“What time’s your flight, Ma?”

  “There!” Her voice came over the line. “I just got my boarding pass,” she told him, obviously unaware that he’d just been spit out from a cyclone of panic. “I land at three thirty your time, Jordie,” she said. “Now don’t worry about me. I’m booking my room next. There’s a nice new hotel not far from Gloria’s apartment. And I’ll get a cab.”

  Gloria Baron. Their next-door neighbor from long ago. She’d been out to stay with Layla a time or two.

  “I’ll come pick you up, Ma,” he said, not at all sure how he was going to wing everything that was coming at him.

  Layla in a hotel that night would be good, at least. Give her time to catch up with her friend.

  And give him the chance to prepare Mia for the next potentially painful moments she was going to have to face in order to share parenting with him. He’d be taking the girls with him when he left the ranch in the morning.

  For once, just once, couldn’t he arrive on her doorstep with no pain involved?

  * * *

  Mia had the best day ever. Partially because she had the girls to herself—or rather, was their only parent—for the first time in two days. And a lot because she was finally starting to let herself believe that she was going to get to mother her children for the rest of her life.

  Mostly, though, it was because Ruby and Violet were hilarious and sweet and loving and needy and precocious and innocent and a little naughty sometimes and she never knew what was going to be coming out of their mouths. She’d burst out with laughter. Or tear up at the profoundness.

  And because she was now in for life, she let it happen. Let herself experience it all fully.

  She thought about calling Lincoln and Sara. Letting her siblings know that there were two more children in the family to guard and love and spoil.

  But she wasn’t ready to deal with their reaction to her agreement with the twins’ father. She and Jordon needed a little time to themselves, to sort out the overall parameters of exactly how they were going to make their situation work, to figure out how to deal with each other, before getting family involved.

  She shuddered to think about Lincoln and Jordon in the same room together. Certainly didn’t want the girls around for that first meeting.

  She didn’t even want to be there for it.

  Testosterone overload to the max.

  Between her brother and the father of her children.

  No, thank you.

  Mia was particularly relieved she’d held off the temptation to notify her family about her most major life change when, later that Monday evening, Jordon texted and asked if she could come down to the cabin for a bit.

  When she left her office, saw him sitting outside in one of the cabin’s two wooden chairs on the small deck off the living room, she got a sinking feeling in her stomach.

  He had the baby monitor.

  But none of the girls’ things were there. Not the cowboy boots they’d already learned to take off before going inside. Not the swimsuits she’d left drying on the rail.

  Could be that Jordon had become a clean freak during their ten years apart, but one flash of his hotel room over the weekend put that hope to death.

  By the time she reached him, sinking had turned to sick. Knotted and sick.

  His face didn’t look any more welcoming than the barren porch.

  “What?” she asked him, keeping her tone low in deference to the other cabins situated around the grounds.

  She could hear a child counting loudly, as though playing hide and seek. Giggling. A television.

  And tried to take them in, focus on them.

  On families having fun.

  “I couldn’t tell her no, Mia.”

  Jordon’s words hit her. He’d been speaking, softer even than she’d done, and she’d missed his first words.

  Tell who no?

  One of the girls?

  She’d seen them for dinner. Grilled hamburgers at the cabin. A Jordon surprise. Ruby had eaten a whole one. Violet almost had. Both girls had been busy, taking bites and then running off from the outdoor picnic table to explore something one of them found in the dirt. Or to watch kids from the next cabin playing hide and seek.

  “I’m sorry,” she said. “Tell who no about what?”

  “My mother’s in Phoenix.”

  She stared. Felt her face grow stiff. Layla Lawrence had been like a mother to her.

  Once upon a time.

  In fairy-tale land.

  “I don’t understand.”

  “I told her about the girls.”

  So much for them parenting together. She’d held off notifying her family, and without even telling her, he’d told his.

  “When?”

  “Last week.”

  That long ago. The fact that he hadn’t shared that news with her hurt. Far more than it should have done.

  She’d talked to Lincoln. He’d known that Jordon’s kids were staying at her place. She hadn’t told Jordon that her brother had called.

  But she also hadn’t told her brother that Jordon’s kids were at the ranch. Nor had she told them that the twins were hers, too.

  Crushing disappointment continued to reverberate through her. Blocking coherent thought while she sat with the pain.

  “Did you tell her that you were keeping them then, too?”

  It shouldn’t matter.

  But it did.

  She’d thought that she and Jordon had been alone in their private world the whole past week. Adjusting to the shock of being parents together, first, before telling anyone else close to them.

  “I told her I was thinking about it.”

  Something he hadn’t told Mia until just a couple of days before. It was clear that his loyalty did not lie with her.

  And there was no reason it should. He owed her nothing.

  She’d just fallen right back into her trap from the past. Believing what she needed to believe, blinding her to what was really there.

  She nodded. Wished the chair rocked.

