Reunited by the Tycoon's Twins

by Ellie Darkins

  ‘Well, I’ve never taken them to the beach,’ Finn said, putting away the tin of formula. ‘It’s too nice a day to spend half of it in traffic getting to the coast, but there’s a pop-up beach I read about that might be fun. It might also be a nightmare of sand-encrusted toddlers. But worth a try?’

  ‘Definitely worth a try,’ Madeleine said, marvelling that the twins were both quieting down as she bounced them gently. ‘Do I even want to know what packing a bag for twins at the beach looks like?’ she asked with a dubious look at the backpack slung over the back of one of the dining chairs.

  ‘It’s terrifying,’ Finn confirmed with a laugh. ‘But I’ll talk you through it. And there should be enough stuff in the fridge to pack a decent picnic. Trudy has a habit of predicting my impulses on such a regular basis it makes me wonder how impulsive I really am.’

  ‘Did you know that the best indicator of the number of barbecues on a Saturday is the temperature on the preceding Tuesday? Sounds like Trudy has a good grip on economics,’ Madeleine said. ‘Right, give me a list of what the kids need and I’ll go find it in their room. Then we can raid the fridge together. Sound like a plan?’

  ‘Great,’ Finn said, before reeling off a list of clothing and supplies that Madeleine was sure could outfit a military unit for several weeks. But as she packed tiny clothes into an enormous bag she was glad of the practical challenges that a day out with the babies would pose. She wanted her time filled—every second of it, if possible—because the alternative was awkward silences or, worse, awkward conversation.

  By the time that she got downstairs, Bella and Hart were in their car seats and Finn was looking at his phone. ‘The car’s outside whenever we’re ready,’ he said, looking up at her with a smile. ‘Did you find everything?’

  ‘I think so. I mean, how badly can it go?’

  ‘Well, I’ve been out with them before and they’ve pooed through every item of clothing in the bag and I’ve run out of wipes halfway through the day. But sure, nothing worse than that.’

  ‘We’re going into central London. They have baby wipes there. We’ll be fine,’ she said with a confidence that she didn’t feel.

  ‘I’ll hold you to that,’ Finn said with a laugh, sliding his phone in his pocket and reaching for one of the car seats. ‘Do you mind grabbing Hart? I cannot tell you what a luxury it is not to have to lug all this stuff on my own.’

  ‘Sure. That’s what I’m here for,’ Madeleine said, and was grateful for the little reminder to herself. She was only here to look after the children. Last night had been awkward, but they just had to ignore it. It wasn’t as if they even had a friendship that they had to rescue. Just because he was friends with Jake didn’t mean he was her friend too. All they had to think about was the children—and she could do that.

  Just from the half day she had spent with them already, she knew that they were more than capable of filling her time and her thoughts. But their dad did keep trying to muscle in there too. No, that wasn’t fair. That made it sound like Finn’s fault, and it wasn’t. It was entirely her fault that she couldn’t stop thinking about him. It had been bad enough, even before that incident on the landing last night. But this morning it was worse.

  Because yesterday—it was a fun little fantasy. Something that she knew that she was never going to act on. Something that she knew couldn’t hurt her. But today...today was different.

  Because once Finn had mentioned his attraction—the chemistry between them—it had breached an unspoken rule where they were just refusing to acknowledge that it existed. And even though Finn had said that he wasn’t interested in acting on their feelings, she wasn’t sure that she believed him. It had felt brutal last night, when he had said the words.

  But this morning she could see the bigger picture. She knew that there had been a spark there when she had arrived. And she knew what a fright she must have looked when she had freaked out about his bedroom. She didn’t want him to be attracted to her. God knew she didn’t want to be attracted to him. If they could go along with what he had said and just try and ignore these feelings, that would make life so much easier for the next few weeks.

  As the car sat and idled in the London traffic she busied herself with fussing over the babies, glad that the four-by-four had enough space that she wasn’t pressed against Finn’s thigh. She wasn’t sure how long she’d be able to kid herself that she had absolutely no feelings about him if she had the firm press of his muscle against her skin.

