DOUBLE THE TROUBLE

by Maureen Child

  Curious, Con grinned. “I’m listening....”

  * * *

  Penny missed Colt more than she would have thought it possible to miss anyone. The twins did, too, she could tell. They weren’t as boisterous as usual and every once in a while, one or both of them would look around an empty room as if searching for their father. Though it broke her heart, she knew that soon, the babies would get past that sensation of something being gone from their lives. They’d go on and their memories would fade and one day, when Colt dropped back into their lives, they would look at him like a stranger.

  She only wished it would be that easy for her, but she knew she would never get past this. She would long for him, dream of him for the rest of her life. In the middle of the night, she reached for him. She listened for the deep rumble of his voice as he read to the twins before bedtime. She even missed hearing him curse under his breath when he hit his head on the door frame.

  That stupid man had left a giant hole in her life. And what she wouldn’t give to have him back.

  “You’re just pitiful, that’s all there is to it,” she muttered, and picked up her digital camera. Turning it on, she pulled up the menu and then began flipping through the photos she’d taken during the time Colt was with them.

  Colt bathing the twins, more water on him than in the tub. Colt holding a sleeping Riley, stacking blocks with Reid. Colt smiling up at Penny from the bed they’d shared too briefly. Her heart didn’t just ache—it throbbed. Pain was her new best friend, and she had a feeling it wasn’t going to get any easier any time soon.

  Thankfully, just as she was ready to sink into the self-pity party of the year, the doorbell rang, which gave her an excuse to turn off the camera and get back to her life. With the twins asleep, she didn’t want to risk waking them by having that doorbell ring again. Hurrying, she opened the door to find a man with a clipboard standing on her porch.

  “Penny Oaks?” He had a bald head, bushy gray eyebrows, a tanned-to-leather face and broad shoulders.

  “Yes...”

  “Got a delivery for you,” he said and thrust the clipboard at her. “Sign here.”

  “Sign for what?” Automatically she glanced at the delivery receipt. A furniture store? “What’s this about?”

  “Bring it all in, Tommy,” the guy on her porch shouted before turning back to her. “I don’t know what’s going on. Just sign it, lady, and let me go back to the high life, okay?”

  She did and then stepped back in astonishment as two more men unloaded a chocolate-brown leather sofa and matching chair.

  “I didn’t order that,” she argued.

  “Somebody did.” The first guy just waved the paper at her. “We’ll haul your old stuff away. Come on guys, got a million stops to make still.”

  “What’re you—” She broke off as the two younger men smiled, nodded and slipped past her into her house. Then they were leaving, carrying her faded, overstuffed couch and chair out to the truck and then bringing in the new leather replacements.

  Before she could ask any more questions, the truck pulled away and she closed the door, staring at new furniture she hadn’t ordered.

  “God, it smells as good as it looks,” she murmured, walking to it to stroke the butter-soft leather as she would a cat. “But who— Colt. It had to be Colt,” she assured herself. “He must have ordered it before he left. He probably forgot to tell me it was coming.”

  She sighed, sat on the arm of the couch and frowned when she heard the roar of a lawn mower starting up. Staring through her front window, she saw a gardening crew working on her lawn. What was going on here?

  Before she made it to the front door, she heard the babies wake up and groaned. Apparently the sounds of the mower and the edger were too loud to sleep through. So much for naptime. She detoured to pick up her kids, plopping each of them on a hip, then went out onto the front porch.

  “Excuse me!” she shouted to one of the guys using a Weed Eater around the edge of her flower bed. “Who hired you?”

  Reid wailed and screwed his eyes up, preparing to launch into a real scream, and once that happened, Penny knew Riley wouldn’t be far behind.

  “Really,” she tried again, giving the hardworking man a hopeful smile. “I need to know...”

  He waved and went back to work. At a loss for what to do next, Penny went back into the house, settled both kids on the floor near their toy box and then watched out the window while her yard was tidied.

  “Your daddy’s behind this, too,” she whispered, feeling the sting of tears burn her eyes. “He won’t stay, but he’ll do this long-distance. Take care of my yard. Buy me new furniture. What’s next?”

  The doorbell rang and Penny stiffened. She hadn’t actually expected an answer to that last question. Throwing a quick glance at the twins to make sure they were all right, she opened the front door to a man in a suit holding up a set of car keys.

  “Who’re you?” she asked.

  “I’m just the messenger, ma’am,” he said and handed the keys to her. “Enjoy!”

  “Enjoy what?” Penny looked past him to see her fifteen-year-old reliable clunker being backed out of her driveway. “Hey! Wait!”

  Panicking a little, she raced back to the living room, picked up the twins and then headed for the porch. The gardeners were already moving on to the backyard and there was a shiny red SUV parked in her driveway. From the corner of her eye, she saw her car making its slow, deliberate way down the street. “Wait! Come back!”

