Does he love her enough to raise another man’s children?

“She’s your baby, Noah Dawson. She’s your responsibility now.”

But is she? Noah is willing enough to believe the adorable newborn left on his doorstep is his child. And then his ex, Sara Mayhew, turns up, claiming the baby is hers—a twin to her infant son—and Noah realizes he’s not the father. Even so, the cowboy has already turned his life around and swapped his spurs for a baby carrier. Despite their still-powerful attraction, Sara isn’t ready to trust the “new” Noah. But he’s already fighting for their future as a family...

MELISSA SENATE has written many novels for Mills & Boon and other publishers, including her debut, See Jane Date, which was made into a TV movie. She also wrote seven books for Mills & Boon’s Special Edition line under the pen name Meg Maxwell. Her novels have been published in over twenty-five countries. Melissa lives on the coast of Maine with her teenage son; their rescue shepherd mix, Flash; and a lap cat named Cleo. For more information, please visit her website, melissasenate.com

Also by Melissa Senate

The Baby Switch!

Detective Barelli’s Legendary Triplets

Wyoming Christmas Surprise

To Keep Her Baby

A Promise for the Twins

A New Leash on Love

A Cowboy in the Kitchen

The Detective’s 8 lb, 10 oz Surprise

The Cowboy’s Big Family Tree

The Cook’s Secret Ingredient Charm

School for Cowboys

Santa’s Seven-Day Baby Tutorial

Discover more at millsandboon.co.uk

For the Twins’ Sake

Melissa Senate

www.millsandboon.co.uk

ISBN: 978-0-008-90322-0

FOR THE TWINS’ SAKE

© 2020 Melissa Senate

Published in Great Britain 2020

by Mills & Boon, an imprint of HarperCollins Publishers 1 London Bridge Street, London, SE1 9GF

All rights reserved including the right of reproduction in whole or in part in any form. This edition is published by arrangement with Harlequin Books S.A.

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, locations and incidents are purely fictional and bear no relationship to any real life individuals, living or dead, or to any actual places, business establishments, locations, events or incidents. Any resemblance is entirely coincidental.

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Version: 2020-03-02

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For my wonderful aunt and uncle,

Rick and Arlene D’Alli, who came to visit me way up

in Maine just as I was finishing writing this novel.

XOXO

Contents

Cover

Back Cover Text

About the Author

Booklist

Title Page

Copyright

Note to Readers

Dedication

Prologue

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Chapter Eleven

Chapter Twelve

Chapter Thirteen

Extract

About the Publisher

Prologue

Was that a baby crying?

Nah.

Noah Dawson turned over in bed and tried to go back to sleep, but he heard the sound again. A crying baby. Impossible on this isolated ranch in the Wyoming wilderness, but unmistakable. Yesterday, Noah had gone to Bear Ridge Groceries to stock up for the impending rainstorm that threatened flash flooding, and a woman in front of him on the long checkout line had had a baby in her shopping cart, wailing just like he was hearing now. A round of peekaboo had helped quiet the screecher. But, man, did he know a crying baby when he heard one.

Still, right now? He glanced at his phone on the bedside table—at 1:52 a.m.? He had to be hearing things. Dreaming. Imagining it.

“Waaaah!”

Noah sat up. The crying was getting louder—and coming through the window on the early April breeze.

Did he have a middle-of-the-night visitor and he’d missed the doorbell ringing or something? Did he even know anyone with a baby?

“Waaah-waaah!”

Noah bolted out of bed. That was a baby crying. And it was coming from just outside the window of his cabin, below which was the front porch. He grabbed his jeans from where he’d slung them over his desk chair, pulled them on and hurried downstairs.

The crying got louder. He pulled the front door open.

Then he looked down—and gasped.

A baby—a girl, guessing from the pink blanket covering most of her in an infant car seat, a white cotton cap on her head—was crying up a storm. A small black tote bag was beside the carrier.

What the hell? Who would leave a baby here? He glanced around for a car, for someone, anyone, but all he saw were the distant evergreens in the moonlight. The ranch was silent otherwise.

“Hello?” he called out, looking in every direction. No one. “Hello?” he shouted.

No response. No person. Nothing but the breeze through the trees.

How long has she been out here? he wondered as he snatched up the carrier and bag and brought them inside, his heart starting to pound, his brain trying to make some sort of sense of this. A baby. Left on his porch at two in the morning.

He set the carrier on the big wood coffee table in the living room. He carefully moved aside the blanket.

Whoa. Noah didn’t know much about babies, but this tiny creature had to be a newborn. He wouldn’t be surprised if the baby had been born today. That’s how small she was. Her pink footie pajamas were way too big for her little body.

Call the police. Call an ambulance. Call social services. So many thoughts ran through his head at once that he had to just stop, stand still and breathe.

He glanced out the window, the rain starting. Just drizzling now, but within ten to fifteen minutes the skies would open up. That was a problem. The ranch was forty minutes from town down some winding rural roads, and the storm was forecasted to quickly create flood conditions, which would come before anyone could safely reach the place. Doc Bakerton, who ran the clinic in Bear Ridge, had emergency hours, and his home was only a ten-minute drive from here. Noah could get the baby over to Bakerton’s faster and safer than an ambulance or the sheriff could get here, and he knew these country roads and where the river would rise the worst. He could get back.

Decision made: he’d take her over to Doc Bakerton’s place.

But right now, the baby was crying her head off. Should he comfort her for a few seconds? Noah had no idea what the hell to do. She let out another wail, and he shifted the blanket aside, not surprised she wasn’t even buckled in.

Hand under the neck, he told himself, lifting her out as carefully as he could. He held her alongside his arm, bracketed by his chest, not sure he was doing this right.

He touched a finger to her little cheek. She wasn’t cold or hot, and her color seemed okay.

A hot burst of anger swelled in his gut over whoever had left a newborn to the elements in the middle of the night. What if he hadn’t heard her crying at all? What if she’d been out there all night? In the middle of the Wyoming wilderness, a rainstorm about to pour down. Granted, the large front porch of his foreman’s cabin was covered on three sides as a point of refuge for future guests of the ranch to wait out any bad weather, but still.

