The SEAL's Secret Heirs (9 page)

Grace wanted to take it
slow
because of what had happened before.

Furiously, he fingered the buttons through the holes haphazardly, none too happy about having to spend the rest of the workday with a hard-on he couldn't get rid of, no matter what he thought of to kill his arousal—slugs, the Cowboys losing the Super Bowl, his mother. Nothing worked because the feel of Grace in his arms was way too fresh, and had been cut way too short.

Because of what had happened
before
. She meant when she'd fallen for Liam and he'd thrown her over. While Kyle appreciated that she wanted to figure out her own mind before taking things further with him, he wasn't about to stand by and let what happened in the past with his brother ruin the present.

Liam was married now and Grace should be completely over all of that. Bygones included forgetting about
everything
that happened in the past.

He didn't have any choice but to let it go for the time being. He had a job to do and men to manage.

By the time the sun set, the entire Wade Ranch staff was giving Kyle a wide berth. So the cow extraction hadn't earned him any points. Figured. His surly mood didn't help and he finally just called it a day.

When he got back to the main house, Liam met him in the mudroom off the back.

“Hey,” Liam called as Kyle sat on the long bench seat to remove his boots, which were a far sight cleaner than they'd been earlier, but still weren't fit to walk the floors inside.

Kyle jerked his chin, not trusting himself to actually speak to anyone civilly. Though if anyone deserved the brunt of his temper, it was Liam.

“Hadley and I are flying to Vail this weekend. Just wanted to give you a heads-up.” Liam's mouth tightened. “You'll be okay handling the babies for a couple of days by yourself, right?”

“Yep.”

Liam hesitated, clearly expecting more of a conversation or maybe even an argument about it, but what else was there to say? Kyle couldn't force the couple to stay, and Maddie and Maggie were his kids. He'd figure it out. Somehow. The little pang in his stomach must be left over from Grace. Probably.

“Okay. We're leaving in an hour or so.”

Kyle let the first boot hit the floor with a resounding
thunk
and nodded. Liam kept talking.

“I'm flying my Cessna, so it's no problem to delay for a bit if you need to talk to Hadley about anything.”

The other boot hit the floor. Hadley had already imparted as much baby knowledge as she possibly could. Another hour of blathering wasn't going to make a difference. “Not necessary.”

Liam still didn't leave. “You have my cell phone number. It's okay if you want to call and ask questions.”

“Yep.”

Geez. Was his brother really that much of an ass? Liam had taken care of the babies before Kyle had gotten there without anyone standing over him waiting for his first mistake. Did Liam really think babysitting was something only he could do and that Kyle was hopelessly inept? Seemed so. Which only set Kyle's resolve.

He wouldn't call. Obviously Liam and Hadley had plans that didn't include taking care of Kyle's children. Who was he to stand in the way of that? Never mind that Kyle had never even stayed alone in the house with the babies. Hadley had always just been there, ready to pick up the slack.

This was the part where Kyle wished he had someone like Hadley. His kids needed a mother. Problem was, he could only picture Grace's face when thinking of a likely candidate. And she was too skittish about
everything
. Mentioning motherhood would likely send her over the edge.

Finally, Liam shuffled off to finish packing or whatever, leaving Kyle to his morose thoughts. It was fine, really. So he'd envisioned asking Grace if she'd like to drive into Odessa for dinner and a movie. Get out of Royal, where there were no prying eyes. Maybe he would have even talked her into spending the night in a swanky motel. He had scads of money he never spent and he couldn't think of anyone he'd rather spend it on than Grace.

Guess that wasn't happening. A grown-up field trip didn't sound too much like Grace's definition of
slow
anyway, so it hardly mattered that his half-formed plan wasn't going to work out.

No matter. He'd spend the weekend with his daughters and it would be great. They'd bond and his love for them would grow. Maybe this was actually a good step toward relieving Hadley permanently of her baby duties. He could keep telling himself that she loved them and didn't mind taking care of his daughters all he wanted, but at the end of the day, it was just an excuse.

He'd decided to stay in Royal, taking a job managing the cattle side of Wade Ranch, and it was time for him to man up and start building the family life his daughters needed.

Liam and Hadley left in a flurry of instructions and worried backward glances until finally Kyle was alone with Maddie and Maggie. That little pang in his stomach was back and he pushed on it with his thumb. The feeling didn't go away and started resembling panic more than anything else.

God Almighty. Maddie and Maggie were babies, for crying out loud. Kyle had faced down a high-ranking, card-carrying member of the Taliban with less sweat.

