“Oh, I’m positive this is all going to blow up in my face. Does that count?”
“No, it does not,” her grandmother said, then asked, “What is this really about, nieta?”
Frowning, Dina picked at a splotch of dried baby food on the hem of her white shorts. “Connor King is overpowering,” she finally said, her voice little more than a whisper of complaint. “He’s gorgeous, he’s pushy, he’s rich.”
“And you worry because of your mother.”
Dina looked at her grandmother, apology in her eyes. Whatever kind of mom Helen had been to Dina, she had also been Angelica’s daughter, and Dina felt guilty for reminding her grandmother of her loss. “I’m sorry. But you saw what happened to Mom, too. She would get involved with men who were larger-than-life and then she’d slowly crumble to whatever they wanted. She was lost, trying to be something she wasn’t.”
Sighing heavily, Angelica took a seat beside Dina, reached out and squeezed her hand. “I loved your mother,” she said, “but she was not a strong woman. She had doubts about who she was, always. My daughter looked to men for the answer rather than to herself, and that was her mistake. Her fault. It’s not yours.”
Dina looked into her grandmother’s eyes.
“You worry for nothing,” her grandmother said softly. “You have a strength she never had, your mother. You are confident where she was hesitant. Strength in a man is not a bad thing. It is only weakness that can be devoured by strength. You have none.”
Dina would like to believe that, but her confidence level was at an all-time low at the moment. Living with Connor, being around him nonstop, was going to be the kind of temptation she had always avoided. And that knowledge only made her feel even more uneasy about this whole thing.
“Now,” her grandmother said as she stood up, “help me finish packing for the niños. It’s time to face your fear and conquer it.”
“Right. Conquer my fear.” Dina stood up, too, and looked at the pile of baby clothes still waiting to be folded. She had a feeling, though, as she started working again, that Connor King wasn’t an easy man to conquer.
* * *
Of course his house was amazing. Set amid lush gardens and heavy greenery, it was a ranch-style home built of brick and stone and glass and looked as though it had simply grown organically where it stood.
Dina was speechless from the moment she entered through the double front doors. Polished oak floors, beautiful furnishings from the gleaming tables to the paintings on the taupe-painted walls to the gray marble fireplace that dominated one wall of the massive great room. It was there they settled the kids down to play and that Dina could take a moment to admire the room. Overstuffed furniture stood in silent invitation to curl up and relax. Books and magazines were stacked on the oak tables and a set of French doors opened onto a stone patio that fed down into a green lawn overlooking the ocean. One entire wall was glass, providing a view that was simply breathtaking, especially at the moment, with sunset spilling across the sea in a path of gold and red and staining the sky in shades of rose and gold and violet.
She did a slow turn, taking it all in and silently wishing she didn’t feel like a peasant invited to the castle. The whole house smelled like fresh flowers and lemon polish. And though she hated to admit it, her entire bungalow would fit nicely into the great room.
The kids were at her feet, spread out on a wide rug that probably cost more than her car, with toys that were so new, she and Connor had had to pry them out of their packaging. Two nut-brown leather couches faced each other across a wide coffee table of distressed wood. Club chairs in varying shades of green and blue were scattered around the wide room in conversational groups and the wall of glass seemed to bring the outside in.
A housekeeper named Louise, a woman of about fifty, with graying dark hair and bright, curious blue eyes, had brought out tall glasses of iced tea along with a plate of cookies and three sippy cups of milk for the triplets. It was perfect, damn it.
“Think you’ll be able to tough it out here?”
She turned to look at Connor, sprawled on one of the couches, looking exactly what he was...lord of the manor.
“Enjoying this, are you?”
“Being comfortable?” he asked. “After time spent on your couch? Oh, yeah.”
She sighed because she couldn’t really blame him. “Your house is beautiful.”
He laughed shortly. “How much did that hurt?”
“A lot,” Dina admitted. “I admit, I was hoping to find that you lived in some soulless, white everywhere modern nightmare—”
“Ooh, careful there. You just described my brother Colt’s house.”
“Really?”
He shrugged. “I never liked it. Felt cold to me, but he thought it looked clean. His wife and kids are currently dirtying it up for him.”
“Right. Well, anyway. This house is beautiful, but you have to know that I feel like you maneuvered me into this move, and I don’t like it.”
“I did, and you don’t have to.” Connor straightened up in the chair, braced his elbows on his knees and slapped his hands together. “I want my kids, Dina. You come with them.”
“For now,” she said.
He lifted one shoulder. “Now’s what we’re dealing with, right?”
Yes, but what happened later? A week, two weeks, three? The longer they stayed in this house, the more solid footing Connor would have for a custody suit. And Dina wasn’t an idiot. She knew he expected to take the kids from her. That thought made her heart ache, but a split second later, something clicked in her brain.
All along, she’d been thinking that Connor had the upper hand. And in a lot of ways, he did. But the reality of actually living with three babies who demanded plenty of attention was something he hadn’t experienced yet. She smiled as she realized that staying here might actually work in her favor after all.
