Colt knew she was expecting him to follow her in and see the twins as they slept. But he wasn’t interested in seeing his kids for the first time while in front of an audience. He could wait a bit longer to see the babies who had brought him here. And he’d do it in his own time.
Hell, he realized with a start, he was actually nervous. He couldn’t even remember the last time he’d felt the skitter of nerves racking his body. Colt had faced down volcanoes, killer surf, parachutes that didn’t open and broken skis on the steep face of a so-called un-skiable mountain. Yet the thought of meeting his children for the first time had him backing away from an open doorway as if it were a gateway to some black, dangerous pit.
So he waited while she fiddled with blankets and murmured soft sounds of comfort and love. He was finding it hard to breathe past a knot of sensation that he recognized as it grew inside him. This wasn’t nerves. This was a familiar, buzzing feeling settling into the pit of his stomach. He felt it every time he stood at the tip of a mountain, jumped off a cliff, rode forty-foot surf. It was that surge of adrenaline that let him know he was alive. That he was about to risk it all. About to put his life on the line and either change it—or end it.
He didn’t care which.
“Colt?”
She was back in the hall, with the babies’ door closed, and she was looking at him. He stared down into those green eyes he’d never really been able to forget. “What?”
“I just thought you’d want to see the twins...”
“I do,” he assured her, getting a tight rein on the runaway sensations pouring through him. “Later.”
“Okay then.” She walked past him slowly, heading to the end of the hall and another closed door. Looking back at him over her shoulder, she reluctantly acknowledged, “You were right before. I think I will need your help getting out of these clothes.”
In different circumstances, getting her undressed would have been Colt’s highest priority. But things were different now. They weren’t lovers. They were...what? Enemies? Maybe. Sure weren’t friends. Exes with children. He looked at Penny and saw misery in her eyes and it wasn’t hard to identify the reason. Couldn’t have been easy for her to admit to him that she needed help. Especially from him. Right now, things between them were strained so tight, the tension in the air between them flavored every breath.
And it wasn’t only the situation with the twins that had them each walking a fine line. It was the sexual chemistry still buzzing between them. But chemistry didn’t have to be acted on, did it? Nodding, he said, “Fine.”
His brain was busy, racing with too many thoughts to sort out, and that was just as well. If he kept his anger burning, he’d be able to ignore the rush of desire already pulsing inside him.
He followed Penny into her bedroom and took a second or two to look around. A full-size bed on one wall, bedside tables and a tall dresser. There were framed photos on the walls—hers, he was willing to bet—of the beach, parks and two smiling babies.
They were beautiful. Both of them. His heart gave an unexpected leap that staggered him. His children. Yes, he’d get a paternity test, but just looking at those two faces caught forever and trapped behind glass, he knew they were his. They looked like him. They each had the King black hair and blue eyes and he could see his own features replicated in miniature.
“They look like you,” she said softly.
His throat squeezed shut and he could hear his own heartbeat hammering in his ears. He kept his gaze fixed on the photos. It seemed he was going to be seeing his children for the first time in front of an audience after all. “When did you take the pictures?”
“Two weeks ago,” she said. “We went to the park, which is why Reid has sand on his face. He tries to eat everything he finds.”
A tight smile curved Colt’s mouth as he looked at his son’s mischievous face. There was a sparkle in the tiny boy’s eyes that promised trouble. And his sister had that same flash of something special about her, Colt thought. His children. And he didn’t know them. Had never heard them. Had never held them. His heart took another leap and he forced himself to turn from the framed photos to the woman sitting on the edge of the bed.
“You cheated me, Penny,” he ground out tightly as a fresh surge of anger washed over him. “Nobody cheats a King and gets away with it.”
Four
“Cheated you?” she countered, green eyes glittering. “You walked away, Colt. You cheated yourself. Out of the kids, out of what we could have had.”
Shaking his head, he took a step back from her and tried to keep his voice down in spite of the raging fury inside him. Seeing his kids there on her wall, realizing just how much of their lives he’d already missed, had stoked the fire of his anger until it felt as if he were being consumed.
“Yeah, I walked. From a marriage that was a mistake,” he muttered. The past came rushing forward, but he wouldn’t look at it. Refused to remember the pain and shock in her eyes as he left her.
“It didn’t last long enough to be classified a mistake,” she countered.
She was right about that much. Colt reached up and pushed both hands through his hair. He’d relived his decision to spontaneously get married a million times over the last eighteen months and he still couldn’t explain to himself why he’d done it. But in that wild moment in the tacky little chapel, he’d known he wanted her with him for always.
“Always” had lasted about ten hours.
Dawn eventually came and shook him out of the passion-induced haze he’d been operating in. In the glare of morning, he’d remembered at last that “forever” didn’t exist. That marriage just wasn’t in his game plan—in spite of how amazing he and Penny were in bed together.
He’d believed then, and he still did, that walking away was the right thing to do. But he would have walked right back if she’d even once mentioned the whole pregnancy thing.
“What did you think was going to happen, Penny?” He glared down at her, refusing to be swayed by the gleam in her eyes or the tilt of her chin. “Did you really see us living the suburban dream? Is that it?”
“No,” she said on a short laugh. “But—”
“But what? Would it have been better to stay married for a month? Six? And then end it? Would that have seemed kinder,” he asked, “or would it just have prolonged the inevitable?”