Twins for the Cowboy Dad (A Bachelor Cowboys Romance #3)

Chapter One

The party was over…a couple of hours ago.

The birthday boy, Brett Lemmon’s grandfather Lem, was probably asleep by now.

Brett should have been, as well, but he was too on edge after what had transpired that day.

So he paced the dark paneled den at the Four Corners Ranch and ruminated on everything that had happened.

His grandfather had turned eighty-one today, and his wife had thrown him a wonderful party with all their enormous family gathered around him at Ranch Haven, an hour away from the town of Willow Creek, Wyoming, and an hour away from the Four Corners Ranch.

Lem should have been the focus of the day, but as usual, she had disrupted it.

Talk of her. Thoughts of her. And then she’d sent that strange text message: I am on my way to Willow Creek.

Alone. Divorce is finally final. I will explain everything when I get to the Four Corners.

How could she possibly explain what she’d done?

Brett couldn’t think of any excuse good enough to justify her not being here when her dad had been hurt and lying in a coma in a hospital bed.

What reason could she possibly have had for not coming home to attend her own father’s funeral?

And how could she justify contesting his will, fighting his final wishes?

Brett didn’t care that she’d been going through a divorce.

He didn’t care about anything except honoring his late boss and friend, Frank Dempsey.

Frank’s daughter, Patricia “Trish” Dempsey-Trent, obviously hadn’t cared about her father.

But Brett had. He’d admired, respected and loved Frank.

And he would do everything within his power to make sure that Frank’s wishes were carried out.

When he’d been alive, Frank had been denied his most fervent wish.

He’d wanted a relationship with his only child, but Frank had told Brett that once Trish had been too old for enforcement of the custody agreement between him and his ex-wife, she had stopped spending summer and school holidays with him.

He’d only seen her sporadically over the years.

And he’d missed her so much.

After pacing around the leather couch, Brett headed toward Frank’s massive oak desk.

Brett and his brothers, Blake and Liam, who helped him run the ranch, hadn’t been able to bring themselves to sit in Frank’s chair yet.

They couldn’t imagine anyone else sitting in the big chair that Frank had used so often the leather had worn thin on the armrests.

Brett and his brothers hadn’t touched the desk either; it still had the things on it that had mattered most to Frank: a box of expensive cigars, a metal shoe from his favorite horse and pictures of his girls, or as he’d called them, Frank’s angels—his daughter, Trish, and her cousin Frankie, who Frank had raised after her parents died, and their best friend, Maci Bluff.

One of the photographs was about eight or nine years old, from the last summer before their senior year of high school, so they were all about seventeen.

Their faces were sunburned, their smiles bright and the love and affection they felt for each other was so clear in their expressions and in the way that their arms were wrapped tightly around each other.

Frankie looked the same now as she had in the picture, with her wild, unruly brown curls. Maci had changed quite a bit. Her short pixie cut had grown out, so her blond hair was longer now and her freckles must have faded away.

And Trish…

Brett had no idea if she still looked the same.

He hadn’t seen her in the five years that he’d worked at the Four Corners Ranch.

In the photograph, she looked a lot like Frankie with the same delicate features, but her face was fuller, rounder.

And her eyes were a lighter brown than Frankie’s, more like topaz.

She had curly hair, too, but it was shorter and kind of frizzy.

There were other pictures of her, too, but she was even younger in those.

In one, she was a baby, and Frank was holding her up over his head, and she was smiling down at him.

Frank looked so happy in the picture that Brett’s heart ached for him, for how much he’d loved his daughter.

But he’d lost her. He’d blamed his vindictive ex-wife and cautioned Brett to never get married.

But Brett didn’t only blame Frank’s ex for breaking his heart; his daughter had done the most damage to him.

And she still continued to disrespect him by disrespecting his wishes, by fighting the will in which Frank had laid out how he wanted to divide his estate.

Frank hadn’t wanted just his daughter to inherit it, or even just his daughter and Frankie.

Frank had wanted his estate split equally between Trish, Frankie, and Brett and his brothers.

