The Rancher's Christmas Promise. Allison Leigh

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СКАЧАТЬ she’d just come from a frustrating visit with a new client in jail—and Braden all had their windows closed against the oppressive heat, the same way she did.

      It was thirty miles, give or take, between Braden and Weaver, and she drove it several times every week. Sometimes more than once in a single day. She knew the highway like the back of her hand. Where the infrequent passing zones were, where the dips filled with ice in the winter and where the shoulder was treacherous. She knew that mile marker 12 had the best view into Braden and mile marker 3 was the spot you were most likely to get a speeding ticket.

      The worst, though, was grinding up and down the hills, going around the curves at a crawl because she was stuck behind a too-wide truck hogging the roadway with a too-tall load of hay.

      Impatience raged inside her and she pushed her fingers against one of the car vents, feeling the air blast against her palm. It didn’t provide much relief, because it was barely cool.

      Probably because her car was close to overheating, she realized.

      Even as she turned off the AC and rolled down the windows, a cloud billowed from beneath the front hood of her car.

      She wanted to scream.

      Instead, she coasted onto the weedy shoulder. It was barely wide enough.

      The car behind her laid on its horn as it swerved around her.

      “I hate August!” she yelled after it while her vehicle burped out steam into the already-miserable air.

       So much for getting to Maddie’s surprise baby shower early.

      Ali was never going to forgive Greer. Unlike their sister, Maddie, the soul of patience she was not. Just that morning Ali had called to remind Greer of her tasks where the shower was concerned. It had been the fifth such call in as many days.

      Marrying Grant hadn’t softened Ali’s annoying side at all.

      Greer wasn’t going to chance exiting through the driver’s side because of the traffic, so she hitched up her skirt enough to climb over the console and out the passenger-side door.

      In just the few minutes it took to get out of the car and open up the hood, Greer’s silk blouse was glued to her skin by the perspiration sliding down her spine.

      The engine had stopped spewing steam. But despite her father’s best efforts to teach the triplets the fundamentals of car care when she and her sisters were growing up, what lived beneath the hood of Greer’s car was still a mystery.

      She knew from experience there was no point in checking her cell phone for a signal. There were about four points on the thirty-mile stretch where a signal reliably reached, and this spot wasn’t one of them. If a Good Samaritan didn’t happen to stop, she knew the schedules of both the Braden Police Department and the Weaver Sheriff’s Department. Even if her disabled vehicle wasn’t reported by someone passing by, officers from one or the other agency routinely traveled the roadway even on a hot August Saturday. She didn’t expect it would be too long before she had some help.

      She popped the trunk a few inches so the heat wouldn’t build up any more than it already had and left the windows down. Then she walked along the shoulder until she reached an outcrop of rock that afforded a little shade from the sun and toed off her shoes, not even caring that she was probably ruining her silk blouse by leaning against the jagged stone.

      Sorry, Ali.

      * * *

      Ryder saw the slender figure in white before he saw the car. It almost made him do a double take, the way sailors did when they spotted a mermaid sunning herself on a rock. A second look reassured him that lack of sleep hadn’t caused him to start hallucinating.

      Not yet, anyway.

      She was on the opposite side of the road, and there was no place for him to pull his rig around to get to her. So he kept on driving until he reached his original destination—the turnoff to the Diamond-L. As soon as he did, he turned around and pulled back out onto the highway to head back to her.

      It was only a matter of fifteen minutes.

      The disabled foreign car was still sitting there, like a strange out-of-place insect among the pickup trucks rumbling by every few minutes. He parked behind it, but let his engine idle and kept the air-conditioning on. He propped his arm over the steering column and thumbed back his hat as he studied the woman.

      She’d noticed him and was picking her way through the rough weeds back toward her car.

      He’d recognized her easily enough.

      Greer Templeton. One of the identical triplets who’d turned his life upside down. Starting with the cop, Ali, who’d come to his door five months ago.

      It wasn’t entirely their fault.

      They weren’t responsible for abandoning Layla. That was his late wife.

      Now Layla was going through nannies like there was a revolving door on the nursery. Currently, the role was filled by Tina Lewis. She’d lasted two weeks but was already making dissatisfied noises.

      He blew out a breath and checked the road before pushing open his door and getting out of the truck. “Looks like you’ve got a problem.”

      “Ryder?”

      He spread his hands. “’Fraid so.” Any minute she’d ask about the baby and he wasn’t real sure what he would say.

      For nearly five months—ever since Judge Stokes had officially made Layla his responsibility—the Templeton triplets had tiptoed around him. He’d quickly learned how attached they’d become to the baby, caring for her after Daisy dumped her on a “friend’s” porch.

      Supposedly, his wife hadn’t been sleeping with that friend but Ryder still had his doubts. DNA might have ruled out Jaxon Swift as Layla’s father, but the man owned Magic Jax, the bar where Daisy had briefly worked as a cocktail waitress before they’d met. He would never understand why she hadn’t just come to him if she’d needed help. He had been her husband, for God’s sake. Not her onetime boss. Unless she’d been more involved with Jax than they all had admitted.

      As for the identity of Layla’s real father, everyone had been happy as hell to stop wondering as soon as Ryder gave proof that he and Daisy had been married.

      Didn’t mean Ryder hadn’t wondered, though.

      But doing a DNA test at this point wouldn’t change anything where he was concerned. It would prove Layla was his by blood. Or it wouldn’t.

      Either way, he believed she was his wife’s child.

      Which made Layla his responsibility. Period.

      The questions about Daisy, though? Every time he looked at Layla, they bubbled up inside him.

      For now, though, he focused on Greer.

      It was no particular hardship.

      The Templeton triplets scored pretty high in the looks department. He could tell Greer apart from her twins because she always looked a little more sophisticated. Maddie—the social worker who’d СКАЧАТЬ