Double the Trouble
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Maureen Child
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One
Colton King never saw the fist that slammed into his jaw.
He shook his head to clear it, then blocked the next punch before it could land. The furious man who’d stormed into Colt’s office only moments before took a step back and ground out, “You had that coming.”
“What the hell?” Colt dropped his packed duffel bag to the floor. “Had it coming?”
Colt did a fast mental review and came up empty. He didn’t know this man and he couldn’t think of a single other person who wanted to hit him—at the moment. His always-temporary relationships with women invariably ended amicably. Heck, even he and his twin brother, Connor, hadn’t had a good argument in weeks.
Yeah, he’d had angry clients show up at the Laguna Beach, California, offices of King’s Extreme Adventures if they didn’t find the monster waves they’d been promised. Or if the dead man’s run on a mountain was closed due to avalanche.
Colton and Connor arranged adventure vacations for the wealthy adrenaline junkies of the world. So, sure, there had been more than a few times when a customer was mad enough to cause a scene. But not one of them had ever punched him. Before now.
So the question was, “Who the hell are you?”
“I called security!” A woman announced from the doorway.
Colt didn’t even glance at Linda, the admin he and Connor shared. “Thanks. Go get Connor.”
“On it,” she said, then vanished.
“Calling security won’t change anything,” the guy who had just punched him said flatly. “You’ll still be a selfish bastard.”
“Okay,” Colt muttered. Not the first time he’d heard that, either. But a little context would be helpful. “You want to tell me what’s going on here?”
“That’s what I’d like to know.” Connor stepped into the room to take a stand beside his twin.
Colt was glad to have him there, though he could have taken the guy who’d gotten in one lucky sucker punch. But probably not good business to have a fistfight here in the office, and having Connor around would help him leash his temper. Besides, fighting wouldn’t give him the answers he wanted. “You took your best shot. Now tell me why.”
“My name is Robert Oaks.”
Oaks. Long-buried memories raced through Colt’s mind in a blinding rush. A ball of ice dropped into the pit of his stomach and his body went utterly still. He studied the stranger glaring at him and in those narrowed green eyes, he saw...familiarity.
Damn it.
The last time he’d looked into eyes like those had been nearly two years ago. At the end of a week in Vegas that should have been ordinary and instead had been...amazing. One specific memory rose up in his mind and Colt wished to hell he could wipe it away, but he’d never been able to pull that off. The morning after he and Penny Oaks had gotten married in a tacky chapel on the strip. The morning when he’d told her they’d be getting a divorce—right before thanking her for a fun week and then leaving her in the hotel room they’d shared.
He didn’t want to think about that day. But hard to avoid that now, with the man who had to be her brother standing in front of him.
Robert Oaks nodded slowly as he saw realization dawn on Colt’s face. “Good. At least you remember.”
“Remember what?” Connor demanded.
“Nothing.” He wasn’t getting into this with Connor. Not right now, anyway.
“Oh, nothing. That’s great.” Oaks shook his head in disgust. “Just what I expected.”
Anger stirred. Whatever was once between him and Penny was just that. Between the two of them. He wasn’t interested in what her brother thought. “Why are you here? What do you want?”
“I want you to do the right thing,” Robert snapped. “But I doubt you will.” His fist bunched. “So I thought punching you would be enough. It wasn’t.”
Impatience stirred and twisted in the anger still balled in Colt’s guts. He had a KingJet waiting to fly him to Sicily. He had places to go. Things to do. And damned if he’d waste one more minute with Robert Oaks.
“Why don’t you quit dancing around and get to it. Why are you here?”
“Because my sister’s in the hospital.”
“Hospital?” Something inside Colt lurched unsteadily. Instantly, memories shifted, his mind filling with images of another hospital, the cold green walls, the grim gray linoleum and the stench of fear and antiseptic flavoring every breath.
For a second or two, he felt as though there was a weight on his chest, dragging him back into a past he never wanted to visit again. Deliberately, he pushed away from the blackness at the edges of his mind and fought his way back to the present. Pushing one hand through his hair, Colt focused his gaze on Penny’s brother and waited.
“My sister had an appendectomy yesterday,” Robert told him.
Relief that it wasn’t something more serious was a small, slim thread winding its way through the tangled mass inside him. “Is she okay?”
Robert snorted a derisive laugh. “Yeah, she’s fine. Except, you know, for worrying about how she’s going to pay the hospital bill. And worrying about her twins. Your twins.”