And Maci, as the executor of his will as well as the lawyer who’d drawn it up, would receive a percentage of the value of it.

Brett hadn’t expected Frank to include him, let alone his brothers.

But in those first couple of lean years when Brett had rarely drawn a salary, Frank had promised that he would make it up to Brett in the end. And Frank had always kept his promises.

Headlights suddenly shone through the blinds over the window in the den that faced the driveway. Brett glanced at his watch. It was after midnight. While her text had said she was on her way to Willow Creek, he’d assumed that meant she would show up tomorrow or the day after, not tonight.

And definitely not when he was the only one awake in the house. Even his niece, Lucy, was sleeping, and Brett had recently wondered if the baby ever closed her eyes. He loved the little girl, but he certainly didn’t want any kids of his own. They were more work than the ranch was.

He preferred to be out riding fences than walking the floor with a fussy infant. He intended to take his late friend’s advice to heart and never give his heart to anyone. Focus on doing what he loved instead of falling in love. That was his plan.

His matchmaking grandpa Lem and his new wife, Sadie March Haven, weren’t going to like that, but he didn’t care. He was going to protect himself and, most importantly, he was going to protect his heart.

* * *

Trish should have stopped for the night in Willow Creek; there were hotels there, bed-and-breakfasts that would have been open still.

She could have checked in and rested before coming out to the ranch in the morning.

But knowing she was only an hour away had pushed her to keep driving.

She’d been gone so long that she hadn’t wanted to wait a minute longer, let alone a day, to see the ranch again.

Maybe it was better that she arrived at night since she was unlikely to see anyone else.

Surely the Lemmons slept in the bunkhouse where the ranch hands always had, so it would only be her cousin Frankie in the house.

And her room, the one her father had promised to always keep for her, should be just as she’d left it years ago.

Now that she was here, she couldn’t wait to get out of the truck where she’d been confined for too long without moving. That wasn’t good for her. Or for them…

She pressed her hand over her swollen belly. First one foot kicked, and then another. She smiled. They were letting her know that they were okay. After losing other babies, she needed this reassurance more than anything.

She pushed open the driver door, maneuvered her pregnant belly from beneath the steering wheel and stepped out onto the gravel driveway.

“This is home, babies,” she whispered. This was the place she’d been the happiest in her life, with the people who’d meant the most to her. But one of them wasn’t here any longer.

If only she could see her father again…

It was too late for that now. He was gone.

And she hadn’t even been able to say goodbye.

Tears stung her eyes, but she blinked them away and focused on the house she’d always loved so much.

Yard lights illuminated the long, one-story ranch house, and another light glowed in one of the front windows and spilled onto the porch that ran the entire length of the house.

Despite not having visited for years, she knew which window that was: her father’s den. That light had been on so often late into the night like it was now, while her father had pored over the ranch books.

Had he been struggling to keep the business afloat like Maci Bluff had told her?

She and Maci had once been so close back when Trish had spent every summer at the Four Corners Ranch.

Those summers had been the best experiences of her entire life, hanging out with her best friends and playing with animals outside all day long.

She wished she’d never stopped spending her summers, or even more of her time, at the ranch.

She wished she’d listened to her father about her ex, because then Harold Trent would have been her ex-fiancé instead of ex-husband.

She wished she’d listened to her father about everything else as well, all the advice he’d given her over the years, like being self-sufficient and not letting her mother get in her head, but it was too late now.

The mistakes had been made, and he was gone.

What she wouldn’t give to hear his voice one more time…

“Who’s out there?”

The voice was deep, gruff and very male. A man was standing on the porch, the front door open behind him. He wore a cowboy hat and boots, but with the light behind him, his face was in shadows.

“Who are you?” she asked. Goose bumps rose on the skin of her bare arms, making her shiver. She had truly expected that only Frankie would be living inside the house.

“Brett Lemmon,” he replied.

She sucked in a breath. This was one of the brothers who’d worked for her father and had somehow convinced Frank to put them in his will.

“And you’re Patricia Dempsey-Trent?” he asked, as if he couldn’t believe it.