His Valentine Triplets

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“I won’t argue with that,” his brother said gleefully. “I heard the whole thing, and you have very little understanding of how to treat a woman, bro.”

“What the hell does that mean?” Rafe snapped, his patience addled by being so near Julie and unable to possess her. “You told me to stay away from her until this whole thing blows up or over.”

“True,” he conceded, “but she didn’t wear that darling little dress to talk about cases, dummy. She came wearing that hot number hoping you’d take it off of her.” His grin was wide. “Boy, are you dumb.”

Sam continued on, and Rafe sighed before heading out to the barn.

He wasn’t dumb. He was playing it safe, and right now, that seemed like the smart thing to do.

And maybe the only thing to do.

RAFE CALLAHAN WAS AN ASS, Julie fumed as she stalked to her truck. She got inside and resisted the urge to peel out of the Rancho Diablo driveway. It would solve nothing, and it served no purpose for him to think he’d won.

That’s what this was all about. From time immemorial, women had been played by Romeos, and she was no different. The Callahans were great tricksters, fond of practical jokes and mayhem. They loved one-upping anyone who tried to outdo them.

Her father was right: Callahans were trouble. And she should have known better than to think there was anything real going on between her and Rafe.

“An ass,” she muttered. “A big, braying ass.”

Her heart jumped and fluttered as she thought about how wonderfully he kissed, and she wiped at a tear that slid down her cheek. One tear, that was all she’d spare for that tall, dark, handsome Romeo.

He wasn’t worth her time.

Unfortunately, she still had to talk to him. The problem now was telling him what she had to tell him without killing him.

This time, she wouldn’t settle for permanent marker hearts all over his face.

A branding iron would be much better, but unfortunately, she didn’t have one of those. “Oh, heck,” Julie said to herself. “This is not going to be good.”

Chapter Four

“So,” Jonas said, rattling pots and pans in the kitchen as Sam walked in. “We’re going to need to organize KP duties. I think an org chart might be necessary. We’ll divide up days of the week for cooking, cleaning—”

“Whoa,” Rafe said, “I’m not eating your cooking.”

“Excellent,” Jonas said. “You can have my days.”

“All right,” Rafe said, as Sam entered the kitchen and poked his head in the fridge. “You can do my cleanup.”

“Why can’t we just eat out?” Sam asked, his face mournful as he considered the fridge. “Frankly, I don’t think the three of us are qualified to take care of ourselves.”

It was probably true. Creed, Pete and Judah had wives and families who could take care of them. Rafe figured Jonas and Sam were pretty useless at providing for themselves, and he didn’t particularly want to be shackled with babying them. Sabrina lived upstairs at the main house, but she definitely could fend for herself. Rafe grimaced. He could take care of himself, too, but someone was going to have to take care of his boob brothers. Sam was busy with the court case and probably couldn’t subsist on hamburgers from Banger’s Bait and Tackle, not if they wanted him firing on all cylinders legally. And Jonas didn’t have the sense to come in out of the rain. Rafe sighed as he looked at his helpless brothers. “We could hire a cook.”

“For the three of us?” Jonas looked outraged. “Doesn’t that seem wasteful?”

“It seems practical,” Rafe snapped. “I make good food, but I’m not cooking for you babies.”

They both looked at him with regret in their eyes. Rafe realized that a trap had been sprung on him. “You two discussed this. You planned this pity party! You want me to do the woman’s work—”

“Don’t let a female hear you talking that way,” Sam interrupted with a glance toward the ceiling, as if he suspected Sabrina might be lurking upstairs. “You’ll get your head handed to you.”

“I don’t care.” He shot his brothers a sour look. “What a pair of wienies.”

“If you cook,” Jonas said, “I’ll do the grocery shopping.”

“And I’ll do cleanup,” Sam said. “Sort of. We’ll eat off paper plates and use paper napkins. No more niceties like cloth napkins, which Fiona used to spoil us with.” A woeful sigh escaped him.

“And what about clean sheets in the bunkhouse?” Rafe asked. “Basic hygiene? We haven’t taken care of ourselves our whole lives.”

“No time like the present,” Sam said, injecting cheer into his tone.

Rafe wasn’t buying it. “We need a housekeeper. Jonas, you’re going to have to open the purse strings.”

“I can’t,” he stated. “Remember, we said we were going to be cautious with our resources until the lawsuit gets dismissed.”

Crap, Rafe thought. “If I cook it, you eat it, no whining. And I never, ever do cleanup.” The very fact that his brothers had shanghaied him into this, when he needed to be thinking about Julie and her long, beautiful legs, teed him off greatly. “I do not have time to be Rachael Ray for you lazy bums. But I will, as long as all I ever hear from you is ‘mmm-mmm good.’”

“Deal,” Jonas and Sam both said, and Rafe stalked out of the kitchen, wondering why today was his day to have everyone lined up against him.

He poked his head back inside the kitchen. “Starting tomorrow.”

His brothers nodded eagerly.

“By the way,” Jonas said, “congratulations.”

Rafe blinked. “On what? Being a patsy?”

Jonas stared at him for a long moment. “Yeah. Sort of.”

“Great. Thanks.” Rafe left again, wondering why Jonas had looked so surprised. “Jerk,” he muttered under his breath, though he loved his older brother. The word jerk made him think about Julie calling him that, walking away from him in her pretty white dress, and he decided maybe thinking about her was just too hard.

To hell with his brothers. They were weird, anyway, even for Callahans.

He was the last normal one left on the range.

FIVE MINUTES LATER, RAFE stared at Julie’s latest handiwork in the bunkhouse. As pranks went, it was a doozy. He appreciated the size and scope of her one-upmanship. He hadn’t wanted to pay attention to her, so she clearly had decided there were better ways to get a man’s attention.

