The More Mavericks, The Merrier!

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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 (#u37234b83-7376-505a-b4e9-c5a9d1404a57)

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.

At first, it hadn’t been so bad. Paula had kept up the house and prepared the meals while he’d handled all of the ranch chores. And he was okay with that, because she was a city girl adjusting to life in Rust Creek Falls. But even that tentative arrangement had fallen apart after the two lines had appeared in the little window of the pregnancy test.

And when his wife had learned that she was carrying three babies, it had been the end of any cooperation or even communication between them. There had been no give-and-take with Paula after that—just a whole lot of unhappiness and anger.

Something beeped in the kitchen, and Fallon pushed herself up off the floor. “Are you still hungry?” she asked.

“Does today end with a y?” Jamie asked her.

She smiled at that. “Give me ten minutes to finish up the gravy.”

He watched her walk out of the room, his gaze focused on the sexy curve of her butt and the gentle sway of her hips. Of course, when he realized what he was doing—ogling his best friend—he was appalled. But that brief glimpse of her mostly bare torso in the laundry room had reminded him of a simple fact that he’d denied for too long: Fallon O’Reilly wasn’t a girl anymore.

Yes, she was his loyal friend and a dedicated caregiver to his babies, but she was also an attractive and appealing woman. Very attractive and incredibly appealing. And the acknowledgment of those simple facts made him a little uneasy, because he had no business thinking of her in those terms.

“Fa!” Henry demanded. “Fa-fa!”

Jamie saw that his son had made his way to the other side of the play yard and was looking toward the doorway through which Fallon had disappeared. All of his kids loved Fallon, but he’d recently begun to suspect that Henry had a little bit of a crush on his second-favorite caregiver—“Auntie Bella” being the favorite of all of them, of course, by simple virtue of the fact that she spent the most time with them.