The More Mavericks, The Merrier!

Chapter Three

Fallon was having second thoughts about the tree-cutting plan before Jamie came back to the house that afternoon. She’d barely finished cleaning up Henry and herself—having to borrow a shirt from her friend’s closet in order to put her own in the wash—when Jared and Katie woke up and began demanding their lunch. Of course, Henry’s belly was empty, too, and though she was wary of what might happen with anything he ate, she couldn’t let him go hungry.

Thankfully, whatever had upset Henry’s tummy earlier seemed to be out of his system, and he dug into his pasta with enthusiasm. After they’d finished eating and she’d finished cleaning up the kitchen, she bundled them into their snowsuits and took them outside to play in the snow. It was fun to watch them crawl around in it, and as an added bonus, it tired them out quickly.

While they were outside, she scanned the property, looking for any sign of their father, but she didn’t see Jamie anywhere. She knew he’d planned to fix the fence on the north border of the property, but unless the damage was worse than he’d suggested, he should have been finished by now.

When the babies finally collapsed in the snow, exhausted, she carted them back inside, wrestled them out of their snowsuits, changed their diapers, gave them their bottles and settled them back in their cribs. She touched the back of her hand to Henry’s forehead, but whatever had ailed the little guy earlier seemed to have truly passed.

When they were finally all settled, she said a silent prayer of thanks that she was able to get them all to sleep at the same time. By that point, she was just as exhausted as they were.

But she threw another load of laundry into the washing machine, added a couple of items to Jamie’s grocery list, and tidied up the toys in the living room because she knew if she sat down, she might not get up again.

She was accustomed to taking care of children all day long. When she wasn’t helping with Jamie’s babies, she worked part-time at Country Kids Day Care. But she worked with the preschool group, children who generally listened to instruction, sat happily at a table to complete an assigned task and enjoyed story time.

As much as she loved Henry, Jared and Katie—and she did—it wasn’t easy trying to keep up with their demands. Although she couldn’t deny that they were much easier to deal with now that their schedules were somewhat synchronized. For the first few months, it seemed as if one baby would go down for a nap, then the second would want to be fed, the third would need to be changed and by the time the second one was almost asleep, the first was waking up again.

In those early months, only a few hours with the babies had exhausted her. Thankfully, during that time, there had been a lot of volunteers in the baby chain so that no one had to do more than a four-hour shift and often there were two volunteers during a given period.

Over the past couple of weeks, however, as holiday preparations put more demands on everyone’s time, the number of volunteers had started to dwindle. While Fallon understood that people had other responsibilities and obligations, she couldn’t abandon Henry, Jared and Katie. Their father was already doing everything he could to keep the ranch running and there was no way he’d be able to do that if he was also responsible for the full-time care of his babies.

The dryer buzzed, signaling the end of the cycle and prompting her return to the laundry room. She knew Jamie appreciated the extra chores she did around the house, but as she folded diapers shirts and sleepers, she found herself wishing that he would—just once—see her as more than a link in the baby chain.

* * *

It wasn’t quite three o’clock when Jamie returned to the house. After kicking off his boots at the back door, he was immediately struck by the unfamiliar sound of silence. Obviously HJK were down for their afternoon nap—but where was their babysitter?

“Fallon?” he called out.

There was no response. But he did hear water running and realized the sound was coming from the laundry room. As he headed in that direction, he was once again struck by the uncomfortable realization that he would never be able to repay her for everything she’d done for his family over the past ten months—and continued to do. Not only did she take care of his babies, but she also helped prepare meals, kept the house tidy and ensured that HJK—and he—always had clean clothes to wear.

But he could at least thank her, and with that thought in mind, he pushed open the partially closed door to reveal Fallon standing in front of the dryer, shaking out a garment that she’d just removed from it.

He didn’t know what it was; he didn’t note the shape or color or anything because he couldn’t tear his gaze away from Fallon’s naked body.

Okay, she wasn’t actually naked.

Not even half-naked really.

