LITMIR.BIZ

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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 front of his children.

      The girls were wearing matching pink overalls with pink-and-white checked shirts. Tiny pink-and-yellow socks were on their impossibly small feet and they laughed and danced in place as Sadie held on to them.

      Sadie’s gaze locked with his and he read her guilt in her eyes. Her regret. Well, it was a damned sight late for regret. She’d kept his daughters from him their whole lives.

      There would be payment made.

      For now though, he dropped to one knee and looked at the girls. Their brown hair curled around their heads, their cheeks were pink and their brown eyes sparkled with life. Love. His heart clenched hard in his chest. One of the girls looked at him warily, and then slowly gave him a smile that tore up his insides.

      “Girls,” Sadie said, laughing as the twins continued to chatter a mile a minute.

      “Birds, Mommy.”

      “Lots.”

      “I know,” Sadie said, giving first one of her daughters then the other a big kiss. “I saw them.”

      “Pretty.”

      “Yes, they are pretty,” Sadie agreed.

      “Who him?”

      Who him. Rick swallowed back the tight ball of anger lodged in his throat. His daughters didn’t know him. He was a damn stranger to his own flesh and blood. That knowledge hurt more than he would have thought possible.

      “This is your daddy,” Sadie said, watching him as she spoke the words that made all of this a reality.

      He sat down, drew one knee up and rested his forearm on it. He wasn’t going to crowd the little girls. But he wanted more than anything to hold them. Instead, he smiled. “You are the prettiest girls I have ever seen.”

      The one closest to him gave him a sly smile and looked up at him from beneath lowered lashes that lay like black velvet on her cheeks. Oh, this one was going to be a heartbreaker when she grew up.

      “Daddy?” she said and pushed away from Sadie to walk to him.

      Rick’s heart stopped as she approached him. He was afraid to move. He worried that anything he did now might shatter the moment. And he didn’t want to risk it. When she was close enough, the little girl reached out and patted his cheek. Her small hand was feather-soft against his skin and she smelled like shampoo and apple juice.

      “Daddy?” She leaned in to give him a hug and Rick held her as carefully as he would have a live grenade. This tiny girl, so perfect, so beautiful, had accepted him without reservation and he’d never been more grateful.

      “Daddy!” The second twin rushed him, cuddling up to him just as her sister had and Rick closed his eyes and wrapped his arms around them. He held them close, feeling the warmth of their bodies, the fluttering of their heartbeats. And in one all-encompassing instant had his life, his world, altered forever.

      Opening his eyes, he looked at Sadie and saw that she was crying. A single tear rolled down her cheek as she watched him with their children and he asked himself what she was crying for. Was she pleased that he was finally meeting his daughters? Or was she regretting telling him at all?

      “Story!” One of the girls blurted the word and pushed away from him, running to a bookcase beneath the window. Meanwhile, her twin settled in on Rick’s lap and played with his hat.

      “How old are they?” he asked tightly.

      “You

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