The Rancher's Texas Twins. Allie Pleiter

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      “Houseguests?” Harley had reason to look surprised. There hadn’t been a houseguest at Five Rocks for years. “Who you got staying at the ranch?”

      Gabe mused at his own reluctance to own up to what he’d done. “Tiny pink things.” He’d found markers on his study desk this morning. Actually, he’d found marker drawings on his study desk blotter, too. A great big pink blob he suspected was supposed to be a heart. Or an elephant. Or a flower—it was tough to tell.

      Harley turned toward him, cupping a hand to one ear. “Come again? You got piglets up at the house?”

      Now Gabe laughed outright. “Not piglets. Little girls. Two little four-year-old girls and their mother. They’re staying with us since Roz Sackett wasn’t much for the noise and they need to stay in Haven.”

      “You took in little girls?” Harley shook his head. “That’s a first. No wonder you’re knocking on my door so early.” Harley got two cups down from his cupboard. “Ain’t nowhere for them to stay in town? Really?”

      “The Blue Bonnet’s full up with some women’s thing and we need Avery Culpepper and her girls to be present at the anniversary celebration.”

      “Culpepper? More kin of Cyrus’s, you mean?”

      Gabe remembered that Harley’s health had forced him to miss the last several Lone Star Cowboy League meetings—the old man knew nothing of the soap opera that had played out in the last few months. “His real long lost granddaughter, to be exact.”

      “I thought you said she showed up last month.”

      “Yes and no.” Gabe reached for a simple way to recount the crazy turn of events. “Turns out that Avery Culpepper wasn’t the real Avery Culpepper, but a gold digger out to grab Cyrus’s estate.”

      “No kidding? Sounds just like ol’ Cyrus to be stirring up trouble even from his grave.” He pointed a bony finger at Gabe. “So you got the real Avery—and her daughters, no less—living with you down at the big house?” Harley began to laugh but it dissolved into a hacking cough that had the old man reaching for his handkerchief and sitting for a spell. “How’s that working out?” he snickered in between wheezes.

      Gabe felt himself smile. “I’m here before you put the coffee on. What do you think?”

      Harley shook his head and dabbed his eyes. “You’re a good man, Gabe. A bit crazy from the sound of it, but a good man.” He made to rise as the coffeepot boiled, but Gabe stopped and got up himself so that Harley could sit and recover his breath. “The funeral was months ago. Why’s she here now and not then?” Harley asked.

      “Cyrus made his granddaughter’s presence one of the crazy requirements in his will. You remember—we’ve got to have her here to deed his land and house to the boys ranch. We just found her. The real her, I mean.”

      “Requirements? There’s more than that one?”

      Harley must be the only person in Haven unaware of Cyrus Culpepper’s wild scheme. Gabe must have told him about the Avery bit, but forgot to mention the other requirement of finding the ranch’s original residents. Probably because the hunt for those three old men was making him crazy lately. “Nothing you need to worry about, Harley. We got it covered.”

      “Good place, the boys ranch.” The words sputtered out between raspy hacks that left Harley reaching for his coffee. “You know that. Cyrus knew it, too. What a fool notion to play games with a good cause like that.”

      “I know. But the boys ranch will lose the best thing to happen to it in years if we don’t play along. So we’re playing along.” Gabe put his hand on Harley’s arm, disturbed to feel it tremble under his palm. “Don’t you worry about it. I’ll take care of it. You know me, I don’t ever give up.”

      Harley looked up. “Never did.”

      “And I won’t now.” Gabe checked his watch, not wanting to bother the old man any further with the weight of his problems. “I’ve got to run by the sheriff’s office and pick up some supplies at the store before I get back for lunch. I’ll get some oil for that door while I’m out. You take care of yourself and I’ll come out in a day or so to fix those hinges.”

      “Sure.” Harley looked lost in thought. The old man really was declining, and way too fast for Gabe’s liking.

      “Thanks for the coffee. See you later, Harley. I’ll see myself out.”

      “Sure.”

      Gabe pulled the squeaking door shut behind him. Harley wasn’t doing well. Another problem to add to the growing mountain of challenges around him these days.

      * * *

      Avery was sitting on the porch emailing furniture websites to a client—she’d found quite a few ways to keep business going remotely once she put her mind to it—when Gabe pulled up. He hauled a pair of large boxes out of the back of his truck. “What’s that?”

      “Those,” Gabe said with a sheepish smile on his face, “are two boxes of sanity.”

      Avery laughed as she closed her laptop. She couldn’t remember the last time she’d gotten thirty uninterrupted minutes online in the daylight hours—extra adults were indeed a blessing and the sense of accomplishment had lifted her spirits considerably. “Sanity?” She put her hands up to her cheeks in mock surprise. “If only I’d known it came in boxes.” Truly, not much in Haven had met the criteria for sanity since her arrival.

      Gabe, who laughed, must have felt the same way, for he replied, “Well, if it came in spray bottles, I can think of a few people I’d douse in a heartbeat these days.”

      Avery walked up to the boxes to see a combination of wood planks, plastic pieces and lengths of rope. Sanity, evidently, came with the label Some Assembly Required. It struck her as a fitting metaphor. “Seriously, what are these?”

      Gabe sat back on one hip. “Well, if all goes as planned, these will be swings tomorrow. Some boys from the ranch are coming over to help me put them together so Dinah and Debbie have some swings to play on while they’re here.”

      Gabe was building swings? Was this some sort of incentive to keep them beyond a short stay? Gratitude and suspicion tumbled together in Avery’s stomach—she didn’t like being indebted to anyone, much less someone like Gabe Everett. And now she’d meet the boys from the ranch. She’d met supporters and volunteers from the ranch—Haven was full of them, as if the whole town had taken up the boys ranch cause. But until now, she’d deftly avoided spending any time with the actual residents. Or on the grounds. She didn’t want to know the people whose lives would be directly affected if she didn’t stay.

      “You don’t need to put up swings for us,” she blurted out a bit more sharply than she ought to have.

      “As a matter of fact, I do. I found markers in my study, and a pink blob colored on my desk blotter. Marlene suggested that if I wanted to avoid my house being overrun with tiny pinkness, we needed some outside playthings.” He pushed the boxes up against the trunk of an expansive tree and started walking toward the house. “I’ve discovered I have a low tolerance for tiny pinkness.”

      His voice held the not-quite-disguised hint of irritation, making Avery think the “box of СКАЧАТЬ