She knew that Connor had only been interested in being a part-time father before Elena and Jackie were killed. Now, it was his own sense of duty and honor—and the realization that he’d been lied to—that had him scrambling to take charge of the triplets.
But what if once he had what he wanted he didn’t want it anymore? What if the day-to-day dealings with three babies showed him that he wasn’t ready for fatherhood? This could turn out to be the best thing she could have done. Living here, letting him take charge of the kids, might just prove to him once and for all that the trips were better off with her.
She smiled to herself at the thought and relaxed for the first time since their kiss the night before.
“Why are you smiling?” he asked, voice colored with suspicion.
“No reason,” she said. Meeting his gaze, she felt something inside her tremble and felt suddenly uncomfortable. But then, she wasn’t comfortable with a lot lately. That kiss they’d shared had been overwhelming and the feelings it engendered were still with her. Along with anxiety. She’d never let a man get close enough to her to make her anxious about her feelings.
Looking across the room at Connor, she stared into his ice-blue eyes and knew that this man was dangerous. Not just to her guardianship of the babies, but to her.
“Louise has your room ready,” he was saying. “It’s upstairs, next to the babies’ room. Mine’s across the hall.”
“Handy,” she murmured.
“Isn’t it?” He smiled and her stomach spun unsteadily.
“What’s the matter, Dina?” he asked. “Don’t trust yourself with me?”
Exactly, but she couldn’t really admit to that.
“I think I can manage to restrain myself,” she said, scooping Sadie off the floor and onto her hip.
“Wanna bet?” Connor stood up, grabbed the other two kids and held them while he looked into her eyes. A smile curved his mouth and something inside her flipped over i
n response.
Oh, yeah. This was not good.
* * *
A week later, Connor was a man on the edge.
Who would have guessed that three babies could take over a house in so little time? There were toys everywhere, forgotten sippy cups under the couch, and stains on half of his shirts. The three of them were a force of nature.
Connor was exhausted.
And it wasn’t just the triplets wearing him down, either. It was the knowledge that Dina was just across the hall from him, every night. It was imagining her showering, naked and wet, with water streaming along her honey-colored skin. It was the images of her floating through his mind, stretched out on the four-poster bed in her room, wearing nothing more than a welcoming smile as she held her arms out to him. It was remembering the taste of her so well he still held her scent inside him.
The way she laughed, the way she smiled at the babies or the way she held them, loved them. She was sparking too many thoughts in his already tired brain and Connor was sure that she somehow knew he was suffering—and she was enjoying it.
Hell, Dina’d hardly lifted a finger for the kids since they moved in. She’d taken a giant step back, telling him that she was sure he wanted to get to know his children. She left the bathing and feeding to him. She watched as he chased them down every morning just to get them dressed. And she laughed whenever one escaped him.
So Connor knew that she was expecting him to fail. To surrender and say that he wasn’t interested in full custody, that it was too much work or some other nonsense. But she was going to be disappointed. He hadn’t changed his mind. If anything, his resolve had only strengthened over the last week. His children belonged with him and he was going to do whatever he had to do to make sure that happened.
The question was, how to deal with Dina.
“She said no, didn’t she?”
“What? Who? Oh. Yeah.” Connor shook his head and looked at Colt. Smoke from the barbecue on his patio lifted into the sea wind and twisted into knots before dissipating. The scent of cooking burgers filled the air.
A family barbecue had been Penny’s idea. Colt’s wife had wanted to meet Dina and the kids.
“You mean to my offer of buying her off?” Grimly, he smiled at the memory of her outraged expression. “Yeah, she said no. And a few other things as well.”
“Told you it wouldn’t work,” Colt said and took a drink of his beer.
“Thanks. I told you so is always so helpful to hear.”
Colt ignored that. “So any ideas on where you go from here?”
“Plenty.” He nodded, picked up the spatula and flipped the burgers on the grill. Grease dropped onto the coals and flames erupted.
“You should get a gas grill,” Colt mused.
“I like charcoal,” Con told him. “Anyway, Rafe and his crew are coming out next week to sketch out plans for the new nursery suite.”
“And Dina knows you’re doing this?”
“Not yet, but why should she care?”
“Oh, I don’t know, because she thought moving in here was temporary and now you’re making it permanent?” Colt’s eyes narrowed on his twin. “What’s going on in your head?”
“Plans. Okay,” Con said, “I admit, it’s a little tougher than I thought it would be, taking care of so many babies at once.”
“As I remember it, you laughed your head off when it happened to me.”
Connor ignored that. “My plans right now are to get to know my kids, to have the lawyer looking into custody and to get to Ireland.”
“You taking Dina and the kids with you?”
“Why not?” He made it sound casual but the truth was, he had to go on this trip and didn’t much care for the idea of being away from Dina and the babies for a week. He refused to look at why. “Dina’s got a passport and I had the family lawyers arrange them for the babies. We’ll go. Say hi to cousin Jefferson and his family and check out Ashford Castle. Three, four days tops and we’re back in California.” When his brother gave him a knowing look, Con shook his head. “Don’t make more of this than there is. I’m taking the kids and Dina’s part of the package. That’s all.”