  Up in her room, she had agonised over what to wear. A visit to the beach didn’t usually see her at her most comfortable at the best of times, but she suspected that a visit to the beach with Finn by her side would make her more self-conscious still. The fact that the beach happened to be in the middle of London, the largest and most densely populated city in the country, was actually a godsend. There would be no room for relaxed, reclined sunbathing. She thought that they would be lucky to find somewhere to plonk the babies down on the sand, never mind find a space for them to sit.

  And if there was no sunbathing there was absolutely no need for a swimsuit. She’d pulled on cropped culottes, a tank top and Wayfarer shades, sure that she would be grateful for the dark lenses to hide behind later in the day.

  She couldn’t shake those words from her head. He was attracted to her. Why did that bother her so much? No, that was the wrong question. She knew why she was so bothered by them. It was because she felt the same. Having that information out in the open was meant to defuse the situation, but it didn’t feel like that right now. Once the shock of last night’s encounter had worn off, the knowledge that their attraction was mutual had left an electric fizz in the air.

  Not that it mattered any more, because after what had happened there was no way that he would be interested in her. Attraction—liking her body and her face—was one thing. Being willing to take on her trunkful of emotional baggage was quite another. And it was clear from the look on his face last night—even without him stating it as clearly as he had—that he absolutely wasn’t interested.

  And who could blame him?

  Finally the car pulled up near to the pop-up beach, and she made herself busy fishing bags and sunshades and stray baby hats out of the boot of the car while Finn flipped out the pushchair with practised ease and started buckling Hart into one side. She fetched Bella from her car seat, stowed bags underneath and then took a step back to marvel at the sheer amount of stuff that they had brought with them.

  ‘I am never ever doing this on my own,’ she stated, only half joking. ‘Can I be one of those completely useless nannies that you have to take time off work to supervise because you’re worried they might leave the babies behind somewhere?’

  Finn shrugged, all mock-casual in a way that had her softening towards him when she’d been so so sure that she could resist that charm of his. ‘Only if you don’t mind me telling Jake how useless you are.’

  She laughed, her body instantly relaxing into it, despite her better judgement. ‘You know it’s really not fair to keep bringing him up like that,’ she said, swatting at him good-humouredly as they clipped the babies into their pram seats. ‘Pulling out sibling rivalry is below the belt. We left school behind more than a decade ago. We should really act like it.’

  ‘I’m only joking with you because you know you will be completely fine. By the end of the weekend you’re going to have the little ones wrapped around your little finger. You’ll be making up a bottle with one hand and drinking a cup of tea with the other and rocking the crib with your foot.’

  ‘Ha. I’m glad you have such faith in me.’ She couldn’t help but feel a little glow that his confidence in her was genuine. She knew that he wouldn’t take risks with his kids and if he said that he trusted her she knew that he meant it.

  They walked along the river, Madeleine enjoying the feel of the sun warming the top of her head. She could hear the beach before she co
uld see it, the squeals of excited children building the closer they came.

  ‘I’m starting to think this might not have been my best idea,’ Finn said after a particularly piercing shriek.

  ‘Ah, come on, it’ll be fine,’ Madeleine said, nudging him with her shoulder. ‘And if it’s not, there are plenty of places to escape to.’ When they reached the beach—really just a huge sandpit—it wasn’t as busy as Madeleine had feared. The summer holiday rush still hadn’t hit, she figured, and there were just a few boisterous pre-schoolers making most of the noise.

  She shook out the picnic blanket while Finn tackled the straps on the pushchair, and soon they had Bella and Hart rolling on the blanket between them, while Madeleine kicked off her sandals and leaned back on the changing bag as a makeshift beach pillow.

  ‘This was most definitely an excellent idea,’ she said, feeling herself sinking a little heavier into the sand, heat coming up through the blanket and the sunlight filtering down through the leaves of a nearby tree. The babies were contentedly gurgling as they lay on the blanket and the pre-schoolers had made a hasty exit when she had subtly mentioned that there were fountains to be run through nearby.

