His Valentine Triplets

“Don’t coddle me,” she said. “Don’t try to lure me with babies and matchmaking and spitting in Bode’s eye. I know what’s best, and what’s best is that Burke and I leave you men to unite against a common foe.”

They all stared at their tiny, determined matriarch.

“Damn,” Rafe said, “that’s pretty strategic thinking, Aunt.”

She nodded. “One of my better plots, I must say.”

He glanced around the large library. His brothers lounged in various positions, some looking lazy (but always ready for action), some rumpled (hard workers), and Jonas, who looked cranky, as always.

Rafe loved his brothers. They were a tight-knit band.

“But what if we don’t unite?” he asked. “What if we turn on each other?”

“Would you?” Fiona asked, looking at him.

“Hell, I don’t know. There’s a ranch at stake.” He shrugged. “Without your hand on the reins, we might go running wild through the New Mexico desert.”

“I doubt it.” Fiona’s voice was crisp. “Anyway, today’s flare-up has convinced Burke and me of what we’d been discussing since Bode launched his grab for your land. We think you are better off without me here to rile him. I’ve divided the ranch up into six equal parts. For the three of you who are married, I’ve put your portion in your name. For those of you who are not married, your portion is in trust, which you will receive upon my death or your marriage, whichever comes first. Without me here, I’d say it won’t be marriage.”

She nodded and took Burke’s hand. “It has been an honor to raise you. We love you like our own sons. We always did. There are a lot of questions you may one day want to ask, and when you’re ready, we’ll answer them for you. And remember that everything you think you know isn’t always what is. Take good care of each other, and most importantly, be brothers.”

Fiona and Burke made their way from the library. Rafe tried not to gawk at the departing figures of their aunt and uncle. “I think she’s serious.”

Sam nodded. “She really believes she’s the source of Bode’s anger. I say we just kill him.”

They all snorted at him.

“She can’t go back to Ireland,” Jonas said. “We need her here. She belongs here. Burke belongs here. They haven’t been back to Ireland in over twenty-some years. What are they going to do there?”

The brothers turned to stare at him.

“That is the most emotion I think I’ve ever heard you spew,” Rafe said. “I feel like I’m in the presence of the angel of human psyche.”

“There’s probably no such thing,” Sam said, “but that was pretty heavy, Jonas, for a tight-ass like you.”

Jonas threw a tissue box at them. “Go ahead, bawl your brains out. We all want to.”

“I’m not crying.” Rafe took a deep breath, not about to let himself get drizzly, although he did feel like a water balloon in danger of being punctured. Fiona’s decision had left him pretty torn up. “I’m going to convince Fiona she’s worried over nothing. I’m—”

They heard a door slam. The brothers glanced at each other.

“Must be going out to check on the horses,” Creed offered.

“Or to change her holiday lights. It’s about time for her to take down the Fourth of July décor-anza.” Pete nodded. “She left them extra long because all the little girlies liked them so much. She said her great-nieces should always have sparkly decorations to look at.”

Fiona was famous far and wide for her lighting displays. Rancho Diablo always looked like a fairyland, sometimes draped with white lights, sometimes colored—but always beautiful. “I want to wring Bode’s scrawny chicken neck,” Rafe said.

“I do, too,” Judah said, “but that’ll just land us in jail.”

“Miserable old fart.” Rafe couldn’t believe what had happened. His luscious Julie had to know that her father was beginning to go around the bend. Not that she would ever admit to such a failing in him, locked in her ivory tower of daddy-knows-best. “Maybe Bode has terminal dumb-ass disea…” Rafe stopped, listening to a sound that had caught his attention. “Was that a motor? A vehicular motor? Visitors, perhaps?”

Or Bode serving up more trouble.

The brothers looked at each other, then jumped to the many windows of the library to study the driveway in the dimming evening light.

“That is a taxi,” Jonas said, “and if I’m not mistaken, our aunt and uncle just bailed on us.”

Chapter Three

“I’m not sure what any of this means,” Sam said to Rafe a week later. They were all busy trying to adjust to Fiona and Burke’s sudden departure. He waved a bunch of legal documents. “It seems our aunt was keeping a lot of secrets.”

Rafe gazed out toward the horizon of Rancho Diablo. The two of them were in Fiona’s library, Sam having called him there to vent his frustration with their aunt’s dispensation of the ranch. “You’ll figure it all out.”

