Cowboy Daddy

Kip stared at the woman in front of him, her words spinning around his head.

Tricia’s sister? Come to take his boys? His brother’s sons?

“What are you talking about? What do you mean?” His heart did a slow flip as the implications of what she said registered.

He had come here to offer her a job, and when he saw Justin climbing the fence of the horse corral, he’d lost it. In front of his very attractive prospective employee.

Now, with his heart still pounding from seeing Justin up on the fence, he was sandbagged with this piece of information.

“When were you going to tell me that you weren’t applying for the job?” Kip growled, unable to keep his anger tamped down.

“I just did.” Nicole raised her chin and looked at him with her cool gray-green eyes. “I had no intention of fooling anyone.”

Kip gave a short laugh. “So how do you figure you’re taking the boys? How does that work?”

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.

Nicole tucked her hair behind her ears, tugged on her jacket and looked him in the eye. “I’m leaving your ranch like you asked me, but I’m not going far. I have a room in a motel in Millarville and I intend on coming here every day to see my nephews.”

“I’m not discussing anything to do with the boys without my lawyer present. So until then, as I said before, I’d like you to stay away.”

She looked like she was about to protest, then gave a delicate shrug. “Fine. When do you want to see your lawyer?”

Never. He had cows to move to other pastures. A tractor to fix, a stock waterer to repair and a sister who would be peeved when she discovered they didn’t have a housekeeper after all.

“Tomorrow,” he said, mentally cringing. He’d just have to work later in the evening to make up for lost time. Hopefully he could get in with Ron, his lawyer. If not, well, she’d have to wait.

“What’s his name and number?” She pulled out a phone, then punched in the information he gave her. “And what time?” she asked, looking up.

“I’ll give you a call.” He wondered what Ron would have to say about the situation.

Nicole put the phone away, then reached into a side pocket of the briefcase she had taken the papers from.

She pulled out a business card and handed it to him.

He glanced down at the name embossed on the card.

Nicole Williams. Director, Williams Foundation. The information was followed by several numbers—home, office, fax, cell—and an email address and a website.

Very official and a bit intimidating.

“Director of the Williams Foundation?” he asked, flicking the card between his fingers.

“My adoptive parents started it.”

“Adoptive?”

“Brent and Norah Williams adopted me when I was eight,” Nicole said, her voice matter of fact. “My father started the nonprofit in memory of my adoptive mother.”

“Admirable.” He tucked the card in the back pocket of his worn jeans, hoping this wasn’t the pair with the hole in the pocket. “I’ll let you know what’s up.”

“Can I come tomorrow to see the boys?”

“Let’s wait to see what my lawyer says.”

Nicole squeezed the top of her briefcase, averting her eyes. “They’re my nephews too,” she said quietly. “My sister’s boys.”

“Boys she abandoned, that no one bothered to find.”

Nicole’s eyes grew hard. “They were taken away from her. The lack of communication is hardly my fault considering we found out about these boys only a few weeks ago.”

Kip was about to say something more when a truck turning onto the yard caught his attention. Isabelle.

His younger sister pulled up beside Nicole’s car, putting it between her and her brother. A strategic move he thought, fighting his anger and frustration with her.

“Hey, Nicole. How’d things go today?” Isabelle called out as she jumped out of the truck. “Had to get groceries,” she said to Kip holding up a solitary plastic bag as if to underline her defense.

“Dressed like that?” Kip asked, eyeing her bright red lipstick, snug T-shirt that sparkled in the sunlight and her too-tight blue jeans.

Isabelle’s face grew mutinous. “I didn’t think I had to stick around here. Especially since Nicole showed up.” She pulled another bag out of the truck and flounced up the walk to the house, her dark hair bouncing with every step.

Kip bit back whatever he wanted to say to his little sister, fully aware of his audience.

Too many things going on, he thought, fighting his frustration with his sister and this new, huge complication.

“I’m going now,” Nicole said, her voice quiet, well modulated. She gave him a tight smile, then pulled her briefcase off the trunk of the car. “I’ll wait to hear from you.”

Without a second glance, she got in, started the engine and roared away from him in a cloud of dust.

Kip pushed back his hat as he watched her leave, frustration clawing at him.

Please Lord, don’t let my family be broken up, he prayed. Don’t let her take my boys away from me.

And please don’t let me lose it with my sister.

He stepped into the house just as his mother wheeled herself into the kitchen. Her long, graying hair was brushed and neatly swept up into a ponytail, her brown eyes sparkled, and the smile on her face was a welcome respite from the resignation that had been his mother’s default expression since her surgery.

“Where did Nicole go?” his mother asked, sounding happier than she had in a while. “She seems like a lovely girl. I’m looking forward to having her around to help out.”

Kip glanced at the clean countertop and shining sink. When he first saw how clean the house was he couldn’t believe that businesslike woman had done all this. Now he knew she was simply trying to weasel her way into his mother’s good graces.

