Buch lesen: «Double Duty For The Cowboy»

Chapter One

Six and a half months later

Regan shifted carefully in the bed.

She felt as if every muscle in her body had been stretched and strained, but maybe that was normal after twenty-two hours of labor had finally resulted in the birth of her twin baby girls. Despite her aches, the new mom felt a smile tug at her lips when she looked at the bassinet beside her hospital bed and saw Piper and Poppy snuggled close together, as they’d been in her womb.

The nurse had advocated for “cobedding,” suggesting that it might help the newborns sleep better and longer. Regan didn’t know if the close proximity was responsible for their slumber now or if they were just exhausted from the whole birthing ordeal, but she was grateful that they were sleeping soundly.

And they weren’t the only ones, she realized, when she saw a familiar figure slumped in a chair in the corner. “Connor?”

He was immediately awake, leaning forward to ask, “What do you need?”

She just shook her head. “What time is it?”

He glanced at his watch. “A few minutes after eleven.”

Which meant that she’d been out for less than two hours. Still, she felt a little better now than when she’d closed her eyes. Not exactly rested and refreshed, but better.

Her husband hadn’t left her side for a moment during her labor, which made her wonder, “Why are you still here?”

Thick, dark brows rose over warm brown eyes. “Where did you think I’d be?”

“Home,” she suggested. “Where you could get some real sleep in a real bed.”

He shrugged, his broad shoulders straining the seams of the Columbia Law sweatshirt—a Christmas gift from his brother—that he’d tugged over his head when she’d awakened him to say that her water had broken. “I didn’t want to leave you.”

Her throat tightened with emotion and she silently cursed the hormones that had kept her strapped into an emotional roller coaster for the past eight months. Since that long ago night when she’d first told Connor about her pregnancy, he’d been there for her, every step of the way. He’d held her hand at the first prenatal appointment—where they’d both been shocked to learn that she was going to have twins; he’d coached her through every contraction as she worked to bring their babies into the world; he’d even cut the umbilical cords—an act that somehow bonded them even more closely than the platinum bands they’d exchanged six months earlier.

“I think you couldn’t stand to let the girls out of your sight,” she teased now.

“That might be true, too.” He covered her hand with his, squeezing gently. “Because they’re every bit as beautiful as their mama.”

She lifted her other hand to brush her hair away from her face. “I’d be afraid to even look in a mirror right now,” she confided, all too aware that she hadn’t washed her hair or even showered after sweating through the arduous labor.

“You’re beautiful,” Connor said again, and sounded as if he meant it.

She glanced away, uncertain how to respond. Over the past few months, there had been hints of something growing between them—aside from the girth of her belly—tempting Regan to hope that the marriage they’d entered into for the sake of their babies might someday become more.

Then a movement in the bassinet caught her eye. “It looks like Poppy’s waking up.”

He followed the direction of her gaze and smiled at the big yawn on the little girl’s face. “Are you sure that’s not Piper?”

“No,” she admitted.

Although the twins weren’t genetically identical, it wasn’t easy to tell them apart. Poppy’s hair was a shade darker than her sister’s, and Piper had a half-moon-shaped birthmark beside her belly button, but of course, they were swaddled in blankets with caps on their heads, so neither telltale feature was visible right now.

He chuckled softly.

“Do you think she’s hungry?” Regan asked worriedly.

The nurse had encouraged her to feed on demand, which meant putting the babies to her breast whenever they were awake and hungry. But her milk hadn’t come in yet, so naturally Regan worried that her babies were always hungry because they weren’t getting any sustenance.

“Let me change her diaper and then we’ll see,” Connor suggested.

She appreciated that he didn’t balk at doing the messy jobs. Of course, parenthood was brand new to both of them, and changing diapers was still more of a novelty than a chore. With two infants, she suspected that would change quickly. The doting daddy might be ducking out of diaper changes before the week was out, but for now, she was grateful for the offer because it meant that her weary and aching body didn’t have to get out of bed.

“She’s so tiny,” he said again, as he carefully lifted one of the pink-blanketed bundles out of the bassinet.

They were the first words he’d spoken when newborn Piper had been placed in his hands, his voice thick with a combination of reverence and fear.

“Not according to Dr. Amaro,” she reminded him.

In fact, the doctor had remarked that the babies were good sizes for twins born two weeks early. Piper had weighed in at five pounds, eight ounces and measured eighteen and a half inches; Poppy had tipped the scale at five pounds, ten ounces and stretched out to an even eighteen inches. Still, she’d recommended that the new mom spend several days in the hospital with her babies to ensure they were feeding and growing before they went home.

But Regan agreed with Connor that the baby did look tiny, especially cradled as she was now in her daddy’s big hands.

“And you were right,” he said, as he unsnapped the baby’s onesie to access her diaper. “This is Poppy.”

Which only meant that the newborn didn’t have a birthmark, not that her mother was particularly astute or intuitive.

Throughout her pregnancy, Regan had often felt out of her element and completely overwhelmed by the prospect of motherhood. When she was younger, several of her friends had earned money by babysitting, but Regan had never done so. She liked kids well enough; she just didn’t have any experience with them.

She’d quickly taken to her niece—the daughter of her younger brother, Spencer. But Dani had been almost four years old the first time Regan met her, a little girl already walking and talking. A baby was a completely different puzzle—not just smaller but so much more fragile, unable to communicate except through cries that might mean she was hungry or wet or unhappy or any number of other things. And even after months spent preparing for the birth of her babies, Regan didn’t feel prepared.

