THOUGH SUNNY HAD fallen asleep almost before she had fully crawled into her bed the night before, she awoke bright and early. The combination of fussy babies across the hall and a particularly enthusiastic rooster made sure of that. Neither babies nor roosters cared about her body clock being out of whack because of her recent travel.
The moment she heard a thump that sounded like crutches from her dad’s room, she tossed back her covers.
“I’ve got them, Dad,” she called out.
“You should rest some more,” he replied as she reached her bedroom door, which she’d left open so she could hear if Lily and Liam needed her in the night. Either they hadn’t or she’d slept through their cries.
“I’m good. Remember, I’m here so you can get some rest.”
And convince you to sell your life’s work. Our family’s legacy.
She mentally shook off the scolding her conscience was giving her.
“I’m not an invalid, you know.”
She walked up to her dad, placed her hands on his shoulders. “I’m fully aware. I would never think of suggesting you are. However, facts are facts, and those facts are that you are not as young as you once were, bones take longer to heal the older we get and caring for two toddlers is quite an undertaking even when you have two fully functioning legs.”
Her dad narrowed his eyes at her. “I hate when you use logic against me.”
Sunny laughed. “I’d think you’d be happy that my logic got you out of changing a few poopy diapers.”
“You have a point.”
She pointed down the hallway. “Go on into the kitchen. There should be coffee ready.”
Once he was pointed in the right direction and thumping toward caffeine, she shifted her attention to her unhappy niece and nephew.
“Now, what’s all this fuss about?” she asked as she entered the nursery.
With sunshine streaming in through the windows, the room was a level of cheerful that didn’t match the twins’ current mood. Amanda had liked bright colors and had decorated the nursery with eye-popping color that she’d been convinced the babies would like.
The familiar pang of loss squeezed Sunny’s chest when she remembered how Amanda never got to see how Liam seemed particularly drawn to red and Lily was an equal-opportunity lover of color. One of the most wrong things to ever exist in the universe was children not being able to grow up knowing their mother’s embrace and smiles. Or a mother who had carried those babies with love and care being robbed of the chance to watch them grow.
She pushed the sad thoughts aside, knowing that she had a right to them but not wanting to communicate her sadness to the babies.
Two new diapers and fresh, baby-scented clothes later, she toted brother and sister into the kitchen that still looked exactly as it had when her mother was alive except for a couple of appliances that had been replaced when their predecessors bit the dust.
The way her dad’s face lit up at the sight of the babies, as if he hadn’t seen them in months, made Sunny smile.
“What?” he asked when she laughed a little under her breath.
“Grandpa is totally head over heels for these two.”
“Guilty as charged.” He reached out and shook Liam’s little hand as Sunny placed him in his high chair.
When the twins were both secured in their chairs, Sunny set about making breakfast that included fresh eggs from the coop out back where the noisy rooster resided. She found herself whistling as she worked in the same space where her mother had once done the same. Despite the losses they’d all endured there was still a lot of love to be had in this cheery room.
She paused in placing bacon in a pan and took in the scene before her. And knew today wasn’t going to be the day she brought up selling the ranch either. She couldn’t put it off too long, but she simply couldn’t bring herself to throw a bomb in the midst of the happiness that her dad had been able to scrape together after the accident that had claimed his son and daughter-in-law.
“What are you planning to do today?” her dad asked a few minutes later when she put a plate of scrambled eggs, bacon and toast in front of him.
“No definite plans. Anything you need me to do?”
“Take a piece of mail back to Dean. A bill of his got stuck inside some of my junk-mail flyers.”
“You two are playing hot potato with your mail.”
“I don’t know what’s up at the mail-sorting center but I got something last week that was supposed to be delivered to someone in Cody.”
Sunny took a couple of bites of her own food before turning her attention to feeding the twins.
“You three should get outside today,” her dad said. “I haven’t been able to do that since my fall.”
“Maybe we’ll go see those kittens Dean mentioned.”
For some reason she imagined Dean holding a tiny kitten with as much tenderness as he’d held Lily the night before. The image caused the strangest sensation that she couldn’t quite describe, kind of like a flutter of anxiety mixed with the enjoyment brought by indulging in a decadent dessert.
What a strange thought.
After breakfast, she settled the twins in the playpen with a healthy variety of toys, then set about some housekeeping chores and handling a few things for work, mainly conveying information that Heidi, her colleague who was filling in for her on a trip to Singapore, would need for the upcoming meetings.
“You still enjoying your job?” her dad asked from where he’d been reading the latest issue of the Valley Post, the local paper her best friend, Maya, managed to keep afloat on a shoestring budget.
“I am.” Maybe she could gradually ease into the idea of him moving to LA. “I often wish you were with me on some of the trips. Lots of beautiful places to see.”
“Can’t imagine any place more beautiful than what’s right outside my front door.”
