“JAKE! COME QUICK!” Miranda Creed carefully settled her eight-months-pregnant body into a chair in the kitchen, hugging a telegram to her chest that had just been delivered to their ranch outside San Antonio.
A moment later, her husband appeared in the kitchen on the run, their one-year-old son, Will, tucked under one arm, and his four-year-old daughter with his first wife, Anna Mae, straddling his hip. Miranda’s two younger brothers, Nick and Harry, along with Slim, her husband’s father-in-law, who rode in a wheeled chair, trailed close behind.
“Is it time?” Jake asked, setting the two children down at her feet. “Should I fetch the doctor?”
“You all right, Missy?” Slim asked anxiously.
“Mama, are you okay?” Anna Mae cried, tugging at Miranda’s apron.
“Mama hurt?” Will said, trying to climb into her lap.
“What can I do, Miranda?” twelve-year-old Nick said, hovering beside her chair.
“Is the baby coming?” six-year-old Harry asked, leaning his hands on her leg.
“The Pinkertons found Josie! She’s coming home!” Miranda said, a grin splitting her face from ear to ear. She reached out to tousle heads of hair and leaned to kiss little ones, before pulling Will onto what was left of her lap.
All the Wentworths had light-colored hair, but Anna Mae had her late mother’s dark brown hair and eyes, and baby Will had Jake’s black hair to go with sky-blue eyes that matched her own.
The wheezing cough that had plagued Harry at the orphanage when he was a baby was long gone, but Nick’s unruly cowlick remained to remind her of days gone by. The elder of her two brothers had sprouted like a Texas tumbleweed and, like that native plant, seemed always to be in motion, his twelve-year-old voice cracking as it wavered from boy to man.
For the past two years, Miranda’s cup had felt full to overflowing, but the liquid within had never been entirely sweet, not with the unexplained disappearance of her youngest sister always there to remind her that her family was not complete.
But Josie had been found at last and was on her way to Texas at this very moment. Miranda’s heart felt so full of joy it was hard to contain it.
Jake slid an arm around her shoulders and leaned down to kiss her hair. “I’m so glad for you, sweetheart. I know how much you’ve worried about your missing sister.”
“Josie’s really been found? No fooling?” Nick said.
“Mr. Thompson sent this telegram,” she said, picking it up from the table where she’d dropped it and waving it in the air. “He found Josie working as a maid at a place called Tearlach Castle in England. He’s putting her on a ship bound for Charleston today. She should be here within a matter of weeks.”
“Just in time to greet the new baby,” Nick said with a grin.
Miranda reached for the edge of her apron to swipe at the tears streaming down her cheeks. “I’m so happy!” she said with a laugh that ended in a sob.
“All right, all of you, go play outside,” Jake ordered. “Give your mom a little time to herself.”
Jake no longer made the distinction between mother and sister where Miranda’s brothers were concerned. For all practical purposes, Miranda had been a mother to both Nick and Harry since they were small children.
There was no grumbling from anyone, since it was a beautiful spring day, and they all had chores that were apparently going to go undone because they’d been ordered to go play.
Miranda felt Jake’s hands sliding under her arms to stand her upright, and realized he’d taken her place in the chair before he lifted her into his lap.
“I’m too heavy, Jake,” she protested.
“Not for me. Let me hold you,” he whispered, his arms tightening around her.
She leaned her head against his shoulder and sighed, a soft exhalation of relief and joy. “I can hardly believe it,” she said. “I was so afraid…”
In two long years, all the Pinkerton agency had been able to discover about Josie was that she’d been bought from the Sioux who’d captured her by the Duke of Blackthorne, who’d paid for her with his gold watch, which one of the Pinkertons had recovered.
With that much information, it should have been simple to find her sister. But Josie seemed to have disappeared from the ship that brought her to England. The Duke of Blackthorne had been inaccessible, and inquiries to the duke’s solicitor had provided no information about anyone named Josephine Wentworth. No further sign of her sister had been found in England. She’d simply disappeared.
Miranda wondered how Mr. Thompson, one of the many Pinkertons she’d hired and sent out across the country—and around the world—had located Josie at last. Although, it didn’t really matter how she’d been found. The important thing was that she had been found.
“I want to send word to Hannah and Hetty. I want them to be here when Josie arrives.”
“I know you’ve been as anxious to reunite with your other sisters as you have been to see Josie,” Jake said. “But perhaps you should wait to have everyone come until after the baby arrives, and you’ve had time to recover your strength.”
“The sheer bliss of having my family around me will be all I need to keep me well,” Miranda assured him. “Please, Jake. I have to tell them she’s been found. They’ve been as worried as I have about Josie. Two years. That’s forever! I wonder what she’ll look like, how she’ll have grown. I can’t wait to hear what’s happened to her and why she didn’t return to us sooner.”
“Very well, love. Write down what you want in the telegrams to Hannah and Flint, and Hetty and Karl, and I’ll make sure they get sent.”
“You don’t mind if I ask my sisters to come as soon as they can?”
