Triple the Fun

by Maureen Child

  Her grandmother heard the disappointment and worry in Dina’s voice and laughed. “That’s a good thing, querida. He’s their father. They’ll need him.”

  “And what about me?” She shook her head and watched as Sadie and Sam had a tug-of-war over a stuffed bunny. The thought of losing the triplets made her chest hurt. Yes, they were a lot of work, and yes, her life had been turned upside down at their arrival, but now she couldn’t imagine living without them.

  “The Kings are also really rich,” she pointed out, more to herself than to her grandmother. “If he wants to take the babies from me, I won’t be able to afford to fight him. He can hire a fleet of lawyers and I’ll be down at Legal Aid with my fingers crossed.”

  Her grandmother laughed, handed a baby doll to Sadie and smiled as she watched Sam chew on the stuffed bunny’s ear. “Wealthy doesn’t mean evil, Dina.”

  “No, but it does mean powerful,” she argued as worry nibbled at her insides. “No judge is going to pick a struggling caterer over a member of the King family when it comes to custody.”

  “Worrying won’t change that,” her grandmother warned.

  “No, but I’m so good at it.”

  The older woman laughed. “Yes, you are. But just this once, you should try not to excel at something.”

  Dina sighed, shook her head and dropped one arm around her grandmother’s shoulders, pulling her close for a brief, hard hug. “I’ll try. Really.”

  Giving Dina another pat, her grandmother said, “This is a good thing, for you and for the babies.”

  “It doesn’t feel that way,” she said, though her hormones might have disagreed.

  “Dina, you can’t care for them on your own. You’re making yourself crazy by trying.”

  “I can do it,” she said stubbornly. “I’m getting a routine and—”

  “And wearing yourself to the bone trying to be all things to all people,” her grandmother told her quietly, almost as though she were hoping to keep the triplets from hearing—though they wouldn’t have understood her anyway. “Their father is here now. Share the work as well as the joy.”

  “It’s not that easy, Abuela,” Dina said with a sigh. “He’s one of the richest men in the country and he’s furious at being lied to.”

  “You didn’t lie to him.”

  “I don’t think he cares,” she said thoughtfully. “If he decides to, he could take the babies from me and no judge would ever choose me over him.”

  “It doesn’t have to come to that.”

  “Maybe not, but I think it will,” Dina said, remembering the look on his face the night before. He was bonding with his children and digging himself deeper into all of their lives. Connor King wasn’t going to back off. It wasn’t in his nature.

  She’d done some checking on him. Granted, it had been on the internet and she knew you couldn’t believe everything you read there. But she had no other options.

  He and his twin, Colton, had built their own business outside of the family fortune. They were rich in their own right now, after spending years providing risk to thrill seekers. A little less than two years ago, the twins had shifted their business model to family vacations and hadn’t missed a step. According to financial websites, King Family Adventures was even bigger than its precursor, which made sense, since their potential client base was so much bigger.

  From everything she’d read, Connor was a hard, cold-eyed negotiator and didn’t tolerate mistakes. He was the kind of man who laid down the rules and expected everyone else to fall into line. Since Dina didn’t take orders well, she couldn’t see any way this situation was going to have a happy ending.

  “I see another problem on the horizon as well,” Angelica said softly.

  “Great. Just what we need.” She blew out a breath. “What problem?”

  “You like him.” Her grandmother smiled knowingly.

  “Please.” Dina laughed and ducked her head to keep her too-knowing grandmother from reading her eyes. She grabbed Sadie as the baby toddled past and plopped the tiny girl onto her lap. “You’re wrong, Abuela. I don’t like him.”

  “So you didn’t lie to him, only to me,” the older woman said, “and to yourself.”

  Reluctantly, Dina lifted her gaze to her grandmother’s. It was pointless to keep avoiding this particular truth anyway. “Fine. I admit to being...intrigued. He’s so different from every other man I know. But—”

  “Different is good, mija,” she said, scooping Sadie off Dina’s lap and onto her own. “And who knows? Maybe this man’s arrival in your life is a good thing.”

  Dina wouldn’t go that far.

  * * *

  A little after midnight, Dina pulled into her driveway with three sleeping babies in the backseat. Glancing at the house, she muttered a soft curse because she’d forgotten to leave the porch light on.

  With a sigh, she climbed out of the car and then as quietly as possible closed the door behind her. The street was silent, houses dark, with families tucked in for the night. It was so quiet, it was as if the whole world had taken a breath and held it.

  And then she heard a voice.

  “Where the hell have you been?”

  Five

  Dina jumped, slapped one hand to her chest and spun around all at the same time. Heart in her throat, she watched Connor stalk across the yard toward her.

  “You scared me to death,” she said, her voice a harsh whisper.

  “Welcome to my world,” he snapped. “I’ve been sitting on your front porch for the last three hours, not knowing where the hell you were.”

  “What? Why?” She looked past him to the porch as if she could see evidence of his vigil.