  “I have come back,” Colt said, stepping out from behind the SUV. “If you’ll have me.”

  All the air left her body. Her stomach did a pitch and roll, then settled for butterflies. Thousands of ’em. Stunned speechless, Penny could only stare at him as he walked closer. Her gaze locked with his and her heart tumbled in her chest. “You’re supposed to be on a volcano.”

  He gave her a quick grin that sent whips of electricity shooting through her veins.

  “Now why would I want to do that when I could be right here?”

  “Here?” She nearly choked on the word.

  “Nowhere else,” he said, stepping up onto the porch.

  Penny held the babies, one on each hip, and laughed a little when they started bouncing and shrieking their delight at seeing their daddy again. Colt laughed, too, reached out and plucked both twins from her. He held them in his arms, kissed each of their foreheads and said, “I missed you guys.”

  “They missed you, too,” Penny told him and surreptitiously wiped away one stray tear.

  “How about their mother?” he asked. “Did she miss me?”

  “A lot,” she admitted, because what was the point of holding back now?

  “Penny.” His voice dropped to that low rumble that never failed to dance along her nerve endings like a caress. “You were right about me.”

  “What? Right? When?”

  He smiled at her and said, “Can we go inside?”

  “Yes. Sure.” She stepped back and Colt slipped past her. He carried both babies into the living room, set them down with their toys, then came back to her. She couldn’t look away from him. She was half afraid that if she did, he might disappear. That she was just having delusions or something because her heart had ached for him so badly.

  But then he was there, in front of her. He smelled so good. His black hair fell across his forehead and his ice-blue eyes were—not icy at all, she realized. They were warm, like a sky in summer, and they were lock
ed on her, showering her with emotions too dizzying to identify.

  “You were right,” he said softly, “when you said that I had been chasing death because I didn’t want to risk living.”

  “Colt...”

  He shook his head and grinned. “Don’t lose your nerve now. Everything you said to me was right, Penny. But not anymore. I want to live. With you. With my kids. You guys are all I’ll ever need.”

  Oh, God, she really wanted to believe him. But, “What about how you love adventure? How will you be happy living in a cottage in Laguna?”

  He pulled her in for a quick hug, then set her back again so he could watch her eyes. So that she could read the truth in his. “Living with you and the twins and all of our other kids will be all the adventure I could ever need.”

  “All the—”

  “And I know you love the cottage, but it’s going to be way too small for the bunch of kids we’re going to have, so I was thinking we could give the cottage to Robert and Maria and we could move to the cliff house?” Another smile. “If I live here, I’ll eventually kill myself, you know, smacking my head into the low beams.”

  Her head was spinning. “All the kids we’re going to have?”

  “Caught that, huh?” His eyes were shining and his smile was wide. “We may even get another set or two of twins, who knows?”

  “Another— Colt, you’re moving too fast,” she said. “I can’t keep up.” And, oh, how she wanted to.

  “This isn’t fast,” he promised her. “I’ve wasted too much time already, thinking about the past instead of looking at the future.”

  He was right there with her. In her living room. Promising her everything. Looking at her with all the love she could have dreamed of, but he still hadn’t said the words she needed to hear so badly.

  “I talked to Con, too, before—”

  “Before you hired a gardener, and bought me new furniture and a new car?”

  “Exactly.” He winked at her. “We’re going to be restructuring our business. Con thinks it’s a great idea. King’s Extreme Adventures is going to become King’s Family Adventures. We’re going to find the best places for families to visit. To vacation. To experience the world. We want people to enjoy their lives, not risk them.”

  Her heart melted. “Oh, Colt...”

  “Think about it! Way bigger customer base.”

  She smiled at him and could only think how happy she felt. How right it was to be here like this, with him.

  “Con and I think you should take all the photos for the advertising, too....”

  “I think I need to sit down.” Before she fell down. Afternoon sunlight spilled through the front windows and lay across the scarred wooden floors. Her kids were in the living room playing and giggling. And the man she loved was standing in front of her offering her the world and more.

  “I’ll hold you up,” he promised, and wrapped his arms around her. “I swear to you, Penny, I will always be there for you. To depend on. To count on. I want you to feel like you can lean on me and let me lean on you. I won’t ever let you down.”

  She stared up into his eyes, lifted one hand to cup his cheek and said, “I never believed you would, Colt.”

  He took a breath, pulled her in close and held on tightly. “We can talk about the business and the move and more kids right after I finish telling you the most important thing.” He let her go, took a step back and dropped to one knee. “I’m doing it right this time.”

  Penny lifted one hand to the base of her throat and watched as her dreams became reality.

