Marie Ferrarella - Twins On The Doorstep

Cole placed the basket on the wide, scarred coffee table just as Garrett called out toward the kitchen, “Hey, Jackson, could you come in here? You’ve just got to see this.”

A minute and a half later Jackson White Eagle, taller and slightly more muscular than his younger brother, walked into the living room.

“What’s all the commotion abou—” Jackson stopped dead in his tracks. His eyes went straight to the basket on the coffee table. “Garrett, what are two babies in a basket doing on our coffee table?”

“Don’t look at me,” Garrett protested. “They belong to Cole.”

“Cole?” Jackson asked incredulously. His eyes shifted to the cowboy he’d hired to work part-time on their ranch.

“No, they don’t,” Cole denied with feeling. “I just stumbled over them on the doorstep as I was leaving this morning.”

“Your doorstep,” Garrett pointed out, obviously thinking that was the key word.

Cole shook his head, trying to distance himself from any responsibility. “I’m beginning to think that was just a mistake.”

“Your mistake?” Garrett asked, eyeing his friend closely. “Did you get some ladylove in the family way, Cole?”

Garrett sat down on the old brown-leather sofa in front of the babies. He made a few cooing noises at the infants, which seemed to entertain them sufficiently to get them to stop whimpering.

“Forever is just a little larger than a postage stamp,” Cole pointed out, referring to the nearby town. “I think if something like that had happened, everyone in Forever would have known—if not immediately, then soon enough.”

“So, these little cuties aren’t yours?” Garrett asked, just to make sure.

If they had been his, Cole would have owned up to it without any hesitation and done the right thing by the babies’ mother. Cole felt that his friend knew him well enough to know that.

Cole frowned at Garrett. “No.”

“You’re sure about that?” Jackson asked, looking at Cole closely.

“Absolutely,” Cole answered, but just the slightest note of hesitation had entered his voice.

What if...?

No, no way. It wasn’t possible.

The only woman he’d been intimate with in the last year had been Stacy Rowe. But Stacy had suddenly taken off not too long after that, leaving without a single word to him. Leaving as if the evening they had spent together had filled her with regrets.

Or maybe, according to the rumor he’d heard later, her Aunt Kate had insisted Stacy come with her on “the vacation of a lifetime,” then whisked her off on a prolonged tour of Europe.

Having her leave like that, without warning, had really hurt him, although he’d said nothing to anyone, not even his family. He’d thought that he and Stacy had something unique going, but obviously she hadn’t shared his feelings.

In time, he got over it.

Or so he told himself.

“Well,” Jackson was saying, turning to look at him. “What are you going to do with them?”

Cole looked at the other man, stunned. “Me?”

“Well, yes,” Jackson replied. “They were left on your doorstep.”

Cole still doubted that had been the person’s actual intention. He didn’t always stay over the same days. He could just as likely have not been here. “Undoubtedly by mistake.”

“Maybe not,” Jackson said thoughtfully.

“What are you talking about?” Cole asked.

“Your brother Cody came to his future wife’s rescue and wound up delivering a baby,” Jackson reminded him. “And didn’t Cassidy rescue that baby from the river not too long after that?”

“Yes,” Cole answered cautiously, not sure where Jackson was going with this.

“Can’t be a coincidence,” Jackson told him. “Somebody probably feels that your family’s good with babies. Want my suggestion?” Before Cole could say anything in response, Jackson told him, “Take the babies home with you until you can sort this whole thing out.”

“Wait,” Cole said, feeling as if this whole thing was just spinning out of control. “You’re forgetting one important thing. You’ve got a ranch full of teenage boys, all of them old enough to father a child—or two,” he pointed out.

Jackson studied the infants for a moment. “My guess is that these babies are about three or four weeks old. Maybe less.”

“Okay,” Cole said, waiting for Jackson to make a point.

“That means that if they were fathered by one of the boys on the ranch, it would have had to have happened about ten months or so ago,” Jackson told him.

“Right,” Cole agreed, still waiting for Jackson’s point.

“Well, we’ve only got three boys who have been here that long,” Jackson concluded. “The rest have been here for less time than that.” There were several who had graduated the program and returned home in that time frame, but for now, he decided not to mention that. He still felt that the infants might be Cole’s.

“Okay!” Cole was on his feet. “Let’s go talk to those three hands.”

The babies were making more noise. Jackson’s attention shifted to them. “Well, before we do that, I think these two little people need to be fed first.”

Feeling suddenly, totally, out of his depth, Cole looked around.

“Is Debi here?” Jackson’s wife, Debi, was a registered nurse who worked at the town’s only medical clinic.

Jackson shook his head. “She went in early today. It’s her turn to open the clinic.”

“What about Kim?” Cole asked hopefully, looking at Garrett.

“Sorry, out of luck there,” Garrett told him. “Kim’s away on assignment. She left last week. She still keeps her hand in,” he explained proudly, “doing occasional stories for the magazine that brought her out here in the first place.”

Obviously taking pity on Cole, Jackson volunteered, “However, Rosa’s here,” referring to the Healing Ranch’s resident housekeeper.

Cole was immediately hopeful. “Do you think that she could...?”

“She might, if we ask her nicely,” Jackson speculated.

“She’s probably in the kitchen. I’ll go get her,” Garrett volunteered, taking off.

The babies were beginning to fuss in earnest now. Cole looked at Jackson. “You don’t think that these belong to one of those boys you mentioned, do you?”

“Highly doubtful,” Jackson said. Moving toward the basket, he picked up the louder of the two infants and began rocking it in an attempt to quiet the baby. “You’ve seen the hands. By the end of the day, they’re all too tired to chew, much less try to romance some little lady. Besides, so far this is still an all-male program we have going here. To find a girl his age, our Romeo would have to ride all the way out to town or the reservation. I’d probably know about it if that happened,” Jackson assured him.

“Where did these babies come from?” Rosa Sanchez asked as she walked into the living room.

“That’s what we’re trying to find out,” Jackson told the woman.

Maternal instincts rose to the surface. Rosa picked up the other infant from the basket and held it against her ample bosom.

“Oh, the poor little thing,” she cooed. “He is hungry.”

Cole stared at her, surprised. “You can tell it’s a he? How?” he asked, then pointed out, “The baby’s all bundled up. They both are.”

Rosa merely smiled. “He is noisier. Men usually are,” Rosa told him knowingly. She looked at Jackson. “Bring the other one,” she instructed the man who was technically her boss. And then she turned toward Cole. “You bring the basket. There is no place to lay them down while I take turns feeding them, so the basket will do.”

“Rosa, how are you going to feed them? We don’t have any baby bottles,” Garrett asked.