“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