Page 30 of The Cowboy's Secret Babies

Maybe one day when you have children, Ryder texted back,assuming you ever reach that level of maturity, you’ll understand why it is that sometimes, the grown-ups have to have a private talk.

He and Wilder texted like this all the time. Wherever they went, whatever they did. It was part of the lifelong conversation they’d always been in, and always would be in.

But it was particularly entertaining tonight, when he could stand across the room and watch his brother laugh when he read what Ryder had sent him.

I’m sure that’s it, Wilder texted back.I’m sure that’s not euphemistic at all.

That’s an awfully big word, Ryder replied.I’m the pretty one, remember?

And he had to consider the evening a win.

The routine he’d fallen into, here in this new phase of his life, took on a different shape after the boys’ party. He got up most mornings and tagged along with one or other of his brothers, getting a feel for the ranch again. Midmorning, he headed to Rosie’s, where the twins called himDaddyin their excited, high-pitched voice, and solicited his opinion on everything of importance to them that day, from their other brother’s perfidy, to the clothes they wanted to wear, to things the infamous Jacinta had said a nursery school. There were usually reports of any silly things their mother might have done.

One morning she looked frazzled when he got there, unusual for the polished Rosie Stark, so he got the boys ready for their nursery school himself. He led them out the door to her car, which he used to drive them down into Cowboy Point because she was the one who had the car seats. He was going to have to upgrade his truck.

After he dropped them off, with a bland smile at the raised eyebrows of the nursery school teacher who met the boys at the door, he decided the car itself was a disaster. And he had some concerns about how it was running, so he drove it down to Marietta, sweet talked his way into a mechanic’s shop since he happened to know the guy in charge from back in high school, and washed and cleaned it out himself.

When he came back to Rosie’s house, she was less frazzled, but more irritated.

“Where have you been?” she demanded, standing there in her front doorway, letting all her heat out into the cold, gloomy day.

“Your car was a disaster,” he told her. “I fixed it.”

“What do you mean, you fixed it?”

He sauntered toward her, aware on some level that he really shouldn’t find these moments of domesticity so much damned fun, but he did. “You know, I really question each and every one of your cousins, not to mention your brother, that they’ve been letting you drive around in that thing.”

“That thingis an incredibly dependable vehicle that has stood the test of time,” she shot back, hotly. Like he’d insulted her honor, her family, and her first born.

“Well, now it will stand it even better,” he drawled as he reached her at the door. “You’re welcome.”

And she was scowling at him, but she was so cute with her hair pulled back and that confection of a pink sweater that she was wearing today. Not to mention a pair of jeans that never failed to do a number on him, so he really had no choice at all but to pull her into his arms and kiss her until she forgot that she was mad at him.

Sometimes he came back in the afternoon when she was done with her job, so he could see the boys when they got home and hang around for dinner, too. Other times he went home and had dinner at the ranch, with whatever configuration of family was around of an evening. Still other times he spent time with Wilder and Cat, playing the card games they seemed to love so much.

“Dangerous prospect, playing cards with a Lisle,” he said to Wilder. Pretty much every time.

“He likes it when I cheat,” Cat said with a wink. “He thinks it’s hot.”

“Ryder doesn’t have an opinion on your hotness,” Wilder told her, shaking his head, though his mouth twitched. “Do you?”

He didn’t even have to look at Ryder as he asked it. Ryder kept his gaze on his cards. “What’s hot?” he asked. “Anyway, I’m blind.”

“As a bat,” Wilder told his wife. Then he threw his cards on the table. “And also, enjoy this royal flush.”

Ryder liked each of these different sorts of evenings in their own ways, and far more than he would have believed he could if he’d tried to tell any past version of him that this was his future. He’d always maintained that what he loved was the road, but it turned out that letting himself settle into what he already had felt even better than another new, temporary city and nothing to think about but bull riding and, if he didn’t break anything, a little companionship on the other side.

It was funny how little appeal that kind of night held now. Usually he felt restless after a weekend anywhere, and yet here he was over a month back home and he didn’t have even the faintest hint of that usual itch.

And of all the evenings he got to have here, the ones he loved the most involved him lying in a narrow little twin bed in the boys’ room, with each of them pressed up tight beside him as he read them one book, then another.

He loved the ease of their affection, uncomplicated and trusting, pressing into him like they were a part of him in ways that transcended biology.

Another thing that would have panicked him to contemplate a year ago—hell, even two months ago—and these days, made him feel something perilously close to the happiest he’d ever been.

Because he liked to read them stories, and he liked the way they listened so intently, and corrected him as he went. But what he really liked was to look up toward the doorway to find Rosie standing there with her heart in her eyes once more.

Every time he did, it shifted things inside him.

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