Thankfully, Connor didn’t seem to suffer from the same worries and doubts. He warmed the wipe between his palms before folding back the wet diaper to gently clean the baby’s skin.

“Did you borrow that plastic baby from our prenatal classes to practice on?” she wondered aloud.

He chuckled as he slid a clean diaper beneath Poppy’s bottom. “No.”

“Then how do you seem to know what you’re doing already?”

“My brother’s eight years younger than me,” he reminded her. “And I changed enough of Deacon’s diapers way back when to remember the basics of how it’s done.”

There was a photo in Brielle’s baby album of Regan holding her infant sister in her lap and a bottle in the baby’s mouth, but she didn’t have any recollection of the event. She’d certainly never been responsible for taking care of her younger siblings. Instead, the routine childcare tasks had fallen to the family housekeeper, Celeste, because both Margaret and Ben Channing had spent most of their waking hours at Blake Mining.

But Connor’s mom hadn’t had the help of a live-in cook and housekeeper. If even half the stories that circulated around town were true, Faith Parrish worked three part-time jobs to pay the bills, often leaving her youngest son in the care of his big brother. Deacon’s father had been in the picture for half a dozen years or so, but the general consensus in town was that he’d done nothing to help out at home and Faith was better off when he left. But everything Regan thought she knew about Connor’s childhood was based on hearsay and innuendo, because even after six months of marriage, her husband remained tight-lipped about his family history.

Which didn’t prevent her from asking: “Your father didn’t help out much, did he?”

“Stepfather,” he corrected automatically. “And no. He was always too busy.”

“Doing what?” she asked, having heard that a serious fall had left the man with a back injury and unable to work.

“Watching TV and drinking beer,” Connor said bluntly, as he slathered petroleum jelly on Poppy’s bottom to protect her delicate skin before fastening the Velcro tabs on the new diaper.

“I guess you didn’t miss him much when he left,” she remarked.

He lifted the baby, cradling her gently against his chest as he carried her over to the bed. “I certainly didn’t miss being knocked around.”

She felt her skin go cold. “Your stepfather hit you?”

“Only when he was drinking.”

Which he’d just admitted the man spent most of his time doing.

“How did I not know any of this?” she wondered aloud, as she unfastened her top to put the baby to her breast.

He shrugged again and turned away, as if to give her privacy.

If the topic of their conversation hadn’t been so serious, Regan might have laughed at the idea of preserving even a shred of modesty with a man who’d watched the same baby now suckling at her breast come into the world between her widely spread legs.

“It’s not something I like to talk about,” he said, facing the closed blinds of the window.

“So why are you telling me now?” she asked curiously.

It was a good question, Connor acknowledged to himself.

He’d tried to bury that part of his past in the past. He didn’t even like to think about those dark days when Dwayne Parrish had lived in the rented, ramshackle bungalow with him and his brother and their mother. To Dwayne, ruling with an iron fist wasn’t just an expression but a point of pride most often made at his stepson’s expense.

He turned back around, silently acknowledging that if he was going to have this conversation with his wife, they needed to have it face-to-face.

“Because part of me worries that, after living with him for seven years, I might have picked up his short fuse,” he finally confided.

Regan immediately shook her head. “You didn’t.”

“We’ve only been married for six months. How can you know?”

“Because I know you,” she said. “You are gentle and generous and giving.”

“I hit him back once,” he revealed.

She didn’t seem bothered or even surprised by the admission. “Only once?”

“I never thought to fight back.”

As a kid, he’d believed he was being disciplined for misbehavior. By the time he was old enough to question what was happening, he was so accustomed to being smacked around, it was no more or less than he expected.

“Not until he backhanded Deacon,” he confided.

His little brother had been about seven years old when he’d accidentally kicked over a bottle of beer on the floor by Dwayne’s recliner, spilling half its contents. Deacon’s father had responded with a string of curses and a swift backhand that knocked the child off his feet.

“You wouldn’t stand up for yourself, but you stood up for your brother,” she mused.

“Someone had to,” he pointed out. “He was just a kid.”

“And how old were you?”

“Fifteen.”

“Still a kid yourself,” she remarked. “What did he... How did your stepfather respond?”

“He was furious with me—that I dared to interfere.” And he’d expressed his anger with his fists and his feet, while Deacon cowered in the corner, sobbing. “But I guess one of our neighbors heard the ruckus and called the sheriff.”

Faith had arrived home at almost the same time as the lawman. Connor didn’t know if his mother would have found the strength to ask her husband to leave if Jed Traynor hadn’t been there with his badge and gun. But he was and she did, and Dwayne opted to pack up and take off rather than spend the night—or maybe several years—in lockup.

“He left that night and never came back,” Connor said.

“Is that when you decided that you wanted to wear a badge someday?” Regan asked.

“It was,” he confirmed. “I know it sounds cheesy, but I wanted to help those who couldn’t help themselves.”

She shook her head. “I don’t think it sounds cheesy. And that’s how I know you’re going to be an amazing dad.”

“Because I finally stood up to my stepfather?”

“Because you didn’t hesitate to do what was necessary to protect someone you care about,” she clarified.

“There isn’t anything I wouldn’t do for my brother,” Connor acknowledged.

And apparently, that included lying to his wife about the reasons he’d married her.