All of the air left the room.
Colt knew that because he couldn’t draw a breath.
“My—” He shook his head while he tried to get a grip on what Penny’s younger brother was telling him. But how the hell did you make sense of something like that coming at you out of the blue? What the hell was he supposed to do? Say? Think?
Colt scrubbed both hands across his face, forced one shaky breath into his lungs and finally managed to say, “Twins? Penny had a baby?”
“Two,” Robert corrected, and looked from Colt to Connor and back again. “Looks like twins run in your family.”
“And she didn’t tell him?” Connor sounded as stunned as Colt felt.
Fury rose up and nearly choked him. She had never said a damn word. She’d been pregnant and hadn’t told him. She’d delivered two children and hadn’t told him.
He had children?
That weight was back on his chest again but this time he ignored it.
“Where are they?” The demand was short and sharp.
Robert looked at him warily and Colt knew that his expression must have mirrored the anger erupting inside.
“My fiancée and I have been taking care of them.”
Them. Colt was the father of twins and he knew nothing about them. How was that even possible? He’d always been careful. But apparently, his mind taunted, not careful enough.
A small voice in the back of his mind whispered that this might all be a lie. That Penny could have told her brother a lie. That the babies weren’t really his. But even as he considered that possibility, he dismissed it. That would have been too easy, and Colt knew better than most that there was nothing easy about any of this.
“A boy and a girl, if you’re interested.”
Colt’s head snapped up and his gaze narrowed on Robert. A boy and a girl. He had two kids. Hell, he didn’t know how he was supposed to feel. The only thing he was sure of at the moment was that his children’s mother had some explaining to do.
“Damn straight I’m interested. Now tell me what hospital Penny’s in.”
He got all the information from Robert, including the man’s cell number and his address. When building security arrived, Colt sent them away. He wasn’t going to press charges against Penny’s brother—the guy was pissed and defending his family. Colton would have done the same. But once Robert had left, Colt released some of his fury by kicking his duffel bag across the room.
Connor leaned against the doorjamb. “So, trip to Sicily is off?”
Colt was supposed to be in the air right now, heading for Mount Etna to try out a new BASE jumping spot. It’s what he did—searching out the most dangerous, most awe-inspiring sport sites for their ever-growing client list.
But now, he had a different sort of adrenaline burst waiting for him. Colt slanted his twin a hard look. “Yeah, it’s off.”
“And you’re a father.”
“Looks like it.”
He sounded calm, didn’t he? He wasn’t, though. There were too many emotions, too many thoughts crowding his mind for him to even separate one from the other. A father. There were two babies in the world because of him, and he’d had no idea until a few minutes ago. How was that even possible? Shouldn’t he have felt something? Shouldn’t he have damn well been told that he was a father?
Colt shook his head, still trying to wrap his mind around it. He couldn’t. Hell, no kid deserved to have him for a father. He knew that. Rubbing the center of his chest to try to ease the ache settled there, Colt blew out a breath. How was he supposed to be feeling? Anger tangled with sheer terror, then twisted into a tight knot that iced over and left him feeling cold to the bone.
“And you were gonna tell me about this when?”
Colt gaped at his twin. “Seriously? I just found out myself, remember?”
“I’m not talking about the twins—I’m talking about their mother.”
“Nothing to tell.” Lies, he thought. Lies. Truth was, there was plenty to tell, just nothing he wanted to talk about. It was the only time in his life Colt had kept something from his twin. He still couldn’t explain why. Colt shoved one hand through his hair. “It was the convention in Vegas nearly two years ago.”
“You met her there?”
Colt stalked across the room and picked up the duffel he’d packed for his now-canceled trip to Sicily. Slinging it over his shoulder, he turned to face his brother. “I don’t want to talk about this now, okay?”
If he didn’t get out of there in the next ten seconds, he was going to blow. Temper boiling, it was all he could do to hold it together.
“Too bad,” Connor said shortly. “I just found out I’m an uncle. So tell me about this woman.”
His twin wasn’t going to let this go and Colt knew it. Hell, if the situation was reversed, he’d be demanding answers, too, so he couldn’t really blame him. Didn’t make this any easier, though.
“Not much to say,” he ground out, teeth gritted. “I met her at the extreme sports convention. We spent the week together and then—”
“Then?”
Colt blew out a breath. “We got married.”