“Where’s Isabelle?”

“In her room.”

“When did she leave the ranch?”

Mary Cosgrove tapped her finger against her lips. “About one.”

Three hours to pick up one bag of groceries. He was so going to talk to his little sister. Leaving his mother alone with a stranger, even if she had come here because of an advertisement, was irresponsible.

Not only a stranger, a woman who had come to completely disrupt their lives.

“I’m so glad you decided to take on a housekeeper,” his mother continued, sounding hopeful. “She seems so capable and organized.”

Kip hated to burst her bubble. “I still think Isabelle should learn to pull her share of the housework.”

His mother sighed. “I know, and I agree, but it’s so much work to get her motivated and Nicole seems so capable.” Mary looked past Kip. “Where is Nicole now?”

“She left.” Kip blew out his breath and dropped into a chair across from her mother. “Truth is, she didn’t come for the housekeeping job. She came…” he hesitated, glancing up at his mother, who seemed more relaxed than she had in months. Scott’s death had been devastating for her. This new piece of information wouldn’t help. “Nicole, apparently, is Tricia’s sister.”

His mother frowned. “Tricia? Scott’s girlfriend?”

“Yep. The mother of the boys.”

Mary’s fingers fluttered over her heart, her eyes wide in a suddenly pale face. “What did she want?”

Kip wrapped his rough hands around his mother’s cold ones. “She claims she has a will granting her custody of Justin and Tristan.”

“But the boys’ mother…Tricia…” Mary squeezed her son’s hands. “Where is she?”

“She’s dead.” The words sounded harsh, even though he’d never met the woman. But she had been the mother of his nephews.

The nephews that Nicole claimed didn’t belong to Kip’s family. Kip’s heart turned over in his chest.

There was no way he was telling his mother that piece of information. He didn’t believe that fact for one minute anyhow. Scott had loved those boys. Doted on them.

Since Scott died, Kip had fought to keep this family together, but lately he felt as if everything he worked so hard for was slipping out of his fingers.

There was no way he was letting Nicole take his mother’s only connection to Scott away. No way.

Chapter Three

“I found them. I found the boys.” Nicole tucked the phone under her chin as she sorted through her clothes. The motel room held a small dresser and minuscule closet she could hang some clothes in. She had packed a variety of clothes, unsure what she would need.

She closed the closet door and glanced around the room. It was the best, supposedly, in Millarville, and she guessed it would do. She hoped she wouldn’t have to stay here long. Staying here resurrected memories she had relegated to the “before” part of her life.

Before the Williams family took her in.

“Are they okay? How do they look?” Her father sounded a bit better, as if the news sparked new life in him.

“They’re fine.” Nicole thought of Justin and Tristan, and her heart contracted.

She knew the Cosgroves wouldn’t simply hand over the boys to her as soon as she had arrived. From what she had discovered, the boys had been at the ranch since Scott took them away.

Kip’s family was the only one the children knew. A family, she discovered, which included Kip’s mother, a younger sister and a married sister with six children.

Nicole couldn’t stop a nudge of jealousy at the thought of Kip’s large family, then quashed it. She’d had a full life with the Williams, and she owed her adoptive parents more than she could ever repay. That Brent’s natural daughter was the one gone only increased her guilt.

“Is the family treating them okay? Do they seem to have a stable home life?”

“The farmhouse is a bit of a wreck,” Nicole said, thinking of the worn flooring, and the faded paint. “It looks as if no money had been spent on the house in a while.”

Yet in spite of the mess, when she walked into the spacious kitchen of the Cosgrove house, she felt enveloped by a sense of home. Of comfort and peace.

Something she seldom experienced in her father’s cavernous house.

“They’re well taken care of.” She tucked the phone under her ear, pulled her laptop out of the bag and plugged it in. Thankfully, she would be able to do much of her work for the family’s foundation while she was here.

“You sound like you think they should stay.” Her father’s voice held an accusatory tone.

“No. I don’t,” Nicole assured him. “But we can’t simply remove them immediately.” She knew she sounded practical, however, her feelings were anything but.

When she saw the boys, a feeling of love, almost devastating in its intensity, bowled her over. She wanted to grab them, hold them close, then run away with them. She couldn’t understand or explain the unexpected power of these feelings. The only time she’d experienced this before was when she saw her little sister, Tricia, for the first time.

“It was what your sister wanted,” her father said, a hard note entering his voice.

“I know. It’s what I want as well, but we have to proceed carefully. The boys don’t remember their mother and they most certainly don’t know who I am.” She highly doubted Kip would tell them in the next few days.

“I should be there,” her father said, his voice harsh. “I should be meeting with that lawyer.” This was followed by a bout of coughing that belied his insistence.

“You know yourself that once lawyers get hold of things, the process grinds to a halt.” She ignored a sliver of panic at the thought. When she arranged to come here, she had given herself three weeks to bring the boys back. Sure, she could work here, but she also needed to spend time with the boys so the transition from here to Toronto wouldn’t be so difficult.

