Sweet Callahan Homecoming

“Actually, Xav,” she said, “these aren’t Mallory’s babies.”

“Ah, well. It’s not important.” He reached into a bassinet and touched one baby gently. “If I’d drawn them in a poker game, I’d say they were a perfect four of a kind.”

Her heart melted just a bit, dislodged from its frozen perch. “Really? You think they’re perfect?”

“Sure. I’ve seen tons of rugrats around Rancho Diablo. These are cute. Look a bit like tiny elves with scrunched red faces.” He stood, picked his hat up off the sofa where Mallory had put it, stared at the damaged crown with a raised brow. “But I didn’t come here to admire someone’s kids, Ash.” He looked into her eyes, and her heart responded with a dangerous flutter. “I’ve come to take you home for the holidays.”

Chapter Two

“That’s not possible, Xav,” Ash told him, her gaze sincere.

He hated it when someone told him something wasn’t possible. It reminded him of his father, Gil Phillips, of Gil Phillips, Inc., who’d run the business and the Hell’s Colony compound with an iron fist. Gil had never let anybody tell him something was impossible, and the only person on earth who’d ever been able to talk Gil off his high horse was their mother. In business, Gil wouldn’t have tolerated an employee who thought anything was impossible.

Xav was pretty certain he’d developed his father’s stubbornness, especially where Ash was concerned. He drank her in, wished he could sneak a kiss.

And a lot more.

“Everything’s possible, little darling. You wouldn’t deny your aunt Fiona the pleasure of having all her nephews and her niece home at Christmas, would you?”

“It’s not possible,” Ash said again with a shake of that platinum hair he loved so much, the ponytail swinging with her negative vibe.

Wasn’t she just too cute? She had no idea that he was a man who didn’t believe in impossible.

“I’ll give you five minutes to pack up,” he said, his tone kind and convincing, the tone he’d used many times in his father’s boardroom—before Xav had gone to live the Callahan way.

Life as a corporate suit was very far in his past. He had a few rougher edges now.

“Five minutes to pack,” he reiterated, “and if you’re not standing by my truck ready to hit the road, I’m tossing you over my shoulder and carrying you out of here, caveman-style. And don’t think I won’t do it, beautiful. I’m not going to be the man who disappoints Fiona at Christmas, not when she sent me on this quest to bring you home. It’s her heart’s desire.” He smiled at Ash. “It’s an assignment I have no intention of failing.”

“Well, you’ll have to.” Ash turned away from him. “I can’t go back.”

How well he knew this woman—he could practically read her mind. He knew the curve of her neck, and the way she crossed her arms denoting Callahan intractability. Xav walked up behind her, put his arms around her, comforting and close—but not too close.

Not as close as he wanted to be—not nearly close enough.

“I know you’re afraid,” he murmured, and Ash went straight as a board in his arms. “Bad word choice,” he backtracked. “I know you think you killed Wolf, Ash. You didn’t.”

She turned to face him. “I tried to kill him. If I didn’t, it doesn’t matter. I meant to. I’d shoot him again the first chance I got.”

He wanted to kiss her so badly. Maybe she sensed it, because she stepped out of his arms, away from him. Put three feet between them.

“I can never go home,” Ash said. “I’m staying here.” She looked at the sleeping babies with a sweet smile, then looked up at him. “How are my brothers? And Aunt Fiona? Uncle Burke? Grandfather Running Bear?”

He’d made love to this woman so many times that he practically knew her every thought, and right now, he knew she was avoiding his mission, dismissing it, as Ash dismissed everything that didn’t square with her worldview. Ash had always been fiercely independent, despite her six doting older brothers, and in a strange way, they depended on their sister more than she depended upon them.

Ash was the spirit of the Callahan clan.

She had to learn that she didn’t have to carry the weight of the world on her delicate shoulders forever.

And anyway, a man was only as good as his promises.

He picked her up, tossed her over one shoulder and marched her to the front door.

“Put me down!”

He spanked her bottom once lightly with a satisfying smack! against her jeans, drawing another outraged protest. She pinched him smartly under his arm, hard enough to force a grunt from him.

“Put me down!” she commanded again, as if he would have listened when he finally had her in his arms.

Two squad cars pulled in front of the house, and the next thing he knew, a couple of Wild’s finest were yelling at him to put the little lady down.