She was only topless. And wearing a bra. But it had been a long time since he’d seen so much bare female skin. Temptingly smooth and pale. He wondered if it could possibly be as soft as it looked and, from out of nowhere, he was almost overcome by the urge to step forward and press his lips to her bare shoulder.

She turned slightly as she slid an arm into a sleeve, and he realized the garment was a shirt. And now he had an even better view of the bra she was wearing. A barely there scrap of lace with low-cut cups that hugged the curve of her breasts.

He swallowed. Hard.

He started to back away, so that she wouldn’t know he’d caught her half-undressed. But he suddenly seemed to be having trouble with blood flow to his brain. Or maybe it was to his legs, because instead of backing out the doorway, he backed into the door, causing it to crash against the wall.

Fallon gasped and whirled around.

Now he had a perfect and unobstructed view of her front, and it was even more spectacular than her back. Because, of course, there were breasts front and center. Delicate swells of creamy flesh that were beautifully showcased by the white lace.

“Jamie!”

He lifted his gaze to her face, saw that her cheeks had turned the same color as her hair. “What?”

“Get out!”

“Oh. Right.”

He backed into the door again, then turned around and fled.

* * *

Fallon’s fingers were unsteady as she worked to fasten the buttons of her shirt. She could still feel the heat in her cheeks, though she didn’t think the rush of blood to her face had been the result of embarrassment as much as arousal.

And it had been arousal she’d seen in Jamie’s eyes, too. She was certain of it. Okay—almost certain.

But how would she know? When had a man ever looked at her with desire in his eyes? Maybe she was just seeing what she wanted to see, because she so desperately wanted to believe he might feel even a tiny bit of what she felt for him.

Aside from some flirting and a few kisses, she didn’t have a lot of experience with the opposite sex. Yeah, she’d been hit on occasionally. Probably because there were a lot more men than women in Rust Creek Falls and any woman who walked through the doors of the Ace in the Hole on a Friday or Saturday night could expect to be hit on. But now that she was thinking about it, she couldn’t remember the last time that had happened. True, she hadn’t been to the local bar in several months, but since the flood a couple of years earlier, there had been an influx of people from Thunder Canyon and other neighboring towns to help the residents of Rust Creek Falls. And while the majority of those people had gone back to their own homes, many had chosen to stay—most of them women. As a result, the local demographic had shifted. Now that there were a lot more young and single women in town, the local cowboys were happy to spread their attention and affection around.

Fallon had absolutely no objections. She’d never wanted anyone but Jamie. Unfortunately, except for that one kiss seven years earlier, he’d never given her any indication that he felt the same way.

She huffed out a breath and pressed her hands to her still-hot cheeks. Obviously she needed another minute or two before she could face him again. Thankfully, there was the rest of the load of laundry to be folded, which she did while trying not to think about what he’d been thinking when he’d looked at her.

Because it was possible that his wide-eyed, slack-jawed expression had been shock rather than arousal. Certainly he would have been shocked to discover her in his laundry room in a state of semiundress. Maybe even appalled—and wasn’t that possibility like a bucket of icy water in her flushed face?

Before she’d finished folding the clothes, she heard, through the baby monitor that she carried with her everywhere she went, sounds of rustling and cooing that were the general precursors to any or all of the triplets waking up. And then she heard Jamie—the low, soothing murmur of his voice as he entered the room and began talking to his children.

She knew it wasn’t easy for him—being both a father and a mother to three babies in addition to performing the majority of day-to-day chores that came with owning and managing a ranch. And yet, when he finally got back to the house at the end of his long days, his first thought was always of his children.

Of course, she knew how much family meant to Jamie, and she understood why it was so important to him to ensure that his children always knew how much they were loved. Because he’d been orphaned at fifteen and separated from his siblings soon after. And as far as she knew, neither Jamie nor Bella had heard a single word from any of the others since.

Losing most of his family in such a short period of time had made him determined to keep his own family together, no matter what. Which was why Jamie had been not just furious but deeply hurt when he ran into his grandfather at Crawford’s a few months after the babies were born and Matthew Baldwin had suggested that the children might be better off if Jamie put them up for adoption, so they could go to homes with two parents to care for them.

