In honor of Father’s Day, I’m sharing a snippet from The Cowboy’s Triple Surprise. Well. . . okay, this is more than just a snippet, but you can’t rush a daddy through his first sight of his first THREE babies!
Shay glanced past him to the doorway, maybe hoping someone would come along to kick him out. Then she stared across the room, as if searching for an answer from the babies. Finally, she looked back at him.
“Hey,” Tyler said, raising his purchases slightly. “I’m in charge of the new-baby welcome wagon.” Stupidest remark he’d ever made. And yet his heart lightened when her lips curled slightly in a reluctant one-sided smile. “How are you doing?”
“Okay.”
That didn’t tell him much more than “fine.” “Are you sleeping all right?”
“Sleep? What’s that?”
At least she still had a sense of humor. “Eating okay?”
She nodded. “I have to, since I’m feeding three.”
“So.” He cleared his throat. “Mind if I come in?”
“You already have.”
It wasn’t the warmest reply he might have gotten, but it would have to do. A look around him proved, sure enough, he had edged a step into the room. He couldn’t back out now.
“Thought you might like this.” He gestured with the mug and crossed the space between them to set it on the small table beside her. The balloons tied to the scuttled sideways above them like clouds in a driving wind.
“Thanks.”
Smiling, he shrugged and held up the stuffed animals. “Didn’t want anybody feeling left out.”
She nodded, her eyes suddenly glistening.
Just as suddenly, he couldn’t think of another thing to say.
Over against one wall, three cribs stood in a row.
“Want to take a peek?” she asked.
His throat tightened, and now he couldn’t have spoken even if he’d come up with something else to discuss. Jed and Paz had said the babies were in a special room of their own. He hadn’t thought about seeing them here. He didn’t intend to walk over to them. But when a new mom sat looking at you the way Shay looked at him, you really didn’t have a choice.
He clutched the stuffed animals, took a deep breath and nodded. As he took his first steps across the room, his legs threatened to give way. He attempted to tread lightly, not wanting the sound of his boots clomping on the tile floor to startle the occupants of the cribs.
He needn’t have worried. They all looked sound asleep.
His throat tightened another notch. The babies were tinier than he’d expected and wrapped in blankets, blue for the boys and a pink one for the girl. He had heard Paz tell Tina and Jane their names and the order of their births. The same as the order of their cribs, with each name posted on a plastic card at the headboard.
Timothy. Jamie. Bree.
Gripping the stuffed animals, he looked down at the babies again.
Jamie and Bree lay curled up, completely covered and apparently comfortable in their blankets. Big brother Timothy had worked one hand free. On the edge of the blanket he had rested his fist, no bigger than a walnut and just about as wrinkled.
The sight of that fist, of the babies themselves, suddenly made it hard for him to catch his breath.
The Cowboy’s Triple Surprise is one
of the latest books in
The Hitching Post Hotel series.
Continuing characters make appearances from book to book, but each story in the series stands alone,
with its own Happy-Ever-After ending.
Amazon Barnes & Noble Books-A-Million
Harlequin IndieBound Kobo
Thanks for stopping by,
and Happy Father’s Day!
