Cowboy's Triplet Trouble Part 12

It had been crazy for her to even think for one minute that he'd want to take on her and the triplets, that somehow he'd fallen in love with her and that love was deep enough for him to throw his own wants, his own needs, away.

Alone. She was going to be alone for a long time to come. It would take a very special man to want to take on not just her, but her three daughters as well. She was a woman who came with baggage, three little suitcases who babbled and drooled, who would grow up to walk and get into things and create chaos.

For just a stupid, crazy moment she'd thought that special man was Jake. She raised a hand from the steering wheel to swipe at an errant tear.

She felt half-sick to her stomach with the pain that pierced through her center. She never knew heartache could be such a physical pain.

It was her own fault that she was leaving here with a broken heart. She'd allowed him to get too close, had opened her heart to him as she'd never opened her heart to a man before.

She had the two-and-a-half-hour drive to pull her self together, to shove thoughts of Jake out of her mind and focus on her real life.

At least Natalie had a job. Maybe it was time Grace took some of the advice she had given Jake. It was time for her to stop rescuing Natalie, stop trying to make up for the lack of a father and the less-than-perfect relationship with her mother.

Natalie had her monthly income from her inheritance, and with even a part-time job she should do fine as long as she learned to stop partying and live within her means.

Grace could only hope the Jimmy she was dating was a good and decent young man, but it was time Grace took her own advice and stopped rescuing her sister.

She frowned, wondering what damage Natalie had managed to do to the credit card she'd let her use. Supposedly Natalie had just needed gas money and groceries, but there was no telling what Grace might find charged on the card when she finally got the bill.

It didn't take long for the lull of the wheels on the pavement to put the girls to sleep, leaving Grace alone with her thoughts. And they were all of Jake.

He had been everything she'd ever dreamed of in a man for herself, everything she'd ever dreamed of as a father for her children. It was as if Bonnie had identified Jake as somebody important in their lives the first time she'd batted her eyelashes at him. Watching him with them had filled Grace's soul with a sense of rightness.

He'd loved the girls like Grace had hoped their father would. When he'd played with them, wiped their mouths, laughed at their antics, there had been a feeling of family, a warmth that had filled Grace's soul.

Grace blinked away a new flurry of tears. What she didn't understand was how she could feel such loss when she'd never really had him to begin with. They had played house for a couple of days due to circ.u.mstances beyond their control.

Everything he had done for her while she'd been at the ranch had probably been part of him doing what he always did-taking care of Justin's messes.

She jumped as her cell phone rang. With one hand she dug it out of her purse and looked at the caller ID. Jake. The very last person in the world she wanted to talk to at the moment.

Why would he be calling? To tell her she left something behind? She was fairly sure she'd gotten out of there with all her belongings. Her heart was a different story.

She didn't even want to hear his voice right now. She knew the sound would merely pull forth the tears she'd been desperately trying to hold back. She turned the phone off and dropped it back into her purse. She'd return his call later, when she was back home in her own environment and not feeling quite so vulnerable to him.

The girls' nap didn't last long. Within half an hour they were awake and chattering like magpies, filling the silence that had been in the car but incapable of soothing the hollow emptiness that resided in Grace's heart-the s.p.a.ce where Jake had been.

By the time she pulled into her driveway she was grateful the drive was over. The girls had started to get cranky, needing lunch and a longer nap, and Grace's shoulder ached from the driving.

It took another hour to get everything unloaded from the car, feed the girls and get them down for their naps, and then she took one of the pain pills the doctor in Cameron Creek had given her and stretched out on her sofa.

There were a million things she should be doing, like throwing in a load of laundry, figuring out what she was going to have for supper or contacting MysteryMom to let her know that Justin had been found but was ultimately lost.

What she wouldn't confess to MysteryMom was that she'd been fool enough to fall in love with one of Justin's brothers. That she'd been fool enough to get pregnant by a man incapable of being a father and had fallen in love with a man incapable of loving her back.

Jake, her heart cried out as she closed her eyes and sought the oblivion of sleep. If nothing else she hoped that someday he would get over his own baggage and find love with somebody, build a family that would make him see that chaos and noise when filled with love was so much better than silence and being all alone.

