Deb Kastner - Texas Christmas Twins

Harper let out an ear-piercing screech, as if someone had pinched her. The guilty party, cracker crumbs on his chubby cheeks, darted forward, right out of the tent. The kid army crawled faster than any soldier Simon had ever seen.

Without thinking, Simon shoved his knees under him and went up on all fours, smacking the back of his head on the card table and sending it keening to the side.

Stretching to his full length, he grasped Hudson by the waist and scooped him into his arms on a roll, landing on his back with Hudson flapping on his stomach.

“Where do you think you’re going, little buddy?” he asked, planting an affectionate kiss on the baby’s forehead. “Did you pinch your sister? Gentlemen don’t pick on ladies, even when they deserve it.”

“Simon?” called Miranda, her voice sounding oddly muffled from behind him. “Harper. Ow!”

When he glanced back, it was to find the card table tipped completely on its side. Harper was sitting by Miranda, laughing and batting her arms as she pulled her fingers through Miranda’s long chestnut curls.

Miranda couldn’t stop the baby from yanking and tugging, even though it had to hurt, because somehow, she’d managed to get completely rolled up, cocoon-style, in a couple of the white sheets that had only moments before served as a tent.

“A little help here?” she pleaded around the cloth. She wriggled but only managed to wrap herself tighter and tighter.

“Ironic, isn’t it?” he asked mildly as he placed Hudson next to Harper and started tugging at the sheets tangled around Miranda.

With effort, he gently unwrapped her.

“What?” Her brow narrowed in confusion when she noticed him staring at her.

He paused significantly.

“You’re a mummy.”

* * *

So not funny.

At least, coming from Simon West it wasn’t. He’d been a callous teenager, and it didn’t look like he was much better now. His mood had gone as dark as a thunderstorm.

After putting the twins down in their cribs for a nap, Miranda dragged her feet as long as possible before returning to the kitchen, where she was oddly certain a confrontation was going to take place. About what, she had no idea.

She’d never been the confrontational type. She preferred to keep the peace.

Simon had been nice enough for a while, but his surprise visit, especially the whole we need to talk thing, definitely had the edge of tension around it.

She serenaded the twins with an extra lullaby and lingered by their bedsides until they dropped into a tranquil slumber. She loved the sound of their deep breathing and cute little snores.

Here in the quiet of the nursery it was nice and calm, and Miranda’s heart teemed over with serene warmth and love, the polar opposite of the crazy, uneven pulse-pounding her heart had taken with her surprising and unexpected encounter with Simon West.

Simon, the boy Miranda had crushed on for every angst-ridden day of her teen years, was now a man whose once soft adolescent face had been hardened by life but was no less handsome for whatever trials the years had given him.

Along with her brother Mason, Simon had picked on her incessantly when she was a soft-hearted, impressionable teenager, but that hadn’t kept her from crushing on him. There was one prank in particular that had stayed with her that had, in a way, informed the woman she’d become when she’d left Wildhorn to pursue a career in photography in Los Angeles.

He probably didn’t even remember the hurtful incident that had so mortified her, and if he did, it was probably only as a humorous blip on his radar.

She scoffed softly and shook her head. She’d just been a silly lovesick teenager. It had been a long time since high school, and she’d tucked her memories of Simon, both the nice and the not-so-nice, deep into her heart and locked them away for good.

Or so she’d thought.

Naturally, she’d known when she’d moved back to Wildhorn that Simon would eventually cross her path. He and Mason were still best friends.

But she wasn’t in any particular hurry to see him again, and she definitely hadn’t expected the explosion of emotion she’d felt when he’d walked in the door of her cabin and she’d first met his sea-blue-eyed gaze. It was as if a boxful of fireworks had suddenly gone off in her chest.

Oh, she remembered Simon, all right. So much more than she wanted to admit. She still recalled every detail of her high school years, every single time she’d lingered by his locker in hopes of seeing him, or stared up at the ceiling in her bedroom, listening to sad songs and pining for the boy in the next room playing video games with her brother.

As an adult, she’d had her heart thoroughly broken by a man using her to further his career. She’d learned from that, and her trust didn’t come easily anymore. She’d sealed up her heart and intended to keep it that way.

Which was all the more reason for this first encounter with Simon not to be an emotional explosion.

She’d been so certain she’d prepared her heart for the eventuality of seeing him again, now that she was home. That any silly teenage emotions she’d felt for him were far behind her.

Clearly not so much.

And anyway—why had he mysteriously shown up at her cabin, insisting that he wanted to talk to her?

She blew out a breath and straightened her shoulders. It wasn’t doing her any good to hide in the nursery speculating over what he might be doing here. The only way she would find out what Simon wanted was to talk to him.

With a sigh, she gave the twins one last loving glance and quietly closed the door to the nursery behind her.

The first thing she did when she entered the kitchen was grab the baby monitor and place it on the table between them like a shield as she slid into a chair across from Simon. She’d brewed coffee earlier in the day, and he’d taken the initiative to pour them each a cup and warm the brew in the microwave.

“Cream or sugar?” Miranda asked, taking a fortifying sip of the hot liquid.

He shook his head. “Dark.”

Kind of like the look he was giving her right now.

“I’m going to come right to the point,” he said, moving straight past polite niceties and digging right in. “I have some concerns about Mary naming you the twins’ guardian when Mason and Charlotte clearly would have been the better choice.”

She choked on her coffee.

Of all the rude and unconscionable declarations he could have made...

His words were so blunt they hit her like a sledgehammer. She scrunched her brow and bit the inside of her lip in a desperate attempt to keep him from seeing how much his statement had hurt her.

“And this is your business how?”

He lifted his chin and narrowed his now ice-blue eyes. “I have a vested interest in them and have every intention of protecting them. I expect to have the opportunity to spend time with them and really get to know them. I’m their godfather, which you would have known if you had bothered to attend Harper and Hudson’s christening.”

“Wow. Judgmental much?”

“Just telling it like it is.”

Miranda’s first impulse was to argue with him, except for one tiny detail—

He was right.

She had missed the twins’ christening, something that she now deeply regretted. If she could dial time back...but she couldn’t. All she could do at this point was own up to her past mistakes and move forward from here.

“You’re right,” she admitted softly.

Simon looked as if he was about to speak, but then he cut himself short and stared at her openmouthed.

“I’m sorry. Did you just say I was right?”

Clearly that wasn’t the response he’d expected. For a man who didn’t know her, he certainly had his opinions about her firmly in place.