He swayed his arms a bit, and the crying stopped. When the baby’s strangely colored eyes—a grayish blueish—closed, his anger dissipated some. The little face looked content, relaxed, the tiny chest rising and falling, rising and falling, the impossibly tiny bow lips giving a quirk.

Whose are you? he wondered. Why would anyone leave you here? The Dawson Family Guest Ranch wasn’t due to open for seven more weeks, on Memorial Day weekend, so the guest cabins were empty. And none of the small staff he’d hired lived on the property.

He glanced at the carrier and tote bag on the coffee table. Maybe there was a note. Or a birth certificate. Something.

He couldn’t reach the bag easily without putting the baby down, and he thought he should hold her a bit—why, exactly, he wasn’t entirely sure. To keep her warm? To comfort her? Make her feel connected to someone and something? His gaze caught on something small and white poking up from underneath the blanket in the car seat. He shoved the blanket aside.

So there was a note. Half a page. Scrawled, crudely, in black pen.

She’s your baby, Noah Dawson. Your responsibility. You won’t hear from me again.

Every cell in his body froze.

What?

My baby? he thought, the idea not penetrating.

Forget the police. Or social services. Until he could think, figure out who the mother was.

His baby? Seriously?

He grabbed the tote bag and rooted around inside it for a birth certificate or envelope or any kind of paperwork. Nothing but a baby bottle, a small container of formula and two tiny diapers.

The infant’s eyes opened just then, then drooped, opened, drooped, then closed again. There was something familiar about the little face, something in the expression, the eyes, that he couldn’t pin down. He knew that face. The baby’s mother, a woman he probably was with one night... Or maybe the little girl looked a bit like him?

Just get her to the doc, he told himself. Now.

He very gently laid her back down in the carrier, one little fist moving, the lips quirking again. He buckled the five-point harness and settled the blanket around her.

From the looks of her, all scrawny and tiny, tinier than your average baby, he was pretty sure she couldn’t be more than a few hours old. So her mother didn’t want to keep her and dropped her off right after giving birth? That hardly made sense. Mothers who’d just delivered a baby didn’t jump in cars and drop off their babies in the middle of the night. Unless they were desperate, maybe.

All he knew was that someone had left a baby on his doorstep. No knock, no explanation. No concern for the infant’s well-being.

No idea who that person could possibly be.

His baby? His brain wasn’t fully firing right now from the shock, but as he lifted the carrier he managed to think back nine months. It was the second week of April now. Who had he been involved with last July?

There were a few possibilities. One of whom he’d seen in passing just last week as he’d parked in front of the coffee shop in town. She certainly hadn’t been nine months pregnant.

Two or three others back then, one-night stands when his life had still been about drinking too much at bars and trying to forget his troubles with women whose last names he didn’t know.

He wasn’t proud of that time in his life.

He’d been a hot mess. Two years ago, the small ranch he’d managed to buy had gone under—like father, like son, he supposed. The woman he’d loved his entire life had told him she’d had enough and was moving on, unless he changed most things about himself. He hadn’t known how, and she’d gotten tired of trying to help when all her advice fell on deaf ears. And so he’d driven her away and she’d married the biggest jerk he’d ever known. The downward spiral had continued.

And then five months ago he’d inherited the Dawson Family Guest Ranch with his five siblings, most of whom wanted nothing to do with the place. Suddenly, the man on the edge of the cliff had inched back to solid ground. Purpose. Determination. Heritage.

Before his father passed, before Noah had come back home to the formerly dilapidated guest ranch he’d grown up on, he’d had no idea heritage meant anything to him. But it clearly did. Because here he was. Not that he had anywhere else to go, but still. He wanted to be here.

And if this baby was his, she belonged here too. With him on the Dawson ranch. Until he figured out whose she was—aside from his—he’d keep his siblings out of it. Maybe he’d call his sister, Daisy, in Cheyenne. Maybe she’d come visit for a few days and help him out.

The tiny eyes opened, and her face scrunched.

“I’m taking you to the doc, little buddy.”

It struck him that little girls probably weren’t called “little buddy” the way boys were. He recalled how Sara—the one he’d driven away—hated that her father had called her princess. I’m no princess, she’d say. Furthest thing from it.

“You’re no princess either,” he told the infant. “You certainly did not get the royal treatment on your first day on earth.”

Carrier in hand, he headed toward the door, setting it on the floor to put on his leather jacket. Then he picked her back up and headed out to the truck.

“I’m not gonna let anything happen to you,” he said, latching the carrier rear-facing on the back seat, like the little diagram on the side of the carrier wisely showed. “You can count on that.”

Chapter One
Seven weeks later

“I, Willem Michael Perry, in sound mind and body, hereby leave my second-rate wife, Sara Mayhew Perry, absolutely nothing.”

Sara sat in her late husband’s attorney’s office, not surprised by anything in the will. The insults. The disinheritance. She wanted to run out of here, put this—including her marriage to Willem—behind her, and go home with her seven-week-old son. If she even had a home anymore.

The lawyer, Holton Parrington, who’d grimaced through every word of the will as he’d read it aloud, put the document down on his desk and took off his glasses. “Sorry about all this, Sara,” he said, shaking his head. “Willem wasn’t exactly the nicest person, was he?”

Understatement of the year. Decade, maybe. But you make a deal with the devil... “No, he wasn’t.”

Her husband had died in a car accident five days ago. He hadn’t been a good person, but Sara hadn’t married him for his personality. She knew she wasn’t perfect, but doing what needed to be done had always come naturally to her, and she’d hoped she could help Willem change, that she would rub off on him, that impending fatherhood would mean something to him, but he’d actually gotten meaner, more spiteful, more controlling.

She glanced at the stroller to her left; baby Chance slept peacefully. She kept her gaze on him for a moment longer; her son was all that truly mattered. Nothing else.

“Willem also left a letter to you and instructions that I read it aloud in the event of his death,” Holton continued. “It’s sealed, and I have no idea what’s inside. Ready?”

Sara sighed inwardly. “For more bashing? No. But I guess this will be the end of it.”

