And there it was again, the doubt. And with it came the fear she’d buried the deepest—that not only did Devlin not love her the way she loved him, but...he loved someone else.
A solid alliance with the Coltons would make our fathers very happy.
She remembered so clearly the night he’d said that. He’d covered for it quickly, making a joke of it, but she’d never forgotten. She’d told herself of course it was a joke, because his father was already engaged to—and quite smitten with—her sister Layla. The wedding had had to be postponed because of the maniac running around killing would-be grooms, but once he was caught, things would proceed as planned. So there was no need for Dev to start dating her just for that. Just because his father approved?
As for her father, she wouldn’t put much past him. He’d been very worried about the business lately, and so had Layla, although they didn’t talk about it in front of her. She’d tried to bring it up once, because she knew a lot of green-energy companies were struggling, but her father had brushed her off. But she hadn’t missed the glances he and Layla had exchanged. And she couldn’t help suspecting Layla was less than enamored of the elder, very wealthy Harrington, but had agreed to marry him anyway, and that made her uneasy. But no one would talk to her about any of it.
She smothered a sigh. She was ever and always the youngest daughter and little sister, and they didn’t take her seriously. Even Blake, whom she was closest to, had laughed at the very idea of her being able to do even this, take care of a couple of sweet babies.
She remembered that thought in the dark hours of that night, when the girls began to wail for the third time. They had seemed distressed all evening and utterly unable to settle after she’d put them to bed. As if the funeral had affected them in some way they hadn’t expected.
Sleepily she got up, wondering as she yawned at what point you left them to cry it out and hopefully go back to sleep on their own. She’d have to research that. She stumbled out her door and toward the den, pulling on her robe, and was nearly there when the screeching began to ebb. When it did, she heard something else.
Music.
Dante must have gotten up and turned on the sound system she’d seen in the den. The song was something slow, sweet and lulling. And it was apparently lulling the twins. And she smiled when she realized the lovely, deep male voice was singing in Italian. So he wasn’t completely severed from his heritage, she thought, if he had that music to play. She should have thought of that before, playing lullabies for them.
Oddly, as she reached the door, the recording seemed to skip, and when it picked back up again, it was without words, only humming of that pretty, soothing melody. Then the words picked up again, as if the singer had forgotten a phrase but then remembered it. A recording of a live performance, perhaps? But there was no accompaniment—that was puzzling.
But the girls were deliciously quiet now, the only sound that wonderful, deep voice, and she peeked inside. And realized it wasn’t a recording at all.
It was Dante.
* * *
“You can sing.”
Dante shrugged as he eased out of the den, mission accomplished. “I’m not sure you can call it that when I don’t know half the words.”
She waved that off. “You know what I mean.”
He shrugged again, embarrassed now. But at least he’d taken time to pull on sweats and a T-shirt or he’d be even more embarrassed. “I was desperate. And I remember my grandmother singing that to me when I was little and wouldn’t go to sleep.”
“Obviously it still works.”
“Seems like.”
“Your voice is amazing.”
“It’s...decent.”
“It’s a lot better than decent. Why aren’t you out there with a singing career?”
She wasn’t the first one to ever suggest that, and his answer never changed. “Because I can’t imagine a career I’d want less.”
She looked startled. “Doesn’t every kid dream of being a star?”
He grimaced. “Not me.”
“But you could be the next—”
“If you name some Italian opera singer, I’m going to bury you in poor little rich girl stereotypes.” He gave her his best glare.
She stared at him for a moment. Then the corners of her mouth—that damned, luscious mouth—began to twitch. When the laugh came, it was the best yet, that rich, wonderful thing that seemed to envelop him in light and warmth. She stood there, looking up at him, and he wanted... He wanted...
Damn, he wanted to kiss her.
Dev Harrington was a fool.
“I’m completely awake now. Buy a girl a drink?” she asked, still smiling widely.
He couldn’t help smiling back. “Sure, if you don’t mind that the bar’s a bit thin.”
“I had something more like hot chocolate in mind,” she said. “One of us should probably stay conscious.”
“Done.”
They were sitting in the living room a few minutes later, sipping at the warming brew. Only the kitchen light was on, so the light in the adjacent room was muted, and where he sat in his usual chair was nearly dark. Maybe it was that—that he could see her but she likely couldn’t see him very well—that made him say it.
“So, tell me...is the main reason you want Harrington back because you love him, or because he hurt your pride?”
She stopped in the midst of taking a sip. “I love him.”
She said it quickly. Almost too quickly. He’d learned to read people’s answers fairly well in his years as a cop, and she sounded as if she were trying to convince someone. He suspected it wasn’t him.
“Not what I asked.”
“What you asked,” she said, her voice chilly now, “is none of your business.”
“It might be, if you pull it off and I have to find a new nanny.”
“Then maybe that’s what you should have asked, if I’ll quit when Dev and I are back together.”
“Oh, if that happens, you will.”
She drew back slightly, but her chin came up. “Assuming again?”