“I wish I’d known half the stuff before we got knee-deep in battling Bode. Did you know that originally this land was owned by a tribe? Our father bought it from them.”

Rafe shrugged. “That explains the yearly visit from the chief, maybe.”

“Yeah, it sure does. The tribe retained the mineral rights to the property.”

Sam sure had his full attention now. Rafe turned away from the window to goggle at his brother. “All mineral rights?”

“Oil, gas, silver—you name it, it’s not Rancho Diablo’s.”

Rafe couldn’t help grinning.

“What’s so damn funny, Einstein?” Sam snapped.

“Bode doesn’t know.” Rafe laughed out loud.

After a moment, the thundercloud lifted from Sam’s brow. “That’s right, he doesn’t. And he can’t sue a tribe for their mineral rights. Well, I guess he could, but he wouldn’t win. This is a signed and properly executed document.”

They both sank onto a leather sofa and chuckled some more. Jonas poked his head in, favoring each of them with a grumpy gaze.

“Don’t you two ever do any work?” he snapped.

“Listen, Oscar the Grouch, close the door,” Sam told his elder brother.

Jonas obliged, though not happily. “Why are you two lounging when there’s work to be done?”

Sam handed him the sheaf of papers. Jonas gave it a cursory glance and handed the stack back. “I don’t have time to read a wad of papers as thick as your head. That’s your job, Counselor.”

“Well, if you would read,” Sam said, “and if you could read, as your medical degree claims you can, according to these papers, Rancho Diablo Holdings owns no mineral rights. They are instead owned by the tribe of Indians from which Chief Running Bear hails.” Sam grinned, waving the papers. “An interesting turn of events, don’t you think?”

Jonas stared at his brothers with obvious disbelief. “All mineral rights?”

“Yep. All we own is the land and the bunkhouses and the main house. Actually, if you think about it,” Sam said, waxing enthusiastic about the topic, “no one really owns the houses, either. The banks do, and even once they’re paid off, the government can still come along and decide to kick you out. They either want the land for building, or they decide you owe back taxes on the property, and poof! There goes your domicile.” Sam shrugged. “The value is in the mineral rights, I’d say, and those, brothers, we do not own.”

“And we never did,” Rafe said, glancing at the papers. “These documents were executed the year before you were born, Sam.”

“Yeah, I noticed that.” He frowned a bit. “But let’s not go there for the moment.”

“Holy Christmas,” Jonas said, “that means Bode’s lawsuit is basically nullified.”

“In large part, if not in total,” Sam agreed. “Lovely day, don’t you think?”

“Fiona knew this,” Jonas said. “She had to know the mineral rights weren’t ours, and that we couldn’t give them over even if Bode won his case.”

“Maybe she didn’t,” Rafe said, wanting to defend their small, spare aunt. “Even Sam said he didn’t really understand the papers.”

“I understand them perfectly,” Sam said, “and I can’t find any documents that state otherwise, which might indicate a later sale from the tribe to Rancho Diablo Holdings. So what that tells me—”

“Is that Fiona probably never saw those documents,” Rafe said stubbornly. “They were signed before she came. When our parents were alive.”

Sam pursed his lips. Jonas sighed and looked out the same window that Rafe had been gazing from. Rafe knew his brothers thought Fiona had withheld the information on purpose.

“She hardly had time to go digging through every document pertaining to the ranch. Overnight, she became guardian to six boys in a foreign country,” he pointed out. It made him slightly angry that his brothers seemed to think Fiona might have been deceptive about what she knew about their property. She was the executor of their estate. “It doesn’t make sense.”

“She became guardian overnight to five boys,” Sam said, bringing up a point that Rafe had chosen to gloss over. “I came later.”

Rafe saw no reason to chase that particular ghost right now. He waved a dismissive hand. “You’re a Callahan. Let’s not dig up every screaming specter in this house right now.”

“What I’m saying is that Fiona knows who my parents are,” Sam said, and Rafe and Jonas stared at him in shock.

In all the years they’d been a family, this was the most they’d discussed Sam’s abrupt arrival. They wouldn’t have even known about it, but Jonas had been old enough to remember that Sam had come later—after the accident that had claimed their parents. Rafe wished Fiona hadn’t left, and that all this discussion of documents had never arisen. Nothing good could come of the past interrupting the present. He looked at Sam’s strained face and felt sorry for his brother.