If he hadn’t been in such a foul mood the look on his twin’s face would have made Colt laugh hysterically. He’d never seen Connor so shocked. Of course, why wouldn’t he be? Colt felt pretty much as if someone had knocked him over the head with a two-by-four, himself.
“You got married?” Connor pushed away from the doorjamb and stalked into the room. “And you didn’t bother to tell me?”
“It lasted, like, a minute,” Colt said. Even now he couldn’t believe that he’d surrendered so deeply to the passion he’d found with Penny that he’d actually married her. He hadn’t said anything to Connor because he hadn’t even been able to explain to himself what he’d done.
Shaking his head, he turned and looked out the window at the ocean beyond the glass. Surfers rode their boards toward shore. Tourists strolled along the beach, snapping pictures as they went, and farther out on the water, sailboats skimmed the surface, bright sails fluttering in the wind.
The world was going on just as it always had. Everything looked completely normal. Nothing out of place. And yet...for him, nothing would ever be the same again.
“Colt, it’s been nearly two years, and you never said a word?”
He glanced over his shoulder at his twin. “Never could find a way to say it. Con, I still don’t know what the hell happened.” Shaking his head again, he huffed out a breath and tamped down the anger still rising within him. “I came home, got a divorce and figured it was done. No point in telling you about it when it was over.”
“Can’t believe you were married.”
“You and me both,” he muttered, and turned his gaze back to the ocean, hoping for the calm that sight usually brought him. This time it didn’t work. “I figured there was just nothing to tell.”
“Yeah, well, you were wrong.”
Understatement of the century.
“Looks that way.” He had kids. Two of them. He could do the math, so he’d already worked out that they were eight months old. Eight months of their lives and he’d never even seen them. Never even guessed that they might exist. Cold fury rose up inside him again and he struggled to breathe past what felt like an iron band, tightening around his chest.
It had been close to two years since he’d seen Penny—though he’d thought about her far more often than he wanted to admit, even to himself. But at the moment, it wasn’t memories driving him. Or the desire he’d once felt for her. It was cold fury, plain and simple. The kind of raw rage he’d never felt before. She’d kept his children from him and she’d done it deliberately. After all, it wasn’t like he was hard to find. He was a King, for God’s sake, and the Kings of California weren’t exactly low profile.
“Fine. So what’re you gonna do?”
Colt turned his back on the ocean and faced his twin. Steely determination fired his soul and filled his voice as he said, “I’m going to see my ex-wife. Then I’m going to get my kids.”
* * *
Every time she moved, Penny felt a swift stab of pain. That didn’t stop her from trying, though. Wincing, she shifted around carefully until she could reach the rollaway table that held her laptop. Swinging it around, she then scooted up higher on the bed, moving much more slowly than she wanted to.
Penny was more accustomed to moving through life at top speed. She had a business and a home and two babies to care for, so hurrying was the only way she could keep up. Being forced to lie still in a hospital bed she couldn’t afford was making her a little crazy.
Every moment she was stuck here was another dollar sign ticking up on the bill she would soon be handed. Every moment here, her babies were without her. And though Penny trusted her younger brother and his fiancée, Maria, completely, she missed the twins desperately. Since she worked out of her home, she was with them all the time. Being away from them made her feel as if she were missing a limb.
She reached out to pull the rolling table closer and gasped at the quick stab of pain slicing through her. “Ow!”
“You probably should lie still.”
“Oh, God.” Penny froze, hardly daring to breathe. She knew that voice. Heard it every night in her dreams. Clutching the edge of the table, only her eyes moved, tracking to the doorway where he stood. Colton King. The father of her children, the star of every one of her fantasies, her ex-husband and absolutely the last man on earth she wanted to see.
“Surprised?” he asked.
That word really didn’t cover what she was feeling. “You could say that.”
“Well then,” he snapped, “you have some idea of how I feel.”
Robert, she thought grimly. She was going to have to kill her little brother. Sure, she’d practically raised him and she loved him dearly. But for going to Colton and ratting her out, Robert had to pay. But dealing with her brother could come later. At the moment, she had to find a way to deal with her past.
“What’re you doing here?”
He walked slowly into the room, his long legs crossing the linoleum-covered floor in a few easy strides. He moved almost lazily, but Penny wasn’t fooled. She could feel the tension radiating off of him in thick waves and she braced herself for the confrontation that had been almost two years in the making.
