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He couldn’t say what made him linger on the porch. Maybe it was because he’d come so far and was so disappointed to find his search turning up a dead end again. Another baby’s cries joined the first, sending up a wail of epic proportions between them, which made the woman anxiously begin to back away.
“Excuse me,” she said, “good luck finding whomever you’re looking for.”
She closed the door. Xav hesitated, then leaned his ear against the wood. He heard soft voices inside comforting the babies, and then unbelievably, he heard a voice he’d know any day, any night, whether he was awake, asleep or even in a coma.
“Sweet baby, don’t fuss. My little prince,” he heard Ash say, and in a flash, he slid over to the enormous glass window framing the Christmas tree so he could peer cautiously inside the house.
Behind the large, ruffle-branched Christmas tree, four white bassinets lay together in a room decorated for the holidays amid beautifully wrapped gifts. He held his breath, watching Ash comfort a tiny infant boy. Ash’s shock of pale hair had grown into a waterfall of silver liquid she wore in a ponytail. Xav grew warm all over despite the cold, and Cupid’s arrow shot right into his heart, the same way it had every time he’d ever gotten within two miles of her.
He was head over heels in love with her, and nine long months apart had done nothing to diminish those emotions. The ring in his pocket practically burned, reminding him how long he’d waited to ask her to marry him.
She put the baby down and picked up another, a sweet, pink-pajamaed little girl, and Xav’s heart felt like it splatted on the ground. She acted as if these were her children, so loving and gentle was she as she held them. Xav was poleaxed with new thoughts of making Ash a mother. Motherhood and Ash weren’t a combination he’d ever really put together in his head, but watching her with these children made him realize his original proposal wasn’t the one he wanted to offer her.
He didn’t want to fall back on a business arrangement to save his ego.
No, he was going all in. He was going to tell her the truth about the shot she’d allegedly fired at Wolf, because clearly that was why she was hiding out here, helping the older lady babysit her family’s babies. Or maybe she ran a babysitting service. It didn’t matter. The point was, Ash was in hiding and he was going to tell her the truth: she was not the hunted one. She was not destined to bring destruction to Rancho Diablo and her family.
And then he was going to ask her to be his wife. His real true wife, to have and to hold, in sickness and health, in good times and better times, forever.
Xav hadn’t realized he’d moved away from the protection of the twinkling Christmas tree in order to spy better, but Ash’s suddenly astonished eyes jolted him out of his reverie. She stared at him over the pink blanket-wrapped baby, her lips parted with shock to see him standing among the evergreen bushes at the window. And then, to his complete dismay, Ash snapped the curtains closed.
A screeching siren split the air. Someone had hit some kind of panic button inside the house, which meant police would be on the way. He was certain Ash had recognized him, but just to be certain she didn’t think he was an intruder, he leaped up on the porch and pushed the door open.
“Hi, beautiful,” Xav said, and she looked at him, completely speechless, and suddenly pain crashed through him. The last thing Xav remembered thinking was how lucky it was that he’d finally located the most footloose Callahan of them all.
He’d succeeded on Fiona’s mission.
Callahan bonus points for sure.
* * *
“WHAT DO WE DO WITH HIM?” Mallory McGrath asked, and Ash tried to force her flabbergasted mind to think rationally. It wasn’t easy, and not just because Mallory had set off the panic button on the security system, which was wailing like mad. She crossed to the system pad and shut the silly thing off before staring down at the lean cowboy sprawled on the floor. How many hours had she spent thinking about Xav Phillips over the past few months, especially during her pregnancy? How many times had she wanted to call him to come to her, yet knowing she couldn’t place him in that kind of danger? Anyone from Rancho Diablo who had any contact with her would be in jeopardy—the Callahans had learned that the hard way, time and again, over the many years they’d battled Uncle Wolf and the cartel. It was no game they were playing, but a full-fledged fight for survival.
Sometimes it felt as though they were losing. It almost always seemed as if they might not ever defeat an enemy that was determined to destroy the ranch and the Callahan legacy. Good didn’t always conquer evil.