“I’m just saying this because Fiona knows who my parents are, and she knew about the mineral rights. I know that,” Sam said, “because Chief Running Bear doesn’t swing by every Christmas Eve just to share toddies with our aunt in the basement.”

“Well, he probably does,” Jonas said, “if I know Fiona.”

Rafe sighed. “This is ridiculous. Just call her and ask. Or go down to the county courthouse and sift through some records. There’s no point in getting all wild and woolly about stuff that doesn’t matter.” He felt ornery at this point. It was too hard seeing Sam suffer. “There’d be no reason for her to keep this from us,” he said, refusing to believe that their aunt could be quite so manipulative. “If she’d known, she would have revealed it in court so Bode would shove off.”

Jonas shook his head. “She might be protecting the tribe.”

“Or she didn’t know!” Rafe insisted.

“Or, and this is the most likely scenario,” Sam said, “this was the perfect way to get right up Bode’s nose.”

Rafe blinked. “You mean to let him sue us for practically no reason?”

Sam shrugged. “Everyone’s been talking for years about the rumored silver mine on our property. We know there’s nothing here, but Bode would believe the gossip. More important than land would be a silver mine. Treasure seekers have always tilted at windmills.”

“Bah,” Rafe said impatiently. “So what. I’ll tell him myself.” He was getting more ruffled by the moment, which made sense, since he was enamored of making love with Bode’s daughter.

“You can’t tell him,” Jonas said, his tone forceful and big-brother-like for a change. “None of us in this room is going to say a word to our brothers or anyone, until we find out why Fiona didn’t want it known that the mineral rights had been sold. I’m pretty certain it’s bad to withhold pertinent information in a court case, and we can’t get our aunt in trouble.”

“Not in this case,” Sam said. “Fiona and Burke are just going to say that the document was executed before they arrived, and they had no knowledge of its existence. And you,” he said to Rafe, “may I suggest you curtail your activities with a certain judge? Try not to annoy her or her father? We need time to figure everything out, before we hurt our case or our aunt. And I don’t trust you to keep your mouth shut if you’re in the throes of pleasure.”

Rafe crammed his hands in his pockets so he wouldn’t take a swing at his brother, and told himself that the family that kept secrets together stayed together.

He could keep a secret.

He could stay away from Julie.

No, I can’t.

I’m sitting on a powder keg. And when it blows, I’m probably going straight to hell.

LIFE DIDN’T SEEM TO BE getting any better when Rafe opened the door to his room in the bunkhouse and found the judge sitting on his bed. “What the hell?” he asked, trying to be nonchalant and not quite making it. She looked delicious, and as heat flooded his groin he realized he’d never been cut out for a monklike existence. “Get out,” he said. “If you’ve come to mess up my face with a permanent marker again, I should warn you I don’t fall for the same tricks twice.” He waved his hat at her. “Anyway, let’s go out in the main room.”

“I have to see you privately,” Julie said, and Rafe sighed.

If it was up to him, he’d love to see the good judge very privately. But he wasn’t going to break with the rules set forth by his brothers, even if the rules were unfair as hell. He looked at Julie’s clouds of luscious dark hair and beautiful tilted brows and delectable full lips and made himself sound stern. “Julie, you need to go.”

“Rafe, I’m not going.”

“Then I’ll go.” He turned to leave, and it was harder than leaving behind part of his own body. He told himself he was truly a man of steel for his virtuousness.

“Rafe,” Julie said, standing up, “we have to talk.”

But his brothers had warned him, and somewhere in his mind, he figured they were probably right. “You’ll find me on the couch if you want to tal—”

Her hand on his arm stopped him. “Rafe.”

Well, technically, they were in a doorway; they weren’t really alone, right? “Yes?”

“If I have to have this discussion with you via a court order, I will.”

He grunted. “So your father sent you.”

“No one sent me. I’m here because I need to talk to you.” She looked at him closely. “The last two times I’ve seen you, you’ve done your best to seduce me, and unfortunately, I’ve let you. Now you’re acting like you don’t even want to look at me…” Her voice drifted off. “It was all about the lawsuit.”

He blinked. “What was?”

“Seducing me in chambers. You just wanted to convince me—compromise me—into recusing myself.”

“Well,” he said, wishing he could kiss her, but knowing he couldn’t without risking his brothers’ wrath, “it’s an interesting premise, but no.”

