Free Tina Leonard - Triplets' Rodeo Man by Tina Leonard Page A

wedding.
    â€œSure,” Jack said, putting his arm around her. “Keep playing along with me. You’re doing great.”
    She didn’t like the sound of that. She’d heard that sneaky tone used before, but always from Josiah. “What are you up to?” she demanded when they were safely in the hospital hallway.
    â€œYou’ve got to save me,” Jack said. “Pop’s trying to trap me.”
    â€œLook here,” Cricket said, already feeling heat run under her good sense. “I refuse to be regarded as a trap, Jack Morgan. You are not a rabbit that I set out to snare, for your information.”
    â€œOh, hell, no, I didn’t mean that.” He held her against him, kissing her as Pete glanced out in the hall.
    â€œJust checking to make certain you lovebirds hadn’t flown the coop,” Pete teased. “Mom’s planning a huge wedding, just so you know. At the Château Morgan, which is to say the ranch. She has visions of you in a formal suit,” he whispered to Jack so their mother wouldn’t hear. “All the weddings she missed is making her want a doozy.”
    â€œThanks for the warning,” Jack said, waving his brother away. “Look, you can see what’s happening here, can’t you?”
    â€œNot exactly,” Cricket said. “I have a lot on my mind these days and haven’t been focusing on the Morgan family, at least not the ones in Union Junction.”
    â€œPrecisely my point,” Jack said. “Pop’s moved Mom onto the ranch. He’s turning over ownership to her. I’m supposed to live there for a year with her to get my million dollars.”
    â€œWhat million dollars?” Cricket asked.
    â€œAll my brothers got a million for coming home to Pop. It was bribe money,” Jack explained. “Now he’s brought Mom into the picture because of his guilty conscience. None of my brothers had to live with her, though, and put up with Pop, and learn how to be a father all at once. The deck is stacked against me. I’m going to need your help, Deacon.”
    â€œI’m not a deacon anymore,” Cricket said, detaching herself from Jack’s arms. She was reluctant to part from him but she didn’t want to be part of a cover-up. “I wasn’t really deacon material considering my unwed, pregnant state.”
    â€œOh,” Jack said, “a little too rebellious for the church, huh?”
    â€œI consider myself to be, at the moment, and turned in my resignation to spare them having to ask me to leave.” Cricket was terribly embarrassed by this. “Anyway, I’m not the person you need to talk to about any type of help. My days are spent warding off morning sickness.”
    â€œMarry me,” Jack said. “We’ll ward off a lot of things together.”
    She looked at him, wishing the proposal was offered seriously. He was so big and tall, handsome in a devil-may-care way. She knew this man was too much of a rogue to ever be tamed by a deacon and three babies—she wouldn’t dream of getting involved in his scheme. “I can’t, Jack. Don’t ask it of me.”
    â€œSure you can,” he said. “Save me, I’ll save you.”
    â€œBut I don’t want to live at the ranch. I mean, I like Gisella, she seems like a woman who’s eager for a second chance. You need to spend some time developing that relationship,” Cricket said, sort of realizing the wonderful madness behind Josiah’s scheme. “You should obey your father, you know.”
    â€œYou mean for the money.”
    â€œNo,” Cricket said. “Although that’s definitely a plus. But your father knows what he’s doing, he almost always has.”
    â€œOh, you weren’t here for the fireworks,” Jack told her. “There’s a box sitting in there full of letters Mom sent us over the years that Pop never opened. He’s a stubborn