The lawyer nodded. He put his glasses back on, then slit open the envelope and pulled out one sheet of paper, written in Willem Perry’s unmistakable, perfect handwriting.

“‘Sara, if you’re reading this, I’m dead,’” the lawyer read, pausing as if bracing himself. He cleared his throat and continued. “‘I don’t know what got me in the end, but I hope it was quick and painless and that I lived till at least ninety-three like my father.’”

Willem hadn’t made it to his twenty-ninth birthday. He’d been reckless with the brand-new Porsche, a gift to himself for becoming a father, and had been going more than ninety around the rain-slick curve on the winding service road into town.

“‘I debated about putting what I’m about to say on paper,’” the lawyer continued reading, “‘but decided I couldn’t—make that shouldn’t—take it to the grave with me. Oh yes, I want you to know. You deserve to know. Brace yourself, darlin’.’”

She was already doing that. Who knew what Willem was capable of? She did, actually. She wished she’d known the extent of his cruelty before she’d agreed to marry him. She’d known he was a snob, but he’d been so kind to her before their wedding, and she’d had such faith she’d turn him around. Back then, she’d thought his worst trait was talking down to waitstaff in the nice restaurants he’d taken her to.

She’d never take anything at face value again. That was for damned sure.

She sucked in a deep breath. Whatever it is, whatever his last laugh is, I can take it, she told herself. I’m stronger than I know. Just keep chanting that and maybe it’ll be true.

The attorney glanced at her, and she nodded.

“‘Our son’s twin sister didn’t die during childbirth,’” the lawyer read on a gasp, his eyes widening.

Sara gasped too. What? They stared at each other, his face as pale as hers must be.

The lawyer sucked in a breath and continued reading. “‘The female twin was frail, much smaller than the male. But very much alive. Thank God I’d insisted on a home birth with a midwife, or I’d never have been able to do what I did.’”

She grabbed the sides of the chair. Her mind went blank, the air whooshing out of her, blackness threatening. What did you do, Willem? What the hell did you do?

The lawyer leaned back, took off his glasses and scrubbed a hand over his face.

“Finish the letter,” Sara said, hearing the panic rise in her voice.

What happened to my baby girl?

Holton nodded, his expression grim. “‘I threatened the midwife and paid her off not to call for medical intervention and to back me up when I told you the female didn’t survive the birth. Don’t be too hard on the poor lady. She accepted the bribe for the same reason you married me. She desperately needed the money.’”

The lawyer glanced at her then, and Sara, feeling her face flame, lifted her chin.

“‘I told you the baby died,’” the lawyer continued reading, “‘then while you were sleeping, I drove it out to Noah Dawson’s place—’”

Sara bolted up. “Noah? Noah has my daughter?”

Her head was spinning. Her daughter was alive? And with Noah Dawson?

“Let’s finish the letter,” Holton said. “There’s only one paragraph left.”

Sara nodded, tears brimming as she dropped back on the chair.

The attorney cleared his throat. “‘With my male heir healthy, I had no need for a sickly-looking daughter. To be quite honest, I don’t particularly like girls. They grow up to become conniving users, don’t they? I drove the baby out to Dawson’s cabin and left her on his porch with that starter kit the midwife had on hand and a note saying it was his baby and his responsibility. For all I know, the twins are his. Maybe you were cheating on me with him during our entire marriage. Since I don’t know whether any of that is true, it means it could be. Since it could also not be, I’ll leave my son the bulk of my estate in trust for when he turns twenty-one. The rest will go to the development of a golf course named in my honor. You, as you already know, get nothing. Not a cent.’” The lawyer paused and put down the letter. “That’s the extent of it. It’s signed ‘Willem Michael Perry.’”

My daughter didn’t die. She’s alive.

“For the past seven weeks, Noah Dawson has had my daughter?” she whispered, the blackness threatening again.

She tried to remember back to the moment when the midwife—a gentle woman in her early sixties who’d come highly recommended—placed Chance on her chest. Tears had been brimming in the woman’s eyes over what Sara had assumed was the loss of the baby girl she’d helped deliver. Sara had felt so woozy, despite Willem’s insistence she take no drugs. She must have fallen asleep hard after initially nursing Chance, because she’d woken up hours later, Willem letting her know Chance was sleeping like a champ in the nursery and that the midwife had gone home and that they’d taken care of the details for the loss of the twin.

She’d been so woozy still, her head feeling like it was stuffed with cotton, and she’d been so grateful that she hadn’t lost both babies that she’d made her way to the nursery and held Chance against her. Her precious son had gotten her through the terrible truth that his sister hadn’t survived. Over the next few days, Willem had resumed his usual twelve-hours-per-day work schedule, so she hadn’t had to deal with him controlling her in person, though he’d left detailed emails about how to hold Chance, feed him, his nap schedule, and that no one was to visit until he’d had his shots.

Her baby girl was alive. And Sara wouldn’t be the least bit surprised if Willem had slipped something into her water during labor, some kind of drug to keep her off balance and to make her sleep hard afterward.

Why would he take the baby to Noah, though? Willem had hated Noah Dawson.

“Sara, I’m afraid I have to prepare you for the possibility that the female twin didn’t survive Willem’s actions,” the lawyer said, shaking her out of her question. “Left on a doorstep in the middle of the night? The second week of April, when it was still a bit chilly? Who knows when Mr. Dawson discovered the baby? If he was even home at the time? Didn’t he very recently inherit the old Dawson guest ranch? I read that they’re set for a grand opening this weekend, but I can’t imagine how, given how run-down the place was.”

She hadn’t known Dawson’s was reopening. She’d heard that Noah’s widowed father had died and that he’d left the dilapidated ranch to his six children. She’d thought about going to the funeral but wasn’t sure she’d be welcome. She’d been showing then and didn’t want to make Noah uncomfortable, so she’d stayed home. She also would have had to get around Willem about where she was going, and she hadn’t had the energy for that.

When she’d woken up about three hours after giving birth, the rain had been coming down hard. Willem had left their daughter on a ranch porch in the middle of the night during a rainstorm? The Dawson ranch in Bear Ridge was over an hour away from the Perry house in Wellington.