His hands were tucked into the pockets of his black jeans. His thick-soled boots hardly made a whisper of sound as he moved. His black hair was a little too long, curling around the collar of his bloodred pullover shirt. But it was his eyes that held her. That mesmerized her as they had nearly two years ago.
They were the pale blue of an icy sky, fringed by lashes so thick and black any woman would have killed to have them. And right now, those cold eyes were fixed on her.
He was still the sexiest man she’d ever met. Still had that air about him that drew women to him like metal shavings to a magnet. Still made her want to throw both herself and a rock at him.
“Robert came to see me,” he said lightly, as if it didn’t mean a thing. But she knew better. Yes, they’d only been together for a week almost two years ago, but in those two years, Penny had relived every moment with him hundreds of times. At first, she had tried to forget him, because remembering only brought pain.
But then she’d found herself pregnant, and forgetting was impossible. So instead, she’d reveled in her memories. Kept them fresh and alive by mentally deconstructing every conversation, examining every moment spent with him. She knew the tone of his voice. Knew the feel of his skin, the taste of his lips.
And she knew, just by looking at him now, he was angry.
Well then, they were a match. She didn’t want him here. Didn’t need him here. Penny took a deep breath and braced for the coming storm.
He stopped at the foot of her hospital bed and met her gaze with a steely stare. “So,” he said. “What’s new?”
Anger flashed in those cool blue eyes and a muscle in his jaw ticked spasmodically. One glance down to where his hands were closed over the footboard showed that his knuckles were white with the force of his grip.
“Robert had no right to go to you.” Her fingers tugged at the thin green blanket covering her.
Her brother had been after her since before the twins were born to go to Colt and tell him the truth. But she’d had her reasons for keeping her secret and nothing had changed. Well, nothing but for the fact that her little brother had turned traitor.
“Well,” he said on a sharp, short laugh. “You’re right about that, anyway. You should have told me.”
Ice coated his words as well as his eyes. No doubt he was waiting for her to quiver and shrivel up beneath his hard gaze. Well, Penny refused to back down or to feel guilty about her decision. When she’d first discovered she was pregnant, she’d gone around and around in her mind, trying to figure out the best course of action.
She had argued with herself for weeks over what was the right thing to do. Yes, she might have had an easier time of it the last couple of years if she had gone to Colt in the beginning. But she also might have spent the last two years tangled up in hard feelings, accusations and arguments. Not to mention a custody battle she wouldn’t have stood a chance in. He was a King, for heaven’s sake, and she didn’t have enough money to buy lunch out!
So she’d chosen to keep the truth from him and she didn’t regret it. How could she, when she knew she had done what she felt was in the best interests of her children?
With that thought firmly in mind, she got a grip on her own feelings as anger and frustration began to churn inside. “I understand how you feel but—”
“You understand nothing.” He cut her off as neatly as if he’d used a knife. “I just found out I’m a father. I have twins and I’ve never seen them.” His white-knuckled grip on the foot rail of the bed tightened further and still his voice remained as cool and detached as the icy glare he had pinned on her. “I don’t even know their names.”
She flushed. Fine. Yes. She could see how he felt. But that didn’t mean what she’d done was wrong. Naturally, he wouldn’t see it that way, but what Colton King thought of her really didn’t matter, did it?
He never blinked. He only stared at her, with those ice-blue eyes narrowed as if he were focusing in an attempt to see into her mind and read all of her secrets. Thank heaven he couldn’t.
“Their names, Penny. I’ve got a right to know the names of my children.”
She hated this. Hated feeling as though she were setting her babies up to be let down by a father who didn’t really want them. But she couldn’t ignore his demand, either. Now that he knew about the twins, what was the point of trying to protect their anonymity?
“Okay. Your son’s name is Reid and your daughter is Riley,” she said.
He swallowed hard, took a deep breath and hissed it out again. “Reid and Riley what?”
She knew exactly what he meant. “Their last name is Oaks.”
His mouth flattened into a grim line and it looked to Penny as if he were counting to ten. Slowly. “That’ll change.”
Panic shot through her, riding a lightning bolt of anger. “You think you can take over and change their names? No. You can’t just walk back into my life and try to decide what’s best for my children.”
“Why the hell not?” he countered coldly. “You made that decision for me nearly two years ago.”
“Colt—”
“Did you bother to list me as the father on their birth certificates?”
“Of course I did.” Her twins had the right to know who their father was. And she would have told them...eventually.