“I forgot to call and tell the sheriff it was a false alarm,” Ash said, apologetic, as he set her gently on the ground. She was breathless and a bit tousled from being upside down. “You’d better go.”

“I’m not going anywhere until you agree to go with me.” He could be just as stubborn as she. “Go tell the sheriff and his friends that their services aren’t needed.”

“It would be better if you go.”

She gazed up at him, and he caught a funny bit of desperation from her. “Nope,” he said, still wearing stubborn like a badge.

“Ash, is there a problem?” the sheriff asked, and Ash looked at Xav.

“Is there a problem?” she asked Xav, and he realized she was holding him hostage to her demand that he leave.

Well, he’d never been one to go down without a fight.

“Hell, yeah, there’s a problem, Sheriff. This woman won’t accept my marriage proposal. I drove all the way from Rancho Diablo in New Mexico to propose to her. Xav Phillips,” he said, shaking the sheriff’s hand.

The sheriff and his deputies snickered a little at his conundrum. Then the sheriff perked up. “Xav Phillips, Gil Phillips’s son, from Hell’s Colony?”

“Yes, sir,” Xav said politely.

“I knew your daddy before you were even a twinkle in his eye,” the sheriff said, drawing a groan from Ash. The sheriff turned to her.

“Ashlyn Callahan, you hit the panic button because some man has proposed to you? Again?” The sheriff shook his head. “He drives a nice truck, comes from a great family, practically Texas royalty. If Santa brings you a father for those four children of yours, you might treat him a little nicer than calling the law on him.” He tipped his hat to Ash, shook Xav’s hand again, and he and his deputies got back in their squad cars. “Good luck,” the sheriff said to Xav through his open window. “Probably five men in the county have offered to marry this lady, and she’s turned them all down flat.”

He nodded. “Forewarned, Sheriff. Thanks.”

“Are all of you through enjoying a manly guffaw at my expense?” Ash demanded. “Because if you are, I need to get back in the house. I have children who need me.”

“Good night, Sheriff.” He followed Ash back inside, his mind niggling with discomfort and alarm. Five men had proposed to her? Ash picked up a baby that was sending up a gentle wail and sat down on the old-fashioned sofa situated across from the Christmas tree.

He sat next to her. “Hey, Ash,” he said, “the sheriff said something about you needing a father for your children, that Santa had sent you one for Christmas. It was a figure of speech, right?” He looked at her, surprised but not displeased in the slightest that she was undoing the pearl buttons on her white sweater. She tossed a baby blanket over her shoulder, obscuring the baby’s face—and suddenly, it hit Xav like a thunderclap that Ash was nursing that baby.

Which would not be the slightest bit possible unless these were her children. He stared at Ash, and she looked back at him calmly, her denim-blue eyes unworried and clear.

“You’re a mother,” he said, feeling light-headed, and not from the crack Mallory had landed on his skull. “These are your babies?”

She nodded, and he got dizzy. The woman he loved was a mother, and somehow she’d had four children. This perfect four of a kind was hers.

It wasn’t possible. But he could hear gentle sucking sounds occasionally, and he knew it was as possible as the sun coming up the next day. He felt weak all over, weak-kneed in a way he’d never been, his heart splintering like shattered glass.

“Damn, Ash, your family...you haven’t told them.”

“No, I haven’t.”

A horrible realization sank into him, painful and searing. “Who’s the father?”

She frowned. “A dumb ornery cowboy.”

“That doesn’t sound like you. You wouldn’t fall for a dumb ornery cowboy.”

“Yes, I would,” Ash said. “I would, and I did.”

He looked at the tiny bundles of sweetness in their bassinets. Two girls, a boy, and he presumed that was a boy underneath the blanket at his mother’s breast, because each bassinet had colored blankets, two pink, two blue. Two of each. He felt sad, sick, really, that the woman he adored had found someone else in the nine months she’d been gone. He felt a little betrayed, sure that the two of them had shared something, although neither of them had ever tried to quantify exactly what it was they’d shared. “He really is dumb if he’s not here taking care of you,” Xav said, and it had to be the truth or she wouldn’t be living with the woman with the wicked swing who’d tried to crush his cranium. “Ash, I’ll marry you, and take care of you, and your children,” he said suddenly, realizing how he could finally catch the woman of his dreams without even appearing to be the love-struck schmuck that he was.