She swallowed back a wail building up deep inside her. “I’m going to see Noah now. My daughter is alive. I feel it.”

“I hope so, Sara,” Holton said. “It seems clear that Willem expected this letter to be read decades from now. There are two bombshells, really. Your daughter. And the midwife’s culpability. We can discuss options for how to proceed there.”

She’d deal with that later. Right now, she only wanted to see her baby girl with her own eyes. Hold her. Get her back.

She reached for her long cardigan and put it on, then gripped the handle of Chance’s stroller. He was fast asleep.

“Sara, again, I’m very sorry,” Holton said. “I hate to bring this up right now, but I do need to tell you that you’ll need to vacate the house within fourteen days. You may take your personal possessions, but everything else now belongs to the estate. If there’s anything you’d like to take, do it before tomorrow, when the appraisals will begin.”

She nodded again. She couldn’t wait to leave that house. Where she’d move, she had no idea. But she did know where she was going now.

To see Noah Dawson. And get her baby girl.

“Should we give Bolt an apple slice?” Noah asked his baby daughter, snug in the carrier strapped to his chest.

He stood at Bolt’s stall in front of the small barn beside his cabin, the mare nudging his arm for her apple. “We should? I agree.” He pulled the baggie of apple slices from his pocket.

Annabel didn’t respond, but according to the book on your baby’s first year, she wouldn’t make sounds or coo for another couple of weeks.

He’d learned quite a bit about babies in the past seven weeks. He’d been right that Annabel had only been hours old when she’d been left on his porch. Doc Bakerton had been a grouch at being woken up at 2:20 in the morning—until he’d seen why Noah had come blazing over.

Because Bakerton was getting up there in years—nearing eighty—and had long been a rural doctor, he hadn’t said anything about calling the sheriff or social services. Noah had showed him the note he’d found in the carrier, and that had been good enough. “The system doesn’t need another abandoned baby when the perfectly good father is standing up,” the doctor had said with a firm nod. Bakerton declared the infant healthy but small, recommended two possible pediatricians to follow up with and sent Noah on his way to beat the worst of the rain.

And so a little over twenty minutes after arriving, Noah had taken the baby home, shell-shocked but focused on the immediate here and now, not even tomorrow. The doc had given Noah some samples of formula and more diapers and wipes and had made a list of the basics Noah should buy in the morning.

Some of the shock had started to wear off while he’d been at Bakerton’s, mostly because he’d realized he could simply leave the infant with the doctor, who’d call whoever needed to be called. The sheriff. Social services. And that would be that.

But what Bakerton had said kept echoing in his head as he’d watched him move that little stethoscope around the tiny back and chest...when the perfectly good father is standing up.

Noah Dawson, perfectly good father? He would have burst out laughing if the situation hadn’t been so incredibly lacking in humor. Thing was, after all that he’d been through, all he’d lost, after the bad day he’d had with a sick calf, Noah had appreciated the extra show of faith in himself as a human being, and Bakerton had uttered the right words at exactly the right moment. The note said the baby was his. The perfectly good—or able, he figured Bakerton had meant—father was here with the infant, doing exactly what he should be doing. That was two for two on the faith scale.

He’d driven slow as his late grandmother’s molasses back to the ranch in the pouring rain, and once inside he’d gone straight to his laptop, holding the tiny baby along his arm as he watched a YouTube video on how to mix formula, how to hold the bottle—how to hold a newborn, for that matter. Turns out he hadn’t been doing that too wrong. He’d watched each video twice. By the time he’d closed his laptop, word had come that the river had flooded and two roads into town were impassable. He’d breathed a sigh of relief at the timing; the baby was safe and had been checked out, and Noah had what he’d needed to get through the night. The universe had been looking out for Noah lately.

They’d both survived that first night. While feeding the tiny infant, he’d realized he’d have to name her, and Annabel popped into his mind and that was that. He’d refused to let himself dwell on why.

Annabel Dawson. It wasn’t official anywhere, not yet, but he’d have to deal with that too—getting Annabel a birth certificate while worrying that some bureaucrat would demand he hand his baby over.

His baby.

How Noah had gotten from where he’d been the night he’d found Annabel to his baby rolling off his tongue with ease was anyone’s guess, but it had happened, and no one was more surprised than his sister. When the roosters had announced it was officially morning, he’d called his sister, Daisy, who lived out in Cheyenne, and boy, had she been in shock. She’d driven up by early evening and helped him so much—with Annabel and the ranch—the baby making her smile when he’d catch her looking so worried so often. Daisy had been close to five months pregnant then and wouldn’t say a word about who the father was. She’d seemed relieved to have a reason to move somewhere, even to the family ranch, with its tangled roots and all.

Up until the moment he’d found Annabel, he’d spent the four months prior rebuilding the Dawson Family Guest Ranch. That had changed him, turned him around, made him a better person and had to have something to do with how immediately responsible he’d felt for the baby left on his porch—his baby. Add that to a tiny finger clutching his pinkie while feeding her. Being up all hours of the night checking on her—sometimes just to make sure she was still breathing. Googling “lullabies newborns like” and then playing them, and then singing them himself while sitting in the rocker he’d gotten from the town swap shop. Changing diapers. Playing peekaboo. Reading the pertinent pages of Your Baby’s First Year and googling all the little things Annabel did that he wasn’t sure was normal. Like burping so loud from that tiny body.

During the past seven weeks, he and Annabel had gotten even closer with all the walking around the vast property of the ranch, the baby against his chest in the Snugli and cozy footie pajamas. He’d told her all about the history of the ranch—how his grandparents had built it fifty-two years ago, how popular it had once been with tourists and locals coming to relax out in the country, to hike or ride on the vast trails in the woods and open grasslands, to learn to ride a horse, shear a sheep, spin fleece into yarn, milk cows and goats, and make butter and yogurt and his grandmother’s award-winning ice cream, which she’d sold right in their own little shop in the main barn. Bess Dawson had always handed each of her grandchildren a little spoon and sample cup of her new flavors to make sure the ice cream passed the kid test, and every flavor always had. Noah could still taste his favorites: chocolate-chocolate chip, strawberry, Bear Ridge Mix—pistachio ice cream with peanuts. Noah had also told Annabel how his widowed father had destroyed it all within three years of inheriting the place, drinking and gambling away profits, savings, their legacy, his six kids eventually scattering across the West to get away from him.