“That’s something at least,” he muttered. “I’ll have my lawyers take care of the legal name change.”
“Excuse me?” She struggled to push herself upright and gasped as another sharp stab of pain hit in her abdomen. Breathless, she dropped back against her pillows.
He was at the side of the bed in an instant. “Are you all right? Do you need a nurse?”
“I’m fine,” she lied tightly as the pain began to ebb into a just barely tolerable ache. “And no, I don’t need a nurse.” She needed pain medication. Privacy so she could cry. An eight-ounce glass of wine. “What I need is for you to leave.”
“Not gonna happen,” he told her.
She closed her eyes and muttered, “I could kill Robert for this.”
“Yeah,” Colt countered. “Someone finally being honest with me. There’s a crime.”
Her gaze snapped back to his. He was studying her as he would a bug under a microscope. Damn it, couldn’t he have gotten fat in the last couple of years? Lost his hair? Something? Why did he still have to be the most gorgeous man she’d ever met? And wouldn’t you just know that she’d have the conversation she had been dreading for nearly two years while trapped in a hospital bed? Wearing a god-awful gown? She was in pain, she was hungry because hospital food was appalling and God knew what her hair looked like.
Oh, that’s good. Be worried about how you look, Penny.
Hard not to worry about it though, she told herself glumly. Especially when Colton King was standing right in front of her looking even better than he had two years ago. He’d taken her breath away the first time she’d seen him and apparently he had the same effect on her today.
“So when do you get out of here?” he asked, shattering her thoughts.
“Tomorrow probably.” And she couldn’t wait. Yes, she was in pain but she hated being in the hospital. She missed her babies. Plus, Penny didn’t like having to ask Robert and Maria to watch her children. They had enough going on, with their wedding only a few weeks away.
In hindsight, she should have known that Robert would go to Colt. Should have guessed that her brother, thinking he was doing the right thing, would betray her secrets to the one man who should never have found out the truth. Oh, she was going to have plenty to say to her little brother once she was released from this antiseptic prison.
“Fine, then,” Colt said flatly. “We’ll continue this discussion once you’re home.”
Well, that caught her attention.
“No, we won’t. This conversation is over, Colt.”
“Not by a long shot.” He stared down at her until Penny twitched uneasily, and then he warned, “You’ve got a hell of a lot of explaining to do.”
“I don’t owe you anything.” But those words sounded hollow even to her.
She’d kept a huge secret from him and she’d done it deliberately. She knew that anyone standing on the outside of this relationship would call her some really descriptive names. But they wouldn’t know why she’d done it. She hadn’t even told Robert everything. Penny’d had reasons for her decisions and they were good ones. Ones she wouldn’t regret, even while staring up into the cool blue eyes that still haunted her dreams.
He was angry and he had the right. But she’d had the right to do what she’d thought best for her children. And she wouldn’t start second-guessing herself now.
“You’re wrong about that,” he told her softly, but the gentle tone of his voice did nothing to hide the fury crouched inside him.
A nurse bustled into the room, all business. “I’m sorry, you’ll have to wait outside while I examine Ms. Oaks.”
Penny’s gaze never left Colt’s and for a second or two, she thought he would argue, refuse to leave. Then he took a step back and nodded.
“Fine. I’ll be back tomorrow to pick you up.”
Panic shot through her. “Not necessary. Robert will pick me up.”
The nurse was hovering and Penny could feel her gaze moving back and forth between the two of them.
“We don’t need Robert’s help. I’ll be here in the morning.”
“Oh,” the nurse piped up, “she probably won’t be released until early afternoon.”
Colt paid no attention. “I’ll be here tomorrow.”
Then he stalked out of the room and didn’t look back. Penny knew because she watched him go and continued to stare at the empty doorway long after the sound of his footsteps had faded.
“Wow,” the nurse murmured. “Is that your husband?”
“No,” Penny said. “He’s—” What? A friend? An enemy? The father of her children? Her past come back to wreak havoc with her present? Since she couldn’t say any of that, she said only, “He’s my ex.”
The nurse sighed. “Wow, can’t believe you let that one get away.”
It wasn’t as if she’d had a choice. Still, to avoid more conversation, Penny closed her eyes and let the nurse get on with the examination.
But her mind wouldn’t stop. Thoughts of Colt jammed up in her brain until all she could see were his eyes. Cold. Icy. Fixed.
And furious enough to make Penny wish tomorrow were years away.
