Triple the Fun

by Maureen Child

  “Jackie loved you.”

  Con snapped her a quick, hard look. He didn’t need her to tell him about Jackie. Or maybe he did. Everything he’d known was tossed into a high wind at the moment and he wasn’t sure of anything anymore. But he wasn’t going to talk about Jackie now. Not while his anger was so fresh and raw.

  “Yeah,” he muttered instead, “I’m convinced.”

  “All I’m saying is that you and Jackie were really tight. That’s why you helped. For her. It had nothing to do with your niece and nephew. You did it for Jackie.”

  “Reid and Riley played a part, but yeah,” he said, voice cold, “she was my best friend. Or so I thought.”

  In the flood of information that had hit him today, he’d hardly had time to react to any of it. The triplets had taken first priority in his mind, because they were here and the immediate problem of dealing with them was hanging over his head. But the truth was, Jackie’s loss was at the back of his mind at all times.

  He hated knowing she was gone. That he’d never see her again. And mostly, he hated the fact that he hadn’t kept in touch with her when she and Elena moved. Not just because then he would have known about the babies, but because Jackie had been a huge part of his life from the time they were teenagers and now he just missed her, damn it. She had cut him out, true, but he hadn’t called. Hadn’t asked what was going on. Why she wasn’t calling. Instead, he’d let it go by telling himself that it was her doing, and that wasn’t true at all.

  Over the years, whenever he had gone silent, Jackie had been the one to call and demand to know what was happening in his life. To say, Hello? You alive? But when she pulled back, he’d never said a word. He hadn’t called. He’d assumed that she was through with him and he let it go.

  Granted, friendships didn’t always last. Even the best of friends eventually hit a bump too big to navigate around and ended up drifting apart. But he hadn’t expected it to happen to him and Jackie. Now she was gone and he would never be able to talk to her again. To tell her he was sorry that he hadn’t called to find out what she was going through.

  “I don’t agree with what they did either,” Dina said softly, as if she knew what he was thinking.

  He shot her a look, bothered by the fact that she seemed to read him so easily. “They didn’t lie to you, though. They didn’t deliberately cut you out of their lives.”

  “No,” she said. “They didn’t. But Elena kept things from me, too. She never told me your name.”

  He sat up straighter, rested his forearms on his thighs and cradled his beer bottle between his palms. He’d been a secret all the way around. In spite of what Jackie had said to him in the beginning, they might as well have gone to a sperm bank, because he had become an anonymous donor anyway. He was DNA handily acquired and soon forgotten.

  There was a slap in the face as well as the heart. Damn it, why had Jackie done it? And why did he care? Whatever her reasons, they couldn’t make up for what his reality was now. Anger churned into a nasty brew inside him until it was hard to draw a breath and impossible to take another swallow of beer without choking on it.

  Connor needed some time to think. To plan. To gather the wildly racing thoughts circling his mind. Being here, with the kids, with the woman who was too much a distraction, wasn’t helping him lay out the immediate future.

  Connor liked knowing how things were going to play out. In the business he shared with Colt, Con was the guy who always thought two steps ahead. He laid out the path for their company to follow. He was the one who always knew what was coming next.

  Until now.

  Now he could only go with his gut. “I’ll be needing a paternity test.”

  She sucked in a gulp of air. “You really think that’s necessary?”

  “No,” he said shortly. Hell, all it had taken was one look at the triplets to convince him they were his. They weren’t identical, of course, but each of them had the distinctive King coloring. It was more than that, though. He’d felt a connection to those children right from the first and that was something he couldn’t deny.

  “My lawyers will want it,” he said, not liking having to explain himself.

  “Fine. Then what?”

  “Then,” he said, setting the beer onto the closest table before standing up, “we’ll do what comes next.”

  “And what’s that?” She stood, too, but kept her distance.

  “I’ll let you know.”

  “I think you mean we’ll decide what that is together.”

  He laughed shortly. “I meant what I said. Those triplets in there are mine. They’re Kings. I’ll do the deciding here.”

  Her cheeks flushed with color and he knew it wasn’t a blush but fury that fed the rosiness blooming across her face. “I’m their legal guardian,” she reminded him. “My sister and her wife wanted the babies in my care.”

  Con didn’t have the time or the patience to fight this battle right now. “And your sister and her wife hid my children’s existence from me. For all I know, you were in on it.”

  “I told you I wasn’t.”

  “And I should believe you.”

  She gulped in air. “Yeah, you should. Why would I lie?”

  “Why would Jackie?” he countered and when she didn’t have an answer for that, he nodded sharply. “Right. Anyway. I’ll want time with the triplets while things are being settled.”

  She nodded. “I thought you would.”

  “And I want the letter Jackie left for me.”

  Her features went stiff and cool, as if she were deliberately shutting off her emotions. He couldn’t blame her, because he wished to hell he could do the same. But everything he was feeling was too close to the surface. Too damn inflamed and sensitive to be buried—so instead he had to fight to push them aside.