Noah was the youngest and had been trapped there for a good bunch of those low years. Daisy, two years older, watched over him the best she could until she’d been driven away by their dad’s self-destruction when she was eighteen. Noah had also left the moment he’d become a legal adult, all his pleading to his father to get his act together going in one ear...

Ten years later, the Dawson Family Guest Ranch had been a ghost ranch, rarely mentioned anymore except for someone in town to shake their head over its demise. But with the money Noah and his siblings had invested, he and a hardworking crew had gotten the place in shape—albeit on a smaller scale than the original—in just five months so they could open Memorial Day weekend. The day after tomorrow, Friday, was the grand reopening. His brothers hadn’t responded to his invitation to stop by for the big day, and Noah wouldn’t be surprised when none showed up.

“Let the place go,” the Dawson siblings had all said to Noah one way or another at their father’s funeral.

Except Noah hadn’t been able to—and then his siblings had rallied around him, making a plan to invest in rebuilding because doing so meant something to him and would mean everything to their grandparents. Noah wouldn’t ever let the ranch go. For many reasons. So many reasons he hadn’t even told Annabel all of them yet. And he’d told her just about everything. His confidante was a seven-week-old, ten-pound, nine-ounce baby with chubby cheeks. There was a first for everything.

He heard a car coming up the drive and turned around. A silver Range Rover SUV was barreling up the dirt road toward the foreman’s cabin. Did he know anyone who drove a Range Rover? The eldest Dawson sibling, Ford, maybe. But Ford had also said hell would freeze before he’d step foot on the ranch again.

Whoever it was sure was in a hell of a hurry to get to the cabin.

One hand protectively on the back of Annabel’s head in the Snugli, he watched the SUV suddenly come to a dead stop halfway up the drive. The glare from the sun made it impossible to see who was behind the wheel. Why stop there?

The Range Rover suddenly started up again and inched forward, this time at two miles an hour.

When the SUV finally got within a few feet, he could see inside.

Holy hell.

Sara.

How long had it been? Almost two years. After she’d told him she was marrying Willem Perry—he could barely even think the name in his head without wanting to vomit or hit something—he’d then heard they’d moved out to Wellington, an affluent town an hour away. He hadn’t seen or heard from her since. He’d been close with Sara’s only living relative, her father, but Preston Mayhew had gotten very sick a few months before she’d married Willem. He’d also heard Sara had had her dad transferred from the county hospital to the state-of-the-art one in Wellington. Noah had once called about visiting hours and was told that all visitors had to be preapproved by Willem Perry. So much for that. It was better that there was no one to talk to him about Sara or what she was up to or how great her life was with that bastard Willem; Noah wouldn’t have been able to bear it.

The car door opened and she stepped out, and his heart lurched. That wasn’t a surprise. The sight of Sara Mayhew had always had that effect. Not just because she was so pretty with her silky light brown hair and round, pale brown eyes; his attraction to her had always been about who she was, not how good she looked. Though she did look good.

She must have heard about the Dawson Family Guest Ranch reopening this weekend and decided to check the place out for herself. After all, she’d grown up here too.

“I can’t tell you how great it is to see you, Sara,” he said, surprising even himself with his honesty. But it was bursting out of him. He’d missed her so much the past couple of years that he’d done regretful things to forget her, nothing working.

She shut her car door and walked toward him, her gaze on the Snugli, then moving up to his face. “You found that baby on your porch seven weeks ago? The early-morning hours of April 9?” Her voice sounded strange. Desperate and shaky.

He stared at her, his grip a bit tighter on the baby carrier. “How did you know that?”

“Because Willem—my late husband—is the one who put her there. She’s mine, Noah. My daughter.”

What? Noah took a step toward Sara, then a step back. “There was a note with her. It said she’s mine.”

Sara shook her head. “She’s not yours. Willem told me she died during the home birth. But he just didn’t want her because she was a girl and frail-looking when her healthy, robust twin brother—the male heir—had been born two minutes earlier.”

No. That’s insanity. On what planet does that sound believable? Even the worst of the worst like Willem Perry wouldn’t do something like that. To his own flesh and blood? His newborn daughter?

She stepped forward, her gaze on the baby’s head before looking up at him. “He left a letter for me via his lawyer detailing how he drove her here right before the rain started to come down in the middle of the night. I had no idea. I thought she didn’t survive the birth.” A sob escaped her, and she put her hand over her mouth.

Oh God. Unthinkable.

So unthinkable that it wasn’t quite sinking in. All he could do in the moment was look at Annabel, whom he’d taken care of for the past almost two months, whom he loved. She was his daughter. The note had said so. She was his child.

“That’s my baby girl, Noah,” she said, taking another step, then stopping. Maybe because of the expression on his face, which had to be something like horror.

For a second he could only stare at Sara, trying to process the craziness that had just come out of her mouth.

He thought about the first moments after bringing Annabel inside the night he’d found her. There had been something familiar about the little face, something in the expression, the eyes, that he couldn’t pin down. He’d figured the baby’s mother was a woman he’d been with for one night...

He and Sara had made love hundreds of times during their brief time as a couple, but the last time was right before she’d dumped him two years ago. He certainly wasn’t the father of her daughter.

He glanced down at what he could see of Annabel’s little profile, and yup, there it was, that slight something in the turndown of the eyes, the way the mouth curved upward. It was Sara’s face. No wonder he’d felt so strangely connected to Annabel from the moment he’d brought her inside the cabin—before he’d even read the note falsely declaring the baby was his.

“I want to hold her so badly,” Sara said. She reached out, and Noah felt the surrender everywhere in his body—the region of his heart most pointedly. This was Sara’s baby. Not his.