She finally fell asleep with her heart aching, wondering how long it would take before she could forget all about Jake Johnson. She dreamed of him, of being held in his arms as they made love. The dream transitioned to him holding her babies and all of them laughing. Then she went from dreamland to sudden awakeness, her heart beating a frantic rhythm that had nothing to do with the visions that had filled her sleep.

Sitting up, she looked around and listened. No crying babies, nothing to indicate what had pulled her from sleep or had made her heart race so fast. A glance at her wrist.w.a.tch let her know she'd only been asleep for about fifteen minutes.

It must have been a dream, she thought as she placed a hand over her pounding heart and drew a deep breath. She must have been having a dream that created the sense of panic that had awakened her.

At that moment Natalie appeared in the doorway between the kitchen and the living room.

Grace released a startled gasp and realized it must have been the sound of the back door opening and closing that had awakened her. "Jeez, Natalie, you scared me to half to death," she exclaimed. "I thought you told me you had to work today."

"I really don't like working," Natalie replied. "Life is too short to work, especially when I shouldn't have to." There was a tough edge to Natalie's voice and a wildness in her eyes.

"What are you doing sneaking in the back door?" Grace asked, her heart sinking as she realized it was possible her sister was on something. Grace's heart suddenly resumed its rapid beat. "Natalie, have you been doing drugs?"

"Maybe so, maybe not." Natalie grinned as a tall, lanky, dark-haired young man appeared just behind her. "You've been wanting to meet Jimmy, so here he is."

He stepped up next to Natalie. "Hey, Grace."

He didn't look like the decent kind of young man Grace had hoped for. He had a rough edge, made more rough by the tattoo that nearly covered one side of his neck and his general unkempt appearance. His jeans hung low and his hair was long and greasy.

"It's nice to finally meet you," Grace forced herself to say.

"You've been quite a problem," he said. His dark eyes looked as wild as Natalie's.

Grace frowned at him, wondering if the pain pill she'd taken earlier had somehow scrambled her brains or if she'd misunderstood him. "Excuse me?"

"He said you've become quite a problem," Natalie repeated with a touch of impatience. "Actually, you became a problem the minute you had those babies and Mother changed her will."

Grace watched in horror as Jimmy pulled a gun from the back of his waistband and pointed it at her. "Your sister and I want to be together. We love each other, but she's been very unhappy with her inheritance and I can't stand to see her so miserable."

Grace felt as if she was still asleep, in the middle of a terrible nightmare as her gaze went from Jimmy to her sister. "I don't understand. Natalie, you and I both got the same amount of an inheritance when Mom died." Grace struggled to make sense of what was happening.

"They got it all," Natalie said, her features showing the first signs of anger. Her green eyes narrowed and her chin thrust forward. "Those babies got everything, and that means you've got it all."

"That's not true," Grace exclaimed, a panic welling up to press tight against her chest. "It's for them, not for me. It's for their college."

"But you can get to it whenever you want," Natalie screamed. "You can just write a check and buy whatever you want with it. It's not fair. It was never fair."

Horrible thoughts suddenly tumbled around in Grace's head. She'd always known deep in her heart that Natalie was selfish and more than a bit narcissistic, but now she recognized the depth of Natalie's rage, a rage that had apparently been building since the reading of their mother's will.

Natalie drew a deep breath as if to calm herself, but her eyes remained wild and filled with anger. "She promised me. Mother promised me when I was growing up that I'd have everything I wanted, that when she was gone I'd never want for anything. She promised and I believed her and you screwed it up by having those d.a.m.ned kids."

Grace searched her sister's features, looking for something soft, something vulnerable, something of the sister she thought she knew, but there was nothing there. The full realization of what lengths Natalie had gone to sank in. "You followed me to Cameron Creek? You tried to shoot me?" her voice was a mere whisper.

"If those stupid cowboys hadn't shown up when they did we wouldn't be having this conversation now," Natalie said.

"So far you've been like a cat with nine lives." Jimmy stepped closer to her, the gun pointed at her head. "I tried to run you off the road, I tried to shoot you, and then I tried to strangle you. Each time you've managed to get away. Unfortunately, the cat has now run out of lives."

"Jimmy and I can take care of the girls," Natalie said as if she were talking about taking care of a couple of goldfish. "As their guardian I'll make sure they have what they need, but I can also live the life I want to live, the one I deserve to live."