  Without another word, Dina walked across the room to a small secretary table holding a cobalt-blue bowl of fresh flowers. Connor joined her and waited as she opened the top drawer, withdrew an envelope, then handed it to him. Once she had, she crossed her arms over her chest again in what was obviously a self-protective stance.

  Too bad she didn’t know that whenever she did it, all she really managed to do was hike her breasts up even higher, demanding his attention. Slowly, he lifted his gaze to meet hers.

  “Look,” she said, “we didn’t get off to the best start, but I think we can both agree that we want what’s best for the triplets.”

  Con looked from her to the envelope for a long minute, then tucked it carefully into his inside jacket pocket. He wasn’t going to read it here, with an audience.

  “We do agree on that much,” he allowed, then added, “but we might have different ideas as to what the best actually is.”

  “I guess we’ll have to work on that when the time comes, then.”

  “Yeah.” He had no intention of working things out. Those were his children, not hers. He would decide what was going to happen from here on out and she could either go along with it or not. Her choice. Still, for now, he would keep communications open between them. No point in making an enemy this early in the game.

  “I’m gonna go,” he said. “I’ll be in touch.”

  “What’s that mean?”

  Her question stopped him halfway across the room. He turned back to her. “It means, we’re not done. Not by a long shot.”

  * * *

  Over the next few days, Dina tried to keep the trips on the already shaky schedule she’d had going for the last three months. But it wasn’t easy, considering that Connor dropped in and out of their lives with no warning. He showed up for breakfast one morning, then went with them to a local lab where the tech took cheek swabs of each child to compare their DNA with Connor’s. It was ridiculous.

  He knew darn well those babies were his, so she wasn’t sure what he was
up to with the paternity test. The next day, he didn’t show up until bath time and left as soon as the babies were put to bed. Today, he’d insisted on going to the park with them. Rather than let him have the triplets all to himself—because, really, he was very rich, and how did she know he wouldn’t just take them to his house and refuse to give them back—she went with them.

  Watching Connor interact with the triplets was endearing and irritating all at once. She had had to do a lot of adjusting when the babies had come into her life. But Connor seemed to be sailing through it. But it wasn’t only that she was bothered by. He was ignoring her completely.

  Not that she wanted his attention, because at this point it would only add to the confusion of the situation. But it was the principle of the thing, really. She might as well have been the babies’ sixty-year-old nanny for all the awareness he showed her. Just as well, she reminded herself sternly. Dina had deliberately kept her distance from men like Connor King for most of her life. She’d seen, up close and personal, just what a strong man could do to a woman.

  Her own mother had wasted her life trying to change to be whatever the man she was with at the moment wanted or needed. Helen Cortez had slowly faded away, losing herself in the never-ending quest to please a man. Dina had watched as her mother eventually lost her own identity as she depended on man after man to take care of her. Which they never did. By the time Helen died eight years ago, she was just a shadow of herself.

  In response to how her mother had lived and died, Dina had vowed to be independent. To count on no one but herself. Strong men could swallow a woman whole, and she had no intention of being devoured. So it wasn’t as though she wanted Connor—her pride was wounded, that was all.

  Frowning slightly, she shifted her gaze from Connor and the triplets to the tablet on her lap. While he played with the kids, Dina took the opportunity to go over business files. An independent business owner had to stay on top of things, especially when the bottom line was looking less than enthusiastic.

  Flipping through her calendar, she made notes on the different jobs listed there. She still had to contact the Johnsons about the menu for their anniversary party and then put in a bid on a big class reunion being held at the Hyatt at the end of the month. She had a wedding reception to cater in two weeks and a sixteenth birthday party three days later. None of the jobs she had lined up were exactly high paying, but she was in no position to turn a job down, either. She just wished she had more time to devote to growing her business. Instead, she spent most of her waking hours trying to get more jobs and handling the millions of details that seemed to crop up with depressing regularity.

  She had thought running her own business would give her freedom. Instead, she was being strangled by all the tiny strings that were forever coming undone. She spent more time on bookkeeping and client hunting than she did actually cooking anymore, and she really missed that. But between taking care of the babies, worrying about Connor’s new role in their lives and paying the bills that never stopped coming, who had time to cook?

  A shriek of pain grabbed her. Dina looked up and saw Connor holding Sage while the baby screamed and cried wildly. Tossing her tablet to the park bench, she raced across the sand, feet sliding on the uneven ground until she reached Connor. When Sage lunged at her, she grabbed him, held him close and instantly began to soothe his tears. The tiny boy’s breath shuddered in and out of his lungs as tears streaked his cheeks. Patting his back and rocking side to side, she looked up at Connor. “What happened?”

  “He fell. He scooted out of the swing and fell about a foot to the sand.” Con lifted Sadie out of the baby swing and set her in the sand beside Sam.

  Sage’s howls had died down to whimpers now and he snuggled his face into the curve of her neck.

  “He was okay, I swear. I don’t know how he moved that fast in the first place, but he was okay. In fact, he laughed at first. Then, you’d have thought he’d landed on broken glass,” Connor was saying.

  Dina shook her head. Finally, a chink in the perfect father armor. “He’s not hurt. He’s scared.” She slid the palm of her hand up and down Sage’s back. “He’s not used to the swings and he’s too small to be in a regular one anyway...”