She pulled away from him, standing a prim and proper three feet away, no longer in the doorway but outside in the den. Rafe knew it was for the best, though he could tell by the hurt look on Julie’s face that she completely had the wrong impression.

But how could he tell her that if it was up to him, he’d toss her into his bed right now and ravish her until next week?

He couldn’t. And the curse of it was he’d never had Julie in a bed. Never had her with hours to spare.

Always quickies. “Damn.”

“What?” Julie stared at him, her pretty face wreathed with suspicion.

“Nothing,” Rafe said with a sigh. “Anyway, what did you want to tell me?”

She took a long look at him. “I wanted to tell you I heard through the grapevine that your Aunt Fiona and Uncle Burke have left.”

He shrugged. “It’s true. What of it?”

“What does this mean for the lawsuit?”

He shrugged again, not interested in discussing it. “Ask your father.”

“I…we don’t discuss it much,” Julie said, and Rafe snorted.

“Right. You were the judge in charge of hearing the case.”

“And since I’m off the case,” Julie said with heat, “we have not discussed it, or your family. I am not the judge, and therefore I am not privy to details!”

She was so cute when she got snippy.

“You’re a jerk,” she said, when he made no reply, and she flounced out the door, her white sundress practically blinding him as he tried to stare through it. He remembered her delightful derriere, and he wanted her. She made him crazy in ways he’d never been crazy before.

“I am a jerk,” he said, and turning, bumped into Sam.

“I won’t argue with that,” his brother said gleefully. “I heard the whole thing, and you have very little understanding of how to treat a woman, bro.”

“What the hell does that mean?” Rafe snapped, his patience addled by being so near Julie and unable to possess her. “You told me to stay away from her until this whole thing blows up or over.”

“True,” he conceded, “but she didn’t wear that darling little dress to talk about cases, dummy. She came wearing that hot number hoping you’d take it off of her.” His grin was wide. “Boy, are you dumb.”

Sam continued on, and Rafe sighed before heading out to the barn.

He wasn’t dumb. He was playing it safe, and right now, that seemed like the smart thing to do.

And maybe the only thing to do.

RAFE CALLAHAN WAS AN ASS, Julie fumed as she stalked to her truck. She got inside and resisted the urge to peel out of the Rancho Diablo driveway. It would solve nothing, and it served no purpose for him to think he’d won.

That’s what this was all about. From time immemorial, women had been played by Romeos, and she was no different. The Callahans were great tricksters, fond of practical jokes and mayhem. They loved one-upping anyone who tried to outdo them.

Her father was right: Callahans were trouble. And she should have known better than to think there was anything real going on between her and Rafe.

“An ass,” she muttered. “A big, braying ass.”

Her heart jumped and fluttered as she thought about how wonderfully he kissed, and she wiped at a tear that slid down her cheek. One tear, that was all she’d spare for that tall, dark, handsome Romeo.

He wasn’t worth her time.

Unfortunately, she still had to talk to him. The problem now was telling him what she had to tell him without killing him.

This time, she wouldn’t settle for permanent marker hearts all over his face.

A branding iron would be much better, but unfortunately, she didn’t have one of those. “Oh, heck,” Julie said to herself. “This is not going to be good.”

Chapter Four

“So,” Jonas said, rattling pots and pans in the kitchen as Sam walked in. “We’re going to need to organize KP duties. I think an org chart might be necessary. We’ll divide up days of the week for cooking, cleaning—”

“Whoa,” Rafe said, “I’m not eating your cooking.”

“Excellent,” Jonas said. “You can have my days.”

“All right,” Rafe said, as Sam entered the kitchen and poked his head in the fridge. “You can do my cleanup.”

“Why can’t we just eat out?” Sam asked, his face mournful as he considered the fridge. “Frankly, I don’t think the three of us are qualified to take care of ourselves.”

It was probably true. Creed, Pete and Judah had wives and families who could take care of them. Rafe figured Jonas and Sam were pretty useless at providing for themselves, and he didn’t particularly want to be shackled with babying them. Sabrina lived upstairs at the main house, but she definitely could fend for herself. Rafe grimaced. He could take care of himself, too, but someone was going to have to take care of his boob brothers. Sam was busy with the court case and probably couldn’t subsist on hamburgers from Banger’s Bait and Tackle, not if they wanted him firing on all cylinders legally. And Jonas didn’t have the sense to come in out of the rain. Rafe sighed as he looked at his helpless brothers. “We could hire a cook.”

