Tina Leonard - A Callahan Outlaw's Twins (15 page)

Chapter Sixteen

A week later, Sloan wondered if it was his bride’s plan to drive his brothers and particularly himself absolutely crazy.

“I can’t take it,” Dante said, peering out the window at the two nannies pushing the babies in big-wheeled prams.

“It’s like catnip,” his twin, Tighe, agreed. “Cowboy catnip.”

“Don’t look,” Sloan said. “Sit by a wall with no windows. You’re making me nuts.” All their comments about the new nannies just made him realize how much he missed his wife. Since she’d been back at the ranch, Kendall hadn’t shared her bed with him once. Hadn’t invited him. Didn’t even give him so much as a wink.

It was agony. He was having to live on the memories of those first few days in her bed.

His brothers’ constant chatter about women was not helping.

“It’s your test,” Ash said, peering over their shoulders. “Hope you pass. Exams are notoriously difficult, you know. That’s why they’re called tests.”

Galen sagged into a leather sofa. “I was the only one good in school. All the rest of you were mental porcupines. Unmotivated, one might say.”

“I had test anxiety, I’m pretty sure,” Jace said, eyeballing the ladies. “Anyway, what teacher would give this test? It’s cruel and unusual.”

“Aunt Fiona,” Ash said, blithely humored by her brothers’ misery. “Kendall is a very willing accomplice, I’m betting.”

Falcon looked at Sloan. “Is it possible that your wife has set some kind of temptation mousetrap for us?”

Sloan smiled. “I would never underestimate my wife.”

Dante grunted. “You should defend her against specious claims.”

Sloan noted his brothers gawking like teenagers, and shrugged. “Doesn’t matter to me if she loads a mousetrap with the most delectable cheese she can find and then snaps your necks.” He sighed. “You hammerheads were always destined either for marriage or misery, and I’m not sure they don’t go together.”

Ash giggled. “I think Kendall’s smart as a whip. She told those beautiful bodyguards to take an evening stroll right at meeting time. Guaranteed to get your attention when you looked out the many windows of this fabulous library.” Ash glanced at Sloan. “Makes me wonder what she’s got up her sleeve for you.”

“I don’t know,” he said, wishing Kendall did have something for him, and wishing it started with a kiss and ended with a satisfying “Oh, Sloan!” “Can we get on to the meeting, please? I think you’ve had enough time to drool on your bibs, bros.”

Dante and Tighe tore themselves away from the windows.

“It’s enough to sap a lesser man,” Tighe said. “Fortunately, I can resist temptation.”

“I can’t,” Dante said, “and I never try.”

“Let’s focus here,” Sloan said. “We have ranch business to discuss.”

“Why would it be us Fiona set the mousetrap for?” Galen, the one of them who liked to overuse his brain cells, said. “Why not you?” he asked Ash.

“Because I am not the weak link. Remember Grandfather said one of you is the weak link in the chain, the hunted one? The enemy knows this and will try to exploit it. But it’s not me, so they don’t have to worry about trying to matchmake me into staying here.”

Sloan and his brothers stared at her.

“Well, don’t look at me that way,” Ash said. “It’s true, if you would only use your skulls for something other than putting your hats on. It’s not me. And Sloan, you’re not totally safe, you know. Your marriage is not exactly built on anything more solid than one of Aunt Fiona’s pies.”

Didn’t he know it. “This whole notion that my wife would plot with the capricious aunt worries me. Do petite, defenseless elderly women really plot?”

“Yes!” everyone in the room exclaimed.

Maybe they did. Sloan didn’t know. “And why do we have a weak link again? Other than Tighe and Dante, who’ve never exactly been the most arrow-straight of the family, we’re all pretty grounded.”

His sister shrugged. “I didn’t say it, the chief did. I never argue with Running Bear. It’s pointless. He knows things none of us will ever know.”

This was true. Sloan slumped back into the sofa. “I’m halfway to hell, I do believe.”

“Better than being all the way,” Falcon said cheerfully. “Now we just have to figure out how to survive the nine circles of hell and we’ll all be good.”

“As I see it,” Ash said, “you lot are pretty much doomed. I easily envision a scenario in which I take over the entire twenty thousand acres of the new land. Which I intend to name Sister Diablo Ranch.”

She received stunned looks from her brothers with delighted laughter. “Oh, yes. I will win. You’re all too much of commitment phobes to be able to get it together. I’m not a commitment phobe. I’m happy to settle down.”