He wandered into the nursery and thought about covering his eyes to shield them from all the pink. But there his girls were. Two of 'em. Staring up at him with the slightly unfocused, slightly bemused expression his daughters seemed to favor. The babies were kind of sweet when they weren't crying.

They couldn't lie around in their room all night.

“Let's hang out,” he announced to his kids. It had a nice ring.

He gathered up Maggie from her crib and carried her downstairs to the family room, where a conglomeration of baby paraphernalia sat in the corner. He dragged one of the baby seats away from the wall with one bare foot and placed Maggie in it the way Hadley always did. There were some straps, similar to a parachute harness, and he grabbed one of Maggie's waving fists to thread it through the arm hole.

She promptly clocked him with the other one, which earned a laugh even as his cheek started smarting. “That's what I get for taking my eye off the ball, right?”

The noise she made didn't sound too much like agreement, but he nodded anyway, as if they were having a conversation. That was one of the things Hadley said all the time. The babies were people, not aliens. He could talk to them normally and it helped increase their vocabulary later on if everyone got out of the habit of using baby talk around them.

Which was fine by Kyle. Baby talk was dumb anyway.

Once Maggie was secured, he fetched Maddie and repeated the process. That was the thing about twins. You were never done. One of them always needed something, and then the other one needed the same thing or something different or both.

But here they were, having family time. In the family room. Couldn't get more domestic than that. He sat on the couch and looked at his daughters squirming in their bouncy seats. Now what?

“You ladies want to watch some TV?”

Since neither one of them started wailing at the suggestion, he took it as a yes.

The flat-screen television mounted to the wall blinked on with a flick of the remote. Kyle tuned to one of the kids' channels, where a group of grown men in bright colors were singing a song about a dog named Wags. The song was almost horrifying in its simplicity and in the dancing that would probably lace his nightmares later that night, assuming he actually slept while continually reliving that aborted kiss with Grace from earlier.

The babies both turned their little faces to the TV and for all intents and purposes looked as though they were watching it. Hadley had said they couldn't really make out stuff really well yet, because their eyes weren't developed enough to know what they were looking at, but they could still enjoy the colors and lights.

And that's when Maddie started fussing. Loudly.

Kyle pulled her out of her baby seat, cursing his burning hands, which were still raw from his climb out of the ravine. Liam's timing sucked. “Shh, little one. That's no way to talk to your daddy.”

She cried harder. It was only a matter of time before Maggie got jealous of the attention and set about getting some of her own with a few well-placed sobs. Hadley could usually ignore it but Kyle didn't have her stamina.

Plan A wasn't working. Kyle rocked his daughter faster but she only cried harder. And there was no one to help analyze the symptoms in order to arrive at a potential solution. This was a solo operation. So he'd run it to completion.

Bottle. That was always Plan B, after rocking. It was close to dinnertime. Kyle secured Maddie in the chair again, forced to let her wail while he fixed her bottle. It seemed cruel, but he needed both hands.

He'd seen some guys wear a baby sling. But he couldn't quite bring himself to go that far, and he'd never seen Liam do it, either, so there was justification for holding on to his dude card, albeit slight.

Maddie sucked the bottle dry quicker than a baby calf who'd lost its mama. Kyle burped her and resettled her in her bouncy seat, intending to move on to Maggie, who was likely wondering where her bottle was.

Maddie was having none of that and let loose with another round of wails.

In desperation, he sang his go-to Taylor Swift song, which surprisingly worked well enough to ease his pounding headache. He sang the verse over again and slid into the chorus with gusto. The moment he stopped, she set off again, louder. He sang. She quieted. He stopped. She cried.

“Maddie,” he groaned. “Tim McGraw should have been your daddy if this is how you're going to be. I can't sing 24-7.”

More crying. With more mercy than he probably deserved, Maggie had been sitting quietly in her seat the whole time, but things surely wouldn't stay so peaceful on her end.

Feeling like the world's biggest idiot, he sneaked off to the kitchen to call Hadley. There was no way on God's green earth he'd call Liam, but Hadley was another story.

She answered on the first ring. “Is everything okay?”

“Fine, fine,” he assured her, visualizing Liam throwing their overnight bags into the cockpit of the Cessna and flying off toward home without even pausing to shut the door. “Well, except Maddie won't stop crying. I've tried everything, bottle, rocking, and it's a bust. Any ideas?”

“Did you burp her?”

“Of course.” He hadn't changed her diaper, but his sense of smell was pretty good and he didn't think that was the problem.