  ‘I’m not going to argue with you. Good ideas are one of my many charms,’ Finn said, his voice treacly and relaxed as hers. She didn’t need to open her eyes and look over at him to know that he had adopted a similar position to her, stretched out on the sand.

  Hart rolled over onto his tummy, nudging at her thigh with a fist, and she opened her eyes with a smile, her heart melting a fraction when she saw him grinning up at her with excitement in his eyes.

  ‘Have they played in the sand before?’ she asked Finn, rolling onto her side so that she could tickle Hart, and soaking in the sound of his gorgeous baby gurgle. Really, these kids were impossibly cute. No wonder Finn wanted to spend as much time with them as possible. If they were her kids, she wasn’t sure that she would be able to tear herself away from them either.

  ‘Nope. First time,’ Finn said, cracking an eye open and smiling at the sight of Hart on his tummy.

  ‘If only he would learn to roll back,’ he said. ‘In five minutes he’ll be bored and annoyed that he’s stuck like that.’

  ‘Better give him something to do then,’ Madeleine said, scooching him round so that he was at the edge of the blanket. Hart reached out into the warm sand, but then drew his hand back quickly in shock.

  Finn laughed, and Madeleine couldn’t help but join in. ‘Maybe he needs backup,’ Finn said, moving Bella so that she could touch the sand too. She reached out but, unlike her brother, buried her hand and giggled as she found the cooler damp sand under the top layer.

  ‘I guess we know who the thrill-seeker is,’ Madeleine said. ‘Are they always like that?’

  ‘Hart’s definitely more sensitive,’ Finn said with a smile. ‘He’s braver when Bella’s around. It’s one of the more adorable things about them.’

  ‘Are there less adorable things about them?’

  ‘I’ll let you ask me that at three tomorrow morning. Hey, kidding,’ he added, and she wondered what had shown on her face. ‘You don’t have to get up in the night with them.’

  ‘No, I’m here to help,’ she said, drawing her eyebrows together and wondering why he was looking so warily at her. ‘I’m happy to do it. That’s the whole point of me coming to stay.’

  ‘But...’ He hesitated, and Madeleine knew from the look on his face that he was thinking about what had happened the night before. It wasn’t going away, she realised. They had spent the last hour or two pretending that nothing out of the ordinary had happened, but it had been there the whole time, hovering over them, adding pressure to their day.

  ‘Go on,’ Madeleine said, aware that they were opening a can of worms. ‘Say what you were going to say.’

  ‘It’s just... I wouldn’t expect you to do the night shift on your own. And I’m worried that if we were to see each other like that—upstairs, in the middle of the night—that it would make you...uncomfortable. And that is the last thing I want.’

  She sat up, drawing her knees up to her chest, and tried to fix him with a solid, stern look. ‘You don’t have to tiptoe around me, Finn. I’m not going to swoon or faint or have a panic attack if I see you after ten p.m. I’m really not the swooning type.’

  ‘I never said you were,’ Finn said, mirroring her body language and sitting upright beside her. ‘But something happened last night, and I don’t want to make you feel that way again.’

  ‘You won’t,’ she promised, hoping that her voice sounded as sure as she felt. ‘It wasn’t you who made me feel like that anyway. It was me, being irrational.’

  ‘I don’t know about irrational.’ Finn’s face softened. ‘Seemed like you were in a place where rational or irrational didn’t mean much. You just looked frightened. And you don’t have to tell me why, if you don’t want. But you can’t stop me wanting to do everything in my power to stop you ever feeling like that again.’

  She shook her head. ‘That’s not your job.’

  ‘I never said it was a job. But you’re...we’re... You’re my friend, Madeleine, and I don’t want to see my friend hurting like that.’

  ‘We’re not friends, Finn,’ she said softly, meeting his gaze. ‘We’ve never been friends.’