“Tough luck for you,” Jace said, “Sloan banished Xav to the outer edges of the ranch. He’s doing canyon duty.”

Ash leveled an ice-blue stare on Sloan. “Is that why Xav hasn’t been around?”

Oh, boy. Here it came. Sloan shot Jace a dark look and shrugged. “Xav said he likes the canyons.”

She blinked. “Oh.”

The brothers fell silent. A man didn’t want to be sent to the outer gates unless he wasn’t emotionally invested in what was
inside
the gates. Sloan decided enough had been said tonight to give them all heartburn for weeks. “Can we get on with the meeting, or should we adjourn until we’ve all quit playing our tiny whiny fiddles? We have serious work to do around here that doesn’t involve the opposite sex.”

“I’m as opposite of sex as I’ve been in years,” Dante said. “I agree with Sloan. Move to adjourn.”

“I’m outta here,” Ash said, and shot through the door.

“Did you have to do that?” Sloan demanded of Jace. “Did you have to roast her heart on a stick?”

“She doesn’t need to look toward a man who can’t make her happy,” Jace pointed out.

“But she deserves the right to make up her own mind,” Sloan said. He felt sorry for his sister, even if she did love torturing all of them just a bit with their own medicine.

“That little devil honestly thinks she’s going to win all the land and give it a girlie name,” Falcon said with a laugh. “And she probably will.”

“Better get cracking, brothers,” Galen said. “You may have just sent your sister out to set her own mousetrap. And I remind you that Ash has never, ever not done something she set her mind to.”

“What about you?” Sloan demanded. “Don’t you feel a need to have a kingdom of your own?”

“I don’t,” Galen said. “When this is all over, I believe I’ll go get another specialty. I’m thinking about studying diseases and conditions of indigenous cultures.”

“Always the books,” Sloan muttered. “That’s just hiding behind your big brain.”

“Yeah, well, you’ll be doing more reading than you’ve ever done in your life soon enough,” Galen retorted. “Starting with
Goodnight Moon
and
Pat the Bunny.
”

“That’s nice.” Sloan went off irritated, not happy with anything at the moment. Out of sorts and bent out of shape.

Was he the weak link? The hunted one who could bring down the family?

It was a question that had begun to haunt him. Everyone else was doing their job, but he alone had his mind divided, torn in two directions.

He went off to find his wife.

* * *

S
LOAN
FOUND
K
ENDALL
IN
the midst of moving baby paraphernalia and her own things into a truck. His sons were nowhere to be seen, but neither were the babelicious bodyguards—as some of his brothers referred to Kendall’s “nannies”—so maybe that was a good thing. “What are you doing?”

“Moving to Sabrina and Jonas’s house.” Kendall looked up at him as she shoved some baby stuff carefully into the back of the truck. “Sabrina says they’ve been gone too many months, and that a house shouldn’t sit still so long or things start going wrong. Since I have two nannies with me, and two babies, Jonas and Sabrina said we needed a place to stretch out. So they told me to move into their house.”

Sloan was glad. For a moment, he’d been afraid she was leaving the ranch. Now that she was here, he was hoping for good things to happen. He didn’t get to talk to Kendall often, but he did get to see his boys a lot, and that was enough to bring a smile to his face every day. “Could have mentioned it,” he said, more roughly than he’d intended.

“I could have, but you’d have just found something to worry about, so I didn’t.” Kendall smiled at him and got in the truck. “I’m really looking forward to living in my own house. Even though it’s not really mine, I won’t feel like I’m roosting on top of everybody else now. I worry that the babies wake Fiona and Burke at night.”

“They haven’t mentioned it.” Sloan shoved his hands in the pockets of his jeans. Even if Fiona heard the babies, she wouldn’t mind. She’d just worry that maybe Kendall needed help.

He could help. How he wished that she was moving into a house they were sharing.

Then it occurred to him: he’d never asked her. Never thought about the two of them sharing a home. Well, he had thought about it, but he didn’t have a house, and hadn’t known when he would. So he felt stuck in between two worlds.

Kendall didn’t feel stuck, obviously. She was moving on.

“We’ll be only a few thousand yards away,” she said, backing up the truck.

Sloan hopped in the passenger seat. “I’ll help you unpack.”

She smiled. “Thank you.”