“From what you’ve said, he wouldn’t want you taking care of somebody else’s kids.” He saw her glance toward the den, where the girls were. Her brow was furrowed. “He’d want you pregnant with his as fast as he could manage it.”
Assuming he can, speaking of assuming.
He was a little startled at the fierceness of that thought. But he couldn’t deny he didn’t like the image his words had conjured. Only because he didn’t much like what she’d told him about Devlin Harrington.
“I think I might have something to say about that.”
“You’re doing this to prove to him you’d be a good mom, because that’s his requirement to marry you, and you don’t think he’s going to want that right away?”
She waved a hand. “I’ll stall him.”
Something chilly was working its way through him, despite the warmth of the chocolate. Something in that blasé dismissal rankled. It took him a moment to realize it was exactly the kind of thing he would have expected from her before he’d met her and spent a rather intense week—damn, not even a week yet—with her.
How could it have been only five days? It already felt as if they’d been doing this forever.
“You do that,” he muttered, standing up. He walked to the kitchen, rinsed out the mug and put it in the dishwasher. Paused for a moment when he realized it was nearly full. Amazing how fast three extra people could fill the thing up. Not to mention the laundry.
He went back to bed, even though he already knew he’d be a long time going back to sleep. Because all he could think about was that moment outside the den when he’d wanted to kiss Gemma.
Chapter 22
Gemma didn’t think she’d ever been so tired in her life. She had to look at her phone to find out it was Sund
ay. She was bleary-eyed when she got up to deal with the twins, and if she later found their clothes—or her own—were inside out, she would not be surprised. Not after she’d found herself drying off after her shower with the blouse she’d meant to wear today.
All of which, she thought rather acidly, could have been avoided had she been able to go back to sleep last night. But her mind had refused to shut down, careening from Dante’s startlingly beautiful singing to the way he’d made her laugh to watching him fix them both hot chocolate, and then slamming full force into his snarky comments about Dev and his abrupt departure.
Is the main reason you want Harrington back because you love him, or because he hurt your pride?
Of course she loved Dev. And it wasn’t pride. It hadn’t been pride when she’d had to become the pursuer to get him to ask her out in the first place, either. She’d just been...intrigued. Not many men she showed an interest in didn’t respond. Of course, she never knew how often it was because they knew who she was; even if she kept it secret, her face was fairly well known in Red Ridge, especially since she’d starting doing the fund-raisers.
She yawned. A moment later she yawned again.
I think my next fund-raiser should be for an organization to give new parents a break.
She nearly laughed at her own thought, but it died in her throat when, after the girls were settled in the playpen, she walked out to the kitchen desperate for coffee and found Dante already there, slouched wearily over the coffeemaker, his hands braced on the counter next to a mug ready and waiting.
Wearing nothing but a pair of boxers.
She stopped in her tracks. For an instant all she could see was the line of his body, the broad shoulders, long, muscled legs, narrow hips, and...that sweet, tight backside. Her imagination easily provided what the boxers almost concealed.
She should, she told herself, be thankful he hadn’t strolled out here naked. The memory of that bath towel slung low around his hips slammed into her. And she found herself wishing he’d done that instead; one tug and it would be gone and she wouldn’t have to rely on her imagination.
She barely managed to smother a gasp of shock at her traitorous thoughts. He turned his head to look at her over his shoulder. His eyes, bloodshot and sleepy, probably mirrored her own. He looked as tired as she felt. She felt a little spark of what she denied was pleasure at the thought that he’d had as sleepless a night as she had.
With a tremendous effort, she said lightly, “Good morning.”
“It’s morning,” he acknowledged.
The coffeemaker began to drip the restorative fluid into the pot. He quickly turned back, yanked the pot out from under the stream, replced it with the mug, held it until it was full, then reversed the procedure. And despite his obvious exhaustion—a feeling she could relate to all too well—he did it sacrificing only a couple of drops to the heating plate beneath.
“All yours,” he muttered, gesturing at a second mug on the counter. He’d gotten it out for her, she realized with a little jolt of what, this time, she acknowledged as pleasure. But it spiked into an altogether different kind of pleasure when he turned around and she confronted that chest and ribbed abdomen again. Damn, but the man was built. And she couldn’t help thinking that while Dev was trim enough, he was just slightly softer.
She tore her eyes away from that expanse of sleek skin over taut muscle and focused on the coffee.
“Are you working today?”
He nodded. “A bit, at least. I haven’t done much all week.”
“Understandable.”
He grimaced, and she guessed he didn’t agree. She thought about making some comment about how no one could do it all, but didn’t. Instead she said, “The girls are up and dressed. It’s a nice day, so I thought I’d get them out. Maybe take them over to the park where they could watch the other kids again. Or play in the sandbox. I think they’d like that. And we’d be out of your way while you work.”
She was chattering, she realized. But it seemed that’s what it took to keep her mind off the nearly naked man just a couple of feet away.
“Then I thought we could—”
“I don’t need an itinerary.”
