Her Twins' Cowboy Dad. Patricia Johns

Чтение книги онлайн.

СКАЧАТЬ red hair. Colt was related to Beau through Beau’s wife’s side of the family, so his hair was a dark brown that women made a point of telling him shone auburn in the sunlight.

      The woman scooped up the giggling girl and came back down the hall, a bag bouncing against one hip and the toddler secured on the other.

      “Michal, come back here...” the woman called to the toddler who’d dashed in his direction, and the tiny girl looked up at Colt for a moment, round brown gaze meeting his soberly. She took a step to the side to head around him and he matched her, eyeing her with a small smile. He could see the mischief in that little face.

      “Could you just head her off?” the woman asked, hoisting the other toddler a little higher in her arms as she approached. “She’s quick.”

      “I’ll try,” he said. The toddler swerved past him and he shot an arm out, scooping the youngster up as she let out a surprised squeak. She was as light as a barn cat, and those little legs gave a couple of kicks as he spun her around to face her mother, then handed her over.

      “Thanks.” The woman’s face broke into a smile as she gathered the second toddler in her arms. “I thought it was hard to carry around two car seats. I had no idea how bad it would be once they were walking.”

      “I can only imagine,” he said with a short laugh. “Michael—that’s an odd name for a girl.”

      “I liked it.” She gave him a tired smile. “It’s Biblical. David’s first wife.”

      “Oh, right.” Yeah, he vaguely remembered that. Not Michael, but Michal.

      She looked over at the lawyer’s office door, then down at a scrap of paper in one hand that she could just see past the toddler. Colt noticed the building address written in cursive, followed by the office number.

      “Are you here to see Mr. Davis?” Colt asked.

      She nodded. “You, too?”

      “Yeah. I’m Colt Hardin. And you are...?”

      The color drained from her face and she licked her lips. Did she recognize his name? “Jane Marshall. Pleasure.”

      “So you’re...a relative of Beau’s?” he asked, and his stomach sank. There weren’t too many Marshalls left—at least not in name. It seemed like every Marshall family had girl after girl, and after they married and took their husbands’ names there was yet another branch of the family tree without the Marshall name. Beau had complained about it to no end.

      “My husband was Josh Marshall,” she replied. “He died, but Beau Marshall was his father.”

      Josh—his cousin. Colt’s heart stuttered, then hammered to catch up. So this was the wife—but he didn’t even know that Josh had had kids. None of the family had ever seen pictures of his wife—Josh had only announced his marriage and then gone silent. This woman was slim, with dark hair and pale skin. She was pretty, but rumpled. Her pink sundress tugged up at one hip where she held Michal, and the other toddler was pulling at a loose thread at her shoulder.

      “You’re Josh’s wife?” Colt repeated. His voice sounded choked in his own ears.

      She nodded. “I am. And you’re his cousin. Josh told me about you.”

      That was almost more than he could say. When Josh took off for the city, he’d cut contact with all of them except for an email once every few years with some pertinent information, like when he joined the army and when he got married. And the army had told them when Josh was killed... So Colt had heard absolutely nothing about her besides the fact that she’d married into the family.

      “What was your name, again?” he asked.

      “Jane Marshall,” she replied. “This is Susanna and Michal, or Suzie and Micha for short.”

      “They have the Marshall look,” he said. The fiery red hair that hung in curls around those identical, chubby faces, for one. “But Josh died, what, three years ago?”

      “They are Marshalls,” she replied, her tone hardening just a touch. “Josh never got to meet them. He...” She swallowed. “He died before they were born.”

      “He never told us—” he said.

      “Yes, he did. He told his father I was pregnant,” she cut him off. “Beau contacted me once after they were born.”

      “Really.” Beau had never mentioned it to him, and they’d worked together daily for twenty years. Beau had complained often enough about his ungrateful son.

      So there had been granddaughters that Beau had never made reference to. That was just like the man—keep Colt working like a horse and never tell him anything that might interfere with his dedication to the ranch. Because Josh wasn’t any help at all having left for the city, and Colt had been the one to shoulder the responsibility of keeping this ranch running all these years. Beau’s health had only been getting worse, and he’d been handing off more and more of the daily running of the place until Colt was doing just about everything. Beau had promised Colt ten years ago that he’d leave him the ranch, keep it in the family. In fact, that was what pushed Josh away to begin with, when Beau told him that if he wasn’t going to take ranching seriously, he’d cut him out of the will. Not a single acre would go to Josh, Beau had vowed, but now that Josh’s widow was here for the reading of the will, he had to wonder if Beau had been stringing him along all these years.

      Anything was possible with Beau.

      The office door opened and Steve Davis, a portly older gentlemen, poked his head out. Colt knew the lawyer relatively well. There weren’t too many lawyers in Creekside, and he attended the same church that Colt did. Steve had been at the funeral.

      “Colt, again, I’m so sorry for your loss,” he said, holding out his hand.

      “Thank you.” Colt stepped forward and shook Steve’s hand. “I appreciate it.”

      “And you must be Jane?” Steve asked turning to the woman beside him.

      “Yes, that’s me.” She hitched a toddler higher on her hip. “I hope bringing the girls with me wasn’t a problem.”

      “No, of course not,” Steve said. “Let’s go into my office.”

      Colt stood back as Jane passed into the office first. Micha stared at him with those big brown eyes as she passed, while Suzie seemed more interested in trying to squirm out of her mother’s arms. He stepped into the office after Jane, then pulled the door shut behind him. Jane took a seat in front of Steve’s wide desk and dug in her shoulder bag, emerging with a ziplock bag of crackers.

      Colt eased into the seat next to her, and he watched as she doled out crackers into the toddlers’ hands. They sat down on the floor, two crackers each, and set to munching on them.

      “You were the only people mentioned in Beau Marshall’s will,” Steve began. “Colt, you were named, as well as his grandchildren. After Josh’s death, Beau updated his will so that their mother would be conservator of their inheritance if he were to die while they were still minors.”

      “He knew about them,” Colt said woodenly.

      “Yes,” Steve confirmed. СКАЧАТЬ