  Or that she could get off it and head to the barn.

  To her office.

  To a glass of wine in the tub.

  But she had her daughters to think of.

  Even if he was about to take them from her.

  Layla had come through. Could easily replace his immediate need for Mia.

  There was still the court ruling to hope for.

  And so...she sat.

  Chapter Seventeen

  “She made the reservations before I even knew what she was doing.” Jordon got out what he considered to be the most important point for the moment. “Today,” he added. “She just made them today.”

  “Why today?” Mia’s calm was unnerving. Her question holding mere curiosity, like she was talking to a stranger.

  Making it clear to him that he was a stranger to her.

  Panicked all over again, fighting back the debilitating doubts that he couldn’t afford, he sat forward. Trying to figure out what to say to get her to like him again. Even a little bit.

  And came up with nothing but the truth.

  Between him and Mia, for him, it would be only the truth until the day he died. “Because I called her this morning to tell her that we were keeping the girls.”

  “We?” Her head cocked. The we had hit a chord.

  A good one or a bad one? He couldn’t read her.

  Was attacked by a frustration surge.

  “Of course, we.”

  “Does she know that we aren’t a couple?”

  He hadn’t specifically said so. But...

  “Yes,” he said. “I told her that I’d have the girls during the school year and that they’d be spending summers on the ranch with you.”

  Her lips seemed a little less thin. Could be he was just imagining that. Seeing what he wanted to see.

  “And then she just arbitrarily decided to fly out?”

  He’d known Mia wouldn’t welcome the tension of having his mother around. He hadn’t expected the height of the walls the news would put between them.

  Another something he wasn’t seeing, he was sure.

  Didn’t help him deal with the fallout any.

  Most particularly because he hadn’t even given her the bad news.

  “Yeah,” he said, and, because he didn’t want to get into the rest of what he had to tell her, he went another direction. One he’d have taken in the past.

  “It’s odd, Mia,” he said. “You know how she was always so...distant...”

  “Your mother was never distant, Jordon. She just gave you your space.”

  Throwing his hands up, nodding, he gave her that. “But her whole bearing...she just takes stuff, doesn’t get worked up about any of it. Good or bad.”

  “I always admired that about her,” Mia said. And he stared. Mia had talked to his mom. He’d never asked what about. Women talked.

  But looking at her, watching her calm...even as her instant distance had told him he’d triggered something in her...had Layla taught her that? And he just hadn’t seen the change happening back then?

  “She didn’t used to be that way,” he told her then. “It happened after my father died. I’ve always thought that a part of her died with him.”

  He’d never told anyone that before. About a part of his mother dying.

  Maybe not even, consciously, himself.

  Darkness had fallen, earlier than in New York, as it did in Arizona. He’d forgotten that until the past week.

  Had forgotten so many things.

  Like the way Mia’s hair seemed to speak a language of its own. Enticing him with its messiness, even as it warned that she wouldn’t be messed with.

  Intriguing him with character that was all Mia, though he knew he could no longer run his fingers through it.

  “She was pretty chill,” Mia was saying, as he stared at her hair. Trying not to feel any of the emotions trying to slam through him. At least Mia was talking to him. “I just thought she was always that way.”

  Because he’d never talked to her about the way his life had changed after his father died. In college, he’d been all about his studies, his buddies, her and the future.

  He shook his head then. To rid himself of the dust coming from disturbed cobwebs. And to disavow her last statement, too.

  “That’s the thing,” he said, leaning forward, hoping he could help her understand why he was allowing a third party to descend upon them before they’d had a chance to even figure out how “them” was going to work.

  “Last week, when I called her to tell her I couldn’t make our weekly dinner because I was in Phoenix...”

  “...you have weekly dinner with your mom?”

  Her shock should have surprised him. Sadly, it didn’t. He’d put off gatherings with his mother when he and Mia had been in college. Finding all kinds of excuses to do so.

  “I do,” he told her. “Every Tuesday.”

  When she said nothing more, he continued, “I had to tell her why I was in Phoenix and, for a second there...it was weird. She started, almost grilling me. At least more of a grill than she’s done since I was about the girls’ age.”

  The girls. Their girls.

  Their daughters.

  The magnitude of having kids hit him once again. Filling him so full of emotions, he didn’t know what to do with any of it. And that they were also Mia’s...

  He took a breath. Got himself back on track. “Then today, she was like this woman I didn’t even know. All full of...just full. No way I could suck any of that out of her.”

  “You think it’s because of Ruby and Violet?” Mia’s tone had softened. And he thought about just letting her go to bed thinking that Layla’s visit was all he’d had to tell her that night.

  She’d figure out the rest. As soon as she had time to think about logistics. But if they could just say good-night on a good note...

  “I do,” he told her.

  And she smiled. An honest, full of goodness Mia smile.

  “Where is she now?” Mia was frowning again.