Hell, he might break down crying. But he lifted Annabel out of the carrier. He handed her over with a stabbing awareness that this was it—it was over. His stint at fatherhood. He was proud of what he’d accomplished with the ranch, but he was proudest of what he’d accomplished with his daughter.

Not his daughter. He’d have to take that phrasing out of his vocabulary, out of his head. She wasn’t his.

As Sara clutched the baby to her chest, tears streaming down her face, he closed his eyes, not surprised by the weight of sadness crushing his chest.

He loved Annabel. That was a surprise. But it was true.

“Is there somewhere I can go to spend time with her?” Sara asked, her gaze moving from the baby to Noah as she gently touched her wispy light brown curls, her cheek, her arm, her little fingers. “I just can’t believe this is real.”

Me either. He stared at his daughter—her daughter—and the jab in his chest intensified.

“You can take her into the cabin,” he said. “She’s eaten recently and been changed, so she’s all set.”

Now she stared at him, as if shocked he knew anything about Annabel’s feeding and diaper-changing schedule.

“My son, her twin brother, is in the SUV,” Sara said. “Could you take him out for me? I can’t bear to let go of my daughter.”

My daughter. My daughter. My daughter.

Noah’s head was swimming, and his knees were wobbly. He nodded and lurched toward the Range Rover, mostly to have something to brace his fall if his legs did give out.

He pulled open the door, and there was Annabel’s honest-to-goodness twin in green-and-white-striped pajamas. They looked so much alike—the wispy light brown curls. The slate-blue eyes. The nose. The expression. It was all Sara.

He took out the car seat and brought it around to where Sara stood. He lifted up the seat to Annabel’s level. The baby that had been in his arms until five minutes ago. “Annabel, you’re about to meet your twin brother.”

Sara’s mouth dropped open. “Annabel? That’s what you named her?”

He nodded. It was Sara’s middle name.

Tears filled her eyes, and she blinked hard.

“This is Chance,” she said. “Chance, meet Noah Dawson. I’ve known him a long time.”

A very long time. “Very nice to meet you, Chance.” He gently touched a hand to the downy little head with its soft brown wisps.

“And Chance, this is Annabel, your twin sister,” Sara added. “You’re back together where you belong.”

Oh hell. He was about to break down himself.

“I want to hear everything,” she said, her pale brown eyes imploring. “From the moment you realized she was outside on your porch to the moment I drove up. I need to know about her life these past seven weeks. But first I just need some time alone with her. To let this sink in.” She cuddled Annabel against her, her gaze going from her daughter to Noah and back again.

All these weeks that Annabel had been right here, with him, her mother had believed that her baby girl was dead. He had to stop thinking about himself and focus on that—what Sara had been through.

And how twin babies had almost been separated forever.

“I understand,” he said, the sturdy weight of the car seat in his right hand making him both happy and miserable. “I’ll help you inside with the twins, and you can have the place to yourself for however long you need. Text me when you’re ready and I’ll come fill you in.”

She let out a breath. “Thank you, Noah. You can’t imagine.” She shook her head, her tear-streaked face his undoing as much as the situation.

He couldn’t imagine.

They started walking to the cabin, which had once been her home when her father had been foreman. She stopped for a moment, staring up at the newly renovated two-story log house with the hunter green covered porch and flower boxes his sister had insisted on putting everywhere. Sara didn’t say anything about the place, how it had changed, but she had much bigger things on her mind than the ranch.

He opened the door, then stepped aside so she could enter with Annabel. He followed her in, wanting to rip his daughter from her arms. He had to stop walking for a second; the pain in his chest was that severe, and dammit, he was worried he’d start bawling like a little kid any second.

He led her into the living room and set Chance’s carrier on the floor beside the sofa. Sara dropped down on the sofa, crying, laughing, staring at the baby girl in her arms.

“Her baby bag is on the stroller by the door if you need anything,” he managed to say. “Plus, there’s a big basket of baby stuff on the side of the coffee table.”

She couldn’t take her eyes off Annabel. She nodded as if barely able to hear him.

“Take as long as you want,” he said. “Text me when you’re ready for me to come back and we’ll talk.” He jotted his cell number down and left it on the coffee table.

She nodded, not taking her eyes off her daughter.

He wanted to grab Annabel away from her and run. Or just stay here, not letting the baby girl out of his sight.

Because no matter how many times he told himself she wasn’t his daughter, he couldn’t make himself believe it.

He forced himself out the door, his heart staying behind.

Chapter Two

Sara couldn’t stop staring at the tiny baby nestled against her chest. Couldn’t stop touching her, couldn’t stop telling her she loved her, that she was so sorry she hadn’t been there the past seven weeks, that nothing would ever come between them again.

On the drive over to the ranch from the lawyer’s office, she’d kept thinking, Please let my daughter be alive. Please let her be there. Please, please, please. Her prayers answered, Sara’s relief, her pure joy at being reunited with her baby girl, trounced her anger—murderous rage, really, at what had been done to the infant, done to Sara. That monster took so much from us. He’s not getting a second more of any piece of me. Not my thoughts or my emotions. Nothing. He’s gone.

“We have so much to catch up on,” Sara whispered, in awe of everything about Annabel. Her ten fingers and toes. Her little nose and chin. The way her chest rose and fell in her sea-foam-green-and-white pajamas with little ducklings across the front. That she was really, truly here.

The baby’s eyes were drooping, and Sara would be happy to sit here forever with Annabel napping in her arms. She glanced down at Chance, who was already asleep in his carrier. The siblings, twins, back together. She took in a deep, satisfying breath. Seven weeks felt like so much to miss out on, but she knew as time went on, she’d be grateful it had barely been two months.

She stood up, gently rocking Annabel, and walked over to the stone fireplace that dominated one wall of the living room, photos on the mantel. She’d lived in this house from the time she was born until she was sixteen, had sat on the sofa facing that fireplace night after night with her father after her mother passed away when she was nine. Talks, homework, reading, her dad’s delicious sub sandwiches as they watched a series they could enjoy together. Her entire life was up in the air right now, but being here in this cabin made her feel safe.

