Page 91 of Christmas with Three Cowboys

“Arrest me? For what?”

“Conspiracy to commit kidnapping for starters,” the sheriff replies, one ear on our conversation and one eye firmly on Darla. “Melissa Carson was taken against her will.”

“Yeah, because it’s the only way for Jake to clear his name!” Louisa insists.

“Melissa went to prison because of Jake’s lies,” I yell, then lower my voice as I continue. “He brought the Esparza cartel to our doorstep. We’re sleeping with one eye open and shotguns under our beds because of him. You’re gonna tell us precisely how you got involved with that fucker and everything else you know, or I swear I’m going to make your life miserable. Your uncle Sammy won’t be able to help you if I get my hands on you, you little brat.”

Whether it’s the tone of my voice or the glare in my eyes, but it works.

Quivering with fear, Louisa starts singing like a nightingale on a sweet summer night. She tells us all about how Jake first approached her, how he love-bombed her—though she calls it courting because she’s still too young and inexperienced to tell a lie from a truth as long as she gets a man’s attention. Kavanaugh then takes her in for questioning.

“I’m gonna take Darla back to the ranch,” Sammy says as we watch Louisa being ushered into the backseat of the sheriff’s car. “She gets a phone call, anyway. She can call her no-good parents to bail her out. I’m done here.”

“Sorry you got involved, Sammy,” Colton replies.

“That piece of shit Jake Miller really got around, didn’t he?”

“Yeah, and he got way too lucky, too,” Darla chimes in. “Melissa had no idea what was happening, the poor soul.”

“They’re a few hours ahead of us, but we can still catch up,” I tell Colton. “We do need to get Laurel over here, though. We can’t let her slip away.”

“We can’t go after her ourselves either. We need to find Melissa,” my brother says, and I completely agree. “I’ll reach out to our friends. One of them will come through. They just need to pick Laurel up and drop her off with Kavanaugh. We’ll explain everything once she’s secured. We can’t risk her disappearing like Bruce, not when we’re so fucking close.”

Sammy nods and offers to drive Darla back to the ranch. “The boys might need your truck to split up while they go out lookin’ for Melissa,” he says. “Colton’s got his ride, but Ethan—”

“Yeah, that’s fine,” Darla concedes and gives me the keys. “You drive safe, boys. And don’t get into any more trouble.”

“Will do, Auntie,” I reply with a stern nod. “Thank you for trying to keep Melissa out of harm’s way.”

She tears up. “I did, I swear to God I did.”

“We’ll find her,” Colton says. “I’ll get Mitch down here as well.”

“There’s something you need to know, though,” Darla adds. “I wasn’t gonna tell you before she had a chance to sit you boys down.”

“Tell us what?” I ask.

The look on Darla’s face fills me with a new kind of dread as the words spill out of her mouth. “Melissa’s pregnant. That’s why we were in town earlier. She got sick, really sick. We did an ultrasound and everything.”

“Was she okay?” Colton gasps, his eyes wide with shock.

I can barely fucking breathe as reality sinks in.

“Yeah, for the most part. It’s mostly stress-related, and I can’t blame her. She’s scared, boys. Scared of prison, scared of thecartel, scared she won’t survive, or worse, that she’ll end up back in Ridgeboro and they’ll take her babies away,” Darla says, trying hard not to cry.

“Babies?” I mumble.

Her eyes widen, then she sighs. “She’s having twins.”

Colton and I exchange glances. We know what this means. Or what it most likely means. The twin gene runs strong down the Avery bloodline. That’s our seed growing in Melissa’s womb, and she was thrown into the trunk of Jake Miller’s car, taken away. Fucking hell, as if things weren’t complicated enough, I can’t even rejoice in the exhilaration of learning that we’re going to be fathers.

That we’re going to be a family.

We need to find her. We need to protect her.

Now, more than ever.

28

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