  “I came to see the kids, but you weren’t here.” He scrubbed both hands across his face, then glared at her. “I didn’t know where you’d gone. For all I knew, you were out and trapped somewhere, or maybe one of the kids was sick. I called your cell and you didn’t answer. Went straight to voice mail.”

  One small niggle of guilt wormed its way through her, but Dina dismissed it fast. How was she supposed to know that he would show up? Just because he’d been dropping by on and off for days was no reason to assume he’d keep doing it. Besides, he was overreacting and that she could hardly believe. He sounded like a worried husband, for heaven’s sake.

  “I always turn my phone off when I’m working,” she said, though that wasn’t true. She’d kept the phone on in case her grandmother needed to reach her. She simply hadn’t answered the phone when she saw it was Connor calling. “And now I’m going to put the triplets to bed. They’re sound asleep in their car seats and if you wake them...”

  Her threat lay open-ended between them, but it did the trick. He took a breath, made an obvious effort to calm himself and said, “Fine. I’ll help. Go unlock the front door.”

  She did it, but only because that’s what she was going to do before he’d ordered her to do it anyway. Muttering under her breath, Dina crossed the yard with hurried strides. It was cold and damp and the moon and stars were blotted out behind a layer of clouds. She opened the door, then turned and headed back to the car, where Con was already unhooking Sam from his car seat. Her heart twisted a bit as the little boy draped himself across Con’s shoulder, arms and legs limp in sleep. Connor kept one hand on the boy’s back and walked to the house without another word to her.

  Good, Dina thought. She was in no mood for his attitude. She was tired, her feet hurt and all she wanted was to sit down, have a glass of wine and then crawl into bed for the few hours’ sleep she’d get before the babies woke up.

  She freed Sadie from her car seat and soothed the baby girl as she snuffled, whimpered and settled down again.

  “I’ll take her,” Connor whispered when he came up behind her.

  “You get Sage,” she said, al
ready walking.

  In what used to be the bungalow’s master bedroom, three cribs were crowded together in the small space. It wouldn’t be long before Dina would have to find somewhere else to live. The babies were going to outgrow this house within the next year or so. But that was a worry for another day.

  “Why the hell didn’t you answer the phone?” Connor’s strained whisper sounded overly loud in the quiet.

  “I was working,” she reminded him. “Then when I wasn’t, I turned the phone off to keep from waking up the babies on the way home.”

  “Okay, then,” he ground out, “what kind of job are you working that you’ve got three babies out until after midnight?”

  She frowned at him as she leaned over the crib and patted Sam’s back until he settled into deep sleep again. “I was catering an anniversary party, and the babies are fine.”

  “They should have been home,” he said, that strained whisper somehow even more strained now.

  Dina swallowed her impatience. “Not that it’s any of your business, but my babysitter got sick at the last minute, so my grandmother watched them for me.”

  While Connor soothed a snuffling, writhing Sadie, he glared at Dina. “Why the hell didn’t you call me? I could have been here to watch them. Hell, I was here. On the damn porch, imagining you and the babies dead in a ditch somewhere.”

  He was serious. She didn’t know whether to be touched, amused or angry. Amusement won.

  She snorted a laugh and was pleased to see his expression darken even further. “Who’re you, my mother?”

  “No,” he reminded her. “I’m their father, and you should have answered my calls.”

  Looking into his eyes, she saw beyond his anger to the worry that had been dogging him for hours. If the situation had been turned around and he had been off with the triplets and she hadn’t been able to reach him, she would have been furious, too. And worried. And scared. And her imagination would have tortured her with images of car accidents, kidnappings—heck, even space invaders!

  Maybe she should have answered his calls, but the truth was, she only left her phone turned on while working in case there was an emergency with the babies. Otherwise, she was focused on the task at hand. And frankly, every time her phone rang and she saw Connor’s number, she’d enjoyed shifting him to voice mail. He was so...dominant male that being able to thwart him even a little had made her feel better. Now, though, she was rethinking that decision.

  “Okay, I’m sorry.” Oh, that was bitter. “I should have let you know the kids were all right.”

  “It wasn’t only them I was worried about,” he said, voice deeper, lower, more intimate.

  She looked at him and in the soft glow of the night-light, his blue eyes seemed fathomless, fixed on her. She felt drawn to him. So much so that she deliberately looked away and took a step back.

  The babies were settled and the baby monitor turned on, so to continue the conversation, Dina led Connor out of the bedroom. She needed some breathing room. Flipping on light switches as she went, to dispel the dark and the accompanying intimacy, she walked straight to the living room with him following close behind. She entered the room, turned to face him and saw that he’d stopped in the open doorway. Taking a breath, she steadied herself. “I’m tired, Connor. Can we do the rest of this another time?”

  Rather than answer, he asked a question of his own. “Why didn’t you ask me to watch the kids?”

  “The simplest answer? It never occurred to me.”

  A rush of pure frustration swamped Connor as he met her eyes and read the truth there. He read the fatigue in her eyes and noted the defensive posture she always adopted when they began to butt heads, and that was almost enough to defuse the anger churning inside him. The last few hours, he’d felt more helpless than he ever had, and he hadn’t enjoyed it. He was used to being in charge, to knowing what was going on at all times. To be in the dark about his own children had been torture.

