlds, and all that intensity, for as long as he was home—he’d be doing it like this.