Lone Star Christmas

“We ate them.”

He glanced over his shoulder. “The whole box?”

His littlest brothers nodded in unison. That couldn’t be good for their stomachs.

“Um...then get the chips. There’s beef jerky, too.”

“Ethan ate all those.” They stood, arms crossed, mirror images of each other. The sixteen-year-old was leaning against the barn, still staring at his phone. The kid hadn’t looked up once all day. Actually, Max couldn’t remember seeing his eyes. Even during the funeral, he’d had his gaze glued to the small screen in his hand.

Max pinched the bridge of his nose. So far, nothing had gone right on this trip. The temperature had to have dropped twenty degrees since they left Dallas this morning.

Standing, he arched his back until he heard the popping. He winced at the pain in his shoulder. Who was he kidding? Nothing had been right for the last two months since he was stomped on by Texas Fire. He’d wanted to be the cowboy who finally stayed on that bull for a full eight seconds. He’d done it, too, but at the cost of a healthy body. One broken collarbone and one fractured eye socket were added to his already long list of wrecked body parts.

“My phone’s about to die.” Ethan looked up for the first time. “I need to charge it. It’s like we dropped off the earth.”

Max wasn’t sure why the teen had even asked to join them, or why he’d agreed to it. He sighed. The kid’s mother was back in Chicago. Unfortunately, Max had plenty of memories of her. She had been his first stepmother, not that she had been any kind of mother. She had sent him away to live with his mother’s father. Apparently, she had no problem sending her own son away, either.

They might all have the same father, but in no way had they been part of the same household.

He hoped to not only be a better big brother but to give them a sense of family. He wanted to be a brother they could count on, even when they didn’t live in the same house.

Injecting positive energy into his voice, Max smiled. “We have a couple of weeks to spend together and get some brotherly bonding. But if you want to go home, Ethan, I’m sure we can find a way to get you to the airport.”

“Nah. I’m good.”

Max stuffed his hands in his pockets and looked down at the two little ones. He could do this until their aunt was able to get them. He had only met Vanessa once, at the rehearsal party for his father’s third marriage. She had been yelling at her sister, his father’s latest bride-to-be. Wanting to stop the fiasco, she had refused to go to the wedding. Yeah, that had been a lovely moment.

She would be taking the boys as soon as she wrapped up her end-of-year work schedule. The will had listed them both as guardians. The boys were stuck with two people who were strangers to them.

He looked at Ethan again. In the new semester, the coltish kid would return to his boarding school.

In less than a month he’d be on his own again, healed up and ready to ride in the finals. He could do this. “What about the cooler? Anything left in there?”

They shook their heads again. The matching pairs of big brown eyes just about did him in. He wanted to get these pens fixed, but he didn’t have the supplies he needed anyway.

“Come on, boys. We’ll turn the stock out in the larger pasture, then explore the living quarters. The main brick house was built by my...our grandfather in the ’70s, you know.” After unloading the bulls from the trailer, they climbed back into his truck. “Our great-great-grandfather built the old ranch house over a hundred years ago. We’ve owned the land for almost two hundred years. When Texas was still part of Mexico.”

Ethan didn’t look impressed. Time and years didn’t have much meaning to Isaac and Tomas. But for him? He hadn’t expected this stirring of coming home.

The old path to the main house was hard to find. There wasn’t any evidence that the place had had a caretaker. The weeds on the road looked as if they had grown unchecked for well over a year.

He pulled up to the house and started unloading.

“Max! Look! Someone’s coming,” one of the boys hollered.

Sure enough, a cloud of dust was heading their way. Maybe if they pretended they weren’t here, whoever it was would leave. There wasn’t a single person in Clear Water Max wanted to see.

“Who do you think it is? Uncle Rigo said this is where our family comes from.”

The other boy nodded. “He said there were lots of stupid people, too.”

Great. No telling what his uncle had said to them. “That’s not a nice word, guys. And Uncle Rigo is a bit grumpy, so I wouldn’t listen too much to what he says.”

Ethan leaned against one of the house’s columns. He slipped his phone into his loose jeans, his dark hair falling over his face. “Maybe they brought food.”

Max checked his watch. It was after two o’clock. Less than one day and he was already starving them. “Once this person leaves, we’ll drive to Uvalde and find something to eat and get supplies.”

A silver Tahoe pulled up to the front porch.

He glanced inside the vehicle. That couldn’t be right. His pulse did an uptick. The one person he wanted to avoid the most had just arrived at his door. What was she doing here? He narrowed his eyes. Maybe it was her twin, Danica, and not Jackie Bergmann.

Why was she just sitting there? He tilted his head. It looked like she was talking to someone. With a nod, she got out and stood next to the SUV, a huge smile on her face...a very forced smile.

One thing was certain. It was Jackie.

The summer they had met on the rodeo circuit she had been a pretty girl, and now she was a gorgeous woman. He had hoped his teenage memories had inflated her beauty, but they hadn’t. He had been Romeo to her Juliet. His stupid self had written endless poems and songs for her. Yeah, he’d been a major loser.

From that summer on, Jackie had become the standard to which he’d compared all the other women in his life. Her laugh, her quick wit, her gentleness—even her faith. To his irritation, the others had always come up short. He hated how much he had loved her. Not fun when it hadn’t been returned. He seemed destined to chase after people who didn’t want him.

“Hi, Max. What a good-looking family you have there. Welcome back to Clear Water.” She didn’t move, just stared at the two little ones standing next to him. “My. Those boys look just like you.”

The one closest to him took his hand. He was the friendlier one, the one who did most of the talking. “Everyone says we’re mini-Maxes. When we get our black cowboy hats, we’ll be just like him. He’s going to teach us how to ride bulls. He says—”

Max put a hand on the small shoulder. If he didn’t cut him off now, he’d never stop talking. “Hey, Danica.”

Okay, calling her by her sister’s name was low, but he couldn’t let her know how much she disturbed him. “What brings you out to the ranch?” He really hoped his voice sounded casual, as though seeing her again didn’t uproot his foundation.

Her eyes went a little wide, then her smile relaxed. “I’m Jackie. You used to be able to tell us apart. Of course, that was a long time ago. Now it looks like you got your own twins. Congratulations on the family.”

“They’re not twins,” he started to explain.

“He can’t tell us apart, either.” One of the boys giggled.

The other just watched the exchange. That had to be Tomas. He seemed to be six going on sixty.

“These are my brothers. Isaac and Tomas. That’s Ethan.”

“I’m five. Tomas is six. Ethan is sixteen.” Isaac offered up the information with a giant smile.

“Your brothers?” Her big green eyes blinked a few times.

“Yeah, it’s what happens when your father marries someone the same age as you.”

“Oh. Um, I’m sorry.” She looked behind her. “In town, I heard you were here with your wife and kids.”

“We’ve been here a couple of hours, and the town gave me a family? How did they even know we were here?”

“Welcome to Smalltown, USA. And having a Delgado back on the ranch is big news.”