“I grew up here,” she whispered to Annabel. “Your grandma lived here. And your grandfather loved this cabin. He was the foreman here.” Now Noah was.

She froze, biting her lip as Noah’s words came back to her. There was a note with her. It said she was mine.

All this time, Noah had thought the baby was his. She glanced around the room, taking in the pale yellow playpen with its pastel mobile atop it by the bay window. The baby swing. The big basket of baby paraphernalia by the coffee table—she could see neatly folded burp cloths, a pack of diapers, a pink pacifier on a silver tray on the coffee table. An infant stroller was by the front door with a tote bag hanging from its handles. Lots of photos on the mantel were of Annabel, a few of Noah holding her.

She gasped as it really sank in that Annabel had lived here these past seven weeks, that Noah had taken her in—as his daughter.

Was he relieved that the mother had come back to take her? Upset? Noah Dawson was the bachelor of bachelors. Clearly he’d gotten his act together to reopen the guest ranch, but perhaps his siblings were all involved in that. The Noah she’d known near the end of their relationship two years ago didn’t wake until noon, despite having a ranch to run. Didn’t take care of business. Didn’t take care of their fledgling romance, the one she’d fought and kicked so hard for. Turned out Noah Dawson had been right about himself—that he’d only break her heart in more ways than one.

She always thought she knew better, didn’t she.

Her future was in her arms. In the carrier beside the sofa. Her children. Hours ago she’d had only a son. Now she had twins.

Take the blessing and let that fill you, she ordered herself. Because letting herself get caught up in anger over the past—recent and not so recent—would only hold her back. She had a family to raise, money to earn, a life to start.

She took a deep breath and glanced at the other photos on the mantel, surprised to see one of her and Noah in their caps and gowns, their high school graduation. They’d both worked at the Circle D then, a prosperous ranch a half hour away. Sara had lived there as the foreman’s daughter, and Noah was a hand. But a month later, when he turned eighteen, Noah had moved there too, so upset by the conversation he’d had with his dad a half hour earlier that he’d gone off alone. Sara still didn’t know what had gone on during that discussion.

The other photos were of his siblings, the six of them together when Noah was sixteen. They’d still come home to celebrate his birthday, though they’d refused to have Christmas at the ranch with their dad and had flown Noah to one of their homes instead.

There was a photo of his mom, a pretty brunette with blue eyes who’d died when he was ten, something that had brought Sara and Noah even closer. They never had to talk about how awful it felt to miss your mother, to wish she were there. They just knew and could be together, quiet, skipping stones in the river, throwing bread to the ducks, climbing trees and sitting up there for hours.

She missed the Noah he’d been three-quarters of the time—even to the very end of their relationship two years ago. She missed that guy so, so much.

And she’d missed this cabin. She turned to look around. She had so many memories here, so much history. She knew every nook and cranny, which floorboards creaked on the stairs, how many steps it was down to the creek (182), how she’d sat on her bed in her room upstairs, writing Sara Dawson in hearts in her journal like the lovesick teenager she’d been.

“Where’s my sweet baby girl?” a woman’s voice called cheerily through the front screen door, followed by a set of knocks. “I need my Annabelly time.”

Sara froze. Oh God. Who was this?

Noah’s wife? Girlfriend?

“Noah? You here?” the feminine voice called.

Sara bit her lip. Should she go to the door? Pretend she wasn’t here?

Curiosity got the better of her, since this woman might have helped Noah take care of Annabel the past seven weeks. Maybe, in fact, she’d done all the work. That was more likely.

She went to the door, and her heart soared. It was Daisy Dawson, Noah’s only sister.

“Daisy!” Sara said, hearing her voice break and not caring. Her long honey-brown hair in a braid practically to her waist, a straw cowboy hat on her head, pretty, sweet Daisy had been a good friend from childhood until Willem had isolated Sara from everyone she used to care about. Daisy was also at least six months pregnant.

“Whoa—Sara?” Daisy asked with a shocked grin, pulling open the screen door and coming inside. She glanced at Annabel in Sara’s arms. “This is a huge surprise. Did you come for Dawson’s grand reopening?” Before Sara could even respond, Daisy added, “That rascal Noah—he didn’t even tell me you two had gotten back in touch. God, Sara, it’s so good to see you. You look amazing. So healthy and glowy. Is Noah here or did he have to step out to deal with something?” Daisy touched a finger to Annabel’s cheek. “I’m so glad you got to meet my beautiful niece. Isn’t she precious?”

My beautiful niece. Sara’s knees buckled.

Sara tightened her arms around Annabel, more out of instinct than because she was worried she’d really drop to her knees.

Her every emotion must have been showing on her face, because Daisy tilted her head and looked at her. “Sara? You okay?”

“Not really,” Sara said. “Not by a long shot. I’ll be okay, though.”

Daisy put a hand on Sara’s arm, her warm blue eyes filled with concern. “How about we go talk in the kitchen? I know I could use a cup of decaf. I actually could use a big mug of real coffee. But I’m limiting myself to one cup a day, and I had that.” She patted her belly.

Sara glanced at Daisy’s left hand. No ring. She wondered what the story was there as she followed Daisy into the kitchen. Daisy always used to talk about wanting to be a mom one day, but she was insistent on picking the right guy so she’d never get divorced like her parents had, let alone thrice divorced like her dad. Sara had once pointed out that you could pick the right guy, as her own mother had, and leave him a brokenhearted widow at age thirty-six. You just never knew what life was going to throw at you.

As Daisy headed for the coffee maker, reaching for two mugs in the cabinet, Sara found her attention taken by the refrigerator door, all the things hung up with magnets. There was a checklist of baby-proofing essentials. A cutout newspaper ad for a local grandmother of five who did hand embroidery personalization on baby clothing and blankets and towels. The American Academy of Pediatrics’ recommendations for feeding and napping schedules.

“Noah loves Annabel, doesn’t he,” Sara said, more a statement than a question, her voice sounding far away to her own ears as she stood in front of the fridge. “I can tell. I knew it as soon I saw him with her in the Snugli.”

