Double Duty For The Cowboy. Brenda Harlen

able to handle.” Her sister filled the electric kettle with water and plugged it in. “Where do you keep your mugs?”

      “The cupboard beside the sink. Tea’s on the shelf above the mugs.”

      Brie opened the cupboard and read the labels. “Spicy chai, pure peppermint, decaffeinated Earl Grey, honey lemon, country peach, blueberry burst, cranberry and orange, vanilla almond, apple and pear, and soothing chamomile.” She glanced at her sister. “That’s a lot of tea.”

      “I was a coffee addict,” Regan confided. “The contents of that cupboard reflect my desperate effort to find something to take its place.”

      “Anything come close?” her sister wondered.

      She shook her head. “But I’m thinking the vanilla almond would probably go well with the cookies.”

      “That works for me,” Brie said, setting the box and two mugs on the counter.

      Connor walked into the kitchen then, a baby monitor in hand. “Baxter missed his morning w-a-l-k so I’m going to take him out now, if you don’t mind.”

      “Of course not,” Regan assured him. “But why are you spelling?”

      “Because you know how crazy he gets when I say the word.”

      Regan did know. In fact, Connor didn’t even have to say the word; he only had to reach for the leash that hung on a hook by the door and Baxter went nuts—spinning in circles and yipping his excitement. But today the dog was nowhere to be found.

      Brielle took a couple of steps back and peered up the staircase her brother-in-law had descended. “Is that first door the babies’ room?”

      “It’s the master bedroom,” Connor said, following her gaze. “But we’ve got the babies’ bassinets set up in there for now.”

      “He’s stretched out on the floor in front of the door,” Brie said to Regan, so that her sister didn’t have to get up to see what everyone else was seeing.

      “And you were worried that he might be jealous of the babies,” Regan remarked to her husband.

      “He was abandoned when I found him,” Connor explained. “So I had no idea if he’d ever been around kids or how he’d behaved with them if he had.”

      “What kind of dog is he?” Brie asked.

      “A mutt,” Connor said.

      “A puggle,” Regan clarified. “Though Connor refuses to acknowledge he has a designer dog.”

      “He has no papers, which makes him a mutt,” her husband insisted.

      “A puggle is part pug, part...beagle?” Brie guessed.

      Her sister nodded.

      “That might explain why he’s already so protective of the babies,” Brie said. “Beagles are pack animals, and Piper and Poppy are now part of his pack.”

      “Say that five times fast,” Regan teased. “And since when do you know so much about dogs?”

      “I don’t,” her sister said. “But for a few months last year, I dated a vet who had a beagle. And a dachshund and a Great Dane.”

      “That’s an eclectic assortment,” Connor noted.

      “He had three cats, too.”

      “Wait a minute,” Regan said. “I’m still stuck on the fact that you dated this guy for a few months and I never heard anything about him until right now.”

      “Because there was nothing to tell,” her sister said.

      “Baxter,” Connor called, obviously preferring to walk rather than hear about his sister-in-law’s dating exploits.

      The dog obediently trotted down the stairs, though he hesitated at the bottom. His tail wagged when Connor held up the leash, but he turned his head to glance back at where the babies were sleeping.

      “Piper and Poppy will be fine,” Connor promised. “Their mommy and Auntie Brie will be here if they need anything while we’re out.”

      Of course, the dog probably didn’t understand what his master was saying, but he seemed reassured enough to let Connor hook the leash onto his collar.

      “I won’t be too long,” Connor said, then reached across the counter to flip the switch on the kettle.

      Brie looked at her sister. “How long were you going to let me wait for the water to boil before telling me that there was a switch?”

      “Only a little while longer.”

      Connor chuckled as he led Baxter to the door.

      “So tell me when and how you met the hunky deputy,” Brie said, as she poured the finally boiling water into the mugs.

      “I’ve known Connor since high school. He was a year ahead of me, but we were in the same math class because I accelerated through some of my courses.”

      “I remember now,” Brie said. “He was a scrawny guy with a surly attitude who you tutored in calculus.”

      She was grateful her sister didn’t refer to him as the bastard kid of “Faithless Faith”—a cruel nickname that had followed Connor’s mother to her grave. Regan had never met Faith Neal—later Faith Parrish—but she knew of her reputation.

      In her later years, Faith had been a hardworking single mom devoted to her two sons, but people still remembered her as a wild teenager who’d snuck out after curfew, hung with a bad crowd and smoked cigarettes and more.

      Some people believed she was desperately looking for the love she’d never known at home. Others were less charitable in their assessment and made her the punchline to a joke. If a man suffered any kind of setback, such as the loss of a job or the breakup of a relationship, others would encourage him to “Have Faith.” That advice was usually followed by raucous laughter and the rejoinder: “Everyone else in town has had her.”

      “He sure did fill out nicely,” Brie remarked now. “Was it those broad shoulders that caught your eye? Or the sexy dent in his square chin? Because I’m guessing it wasn’t his kitchen decor.”

      Regan reached into the bakery box for a cookie. “This room is an eyesore, isn’t it?”

      “Or are white melamine cupboards with red plastic handles retro-chic?”

      “Connor’s saving up to renovate.”

      “Saving up?” Brie echoed, sounding amused. “I guess that means he didn’t marry you for your money.”

      “He married me because I was pregnant,” Regan told her. Because when a bride gave birth six months after the ring was put on her finger, what was the point in pretending otherwise?

      “Well, if you had to get knocked up, at least it was by a guy who was willing to do the right thing.”

      “Hmm,” Regan murmured in apparent agreement.

      Brie broke off a piece of cookie. “I would have come home for your wedding, if you’d asked.”

      “We eloped in Reno,” Regan told her.

      “Doesn’t that count as a wedding?”

      She shook her head. “Weddings take time to plan, and I didn’t want to be waddling down the aisle.”

      “I’m sure you didn’t waddle,” her sister said loyally.

      “I showed you my belly when we Facetimed, so you know I was huge. I was waddling before the end of my fifth month.”

      “Well, you were carrying two babies,” Brie acknowledged. She chewed on another bite of cookie before she asked, “What did the folks think about your elopement?”

      “They were surprisingly supportive. Or maybe