  “I love you, Penny Oaks. I think I did from the very first moment I met you.” He gave her a sad smile. “That’s why I ran so far so fast. What I felt for you terrified me. Now, the only terrifying thing I can imagine is having to live without you.” He pulled a jeweler’s box from his pocket, flipped the velvet lid open and showed her a huge, canary-yellow diamond ring.

  “Oh, Colt...”

  “Marry me again, Penny. Share your life with me. I promise we’ll have a great adventure.”

  “Yes, oh my God, yes, Colt. I will absolutely marry you!”

  He jumped to his feet, swept her up into his arms and swung her in a circle before setting her down and sliding that ring onto her finger. Penny couldn’t stop smiling.

  “We’ll have the kind of wedding you deserve this time,” he said, cupping her face and pausing only long enough to kiss her senseless. “We’ll have the biggest damn wedding California’s ever seen. Anything you want.”

  She looked from the ring on her hand to the love shining in Colt’s eyes and said, “All I want is to go back to the chapel where we were married the first time. Just you, me and the twins.”

  “God, you’re amazing,” he whispered and kissed her again. “I’ll get the jet fueled. We can go tomorrow if your doctor says it’s okay. Did you see him?”

  “I did. He said I’m perfect.”

  Colt gave her a slow, wicked smile. “He’s right about that.”

  Penny couldn’t believe this was happening. She suddenly had everything she had ever wished for. The man she loved. Her children—

  “Da!”

  Penny and Colt went still and in tandem turned to look at the twins. Reid was standing on his own two feet and Riley clapped her hands and shouted again, “Da!”

  He moved swiftly across the room, lifted both of the twins into his arms and just for a moment, buried his face in the sweetness of them. When he looked at Penny again, she saw love shining in his eyes.

  “I can’t believe I almost missed that,” he whispered.

  Penny walked to them, wrapped her arms around her family and held on. Until she heard another truck pull up out front. Pulling back, she eyed the man she loved warily. “What else did you do?”

  Colt grinned and shrugged. “It’s probably Rafe’s crew to install a picket fence.”

  Laughing, Penny leaned into him and listened to the steady beat of his heart. “I thought you hated picket fences.”

  “They’re not so bad,” he mused. “Besides, when the puppies get here, we’ll need it.”

  “Puppies?” Shaking her head, she thought that life with Colton King would never be boring and she would always, always know what it felt like to be loved completely. Nothing could have been more perfect.

  Colt bent his head, kissed her and whispered, “The adventure begins.”

  * * * * *

  Don’t miss these other BILLIONAIRES & BABIES stories from USA TODAY bestselling author Maureen Child:

  BABY BONANZA

  HAVE BABY NEED BILLIONAIRE

  All available now, from Harlequin Desire!

  If you liked this BILLIONAIRES & BABIES novel, watch for the next book in this number one bestselling Desire series, HIS LOVER’S LITTLE SECRET by Andrea Laurence, available April 2014.

  Keep reading for an excerpt from SEDUCING HIS PRINCESS by Olivia Gates.

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  Prologue

  Six years ago...

  A fist of foreboding squeezed Mohab Aal Ghaanem’s heart.

  Najeeb was back. And Jala had gone to see him.

  Although he had contrived to keep her from seeing Najeeb for months now as part of his original mission to keep them apart, when Najeeb had returned in spite of all his machinations, there’d been nothing further Mohab could do. Nothing but demand Jala not see Najeeb.

  And what reason could he have given for asking her not to see his cousin and crown prince? That he was jealous?

  She would have been shocked by the notion. At best, this would have made her think he didn’t trust her, or that he wasn’t the progressive man she thought him to be. Personal freedom and boundaries were very touchy subjects with her, and she had serious issues with the “repressive male dinosaurs” prevalent in their culture.

  At worst, she might have suspected that he had other motives for wanting to prevent that meeting with her “best friend,” motives that went beyond simple possessiveness. As he did.

  So he’d stood back and watched her leave for that dreaded yet inevitable rendezvous. And she hadn’t returned.

  Not that she’d said she would. Having an early business meeting the next day close to her house in Long Beach, it made sense for her to spend the night at her home. He wished he could have waited for her there, but though she’d given him keys, the gesture had been only as a token of trust. She’d been adamant about not making their relationship public knowledge before she was ready to do so. He was probably working himself up for nothing but...

  B’Ellahi... What was he thinking? It was for nothing. Jala had agreed to marry him. She was his, body and heart. He’d been her first, and he’d always be her only. He should have stopped worrying about how their relationship had started long ago, shouldn’t have tried to keep Najeeb away once his...purpose had been achieved—even if the way it had been had taken him by surprise. He’d already been attracted to Jala, but he surely hadn’t imagined when he’d first approached her that he’d fall for her that hard, that totally.