Brenda Harlen - Double Duty For The Cowboy

“It’s the usual reason for someone throwing up outside the town’s favorite watering hole,” he noted.

Regan nodded, acknowledging the validity of his point. “But I’m not drunk... I’m pregnant.”

Chapter One

Six and a half months later

Regan shifted carefully in the bed.

She felt as if every muscle in her body had been stretched and strained, but maybe that was normal after twenty-two hours of labor had finally resulted in the birth of her twin baby girls. Despite her aches, the new mom felt a smile tug at her lips when she looked at the bassinet beside her hospital bed and saw Piper and Poppy snuggled close together, as they’d been in her womb.

The nurse had advocated for “cobedding,” suggesting that it might help the newborns sleep better and longer. Regan didn’t know if the close proximity was responsible for their slumber now or if they were just exhausted from the whole birthing ordeal, but she was grateful that they were sleeping soundly.

And they weren’t the only ones, she realized, when she saw a familiar figure slumped in a chair in the corner. “Connor?”

He was immediately awake, leaning forward to ask, “What do you need?”

She just shook her head. “What time is it?”

He glanced at his watch. “A few minutes after eleven.”

Which meant that she’d been out for less than two hours. Still, she felt a little better now than when she’d closed her eyes. Not exactly rested and refreshed, but better.

Her husband hadn’t left her side for a moment during her labor, which made her wonder, “Why are you still here?”

Thick, dark brows rose over warm brown eyes. “Where did you think I’d be?”

“Home,” she suggested. “Where you could get some real sleep in a real bed.”

He shrugged, his broad shoulders straining the seams of the Columbia Law sweatshirt—a Christmas gift from his brother—that he’d tugged over his head when she’d awakened him to say that her water had broken. “I didn’t want to leave you.”

Her throat tightened with emotion and she silently cursed the hormones that had kept her strapped into an emotional roller coaster for the past eight months. Since that long ago night when she’d first told Connor about her pregnancy, he’d been there for her, every step of the way. He’d held her hand at the first prenatal appointment—where they’d both been shocked to learn that she was going to have twins; he’d coached her through every contraction as she worked to bring their babies into the world; he’d even cut the umbilical cords—an act that somehow bonded them even more closely than the platinum bands they’d exchanged six months earlier.

“I think you couldn’t stand to let the girls out of your sight,” she teased now.

“That might be true, too.” He covered her hand with his, squeezing gently. “Because they’re every bit as beautiful as their mama.”

She lifted her other hand to brush her hair away from her face. “I’d be afraid to even look in a mirror right now,” she confided, all too aware that she hadn’t washed her hair or even showered after sweating through the arduous labor.

“You’re beautiful,” Connor said again, and sounded as if he meant it.

She glanced away, uncertain how to respond. Over the past few months, there had been hints of something growing between them—aside from the girth of her belly—tempting Regan to hope that the marriage they’d entered into for the sake of their babies might someday become more.

Then a movement in the bassinet caught her eye. “It looks like Poppy’s waking up.”

He followed the direction of her gaze and smiled at the big yawn on the little girl’s face. “Are you sure that’s not Piper?”

“No,” she admitted.

Although the twins weren’t genetically identical, it wasn’t easy to tell them apart. Poppy’s hair was a shade darker than her sister’s, and Piper had a half-moon-shaped birthmark beside her belly button, but of course, they were swaddled in blankets with caps on their heads, so neither telltale feature was visible right now.

He chuckled softly.

“Do you think she’s hungry?” Regan asked worriedly.

The nurse had encouraged her to feed on demand, which meant putting the babies to her breast whenever they were awake and hungry. But her milk hadn’t come in yet, so naturally Regan worried that her babies were always hungry because they weren’t getting any sustenance.

“Let me change her diaper and then we’ll see,” Connor suggested.

She appreciated that he didn’t balk at doing the messy jobs. Of course, parenthood was brand new to both of them, and changing diapers was still more of a novelty than a chore. With two infants, she suspected that would change quickly. The doting daddy might be ducking out of diaper changes before the week was out, but for now, she was grateful for the offer because it meant that her weary and aching body didn’t have to get out of bed.

“She’s so tiny,” he said again, as he carefully lifted one of the pink-blanketed bundles out of the bassinet.

They were the first words he’d spoken when newborn Piper had been placed in his hands, his voice thick with a combination of reverence and fear.

“Not according to Dr. Amaro,” she reminded him.

In fact, the doctor had remarked that the babies were good sizes for twins born two weeks early. Piper had weighed in at five pounds, eight ounces and measured eighteen and a half inches; Poppy had tipped the scale at five pounds, ten ounces and stretched out to an even eighteen inches. Still, she’d recommended that the new mom spend several days in the hospital with her babies to ensure they were feeding and growing before they went home.

But Regan agreed with Connor that the baby did look tiny, especially cradled as she was now in her daddy’s big hands.

“And you were right,” he said, as he unsnapped the baby’s onesie to access her diaper. “This is Poppy.”

Which only meant that the newborn didn’t have a birthmark, not that her mother was particularly astute or intuitive.

Throughout her pregnancy, Regan had often felt out of her element and completely overwhelmed by the prospect of motherhood. When she was younger, several of her friends had earned money by babysitting, but Regan had never done so. She liked kids well enough; she just didn’t have any experience with them.

She’d quickly taken to her niece—the daughter of her younger brother, Spencer. But Dani had been almost four years old the first time Regan met her, a little girl already walking and talking. A baby was a completely different puzzle—not just smaller but so much more fragile, unable to communicate except through cries that might mean she was hungry or wet or unhappy or any number of other things. And even after months spent preparing for the birth of her babies, Regan didn’t feel prepared.

Thankfully, Connor didn’t seem to suffer from the same worries and doubts. He warmed the wipe between his palms before folding back the wet diaper to gently clean the baby’s skin.

“Did you borrow that plastic baby from our prenatal classes to practice on?” she wondered aloud.

He chuckled as he slid a clean diaper beneath Poppy’s bottom. “No.”

“Then how do you seem to know what you’re doing already?”

“My brother’s eight years younger than me,” he reminded her. “And I changed enough of Deacon’s diapers way back when to remember the basics of how it’s done.”

There was a photo in Brielle’s baby album of Regan holding her infant sister in her lap and a bottle in the baby’s mouth, but she didn’t have any recollection of the event. She’d certainly never been responsible for taking care of her younger siblings. Instead, the routine childcare tasks had fallen to the family housekeeper, Celeste, because both Margaret and Ben Channing had spent most of their waking hours at Blake Mining.