The Triplets' Cowboy Daddy. Patricia Johns

at the bank.

      After they’d parked, Easton hopped out of his truck and angled around to her vehicle, where she was already unbuckling car seats.

      “Thanks,” Nora said as she passed him the first baby in her seat. “I don’t know how to balance three of them yet. I should probably call up Mackenzie Granger and see if she has any ideas. She’s got the twins, after all.”

      He held the front door open for her with the heel of his boot and waited while she stepped inside. The sun was lowering in the sky, illuminating the simple interior. Nora paused as she looked around.

      “It’s different than I left it.”

      “Yeah...” He wasn’t sure how apologetic he should be here. “I got rid of the old furniture. It was pretty musty.”

      Easton hadn’t put anything on the walls yet. He had a few pictures of his mother, but they didn’t belong on the wall. She’d run off when he was eight—left a letter stuck to the fridge saying she couldn’t handle it anymore, and that Easton was now his father’s problem. He’d never seen her again. Considering the only family pictures he had were a few snapshots of his mom, the walls had stayed bare.

      “Why did my dad leave this house to you?” Nora turned to face him. “I can’t figure that part out. Why would he do that?”

      Easton hadn’t been the one to hurt her, but he was the one standing in front of her, regardless, and he felt an irrational wave of guilt. He was caught up in her pain, whether he meant to be or not.

      “I don’t know...” It had been a kind gesture—more than kind—and he’d wondered ever since if there were hidden strings. “A while ago, he said that he needed someone to take care of it, put some new life into it. I’d assumed that he wanted to rent it out or something. I didn’t expect this.”

      “But this is my great-grandparents’ home,” she said. “I loved this place...”

      She had... He remembered helping the family paint the old house one year when he was a teenager, and Nora had put fresh curtains in the windows in the kitchen—she’d sewn them in home economics class. She did love this old house, but then she’d gone to college and gotten a city job, and he’d just figured she’d moved on.

      “You had your own life in the city. Maybe your dad thought—”

      “That doesn’t mean I don’t have roots here in Hope!” she shot back. “This house is mine. It should have been mine... My father should never have done this.” She had to point her anger at someone, and it was hard to tell off the dead.

      “What he should have done is debatable,” Easton said. “But he made a choice.”

      She didn’t answer him, and he didn’t expect her to. She hated this, but he couldn’t change facts, and he wasn’t about to be pushed around, either. They’d just have to try to sort out a truce over the next few days.

      “I’m making some tea,” he added. “You want some?”

      They’d been friends back in the day, but a lot had changed. Easton grew up and filled out. Nora had gone to college and moved to the city. He was now legal owner of a house she was still attached to, and an old friendship wasn’t going to be cushion enough for all of this.

      “Yes, tea would be nice.” Her tone was tight.

      “Nora.” He turned on the rattling faucet to fill up the kettle. “I don’t know what you think I did, but I never asked for this house. And I never angled for it.”

      “You didn’t turn it down, either.”

      No, he hadn’t. He could have refused the inheritance, but it had been an answer to midnight prayers, a way to step out from under his past. Mr. Carpenter’s gift had made him feel more like family and less like the messed-up kid who needed a job. Mr. Carpenter had seen him differently, but he suspected Nora still saw him the same way she always had—a skinny kid who would do pretty much anything she asked to make her happy.

      And as dumb as it was, he also saw her the same way he always had—the beautiful girl whom he wished could see past his flaws and down to his core. He was a man now—not a boy, and most certainly not a charity case. Nora was a reminder of a time he didn’t want to revisit—when he’d been in love with a girl who took what he had to offer and never once saw him as more than a buddy. It hadn’t been only her...he’d been an isolated kid looking for acceptance anywhere he could get it, and he didn’t like those memories. They were marinated in loneliness.

      That wasn’t who he was anymore. Everything had changed around here. Including him.

       Chapter Two

      Easton heard the soft beep of an alarm go off through a fog of sleep, and he blinked his eyes open, glancing at the clock beside him. It was 3 a.m., and it wasn’t his alarm. The sound filtered through the wall from the bedroom next door. He had another hour before he had to be up for chores, and he was about to roll over when he heard the sound of footsteps going down the staircase.

      Nora was up—though the babies were silent. It was strange to have her back...to have her here. She’d stayed away, made a life in the city where she had an office job of some sort. She would come back for a weekend home every now and then, but she’d spent her time with friends, cousins, aunts and uncles. Easton didn’t fit into any category—not anymore. He was an employee. He’d worked his shifts, managed the ranch hands and if he got so much as a passing wave from her, he’d be lucky.

      Now she was in his home. Her presence seemed to be a constant reminder of his status around here—employee. Even this house—legally his—felt less like his own. There was something about Nora Carpenter that put him right back into his place. For a while he’d been able to forget about his status around here, believe he could be more, but with her back—

      He wasn’t going to be able to sleep listening to the soft sounds of a woman moving around the house anyway. He swung his legs over the side of his bed, yawning. The footsteps came back up the narrow staircase again, and he rose to his feet, stretching as he did. He was in a white T-shirt and pajama bottoms, decent enough to see her. He crossed his bedroom and opened the door.

      Nora stood in the hallway, three bottles of milk in her hands, and she froze at the sight of him. Her blond hair tumbled over her shoulders, and she stood there in a pair of pajamas—a tank top and pink, pin-striped cotton shorts.

      She’s cute.

      She always had been, and no matter how distant or uninterested she got, he’d never stopped noticing.

      “Sorry,” she whispered. “I was trying to be quiet.”

      He hadn’t actually been prepared to see her like this—her milky skin glowing in the dim light from her open bedroom door, her luminous eyes fixed on him apologetically. She was stunning, just as she’d always been, but she was more womanly now—rounder, softer, more sure of herself. They should both be sleeping right now, oblivious to each other. That was safer by far.

      “The babies aren’t crying,” he pointed out.

      “I’m following the advice of the social worker who gave me the lowdown on caring for triplets. She said to feed them on a schedule. If I wait for them to wake up, we’ll have three crying babies.”

      It made sense, actually. He’d never given infant care—let alone infant care for triplets—much thought before. He should leave her to it, go back to bed...maybe go downstairs and start breakfast if he really couldn’t sleep.

      “Need a hand?” he asked.

      Where had that come from? Childcare wasn’t his domain, and frankly, neither was Nora. He’d been through this before with her—he knew how it went. She batted her eyes in his general direction, he got attached, she waltzed off once her problems were solved, and he was left behind, wrung out. Letting her stay here