LITMIR.BIZ

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was the size of a truck tire.

      “I didn’t want anyone to see me,” Belle said as if that explained her getup. “There are reporters out there, and someone left a bunch of these on the porch at the ranch.” She reached in both her pockets and pulled out the turd-shaped horns.

      Garrett cursed. “We might need to hire some security.”

      No. Lawson just needed to kick some asses. That had a twofold purpose. It’d get rid of the trespassers along with burning off some of this restless energy inside him. But he rethought that. Best not to pop any stitches, or he’d end up back here.

      “I’ll have Sophie send down some of the security guards who work at the company,” Garrett added.

      That was a good idea. Sophie ran the family business, Granger Western—or Cowboy Mart, as most folks called it since it sold discount Western supplies. It was a huge operation with no doubt plenty of security at the warehouses. It wouldn’t hurt to have a few of them on the ranch...unless Eve wouldn’t be returning there. Lawson was about to bring up that possibility/hope, but Garrett spoke before he could.

      “Lawson wanted to know if you knew how to get in touch with Eve’s daughter, Tessie,” Garrett said to his mom. “Eve broke her phone when she went into labor, so she might not know the number right off the top of her head.”

      “Oh, I already called her and told her about Eve having the baby. Eve had left her number with me. You know, in case there was some kind of emergency. But Tessie didn’t answer. I think she must have been in class or something, so I left her a message. I’m sure she’ll be calling back soon when she hears she’s got a baby brother.”

      Good. Somehow, Tessie’s photo hadn’t landed in the tabloids, but Lawson remembered the news when Eve had adopted her. Eve had been in her early twenties, which meant Tessie was either a teenager or close to being one. It did make Lawson wonder, though, why Tessie hadn’t made the move with Eve, but maybe the girl was at boarding school.

      “How long will Eve be staying?” Lawson asked.

      “Until her house is ready. She’s having some remodeling done before she moves in. She runs a charity foundation, and she needed an office for that. Plus, she had to redo rooms for the nursery and the baby’s nanny.”

      Lawson was certain he’d missed something—and no, it wasn’t the room-usage part. “What house? Is it here in Wrangler’s Creek?”

      Belle didn’t seem to notice his surprise because she dropped some more of the horns, and they clattered onto the tile floor. “Your brother Lucian sold her one of the houses on your family’s land.”

      Well, hell in a shit-lined handbasket. Yeah, he had definitely missed something, and apparently he had another ass to kick because Lucian should have told him something that monumental.

      “Which house and why did Lucian sell it to Eve?” Lawson snapped. Because last he heard, there were at least four houses on the property, and none of them were occupied full-time. None of them had been for sale, either.

      Belle looked up from her horn retrieval and shook her head. She tsk-tsked him. “I know you don’t get on with your brothers, but you really should make more of an effort.”

      No, because he wanted to stay sane. That’s why he worked for Garrett. He didn’t intend to go back into the viper pit owned by his immediate gene pool, and Garrett and Roman felt the same way about Lawson’s kin.

      It was enough of a compromise that Lawson was building his new place on land that would get him marginally closer to his brothers. Or more specifically, Lucian. But it’d been his land, and Lawson had decided he could live with marginally closer to have the home he’d always wanted.

      “Eve bought your mom’s house,” Belle continued. “It was the place your great-grandpa built and where she moved after she divorced your dad. She hasn’t lived there in donkey’s years though, so I guess Lucian figured it’d make a good home for Eve.”

      That particular house was only about a quarter of a mile from the one Lawson was building. Eve and he would practically be neighbors. If he couldn’t stop the sale, that is.

      He would stop it.

      No way did he want daily reminders of Eve, and he was certain she wouldn’t want that, either. Lucian must not have told her that she’d be so close to him and the main house on the Granger Ranch.

      On second thought...

      Lucian wouldn’t have brought that up. His family and Garrett’s had been feuding over some acreage for over sixty years now. Acres that lay directly between the Granger Ranch and Lawson’s family’s land. Lucian was always threatening a lawsuit, and if it happened, that would put Eve’s house right smack in the middle. Once Eve learned that, no way would she want the house.

      And Lawson was going to be the one to clue her in.

      He turned, ready to head to her room—and maybe have one last look at the baby—but the commotion stopped him. There were footsteps, loud voices and the flashes from cameras.

      “The reporters got in,” Garrett mumbled.

      Yes, and Lawson was about to send them right back out, but then he saw who was in the middle of that commotion.

      Kellan Carver, aka Stavros.

      No black leather today, but he was dressed like a rock star. Sorta looked like one, too, and he was talking and posing for pictures at the same time. There were two nurses trailing along behind him. A patient, too, on crutches and another in a wheelchair. They all looked giddy and starstruck.

      “There you are,” Kellan said, aiming a smile that was more blinding than the camera flashes, and he was aiming it at Lawson.

      Lawson hated him on sight.

      Kellan went to him, automatically taking Lawson’s hand for the side-by-side posed handshake photos that quickly followed. The flashes were like being swarmed by giant lightning bugs.

      “This is the hero of the hour,” Kellan announced, lifting Lawson’s arm the way a ref would lift a prizewinning fighter. “Lawson Granger. Thanks, man,” Kellan added to him in a whisper that was still plenty loud enough for everyone to hear.

      Lawson pulled back his hand. “Thanks for what?” he asked once he got his teeth unclenched.

      Kellan’s plastic smile never wavered. “For being there when Eve and me needed you.” He slapped Lawson on the back, his hand landing right on a giant bruise. “Man, you delivered my son.”

       CHAPTER FOUR

      “IN MY MAMA’S DAY, women gave birth and then went out and tended the herd,” the nurse said to Eve. “After they hung out the wash and cooked supper, that is.”

      Eve felt as if she’d done all of those things. She was bone-tired, but it was covered with a layer of giddiness.

      She had a son.

      A perfectly healthy one, from what the doctors had told her, and now she wanted nothing more than to hold him again. She had a sudden urge to check every inch of his little body and make sure everything was there and where it should be. She hadn’t gotten a chance to do that in the ambulance ride to the hospital, and after they’d arrived, the doctors had insisted on putting him in an incubator while they examined her.

      “Women didn’t get overnight hospital stays for birthing in my mama’s day,” the nurse went on. “Now we got all these rules.”

      The nurse was Mildred Wheeler, who, according to her introduction, had worked at the hospital since it was first built in the late fifties. Eve didn’t know exactly how old the woman was, but her stories had a distinctive “I walked twenty miles to school in the snow, uphill both ways” slant to them.

      “You said something about getting me a wheelchair

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