"Natalie and I are going to live a great life. Unfortunately, you're in the way of that." Jimmy smiled, but there was no humor in the gesture. "Face it, sis. You have to go."

Grace looked at her sister, hoping this was all some kind of a terrible joke, but Natalie's eyes held a hard glaze she didn't recognize.

"I won't have to hear you b.i.t.c.h at me anymore. I won't have to listen to your stupid advice." Natalie's hands balled into fists at her side. "All the times I wanted Mother and she wasn't there for me, I always remembered that she told me it would be worth it in the end, that if anything happened to her I'd have a life most people dreamed about. I'm not going to let those brats take that away from me."

"While you were gone somebody cased your house," Jimmy said. "They broke in and didn't realize you were back home. As they started to rob the place, you confronted them and sadly you didn't survive the attack."

Horror rose up inside Grace's throat. "Natalie, you can't be serious about this. I'm your sister, for G.o.d's sake."

"I don't care about you," Natalie replied. "I just want the money."

"Even if you kill me, the girls have a father who would get custody," Grace said, trying to reason her way out of danger.

"He doesn't want custody," she scoffed. "You told me he isn't fit material to be a guardian. You told me the last thing he wants is to be a father. Trust me, from what you said about him he won't fight me. He'll be glad that somebody else is ready to step in to take care of them. I'm their aunt, your only living relative. I'll get custody and I'll get their money. The only thing that stands in my way is you."

As Grace looked into the very soullessness of her sister's eyes, she realized she'd vastly underestimated Natalie's mental problems and as a consequence she was in terrible danger.

Jake tried to call Grace several times, but each of his calls went directly to her voice mail. Since he couldn't imagine her risking driving while talking on the cell phone, he could only a.s.sume that she had the phone off.

Still, with each pa.s.sing minute that took her closer to her home, an urgency banged in his heart. It was crazy for him to think she might be in imminent danger, and yet was it really so far-fetched?

Somebody had tried to kill her, and he'd begun to think it wasn't somebody from here but rather somebody close to her back in Wichita.

Even though he knew it was probably illogical, he felt as if he needed to get to her as soon as possible, and without being able to call her, he did the next best thing. He grabbed the sheet of paper with her address on it, got into his truck and took off after her.

He was a good thirty or forty minutes behind her. It was possible if he pushed the speed limit he could catch her on the road. If not, he'd use the address she'd left and get to her house.

And tell her what? That a car accident might not have been an accident at all? That he thought somebody was chasing her all over the country in an effort to kill her? That somehow this made more sense than Shirley being responsible for the two attacks on her?

His foot eased off the gas pedal as doubts filled his head. Was he chasing after her with these crazy ideas because deep in his heart he didn't want to let her go?

Was his heart telling him something his brain refused to acknowledge? This time was it him creating drama instead of his brother? Chasing after a woman with some conspiracy plot just because he wanted to see her one more time?

No, this wasn't about some imagined drama. He pressed his foot back on the gas, once again filled with a sense of urgency. This had nothing to do with what he wanted or didn't want with Grace and the children. This had to do with their safety, and despite all rational thought, he felt that she was heading right into trouble.

As he pa.s.sed each roadside cafe and gas station along the way, he slowed to look for her car but didn't see it parked anywhere. He could only press the speed limit so much. The last thing he wanted was to get reckless and be in an accident of his own or cause a problem for other drivers.

He consciously didn't want to think about his feelings for Grace and the girls. He still had no intention of offering her anything that looked like a future. He just wanted to get to her now, to let her know what he suspected.

The drive to Wichita seemed to take forever. He tried to call her several more times with the same results, but the calls went directly to her voice mail.

Why wasn't she answering the phone? Surely she'd know that so many calls from him would mean he was trying to get in touch with her for an important reason. If she worried about driving and talking, she could always pull to the side of the road to find out what he wanted.

Maybe she doesn't want to talk to you, a little voice whispered in his head. They'd had a beautiful time together; but ultimately he'd never been the brother she'd come for, the one she'd wanted, needed in her life.

When she'd driven away from the ranch, maybe the last thing she'd wanted was to think about or talk to any of the Johnson men again. He couldn't really blame her for that.

But he had to talk to her whether she wanted to hear from him or not. She needed to know his suspicions. The more he thought about it, the more it made sense. He'd be a fool not to consider that the person who stood to gain the most if anything happened to her was her sister.