Although Fallon believed the old man had offered this advice out of a sincere desire to help guide his grandson through a difficult situation, she didn’t believe it was the right advice. And it renewed her determination to help in any way that she could to ensure that Jamie never needed to worry about losing his children.

When the laundry was folded, she headed upstairs and found him in the babies’ room, changing Katie’s diaper. Henry was standing up, holding on to the bars of his crib and chewing on the top rail. Jared was still sleeping, his arms flung out at his sides. He was the only one of the babies who had hated being swaddled as an infant.

“Need a hand?” she asked.

He lifted Katie off of the changing table. “Sure—you can take her downstairs. I’ll bring Henry and Jared when they’re ready.”

“Okay.” She took the little girl from his arms, and he immediately turned toward Henry’s crib without looking at her.

“Apparently this is going to be awkward,” she said, standing beside the changing table with Katie propped on her hip.

“I’m sorry.” He carried Henry to the table and began unfastening his overalls.

“Sorry this is awkward?”

He finally lifted his gaze to meet hers. “Sorry I walked in on you in the laundry room,” he clarified.

“Forget it,” she said. “It was just unfortunate timing.”

One side of his mouth curved. “Or fortunate—depending on your perspective.”

She felt heat rise into her face again.

“But I wouldn’t have walked into the laundry room if I’d known you were in there. Naked,” he said.

Her gaze shifted to the trio of cribs lined up along the far wall, settling on the closest one, in which Jared was still sleeping. Of course, none of the babies was paying any attention to their conversation. And even if they had been listening, they wouldn’t have understood what the adults were saying. But that knowledge didn’t prevent Fallon’s cheeks from burning. “I wasn’t naked.”

“Close enough,” he said.

“I was topless,” she clarified. “And wearing a bra.”

“White lace,” he said, confirming that he’d noticed.

“A lot of women wear bathing suits that cover less,” she pointed out.

He finished with Henry’s diaper and turned back to face her. “Not in Montana in December.”

“I’m just saying—it’s not a big deal.”

“It is to a man who hasn’t seen an even partially naked female body in almost fifteen months.”

Fifteen months?

He nodded, obviously having read the confusion on her face. “Yeah, the minute Paula found out she was carrying triplets, she shut me out of the bedroom.”

Fallon didn’t know how to respond to that, so she said nothing.

“So if I was staring—” He shook his head as he set Henry back in his crib so that he could perform the diaper routine with Jared, who was just waking up. “There’s no ‘if’ about it—I was staring. And I’m sorry.”

“It’s okay,” she said, and managed a small smile. “Truthfully, I’m flattered. My breasts are too small to garner much notice.”

“Your breasts aren’t too small, they’re—” He broke off again, swallowed. “Wow, this is a really inappropriate conversation.”

“Forget it,” she said again. “Please.”

“I don’t know if I can,” he admitted. “But I’ll try.”

* * *

The scent of something rich and savory teased Jamie’s nostrils and made his mouth water as he made his way back down the stairs. After setting Henry and Jared in the enclosed play yard with their sister, he headed toward the kitchen, where he could hear Fallon moving around.

“Something smells good,” he noted. And looks even better, he thought, surreptitiously glancing at her. Though she was fully dressed now, it was as if he could see right through her clothes to the creamy skin beneath, the tantalizing feminine curves, the peaked nipples pressing against white lace.

“I figured you would probably be ready for dinner by the time we got back from getting the tree,” Fallon said, “so I put a roast and vegetables in the slow cooker.”

He snapped a leash on his wayward libido and turned his attention to the pot. “We’re not eating until we get back?”

“The plan was to go out before it gets dark,” she reminded him. “And the roast won’t be ready for another hour, anyway. But to be honest, I’m not sure we should get the tree today.”

“Why not?” He had no objection to the reprieve, but he was curious as to why Fallon—who had been so eager to get the house decked out for the holidays—had suddenly changed her mind.