“Who do the boys look like?” Brent asked, a thread of hope in his voice.

“They look exactly like Tricia.” Nicole pressed her fingers to her lips, restraining her sorrow.

“You have to bring my boys back, Nicole. They are all I have left of Tricia. Those boys don’t belong there. They’re not even blood relatives.”

Nicole knew her father spoke out of sorrow, but his words struck at the foundations of Nicole’s insecurities. Tricia was Sam and Norah’s natural daughter.

Nicole was simply the adopted one.

“Tomorrow I’ll see Mr. Cosgrove’s lawyer,” Nicole said, opening her laptop and turning it on. “We’ll have to take this one step at a time.”

“When you talk to that lawyer you make sure to let him know that James Feschuk is working for us. His reputation might get things moving a bit. I also want a DNA test. If they don’t believe us, then we’ll get positive proof that Scott Cosgrove was not the boys’ father.”

“How will that happen?” Nicole asked.

“James told me that you can get DNA tests done locally. He suggested one called a grandparent’s test. Get that grandmother to get tested and we’ll find out. I’ll get tested too. Then we’ve got some teeth to our argument.” His voice rose and Sam started coughing again.

“I’m saying goodbye,” Nicole said. “And you should go to bed. Make sure you take your medication and use that puffer the doctor gave you.”

“Yes, yes,” Sam said. “I’ll get James to phone that lawyer. Tell him we insist on a DNA test. Give me his name and I can take care of it.”

Nicole pulled out her cell phone and called up the name and number and gave that information to her father. “I’ll let you know the minute I hear anything.”

Nicole said goodbye. She turned back to her computer, but only sat and stared sightlessly at the screen, her work suddenly forgotten as she thought of Justin and Tristan. Tricia’s boys.

Seeing them had been heartwarming and heartrending at the same time.

Again she felt the sting of her sister’s betrayal when Tricia had left without a word those many years ago. Nicole had hoped and prayed for an opportunity to talk to her face-to-face, to apologize. But the only letter in the envelope was one to her parents pleading for forgiveness. Nothing for her.

Nicole glanced around the room as memories of other evenings in other motel rooms crowded in.

Nicole tried to push the memories away, but the emotions of the past day had made her vulnerable and her mind slipped back to a vivid picture of herself, sitting on a bed in a motel room, a little girl of five, waiting while her aunt smoked and strode back and forth, watching through the window.

When Nicole’s natural mother died, her father, a long-distance trucker, put Nicole into the care of his sister, a bitter, verbally abusive woman.

Whenever he came into town, Nicole’s aunt would bring her to a motel where they would meet her father. She would stay with him for a couple of days and then he would be gone.

That evening they waited until the next morning, but he never came. His truck had spun out of control and he had died in the subsequent accident.

After six months, her aunt had her moved to an already-full foster home.

Four years later, she was adopted by the Williams family at age eight, and her life went from the instability of seven foster homes in four years to the stability of a wealthy family. She was told enough times how blessed she was, and she knew it.

Yet each night as she crawled into her bed, she would wonder when it would all get taken away. People had always left her. It would happen again.

Then something magical and miraculous happened to her and the Williams family. Norah, who was never supposed to be able to conceive, became pregnant. When Tricia was born, Nicole bonded with this little baby in a way she couldn’t seem to with Norah and Sam. Tricia became as much Nicole’s child as her parents’.

Nicole took care of her with a fierce intensity. She stood up for her in school, listened to her stories of heartbreak and sorrow. Defended her to Sam and Norah whenever Tricia got into yet another scrape. She was Tricia’s confidant.

Then Tricia turned thirteen. She withdrew. Became sullen and ungrateful. She started hanging around with the wrong crowd and staying out late. Nicole had tried to reason with her, to explain that she was throwing her life away.

But Tricia kept up her self-destructive lifestyle. Finally, in frustration, Nicole fought with her.

Then Tricia, too, left and never came back.

Nicole got up, grabbed her purse and walked out of the motel. She walked down the street, then up it again. She let the cooling mountain air soothe away the memories. She bought a sandwich, returned to her motel room and dove into her work. A few hours later she took a shower and crawled, exhausted, into bed. She needed all the rest could she get.

Tomorrow she would be seeing Kip Cosgrove again.

Tomorrow she would have other battles to fight.

“So she has some legitimacy?” Kip leaned his elbows on his knees, then frowned at the grass stain he saw on his blue jeans. He should have checked before he put the pants on. Of course he was in a hurry when he left the ranch. Of course he had to go through a mini battle to get Isabelle to agree to take care of her nephews while he was gone.

“As an aunt to the boys, she has as much right as you do,” Ron Benton, his lawyer, said, leaning his elbows on the desk. “As for her claim about Scott not being the father, unfortunately it’s a matter of her word against yours now that both the principals in this case are dead. We’ll need more information.”