LITMIR.BIZ

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he just stared at her, Sadie stopped talking and shrugged. “It just appeals to me.”

      “You should do it then,” he told her. “Go take classes. Learn. Doing what you love is what makes life worth living.”

      The light changed and he drove on.

      “Is that why you’re still a marine?”

      He laughed. “There’s an old saying—once a marine, always a marine.”

      “Yes, but you’re still active duty. Why?” She was watching him closely, so she noticed when his jaw tightened slightly. “You could come back to Royal, run your family ranch. Why stay in the Corps?”

      “Duty,” he said simply. “It’s an old-fashioned word, but I was raised to take it seriously. My father was a marine, you know.”

      “Yeah, I know.”

      “We traveled all over the world when I was a kid. Finally settled here when he left the Corps, because my mom had roots here.” He glanced at her. “But when you grow up on bases, when you see what people are willing to give to serve their country … Well, it makes you want to do the same. And by doing my duty, serving my country, I help keep everyone I care about safe.”

      She felt a sting of tears in her eyes and frantically blinked them back. Here he was talking about honor and duty and she had been lying to him for nearly three years. She was a rotten human being. She deserved to be flogged.

      They drove down her street and suddenly Sadie had to say something. Try to prepare him for what he was about to find out.

      “Rick, before we get to the house, there’s something you should know—”

      “If it’s about the flamingos, I’ve got to say that maybe you should rethink landscape design.”

      “What?”

      Grinning, he pulled into the driveway and that’s when Sadie noticed the flock of pink plastic birds on the front lawn. Thank heaven her father was off on his fishing trip. If Robert Price had seen his elegant lawn covered with the tacky pink birds, he—well, Sadie wasn’t sure what he’d have done, but it wouldn’t have been pretty.

      “Oh, for heaven’s sake.” As soon as Rick parked the car opposite the front door, Sadie hopped out and walked around the hood. She crossed the front yard until she came to the closest flamingo. The birds were staggered across the expertly trimmed lawn and looked so ridiculously out of place, Sadie couldn’t help laughing.

      “What’s this about? A new trend in decorating?”

      She jolted when Rick came up behind her. As hot as the July sun felt on her skin, his nearness made her temperature inch up just that much higher. There had never been another man in her life who had affected her like Rick Pruitt did. Not even her ex-husband-the-lying-cheating-weasel.

      She took a breath, steadied herself, then looked up at him, trying not to fall into those dark brown eyes. It wasn’t easy. He was tall and muscular and even in his jeans and T-shirt, Rick looked like a man used to giving orders and having them obeyed.

      He was the quintessential Texas man. Add the Marine Corps to that and you had an impossible-to-resist combination. As the quickening heat in her body could testify.

      Swallowing hard, Sadie fought past the dry mouth to say, “Actually, the flamingos are a fundraising drive for a local women’s shelter.” She tore her gaze from his and scanned the fifty or more pink birds scattered across the yard and sighed. “Summer Franklin runs it.”

      “Darius’s wife?”

      “Yes. The idea is that whoever receives the pink flamingo flock pays the charity to remove them and pass the birds onto the next ‘victim’. Then that person pays and so on and so on …”

      Rick laughed, pulled up one of the flamingos and looked it dead in its beady eye. “Sounds like a fun way to make money for a good cause.”

      “I suppose,” she said, and worriedly looked at the hot-pink birds. “But they’re so tacky. I’m just grateful my father’s not here. He’d have a fit, wondering what the neighbors would be thinking.”

      Shaking his head, Rick stabbed the flamingo’s metal pole back into the lawn and looked at Sadie. “Now that sounds like the prim and proper Sadie Price I used to know. Not the woman I spent that night with.”

      Prim and proper.

      That’s how she had lived her entire life. The perfect Price heiress. Always doing and saying the proper thing. But that, she assured herself, was in another life.

      “I’m not that girl anymore, believe me.” She looked up at him again and said, “Can you come in for a minute? There’s something you need to see.”

      “Okay.” He sounded intrigued but confused.

      He wouldn’t be for long.

      She headed for the front door, let herself in and almost sighed with relief as the blissfully cool air-conditioned room welcomed her. A graying blonde woman in her fifties hurried over to her. “Miss Sadie, everything’s fine upstairs. They’re sleeping like angels.”

      “Thanks, Hannah,” she said with a smile, not bothering to look back at Rick now. It was too late to back out. Her time had come. “I’ll just go up and check on them.”

      The housekeeper gave Rick a long look, shifted her gaze to Sadie and smiled. “I’ll be in the kitchen if you need anything.”

      Rick pulled his hat off and waited until Hannah was gone before he spoke. “Who’s asleep? What’s this about?”

      “You’ll see.” She still didn’t look at him, just walked across the marble floor toward the wide, sweeping staircase. “Come on upstairs.”

      She slid one hand across the polished walnut banister as she climbed the steps. Her heart was racing and a swarm of butterflies were taking flight in the pit of her stomach.

      “What’s going on, Sadie? In town, you said we had to talk. Then you say I’ve got to see something.” He stepped around her when they reached the second-floor landing and blocked her way until she looked up at him. “Talk to me.”

      “I will,” she promised, finally staring up into his eyes, reading his frustration easily. “As soon as I show you something.”

      “All right,” he told her, “but I never did care for surprises.”

      The thick, patterned floor runner muffled their footsteps as they walked down the long hallway. Every step was more difficult than the last for her. But finally, she came to the last door on the left. She took a breath, turned the knob and opened it to a sunlit room.

      Inside were two beds, two dressers, two toy boxes. And sitting on the floor, clearly not sleeping like angels, were her twin daughters.

      Rick’s twin daughters.

      The girls looked up. Their brown eyes went wide and bright and they smiled as they spotted their mother. Sadie dropped to her knees to swoop them into her arms. With her girls held tightly to her, she turned her gaze on a stupefied Rick and whispered, “Surprise.”

Three

      Rick felt like he’d been kicked in the head.

      Twin girls.

      With his eyes.

      They were jabbering nonstop as they climbed over their mother.

      Their mother.

      Sadie Price was the mother of his daughters.

      Shock slowly gave way to an anger that burned inside him with the heat of a thousand suns. He was blistered by it and forced to contain it all because damned if he’d lose his temper in

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