  He told her about the arrangements Layla had made before telling him she was coming. About the hotel by Gloria’s place.

  Was building up to the point where he told her that he’d be taking the girls with him to the city in the morning, knowing that her next question was going to involve Layla meeting her granddaughters, when Mia said, “She has to come back with you tomorrow night, Jordon. I have a family of only three who wanted a two-bedroom place, but I didn’t have any available. I’m sure they’ll switch with you. And even if they won’t, I have plenty of room, as you well know. She can stay at the house...”

  He stared.

  “You want my mother here?”

  “Of course! She was wonderful to me, almost like a mother sometimes...” Coming from a woman who’d lost her own mother to a bizarre strike of lightning when she was not much older than Violet and Ruby, Jordon could hardly believe what he was hearing.

  He’d known the two got along. Well.

  But Mia had never said...

  Or he’d never listened?

  How did he know?

  It was all so long ago...

  “You haven’t seen her in ten years.” Someone had to see that his thinking wasn’t all backward. If Mia had cared so deeply about his mother, why hadn’t she stayed in touch?

  “She’s your mother, Jordon. The only family you had. There was no way I was going to put her in the middle of us...”

  No way she was going to tell his mother he’d lied to her for four years. Or let Layla see how badly he’d broken her heart.

  “Or tell her that you loved Shelter Valley more than you loved me.”

  The words fell out of him again. Shaming him.

  But he wasn’t the only bad guy in their situation. Yeah, he’d been a bit full of himself in college. And he’d lacked certain...perspective.

  But he’d truly loved Mia.

  And the look on her face told him he’d gone too far. Trespassed where they’d agreed not to go in order to make parenting work in a healthy manner for their daughters. “I’m sorry,” he said. And then, before she could take back the offer that was going to let everyone continue on in a positive form for a few more days at least, he said, “And if you’re sure you don’t mind, I will most definitely bring Ma here tomorrow after work.”

  Mia studied him for a second, her eyes glowing by one of the many security lights keeping campers safe in the desert, and then said, “Good.”

  That was it. Just good.

  But she didn’t get up and leave. Or walk out without a good-night, which had kind of become their habit as of late.

  She talked about making a nice dinner for all of them. About letting the girls introduce his mother to Macy. And show her their crafts.

  “Thank you,” Jordon said when she finally fell silent.

  “For what?” She was looking him in the eye again.

  For being you, he wanted to say. Couldn’t make it that personal. “For welcoming my mother into your home. I know it’s not going to be easy.”

  With a shrug, she didn’t deny the awkwardness. The painful memories and lost dreams that being with his mother might engage. “She’s their grandmother, Jordon,” she whispered. “The only one they’re going to have. They need her. And they’re lucky to have her.”

  Reminding him that one of the things that had bonded the two of them early on, was the way they’d both grown up in similar circumstance. Coming from a one-parent home, having lost a parent to death, and having no grandparents.

  “They’re lucky to have you, too,” he told her then.

  And had to look away before he made the moment between them very personal.

  * * *

  She had to leave.

  Danger loomed all over the porch. In the air. The scents. The sounds. Because all of them seemed to encase her and Jordon into their own little world.

  But she couldn’t go yet.

  She had a motherly duty that had just been pushed to the forefront.

  “When are we going to tell the girls that we’re their parents?”

  Mariah O’Connell had suggested that Jordon do so as soon as he decided to keep them. But only if he decided to do so. She’d read the report.

  “Four-year-olds aren’t going to understand biology,” she quoted from the child life specialist’s advice. “They won’t need to know details, or that we’re their biological parents, until they’re older.”

  “We’re their new parents,” he said, nodding. He’d read the report, too, she knew.

  “Ones who don’t live together,” she added quickly, when the air got too thick. And then moved on to her destination. “We can’t introduce your mother as their new grandmother until they know we, or at least you, are their parent.”

  “We,” Jordon said, sounding almost irritated with her.

  Bringing on the urge for her to smile again. She didn’t. But she savored that one word. Spoken as though he didn’t like being doubted.

  Like her being in the girls’ lives really did matter to him.

  A lot.

  But there were other matters at hand.

  Ones she’d been considering on and off all day.

  With Jordon’s decision made, and them having finished going through the girls’ boxes...with his having hired the estate company, he had no more reason to stay.

  Would he be taking the girls with him? Or...since it was summer for another few weeks at least, did they stay with her while he went back and got his life in New York ready for them?

  He’d have people to notify, furniture to buy...

  “We’ll tell them tomorrow, before I head to Phoenix. I’ll stay here until they wake up in the morning. Do what I can from my phone...”

  “You’re welcome to use my computer...” Thoughts were flying swiftly. “I’ll come over in the morning, sit with the girls, and you can work in my office. When they get up, I’ll get them bathed and dressed and then bring them up to the house for breakfast.”