She couldn’t argue that this valley was indeed beautiful. Still...
“True. I sometimes forget all that my own backyard has to offer because I’m traveling so much.”
“I’m sure the weather is nice, but you couldn’t pay me to put up with that traffic.”
Okay, this was not going well. Time to retreat and plan a new method of approach.
“I guess every place has its pros and cons.”
Her dad just grunted in reply.
When his best buddy, Tom Rifkin, came by, Sunny left them to chat and took the kids outside. Holding their hands, she allowed them to walk beside her but not toddle off into possible danger. At the rate their little legs could carry them it took forever to reach the barn.
Sunny glanced around to see if Dean was nearby, but neither he nor any of the other ranch hands were visible. Instead, she greeted the couple of horses that were standing in their stalls, swallowing a lump as she rubbed the forehead of Copper the bay that had been her brother’s. She followed the sound of kitten mews to an unoccupied stall.
“Aww, look at the kitties.” She squatted between the twins and pointed toward the six kittens and their mama.
“Ki,” Lily said, making Sunny smile.
Lily was more vocal than her brother, though neither of them had much of a vocabulary. Another of her heartstrings got tugged at the fact that babies’ first words were usually mama and dada but Lily and Liam had neither. What would be their first clear words without those usual family figures in their lives? It’d probably be some version of grandpa, which would be both sweet and sad.
A fluffy little orange kitten approached them on wobbly legs. Mama cat kept her eyes on her little one but must not have deemed the newcomers a threat because she didn’t move to intervene. Likewise, Sunny kept part of her attention on the mama cat. She wanted the twins to enjoy playing with the kittens but not get scratched in the process.
“You have to be gentle with them.” Sunny demonstrated care in petting the kitten, hoping that the combination of words and actions would allow the twins to understand what she meant.
The orange kitty was soon joined by one of its black-and-white siblings, allowing each of the twins to have a little fluffball to pet. When Liam started to pet too forcefully, Sunny took his hand and showed him again the proper way of handling a creature so small. When the kitten he was petting rubbed its little head against his palm, he giggled.
“They sound like they’re enjoying themselves.”
Sunny looked up to find Dean standing outside the stall. Had his voice always been that deep? Had she officially been away from Jade Valley long enough that she was forgetting traits of people she’d known her entire life?
“They’re not the only ones. Kittens are adorable at this age.”
“Yeah, I admit to sitting and playing with them probably more than I should.”
The image of tall, lanky Dean Wheeler sitting in a stall with kittens crawling all over him made her smile.
“I can imagine they’re hard to resist.”
“Yeah, but the guys like to tease me about it.”
“Well, I for one think it’s sweet.”
“Don’t let the guys hear you say that or I’ll never hear the end of it.”
“Dean Wheeler, afraid of a little good-natured ribbing, what is the world coming to?”
He rolled his eyes at her, and she laughed in response. Her laughter drew Lily’s attention, and when she noticed Dean with his arms draped over the top of the stall door she held out her own.
“How is it that my niece has a crush at barely over a year old?”
“What can I say? Kids seem to like me for some reason.”
Maybe because kids were excellent judges of character, and Dean had always been a fundamentally good person. A good friend when she’d needed one. When her mom had died, Maya had been the ever-supportive best friend. But it had been Dean who’d been there to listen to her in her most fragile moments when she’d been on the ranch, surrounded by memories of her mom but trying to hide most of her sorrow from her devastated dad.
Dean had seen her cry. Not many people had.
Dean opened the stall and the moment he lowered himself to sit beside her, Lily crawled up into his lap.
Sunny huffed out a little laugh and shifted her attention to Liam, who was still transfixed by the fluffy kitten he was now petting with exaggerated care. The image filled her heart with love. Because she lived so far away, she wasn’t able to see the twins that often. But that didn’t make her love them any less, and not only because they were all she had left of her brother. They were sweet and lovable on their own. Even at such a young age she was able to distinguish their personalities.
If everything went as planned, she’d get to see them all the time and really be able to watch them grow up. She’d be able to do what Jason and Amanda couldn’t.
“You okay?” Dean asked.
“Yeah. Hard to escape memories, I guess.”
“I miss them too.”
Sunny hated that she hadn’t thought of how Dean might be faring. Even though he wasn’t technically family, he’d now lived on this ranch longer than either she or Jason. He’d gone to school alongside both of them. While she’d been at college and then working in LA, he and Jason had worked together every day. They’d been about as close to being brothers as two guys who didn’t share parentage could be.
“Thanks for being here for my dad.”
“Where else would I be?”
Though he hadn’t meant that as a criticism of her any more than her dad had, it stung nonetheless.
“I’m not like you,” he said. “I didn’t have the intelligence to do anything different.”
“Don’t say that.”
He glanced over at her with a slight smile. “I seem to remember you saving me from failing senior English.”