Grace had told him that the children had gotten the bulk of whatever estate her mother had possessed. If anything happened to Grace, the triplets would go to Justin, who could easily be talked out of taking guardianship by a loving, caring aunt. It was what made the most sense and yet what he didn't want to believe.

How on earth was he supposed to talk to Grace about the fact that her sister might not have her best interests at heart when his own brother had been the one who had broken her heart?

As he entered the city limits of Wichita, he figured he'd cross that bridge when he came to it. Right now all he really wanted was to see her and the girls safe and sound and warn her that the danger might be closer than she thought.

Jake had been to Wichita several times in the past, but he didn't really know the city well. He had to stop at a convenience store and ask for directions to Grace's area of town.

When he found her street, some of the adrenaline that had been with him since he'd jumped into his truck finally began to ease somewhat. Within minutes he'd see that she and the girls were fine and the worst that would happen was that he'd feel like more than a bit of a fool for making the race instead of just waiting to contact her by phone.

At least he'd know he'd forewarned her that the danger to her might not be over just because she'd returned to Wichita. She needed to be aware that there could still be trouble here.

He found her address and parked along the curb. It was a neat ranch house painted a soft beige and with darker brown trim. A large oak tree stood in the center of the yard and would provide welcome shade in the summer.

It was obviously a working-cla.s.s neighborhood, and he imagined that most of the houses were empty at this time of the day, parents working and kids at babysitters or enjoying summer camp.

It was a good place to raise three children, he told himself. The house appeared solid; the neighborhood looked nice. There was no reason why she and the girls couldn't live a happy life right here.

She'd probably been telling the truth when she said she didn't need anything financially from Justin. She'd just wanted a father for her girls.

He got out of the truck and stretched, mentally preparing himself for seeing her again, for guarding his heart against the tug it felt in her direction.

He was here to give her information and nothing more. Nothing had changed as far as he was concerned, and in any case he'd never be the man she truly wanted in her life.

He walked up to the front door and glanced at his watch. It was nap time for the girls, so he decided not to ring the bell or knock on the door.

The front door was gla.s.s, and hopefully he could catch her attention by looking through without having to knock and possibly wake the girls.

He peered into the window and for a moment didn't see anyone. Again he wondered if this whole frantic drive to Wichita and his own crazy thoughts about danger everywhere were just long-term moments of total insanity.

Grace insanity. That's what he should call it, the insane desire to see her just one last time, to a.s.sure himself that she was really in the right kind of physical condition to take care of herself, of the girls. Or just because he hadn't been ready to tell her goodbye.

He had just about talked himself into turning around and leaving without saying anything to her when he saw the shadow of somebody too tall to be her, tall like a man, inside the house. Whoever it was stood in the hallway to the living room and obviously wasn't aware of Jake's presence at the door.

Who was he? And what was he doing in Grace's house? He mentally shook himself. It was really none of his business. He had no right to know.

As Jake watched, the man turned halfway and Jake saw that he had a gun in his hand. Instantly Jake slammed himself against the side of the house, where he couldn't be seen if the man looked out the front door.

Jake's heart banged hard against his ribs. He had no idea who the man was in Grace's living room. He definitely had no idea why the man had a gun, but he knew with a certainty that it didn't bode well for Grace. He'd been right. She was in trouble and he knew that if he didn't do something fast and drastic, then disaster was about to strike.

"For G.o.d's sake, Natalie, think about what you're doing," Grace pled with her sister. Grace was seated in a chair they'd dragged from the kitchen into the living room, her arms tied to the rungs of the chair back behind her.

Jimmy still held the gun trained on Grace while Natalie began unplugging the flat-screen television and the computer. "Don't forget the jewelry," he said to Natalie. "Thieves would take everything like that they could fence or p.a.w.n."

"Got it," Natalie replied.

"Natalie, don't listen to him. Look at me-I'm your sister." Grace had worried about what kind of a man her sister had hooked up with and now she knew-Natalie had hooked up with a dopehead criminal, one who had apparently filled her head with all kinds of bad things.

"You're the reason she didn't get what she deserved," Jimmy replied.

"Shut up," Grace exclaimed. "I wasn't talking to you, I was talking to my sister."