The Rancher's Texas Twins

“Stay with you?” Avery looked shocked. She ought to. He was still shocked he’d made the offer at all.

“No,” Gabe clarified a second time, “with me, my housekeeper and her husband.” When both Avery and Mrs. Sackett still stared at him, he reached down and began gathering the markers off the floor. “If nothing else, four adults might give you a fighting chance against these two.”

Debbie reached over and began picking up markers herself, but ended up knocking Gabe’s hat off his head.

They all fell into stunned silence. No one, especially not a preschooler, knocked a cowboy’s hat off his head. Gabe felt his face tighten into a frustrated scowl before he could stop it. Debbie, cued by his frown, caught on to the grievous nature of what she’d just done. Her bitty blue eyes went wide, the tiny pink lip below them jutted and quivered, and she dissolved once again into tears.

Gabriel Everett now added host to his list of demanding jobs—and it was the one that just might be the death of him.

* * *

Avery was sure she looked exasperated. Mostly because she was. Some days it felt like she hadn’t known a moment’s peace since Danny left.

No one should have to raise two precious little girls on her own. Debbie and Dinah should know their father, should see every day how much daddies loved mommies. How could any man she had been so sure she loved be capable of what Danny had done? Just up and decide that two children at once were too much? Had all his “faith” been false? He’d never been overly free with affection, but lately she wondered if he’d ever really loved her at all. Did the man ever give a thought to his dear daughters and how they fared?

Only her pride made her go on about needing to get back to Tennessee. Dickson was where she lived, where she was trying to make a life without Danny, but the truth was, precious little was back there. A house, a smattering of clients, some acquaintances, but no true friends.

Not that she’d admit any of that to anyone here. Successful businesswomen didn’t up and leave their enterprises for weeks at a time to help with some charity case. She’d end up a charity case herself if she kept that up. Every eye in Haven seemed to stare at her in either expectation or suspicion. And as for the whole town being ready to help, she didn’t much believe that. Not after Mrs. Sackett’s persnickety scrutiny.

“Avery?” Gabe was clearly expecting an answer to his startlingly generous offer. It was clear he would do anything to get her to stay, and the pressure of that choked any reply.

Life had dropped too many emotional bombs since her arrival here to let her think clearly. Coming to Haven had felt like stepping into a crammed-full kind of chaos. Really, who ever discovers they’ve been impersonated? Some gold-digging woman had actually come here earlier claiming to be her. Clearly, she was supposed to be someone important. The whole town was in an uproar over the fate of her grandfather Cyrus’s estate. It had been set—along with a mountain of stipulations, one of which included her presence—to become the new home of a ranch for troubled boys. The huge house went to a worthy cause, while she, evidently his only surviving relative, got a run-down cabin. Everyone wanted something from her despite the fact that she was just trying to hold her life together. Someone important? Ha! The number of nights she fell into bed exhausted and near tears ought to be illegal.

Should she stay? Could she stay?

“You’re serious?” she finally asked Gabe as she tried unsuccessfully to fetch the poor man’s toppled hat. “I mean...look at them.” She loved Dinah and Debbie to pieces, but even she knew they could be a handful. Gabriel Everett did not seem at all like the kind of man who would suffer any children—much less four-year-olds—with any grace.

Time came to a prickly halt while the man bent over, grasped his hat and settled it back on his head. He seemed as shocked at the proposition he’d just made as she was.

“Marlene will love them,” he said almost begrudgingly. “She and Jethro have their grandkids in college now, and Marlene needs someone to coddle. I caught her staring at an ad for puppies the other day.” Avery got the distinct impression he was trying to convince himself as much as her.

“No, I’d expect it would be best if we just went back.”

“You can’t.” He wiped his hands down his face. “I mean, the whole town would be obliged if you’d stay. I’ve got the space, and things aren’t so—” he gestured around the boardinghouse “—fussy out there. Not much they could break or stain.”

Dinah and Debbie had indeed excelled at breaking and staining recently. Mrs. Sackett hadn’t asked her to pay for or replace anything the girls had damaged, but she could tell the woman was getting close to drawing up a bill. The dolls—which they had been warned about several times—were clearly the last straw.

Would it be so awful to stay a bit longer? At a place with extra helping hands? Experienced grandparent hands? “Well,” Avery said, pulling in a deep breath, “I suppose we could give it a try.”

Avery’s eye caught Mrs. Sackett’s hard stare, one that practically shouted “you sure as shooting better give it a try.”

Stay with Gabriel Everett?

