had a snake tattooed on his neck, remember?—at first I thought he was going to rough you up. Then he started blubbering. I’ll never forget the way he hugged that baby and said he couldn’t bear it if anything went wrong.”
“They came to see me on their son’s first birthday,” Gina recalled. “He’s doing well. I guess my horror stories worked.”
“So don’t tell me you’re a coward,” Katie finished. “Hey, look at the time! I promised to meet some friends at a club in ten minutes. Want to come along? There’s a bluegrass band tonight.”
“No, thanks. I’ve got some heavy thinking to do.” She gave her friend a pat on the arm. “Thanks for your support.”
“Any time.”
Operating on automatic pilot, Gina strolled back to her boardinghouse and went upstairs. Entering her room was like returning to the home where she’d lived with her parents until four years ago. Her mother’s china figurines filled a display case. Dainty lace curtains hung at the window, and Victorian-style furniture gave a sense of stepping into the past. It was a refuge from disappointments, from stress, from the modern era.
Gina got a chill when she tried to picture how she would feel, returning to this room or one like it after months as Mason’s temporary wife. How could she expect to fit back into her old life?
If she didn’t care so much, perhaps she might regard the temporary marriage as an extended vacation. But she did care. She cared too much.
She wasn’t willing to chance a heartbreak that would cut so deeply. Better to live with might-have-beens than to lie here aching, night after night, for something she’d briefly possessed and could never have again.
For her own self-preservation, her answer had to be no.
Chapter Three
Was he being selfish? Mason had never asked himself that question before. He asked it a lot that night at the ranch, and the next morning on the two-hour drive to Austin.
All his life, until now, the future and his place in it had spread before him as neatly as the procession of the seasons. He and Rance would grow up to take over the ranch. They would run it together, expand their operations and leave a rich heritage for the next generation.
For years, they’d kept on course. After their father’s death, when Mason was twenty-three and Rance eighteen, the younger brother had taken over the horse-training operation while the elder focused on cattle and oil. Although both preferred working with animals, their finances depended on the pumps that worked with steady efficiency around the range.
Mason didn’t have to question why he did what he did. It was simply there, a force of nature. He was a rancher, he was his father’s son and he was Rance’s brother.
Two months ago, when he received the phone call telling him Rance was dead, he’d desperately turned his attention to saving Amy. Then she, too, had slipped away.
Now he had Daisy and Lily. He needed them more than anything. A man could only rebuild his future if there was a purpose to it.
Was he being fair in asking Gina to come to the ranch with him? For all her skill in the nursery, she looked as delicate as an orchid. How would she cope with a hardened man like him, one who might be gone all day and return exhausted and covered with dirt?
Nevertheless, Gina attracted him more than any woman he’d ever met. He hoped she would say yes, and he didn’t care if he was being selfish.
If she agreed even to a short-term union, there was hope she’d want to stay. Maybe he could win her, despite logic and everything he knew about himself.
Mason wasn’t a man to give up easily. Not with his daughters, and not with the woman he wanted.
At Maitland Maternity, he parked in the visitors’ lot and went inside. The place seemed different—something about the light. Or the dimensions. Or the fact that, after today, he would no longer be a part of its daily goings-on.
“Darn.” He stopped in the lobby. “I forgot to get going-home clothes.” When a grandmotherly woman smiled at him, he realized he’d spoken aloud.
“Try the gift shop,” she said.
“Much obliged.”
He checked inside. There was a refrigerated case full of flowers, along with shelves of paperback books, magazines and stuffed animals, almost as many as he’d already bought for the girls’ room at home. In one corner, he found baby rattles, booties, diapers and some clothing, but if the store carried little dresses, they must be sold out.
He was willing to bet Margaret would arrive with an armload of gowns and bonnets. No doubt she would count it as evidence of her superior parental fitness.
Had she and Stuart already landed in town? Mason hoped not. He wanted to complete the paperwork and whisk the girls back to the ranch before his sister could complicate the situation.
Possession might not be nine-tenths of the law when it came to children, but it would give him an edge. He intended to take any advantage he could find.
It was after eight. Gina would be on duty, fresh and bright as always. Mason speeded his footsteps.
He saw her through the nursery window, feeding one of the girls. The way she bent over the baby on her lap, he couldn’t see her expression.
Then she glanced toward one of the other nurses, and he noted the puffiness under her eyes. She’d been crying.
Chagrin filled him. A woman about to marry the man she adored wouldn’t be crying about it. Gina must have decided to give up the girls, rather than spend even a few months with him.
Mason squared his shoulders. He couldn’t make her love him, but he didn’t intend to take no for an answer. For his daughters’ sake, he had to give it his best shot.
Surely Gina wouldn’t really mind spending time at the ranch, as long as he left her strictly alone. She’d said herself that she loved the girls enough to want to adopt them.
Moving away from the window, he allowed himself a couple of deep breaths. So far, she hadn’t noticed him.
Suppressing his doubts, he assumed a confident air. Before he could talk to her, though, he needed to prepare by handling a few details at the administration office.
Once he cajoled her consent, he didn’t want anything to delay their departure.
GINA HAD SAID GOODBYE to hundreds of babies. Off they would go in their mothers’ arms, and she’d miss them for a few hours, until another newborn arrived. She’d cherish it for a few days or weeks, and then she would say goodbye to it, too.
As she changed the dressing on Daisy’s rapidly healing surgical wound, she wished she could detach herself as readily from the twins as from so many others. “What is it about you that makes you special?” she asked.
Daisy gripped her thumb and gazed intently into Gina’s eyes. A vise squeezed her heart.
How could she let them go? These girls felt like her daughters.
Their
