LITMIR.BIZ

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should have told me.” The words dropped into the silence like stones plunked into a well.

      She took a breath and prepared for battle. “I get that you’re angry.”

      He snorted. “You think?”

      She met his gaze from across the room, refusing to be cowed or ashamed of the decision she’d made. “You made it plain, that last morning in Vegas, that you didn’t want to be married and you definitely didn’t want kids.”

      His mouth tightened into a grim line and a muscle in his jaw twitched. “Yeah, I did say that,” he admitted. “But that was hypothetical kids. Did I ever say that if you were pregnant I wouldn’t want to know about it?”

      “You might as well have.” Penny shifted on the sofa carefully, her stitches pulling and aching, reminding her that she wasn’t at her best. “I knew that you wouldn’t care.”

      “So you’re a mind reader.” He nodded sagely.

      “I didn’t have to read your mind, Colt. You said it all. Flat out in plain English,” she argued, not willing to stand there and take sole responsibility for what had happened between them. “You walked out on me, Colt. Why did I owe you anything?”

      “You had my children.” His voice lowered, emphasizing that last word without having to shout.

      She stiffened and he must have noticed because he took a breath, seemed to settle himself and then said, “All right. Let’s start over. Just tell me why you didn’t tell me when you first found out you were pregnant.”

      “I already told you.” What she didn’t add was that she had also been afraid. Afraid of the King name, the King fortune. She’d worried that he might simply turn his lawyers loose and take her children from her. And he’d pretty much threatened to do just that when he first stormed back into her life. What chance would she have had against the kind of power the Kings could muster?

      “I missed a hell of a lot, Penny, and I’m not forgetting that anytime soon.”

      “I understand.” Which meant, of course, that she and Colt were on opposite sides of this battle and unless they found a way to build a bridge across the gap separating them, there would be no solution. No peace. “You know about them now, Colt. What are you going to do about it?”

      He pushed one hand through his hair and she remembered that impatient gesture. “I don’t know,” he grumbled and shot a quick look at the twins, babbling happily at each other. “All I’m sure of is I want to know them.”

      She could understand that and, maybe, a small part of her warmed to him because of it. But the fact was that Penny was still exhausted, sore and not a little off her game since Colt had walked back into her life. So being cool and logical was a stretch at the moment.

      Walking around the couch, he took a seat in a chair opposite her and close to the twins. His gaze shifted to them briefly and Penny watched his features soften. When he looked back to her, though, his eyes were chips of ice again. “I won’t be a stranger to my own kids, Penny. I won’t be shut out of their lives.”

      A sinking sensation swamped her as she came to grips with her new reality. Whether she liked it or not, Colt would be a part of her children’s lives. Now she had to find a way to protect them from caring for him too much. Because though he insisted he wanted to be a part of their world right now, she knew that wouldn’t last long. How could it? He was always traveling, wandering the world, looking for the next rush.

      Taking a deep breath, she said, “And what about the next time you go wingsuit flying? Or parasailing?”

      He frowned. “What’re you talking about?”

      “You, Colt,” she said. “It’s just not in your nature to be a suburban dad. You won’t last a month before you’ll be off running with bulls or some other crazy thing.”

      “Crazy?”

      “Yes. You risk your life all the time and you do it because you like it.” She shook her head. “I saw pictures of you in a magazine last month—standing on the rim of a volcano while magma jumped in the air around you.”

      “Yeah. I was in Japan scouting new sites. So?”

      “So how’s a quiet street in Laguna going to hold your interest, Colt?” She gave him a small smile. “This isn’t your world. Never will be. Why fight so hard to be a part of something you never wanted in the first place?”

      His gaze never left the twins. Reid plopped down onto his behind and Riley leaned over to pull a car from her brother’s grasp. Reid’s face screwed up as he prepared to howl, but Colt cut off the reaction by reaching into the plastic tub and getting another car that he handed to Reid. Immediately, the baby looked up at him and gave his father a wide enough smile that all three of his teeth were displayed.

      Colt laughed a little, waited another moment or two and then shifted his gaze to hers. “Because, Penny. I’m a King. And to a King, family is everything.”

       Five

      Penny’s fists curled into the fabric of her nightgown and held on as if it meant her life. And in a way, it did. The tangible, very real feel of what Colt had called her “radioactive” nightshirt reminded her of who she was and where she was. This was her home and he was the intruder. For the moment at least, they were on her turf and she held all the cards.

      How long that would last, she couldn’t even guess.

      Even from across the room, she felt the magnetic pull of him and had to fight against it. He wasn’t here for her―he was here to rip apart her world.

      Pain ripped through her and she hated knowing that he still had the ability to hurt her. She’d worked so hard to get past this. To get over Colton King. And she’d done a pretty good job of it, too. She hardly ever thought of him anymore—well, no more than a few times a day and all night in her dreams—but now he was here again, back in her life. This was going to reset her starting-over clock and soon she’d be going through all the misery she’d already survived once. But better to do it now, she told herself. While the kids were too little to understand. Too small to remember him. To miss him when he was gone.

      But their argument was circular. He blamed her for keeping secrets. She blamed him for walking away. There was no middle ground here, so she’d have to try to create some.

      “Colt, I get what you’re trying to do.”

      “Is that right?”

      “But,” she said, ignoring the taunt, “you don’t have to. Just because they’re your family doesn’t mean you have to be here.”

      Nodding slowly, he fixed his gaze on hers and she could have sworn she felt the temperature in the room drop a few degrees. “Where should I be?”

      She threw her hands up, already forgetting about that calm, cool middle ground she was going to build. Panic wasn’t a good breeding ground for calm and cool. “I don’t know. Bali? Australia? The top of a mountain, or the bottom of the sea?”

      “You’re wrong. I should be right here.”

      “No, I’m not wrong.” A short, sharp laugh escaped her. “Right now, you’re doing what you think you should, Colt. Not what you want to do. And when this rush of responsibility has faded, you’ll take off again. It’s what you do. It’s who you are.”

      Riley chose that moment to crawl to her father and pull herself up by grabbing tiny fistfuls of his jeans. She staggered a little and swayed more than a few times, but Colt sat perfectly still, watching his daughter grow and develop right before his eyes. Her black hair curled around her ears, her blue eyes shone with happiness and her chubby hands slapped at his legs in triumph as she finally found her feet.

      He covered one tiny hand with his and stroked his thumb over

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