SWEET CALLAHAN HOMECOMING (2 page)

Great. He might seem fine after a crack on the head, but the truth was going to blow his mind.

On the other hand, maybe it was best if Xav didn’t know he was a father. She could convince him to go on his merry way and never look back.

No. That didn’t sound right, either. He’d tracked her down, he was here. These were his children. There was no going back.

“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.

* * *

“Y
OU
’
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.”