LITMIR.BIZ

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      He shut off the vehicle and jumped out, hurrying to where the boy lay still in the snow. The middle boy was already crouched in the snow next to him, but his attention was focused more on his older brother than the injured younger one.

      “You’re such a dope, Hayden.” He glared. “Why’d you make him do it? Mom’s gonna kill us both now!”

      “I didn’t make him! He didn’t have to do it just because I told him to. He’s got a brain, doesn’t he?”

      “More of one than you do,” the middle boy snapped.

      Carson decided it was past time for him to step in and focus attention on the important thing, their dazed brother, who looked as if he’d had the wind and everything else knocked out of his sails.

      “Come on, kid. Talk to me.”

      The boy met his gaze, his green eyes wide and a little unfocused. After a few seconds, he drew in a deep breath and then he started to wail, softly at first and then loud enough to spook up a couple of magpies that had come to see what the commotion was about.

      “Come on, Kip. You’re okay,” the middle kid soothed, patting him on the shoulder, which only seemed to make the kid howl louder.

      What Carson knew about bawling kids would fit inside the cap of a ballpoint pen. His instincts were telling him to hop right back into his SUV and leave the boys to fend for themselves. Knowing how rowdy and reckless they were, this couldn’t be the first time one of them had taken a tumble.

      But he couldn’t do it. Not with the kid looking at him out of those drippy eyes and the other two watching him with such contrasting expressions—one hostile and the other obviously expecting him to take charge.

      The boy swiped at his tears with the sleeve of his parka and scrambled to sit up in the snow. Carson watched his efforts to make sure he wasn’t favoring any stray limbs, but nothing appeared to be damaged beyond repair.

      He would let their mother deal with it all, he decided. It would serve her right for letting them run wild. “Come on. I’ll give you all a ride back to your house.”

      The middle boy eyed him warily. “We’re not supposed to get in strangers’ cars.”

      “He’s not a stranger,” the older boy snapped with a return to that belligerence. “He’s Mr. McRaven, the dude who stole our ranch.”

      “I didn’t—” Instinctively, Carson started to defend himself, then broke off the words. How ridiculous, that he would feel compelled to offer any explanations at all to a trio of rowdy little hellions.

      “You want me to drive your little brother home or would you like to carry him all the way yourselves?” he asked.

      The older boys exchanged a glance and then Hayden, the older one, shrugged. “Whatever.”

      He personally would have preferred the latter option, especially after he scooped up the boy and carried him to the SUV, which resulted in even more tears. Again, he wished fiercely that he had just kept on driving when he’d seen them on his fence. If not for that ill-fated decision to stop, none of this would have happened and right now he would be saddling up one of his horses for a good hard ride into the snowy mountains.

      He set the boy in the backseat then turned back to the other boys. “You two coming?”

      The middle boy with the glasses nodded and climbed in beside his brother but the older one looked as if he would rather be dragged behind the SUV than accept a ride from him. After a long moment, though, he shrugged and went around to the other door.

      The only sound in the SUV as they drove the short distance up the driveway to the Wheeler house was the little one’s steady sobs and a few furtive attempts to comfort him.

      The two-story cedar farmhouse was charming in its own way, he supposed, with the shake roof and the old-fashioned swing on the wide front porch. But no one could possibly miss that a passel of children lived here. From the basketball hoop above the garage to the Santa Claus and reindeer figures in the yard to the sleds propped against the porch steps, everything shouted family.

      It was completely alien to him, and all the more terrifying because of it.

      For about half a second, he was tempted just to dump the lot of them there at their doorstep but he supposed that sort of callousness wouldn’t exactly be considered neighborly around these parts.

      Fighting his reluctance, he climbed out of the SUV and opened the rear door, then scooped out the still-crying Kip.

      They all moved together up the porch steps but before Carson could knock at the door, Hayden burst through and shouted for his mother.

      “Mom, Kip fell down off the fence by the bus stop. It was an accident. Nobody dared him or anything, he just went up by himself and slipped.”

      Warmth seeped out from the open doorway, along with the mingled aroma of cinnamon and sugar and pine.

      The comforting, enticing scents of home.

      The Wheeler boys might be wild, fatherless urchins with a distracted mother and more courage than sense. But Carson couldn’t help the niggle of envy for what they had, things they no doubt would not even appreciate until much later in their lives.

      “You can come inside,” the middle boy said shyly. “Mom doesn’t like us to leave the door open.”

      Feeling a bit encroaching for walking into her house, even at the permission of her kid, Carson took a few steps inside, just enough that he could close the door behind him.

      He instantly wondered if he had accidentally stepped into one of those annoying Christmas shops in Jackson Hole. Every inch of the foyer seemed to be decorated with greenery or muted red gingham ribbons or ornaments of some sort. A wide staircase led upstairs and the banister was a wild riot of evergreen boughs and twinkling lights. A small trio of fir trees in the corner of the landing were decorated with homespun decorations from nature—pinecones, dried orange slices, even a couple of miniature bird nests.

      Through the doorway into the living room, he caught a glimpse of a big evergreen tree, decorated with sloppy paper chains and a hodgepodge of decorations that seemed lopsided, even at a cursory glance.

      He barely had time for the few observations to register when the boys’ mother bustled into the foyer wearing a red-and-green pin-striped apron and carrying the littlest Wheeler—and the only girl of the bunch.

      Jenna stopped dead when she saw him, her ethereal blond hair slipping free of its confines, as usual. “Oh! Mr. McRaven! This is a surprise. Hayden didn’t mention you were here.”

      “I happened to be passing by in time to see the, uh, accident. I couldn’t just leave him out there.”

      “Of course you couldn’t,” she said. Though her tone was polite enough, he was quite sure he caught a whiff of skepticism. He tried not to let it rankle.

      “Thank you for your kindness in bringing them home. I’m very sorry they troubled you again.”

      Her tone was cooler than the icicles hanging off her porch. The Widow Wheeler didn’t like him very much. She had made that fact abundantly clear over the last ten months since he purchased her property.

      Oh, she was polite enough in their sporadic dealings, never overtly rude. But he ran an international technology innovation company, which was a hell of a lot like a good poker game. Keen powers of observation were a vital job skill and he had developed his own to a fine degree. He couldn’t miss the tiny shadow of disdain in her green eyes when she talked to him.

      “Where would you like me to set your little injured buckaroo here?”

      “I’ll take him.”

      She set the little one on the floor and the girl toddled to a wicker basket full of toys in the living room and proceeded to start yanking the contents out, one by one, and tossing them on the floor.

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