The Texas Rancher's Marriage

“I was beginning to think you’d left us for good,” the owner of Sonny’s Barbecue teased, giving him a slap on the back…and a hug. “Come by and see me when you get a little time.”

And so it went. Everyone complaining good-naturedly about how long he’d been gone, worrying he’d up and leave Laramie County again, warning him that if he did take off again their hearts would be broken beyond repair. The twins’ eyes got even wider as they soaked it all in.

“I think you’d all survive,” Chase joshed back when the rush of sentiment got a little much. Any more of this and they’d have him getting all weepy, too.

He looked around for help. Merri seemed to have faded into the background, but members of the band—also old pals of his—got the hint. They immediately started playing a rowdy rendition of the perennial Texas party favorite, “Friends in Low Places.”

An appreciative roar went up. Everyone joined in the raucous singing and swaying. Dancing soon followed. And, to Chase’s joy, the real homecoming began.

* * *

HOURS LATER, CHASE AND MERRI stood side by side as the last of the taillights disappeared down the drive. It was the first time they’d been alone since he arrived, and Chase was more than a little aware of her. Not that this was a surprise. The first time he had seen her, at his brother’s engagement party, he’d wanted her. But Merri had been living with another guy and practically engaged, so he’d done the honorable thing and walked away.

She turned to him now with heartfelt apology. “I’m sorry about the cool reception you received from the twins.”

Cognizant that he probably should have expected as much, given how little contact they’d had, Chase shrugged. “Don’t worry about it.”

“I tried to prepare them for actually meeting you, instead of just seeing your face on the screen in a video chat, or hearing your voice on the phone.”

Which, Chase reflected, given some of the rough-and-tumble sites where he had been stationed, hadn’t happened all that frequently. He tore his eyes from the curves beneath Merri’s snug-fitting T-shirt, cropped denim jacket and jeans. Her burgundy western boots were nice, too. Obviously custom, from Monroe’s. He recognized the signature Texas rose hidden in the fancy feminine embroidery adorning the sides.

“But I’m not sure they believed it was really going to happen,” Merri continued, oblivious of the impact she was having on him. “Or understood what your coming here would mean to them.” She released a sigh. “Because at the time I told them, I wasn’t sure if you were just coming for a visit or staying long-term.”

Had she always smelled this good? Like lavender…and woman? Wishing he could make a move on her, without complicating things unnecessarily, Chase shrugged. “I’m sorry about that.” Because the kids were already inside, fast asleep, he remained on the porch, speaking quietly with Merri. His gaze roved her upturned face. Although she’d been gorgeous in daylight, she looked even more radiant in the soft glow of the porch light.

Gruffly, he confessed, “I didn’t know what I was going to do myself till a few days ago.” It had been a tough decision to make. Complicated by the fact that if he came back to stay, Merri was going to expect him to be an uncle to the kids, and behave in a brotherly fashion to her. And his feelings for her were anything but fraternal. Although, thankfully for both of them, she didn’t know that.

Merri studied him, a new realism shining in her lovely green eyes. As if the fairy-tale wishes she had once harbored had faded, and she knew now what life was—and what it wasn’t. She stepped a little closer, further inundating him in her deliciously feminine scent. “You were really thinking of reenlisting?”

Chase ignored the mounting desire generated by her closeness; and the sight of her running a delicate hand through the soft, thick layers of her honey-blond hair. “It’s important work. I made a lot of good friends over there. But…there’s important work to be done here, too, and I also have a lot of friends here, so…I finally decided to come home.”

Chase saw her shiver a little in the cooling night air. She pulled the edges of her jacket together, but not before he noted her physical reaction to the declining temperature.

“I’m glad you did.” Flushing self-consciously, she said, “I know the kids are, too. They just don’t know how to express it yet. In any case, I prepared the guest room for you.”

“You don’t have to put me up tonight,” Chase said. “I can sleep in an on-call room at the hospital, till I have time to find a place.” Thanks to the local auto dealer’s cooperation in making an advance sale, he even had a brand-new pickup truck to drive, waiting in the parking area next to the ranch house.

A mixture of disappointment and guilt colored her expression. “This is your home.”

“It was once,” Chase agreed, his tone flat, as old decisions neither of them had anything to do with came back to haunt them once again. He brushed aside the hurt he’d felt for years now. The hurt that had helped keep him away, and made him wonder if he should return to Laramie County at all. “But not anymore.”

* * *

MERRI WONDERED IF THIS was the reason behind the rift that had existed between Chase and his younger brother. One that had seemed to only get bigger as time passed, reaching a point of no return shortly before Chase went off to war. Which, of course, made his eventual generosity regarding the birth of the twins even more difficult for her to understand.

Now that he was back, however, and going to be part of the twins’ lives, it was time she rectified that.

