A Daddy For Her Triplets. Deb Kastner

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Chapter One

      “Olivia Barlow, as I live and breathe. Finally! There you are. I’ve been looking all over for you. I was beginning to think you weren’t going to show up tonight at all. Then what would I have done?” Elderly Miss Betty Leland had clearly been watching for Olivia, because the sprightly old woman made a beeline for her the moment she herded her triplet six-year-old boys into the league’s brightly decorated red-and-pink-crepe-papered banquet hall.

      A cold finger of premonition skittered up Olivia’s spine. Miss Betty was clearly up to something. Olivia could see it in the pale blue sparkle of the aged woman’s eyes. Nothing good could possibly come out of that kind of mischief, however friendly and well-intentioned.

      Olivia forced a laugh she didn’t feel and returned the elderly woman’s smile. It wasn’t Miss Betty’s fault Olivia wasn’t in the mood for a party, especially Little Horn’s Lone Star Cowboy League’s Valentine Roundup.

      Valentine’s Day anything was more than widowed Olivia wanted to deal with. She felt out of place here among seeking singles, newly engaged couples and newlyweds. It seemed as if everyone was in love except her—not that she wanted to be. She had her plate full to overflowing already.

      The local band was warming up its fiddles, playing a lively Texas two-step for eager dancers. Various couples and hopeful single men and women were flooding into the Grange hall. There were also quite a few teenagers. The boys were roughhousing and trying to look cool for the groups of giggling girls watching them, but Olivia knew they hoped to pair up before the night was over.

      She spotted Carson Thorn and Ruby Donovan, a newly engaged couple who were laughing together as they helped serve the punch. Engaged couple Finn Brannigan and Amelia Klondike were already testing out the dance floor. In a far corner away from the noisy speakers, Grady Stillwater stood with his grandma Mamie and his fiancée, Chloe Miner. Chloe was bouncing Grady’s seven-month-old nephew, Cody, on her shoulder in time to the music.

      Tyler Grainger, the local pediatrician, had recently married pretty Eva Brooks, and Olivia had heard they’d already started the process to adopt a baby.

      Yep. Pretty much everyone but her—not that she minded. Much. Of course she didn’t begrudge anyone their romantic happily-ever-after. She just didn’t want to have to watch it. Not right now when her heart was still so tender after the loss of her own husband, Luke.

      At least the planning committee had nixed the usual romantic mixing and matchmaking this year, what with all the problems the locals were having with recent thefts in the area. People were looking over their shoulders at every turn, afraid that what had happened to other ranches would happen to them.

      It didn’t make for a festive atmosphere, but the Lone Star Cowboy League had decided to go through with the dance nonetheless, perhaps to take folks’ minds off their worries for a bit.

      “If I’m being honest, I almost didn’t come tonight,” Olivia admitted, bending her head to speak into Miss Betty’s ear. The woman was mostly deaf even without the loud din of music around her, although she’d never admit as much if you asked her. She just pretended she knew what a person was saying and then continued speaking to state her own fill of words.

      Olivia brushed her dark brown curls behind her ear and gestured to her identical, towheaded sons, Noah, Levi and Caleb. “I probably would have passed on it, except the boys wouldn’t let me off the hook. Apparently at school today they put a lot of effort into making Valentine’s Day cards. They insisted they had to come to the dance in order to post them up on the Sweetheart Wall where their friends can see them. I just couldn’t find it in my heart to say no to them.”

      The wall in question was already papered with hearts of all shapes, colors and sizes. In addition to hanging the schoolchildren’s artwork, it was a town tradition for the adults in the crowd to publicly post their romantic notions and even the occasional marriage proposal. Over the years more than one engagement had come out of it.

      Olivia was not in a place in her life where she was searching for romance, and she doubted she ever would be, between single-handedly raising her triplets and struggling to keep her small quarter horse farm afloat. Three boys and Barlow Acres was more than enough to fill her days. She fell into a dead sleep most nights, although occasionally rest would elude her and a spot of loneliness would creep in.

      “I think it’s some kind of competition between them and their classmates as to who made the most elaborate valentine,” she continued. “Or at least a competition between the three of them. You know boys. The triplets like to make a contest out of everything.”

      Honestly, she found the whole thing to be more than a little ridiculous. What six-year-old boy wanted anything to do with a holiday steeped in romance and kissing? Her sons didn’t even like girls yet, and wouldn’t for a good long while. Several years at least.

      She hoped.

      “Well, good for them,” Miss Betty replied, nodding so vigorously that her short gray curls bobbed in response. “I’m glad they pushed you off your farm and into the community for the dance. It’s good for you to get out from time to time and mingle a little bit. It will do you a wealth of good. Mark my words.”

      She started to deny Miss Betty’s statement but then realized that what the older woman was saying was spot-on. Olivia hadn’t meant for that to happen, nor had she even been aware of her actions—or lack thereof. But she had to admit she’d been somewhat of a recluse lately. She hadn’t been in the mood to participate in town activities nearly as much as she had before, but since her husband passed two years earlier, social activities just didn’t seem the same.

      Frankly, despite Miss Betty’s kind words, Olivia wasn’t sure it would do her any good to be at the party tonight. As stressed as she was about the farm, she was bound to be a downer in even the most mundane of conversations. It wouldn’t lift her spirits, and in her current mood she wouldn’t be much good to her friends.

      There was a time in her past when she used to be social and upbeat, but at the moment it was all she could do not to break down in tears. The mortgage was due on the house, several of her mares were due to foal in the spring and she had no idea how she was going to come up with enough money to keep her dwindling herd in hay and oats until the horse market opened in early summer.

      “Which reminds me,” Miss Betty continued, either not recognizing Olivia’s hesitation or refusing to acknowledge it. She reached into the oversize, glossy red purse dangling from the crook of her elbow and withdrew a small stack of folded pink and red heart-shaped notes. “Pink for the ladies, red for the gentlemen,” she explained as she shuffled through them. As if that would mean something to Olivia—which it didn’t. “Oh, here we go. Olivia Barlow.”

      Olivia automatically accepted the missive Miss Betty thrust at her. “Thank you. I—”

      She stared down at the garish, fluorescent-pink, heart-shaped paper and her sentence abruptly stalled. Her name had been carefully stenciled onto the heart, but that wasn’t what caught her eye. It was the name written beneath her own that kicked her adrenaline into overdrive.

      Olivia СКАЧАТЬ