Help with the girls was a hard prospect to refuse right about now, even though Haven wasn’t turning out anything like she’d hoped.

“How soon can you take them, Gabe?” Mrs. Sackett asked with a hurtful sense of urgency. Clearly, she meant every word of her threat to toss them out.

“Well, it’s Monday. I think I can have them off your hands by tomorrow noon, Roz. Just a matter of a phone call and a bit of rearranging.” He turned to look at Avery. “If that’s agreeable to you.”

“Well, then, I guess I should thank you kindly for the hospitality,” she said, handing markers to Dinah to put back in the box. Just like that, the girls went back to their coloring. Her sweet little girls had returned—at least until the next calamity.

But something needed to be said. “Just for a week or so. Maybe less. I haven’t made up my mind about anything after that.” She’d gotten the distinct impression that being a Culpepper wasn’t a positive in this town—nothing she wanted a big dose of, for her or the girls.

“Let’s tackle that subject in a day or two.” Gabriel turned his gaze to the innkeeper again. “After all, we can’t have you run out of town now, can we?”

Mrs. Sackett just huffed, held the doll close to her chest as if the thing was alive and turned back toward the door.

“I don’t know.” Resentment at Cyrus for putting her in this position boiled in her blood—right now she could barely bring herself to care about whatever else the old man was leaving her, if anything.

Avery reached down to touch Dinah’s soft brown curls. “They’re not difficult all the time, you know. They really can be sweet as pie some days.”

Gabe returned an orange marker to the table. “I’m sure that’s true.” He didn’t look like he meant it.

“I’m sure the boys ranch is a fine cause, but I need to think about what’s best for the girls, and for me.” Avery hated how tight and forced her voice sounded.

“No one can fault you for that. Just take some time before you decide.” He stuffed his hands in his pockets, looking down at the little girls with a mixture of bafflement and irritation. “Give us a chance to work all this out.”

She didn’t have it in her to fight. At least not today. “We’ll see.”

It wasn’t a yes, but he looked relieved anyway. “I’ll come by tomorrow around eleven and we can load my truck with whatever doesn’t fit in your car. I’ll call Marlene right now. I’m sure it’ll set her into a storm of happy preparations. Is it okay if I give her your phone number if she has any questions?”

“Sure.” The prospect of getting out of the boardinghouse lifted a weight off Avery’s shoulders she hadn’t even realized was pressing down so hard. “Thank you,” she said, fighting the awkward and indebted feeling that settled cold and hard against her rigid spine. “Really. It’s a very kind offer.”

Gabriel shrugged. “I’ve got the space, and nothing gets solved if you leave. It works for everybody.” He seemed more at peace with the idea than he had been even two minutes ago.

That peace wasn’t likely to last. “We’ll see if you say that after twenty-four hours of these two, cowboy,” Avery teased. He couldn’t really know what he was getting himself into, could he?

“I’ve handled far rougher bulls at the ranch. How hard can a pair of little girls be?”

Bless his heart, Avery thought, he’s about to find out.

Chapter Two (#udda3a390-468b-5857-9bb8-da36a273e3de)

Following a mountain of exasperating Lone Star Cowboy League business, Gabe came home that Monday afternoon to find Marlene and Jethro Frank cleaning a batch of old toys. Even the squeal of joy Marlene had given over the phone hadn’t prepared him for just how much the older couple was going to enjoy this spontaneous setup. As he cut the ignition on his truck, Gabe couldn’t help but wonder if he was looking at his last quiet evening on the ranch for a while.

“Evening, Gabriel,” Jethro called from over a bucket of sudsy water. “Just getting things ready.”

Gabe looked to his left to see child-sized pastel sheets hanging on the line. “You had all this?”

“A few calls around church was all it took,” Marlene said with a smile. She chuckled as she handed a bright green doll carriage to Jethro. “Little girls! And twins at that!”

Jethro shot Gabe just a hint of a “you sure you know what you’re doing?” glance, one gray eyebrow raised as he plunged a sponge into the soapy water.

Gabe had no idea what he was doing. He’d been asking himself all afternoon what on earth had made him offer to house Avery and the twins. He didn’t especially like children—but he liked failing a whole town even less.

It wasn’t as if life hadn’t complicated itself tenfold in the past few months. Cyrus’s will was forcing him to hunt down Theodore Linley, his maternal grandfather—someone Gabe never wanted to see again. Worse yet, Linley clearly didn’t want to be found. No one else in Haven had been able to locate him, and even the private investigators hired to find the man had failed.

Cyrus Culpepper’s set of demands was beginning to look more impossible with each passing day.