Ash knelt down to move Xav’s long, ebony hair out of his face. “Poor Xav. I could have told you that you should stay away from me.” The tree twinkled, sending soft colorful light against his drawn skin. “What am I going to do with you now?” she asked him, though she knew she wouldn’t get an answer.
She was startled when he opened his eyes. “Marry me,” Xav said. “You can marry me, damn it, and tell the woman with the wrought-iron Santa Claus she whaled upside my noggin that I come in peace.”
“Xav!” She wanted to kiss him so badly, yet didn’t dare. Of course his marriage proposal wasn’t sincere; clearly a concussion rendered him temporarily senseless. “Can you sit up? Mallory, will you get him a glass of water?”
“Who is he?” Mallory asked, reluctantly setting down her festive weapon.
“Just a family friend,” Ash said, her gaze on Xav as his eyes locked on hers.
“Friend my ass,” Xav growled. “Do you have any idea how hard it was to find you? Do friends search every nook and cranny of Texas and parts in between to find each other?”
“Definitely a concussion,” Ash said, frowning at the big handsome man, all long body and sinewy muscles. “I’ve never heard him talk like that.”
“Hello, I’m right here,” Xav said crustily, trying to rise.
Ash pushed him back to the floor. “Take a minute to gather your wits, cowboy.”
“My wits have never been so gathered.” He sat up and glared at her, then stared at his brown cowboy hat mournfully. “She killed it.”
Mallory had the nerve to giggle, and Xav looked even more disgusted, as if he thought it rude that someone laughed at crushing his cowboy hat with a Santa Claus doorstop before they’d been introduced.
“It’ll be all right.” Ash took the hat from him, put it on a chair, inspected his head. “I do believe that hat saved your thick skull. There’s not a scratch on you.”
“Well, thanks for that.” He stood, and Ash steered him toward one of Mallory’s soft, old-fashioned Victorian sofas. Before she could get him past the babies and onto the sofa, Xav stopped, staring down into the bassinettes, transfixed by the tiny infants inside. The four babies slept peacefully, undisturbed by the strong, determined male visitor in their midst.
“Hmm,” Xav said, “pretty cute little stinkweeds.”
For all the times she’d envisioned introducing the babies to their father, never had she imagined he’d call his adorable offspring stinkweeds. Ash stiffened, her bubble bursting, and Mallory laughed and excused herself, saying she was going to go hunt up some tea and cinnamon cake.
“Stinkweeds?” Ash demanded. “Is that the best you can do?”
Xav hunkered down on the sofa, rubbed his head. “I think at the moment, yes. In a minute, when the headache passes, I can probably be more creative.” He looked at her. “You didn’t introduce me to your friend, but I assume these babies are her grandkids?”
He must have noted her astonished expression because he quickly said, “Or are you running a babysitting service?”
Great. He might seem fine after a crack on the head, but the truth was going to blow his mind.
On the other hand, maybe it was best if Xav didn’t know he was a father. She could convince him to go on his merry way and never look back.
No. That didn’t sound right, either. He’d tracked her down, he was here. These were his children. There was no going back.
“Actually, Xav,” she said, “these aren’t Mallory’s babies.”
“Ah, well. It’s not important.” He reached into a bassinet and touched one baby gently. “If I’d drawn them in a poker game, I’d say they were a perfect four of a kind.”
Her heart melted just a bit, dislodged from its frozen perch. “Really? You think they’re perfect?”
“Sure. I’ve seen tons of rugrats around Rancho Diablo. These are cute. Look a bit like tiny elves with scrunched red faces.” He stood, picked his hat up off the sofa where Mallory had put it, stared at the damaged crown with a raised brow. “But I didn’t come here to admire someone’s kids, Ash.” He looked into her eyes, and her heart responded with a dangerous flutter. “I’ve come to take you home for the holidays.”
Chapter Two
“That’s not possible, Xav,” Ash told him, her gaze sincere.
