in your back pocket because you’re not getting those girls without a hell of a fight.”
God Almighty. The hits kept coming. He’d barely had time to get his feet under him from being sucker punched a minute after crossing the threshold of his childhood home, only to have Liam drop twin daughters, Grace Haines and a custody battle in his lap.
They stared at each other, neither blinking. Neither backing down. They were both stubborn enough to stand there until the cows came home, and probably would, too.
Nothing was going to get fixed this way, and with Grace’s admonition to prove he was serious about providing a stable environment for Maddie and Maggie ringing in his ears, he contemplated his mule-headed brother. He wanted help with the ranch? By God, he’d get it. And Kyle would have employment to put on his Fatherhood Résumé, which would hopefully get Grace off his back at the same time.
“Give me a job if it means so much to you that I take ranch ownership seriously. I’ll do something with the horses.”
Liam nearly busted a gut laughing, which did not improve Kyle’s grip on his temper. “You can feed them. But that’s about it. You have no training.”
And Kyle wasn’t at 100 percent physically, but no one had to know about that. His injuries mostly didn’t count anyway. It just meant he had to work that much harder, which he’d do. Those babies were worth a little agony.
“I can learn. You can’t have it both ways. Either you give me a shot at being half owner of Wade Ranch or shut up about it.”
“All right, smart-ass.” Liam tipped back his hat and jerked his chin at Kyle. “We got a whole cattle division here at Wade Ranch that’s ripe for improvement. I’ve been concentrating on the horses and letting Danny and Emma Jane handle that side. You take over.”
“Done.”
Kyle knew even less about cows than he did babies. But he hadn’t known anything about guns or explosives before joining the navy, either. BUD/S training had nearly broken him, but he’d learned how to survive impossible physical conditions, learned how to stretch his body to the point of exhaustion and still come out swinging when the next challenge reared its ugly head.
You had to start out with the mind-set that quitting wasn’t an option. Even the smallest mental slip would finish a man. So he wouldn’t slip.
Liam eyed him and shook his head. “You’re serious?”
“As a heart attack. I’ll take my best shot at the cattle side of the ranch. Just one question. What am I aiming at?”
“We have a Black Angus breeding program. Emma Jane—she’s the sales manager I hired last year—is great. She sold about two hundred head. If you want me to call you successful, double that in under six months.”
That didn’t sound too bad, especially if there was a sales manager already doing the heavy lifting. “No problem. Now drop the whole adoption idea and we’ll call it even.”
“Let me see you in action, and then we’ll talk. I have yet to see anything that tells me you’re planning to stick around. If you take off again, the babies will be mine anyway. Might as well make it legal sooner rather than later.” Liam shrugged. “You made your bed by leaving. So lie in it for a while.”
Yeah, except he’d left for very specific reasons. He and Liam had never been close, and Kyle hadn’t felt as if he was part of anything until he’d found his brothers of the heart on a SEAL team. That’s where he’d finally felt secure. He could actually care about someone again without fear of being either abandoned or betrayed.
He’d like to say he could find a way to stay at the ranch this time. But what had changed from the first time? Not much.
Just that he was a father now. And he owed his daughters a stable home life. They were amazing little creatures that he wanted to see grow up. With the additional complications of Maddie’s health problems, he couldn’t relocate them at the drop of a hat, either.
“I’m not going anywhere,” Kyle repeated for what felt like the four hundredth time.
Maybe if he kept saying it, people would believe him. Maybe he’d believe it, too.
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