Cowboy Daddy

Nicole pressed her lips together and looked away. “It works because Tricia wrote up a will stating that our parents get custody and now she’s…now she’s dead.”

Kip took a step back, the news hitting him like a blow.

“What? When?” His poor nephews. How was he going to tell them?

Nicole didn’t answer right away, and Kip saw the silvery track of a tear on her cheek. She swiped it away with the cuff of her tailored jacket.

“Tricia died about three years ago. We found out a only few weeks ago.” Her voice sounded strangled, and for a moment Kip sympathized with her. The first few weeks after his brother Scott died, he could barely function. He went through the motions of work, hoping, praying, he could find his balance again. Hoping, praying the pain in his heart would someday ease. Hoping the guilt that tormented him over his brother’s death would someday be gone as well.

His brother had died only six months ago, and they had only recently found out about Tricia. Her pain must be so raw yet…

He pulled his thoughts back to the problem at hand. “Why did it take so long for you to find out about Tricia’s death?” he asked, steeling his own emotions to her sorrow.

“She hadn’t told anyone about her family. Apparently she had just come out of a drug-rehab program. Then she was going to find her boys.”

“Drug rehab?” Kip’s anger returned. “No wonder Scott came back with the boys.”

Nicole shot him an angry glance. “According to Tricia’s diary and letters, he took them away without her knowledge or permission. Tricia had moved out of the apartment she shared with Scott and had taken the boys with her. She had brought the boys to a friend’s place so she could go into rehab. She was in for two weeks, and when she came back to see the boys, Scott had taken them and was gone.”

Kip laughed. “Really.”

Nicole shot him a frown. “Yes. Really.”

“And you believe a drug user?”

Nicole’s frown deepened. “I truly believe that after the boys were born, Tricia had changed. I also believe my sister would not willingly abandon her children.”

“But she did.”

“Scott took them away from a home she had placed them in so she could get her life together.” Nicole drew in a quick breath. “Something he had no right to do.”

“How do you figure that?” Kip’s anger grew. “He was their father.”

“According to what Tricia wrote, the boys were born before she moved in with Scott. He wasn’t their father.”

Disbelief and anger battled with each other. “That I refuse to believe,” he barked. “My brother loved those boys. They are his. You can’t prove otherwise. Your sister is a liar.”

Nicole’s eyes narrowed, and Kip knew he had stepped over a line. He didn’t care. This woman waltzes into their lives with this complicated lie and he’s supposed to be polite and swallow it all? And then let her take the boys away?

Over his dead body.

“So how do you want to proceed on this?” Nicole asked, arching one perfectly plucked eyebrow in his direction.

Kip mentally heaved a sigh. For a small moment he’d thought this woman was the solution to part of his problems.

Not only was he was back to where he started, even if she was lying, he now had a whole new legal tangle to deal with.

Dear Lord, I don’t need anything else right now. I don’t have the strength.

He held her steady gaze, determined not to be swayed by the sparkling in her eyes that he suspected were tears. “The boys were left with me as per my brother’s verbal request,” he said. “I’m their guardian, and until I am notified otherwise, they’re not going anywhere and you’re not to come back here.”

He turned and walked away from the corral. The corral that brought back too many painful memories.

Well, add one more to the list. Somehow he had to tell his nephews that their mother, who had always been a shadowy figure in their lives, was officially dead. If he could believe what this Nicole woman had told him then he had to tell his mother that the woman they had thought was their salvation was anything but.

He shot a quick glance behind him.

Nicole stood by the corral fences, her head bent and her arms crossed over her midsection. Dusty fragments of sunlight gilded her hair and in the silence he heard a muffled sob.

Sympathy for her knotted his chest. Regardless of what he felt, she’d found out about her sister’s death only a few weeks ago. Not long enough for the pain to lose that jagged edge. Not near long enough to finish shedding the tears that needed to spill.

For a moment he thought he should go over to her side and offer her what comfort he could. Then he stopped himself.

She wants to take the boys away, he reminded himself. She claimed they weren’t his nephews. And that reminder effectively doused his sympathy.

“I’m sorry, Nicole, but I’d like you to leave,” he said, hoping his voice projected a tiny bit of sympathy.

She drew in a shuddering breath and looked up, a streak of mascara marring her ethereal features.

“I have pictures,” she said.

“What is that supposed to mean?”

“It means I can prove who I am.” Nicole wiped at her cheeks with the tips of her fingers, a delicate motion belying the strength of conviction in her voice. “I also have a signed letter from my sister along with a copy of her last will and testament.” Nicole took a few steps toward him, wrapping her arms around her waist. “So I’m not without ammunition myself.”

“I’d like to see all that.”

“Fine.” She walked past him, the scent of lilacs trailing behind her.

Kip followed her as regret lingered a moment.

She was a beautiful woman. When he still thought of her as his future housekeeper, he had thought having her around every day might have been a distraction. He was lonely, she was beautiful. Maybe not the best mix.

But now?

Right now she was a complication he didn’t know how to work his way around.

She yanked a key ring out of her coat pocket, pointed it at the car and unlocked the door. Ducking inside, she pulled out a briefcase, which she set on the trunk of the car.

Kip came closer as she drew an envelope out of the case, opened it and took out a picture.

“This is my sister, the boys and your brother. I think the boys are about six months old there.”

Kip took the laminated photo, and as he glanced at it he felt as if spiders scuttled across his gut.

The picture was identical to one he’d had blown up, then framed and hung in the boy’s room. The only picture the boys had of their mother.

As he handed the picture back, sorrow mixed with his anger. Two of the people in the picture were dead. The boys were officially orphans.