Stella Bagwell - The Tycoon's Tots

“You saw my sister while she was jailed?”

Chloe nodded. It wasn’t one of her more pleasant memories. But she and her sisters, Justine and Rose, had felt compelled to talk to the woman. She’d known things about their father that only she could tell them. And Belinda had told them some things in her own disturbed, fragmented way. Chloe had come away from the county jail feeling both saddened and sickened. From what she’d seen, Belinda Waller had once been a beautiful young woman, but drugs and alcohol had ruined her looks, her mind, and subsequently her very life. It was such a waste.

“How was she then? How long was that before she died?”

Chloe shrugged. “Two or three weeks probably. As far as how she was, I can’t really say. I didn’t know her beforehand.”

Wyatt felt weak and sick. And he wondered why he’d ever left Houston to come here. But of course, deep down he knew it was simply for the babies. He felt he owed Belinda that much.

Turning away from Chloe, Wyatt walked to the end of the long stable and stared out the open doorway at the mountain range rising directly behind the ranch.

It didn’t seem possible that his family was gone now. His mother had simply left. His father had been killed. And now Belinda was dead. The only close relatives Wyatt had left were the twins.

“Mr. Sanders? Are you all right?”

He turned slowly to see Chloe standing just behind him. She looked genuinely concerned for him, which was quite a switch from a few moments ago when he’d gotten the impression she wanted to wham the side of his head with her shovel.

“I was just thinking about Belinda,” he said, then with a sigh he swiped a hand through his coal black hair. “She was beautiful and outgoing. One of those bubbly kind of people who laughed a lot. She loved excitement and always liked to stay on the go.” His expression grim, he glanced away from her. “But her traveling days are all over now.”

Whatever Chloe felt about Belinda Waller, she harbored no malice toward this man. As far as she and her family knew, he had nothing to do with the damage his sister had done to their father and their ranch. It would serve no purpose to describe to him the pathetic creature she’d seen locked behind bars. He obviously didn’t know what his sister had become. And Chloe hardly wanted to be the one to tell him.

“Well, we might as well go up to the house so you can see the twins,” she said, while telling herself the sooner he saw the babies, the sooner he would leave the ranch. “Aunt Kitty is probably feeding them a snack about now.”

“Earlier, at the house, a small woman with gray hair answered the door. Was that your aunt?”

Chloe nodded and Wyatt said, “I figured she was the housekeeper or nanny or something.”

“We’re all family around here,” she told him, her voice laced with pride.

“I see,” he said. “And she helps take care of the twins while you’re doing this?” He gestured around the large stable.

The way he said this made it sound as if she were no better than a common ditch digger. And she suddenly decided it was a shame the inside of this man wasn’t as nice as the outside. But then, in her experience, men were usually lacking beneath the surface.

“She does,” Chloe answered his question. “Aunt Kitty loves the twins as much as me and my sisters.”

He didn’t say anything to that and Chloe wondered what he was thinking and why he was really here. She somehow knew she hadn’t heard everything from him yet

“Well, right now I have to get the horses off the walker. If you’d rather not wait, you can go on up to the house without me,” she told him.

Wyatt figured if he was smart, he wouldn’t wait. He’d go see the babies without this woman’s interference. But he didn’t always do the smart thing. Believing Belinda’s happy stories proved that much.

“I’ll wait. Is there anything I can help you with?”

Surprised by his offer, she looked at him. Not as a threat, but simply as a man. “I wouldn’t want you to dirty yourself.”

There wasn’t anything he needed to prove to this woman. Her opinion of him didn’t matter at all. Yet the idea that she thought of him as soft, pricked his ego as nothing had in years. “I’ve been known to get a little dirt under my fingernails before.”

She gave him a dry little smile. “Scratching and clawing your way to the top, I suppose?”

“You find something wrong with ambition, Ms. Murdock?”

“Not when it’s aimed in the right direction, Mr. Sanders.”

Brushing past him, she walked out of the stable to leave Wyatt standing by the empty stall. For a moment he considered following her, but then he decided there wouldn’t be much point in it. This was her turf, and she obviously figured he’d be more of a hindrance than a help.

It took her only a matter of a few minutes to return the four horses to their stalls. Wyatt stood silently by, watching her work and wondering if this was how she spent all of her time here on this isolated New Mexican ranch. In his opinion it was a shame to see a beautiful woman like her buried in such a place.

Once she was ready to go, Wyatt followed her out of the stable and along the beaten path leading back to the house. Along the way they passed several barns and a maze of connecting metal pens.

Wyatt didn’t see any cattle except one bull lying near a mound of alfalfa hay. Closer to the house, in a small wooden corral, a black calf poked its head through the fence and bawled loudly.

“You’ll get your bottle soon enough, Martin,” Chloe told the calf. “You’re not the only one around here who’s hungry.”

“Where’s his mother? Can’t she feed him?” Wyatt asked as they walked on at a brisk clip. Did the woman move at this pace all day, he wondered. If she did, she had to feel like hell by nightfall. And weren’t there any cowboys around to help?

“His mother is dead. My sister Rose and I take turns hand-feeding him.” Chloe didn’t go on to tell him that Martin’s mother was killed when Belinda torched a section of the ranch. It was a horrible scene she hated to think about, much less relate to him.

A few moments later, the two of them entered a small courtyard landscaped with an assortment of desert plants, a couple of piñon pines and redwood lawn furniture.

A ground-level porch made a square with the back of the house. Wyatt followed her across one end of it, through a screen door and into a warm, cluttered kitchen. Two steps inside the room, Wyatt stopped dead in his tracks as he spotted two red-headed babies sitting side by side in a pair of high chairs.

These were his sister’s children, the only close relatives he had left. Yet incredibly they looked like the woman standing next to him.

“Aunt Kitty, this is Wyatt Sanders.”

Wyatt tore his gaze away from the babies to see the petite gray-haired woman had joined them. She was wiping her hands on a tea towel and looking Wyatt over with open suspicion.

“Yes, he told me his name when he came to the door. I see you found Chloe,” she told him.

He nodded politely toward the older woman, but before he could get a word out, Chloe said, “Did he tell you he’s Belinda Waller’s brother?”

Kitty’s face grew ashen and her wide gaze flew from her niece to the dark-haired stranger. “Belinda’s brother?” she asked in a hoarse whisper. “We didn’t know she had a brother! What are you doing here?”

Wyatt turned to Chloe and wondered, not for the first time, what his next words were going to do to her.

“I’m here to take the twins home. With me,” he said quietly.

Now was not the time for Chloe to panic or lose her temper. She had to show this man he didn’t scare her. The twins were hers! He couldn’t simply walk in and take them away from her!