If anyone was father material, it was he.

* * *

“YOU’LL MARRY ME?” Ash repeated, outraged. “You’ll marry me, you big, dumb, ornery—”

He held up a hand. “Of course I will. I’d do anything for a friend, and I consider you one of my dearest friends. A sister. I’ll give your children my name, and I’ll protect you, Ash.”

If she hadn’t been nursing Thorn, she’d have given the gorgeous sexy hunk next to her another knock on the head to match the lump he probably already sported. “I don’t want to get married. And I certainly wouldn’t marry you.”

“You have to get married, Ash.” She heard the concern in his voice. “Your brothers are going to have a fit when they find out you’re a single mother and the father won’t step up. They’ll drag him to the altar for sure. And it won’t be pretty. Your brothers can be tough when crossed, you know that.”

Mallory bustled in with some cake and tea on a wicker tray. She handed Xav a cup and looked at him directly. “So, when’s the wedding?”

“Mallory,” Ash said, and Xav said, “As soon as I can convince Ash that getting married is the right thing to do.”

“I should think so,” Mallory said as she leaned over to pick up one of the girls. “After all, I would have thought you’d have been here for the birth. Ash said you’d never find her, but I had a feeling you would. A man belongs with his family.”

Xav’s gaze landed on her. She glared at Mallory, wishing her friend would cease with the barrage of information. “Mallory, Xav and I haven’t really had a chance to talk things out.”

“Oh, pooh,” Mallory told the baby she’d picked up. “If we wait on your mother to talk things out, you’ll never have a father. Xav, meet your daughter Skye.” She handed him the baby, which he took, and not as gingerly as Ash might have wanted. “And this is Valor,” Mallory continued, pointing to the last baby in his white bassinet, “and that little fellow being held by his mother is Thorn. This little angel is Briar. Children, meet your father. Please help yourself to the cake, Xav. You’d better eat while you can. Once these little babies get tuned up, they tend to want everything at once. It’s quite the diaper rodeo.”

Mallory left the room, pleased with herself. Ash could barely meet Xav’s eyes, but she made herself look at him.

He looked the way she’d known he would—thunderstruck. Astonished. Maybe even a little angry.

“I’m the big, dumb, ornery cowboy?”

She nodded. “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have phrased it quite that way.” The moment had come upon her so unexpectedly that she hadn’t handled any of it well. “I wish I’d found a different way to tell you, Xav.”

“These are my babies?” He sounded absolutely incredulous, rocked. Dumbfounded.

She nodded, words seeming inadequate.

He hesitated, stared at the baby in his arms. “I don’t understand. You’ve been gone a long time. When did this happen? When were you going to tell me?”

So many questions, so few answers. He wasn’t going to be happy with any answer she gave him, and she couldn’t blame him. “The night I shot Uncle Wolf,” she began, faltering a little at the expression in his eyes. He still looked angry. “The night I shot Wolf, I was going to tell you I’d just learned I was pregnant,” she rushed out.

The baby in his arms began a snuffling sort of wail, which startled the baby she was nursing. Which got the other two going, and suddenly there was no time to explain more.

An hour later, they collapsed on the sofa, worn out, all babies fed, changed and asleep in their bassinets.

“They’re down for twenty minutes,” Ash said. “You should probably go, while you still can.”

He looked at her. “We’ve got a thousand things to talk about, and a lot you have to tell me. But you can’t stay here. You can’t keep these babies from their family, from Rancho Diablo. You can’t keep them from Fiona.” He looked so serious, so very serious, that the automatic no died on her lips. “Can you imagine how her Christmas would explode with joy—times four? You can’t cheat her of Christmas with her whole family, not to mention you can’t deny your grandfather, Running Bear, knowing the next generation of his great-grandchildren.” He reached out to touch her hand. “These babies will never know their grandparents, Ash. You can’t keep them from their great-grandfather. The chief’s one of the finest men I’ve ever known.”

Tears jumped into her eyes. “Grandfather is one of the finest men to ever walk the planet,” Ash said. “Thank you for respecting him.”

“Respect him, hell. I want to be him.”

