Both girls were too old for their “bubbas” as they called them. But Jane was a single mom, and with the two of them a bottle just helped the girls relax enough to sleep. She’d take all the help she could rustle up at bedtime, including this cowboy sitting across from her.
“Thanks,” Jane said with a smile, and she looked down at Micha in her arms. Micha’s eyes were shut, and a dribble of milk leaked out one corner of her mouth. They were still babies in so many ways—the bottles, the diapers, the chubby legs and cheeks...but they were growing up, too, and one of these days she’d have to put them into a day care again and she’d miss out on all of this.
“They do look like Josh,” she said quietly. “I wanted my girls to look like me so badly. I imagined these identical little mini-mes running around, and—” Tears misted her eyes, and she blinked them back. “Considering that Josh didn’t make it home, maybe I should be glad they look just like him.”
Colt’s dark gaze was locked on her, and when she met his eyes, he cleared his throat.
“I’m sorry about what I said earlier,” he explained. “About marriage. I wasn’t meaning to undermine what you had with my cousin or anything like that.”
“It’s okay.”
“I’m glad that Josh didn’t get bitter watching the marriages around us,” Colt said. “I mean, he wrote off the family, but he didn’t write off marriage completely. I went the opposite direction.”
Except that Jane and Josh hadn’t been as happy as she liked people to believe. Maybe they would have been if they’d had a chance to grow their relationship before he got deployed... She’d done her best. She’d Skyped with him, stayed cheerful for him, sent him packages, and when he came home on leave, she refused to fight with him. Even when he was being a jerk and pushing her to the limit. Because she only had a couple of weeks, and then he’d be gone again. It had been so much work, and she’d been so incredibly tired that when she found out she was pregnant after his visit home, the first thing she did was sit down and cry. Then she’d had to toughen up, because she couldn’t let Josh see her crumbling when she Skyped with him that night and told him the news. He needed to focus on staying safe over there and coming back to be a daddy. It had taken every last ounce of her emotional strength.
Jane cast Colt a wan smile.
“No worries,” she said. “I’ll let some other woman talk you into the walk down the aisle.”
Colt smiled wryly in return. “Peg’s life goal, these days.”
Colt didn’t want marriage, but to be fair neither did she. Not again. Marriage had turned out to be so much more work than she’d ever imagined, and all she wanted was to raise her daughters. If she could open that bed-and-breakfast, then she’d be able to raise her girls and make an income at the same time. It would be the best of both worlds, and a huge amount of work. She knew that, but even so, it felt like less work than her marriage had been.
Maybe she and Colt had more in common than she thought, because while Jane believed in marriage, one was all her heart could take.
Colt looked down at the sleeping toddler on his lap. Suzie’s red lashes brushed her ivory cheeks, and while her bottle was already on a side table next to him, she still made little sucking noises with her pursed pink lips. Josh’s daughters were his, what...first cousins once removed? How did that relationship work? He wasn’t sure—but they were part of his family and he felt a little tug of familiar recognition looking at them. They belonged in this zoo—in some way.
Colt didn’t feel entirely comfortable with the way his heart softened just a little bit around this woman. Her silken long dark hair drew his gaze as she tucked it behind her ear. She was beautiful, but it was more than that. She was gentle, feminine...attractive in a way that tugged at him. But she was the kind of woman who ended up deeply disappointed in what he could offer. He’d been down this road before.
He cleared his throat and looked away. Maybe he was just lonely, and if that was the case he’d better learn to get used to it. Because this was Josh’s family, and that made things a little harder to classify. He’d let Josh down already, and he felt an obligation toward his widow and daughters.
“I appreciate you being willing to help out with the canteen tomorrow,” he said.
“I’m happy to help,” she answered. “Josh used to talk about how much work a ranch was, and I can see what he meant.”
“He talked about us,” Colt said.
“From time to time.”
“Good stuff or bad?” he asked with a wry smile.
“Do you really want to know?”
“Maybe not.” Colt’s arm was getting tired from holding Suzie in this position, and he lowered her down just a little more to make himself more comfortable. The toddler seemed to be asleep in his arms now, her breath coming long and deep, and it was oddly soothing to hold a sleeping baby. He’d never done this before. “So he really hated us, huh?”
“Josh—” Jane paused, then shrugged weakly. “He was hurt. I often thought that if he’d lived longer, he might have come back—made some peace with all of you.”
“So why did you come out here to see us?” he asked. “Knowing how he felt about us and all that.”
“For my girls,” she said simply. “They need family. And I don’t have much. I was raised by an aunt who’s already passed away. I have a few cousins—but we grew up in different states and
