Two
Connor had come for his kids, but now couldn’t take his eyes off the woman who’d opened the door. Lust surged through him, grabbed him at the base of his throat and held on tight. All he could do was try to breathe through it.
The woman currently glaring at him had huge, chocolate-brown eyes, thick black hair hanging loose around her shoulders and long, gorgeous legs displayed by the white shorts she wore. Her short-sleeved red T-shirt clung to her body, showing off breasts that were just the right size to fill a man’s hands.
Con couldn’t understand how he hadn’t noticed her at Jackie and Elena’s wedding two years ago. Or how he’d managed to forget her. This was not a forgettable woman.
“Dina Cortez?” he asked, though he knew damn well who she was.
“Yes. And you’re Connor King.”
He nodded. Lust was still there, clawing at him, but he breathed through it and got back on track. “Now that the formalities are over, where are the kids?”
She folded her arms beneath her breasts, lifted her chin and said, “You shouldn’t be here.”
“Yeah,” Con told her. “That’s what my lawyer said, too.”
In fact, he hadn’t needed his lawyer to tell him to stay clear until they had more answers. Con knew he shouldn’t have come, but there was no way he could stay away, either. He was a father. Of triplets. How the hell was a man supposed to ignore that?
He’d had to come, see the kids and find out what he could for himself, minus lawyerspeak. His twin had understood, though Penny had argued against it. But then, a couple of years ago, Colt had barged right in, too, to get a look at his twins and to confront the woman who’d given birth to them and then kept them a secret.
Well, Con couldn’t face down Jackie or Elena, but the triplets were here, which explained, at least to him, why he was.
“Lawyers can still do their legal dance,” he said, silently congratulating himself on keeping the temper still frothing inside him at a low boil. “For now, I had to come.”
“Why?”
“Why?” He choked out a short laugh and shook his head. “Because I just found out I’m a father by hearing that I’m being sued for child support.”
“Maybe if you had kept in contact with Jackie and Elena you would have known earlier,” she pointed out.
“Seriously? You really want to go there? Maybe if my best friend hadn’t lied to me about those kids, this wouldn’t be an issue,” he argued and took a step closer. “And your sister was in on those lies,” he reminded her tightly.
She blew out a breath and seemed to release some of the anger he could still see churning in her eyes. “Fine. You’re right. They didn’t tell me, either, you know. About you, I mean. They didn’t tell me who the babies’ father was.”
His breath exploded in a rush. He was angry and had nowhere to focus it. He and Dina had been caught up in a web spun by Jackie and Elena. God, he wanted five minutes with Jackie just to demand some answers. But since he wasn’t going to get that time, he said, “How did you find out about me, then?”
Sighing, Dina said, “There was a letter to you in their papers. I read it.”
His eyebrows lifted.
She saw it and shrugged. “If you’re waiting on an apology, there isn’t one coming.”
Reluctantly, he felt a flash of admiration for her. She was tough. He could appreciate that. She was gorgeous and he really appreciated that. Lust still had him by the throat and it was a wonder he could talk at all. Hard to keep his mind on what was happening when his body was urging him to think about something else entirely.
That compact yet curvy body, her dusky olive-toned skin and the wary glitter in her eyes all came together to make Connor grateful to be a man. She smelled good, too. But none of that was important right now.
“Fine,” he finally managed to say. “How about a few answers, then?”
Nodding, she walked into the living room and he followed. The house was small and old, like every other bungalow in this section of Huntington Beach. Yards were narrow, houses were practically on top of each other and parking was hard to come by.
He’d noticed when he arrived that her yard was so ratty it looked like she kept goats. The driveway had more potholes than asphalt and the roof needed replacing. The whole place could use a coat of paint and he’d been half-afraid what the inside might look like.
But here he was surprised. The house was old but clean. Clearly, Dina put whatever time and money she had into maintaining the inside rather than the outside. The hardwood floors were scarred but polished. The walls had been painted a soft gold and boasted framed photographs of family and nature. The furniture looked comfortable and though the house was small, it was welcoming.
A hallway spilled from the living room and led, he guessed, to the bedrooms. There was a small dining room attached to the living area and beyond that, the kitchen. A happy squeal erupted and Con flinched. The triplets were back there. His children.
He scrubbed one hand across his face in a futile attempt to clear his mind. Shaking his head, he ground out, “My lawyer did some checking after I got your lawsuit papers this morning.”
She frowned a little, but he didn’t care if she was having second thoughts about suing him now.
“He says Jackie and Elena died three months ago?”
All of the air seemed to leave her. Dina slumped and dropped into the closest chair. “Elena was taking flying lessons.” A smile curved her mouth briefly. “She wanted to be able to come down here to visit me and our grandmother whenever she wanted to.”
Con’s stomach clutched.
“Anyway, she got her license and to celebrate, she and Jackie went on a weekend trip to San Francisco.”
“Without the kids?”
She nodded. “Thank God, as it turned out. One of their friends stayed at the house with the triplets. Anyway, on their way home, there was some kind of engine trouble. Elena wasn’t experienced enough to compensate for it and they went down in a field.”
Pain slapped at him as Connor’s mind filled with memories of Jackie. Of the years they’d spent together, of the laughs, of all the good times. He hated knowing she was dead. Hated thinking how scared she must have been at the end. Hated that she wasn’t here for him to yell at. Getting past his own racing thoughts, he looked at Dina and saw the misery in her eyes before she could mask it. And he was forced to remember that she’d lost her sister in that crash.
“I’m sorry,” he said. “About Elena.”
“Thank you,” she said, taking a breath as she stood up to face him. “And I’m sorry about suing you without talking to you first.”
A snort of laughter shot from his throat. “Aren’t we polite all of a sudden.”