“Temperature?”

He dashed back into the family room, cringing at the decibel level of Maddie's cries, and put a hand on her forehead. Which was moronic when he'd been holding her for thirty minutes. “She doesn't feel hot.”

“Is that Maddie crying like that?” Now Hadley sounded worried, which was not what Kyle had intended. “Take her temperature anyway, just to be sure. Then try the gas drops. Call me back in an hour and let me know how it's going.”

“Won't I be interrupting?” He so did not want to know the answer to that, but it was pretty crappy of him to call once, let alone twice.

“Yes,” Liam growled in the background. “Stop coddling him, Hadley.”

Kyle muttered an expletive aimed at Liam, but his wife was the one who heard it. “Excuse my French, Hadley. Never mind. I got this. You and Liam go back to whatever you were doing, which I do
not
need details about.”

“We should come home,” Hadley interjected. This was accompanied by a very vehement “No!” from Liam, and some muffled conversation. “Okay, we're not coming home. You'll be fine,” Hadley said into the phone in her soothing voice that she normally reserved for the girls, but whether it was directed at Liam or Kyle, he couldn't say. “Call Clare if you need to. She won't mind.”

“Clare?” Liam's incredulity came through loud and clear despite his mouth being nowhere near the phone. “She's already got plenty of babies that Royal Memorial pays her to take care of. Call Grace if you're going to call anyone.”

Grace
. He could get Grace over here under the guise of helping with the twins and get to see her tonight after all. Now that was a stellar idea if Kyle had ever heard one. Not that he was about to let Liam get all cocky about it. “Sorry I bothered you. Good night.”

Kyle eyed the still-screaming baby. Fatherhood wasn't a job for the fainthearted, that was for sure. Nor was it a job for the clueless, and thankfully, Ms. Haines already had him cast in her head as such. She thought he was clueless? Great.

Time to use that to his advantage.

Eight

W
hen the phone rang, Grace almost didn't answer it.

The oven had freaked out. Worse than last time. It turned on and heated up fine, but halfway through the cooking cycle, the element shut off. Cold. Which described the state of her dinner, too. The roast was still raw inside and she could have used the potatoes to pound nails.

But there was no saving it now. The oven wouldn't start again no matter how much she cursed at it. She'd checked the power cord but it was plugged in with no visible frays or anything. Last time, she'd been able to turn it off and turn it back on, but that didn't work this time.

So why not answer the phone?

Except it was Kyle. His name flashed at her from the screen and she stared at it for a moment as the
wow
from earlier flooded all her full-grown woman parts. So this was taking it slow? Calling her mere hours after she'd broken off a kiss with more willpower than it should have taken—for the second time?

“This better be important,” she said instead of hello, and then winced. Her mama had raised her better than that.

“It is.” Something that sounded like a tornado siren wailed in the distance. “Something's wrong with Maddie.”

That was
Maddie
doing the siren impression?
Relapse
. Her heart rate sped up. Those harrowing hours when they didn't know what was wrong with Maddie came back in a rush. Heart problems were no joke, and Maddie'd had several surgeries to correct the abnormalities.

“What's wrong? Where's Hadley?” She might be hyperventilating. Was that what it was called when you couldn't breathe?

“She and Liam went to Vail. I didn't want to bother them.”

Vail? Suspicion ruffled the edges of Grace's consciousness. The couple had just gone to Vail a couple of months ago. Was this some kind of covert attempt to get Kyle to take his fatherhood responsibilities more seriously? Or an elaborate setup from the mind of Kyle Wade to get his way with Grace?

“Okay,” she said slowly, feeling her way through the land mines. “Did you try—”

“Yep. I tried everything. She's been crying like this for an hour and it's upsetting Maggie. I wouldn't have called you otherwise.” He was trying hard to keep the panic from his voice, but she could tell he was at the end of his rope. Her heart melted a little, sweeping aside all her suspicion.

It didn't matter why Liam and Hadley had gone to Vail. Maddie—and Kyle—needed help, and she couldn't ignore that for anything.

“Do you need me to come by?” She shouldn't, for all the reasons she hadn't stayed with him in the barn earlier that day.

Plus, and this was the kicker, he hadn't asked her to come over. Maybe it was supposed to be implied, but this was typical with Kyle. He had a huge problem just coming out and saying what he thought. That might be the number one reason she hadn't stayed in his arms, both back in high school and today.

Nothing had changed.

“That's a great idea,” he said enthusiastically, and she didn't miss that he was acting as though it was all hers, and not what he'd been after the whole time. “I'll cook you dinner as a thank-you. Unless you've got other plans?”

