LITMIR.BIZ

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from by her family again—except last month when she’d sent a text to her family to wish them happy holidays.

      It was that holiday message that had nearly broken Fiona. Fiona had summoned him, sending him off to find her beloved niece.

      He’d accepted the mission gladly, knowing it wasn’t going to be a cakewalk. Ash wasn’t easy to track. She used only cash. There were no phone calls, no computer emails to track. It was as if she’d disappeared—which she’d obviously intended to do.

      In the end, he’d gone to Running Bear for direction, only to be amazed that Running Bear hadn’t heard from Ash, either. Those two shared the same untamed spirit.

      But Xav got a pointer or two from Running Bear that sent him on a path to find her. Now he shifted on the white-painted porch, hearing footsteps inside, hoping his journey wasn’t a dead end. It had been too many months since he’d held the love of his life in his arms.

      A middle-aged woman opened the door, a questioning frown on her face. “Yes?”

      “Hi.” He gave her his most friendly smile. “I’m Xav Phillips, from Diablo, New Mexico. I’m looking for a woman named Ashlyn Callahan.”

      The woman shook her head, glancing over her shoulder when a baby’s cry burst in the background. “I’m sorry, no. I’ve never heard of her.”

      He couldn’t say what made him linger on the porch. Maybe it was because he’d come so far and was so disappointed to find his search turning up a dead end again. Another baby’s cries joined the first, sending up a wail of epic proportions between them, which made the woman anxiously begin to back away.

      “Excuse me,” she said, “good luck finding whomever you’re looking for.”

      She closed the door. Xav hesitated, then leaned his ear against the wood. He heard soft voices inside comforting the babies, and then unbelievably, he heard a voice he’d know any day, any night, whether he was awake, asleep or even in a coma.

      “Sweet baby, don’t fuss. My little prince,” he heard Ash say, and in a flash, he slid over to the enormous glass window framing the Christmas tree so he could peer cautiously inside the house.

      Behind the large, ruffle-branched Christmas tree, four white bassinets lay together in a room decorated for the holidays amid beautifully wrapped gifts. He held his breath, watching Ash comfort a tiny infant boy. Ash’s shock of pale hair had grown into a waterfall of silver liquid she wore in a ponytail. Xav grew warm all over despite the cold, and Cupid’s arrow shot right into his heart, the same way it had every time he’d ever gotten within two miles of her.

      He was head over heels in love with her, and nine long months apart had done nothing to diminish those emotions. The ring in his pocket practically burned, reminding him how long he’d waited to ask her to marry him.

      She put the baby down and picked up another, a sweet, pink-pajamaed little girl, and Xav’s heart felt like it splatted on the ground. She acted as if these were her children, so loving and gentle was she as she held them. Xav was poleaxed with new thoughts of making Ash a mother. Motherhood and Ash weren’t a combination he’d ever really put together in his head, but watching her with these children made him realize his original proposal wasn’t the one he wanted to offer her.

      He didn’t want to fall back on a business arrangement to save his ego.

      No, he was going all in. He was going to tell her the truth about the shot she’d allegedly fired at Wolf, because clearly that was why she was hiding out here, helping the older lady babysit her family’s babies. Or maybe she ran a babysitting service. It didn’t matter. The point was, Ash was in hiding and he was going to tell her the truth: she was not the hunted one. She was not destined to bring destruction to Rancho Diablo and her family.

      And then he was going to ask her to be his wife. His real true wife, to have and to hold, in sickness and health, in good times and better times, forever.

      Xav hadn’t realized he’d moved away from the protection of the twinkling Christmas tree in order to spy better, but Ash’s suddenly astonished eyes jolted him out of his reverie. She stared at him over the pink blanket-wrapped baby, her lips parted with shock to see him standing among the evergreen bushes at the window. And then, to his complete dismay, Ash snapped the curtains closed.

      A screeching siren split the air. Someone had hit some kind of panic button inside the house, which meant police would be on the way. He was certain Ash had recognized him, but just to be certain she didn’t think he was an intruder, he leaped up on the porch and pushed the door open.

      “Hi, beautiful,” Xav said, and she looked at him, completely speechless, and suddenly pain crashed through him. The last thing Xav remembered thinking was how lucky it was that he’d finally located the most footloose Callahan of them all.

      He’d succeeded on Fiona’s mission.

      Callahan bonus points for sure.

      * * *

      “WHAT DO WE DO WITH HIM?” Mallory McGrath asked, and Ash tried to force her flabbergasted mind to think rationally. It wasn’t easy, and not just because Mallory had set off the panic button on the security system, which was wailing like mad. She crossed to the system pad and shut the silly thing off before staring down at the lean cowboy sprawled on the floor. How many hours had she spent thinking about Xav Phillips over the past few months, especially during her pregnancy? How many times had she wanted to call him to come to her, yet knowing she couldn’t place him in that kind of danger? Anyone from Rancho Diablo who had any contact with her would be in jeopardy—the Callahans had learned that the hard way, time and again, over the many years they’d battled Uncle Wolf and the cartel. It was no game they were playing, but a full-fledged fight for survival.

      Sometimes it felt as though they were losing. It almost always seemed as if they might not ever defeat an enemy that was determined to destroy the ranch and the Callahan legacy. Good didn’t always conquer evil.

      Ash knelt down to move Xav’s long, ebony hair out of his face. “Poor Xav. I could have told you that you should stay away from me.” The tree twinkled, sending soft colorful light against his drawn skin. “What am I going to do with you now?” she asked him, though she knew she wouldn’t get an answer.

      She was startled when he opened his eyes. “Marry me,” Xav said. “You can marry me, damn it, and tell the woman with the wrought-iron Santa Claus she whaled upside my noggin that I come in peace.”

      “Xav!” She wanted to kiss him so badly, yet didn’t dare. Of course his marriage proposal wasn’t sincere; clearly a concussion rendered him temporarily senseless. “Can you sit up? Mallory, will you get him a glass of water?”

      “Who is he?” Mallory asked, reluctantly setting down her festive weapon.

      “Just a family friend,” Ash said, her gaze on Xav as his eyes locked on hers.

      “Friend my ass,” Xav growled. “Do you have any idea how hard it was to find you? Do friends search every nook and cranny of Texas and parts in between to find each other?”

      “Definitely a concussion,” Ash said, frowning at the big handsome man, all long body and sinewy muscles. “I’ve never heard him talk like that.”

      “Hello, I’m right here,” Xav said crustily, trying to rise.

      Ash pushed him back to the floor. “Take a minute to gather your wits, cowboy.”

      “My wits have never been so gathered.” He sat up and glared at her, then stared at his brown cowboy hat mournfully. “She killed it.”

      Mallory had the nerve to giggle, and Xav looked even more disgusted, as if he thought it rude that someone laughed at crushing his cowboy hat with a Santa Claus doorstop before they’d been introduced.

      “It’ll be all right.” Ash took the hat from him, put it on a chair, inspected his head. “I do believe that hat saved your thick skull. There’s not a scratch on you.”

      “Well,

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