Skylar slipped out as quietly as possible.
Chapter Seven
“You ain’t complainin’ about bein’ tied down with a kid and all that shit now?”Tied down. As if. Eliza had turned his world upside down, but she hung the moon and the stars as far as Kade was concerned. He was absolutely head over heels for his little Miz Eliza Belle Ellison McKay. Thinking about her sweet face, big inquisitive eyes, toothless grin and plump cheeks filled him with so much pride and love, he was damn close to bursting out in song.
“No complaints,” Kade said.
“Really? So how’s diaper duty?”
“Ain’t any worse than shovelin’ hot cow shit.”
Kane snorted. “If you say so.”
His brother’s sarcastic comments about Eliza were getting tiresome. Kade rested his forearm across the posthole digger handle and tried to rein in his temper. “What’s that supposed to mean?”
“Nothin’.”
“I’m serious. Why you always sayin’ shit like that, Kane?”
“Maybe you oughta be askin’ why you’re so touchy about it. I can’t say nothin’ lately without you bitin’ off my head, bro.” Kane continued to fiddle with the coil of barbed wire and wouldn’t look at him.
“Yeah? Maybe I am a little touchy ’cause my only brother can’t be bothered to drive sixty miles down the road to meet my baby daughter.”
“I ain’t good with babies,” he said softly. “You know that.”
Kade hadn’t been either up until about two weeks ago. “Look. I ain’t gonna make you change her diaper.”
Kane’s mouth twitched.
“But I would like you to see her. Next to her mama, she’s the prettiest thing in the whole world.”
“I reckon she probably is. But you ever think it might not be the best idea for me to see her? Or for her to see me?”
“Didja hit yourself in the head with a hammer?”
“Why you say that?”
“’Cause you ain’t makin’ a lick of sense.”
Kane squinted at him. “Yeah? Did it escape your notice in the year you’ve been gone that we’re identical twins? That havin’ two men who both look like daddy might be confusin’ to her?”
Hell. That hadn’t occurred to him.
“I know you’re bondin’ with her, or whatever you wanna call it, and it’d be just my luck if I’d fuck it up somehow. I done that once with you and her mama. I ain’t lookin’ to do it again.”
Kade had no idea how to answer. For once his brother had brought up a valid point. “I appreciate your honesty. But it wasn’t your fault I never came clean with Skylar about me not bein’ you. I pissed away my chances to tell her and I gotta live with my stupidity.”
A couple of minutes passed where the only sounds were bugs and birds and the grinding chink of tools against hard-packed soil.
A heartfelt sigh drifted up from where Kane worked in the dirt. “Didja ever wonder why Ma named us Kane and Kade? Jesus. It ain’t bad enough hardly anyone can tell us apart? We gotta have names that are damn close to identical?”
“Yeah, I wondered that. But neither of us has balls enough to ask the blonde tornado just what she was thinkin’ when she popped out a matched set,” Kade said wryly.
“True. Dad’d skin us alive if we upset the queen bee, even now.” Kane twisted the wire cutters. “Anyway, I’m thinkin’ about changin’ my name.”
Kade laughed. “Right.”
“I’m serious. Something that don’t start with a ‘K’ or a ‘C’ like everyone in this damn family.”
“How about…Dick?”
“How about you fuck off, smartass?”
Kade grinned. “So whatcha thinkin’? Bubba? Spud? Deuce? Fred? Ethyl?”
“I think Bennett’s datin’ a woman from Thermopolis named Ethyl.”
“No kiddin’?”
“Yeah, I’m kiddin’. Goddamn you’re easy to tease, Kade.”
“Give me a break. I ain’t had to make small talk besides with the cattle for the last year. Good thing Eliza ain’t expectin’ me to be a brilliant talker.”
Kane clipped a section of wire. “What about Skylar? Does she expect that from you?”
“Who the hell knows?” Frustrated, Kade pounded his foot against the metal jaws of the posthole digger. “We don’t talk about nothin’ except Eliza.”
“That’s to be expected, ain’t it?”
“Probably. But it’s been a few weeks since I moved in. I thought since I was up with the baby last night that Sky would be rested and we could talk about something else this mornin’. But after I got out of the shower, she’d already made up the bed. When I