She’d put a sign on his bedroom door in the bunkhouse. It had a stork carrying a blue-swaddled bundle of joy.

His breath stung in his chest. “‘Congratulations,’” he read aloud, “‘baby Jenkins arrives in May. Julie.’”

Rafe was reeling. There’d been no warning. No clue.

Except from Jonas, but whoever paid attention to him? “My world has gone mad,” Rafe muttered, and tore the stork off his door.

He was not having a baby. This was some mad attempt by Julie to rattle him, like the time she’d doodled on his face. Only this would last longer than a week. His brothers would be in top form over this joke. Everyone knew that Callahans were supposed to marry and populate. She was adding fuel to the fire.

But the sign said May. That was pretty darn definitive, and judges were typically pretty careful with details. Rafe tried to take another gulp of air and decided he might be having a wee panic attack. He needed a shot of something stiffening, like perhaps whiskey.

He hit the bar, and didn’t bother with a glass, just let the liquor burn down his throat from the bottle. After capping it, he wiped his brow and concentrated on the pain.

“I had no other way to tell you,” Julie said, stepping out of his room. Rafe’s throat went dry as a bone, no longer moist from the alcoholic drenching. “It takes a lot to get your attention, cowboy.”

“There’s no way,” he told her. “I used a condom when we were in the field. Mind you, it wasn’t the newest, but latex lasts forever. It’s nuclear material. So you must be mistaken, Julie. Condoms are safe.”

“I don’t remember hearing the sound of foil tearing open in my office.”

This was true. “I figured you were on the pill or something by then,” he said, and Julie looked outraged.

“Excuse me if I never considered us an ongoing thing.”

He blinked. “And now?”

“Now you know.” She walked past him, obviously about to leave. “That’s all I owe you, Rafe.”

“Who else knows?” he asked, wondering if he needed to talk to Bode.

“You and whoever saw this sign.”

“Did Jonas know you were waiting in my room?” Rafe’s head was spinning. “I mean, he told me congratulations.”

She smiled. “I asked him not to.”

Great. Everyone loved pulling the wool over good ol’ Rafe’s eyes, he thought bitterly. “Well, things will have to change. You, me, everything.”

“Probably,” she said, and walked out the door.

As if he was supposed to know what to make of that. Rafe hurried after her. Julie got in her truck, gunning it, sending up plumes of driveway dust, and the little judge went off without even a glance at him.

Not even caring that she’d totally kicked his ass in a major way.

“I’m going to be a dad,” Rafe said. “More importantly, I’m also going to be a husband, whether that little judge and I ever see eye to eye on the subject or not.”

“Talk to yourself often?” Sam asked, wandering by with a smirk on his face. “Dad?”

“Only when I want to,” Rafe said, and headed off to ponder what the hell had just happened to him.

“YOU’D BEST FIND A BUNKER,” Jonas told Rafe an hour later when he found him staring up at the ceiling, his gaze fixed on the plaster as he lay on the leather sofa. “Bode’s going to tear you limb from limb when he hears the not-so-good news. Jeez, Rafe, what were you thinking?”

“I wasn’t.”

“Obviously. This throws a wrench into everything.”

“Tell me about it,” Rafe said. “Great sex goes out the window once the little woman’s got a bun in the oven. And I never got to have great sex with her.” He moaned piteously.

“Ugh,” Jonas said under his breath to Sam, who leaned over the sofa to punch his brother in the chest with a grin. “Do something with him, will you? Explain to him how neatly, with one fell swoop, he’s destroyed our court case you’ve slaved over for three years.”

“Idiot,” Sam told Rafe. “You’re supposed to be the smart one. Turns out you’re the dumbest of all.” He laughed, enjoying his brother’s plight.

“It’s not funny,” Rafe said. “Now she hates me.”

“Now we all hate you, dummy.” Jonas sank onto the sofa, staring at the fireplace. “I was hoping it wasn’t true. I was hoping you weren’t as dumb as you look. Once again, however, you prove yourself.”

Rafe waved a hand in the air. “Try being me for a change. The most beautiful woman in the world is having your baby. She doesn’t want you. Life is ugly from where I’m lying.”

“Please don’t let me ever be that pitiful,” Jonas said aloud. “If I ever get like him, Sam, you’re in charge of shooting me.”

Sam took a seat in a wingback chair. “It’s just that he’s been convinced for so long that he was so much smarter than everyone. Bulletproof, like Superman. Only now you’re Superwienie,” he told Rafe. “This is going to complicate the hell out of things, especially when Bode comes to kill you.”

“I know,” Rafe said. “I think I better go talk to him.”

“No!” Sam and Jonas exclaimed.

“Don’t set a foot on that property, Rafe.” Jonas’s tone was grim. “Don’t go see Julie. Don’t upset Bode. We’ll try to hide you as best we can, but we’re not the Secret Service. We’re not nannies, damn it.”

“Be careful,” Rafe said. “I’m the cook. Mind your manners or you’ll be eating Rice Krispies for days.”

Sam shook his head. “Look, Plato, Jonas is right. You’re going to have to lie low. If you think Bode wanted to put lead in you for picking on his little girl when we made her recuse, he’s going to send out a team of snipers to take you out once he finds out you’ve knocked up his little lambkins.”

“I think he should leave town,” Jonas said, as if Rafe wasn’t there. “He could hit the rodeo circuit. The boys’d cover for him. He could fly the plane up to Alaska and do something productive for a change.”

“Fly fishing’s productive?” Rafe asked. “I’m not going anywhere except over to Julie’s.”

“No!” Sam said. “Look, freak, you’re in big trouble, even if you’re too dumb to know it. God, all kinds of IQ and not a grain of street smarts.”