She smiled. “We all do.”

“Anyway,” Xav said, “in these babies flows Callahan blood. You’ve got to take them home, tell your family the truth of why you left.”

“I didn’t leave because I was pregnant. I left because I knew I’d brought trouble to Rancho Diablo and my family when I disobeyed Grandfather by killing Wolf. You don’t understand what it’s like to bring a curse upon your own family.”

“No, but I do understand you have a bigger problem, beautiful, which is what your brothers are going to do to you when they find out you had four little Callahans and kept them out of the whole process. You shared in all their pregnancies, the joy, the misery, all of it.” He shook his head.

“You’re not telling me anything I don’t know. I didn’t make the decision to leave lightly. You were there, you know I went against Grandfather’s teachings.”

He shrugged. “Your brothers are still going to be hot with you about this. Not as hot as I am, but they’re going to be awfully let down.”

“I couldn’t tell you,” Ash said. “You’d have followed me anywhere I went if you’d known I was pregnant.”

“I followed you anyway. Babies didn’t figure into my equation, but I wasn’t about to let the trail go cold.” He looked at her and shook his head again. “You little devil. When were you going to tell me?”

That was the question she had asked herself many times: When should she tell Xav he was a father?

There had been no good answers. If she’d told him where she was, she’d have to tell all the family—hardly a way to keep them safe. “Xav, you don’t understand. I know you think you’re a Callahan now, but you’re not. You didn’t grow up understanding that some things just can’t be explained. Spiritual and mystical things.”

“The ghosts at Rancho Diablo aren’t any worse than the ones at the Phillips compound, I assure you.”

She shook her head impatiently. “I don’t mean secrets, I’m talking about spirits. We live our lives by the spirits. And there are evil spirits in the world. One of them is Uncle Wolf. I wasn’t about to bring tragedy on my children by exposing them to him.”

“It makes sense, but it also sounds like you don’t think I can protect you or my own flesh and blood. I assure you I can, and I will.”

It was so true what Xav said. Somehow she’d known he’d find her eventually. Their paths were meant to cross again.

She’d just thought it would be further in the future. Past the holidays, away from sentiment and the longing for home at Christmas that had come over her lately. “Like Mallory said, this is Briar,” she said, pointing to her firstborn, “and her sister is Skye. Skye’s my special one.” She reached a gentle finger to stroke Skye’s back. The baby slept on, undisturbed. “Skye is a Down’s syndrome baby, and my happiest spirit. She rarely fusses, just really wants to snuggle. Skye has Grandfather Running Bear’s spirit. It’s strong in her. Briar is strong physically. She always keeps her head turned toward her sister. I think she’s determined to protect her.” She looked at Xav. He was smiling, his eyes peaceful as he listened, so she continued. “This is Thorn. He was born second, and had some lung issues for a while. But the doctors expect him to make a full recovery. And this is Valor,” she said, gently patting her last son. “It was touch and go for him for a while, and I really thought I might lose him. All of them were underweight, of course, so there was a lot of time in the hospital. They’ve only been home with me for about three weeks. Valor became stronger and stronger, and now I really believe he’s going to be a warrior like Running Bear. I can feel him listening to the world around him, and I know he’s taking it all in.”

“When were they born?”

“October 15. Cesarean section. Briar came home first, then Valor. Thorn and Skye came home together the day before Thanksgiving, so I felt very blessed. Mallory’s been a rock. I couldn’t have done it without her.”

Xav got up, stalked to the window. “I wish I’d been here. I should have been here.”

“I wish things could have been different. But everything changed when I shot my uncle. It set things in motion I had no control over. And since you’ve spent the last several years working at Rancho Diablo, you know that as well as anyone.”

Chapter Three

Briar, Thorn, Skye and Valor—all strong names. Xav looked at his children with amazement and some lingering shock. How had this happened? How had he become a father of four, as easily as if a Fiona-style fairy godmother had waved her magic wand at him, gifting him with a full-blown family?

God, he couldn’t blame this on Fiona or even a fairy godmother, even though Fiona had totally and not too subtly plotted to enlarge her Callahan family tree. All the Callahans, every last one of them, had fallen to Fiona’s legendary and epic lures and chicanery to see her family with families of their own, but Ash won the prize for secret babypalooza. He stared in shock at his four offspring, trying to figure out how his world had changed when he wasn’t paying attention.

