Kristen’s heart lurched. She squeezed her eyes shut to gather her wits before walking to the first available rocker. She felt like fate was reminding her that these kids knew nothing about their mother and would never know about their mother. She doubted the Brewsters could tell the children much since Angela hadn’t been in their family for very long.

Snuggling both girls against her, Kristen leaned back on the rocker. She hadn’t known about these children until she received a letter from Angela’s lawyer announcing that he was withdrawing as counsel in Angela’s claim for the Morris family ranch. Holding the girls close, Kirsten experienced strange, compelling feelings. These babies weren’t merely all she had left, they could easily become the meaning and purpose for her existence. After her husband Bradley’s death, her life was nothing more than day-to-day emptiness, but with the knowledge that she needed to be the mother to her sister’s three children, something wonderful had been born in her. More than a reason to live, a reason to be happy. A reason to rejoice.

But custody of the kids belonged to men she didn’t even know in a state two thousand miles away from her home. They were rich, they were powerful, and she only owned the clothes on her back.

The fight, if it came down to that, would not be a fair one, and she understood why Mrs. Romani had suggested Kristen demonstrate to this family that she was a good, kind, generous person before she not only revealed who she was but also announced that she needed to take these children to Texas.

At the sound of the nursery doorknob turning, signaling Grant’s return, Kristen became fully alert. One swift frown got the attention of the squirming babies on her lap. “Things are strained enough between us already,” she quickly whispered. “If your brother thinks you’re misbehaving for me, he might ask me to leave.”

Though she thought her rationalization explained everything sufficiently that the girls would obey, Taylor then let out with a squeal and immediately thereafter Annie followed suit. “Shh!” she admonished quietly.

“Don’t waste your breath,” Grant said, closing the door behind him. “They’re wound-up from all the attention at the wedding. But more than that, they won’t listen to you because you’re new.”

He added the last as he scooped Taylor from Kristen’s lap. In one smooth motion, he raised her above his head, then swung her down far enough that he could blow on her belly. The action caused Taylor to squeal.

Terrified for the baby’s safety, Kristen gaped at him. “What the heck is that?”

“It’s called playing,” Grant replied, then swung Taylor over his head again.

Kristen bounced from her seat ready to rescue the little girl, but when she realized Taylor was squealing with delight, not fright, she stopped dead in her tracks. “She likes that?”

Grant cast a curious glance at Kristen. “She expects this from me.”

“She expects to be roughhoused?”

“She expects to be played with,” Grant corrected with a laugh, then shifted the little girl into the crook of his arm and reached into the small refrigerator in the corner of the room and pulled out a baby bottle. He tossed it to Kristen.

Only through the grace of God and good reflexes did she catch it.

“Feed Annie.”

She looked at the bottle, then the baby, then back at Grant again. But preoccupied with grabbing another bottle, kicking the refrigerator door closed and carrying Taylor to a rocker, he didn’t seem to see that she didn’t know what to do.

As he sat, Kristen saw that he noticed she hadn’t moved and he sighed heavily. “Slide the nipple into her mouth,” he suggested evenly.

“I was just a little shell-shocked from having a bottle tossed at me,” Kristen said, trying to cover for the fact that she’d never given a baby a bottle before. She’d seen mothers feed babies, dress them, diaper them. She watched all her friends have children and begin to raise them, but she hadn’t actually done any of the baby work with or for them.

“Whatever,” Grant said, sliding the nipple of the bottle into Taylor’s mouth, then relaxing against the back of his rocker. Without another word, he closed his eyes.

Because she’d been primed for a fight or a lecture, Kristen frowned as she gave the bottle to Annie and got comfortable in her rocker. Confused, but guessing that Grant’s brother might have cautioned him against saying anything that might lose their “nanny,” she covertly studied Grant.

Eyes closed, wearing jeans and a sweatshirt, and restfully lounging in the rocker, he was casually gorgeous, but also the epitome of a well-practiced dad. He could have been the babies’ father. In fact, he should have been the triplet’s father. Somewhere in his mid-thirties, Grant was probably closer to Angela’s age than Norm Brewster had been.

Remembering her own shock at being told in Arnie Garrett’s letter that Angela had had triplets with someone from a different generation, Kristen couldn’t even speculate on the Brewster brothers’ reaction. How would the grown children of an elderly man take the news that they had infant siblings? Surely they didn’t rejoice. Second families were always a little hard to take and with the addition of more people into this particular bloodline, the Brewsters would also have to share their inheritance. Nine chances out of ten, they’d been angry with their father—probably furious—when these children were born. And now they were forced to raise the same kids whose very existence had cut their net worths in half.

“Do you resent these kids?” she blurted into the quiet room, too appalled that the Brewsters might mistreat the babies to think clearly, but simultaneously regretting being nosy. Recognizing she had to somehow cover that slip, she added, “Your father must have married a woman a lot younger than he was to have babies. So, you couldn’t have been happy.”

Still not opening his eyes, Grant said, “Mrs. Romani filled your head with the village gossip, I see.”

“She didn’t say anything,” Kristen said, then paused, realizing it was true. The only thing that had really concerned Mrs. Romani was that Kristen understood Grant Brewster wasn’t an easy man to get along with. From his blunt assumption, she was beginning to see why. “I’m just curious.”

“All right,” he said. Sighing heavily, he opened his eyes and faced her, never once jostling or disturbing the baby he was feeding. “You’re going to hear it eventually anyway, so I’ll tell you that I wasn’t pleased when my father remarried two months after my mother died. I threw a fit, left town, dragged my brothers with me and didn’t return until my father died.”

Kristen heard the remorse that resonated through the last part, the part about his father, and she felt guilty for asking. Obviously Norm had married Angela to help the Morris family regain control of their ranch. If he hadn’t explained that to his sons, though, it sounded as if that was because they hadn’t given him a chance.

Unfortunately she also couldn’t explain to Grant Brewster that his father had married her sister because the Morrises were about to lose their family home. When her father and uncle were killed together in an airplane accident, the property reverted to a childless aunt, who didn’t know how to bequeath it. So, in her will she’d stipulated that the first Morris to have a child inherited the ranch, provided he or she agreed to live there with that child. But when Aunt Paige died, Morrises came out of the woodwork, each claiming he was the rightful heir, forcing Angela, Kristen and a handful of California relatives to prove they were the only people with a direct line to the property.

But one of them still had to have a child to claim it. If Norm Brewster married her sister and immediately made her pregnant, Kristen could only assume he’d done it as a kindness.

She couldn’t reveal all this to Grant Brewster because if she went into that kind of detail with him, no matter how speculatively, she would give herself away. But she would explain. Soon. And when she did, Grant Brewster could forgive himself.