“I’ll add my entreaty to yours,” he said. “I guess it’s about time you and your sisters got back together and met each other’s husbands and families.”
“Don’t forget to invite both your brothers,” Miranda said. “Ransom won’t want to miss out on this reunion.”
Somehow, some way, Miranda’s sister Hannah had ended up married to Jake’s younger brother Flint, who co-owned a ranch in Wyoming with Jake’s youngest brother, Ransom.
“Your mother will be ecstatic to have her family back together,” Miranda said.
Jake scowled. “I hope you’re not suggesting I invite her husband to this reunion.”
After Jake’s father had died in the Civil War, Jake’s mother, Cricket Creed, had married a man named Alexander Blackthorne, who’d quickly claimed what should have been Jake’s inheritance. Jake had refused to move farther than Three Oaks, land that sat, like an irritating chicken bone in the throat, smack in the middle of Blackthorne’s vast—and growing—Bitter Creek empire.
“You know your mother won’t want to come without her husband and their twin boys. You have to forgive Alex someday for marrying her.”
“Why?” Jake demanded.
Miranda put a hand to his cheek, feeling the muscles in his jaw flex as he gritted his teeth. “Because you love your mother, and you don’t want to make her unhappy.”
He made a disgusted sound in his throat before admitting, “All right. Fine. I’ll invite the son of a bitch. But I don’t have to like it. And I can’t guarantee what Flint and Ransom will do or say when they lay eyes on him.”
“Thank you, Jake. Let’s let their wives worry about their behavior.”
Jake snorted. “I suppose they’re being led around by their noses by the women they love, just like I am.”
Miranda caught his nose between two fingers and giggled. “As if you do anything you don’t want to do, just because I ask it of you.”
She let go of his nose when she saw the look in his eyes.
“You know I’d kiss that rotten son of a bitch, if it would put a smile on your face,” he said seriously. “I love you, Miranda. I bless the day you walked into my life.”
“Even when I showed up with two little boys you weren’t expecting?” she said breathlessly.
He nodded, then lowered his head and kissed her as tenderly as she’d ever been kissed. “Even with those two little brats in tow.”
“Jake!” She jerked back at his description of Nick and Harry, and then saw the teasing light in his blue eyes, before they crinkled with laughter.
“Oh, you! You know you love them.”
“I do,” he admitted. “I mourned when those outlaws burned Three Oaks down. I never imagined anything could replace it—even with all your inherited millions. I had no idea that love was the thing that made Three Oaks a home. And we have more than enough of that to go around.”
“Oh, Jake.” Her eyes welled with tears, and she felt his warm lips on her cheek, kissing away the first one to fall.
He lifted his head and added, with a cheeky grin, “I also have to admit, I’m damned grateful you insisted on a house so big that we’ll have plenty of room for everyone who’s bound to show up here over the next couple of weeks.”
Miranda laughed. She laid a hand on her belly and said, “Now, if this little one will just cooperate, and wait until everyone arrives before she—”
“Or he,” Jake interjected.
“Makes an appearance,” Miranda finished, as though he hadn’t interrupted. “I promised Anna Mae a sister, if you’ll recall, and I intend to keep my promise.”
Jake nuzzled her neck below her ear. “But I promised your brothers another brother.”
Miranda chuckled. “Well, I suppose if either of them doesn’t get their wish, we’ll just have to keep on trying.”
Jake’s hands slid up to cup her breasts. “Well I, for one, will be happy to oblige.”
Miranda turned her head so her husband’s mouth could find hers, but their kiss was interrupted when Jake released his breath in an oomph and sat up straight.
“That little dickens hit me! With fists like that, it has to be a boy.”
Miranda put her hand on her belly where the kick had originated. “Our little girl is just anxious to join us.” She leaned close until their lips almost met and whispered, “Or maybe it’ll be both.”
Jake reared back. “What makes you say something like that?”
“You know twins run in my family. Admit it, I’m twice as big as I was with Will.”
“You look beautiful to me.”
She laughed. “I wish I could believe you.”
He met her gaze and said, “You’re the most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen.”
Miranda leaned her head against her husband’s chest, because the look of love in his eyes made her throat swell and her heart ache. How lucky she was to have found him! It had been terrifying to come all the way from Chicago to Texas to become a mail-order bride. It all could have turned out so very wrong. Instead, she’d married a strong, loving man who was a wonderful father to both their children and her brothers.
“Time for you to rest, sweetheart,” Jake said, standing up, shifting her in his arms, and holding her close.
Miranda’s eyes slid closed. She tired so easily these days. She hadn’t been feeling well, but she didn’t want to worry Jake, so she’d kept her inability to keep food down a secret. Whether he wanted to admit it or not, she’d gotten much larger around the middle with this pregnancy. Was it twins? She worried that two small babies would have a harder time surviving than one large one. On the other hand, one very large baby might be a lot more difficult to deliver.
“Don’t forget to send the telegrams,” she murmured as he settled her in their bed.
“I won’t forget.”
She felt him spread a blanket over her, before he leaned down and kissed her forehead. The last thing she remembered was the door closing with a quiet click as he left the room.