Ha. If she couldn't hear Maddie's cries for herself, she'd think he'd set all this up. Grace glanced at her oven and half-cooked dinner, then at the lonely dining room table where she'd eaten a lot of meals by herself, especially in the past three years upon becoming a Professional Single Girl.

The timing was oh, so convenient. But even Kyle couldn't magically make her oven stop working at precisely the moment he'd asked her to come over for dinner. Thus far she'd avoided having any meals with him and his family because that would be too hard. Too much of a reminder that a husband and children was what she wanted more than anything—and that there was nothing on the horizon to indicate she'd ever get either one.

But this was an emergency. Or at least that was what she was going to keep telling herself.

“I'll be right there,” she promised, and dumped the roast in the trash. If she freshened up her makeup and put on a different dress, no one had to know.

She drove to Wade Ranch at four miles per hour over the speed limit.

Kyle opened the door before she knocked. “Hey, Grace. Thanks.”

His pure physical beauty swept out and slapped her. Mute, she stared at his face, memorizing it, which was silly when she already had a handy image of him, shirtless, emblazoned across her brain. She'd just seen him a few hours ago. Why did she have to have a reaction by simply standing near him?

“Where's Maddie?” she asked brusquely to cover the catch in her throat.

“Right this way, Ms. Haines.”

Grace followed Kyle through the formal parlor and across the hardwood floor into the hall connecting to the back of the house. Why did it feel like the blind leading the blind? She didn't have any special baby knowledge. Most kids in the system were older by the time their cases landed on her desk, which brought back her earlier reservations about the real reason he'd called her. It wouldn't be the first time today that he'd manufactured a scenario to get a reaction from her.

In the family room, two babies sat in low seats, wide-eyed as they stared at the TV, both silent as the grave.

Grace pointed out the obvious. “Um. Maddie's not crying.”

“I gave her Tylenol while you were on your way over here.” He shrugged. “Must have worked.”

“Why didn't you call me?”

“She didn't stop crying until a few minutes before you got here,” he replied defensively, which was only fair. She'd heard Maddie crying over the phone. It wasn't as if he'd shoved Liam and Hadley out the door, and then faked an emergency to get her into his clutches.

She sighed. “I'm sorry. I'm being rude. It's just... I was convinced this was all just an elaborate plot to get me to have dinner with you.”

Kyle blinked. “Why on earth would I do that?”

“Well, you know.” Discomfort prickled the back of her neck as he stared at her in pure confusion. “Because you faked all that stuff with Emma Jane earlier today. Seemed like it might be a trend.”

He cocked his head and gave her a small smile. “I called you because it was the best of both worlds. I needed help with Maddie and I wanted to see you, too. Is that so terrible?”

Not when he put it that way. Chagrined, she shook her head. “No. But it just seems like I'm a little extraneous at this point. I should probably go. Maddie's fine.”

“Don't be silly.” His smile faltered just a touch. “She might go off again at any moment and Maggie could decide to join in. What will I do then? Please stay. Besides, I promised you dinner. Let me do something nice for you for coming all this way.”

The panicky undercurrent had climbed back into his voice, bless his heart. She couldn't help but smile in hopes of bolstering his confidence. “It wasn't that far. But okay. I'll stay.”

“Great. It's settled then.” He held out his hand as if he wanted to shake on it but when she placed her hand in his, he yanked on it, pulling her toward the bouncy seats. “Come on, grab a baby and you can watch me cook.”

Laughing, she did as commanded, though he insisted on taking Maddie himself. She gathered up Maggie, bouncy seat and all, and followed him to the kitchen, mirroring his moves as he situated the seat near one of the two islands in the center of the room, presumably so the girls didn't feel left out.

She kissed Maggie on the head, unable to resist her sweet face. This baby was special for lots of reasons, but mostly because of who her daddy was.

Wow. Where had that come from? She needed to reel it back, pronto.

“We'll let them hang out for a little while,” Kyle said conversationally. “And then we'll put them to bed. Hadley has them on a strict schedule.”

“Sure. I'd be glad to help.”

It sounded great, actually. The children she helped always either had families already, or were waiting on her to find them the best one. Grace never got to keep any of the children on whose behalf she worked, which was a little heartbreaking in a way.

But here she was, right in the middle of Maddie and Maggie's permanent home, spending time with them and their father outside of work. The smell of baby powder clung to her hands where she'd picked up Maggie, and all at once, soft jazz music floated through the kitchen as Kyle clicked up an internet radio station at the kitchen's entertainment center. It was a bit magical and her throat tightened.