  Connor frowned, muttered, “I should have known that.” Then he bent to look at Sage. “Hey, buddy, you okay?”

  Sage only burrowed closer to Dina and she gave him an extra squeeze for it. The triplets might be enamored by the new man in their lives, but clearly when they wanted comforting, it was her they turned to. Her heart swelled with love for the three tiny people who had brought such contained chaos into her life.

  “Is he all right?” Connor asked with a sigh.

  “He’s fine,” she said. “But it’s nap time, so I should get them home.”

  “Right.” Connor nodded, his expression thoughtful. “Home.”

  Still holding Sage tight, Dina turned to pick up their things and head to the car. But first she glanced over her shoulder and said, “You might want to stop Sam from eating sand.”

  “What?”

  She smiled, listening to Connor’s frantic yelp as he dealt with his sand-eating son.

  * * *

  Con still hadn’t read Jackie’s letter.

  He’d planned to, that first night, but he’d been too angry at her to read whatever it was she had to say. Too twisted up over his first visit with his kids and too distracted by thoughts of Dina. Besides, how could Jackie possibly explain away lying to him about his own children? There was no reason good enough, he told himself. No excuse that would take away the pain and the fury of the betrayal still raging inside him.

  For years, Jackie was the one woman he’d trusted. The one friend he could count on no matter what. To find out now that she’d used him just as so many other women had tried to tore at him.

  Con wandered through his darkened house. He didn’t need lights since he knew the position of every stick of furniture in the place. He didn’t want lights because right now his mood was so dark that light would be offensive. The quiet was overpowering—especially after having been in Dina’s tiny, too crowded bungalow only an hour ago. A smile teased his mouth briefly as he remembered the chorus of noises created by the busy triplets and for a second, he tried to imagine those sounds here, in his big, empty house.

  “Funny,” he murmured, just to shatter the silence, “this place never seemed empty before. Just...roomy.”

  Sure, he knew a man alone didn’t need a huge house. But why buy a small one? Con had always had some vague, nebulous idea of finding a woman at some point, getting married and having kids. But he’d been in no rush for that. Now he had the kids, but no wife—just two women on his mind. The memory of one haunting him and the other, one he couldn’t stop wanting.

  He walked through the living room, skirted the wide coffee table and stepped through a set of French doors onto the patio. Out here, there were solar lights circling the area, but the illumination was so pale, he didn’t really mind it. Barefoot, he felt the cold damp of the flagstones beneath his feet and accepted the chill as part of the June night. Moonlight sifted through a covering bank of clouds and lay across the dark ocean like a pale ribbon tossed on top of black velvet. The pounding waves slamming into the cliffs below were a heartbeat. The wind off the sea was cold and cut right through the fabric of his T-shirt, but he didn’t care. He had too much to work out to bother about being cold.

  For three days, he’d been the part-time father he’d thought he would be. Coming and going from the lives of the triplets and Dina like a ghost. He could drop in, harass Dina a little, play with the kids, then leave it all behind and go to his office. There, his new responsibilities were buried beneath contracts, dealing with clients, new business ventures and a hundred other things that demanded his attention.

  But always, the triplets and their guardian came sliding back into his con
sciousness. And every time he left that cottage in Huntington Beach, it was harder to go. Con scraped one hand across the back of his neck as that realization sank in. However it had started—outrage, betrayal, duty—it had become something else. What, exactly, he wasn’t ready to admit yet. But he knew he was deeper into this situation than he would have thought possible three days ago. He knew that he missed those kids when he wasn’t around them.

  And yeah, he missed being around Dina, too. Damn, but the woman was fascinating. She was on edge around him most of the time, but that didn’t do anything to dull the desire he felt every time he looked at her. She was prickly, defensive and her temper made those dark brown eyes of hers flash. Damned if he didn’t enjoy that, too.

  Then there was today at the park. When Sage was hurt and scared, he hadn’t wanted Con. He’d wanted Dina. Her connection to the babies was deep despite the fact that she’d been their guardian only three months. So Con had to work with that, as well. Did he take those kids away from her? Or did he try to find a way to work with her?

  “Hell, this whole mess could have been avoided if Jackie had just told me the damn truth.” He tipped his head back, stared up at the sky and said, “You know you did this, right? You enjoying the show?”

  He couldn’t get an answer from the night. The only one he might get was in the house, in Jackie’s letter. And it was time to finally read it. See what his friend had to say to him.

  Whatever it is, it’s too little, too late, as his mother used to say.

  Shaking his head, Con stalked across the patio to the house, then walked into his bedroom and snatched Jackie’s letter off the dresser. He hit the wall switch, flooding the huge room with light from the ironwork chandelier overhead. He took a seat on the edge of his bed and pulled the letter free. His gaze swept over the familiar handwriting and in his head, he heard Jackie’s voice...

  “Con, if you’re reading this, Elena and I are both gone, so no offense, but I hope you never read this. But if you are, I know you’re pissed, and I can’t blame you. Yes. I lied.”