“Everyone has things they’re good at and things they’re not. I, if you remember, am squeamish with touching fish. Something that you and Jason used to exploit much to my displeasure.”
Dean smiled. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“Don’t lie in front of the babies. I have vivid memories of the two of you chasing me, threatening to put flopping fish you’d just caught down my shirt.”
“That was Jason’s idea. I was only going along with it, him being the boss’s son and all.”
Sunny made a pfft sound of disbelief. “I don’t believe you for a second.”
Liam tried to pick up the kitten and it squeaked, causing mama kitty to tense. Sunny quickly pulled Liam onto her lap and soothed the kitten with her hand and its mama with her voice.
“You’re good with them,” Dean said.
“Kids or cats?”
“Both.”
“Well, I’ve always liked animals, and I’d protect these two with my life.” She hugged Liam to her and reached out to smooth Lily’s soft hair, which had grown a good bit in the six months since the last time Sunny had seen her.
Dean looked at Sunny with an intensity that surprised her, but it was gone in the space of a blink.
“Let’s hope it never comes to that.”
When the mama kitty appeared to have had her fill of the human invaders handling her babies, Sunny placed the kitten that Liam was petting closer to its mother.
“I think it’s time we made our exit.”
Lily and Liam disagreed, crying when she and Dean got to their feet, each carrying a twin.
“The downside of playing with cute kittens, having to leave cute kittens,” she said.
“You can come back tomorrow,” Dean said to Lily, wiping a fat tear off her cheek.
Lily responded by crying harder.
“Well, I guess her crush on you has worn off.”
“I knew I couldn’t compete with kittens.”
Something about the way he said that made her wonder why he wasn’t married with kids and pets of his own. She had a reason for not being married—a crazy overseas travel schedule and long hours at work. But while Dean no doubt worked long hours too, he was always here. Was he dating at least? Not that the pool of potential romantic partners was extensive in Jade Valley, especially once you graduated high school and almost everyone who stayed in town was paired up.
As they exited the barn, Sunny looked around, trying to figure out some way to get the kiddos to stop crying before they returned to the house.
“How about we take them for a walk down by the river?” Dean said. “The sound of running water is calming, right?”
She looked up at him, squinting since the sun was behind his head.
“Were you a nanny in previous life?”
He snorted. “I seriously doubt that.”
“I don’t know. I’d say odds are at least fifty-fifty.”
Dean shook his head and started walking toward the river. Sunny smiled and followed, pointing out everything from cows to birds flying in the air to Liam in an attempt to cheer him up.
It took a few minutes but after they reached the rocky riverbank and Dean showed the twins how to stack little flat rocks that had been smoothed by the continual flow of water, Lily’s and Liam’s tears ceased.
“Yep, you were definitely a magical nanny in a previous life.”
“Careful or I might catch a fish and chase you with it.”
Sunny leaned down next to Lily and pointed at Dean.
“See that man, Lily?” she faux whispered. “Don’t trust him. He has nefarious intentions.”
They joked a bit more before falling into companionable silence. Sunny leaned her head back, closed her eyes and inhaled deeply of the fresh air with tinges of pine, sunbaked earth and river moisture.
“Looks like the twins aren’t the only ones enjoying this spot,” Dean said.
Sunny opened her eyes and took in the picturesque scene painted with the river in the foreground and the mountains in the distance.
“I always thought it would be nice to have a gazebo here overlooking the river.”
“Did you wish for that all those times you sat down here doing homework or reading?”
She nodded. “I imagined it having a table where I could eat or work, a comfy chair, a hammock.”
“That’s one crowded gazebo.”
She smiled. “True.”
They were quiet for a few moments before Dean pitched a pebble into the river.
“I told your dad I bet he could bring in some more income if he built a few cabins along the river and rented them out.”
“That’s a great idea. Diversification is helping a lot of ranches survive when they might otherwise fold.”
“Unfortunately, your dad doesn’t agree with you.”
She couldn’t say she was surprised. Jonathon Breckinridge was the definition of set in one’s ways. The task ahead of her seemed even more monumental now that she was back on the ranch than she’d allowed herself to admit while in LA.
“What’s wrong?”
Sunny turned to sit facing Dean.
“Can you keep a secret?”
“If you ask me to.”
Sunny fiddled with some pebbles in front of her, unsure how to approach the topic. If she was this agitated telling Dean about her plans, how was she going to broach the subject with her dad?
“I have another reason for coming back for a visit other than helping Dad out with the twins.”
“Oh?”
Was it her imagination or was there hesitance in Dean’s response, as if he wasn’t sure he wanted to hear anything further?
“I think it’s time for him to sell the ranch and he and the twins come to live with me in California.”
She glanced up from where she’d been stacking her own little pile of stones and was surprised by the look on Dean’s face. If she was forced to describe it, she’d say he looked as if he’d taken a powerful jolt from an electric fence.