  By the time she had pulled into the driveway, Connor had been tense enough to snap in two. It was only the presence of the sleeping babies that had kept his temper from boiling over. But his frustration continued to bubble and froth in the pit of his stomach.

  She hadn’t called him because she hadn’t given him a thought. She’d needed help and she’d gone to her grandmother instead of him. Because he wasn’t a part of her or the kids’ lives. He was still on the periphery, and he was the only one who could change that.

  “That’s got to stop,” he said flatly, silently congratulating himself on his rigid control.

  “Look, I’m sorry you were worried,” she said. “But I’m too tired to do this right now.”

  He nodded solemnly. “Fine. We’ll talk about it in the morning.”

  “Okay, good.” She waved a hand at the hall and the front door behind him. “Now I’m going to bed and you should go home.”

  “Oh,” Connor said, leaning against the doorjamb with a casual ease he wasn’t feeling, “I’m not going anywhere.”

  “What?”

  Her chocolate eyes went wide and outraged and Connor smiled. He liked the way she went from cool to hot in a split second and he really wanted to see how hot she’d burn in his bed. For a second or two, that image scalded his brain and made speech impossible. When he came back to the moment, she was in the middle of a whispered rant, trying to keep her anger from waking the babies in the other room.

  “You think you can just stay uninvited in my house? What gives you the right? Nothing, that’s what.” She answered her own question before he could say a word. She glanced at the baby monitor she held in her hands as the sounds of restless squirming cut into the room. In another moment or two, they might be awake and crying and this conversation—such as it was—would come to an end.

  So he ended it first.

  Connor didn’t think about it, he simply went on instinct, following the urges that had been clawing at him since the first time he’d seen her. Pushing away from the wall, he grabbed her, pulled her close and kissed her.

  The instant his mouth met hers, heat exploded between them. Sensations unlike anything he’d ever known before enveloped him and Connor could only hold onto her, tightening his arms around her until he held her captive, pinned to his body. She went from startled to swept away in a heartbeat. As if she, too, were being consumed by the flames licking at his insides, she hooked her arms around his neck and held on. Mouths taking, giving, tongues twining together in a frantic dance of need. Their breath came in short, hard gasps. The bright living room lights shining around them did nothing to dispel the closeness wrapping itself around them.

  His brain racing, heart thundering in his chest and his groin so heavy and hard he ached with it, Connor relished the feel of her mouth under his. The longer he kissed her, the more he felt, those flames burning brighter, hotter, scorching his soul. She sighed and leaned into him, and that soft sound was enough to penetrate his brain, bring him back to himself and the realization that he was only a blink away from pulling Dina down to the damn floor.

  No. When this happened, he told himself, they would have a bed. And privacy. And all the time they needed to explore whatever it was burning between them. When that thought registered, he broke the kiss, stepped back and with satisfaction, watched her stagger before finding her balance. Breath ragged in his lungs, his heart hammering against his ribs, Con ground out, “I’m staying here tonight.”

  She shook her head instantly. “We’re not going to—”

  “I’ll sleep on the couch.”

  Her gaze met his and she must have seen that he wasn’t going to be sent on his way. With tension blistering the air in the room, she only nodded, accepting the inevitable.

  “This isn’t over,” he said.

  “It is for tonight,” she answered and walked past him, down the short hall to her room.
She disappeared inside and closed the door behind her.

  Alone, Connor shoved one hand through his hair and barely resisted giving it a hard tug to relieve some of the frustration still holding him in its clutches. Instead, he walked to the too-short couch and eyed it grimly.

  It was going to be a miserable night.

  * * *

  During the long, incredibly sleepless night, Connor had had time to do some thinking. And some snooping. Sure, maybe he had crossed a line, when he’d poked around in Dina’s laptop, which really should be password protected. But he’d told himself that the triplets gave him all the reason he needed to invade her privacy a little.

  Just as his lawyers had informed him, her business was in trouble. She was already in a downward spiral of debt and picking up speed every day. He’d flipped through enough of her records to know that she was using her small savings account to supplement her income and that wasn’t going to last for much longer.

  Bottom line? Dina Cortez was in no shape to provide for three growing kids. And he could use that information.

  He already had the babies changed and dressed when she walked into the nursery bright and early the next morning. One look was all it took to tell him that she’d gotten as little sleep during the night as he had.

  “You’re awake?”

  He shrugged and finished pulling Sam’s shirt into place. “Never really went to sleep.” He shot her a sly glance. “Too much on my mind.”

  She inhaled sharply and Connor guessed that she’d been thinking about that kiss and what should have come next. Hell, thoughts like that had been tormenting him all night. Knowing that she was just down the hall from him. Knowing that she would welcome his touch. It had taken everything he had to keep from going to her.

  But the bottom line was that he wasn’t here because of this attraction and desire he felt for Dina. He was here for his children, and they had to come first. If he made a play for Dina, it would complicate everything. Better to settle the situation here before moving on what he wanted from her.