  She didn’t say it to hurt him, and she didn’t expect the expression on his face—as if she’d struck him.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ she added quickly. ‘I didn’t mean it as a bad thing. It’s just...true. We aren’t, really. Are we? We’ve never hung out. You don’t call or text for a chat. And that’s fine. You’re Jake’s friend, and you’re a part of the family. But I don’t think we’re friends.’

  He stared at her for a long time, and she wished she could crack open that skull and see what he was thinking. What the narrowing of his eyes and the crease of his brow meant.

  ‘I’d like to be,’ he said at last. ‘If we’re living together, however temporarily, it would be nice if we were friends.’

  She sighed. ‘You’re just saying this because I freaked out last night. You don’t have to do this. I’m not some fragile little girl who needs looking after.’

  He actually laughed at that. ‘Fragile? You think I think you’re fragile? Last night I thought you might punch me. Or kick me in the balls... I never thought for a second you were fragile. Angry, yes. Frightened, yes. But never fragile.’

  ‘Really? I looked like that to you?’ She couldn’t help smiling at the thought of that. Because she hadn’t felt it. Hadn’t felt strong. But it turned out she quite liked knowing how Finn saw her. She had felt cornered and vulnerable. But it turned out her reaction to those feelings had been very much in the fight camp, and she gave herself a little mental pat on the back for that. Once upon a time, she’d frozen. And then run. She wished that in the past she’d had that anger, that fire she had now. She could have directed it at the person who’d really deserved it rather than an innocent bystander.

  ‘I... It wasn’t you I was mad at.’

  ‘I guessed as much,’ Finn said, dipping his head to meet her gaze when she tried to look away. She followed it back up, determined to be the fighter that he had said he’d seen in her, rather than meekly dropping her head as if she’d been the one in the wrong.

  ‘Do you want to talk about it?’ he asked. And she didn’t. She never had. But...she couldn’t bear the tiptoeing. Couldn’t bear the fact that she’d come to stay to help him out with the kids and now he thought that she couldn’t handle the night shift in case she bumped into him in the dark.

  But talking about last night... That was complicated. Because it wasn’t just how she had acted. It was what he had said. He had just come straight out with it. He was attracted to her. He acknowledged the spark and the chemistry between them as if it was the most normal thing in the world. But it didn’t feel normal to her to be having
that conversation. What was she meant to say—yes, you were right, I’m totally hot for you and desperately trying to ignore it because doing anything else would be a spectacularly bad idea? That didn’t sound like a fun conversation. That sounded awkward and painful and suited to somewhere other than a kids’ sandpit.

  And if they acknowledged those feelings here in the daylight, out in the real world, then how were they meant to carry on as normal? Sure, he had mentioned it last night. But those were extenuating circumstances. He had said it because she was having a major freak-out and he needed to clear the air for her to feel safe. That didn’t mean that he wanted to talk about it again, that he thought that those feelings meant anything—that they were important in any way.

  They weren’t important to her. How could they be? So, he was attracted to her. Big deal: a lot of guys were. Since she’d been a teenager, her life had been a string of guys making a big deal out of how attracted to her they were, whether she was interested in their attention or not. Usually not.

  But not this time.

  And when she thought back to what he had said, he hadn’t actually said that he was attracted to her. Hadn’t mentioned her boobs or her body, like half the guys who came onto her, thinking that that was what she would want to hear. No, he had talked about connection. About spark. About something mutual between them. And that was dangerous. She wasn’t worried that he thought she was attractive. She was worried about the fact that he could see her attraction to him. That she wasn’t imagining the spark of something between them.

  How long had it been there? She couldn’t be sure. It wasn’t there the first time they’d met, when he was a skinny, scrawny eleven-year-old and she was a sullen thirteen. Had it been there at Jake’s wedding five years ago? Thank goodness Jake and his husband had passed on the big traditional do and had listened to her insistence that she didn’t need to be a bridesmaid. For a fleeting second she felt the horror of being matched with Finn as the best man. Except Caro had been there anyway, smiling at Finn’s side for the best part of the day. Madeleine had given them a wide berth and had made polite conversation with Finn only when necessary.