“For the three of us?” Jonas looked outraged. “Doesn’t that seem wasteful?”

“It seems practical,” Rafe snapped. “I make good food, but I’m not cooking for you babies.”

They both looked at him with regret in their eyes. Rafe realized that a trap had been sprung on him. “You two discussed this. You planned this pity party! You want me to do the woman’s work—”

“Don’t let a female hear you talking that way,” Sam interrupted with a glance toward the ceiling, as if he suspected Sabrina might be lurking upstairs. “You’ll get your head handed to you.”

“I don’t care.” He shot his brothers a sour look. “What a pair of wienies.”

“If you cook,” Jonas said, “I’ll do the grocery shopping.”

“And I’ll do cleanup,” Sam said. “Sort of. We’ll eat off paper plates and use paper napkins. No more niceties like cloth napkins, which Fiona used to spoil us with.” A woeful sigh escaped him.

“And what about clean sheets in the bunkhouse?” Rafe asked. “Basic hygiene? We haven’t taken care of ourselves our whole lives.”

“No time like the present,” Sam said, injecting cheer into his tone.

Rafe wasn’t buying it. “We need a housekeeper. Jonas, you’re going to have to open the purse strings.”

“I can’t,” he stated. “Remember, we said we were going to be cautious with our resources until the lawsuit gets dismissed.”

Crap, Rafe thought. “If I cook it, you eat it, no whining. And I never, ever do cleanup.” The very fact that his brothers had shanghaied him into this, when he needed to be thinking about Julie and her long, beautiful legs, teed him off greatly. “I do not have time to be Rachael Ray for you lazy bums. But I will, as long as all I ever hear from you is ‘mmm-mmm good.’”

“Deal,” Jonas and Sam both said, and Rafe stalked out of the kitchen, wondering why today was his day to have everyone lined up against him.

He poked his head back inside the kitchen. “Starting tomorrow.”

His brothers nodded eagerly.

“By the way,” Jonas said, “congratulations.”

Rafe blinked. “On what? Being a patsy?”

Jonas stared at him for a long moment. “Yeah. Sort of.”

“Great. Thanks.” Rafe left again, wondering why Jonas had looked so surprised. “Jerk,” he muttered under his breath, though he loved his older brother. The word jerk made him think about Julie calling him that, walking away from him in her pretty white dress, and he decided maybe thinking about her was just too hard.

To hell with his brothers. They were weird, anyway, even for Callahans.

He was the last normal one left on the range.

FIVE MINUTES LATER, RAFE stared at Julie’s latest handiwork in the bunkhouse. As pranks went, it was a doozy. He appreciated the size and scope of her one-upmanship. He hadn’t wanted to pay attention to her, so she clearly had decided there were better ways to get a man’s attention.

She’d put a sign on his bedroom door in the bunkhouse. It had a stork carrying a blue-swaddled bundle of joy.

His breath stung in his chest. “‘Congratulations,’” he read aloud, “‘baby Jenkins arrives in May. Julie.’”

Rafe was reeling. There’d been no warning. No clue.

Except from Jonas, but whoever paid attention to him? “My world has gone mad,” Rafe muttered, and tore the stork off his door.

He was not having a baby. This was some mad attempt by Julie to rattle him, like the time she’d doodled on his face. Only this would last longer than a week. His brothers would be in top form over this joke. Everyone knew that Callahans were supposed to marry and populate. She was adding fuel to the fire.

But the sign said May. That was pretty darn definitive, and judges were typically pretty careful with details. Rafe tried to take another gulp of air and decided he might be having a wee panic attack. He needed a shot of something stiffening, like perhaps whiskey.

He hit the bar, and didn’t bother with a glass, just let the liquor burn down his throat from the bottle. After capping it, he wiped his brow and concentrated on the pain.

“I had no other way to tell you,” Julie said, stepping out of his room. Rafe’s throat went dry as a bone, no longer moist from the alcoholic drenching. “It takes a lot to get your attention, cowboy.”

“There’s no way,” he told her. “I used a condom when we were in the field. Mind you, it wasn’t the newest, but latex lasts forever. It’s nuclear material. So you must be mistaken, Julie. Condoms are safe.”