LITMIR.BIZ

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eyes close. Sighing, he headed up the stairs.

      In the second-floor family room, there were five brothers and a baby. A sweetly chubby baby, maybe a year old, he guessed, from the three tiny blond curls on the back of her head and her consciously erect posture. The brothers were arranged in a semi-circle, all of them flat on their chests staring at her as she stared back at them. It was like a Mexican standoff, and the baby was winning, clearly bemusing her older companions.

      It wasn’t worth wondering whose baby it was. What mattered was that it seemed nothing had changed around Malfunction Junction. Still fun and games. “Howdy.”

      His brothers looked up and stared at him. Calhoun was the first to jump to his feet. “Mason!”

      Mason tossed his hat onto the sofa. “I wasn’t gone long enough for any of you to have a baby.”

      The other brothers halted, midrise.

      “True,” Calhoun said. “And this is not our baby, per se.”

      The baby turned her head to look up at him, and Mason felt his heart stop inside his chest. He would know that baby in a field of children; he could pick her out with ease. Fair, fine blond curls, big blue eyes that were her mother’s, the sparkle of mischief in her expression as she’d enjoyed commanding the attention of her covey of “uncles.”

      “It’s Nanette,” Bandera said. “We’re helping Mimi out ’cause she’s been cooking for all of us and the ladies downstairs.”

      “Heat went out over the salon. Been out for three days,” Last said. “Seemed the right thing to do to bring Lily and her crew here.”

      Crockett nodded. “They stood it as long as they could. We found out they weren’t telling us, and had Shoeshine bring them over here in his bus.”

      Mason ignored his brother’s blabbering, bending instead to scoop up Nanette and hold her to him. She didn’t cry out at the chill in his fingers. Instead, she touched his face, patting it with curiosity, though he told himself she touched him because she recognized him.

      “Been a long time since I held you,” he murmured to her, so that his brothers couldn’t hear. “You can sit up now. When I last saw you, you were just a tiny potato. I didn’t know you would grow so fast,” he said, nuzzling her. “You weren’t supposed to grow up without me. I missed you.” She patted his face again, and his eyes welled up with tears he wouldn’t let his brothers see. “I shouldn’t have left you.”

      The softness of her skin and her instant trust of him shattered his barely healed heart. Being gone hadn’t solved a damn thing. He still loved Mimi, in a way he knew he should not. And he loved her child, the child he’d helped deliver, as if she were his very own.

      In his heart, she was his very own.

      Mason gruffly cleared his throat, aware that his brothers were uncomfortably silent. “What else did I miss?” he demanded.

      The brothers glanced at each other. Last looked ill.

      “How about we talk later?” Calhoun asked.

      “We can talk now,” Mason said.

      “Not really,” Calhoun said, glowering. “We’ve been amusing twelve months of dynamite. We’re torn between using pacifiers, sippie cups, back rubs and guitar lullabies as good-luck charms to ward off the displeasure this child seems to feel at being out of her element. She doesn’t like us, and quite frankly, we’re beginning to wonder why babies aren’t stored in pods until they ripen.”

      “We’ve had some ripe occasions,” Archer said. “That one, delicate flower that she may be, can put forth some really ripe diapers.”

      “What we’re trying to say, Mason,” Bandera said, “is that we’re tired. We’re actually ragged. Let’s get one thing straight from the start. You left. You took your bad moods and your broken heart and you deserted us. We’ve handled everything while you were gone. Now, we’re of no mind to have you walk in here demanding answers.”

      “That’s right,” Crockett said, “we get first shot at Answer Number One.”

      Calhoun stood tall, crossing his arms. “Exactly. And our first question is, what in the hell do you think gave you the right to disappear like that?”

      Mason stiffened. He’d had no right; it was just something he’d had to do. But he couldn’t explain that to his brothers. What did they know of broken hearts, except when they were haphazardly doing the breaking?

      Calhoun looked at him curiously. “Yeah, and while you’re thinking of the answer, Mr. Wandering Foot, you might be interested to know that Mimi’s filed for divorce from Brian.”

      Mason instantly went cold.

      Chapter One

      Nudes. Calhoun Jefferson loved painting nudes, he loved the color of bare skin and he loved women who were willing to get naked. That was a bounty for the eyes: women in the flesh—the different, varying skin tones that harmonized with the female personality. Dark, light, medium—he loved all the colors under the sun.

      Particularly nude.

      Some men saw heaven in a sunset. Some found God in the ocean’s waves and secretive depths. “Ah, for me, it’s the color of a nipple shadowed against the velvet of a rounded breast, the shades contrasting and yet complimenting, so tantalizing in hue,” Calhoun explained to his brothers.

      “Oh, God,” Last said on a moan. “He’s been to Hooters again.”

      “I have not,” Calhoun said, indignantly slinging a saddle over a wooden rail. “I’m trying to explain my latest work of art to you undercultured dunces. I’m calling it ‘Hues from Heaven.’”

      “I feel more cultured already,” Crockett said. “And my IQ has risen commensurately.”

      Calhoun sighed. “I’m heading over to Lonely Hearts Station for the rodeo. Anybody interested in going?”

      “What for?” Archer asked. “Wait a minute, are you paintin’ hooves again?”

      Calhoun stood straight, staring at his brothers. “It just so happens that, this time, I’m entered, thank you very much.”

      “Entered as what?” Bandera asked. “Rodeo clown?”

      “Rider,” Calhoun said, deciding he wasn’t going to let his brothers’ jiving get to him. He had a mission today, and that was to advertise his afternoon art showing of first-class nudes by riding in the rodeo.

      Of course, his show wasn’t anything he wanted Mason to know about. Or his other brothers. They simply did not understand his love of artistic nudity.

      “What I just can’t get,” Last said, “is if you like nekkid women so much, why don’t you just get you one? We got about ten sleeping in our house this week, if you were too scared to notice. Just a set of jammies or a big sleep shirt between you and heaven’s bounty. I say, pick one already.”

      Calhoun felt heat color his neck and rise up under his hat. “Have you been too scared to tell Mason that you have a woman living at the ranch who’s expecting your child?” he asked, his tone deliberate and mild.

      Every brother went still. Not even a jaw moved as they stared at Last.

      “He just got home yesterday,” Last said. “And he’s been hiding from Mimi. I think I’d better give him a few more days to settle back in.”

      His point made, Calhoun walked from the barn. He wasn’t scared of women! He revered women. And that was his brothers’ problem, one of a thousand. They didn’t understand that a man didn’t necessarily have to sleep with his passion.

      Of course, it was nice when he could.

      But sleeping around had gotten some of the brothers married lately, and one of them was now expecting a child. “I’m

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