Was it his fault? Had his gawking at her nearly naked breasts made her uncomfortable? He mentally shook his head at the ridiculousness of the question. Of course, his gawking had made her uncomfortable. Unfortunately there was no way for him to unsee what he’d seen, even if he wanted to...and he wasn’t certain that he did.

“Well, the reason I was doing laundry today—” she glanced away, her cheeks flushing prettily “—is that Henry threw up on me earlier.”

“I’m sorry.”

“It wasn’t your fault,” she assured him.

“But I knew he was feeling off,” Jamie said, relieved that she didn’t blame him for the incident, and especially that she didn’t seem to feel uncomfortable after the laundry room encounter. “He was awake a couple of times in the night, not for any particular reason that I could tell, but he was definitely unsettled.”

“Well, he seems fine now,” she said. “But I’m not sure that being out in the cold for an extended period of time is a good idea.”

“My mom always sent us out to play in the winter so the cold could kill off our germs.”

The words were out of his mouth before he even knew what he was saying. If she realized the significance of his statement, the implication that she was as close to a mother-figure as his babies had, she didn’t show it. In fact, she didn’t react at all, except to ask, “What if it wasn’t some kind of bug?”

“What else could it be?” he asked.

“Maybe...the muffins I made,” she suggested tentatively.

Jamie shook his head. “Your baking did not make him sick.”

“How do you know?” she challenged.

“Because all of the babies had the same thing and only Henry threw up.”

“So far,” she muttered.

“Besides, I ate four of those muffins,” he pointed out. “And they were delicious.”

She still looked dubious.

“He’s fine, Fallon. If I’ve learned nothing else over the past ten months, I’ve learned that kids get sick—and preemies more often than most. There’s no way to prevent it,” he assured her.

“I’ve also learned that three babies living in close proximity usually share germs and viruses much more willingly than toys—so it’s quite possible that whatever caused Henry’s stomach upset might already have been passed on to Jared and Katie.”

She nodded in acknowledgment of that fact. “Which is another reason it might be a good idea to delay the tree-cutting.”

“That will also give me a chance to haul down the boxes of decorations from the attic,” he said. “Because I assume that, after we cut down the tree, you’re going to want to decorate it.”

“No, you’re going to decorate it,” she said, but softened the directive with a smile.

A smile that drew his attention to her mouth and made him wonder if her lips could possibly be as soft and sweet as they looked. He pushed the tempting question aside. “There you go, being all bossy again,” he said, his tone deliberately light.

“But I might be persuaded to help,” Fallon relented.

He lifted the lid on the pot and peered at the roast beef and vegetables in an effort to avoid focusing on her and the new and unexpected hunger that was churning inside him. “Are you sure it’s going to be another hour before it’s ready?”

She took the lid from his hand and set it firmly back on top of the stoneware. “Longer if you keep letting all the heat out,” she warned.

Except he suspected that her proximity was generating even more heat than the cooking pot. He took a deliberate step away. “Sorry—but I worked through lunch, and dinner smells so good.”

She plucked a muffin out of the container on the table and tossed it to him.

He immediately took a bite out of the top, because he was hungry and wanted to reassure her that he had no concerns about the treats she’d baked, but also because focusing on the muffin would help him resist the urge to reach for her. “These are really delicious.”

“See? I’m not as inept in the kitchen as people like to believe.”

“Hmm.”

She narrowed her gaze. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

“Well...that was a pretty awful cake that you took to the potluck.” He couldn’t resist teasing her a little.

She huffed out a breath and shook her head. “One mistake. One. And no one will let me live it down.”

“On the other hand, the roast in that Crock-Pot smells really good.”

“Crock-Pot cooking is easy,” she admitted. “You just toss in the meat and veggies, add some liquid and seasoning, and it pretty much cooks itself.”

“Still, I appreciate the effort,” he said.

“If that’s a ‘thank you,’ then you’re welcome,” she said, lifting her coat off the hook by the door.

“Where are you going?” he asked.