“Uh-huh.” Colt took another drink of his beer, nodded to where the women and kids were and said, “If you ask me, she’s quite a package all on her own.”
“Nobody asked you,” Connor snapped. Then he took the burgers off the grill. “Time to eat.”
* * *
“You didn’t tell me you and your brother were identical twins,” Dina said later after everyone had gone home again.
“There are some differences,” Connor said. “I’m the good-looking one.”
She laughed and realized that over the last week, she’d become less anxious around him. Less wary. And that should probably worry her. But at the moment she felt too good to ruin her mood with anxiety.
With the triplets tucked into bed and the housekeeper in her suite at the rear of the house, Connor and Dina were alone. The patio was quiet and cool and the sound of the ocean slamming into the cliffs below was rhythmic, soothing. They sat on Adirondack chairs, each of them holding a glass of wine.
“Colt’s wife is great,” she said. “Did you know she’s having the whole house redone?”
“Yeah. Our cousin Rafe at King Construction is madly in love with her,” Con said with a chuckle. “She’s changing so much it’s turned into a huge project that’ll keep Rafe’s crew busy for months.”
“She pointed the house out to me earlier. The big white one that looks like a box with windows?” Dina had taken one look at the place and hated it. Penny had told her she’d felt much the same way when she first saw it. But she was having Spanish revival style added to the basic box and by the time she was finished, Dina was willing to bet that the house would be beautiful. “Penny also told me that Rafe was going to be taking a break from working on her house long enough to do a job for you.”
“Told you that, did she?” He turned his head and looked at her, and in the moonlight, his blue eyes shone.
“You’re building a suite for the babies but you didn’t tell me?” When Penny brought it up, Dina had felt a quick jolt of panic. Adding onto a home was a permanent thing. To Connor’s mind, this wasn’t temporary at all.
“I was going to,” he said, voice quiet and almost lost in the sigh of the waves below.
“You’re really going to sue for custody, aren’t you?”
He sat forward. “I never made a secret of the fact that I want my kids, Dina.”
“I know,” she said, shifting her gaze to where a full moon hung in a black sky and slanted silver light on the sea. “The problem is, I want them, too, Connor.”
He stood up and pulled her to her feet. She was barefoot and the stone patio was damp and cold, seeping into her bones. With his hands on her upper arms, holding her in place, he looked down into her eyes and Dina felt that tremble of something wild and dangerous rise up inside her again.
“You don’t want to fight me for them, Dina,” he said. “You would lose.”
“If I don’t fight, I’ve lost already,” she pointed out and congratulated herself on keeping her voice steady and even despite the insistent tremble she felt within.
The wind sighed past them, briefly enfolding them in a chilly embrace. Dina’s hair flew across her eyes and Connor tugged it free, rubbing the silky strands between his thumb and fingers.
“We don’t have to be enemies,” he whispered. “We can find a way to work together on this.”
“I don’t see how,” she said, staring into those blue eyes that only seemed to shine more brightly in the darkness.
“This is a start,” he murmured and kissed her again.
Dina melted against him, plying her body along his as he pulled her in more tightly, pressing her to him c
losely enough that she felt the hard proof of what he wanted. Her insides churned, her heartbeat quickened and her mind went blessedly blank.
Her entire life had been spent trying to avoid the kind of feelings she was right now surrendering to. If she thought about what she was doing, she’d have to stop. Have to be rational. Logical. Clearheaded.
So she didn’t think.
Dina gave her emotions free rein and let herself wallow in the amazing sensation of being held and kissed by a man who could turn her knees to water with a single look. She had known that one kiss would never be enough.
And when Connor pulled back, breaking contact, she knew that two kisses wouldn’t be enough, either.
She was heading down a road she’d never intended to travel. But turning back simply wasn’t an option now.
He cupped her cheek in his palm and smiled down at her. Dina’s only consolation in all of this was that he looked as shaken as she felt. “What’re we doing, Connor?”
“Right now?” He grinned, lifted her chin and planted a quick, hard kiss on her mouth. “We’re saying good-night while I’m still enough of a gentleman to let you walk away from me.”
“That’s not what I meant.”
“I know,” he said and stepped back and away from her. “Dina, I want you more than I’ve ever wanted anyone before, so I’m giving you fair warning. Leave now, or wake up in my bed.”
Heat pooled in her center and her breath came just a little bit quicker. “I’m not sleeping with you, Connor.”
“You’re right about that, anyway,” he said wryly. “Sleeping wasn’t what I had in mind.”
More heat flared until Dina felt as if she might simply spontaneously combust right there on the patio. Funny, all it took was warning her away from him to make her want him even more. How twisted was that?
“Connor—”
“Do us both a favor and go to bed, okay?” He scrubbed one hand across the back of his neck, then let his hand fall to his side.
“Fine. I’m going.” She hadn’t taken more than a few steps, though, when his voice stopped her.
“Oh, yeah. We’ll be going to Ireland in a few days, if there’s anything you need to take care of before we go.”
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