This was not her life. She didn't trust Kyle enough to consider where this could lead. But all at once, she couldn't remember why that was so important. All she had to do right this minute was enjoy this.

“Can I do something to help with dinner?” she asked, since the babies were occupied with staring at their fists.

Kyle grinned and pulled a stool from behind the island, pointing to it. “Sit. Your job is to keep me company.”

Charmed, she watched as instructed. It wasn't a hardship. He moved fluidly, as comfortable sliding a bottle from the built-in wine refrigerator as he was handling the reins of his mount earlier that day.

The cork gave way with a
pop
and he poured her a glass of pale yellow wine, handing it to her with one finger in the universal “one minute” gesture. He grabbed his own glass and clinked it against hers. “To bygones.”

She raised a brow. That was an interesting thing to toast to. But appropriate. She was determined not to let the past interfere with her family moment, and the future was too murky. “To bygones.”

They both drank from their glasses, staring at each other over the rims, and she had the distinct impression he was evaluating her just as much as she was him.

The fruity tang of the wine raced across her tongue, cool and delicious. And unexpected. “I wouldn't have pegged you as a Chardonnay kind of guy,” she commented.

“I'm full of surprises.” With that cryptic comment, he set his wineglass on the counter and began pulling items from the double-doored stainless steel refrigerator. “I'm making something simple. Chicken salad. I hope that's okay. The ladies didn't give me a lot of time to prep.”

She hid a smile at his description of the babies. “Sounds great.”

Kyle bustled around the kitchen chopping lettuce and a cooked chicken breast, leaving her to alternate watching him and the twins. Though he drew her eye far more than she would have expected, given that she was here to help with the babies.

“I don't remember you being much of a connoisseur in the kitchen,” she said as he began mixing the ingredients for homemade dressing.

They'd been so young the first time, though. Not even out of their teens, yet their twenties were practically in the rearview mirror now. Of course they'd grown and changed. It would be more shocking if they hadn't.

“In a place like Afghanistan, if you don't learn to cook, you starve,” he returned.

It was rare for him to mention his military stint, and it occurred to her that she typically shied away from the subject because it held so many negative associations. For her, at least. He might feel differently about the thing that had taken him away from her, and she was suddenly curious about it.

“Did you enjoy being in the military?”

He glanced up, his expression shuttered all at once. “It was a part of me. And now it's not.”

Okay, message received. He didn't want to talk about that. Which was fine. Neither did she.

“I'm at a stopping point,” he said, his tone a little lighter. “Let's put the girls to bed.”

Though she suspected it was merely a diversion, she nodded and followed him through the mysterious ritual of bedtime. It was over before she'd fully immersed herself in the moment. They changed the girls' diapers, changed their outfits, put them down on their backs and left the room.

“That was it?” she whispered as she and Kyle took the back stairs to the kitchen.

“Yep. Sometimes Hadley rocks them if they don't go to sleep right away, but she says not to do that too much, or they'll get used to it, and we'll be doing it until they go to college.” He waved the mobile video monitor in his hand. “I watch and listen using this and if they fuss, I come running. Not much more to it.”

They emerged into the kitchen, where the tangy scent of the salad dressing greeted them. Kyle set the monitor on the counter on his way to the area where he'd been preparing dinner.

He'd clearly been asking Hadley questions and soaking up her baby knowledge. Much more so than Grace would have given him credit for. “You're taking fatherhood very seriously.”

He halted and whirled so fast that she smacked into his chest. But he didn't step back. “What's it going to take to convince you that I'm in this for the long haul?”

Blinking, she stared up into his green eyes as they cut through her. Condemning her. Uncertain all of a sudden, she tried to take a step back, but he didn't let her. His hands shot out to grip her elbows, hauling her back into place. Into his space. A hairbreadth from the cut torso she'd felt under her fingers earlier today.

“What will it take, Grace?” he murmured. “You say something like that and it makes me think you're surprised that I'm ready, willing and able to take care of my daughters.
Still
surprised, after all I've done and learned. After I've become gainfully employed. After I've shown you my commitment in site visits like you asked. This isn't about me anymore. It's about you. Why is this all so hard for you to believe?”

“Because, Kyle!” she burst out. “You've been gone. You didn't come home when Liam called you about the babies. Is it so difficult to fathom that I might have questions about your intentions? You just said the military was a part of you. What if you wake up one day and want to join up again? Those girls will suffer.”