Daisy tilted her head. “Of course. He loves that baby girl to pieces. Did you hear the crazy story? How someone left her on his porch right before that terrible rainstorm just about two months ago? There was a note that said the baby was his. He had no reason to doubt it. He even insists Annabel looks like him, but I don’t see it. Don’t tell him I said that!” She laughed and pressed a button on the coffee maker.

Sara almost smiled at the thought of Noah thinking Annabel looked like him. Once upon a time, when she’d still held out hope for marrying Noah Dawson and having a family with him, she’d always pictured little Noahs, two or three, with intense blue eyes and wavy dark hair, mischievous grins and big hearts.

“Daisy, I have a crazier story,” Sara said. And told her everything. Not leaving a detail out.

Daisy was an expressive woman to start with, but the range of emotions that crossed her face was something. “Oh my God, Sara.”

Sara nodded.

“Can I be really happy for you and really sad for my brother at the same time?” Daisy asked. “He must be out of his mind right now knowing you’re going to take Annabel away.”

Take Annabel away. Sara’s stomach flipped over. She’d never really thought of coming to get her daughter as taking the baby away from someone. But now she kept seeing the look on Noah’s face as he’d taken Annabel out of the carrier and handed her over.

It was anguish.

Oh, Noah, she thought. This part of the story never would have occurred to me.

This whole time, from the moment the lawyer had read Willem’s awful letter, Sara had only focused on the fact that her daughter was alive, that Willem had taken her to Noah’s cabin. She’d never stopped to think about what had happened between then and now. Sara had just wanted to find her child and reunite.

But Noah had taken her in, had been raising her as his own, as he believed she was.

And that anguish on his face? Yes, he loved the baby.

Daisy poured two mugs of coffee and then opened Noah’s fridge. “Ooh, half a pecan pie. I think we’re gonna need a little of that too. Maybe a lot. Am I right?”

“Probably,” Sara said. “I’m not sure if I can eat a bite of anything, but since when don’t I stress eat?”

Daisy nodded sagely and grabbed the pie and the container of half-and-half, and Sara brought over the mugs to the table. By the time Sara sat down and took her third sip of the coffee and her second bite of pie, an idea had started forming in her mind.

An either really good idea or a really bad one. She truly wasn’t sure.

Noah barely heard what his ranch hand was saying about the hay bales, but the guy was smiling, so Noah smiled back and nodded. Two days before the grand opening was no time to have his mind elsewhere, but every cell in Noah’s body was focused on his cabin. And what was going on in there.

He knew, actually. Sara was reuniting with the daughter she’d never gotten to hold. Never gotten to meet, let alone know.

And soon she’d text him that she was ready for him to come back so they could talk, so he could fill her in on the last seven weeks.

So he could say goodbye to the baby girl he’d taken care of. His daughter who wasn’t.

The pain gripped his chest again, and he sucked in a breath.

“You okay, boss?” Dylan asked, adjusting his cowboy hat as he peered at Noah. “You don’t look so good.”

“A-okay,” Noah assured him. “So everything’s in order in the main barn. What about the petting zoo?”

Dylan nodded, his mop of blond bangs shifting. “We’re all set. I did inventory this morning. We won’t need to place orders till Tuesday. Layla’s feeding the farm animals now.”

Noah nodded. “Thanks,” he said. He’d hired several experienced hands for the land and animals and knew he could let go for a little while to deal with what was going on with Annabel.

He walked the quarter mile to his cabin and saddled up Bolt, riding her out to the gate a half mile down the gravel drive. He stopped and patted Bolt’s flanks, staring at the hunter green metal that stretched across the road, Dawson Family Guest Ranch in gold letters, the silhouettes of a cowboy and a cowgirl on horses on either side. His grandparents had made belt buckles with the logo to sell in the gift shop, and one Christmas, he’d had six personalized with the grandkids’ names. Noah still had his. In fact, he kept it on his desk, always had, and the past five months the buckle had served as a talisman, a lucky charm.

And for the past seven weeks, Annabel’s presence had spurred him on to go even farther with making sure every detail of the ranch’s reopening was perfect. This was going to be her future.

Now she wouldn’t be part of it. She wouldn’t be around at all.

His phone pinged with a text, and he reluctantly took it from his pocket. The sooner Sara was ready for him to return, the sooner she’d leave. With his baby.

But it was Daisy texting him.

U ok? Where R U? Heard whole story from S in the cabin.

At the gate, he texted back. No, not OK.

She texted back, Be right there.

A few minutes later, Daisy rode up on her bike. She jumped off, one hand on her belly, and threw her arms around him.

“Sara’s going to take her away,” Noah said, letting his sister comfort him for a second before pulling back. He stared out at the woods beyond the road. “Just like that.”

“I’m so sorry,” Daisy said. “You know I love that baby girl.”

“At least Annabel will be with her mother. And Sara will be with her daughter. I should focus on that. She got her daughter back. It’s a friggin’ miracle.”

Daisy nodded. “It is.”

“And I guess Annabel as a Perry and not a Dawson will have every creature comfort, certainly more than I could ever provide.” He knew the Dawson Family Guest Ranch would do well; he was already booked for the weekend and had bookings stretching all the way to fall. Not every cabin was filled for every day, but word of mouth would spread, and the ranch would be a big success. He believed it. But he’d never be able to give Annabel the life Sara could as richer-than-rich Willem Perry’s widow.

“You know what’s crazy, Daize?” he said. “My heart’s been broken before, so I know what that feels like. This feels like that.”

His sister put her hand on his arm. “Look, I don’t know what happened between you and Sara two years ago. But maybe you can stay in touch, visit Annabel.”

He could just see it now. “Uncle” Noah coming to visit every couple of months, bringing a stuffed animal. How could he become Uncle Noah when that baby had changed his entire life and world? She’d turned him into a father, something he wouldn’t have seen coming in a million years. And dammit, he’d been good at it. Another shocker.

His phone pinged with a text, and his heart sank.

Come talk?—Sara

He stood there, his head hung, unable to move.

“I’m so sorry, Noah,” his sister said again. “I know how much you love Annabel.”

Even he hadn’t known just how much he loved that ten-pound little human until this moment. More than he’d ever realized.

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