“I never understood why your mother willed the entire property to Scott.” The one-sided terms of the late Lydia Armstrong’s estate had shocked everyone when the will had been read. Especially Chase, Merri remembered, because he hadn’t known the disinheritance was coming.

He glanced up at the half-moon overhead, then restlessly walked the length of the porch that lined the large stone-and-cedar ranch house. His gaze traveled over the manicured lawn and the lush shrubbery, to the now-empty pastures. He didn’t seem to find fault with anything he saw in the pastoral scene. Which was no surprise to Merri. She had done a good job as conservator of the property, on behalf of the twins, who had inherited it all upon their father’s death.

Chase ignored the chain-hung swing at the end of the porch and ambled back to her side. “She figured I was a doctor. I’d make plenty of money and never have time to ranch. Whereas Scott needed a job and a place to live.”

Merri knew enough about Scott and Sasha’s selfishness now to realize undue pressure had been applied to the elder, ailing Armstrong, her emotions likely played upon. Because, hard as it was to admit, at the end of the day, all Merri’s sister and Chase’s brother had ever thought about was themselves. Their desires. Their needs.

And Chase knew it, too.

Aware it was a little too intimate to be standing there together in the semidarkness, Merri pivoted and led him inside. “Your mom could have left you half the land anyway,” she said over her shoulder. “I mean, we’re talking about over five thousand acres! Or Scott and Sasha could have willed the property back to you, instead of putting it in trust for their children.” And naming me as executor and guardian of that trust.

In the living room, Chase watched her remove the screen on the fireplace. He seemed as oblivious to the chill in the air as she was sensitive to it.

“It’s okay. I got over what happened a long time ago.”

Had he? Truth was, Merri couldn’t see how. She knelt before the hearth, and admitted with total frankness, “I still feel funny about us living here and you not. It doesn’t seem right.”

Chase continued to watch as she arranged the firewood. “Life’s not fair. We all know that.”

He was right. Merri wadded up some newspaper and stuffed it in the gaps between the oak logs. If it had been, her sister would have had functioning ovaries. She would not have required donated eggs—from Merri—to become pregnant. Had life been fair, Scott wouldn’t have needed to go to Chase for his assistance, too.

Still surprised that Chase had helped Sasha and Scott out in the end, even after initially turning the couple down, Merri decided it was past time to ask the question that had been burning in her gut for several years now. Nervously, she blurted out, “What about the twins?”

Chase gave her a mystified look. “What about them?” he asked carefully.

She struck a match and lit the fire. “What are your intentions there?” she prodded.

Chase watched the paper take the flame, before turning his gaze to Merri again. “You’re their biological mother. You should be telling me how you want this to work.”

Her anxiety rose. Chase was decisive in all other areas of his life. His apathy and indifference here were daunting, to say the least. “But like it or not, you’re involved, too,” she persisted, trying to squeeze some emotion out of him, to get him to tell her where this predicament was likely headed. “Biologically speaking, anyway.”

A tense silence fell. Chase stared at her as if she had either lost her mind or was a disaster waiting to happen. “What are you talking about?” He slowly enunciated every word.

Weary of maintaining the public ruse her late brother-in-law and sister had insisted upon, Merri looked Chase square in the eye and admitted, “A few months after Scott and Sasha died, I found the paperwork from the fertility clinic, indicating that Scott received help there, too.”

Chase shrugged. “Although it wasn’t common knowledge, you and I both know my brother had problems in that regard, too. That he was, for all intents and purposes, as sterile as Sasha.”

“Which was why you jumped in to help, just as I did.”

“And,” Chase continued matter-of-factly, “set him up with the top infertility specialists at the medical school I attended.”

His involvement hadn’t ended there and Merri knew it. Frustration mounting, she rose and walked toward him. “Look, I don’t know what kind of deal you and your brother made…probably something similar to the one I made with Sasha and him. But you don’t have to hide anything from me, Chase. Not anymore. I know that you ‘helped out’ a heck of a lot more than just setting them up with the right professionals.”

Chase studied her. “I don’t know what Scott told you—or Sasha, for that matter. My brother had a way of bending the truth to suit his needs, never more so than when his back was against a wall. But I did not do what you did, Merri. I didn’t offer up my genetic material to help them out.” He exhaled sharply. “They asked me—before I went overseas…as you well know—but I told them I couldn’t handle having a child raised by someone else, not even my own kin. It’s not in me to be a spectator in my own child’s life.”

Merri knotted her hands in frustration. She remembered the chaos his refusal had caused among the four of them. The rift that had left Chase and his brother barely speaking. “Then why did you sign those papers, allowing Scott to use sperm you had already donated to the university for medical research, for Sasha’s in vitro fertilization procedure?”

Chase’s mouth dropped open in dismay. “I never signed anything.”

“But you did!” Merri went to the desk, unlocked the drawer and pulled out a slender file of papers. She handed it over.