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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.
Two (#ulink_f9c8fa0f-cefb-593e-9219-ddab4e1a766d)
He didn’t go to see his twins.
He wasn’t up for that just yet.
Colt didn’t want his children’s first subconscious memory of their father to be of him furious.
So instead, he went to the beach. He needed to burn off some of the fury pumping through him. But the calm waves at Laguna weren’t going to be enough to soothe the temper riding him. What he needed for that was blood-pumping action with a thread of danger. Enough to make his adrenaline high enough to swamp the anger chewing at him.
In Newport Beach, the Wedge was just at the end of the Balboa Peninsula and the waves there could reach thirty feet or more. Because of some “improvements” to the jetty in Newport Harbor sometime in the thirties, the waves here were highly unpredictable. One wave combined with another and then still another until the resulting wave was higher than anywhere else on the coast. Best part was, no two waves were alike, and where they would break was anybody’s guess. Inexperienced surfers avoided the Wedge if they had any brains. As for Colt and the handful of other surfers out on this cold, autumn day...
The danger added to the fun.
Usually, anyway. Today, as he took wave after wave, riding the crest, being tossed into the sea and coming up in a froth of foam, his mind was too distracted to enjoy the rush. Images of Penny flashed through his mind on a continual loop. Visions of babies were there, too. Crying, laughing, sleeping. He couldn’t clear his brain of the thoughts plaguing him, so he pushed himself harder, hoping for clarity. It didn’t come though, and after a few hours in the punishing tempest of the sea, Colt had had enough. He dragged his board onto the sand and flopped down onto it.
Wrapping his arms around his knees, he stared out at the water and tried to make sense of what had happened that day. He’d never expected to see Penny Oaks again. Colt scrubbed one hand across his face and let himself remember her, lying in that hospital bed.
Through the anger, through the frustration and shock, he still had felt that jolt of sexual insanity he associated only with Penny. And insanity was the only word he could use to describe what she made him feel.
Penny, with her jeans and T-shirts and her lack of makeup or artifice of any kind, was just not the type of woman he was usually drawn to. He liked his women fast and sleek, with no expectations other than a great time in bed. Penny, though, was something else again. He’d known it instantly. But from that first moment at the convention nearly two years ago, he’d had to have her. One look at her and all he’d been able to think about was her long legs, wrapped around his waist. Her mouth pressed to his. Her breath warm against his skin.
And damned if she still didn’t affect him that way.
Even lying in a hospital bed, with her long, dark red hair a tangle about her head, with her green eyes shining with both pain and panic, he’d wanted her so badly he’d had a hell of a time just walking out of the hospital.
After Vegas, he’d buried her memory and lost himself in dozens of temporary women. Yet he’d never really been able to wipe Penny from his mind entirely. And now she was back—with his children—and he’d be damned if he’d be cut out of his kids’ lives. Even if, he was forced to admit, he was hardly father material.
The beach was nearly empty and the sunset stained the white clouds varying shades of pink and orange. The waves crashed relentlessly onto the shore, and out beyond the breakers, a few remaining surfers chased the next ride.
“You’re an idiot.”
Colt didn’t have to turn around to know who had spoken. His twin’s voice was unmistakable.
“Thanks for stopping by,” he said. “Go away.”
“Right. That’ll happen.” Instead, Connor settled down on the sand beside his brother and instinctively took up the same position as Colt. Arms wrapped around his drawn-up knees, gaze fixed on the ocean. They were so alike, they generally didn’t even have to speak because each knew what the other was thinking.
But today, Colt realized, even he didn’t know what he was thinking. Sexual desire, yes. Fury, oh, yes. But there was so much more. How the hell could he figure it out? Thoughts raced through his mind, slapped up against the wall of his brain and then rushed back down again to tangle with the others. Much like the legendary surf at the Wedge, Colt’s mind at the moment was a dangerous place to be.
“You don’t surf the Wedge alone and you know it,” Connor said.
