Sweet Callahan Homecoming. Tina Leonard

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