She gave him a sharp look. “I would have thought you would want to know what I’ll be doing with your nieces.”
He ran a hand over his hair, rubbed at his eyes. It showed her he was indeed as weary as she was, but somehow all she could think about was the way he moved and how well muscled he was. Not bodybuilder huge, but very masculine and solid.
“I didn’t mean it like that. I meant I trust you.”
“Oh.” Yet another kind of pleasure welled up in her, a warm, happy kind. She couldn’t remember the last time she’d felt anything like it. If she ever had.
“And that will help. I’m going to drop Flash off at the training center this morning so he can wander for a while. He’s been a bit cooped up since all this happened.”
She glanced over to where the dog was sprawled in front of the hearth. Only to see that he’d quietly moved.
“He’s in his chair!” she exclaimed, startled anew by how much that pleased her.
Dante smiled at her. “He is. Looks like you have the Flash stamp of approval.”
“And the girls,” she added, smiling widely back at him. “You think he’s resigned?”
“Maybe. But he’ll milk it, try to guilt you with that long-suffering demeanor he’s so good at.”
She laughed. And it suddenly struck her how seldom she laughed with Dev. He was always so serious.
This was beginning to get very unsettling, this comparing Dante with Devlin and having Dev come up short. How could that be, when she loved Dev? If she truly loved him, shouldn’t she see only the good in him? To cover her tangled emotions, she walked over to Flash, who lifted his head.
“How on earth do you curl up small enough to fit in that chair?”
“He’s in boneless mode,” Dante said, and she smiled again.
But she kept her attention on Flash. She stroked the soft silk of his long, droopy ears. And was touched beyond what she could have ever imagined when the dog leaned into her touch.
“Definitely approval,” Dante said. Then he added in a teasing tone, “I’ll give you that, Colton. You may have grown up clutching the proverbial silver spoon, but you’re no quitter.”
The pleasure expanded inside her. So much that it almost scared her. Again. At this moment, with the girls jabbering in the den, a dog’s acceptance and Dante Mancuso’s smile, her life felt fuller than it ever had. She fought for equilibrium. Looked over at him. Grabbed at the only retort she could think of.
“It was a gold spoon, thank you very much,” she said primly.
He stopped mid–coffee gulp. Swallowed. Lowered the mug as a crooked grin curved his mouth.
She stared at that mouth she’d seen so many ways—tight, smiling, frowning, under pressure from his fingers steepled against them...and suddenly she was wondering what his mouth would feel like if it were her lips instead of his fingers pressing against it.
She nearly gasped aloud again. What was wrong with her? Why was she thinking such things?
Because he’s standing here practically naked and he’s damned hot?
She quashed the thought even though she couldn’t deny the factual truth of it. All of it. And try though she might, she couldn’t deny that this man stirred things in her she’d never felt with Dev.
And where that left her, she wasn’t sure.
* * *
Dante helped her maneuver outside with the stroller. He’d kissed both girls before they’d been strapped in. They had both giggled. He’d glanced at Gemma, but if she was thinking of his earlier joke he couldn’t tell, because she wasn’t looking at him. Or maybe wouldn’t look at him. And that made him think maybe she did remember.
Damn, he was tire
d. Even his thoughts weren’t making sense. He smothered yet another yawn. Gemma still didn’t meet his gaze. In fact, she’d barely looked at him since they’d had that discussion over the coffee.
What did you expect? She’d faint dead away because you pulled on only boxers?
No, she was made of sterner stuff than that. And she’d probably seen her share of guys in that state of undress. And more. Besides, she’d already seen him in just that towel, when he’d been unable to control his body’s reaction to her.
That thought sent his mind careening down a path he did not dare follow. And he didn’t like the amount of effort it took to get his unruly brain to behave, to get his thoughts under control.
“Gemma?” he said when he thought he’d done it. She did look at him then. “If you happen to see the most wanted person in the county, the one every cop in the state is hunting for, call a little sooner, okay?”
He intentionally didn’t say it accusingly, or even sharply. He sort of drawled it out jokingly, and after a moment she clearly decided to take it that way.
“Right. Copy that. Isn’t that what you guys say?”
“Too much TV. It’s usually just ‘Copy.’”
She smiled at that. But her expression changed to that look of curiosity he’d come to know. “You don’t sound worried that we might see her again.”
He gave a one-shouldered shrug. “You hardly fit the profile of the victims.”
“But I saw her, recognized her.”
“So have others. If she wanted to go after them, she’s had the chance often enough.”
She hesitated, then asked, “Do you really think she killed all those men?”
“Doesn’t matter what I think.”
“It does to me.”
Something had changed in her tone, something that made him feel a tightness in his gut. He answered carefully. “She’s a tough girl. With a temper.”
“And that makes her a serial killer?”
“No. Look, Gemma, I can’t talk about the case, especially since I’m not on it. But I can say every bit of physical evidence they’ve got points directly at her.”
Colton's Twin Secrets Page 16