True. Even adrenaline junkies knew what line not to cross, but today, he just hadn’t given a damn. Not that he would admit it to Connor.
“I wasn’t alone,” Colt argued. “There are at least a dozen other guys out there.”
“Yeah, all looking out for themselves. Don’t suppose you noticed the riptide?”
“I noticed,” he admitted grudgingly. Riptides were a danger on their own. Riptides at the Wedge were a whole new level of risky. Get caught in one of those and you could be dragged out to sea so far you wouldn’t have the strength to swim back in. “And I don’t need you nagging me.”
“Fine. Won’t nag. Just leave a note behind next time you surf here alone, okay?”
“A note?” He looked at his twin.
Connor shrugged. “You’re gonna commit suicide the least you can do is leave a note—you could say, ‘I should have listened to Connor.’”
Colt shook his head and returned his gaze to the churning sea. White water and spray shot into the air. A cold sea wind whipped his hair back from his forehead, and overhead, gulls shrieked like the dying.
He didn’t even wonder how Connor had known to find him here. For the last ten years, Colt had spent most of his time chasing the next adventure. Always searching out danger and beating it. He just wasn’t the office, suit-and-tie kind of guy.
Hell, even with floor-to-ceiling windows displaying a spectacular view of the Pacific Ocean and the California coastline, he felt trapped in the building he and Connor owned on the Pacific Coast Highway. Which was why, he reminded himself, he was the adventure man and his twin was in charge of paperwork.
He shuddered at the thought of being buried behind a desk. Like the clients that King’s Extreme Adventures served, Colt was always looking for the next shot of adrenaline. Skydiving, BASE jumping, extreme surfing, wingsuit flying―he’d done them all and had no intention of ever stopping.
In spite of what he’d learned today.
“Have you seen the twins?”
“No.” Colt narrowed his gaze on the ocean and tried to ignore the sudden, frantic beat of his heart.
“Why not?”
“Because I’m too pissed at their mother.”
Connor laughed shortly. “I’m guessing their mom’s not real fond of you about now, either.”
He turned his head to glare at his brother. “You think that matters to me?”
“No. But I know the kids do.”
Well, that took the fire out of him. “What the hell do I know about being a father?”
Connor shrugged. “We had a pretty good role model for that, I think.”
“Yeah, we did.” Their parents had been the best. Until... Guilt reared up inside him, shouting to be heard, but he shut it down as he always did. The past didn’t have any meaning here. This was all about the now. And the future. “Doesn’t mean I’ll be any good at it.”
“Doesn’t mean you’ll suck, either.”
Colt laughed and pushed one hand through his still-wet hair. “Quite the pep talk.”
Connor grinned and turned his gaze on the ocean. “You don’t need a pep talk. Unless you don’t believe they’re your kids...”
“No.” Colt shook his head and scowled. Naturally, he’d considered that for a split second, right after Robert Oaks had punched him. But he’d discounted it just as quickly. “One thing Penny is not is a liar. In spite of the fact that she hid them from me. Besides,” he reasoned, “if she was trying to push someone else’s twins off as mine, she’d have come to me for money right from the jump.”
“True. Still, you should do a paternity test. Cover all your bases legally.”
He would, eventually. Colt wasn’t an idiot. But tests or no tests, he knew, in his gut, those twins were his. Penny had been too panicked about him finding out about them to have him doubting it for a second. And she was right to panic, he told himself. Because things were going to change. Her life as she knew it was now over.
Because Colton King would do whatever he had to to make sure his kids were taken care of.
* * *
Maybe he’d forgotten to come.
Penny laughed silently at the very idea. Colton King might look like a wild, untamed, crazy adventurer—and he was. But he was also a brilliant businessman who never forgot a detail.
So then if he hadn’t forgotten, why hadn’t he shown up at the hospital this morning as promised? Penny had spent a long, sleepless night, worrying about what she would say to him when he strolled into her room again. Turned out, she needn’t have bothered.