The “magic” had simply been an old-fashioned condom malfunction and his own raging desire to have the blonde sylph currently sitting on the sofa every which way from Sunday any chance he could reel her in.

She’d not been as reelable as he would have liked, and consequently, he’d spent most of his years with a serious case of unrequited longing. And every time he’d thought he’d had Ash, she’d disappeared again, leaving him satisfied for the moment but drained emotionally because who knew how long he’d have to wait until the next time she showed up in the canyons wearing a smile that made him virtually her love captive?

Undaunted, he’d played a waiting game, slightly uncomfortable because he felt guilty luring the sister of the men whom he considered good friends and employers. So he had to wait for Ash to come to him to lessen his guilt, when he really wanted to ride off with her into the canyons and drown himself in her for days.

“I left the middle names for you,” Ash said, snapping him out of his tangled thoughts. “I thought you’d want to have some say in naming your children.”

So Ash had eventually planned to tell him. He felt a little better. “How did four happen?”

She shrugged. “I wanted them, and they wanted me.”

What kind of an answer was that? Coming from Ash, it was almost reasonable, but he needed more grounding. “I’m not sure I understand.”

“I asked the spirits for a big family. I always wanted four children. I didn’t realize I’d get them all at once, but I feel really blessed.” She smiled, and she was the most beautiful woman in the world to his Ashlyn-starved eyes. “These babies agreed to be my family.”

The answer somehow made absolute sense to him. Whatever Ash wanted, Ash believed she would get—and so her wishes usually happened exactly the way she dreamed them. It was her force of spirit and confidence that commanded the earth and stars around her.

Except for Wolf, who she had no command over, and the reason she was here.

“Look, Ash, I know why you went away. I know you think you’re the hunted one your grandfather always warned about. But I shot Wolf. So you’re not the hunted one.” It was so important that she understand this, because they needed to put their family together.

He needed this family. He needed her.

Xav pulled her toward him, wrapped her in his arms. She seemed so surprised she didn’t fight him, so he took advantage of her momentary lull in willpower and enjoyed the moment. Memories washed over him. “You still smell like peaches, you’re still soft as rainwater and you still fit right under my heart.”

“I am the hunted one,” Ash said quietly. “You’re trying to protect me.”

“Gage, Shaman, Kendall and Ashlyn,” he said against her hair, drinking in the scent of her and the feel of her in his arms.

“What?”

“Those are the middle names I choose. And you should be impressed with my ability to select names when I didn’t even know I was a father four hours ago. Briar Kendall, Skye Ashlyn, Valor Shaman and Thorn Gage. Phillips. Named after my brothers and sister. Have to have the other side of the family represented.”

She moved out of his arms, and he decided not to try to pull her back. “Callahan, not Phillips.”

He hauled her into his lap as he sat down on the poufy old-fashioned sofa. “Here’s the deal. You marry me and you can pick all the names.”

“No,” Ash said, “I like the names you chose.”

“Great. Now,” he said, taking the diamond-and-sapphire ring from his pocket, “here’s what I was going to give you the last night we were together. Put it on your delicate little finger and tell me when and where we’re going to gather for a wedding.”

She stared at the ring. “Were you really going to give that to me before Wolf ambushed us?”

He nodded. “It was a very disappointing interruption, I’ll admit.” Nine months of an interruption. “I would have proposed at some appropriate point after I shot Wolf, but you disappeared. Which I would appreciate you not doing again.” He looked at his children. “I want to give these children my name as soon as possible.”

She handed him back the ring. “As beautiful as this ring is, I can’t marry you.”

“I can’t make love to you until you do.”

Ash cocked a brow. “Who says I want you to make love to me?”

He kissed her, taking his time, before she finally pushed him gently away. “You want me to make love to you right now, Ashlyn Callahan.”

Ash got out of his lap. “Xav, you don’t understand.”

“I understand that we belong together. That’s all I need to know. The only reason you’re saying no is because you don’t believe that I shot Wolf. Let me tell you how that went down,” Xav said. “I had unloaded your gun.”

“No one gets my gun away from me.” She looked at the babies with a fond smile. “Of course, that was before I became a mother. Now I never carry.”