He wanted to offer her a home. But he didn’t have one. He didn’t know how long he would be here.

Unless he got the land across the canyons Aunt Fiona was dangling in front of them. “You ever think about us?”

Kendall glanced over at him as she drove. “I think about what’s going to happen to us, and how it will affect the boys.”

That wasn’t exactly a ringing announcement that she envisioned him in her life. The two of them together. “Maybe we should have our own place.”

She stopped the truck in front of Jonas’s house. “Maybe.” Going around to the back, she put the gate down and picked up a box.

He took it from her. “Maybe?”

She smiled up at him. “Maybe.”

Was he looking for too much too soon? Sloan carried the box inside, amazed by the sight of his sons sleeping on a thick pallet on the floor, watched over by the nannies. The boys lay close together, wearing blue jean shorts and white T-shirts that read “Thing 1” and “Thing 2.”

The sight stole Sloan’s heart so fast he wasn’t even aware it was gone. “Hey, little guys,” he said, running a hand gently across their backs. He just wanted to feel them, their tiny, plump bodies so sweet and angelic they reminded him that there was still a lot of good in the world, and until this moment, maybe he hadn’t remembered just how much.

The nannies melted away. Kendall knelt down next to him. “The outfits are your aunt Fiona’s handiwork.”

He smiled. “I’m not surprised.”

“Your grandfather brought tiny moccasins.” She showed him the small footwear, smiling.

“I didn’t get them a gift. I didn’t get
you
a gift.” He looked at her. “Tell me what you want.”

“When I think of something, I’ll let you know.”

He felt churlish. “Storm Cash brought the babies a gift. I think I left it in the barn.”

“I know. Ash gave it to me. She said she knew I’d want to write a thank-you note.”

There wasn’t much to say to that. Sloan got up, glanced one last time at his sons, then at his beautiful wife. “I don’t like Storm Cash.”

“I know.” Kendall nodded. “It’s not a big deal. He brought a couple of baby blankets, which was sweet, but nothing that required anything more on my part than a formal acknowledgment.”

Sloan felt a little better. “What about the nannies?”

“What about them?”

“I’m glad you have them.” But he was uncomfortable, too, and decided that was because they spent time with Kendall that he couldn’t. She didn’t seem to be thawing all that much toward him. “Have you been out to see the bunkhouse?”

She shook her head. “I’m going this evening.”

“I’ll take you.”

“Sloan, you don’t have to. I have plenty of help.”

“Yes, well, damn it, I’m your husband, and I’m tired of tiptoeing around that fact,” he said, and her eyes went wide.

“Well, if you feel strongly about it, I’d love it if you went with me.” Kendall smiled, and he felt as if he were melting under the sun. How was he ever going to explain to this woman that he might have married her because of the children, but that had been just an excuse for his real feelings?

* * *

K
ENDALL
MADE
SURE
Ana and River were watching the babies—and that Sloan had taken off to do his watch duty—before she left her new abode. She got the military jeep and drove to the south end of the ranch, near the canyons. She checked her mobile, but there was no service.

She drove farther west, looking for any sign of her brother, and finally, she saw him, astride a horse, waving at her.

“What are you doing?” she demanded, when she drove near enough to yell at him. “I haven’t seen you in days. I didn’t know if you were dead or alive.”

Her twin smiled at her ire. “I’m fine.”

“That’s not the point, Xav. You might not have been fine. Why are you hiding out down here? You look terrible.” Her brother had changed so much from the man who used to help her run Gil Phillips, Inc., that she could barely believe it. His face wore several days’ rough stubble, his jeans were dusty, his long-sleeved khaki shirt dirty. Even his brown Stetson was rimmed with a frosting of grit. “You have nephews at the house that would like to see you. And a shower would not be amiss.”

His grin stretched wider. “It’s good to see you, too, sis. Are you here just to give me heck?”

“Yes.” She got out of the jeep, and he laughed. “What?”

“Where is my sister? What have you done with her?” He laughed so hard his horse stirred. “Where are your candy-colored stilettos and your business suit?”

She glared at him. “Haven’t you heard I’m a mother now?” She glanced down at her cowboy boots, blue jean skirt and summery tank top. “Besides, it’s comfortable. I was really worked up about getting my stiletto boots back, but that was just a pride thing.” She admired the brown, basic Ropers she was wearing. “These are perfect.”