The Cowboy's Big Family Tree. Meg Maxwell

Logan!” Henry, the older twin by one minute, twelve seconds, called out, knocking Logan from his thoughts. The little boy raced across the barn and flung himself into a pile of hay.

      Next to the small evergreen set up in a corner near the door, Harry was twirling himself in red tinsel meant for the tree, then followed his brother in a running leap for the haystack.

      Logan closed his eyes for a moment—never a good idea with three-year-olds running amok—and put down the box of ornaments he’d found in the attic. They’re yours, he assured himself again, opening his eyes to see the boys pulling hay out of their thick blond hair. A whole bunch of legal paperwork said so. When Logan’s brother, Seth, and his wife, Mandy, died in a private plane crash last spring, Logan had been named legal guardian of his nephews. Mandy had no family and all Seth had was a wild older brother who lived and breathed for the rodeo circuit.

      But when Logan had gotten the news about Seth’s death nine months ago, he’d quit the rodeo, quit the road, quit it all, and had come home to Blue Gulch. He’d picked up where Seth had left off, on the ranch his brother had fought so hard to hang on to. Logan had put a good chunk of his considerable savings into the place over the last nine months and he was proud of the strong, healthy herd, the new barn and the new roof on the farmhouse. The Grainger Ranch was the boys’ legacy and Logan would not only keep it going, but build it into something grand for them. In the meantime, though, he’d ensure the twins a good Christmas—their first without their parents. Today was the last day of November, the day he’d promised Harry and Henry they could finally decorate the barn tree for the horses.

      “Uncle Logan, can I put a snowflake on Lulu’s door?” Harry asked, pulling a tattered, folded origami snowflake that he’d made in preschool that morning from his pocket. He pointed at the mare’s stall.

      “Sure can,” Logan said.

      Henry raced over, his little body covered in hay. He pulled out his own tattered snowflake and Logan helped them tape them up on the low wall of the stall.

      “Do the horses know Christmas is coming?” Harry asked, his big pale brown eyes so like his father’s.

      Logan scooped up one boy in each arm, balancing each against a hip. “Do you think so?”

      “Yes,” Harry said.

      “Me too,” Henry added, those same big brown eyes full of surety.

      Logan smiled. “I think so too. Let’s go into the house and have that ice cream I promised you,” he added, giving each a kiss and setting them down. “We’ll finish decorating the barn tree tomorrow.”

      “Can Clementine come help?” Henry asked.

      “I miss her,” Harry said.

      Clementine Hurley’s pretty face flashed into his mind, her long, silky dark hair always caught in a ponytail, her big hazel eyes with all those lashes, the way she filled out a white T-shirt and jeans.

      He let her image linger for a second, then forced it away.

      “No, guys,” he said gently, knowing how much they liked their former babysitter.

      He’d never forget the last time she sat for the boys, back in August. He’d come into the house, done for the day, looking forward to seeing the twins and her, but the boys had fallen asleep on the couch as she’d read them a story so she’d been waiting for him to come in to bring them up to bed. He did, tucking them in, regretful that he hadn’t been able to say good-night. When he came back down, all Clementine had done was ask him how things had gone with the calf he’d been keeping an eye on, and all of a sudden he kissed her. Just tilted up her chin with his hand and leaned forward and kissed her. She’d kissed him back too. Hard.

      He’d stepped back, unsure if he wanted to start something with Clementine after the debacle he’d been through on the rodeo circuit with Bethany, aka The Liar. Bethany Appleton had cost him his trust in himself, his reputation and his livelihood, though for a month he’d been a hot ticket, folks coming out in droves to see the Handcuff Cowboy in the ring. That bullcrud aside, the night he’d kissed Clementine, he’d only had the twins for a few months and wanted to focus on them and getting the ranch in order, not on romance.

      She’d seemed to sense his unease and had said, “Oh, I ran into the mailman outside and he gave me your mail.” She’d scooped up the pile from the coffee table.

      He wanted to stall so he’d glanced at the stack of mail, all bills he’d take care of. But one was from a name he didn’t recognize, a Tuckerville, Texas, return address.

      “I should open this,” he’d said, needing a minute to think about the kiss. Did he really want to start down this road again? Pre-Bethany, he’d been open to love and marriage and all that warm and fuzzy stuff he observed from a distance at holidays and birthday celebrations with his brother’s family. Post-Bethany, he was cynical and wary about what ugliness might be hidden inside pretty packages. With Clementine eyeing him, he’d pretended great interest in opening the letter, fully expecting it to be nothing, junk mail even.

      But it was from Clyde T. Parsons with a damned bombshell.

      The color must have drained from his face and his expression must have been grim because Clementine had rushed over to him and asked if everything was okay.

      “No,” he’d said. “It’s not. I need you to go.”

      He was surprised, to this day, that her expression had registered. Hurt. Confusion. But it had. He’d just been too shocked to try to fix it, soften it. She’d nodded, then went to the door and looked back at him, his gaze on the letter, reading it again and a third time. He felt her eyes on him, but he hadn’t looked up; he’d just turned away and she’d left, the door clicking shut behind her.

      And then all thought of Clementine Hurley, of anything, went out of his mind.

      His entire life had been a lie. He wasn’t a Grainger. He wasn’t his father’s son. People he’d loved had lied to him.

      And a stranger, a man claiming to be his biological father, had told him the damned truth.

      If it was the truth, Logan thought now, holding out a hand to each nephew. But why would the man lie? Deathbed confessions didn’t work that way. People told the truth to settle stuff inside them, to make things right, to go in peace, to get into heaven.

      As each little nephew slipped a tiny, trusting hand into his, Logan felt that same burn in his gut. Who the hell am I?

      And was he going to ignore the letter as he’d done the past three months? Not follow up? Not confirm whether it was true? He thought about the little gold key that had been in the envelope and the next to last paragraph of Parsons’s letter.

      I’ve never had much money, but every week since you were born until you turned eighteen I put money away for you, child support, I suppose, in a PO box at the post office in Tuckerville where I live. Eighteen years times fifty two weeks adds up, but I have no idea how much is in there. Some weeks I had five bucks to put in, some weeks fifty if there was overtime. But I never skipped a week, not once. I want you to know that.

      Logan didn’t want to know that. He didn’t want to know any of it.

      The next day, he’d told Clementine he wouldn’t be needing her to sit for him anymore. And then he’d shut her out. He’d shut out everyone, not that there were so many people in his life these days. His parents had been gone almost ten years and Logan had always been one to keep to himself.

      There had been a warm outpouring of support for him in those early months after he’d come home to raise the boys. Clementine, who he’d known only as the startlingly pretty waitress at Hurley’s Homestyle Kitchen, where he’d liked to have lunch as often as possible, had come by the house to pay her respects with a heap of food in containers with reheating instructions and enough homemade pies to last him a year. He’d ignored his attraction to Clementine and took her up on her offer to babysit whenever he needed. And there she’d been, in his house, and they’d gotten to know each other some, Logan leaving