LITMIR.BIZ

       Four

      “Cheated you?” she countered, green eyes glittering. “You walked away, Colt. You cheated yourself. Out of the kids, out of what we could have had.”

      Shaking his head, he took a step back from her and tried to keep his voice down in spite of the raging fury inside him. Seeing his kids there on her wall, realizing just how much of their lives he’d already missed, had stoked the fire of his anger until it felt as if he were being consumed.

      “Yeah, I walked. From a marriage that was a mistake,” he muttered. The past came rushing forward, but he wouldn’t look at it. Refused to remember the pain and shock in her eyes as he left her.

      “It didn’t last long enough to be classified a mistake,” she countered.

      She was right about that much. Colt reached up and pushed both hands through his hair. He’d relived his decision to spontaneously get married a million times over the last eighteen months and he still couldn’t explain to himself why he’d done it. But in that wild moment in the tacky little chapel, he’d known he wanted her with him for always.

      “Always” had lasted about ten hours.

      Dawn eventually came and shook him out of the passion-induced haze he’d been operating in. In the glare of morning, he’d remembered at last that “forever” didn’t exist. That marriage just wasn’t in his game plan—in spite of how amazing he and Penny were in bed together.

      He’d believed then, and he still did, that walking away was the right thing to do. But he would have walked right back if she’d even once mentioned the whole pregnancy thing.

      “What did you think was going to happen, Penny?” He glared down at her, refusing to be swayed by the gleam in her eyes or the tilt of her chin. “Did you really see us living the suburban dream? Is that it?”

      “No,” she said on a short laugh. “But—”

      “But what? Would it have been better to stay married for a month? Six? And then end it? Would that have seemed kinder,” he asked, “or would it just have prolonged the inevitable?”

      “I don’t know,” she muttered, pushing her hair back from her face with an impatient gesture. “All I know is, we dated, got married and got divorced in the span of a week and now you’re back claiming that I somehow cheated you.”

      “It always comes back to the same thing, Penny,” he said, voice low and deep. “You should have told me.”

      She blew out a breath and glared at him. “And here we are again, on the carousel of knives where we just slash at each other and nothing is ever solved.”

      Colt stalked a few paces away from the bed, but he couldn’t get far, since the whole room would have fit inside his walk-in closet. He felt trapped. In the small space. In this situation. But despite the invisible chains wrapping around him tighter by the moment, he knew he couldn’t leave. Wouldn’t leave. He had children—whether he’d planned on it or not—and he had to do right by them.

      He spun around to look at her and promised, “You can’t keep me from the twins.”

      “You’ll just confuse them,” she told him flatly.

      “Confuse them how?” He threw both hands high then let them slap back down against his thighs. “They’re babies. They don’t know what’s going on!”

      “Keep your voice down―you’ll wake them up.” She glared at him and after a second or two of that heated stare, he shifted uncomfortably. “And they understand when people are happy. Or angry. And I don’t want you upsetting them by shouting.”

      Colt took a breath and nodded. “Fine.” He lowered his voice because he hadn’t meant to shout in the first place. Connor was the twin with the hot temper. Which just went to show how far out of his own comfort zone Colt really was. “Confuse them how?”

      “You’re a stranger to them—”

      He gritted his teeth.

      “—and you just pop up into their lives? For how long, Colt? How long before you tell them, ‘Sorry kids, but I’m just not father material. I’ll have my lawyers contact you about child support.’”

      “Funny.” His tone was flat, his eyes narrowed and he had a very slight grip on the temper that was beginning to ice over his insides. “You can be as bitter as you want about what happened between us. But I’m not going to do that to them.”

      “And how do I know that?” She winced as she straightened on the bed. “You walked away from a wife. Why not your kids, too?”

      “It’s different and you know it.”

      “No, I don’t. That’s the problem.”

      The last of the daylight pearled the room in a warm, pale haze that floated through the open curtains and lay across the oak floor like gold dust. As the old house settled down for the night, it creaked and groaned like a tired old woman settling in for a nap. There was a baby monitor on her bedside table that crackled with static and then broadcast one of the babies coughing.

      Colt jolted at the sound. “Are they choking?”

      “No,” Penny said with a sigh. “That’s just Riley. When she sleeps she sucks so hard on her pacifier that she gurgles and coughs.”

      “Is that normal?” Frowning at the monitor, he felt completely out of his element here. How would he know what was normal for an infant or not? It wasn’t as if he spent all that much time with any of the new King babies. Seeing them at family parties hadn’t really prepared him for a lot of one-on-one time with two infants.

      “Yes. Colt—”

      He heard the fatigue in her voice. Saw it in her eyes and the pale color of her skin. They were going around and around and not gaining ground. There would be plenty of time to sort out what they were going to do. And when he argued with someone, he wanted them at full strength. Penny clearly was not. He didn’t want to worry about her, but a slender thread of concern drifted through him anyway.

      “Let’s just get you changed, all right? We’ll talk about this more tomorrow.”

      “Oh, boy,” she murmured. “There’s something to look forward to.” Then she winced and tugged at the snap on her jeans. “But I’m so uncomfortable, I’m willing to risk it.”

      “What do you need?”

      “My nightgown’s in the top drawer of the dresser.”

      Nightgown.

      And she’d be naked underneath it, of course. Even as he felt his body stir and tighten, he had to wonder how he could be so furious with a woman and want her so badly all at the same damn time. Still grinding his teeth, he moved to the dresser, opened the top drawer and discovered there actually was a cure for lust.

      “This? Really?” he asked, holding up the most hideous nightgown he’d ever seen.

      She frowned. “And what’s wrong with it?”

      Shaking his head, he gave her the fire-engine-red sleep shirt

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