“Home.”

He should let her go. He needed some time to catch his breath and think about the sudden and unexpected awareness between them—and he couldn’t do that while her presence was wreaking havoc on his hormones. But instead of nodding and advising her to ‘drive safely,’ when he opened his mouth, the only word that came out was, “Stay.”

Chapter Four

Fallon raised a brow. “Now who’s being bossy?”

But she didn’t protest when Jamie took the coat from her hand and returned it to the hook. “You went to the effort of making dinner, you should stay and eat it with us.”

“I thought you might appreciate some peace and quiet after a busy day,” she said.

“Yeah, me and the triplets—a definite recipe for peace and quiet,” he remarked dryly.

Still she hesitated.

“If you don’t have other plans, I would enjoy some adult company.”

“Bella won’t be home for dinner?”

“Not likely,” he told her. “She and Hudson are pretty much inseparable these days.”

“I guess that makes sense, considering that they’re head over heels in love and planning to get married.”

His only response was to snag another muffin.

“I thought a dozen of those would last more than a day,” she noted, heading back to the living room where the kids were playing.

“I worked up an appetite today,” he told her.

She lowered herself to the floor, near the play yard, using the sofa as a backrest. “Did you get the north fence repaired?”

He nodded as he sat down beside her, stretching his legs out in front of him.

She picked up a block that Henry tossed over the enclosure and dropped it back inside for him. “How’s Daisy?”

“She seems to be doing okay, if maybe a little restless.” He polished off the second muffin as his firstborn continued to play “catch” with Fallon. “How was your day—aside from being vomited on?”

As he’d expected, her cheeks immediately filled with color. “Aside from that, it was good,” she said. “Bella asked me to be her maid of honor.”

“I thought she would,” Jamie said. “You’re not just her best friend, you’re like a sister to her. To both of us.” It was an effort to keep his tone casual, to not reveal any of the inner turmoil he was feeling.

Because while Fallon was like a sister to Bella, she could never take the place of the actual sisters that she’d lost touch with eleven years earlier. And while he wanted to believe she was like a sister to him, their relationship wasn’t quite that simple. Especially since he’d seen her half-naked in the laundry room. While he was still trying to get a handle on the feelings churning inside him, he was certain of one thing: those feelings weren’t the least bit brotherly.

But maybe he hadn’t been as successful at hiding his thoughts as he’d hoped, or maybe Fallon just knew him too well, because she touched his arm. It was simply a gesture of support, but the sight of her hand on his arm made him crave her touch on other parts of his body. He wanted those fingers gliding over his skin, her nails biting into his flesh as he—

Whoa! Not going there. Not with Fallon. No way.

“It’s not easy for her, either,” she said gently, drawing his attention back to the issue of his sister’s wedding. “As excited as Bella is about starting a life with the man she loves, she’s going to be thinking of all the people who won’t be there on her wedding day.”

He nodded. “I’m going to walk her down the aisle, but I’m not giving her away. Aside from it being an archaic tradition, it just doesn’t feel right, so we’re going to ask the minister to skip that part.”

“She’d probably be happy to skip all of the parts that come before ‘I now pronounce you husband and wife,’” Fallon said, in what he recognized as a deliberate attempt to lighten the mood.

“Because she knows I wouldn’t approve of her moving in with Hudson until he’s put the second ring on her finger.”

“And you know she wouldn’t just abandon you and the babies,” she pointed out.

He nodded. “She’s already put her life on hold long enough to help us out. And while I sometimes think I should have insisted that she stay at school to get her diploma, there’s no way I would have managed this past year without her.”

“She’ll go back and finish,” Fallon assured him.

“Even if she doesn’t, she’s got Hudson to take care of her now.”

Fallon shook her head despairingly. “It’s not his responsibility to take care of her,” she chided. “When a man and a woman decide to join their lives together, they take care of each other.”

She was right, of course. If he let himself think about his parents—which he rarely did—he knew that they’d enjoyed a mutually loving and supportive relationship. But his own experience with marriage had been very different.