He hated it when someone told him something wasn’t possible. It reminded him of his father, Gil Phillips, of Gil Phillips, Inc., who’d run the business and the Hell’s Colony compound with an iron fist. Gil had never let anybody tell him something was impossible, and the only person on earth who’d ever been able to talk Gil off his high horse was their mother. In business, Gil wouldn’t have tolerated an employee who thought anything was impossible.
Xav was pretty certain he’d developed his father’s stubbornness, especially where Ash was concerned. He drank her in, wished he could sneak a kiss.
And a lot more.
“Everything’s possible, little darling. You wouldn’t deny your aunt Fiona the pleasure of having all her nephews and her niece home at Christmas, would you?”
“It’s not possible,” Ash said again with a shake of that platinum hair he loved so much, the ponytail swinging with her negative vibe.
Wasn’t she just too cute? She had no idea that he was a man who didn’t believe in impossible.
“I’ll give you five minutes to pack up,” he said, his tone kind and convincing, the tone he’d used many times in his father’s boardroom—before Xav had gone to live the Callahan way.
Life as a corporate suit was very far in his past. He had a few rougher edges now.
“Five minutes to pack,” he reiterated, “and if you’re not standing by my truck ready to hit the road, I’m tossing you over my shoulder and carrying you out of here, caveman-style. And don’t think I won’t do it, beautiful. I’m not going to be the man who disappoints Fiona at Christmas, not when she sent me on this quest to bring you home. It’s her heart’s desire.” He smiled at Ash. “It’s an assignment I have no intention of failing.”
“Well, you’ll have to.” Ash turned away from him. “I can’t go back.”
How well he knew this woman—he could practically read her mind. He knew the curve of her neck, and the way she crossed her arms denoting Callahan intractability. Xav walked up behind her, put his arms around her, comforting and close—but not too close.
Not as close as he wanted to be—not nearly close enough.
“I know you’re afraid,” he murmured, and Ash went straight as a board in his arms. “Bad word choice,” he backtracked. “I know you think you killed Wolf, Ash. You didn’t.”
She turned to face him. “I tried to kill him. If I didn’t, it doesn’t matter. I meant to. I’d shoot him again the first chance I got.”
He wanted to kiss her so badly. Maybe she sensed it, because she stepped out of his arms, away from him. Put three feet between them.
“I can never go home,” Ash said. “I’m staying here.” She looked at the sleeping babies with a sweet smile, then looked up at him. “How are my brothers? And Aunt Fiona? Uncle Burke? Grandfather Running Bear?”
He’d made love to this woman so many times that he practically knew her every thought, and right now, he knew she was avoiding his mission, dismissing it, as Ash dismissed everything that didn’t square with her worldview. Ash had always been fiercely independent, despite her six doting older brothers, and in a strange way, they depended on their sister more than she depended upon them.
Ash was the spirit of the Callahan clan.
She had to learn that she didn’t have to carry the weight of the world on her delicate shoulders forever.
And anyway, a man was only as good as his promises.
He picked her up, tossed her over one shoulder and marched her to the front door.
“Put me down!”
He spanked her bottom once lightly with a satisfying smack! against her jeans, drawing another outraged protest. She pinched him smartly under his arm, hard enough to force a grunt from him.
“Put me down!” she commanded again, as if he would have listened when he finally had her in his arms.
Two squad cars pulled in front of the house, and the next thing he knew, a couple of Wild’s finest were yelling at him to put the little lady down.
“I forgot to call and tell the sheriff it was a false alarm,” Ash said, apologetic, as he set her gently on the ground. She was breathless and a bit tousled from being upside down. “You’d better go.”
“I’m not going anywhere until you agree to go with me.” He could be just as stubborn as she. “Go tell the sheriff and his friends that their services aren’t needed.”
“It would be better if you go.”
She gazed up at him, and he caught a funny bit of desperation from her. “Nope,” he said, still wearing stubborn like a badge.
“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—”
