Hands fisted on the steering wheel, he sat in the shade of the spectacular house that hadn’t become a home until Penny and the twins had arrived. He looked up at the building and felt an emptiness he’d never known before. He was being chased not only by his own past but by the futures that he wouldn’t be a part of.
He already missed Penny. The scent of her. The sound of her laugh. The taste of her. Colt had never thought about falling in love. Never even considered it. But now he realized that when he’d first met her in Vegas, he’d instinctively known that she would be the one woman he would never get over.
Now he’d made that situation worse.
Then there were the twins. He didn’t want to think about all he would miss with his kids, but how could he help it? First words. First steps. First day of school. First heartbreak. He’d miss them all.
His heart twisted in his chest, but he couldn’t back down now. He was doing the right thing and he’d keep on doing it. Even if he suffered every day of his life because he’d walked away from the three people in the world who meant the most to him.
Grabbing his duffel bag, Colt climbed out of the car, slung the bag over one shoulder and headed inside. What he needed to do was to get back to the real world. The exciting race to find bigger and better adrenaline rushes.
The house was too quiet. Deliberately, he didn’t notice a thing about the place where Penny and the twins had been so recently. They’d left themselves stamped all over the house, but he figured the memories would fade in time. And if they didn’t, he’d sell the damn house.
He made a few phone calls—his brother, the airport and his lawyer—threw some clothes in another bag, then grabbed up his ski equipment and headed for John Wayne Airport. A KingJet would be waiting for him and in several hours, he’d be where he should have gone nearly two weeks ago. Sicily. Mount Etna.
He’d reclaim normalcy for himself and chalk up the last couple of weeks as a glitch on his radar. A bump in the road.
Which would be much easier to do if the memory of Penny’s eyes would just leave him the hell alone.
* * *
Both of the twins were whiny and Penny knew just how they felt. They missed Colt and so did she. In a couple of short weeks, he’d become a part of their lives in the cottage, and now that he was gone, there was an aching hole in the tapestry of their family.
She still couldn’t believe that she’d actually told him to leave the night before. After wishing so hard that he would stay, it was completely ironic that she would be the one to tell him to go.
She’d been awake all night, going over their conversation, word for word. She remembered the shadowed look in his eyes when he’d told her about the day his parents died. She’d seen the pain and the guilt glittering in his gaze despite his effort to shield his emotions from her.
Penny knew he was hurt and had been for years. She felt bad for him, living with misplaced guilt for so long, but at the same time she wanted to shriek at him. He hadn’t killed his family. Why did he have to keep suffering? When would it be enough?
She’d overcome her past and moved on. Why couldn’t he? Why couldn’t he value her and their children more than his own fears and guilt? And why was she still torturing herself?
Her baby girl let out a snuffle and a cry and Penny immediately turned her brain back to matters at hand.
“It’s okay, Riley,” she soothed as she changed her daughter’s T-shirt. “I know you miss your daddy, but it’ll get easier, I promise.”
Lies. Why did parents always lie to their children? It wasn’t going to get easier. It would never be easy living without Colt. The twins were lucky, she supposed; they were too young to carry this memory with them. She knew that Colt would come back for the kids. That he would visit them and remain a part of their lives. But it was just a shadow of what they might have had together.
“I never should have told him,” Robert said from the open doorway of the kids’ room. “I’m really sorry, Pen. I thought he’d do the right thing.”
“Don’t be sorry,” she said and tugged a clean shirt over Riley’s head. The baby girl laughed and clapped her chubby hands in appreciation. Penny glanced at her brother. “Colt had the right to know about the twins and now he does. Let’s just leave it at that.”
“Sure. It’s no problem at all that he’s gone, is it?”
“Nope. Life marches on, or something equally as clichéd and profound.” Penny told herself she should probably worry. She was getting entirely too good at the whole lying thing. Scooping her daughter up for a hug, Penny held the baby tightly, then turned to face Robert, who was watching her with an all-too-knowing gaze.
“It never would have worked,” she said, because she’d been telling herself that since the afternoon before when she’d practically tossed Colt out of her house. But she hadn’t had a choice, right? He as much as told her that he wouldn’t love her. Told her he couldn’t be depended on. So what else could she have done?
“We’re too different. He takes too many risks and I—”
“Don’t take any?” Robert finished for her.
Irritated, she said, “Now you sound like Colt.”
“Not surprising. It’s pretty obvious, Pen.” He moved farther into the room, plucked Riley out of her arms and held his niece close. “Dad did a real number on you when he left. You think I was too young to notice, but I wasn’t. I watched how hard you worked to pick up the slack.”
Her eyes filled with tears and she used the tips of her fingers to wipe them away. Those years had been terrifying, but satisfying, too. She’d discovered that fear didn’t have to hold you back. She’d found her passion for photography. She’d seen Robert get a full scholarship to college—and then she’d met Colt and it had felt, for a while, as if she had finally found some magic for herself.
But that dream had ended and a new one, she assured herself, had begun. In the middle of all this pain and misery, she had to remember that she wasn’t alone. She had her children. She had Robert and Maria. And one day, maybe that would all seem like enough.
When the ache for Colt finally faded.
“I saw how badly Dad leaving hurt you. You kind of closed yourself off, Penny. To everyone but me.”
Her gaze snapped to his and she felt a flush rise up and stain her cheeks. Maybe she had, she silently conceded. But she’d opened herself up to Colt eighteen months ago. She had taken a risk with her heart and she’d lost.
“But I saw you with Colt and you were happier than I’ve ever known you to be. Plus,” he added, after kissing the top of Riley’s head, “I know he cares about you so I hoped...”
Penny’s heart twisted in her chest. She’d hoped, too. In spite of everything, she had hoped. Now she missed Colt so much. It was infinitely harder to lose him now than it had been eighteen months ago. Seeing him walk out the door, not knowing if he’d ever walk back in. Knowing that her kids would be cheated out of a day-to-day relationship with their father. That the man she loved was more interested in waiting to die than he was in living with her. It was all so hard.
“I appreciate that,” she said when she was sure her voice wouldn’t break. Reaching out, she smoothed Riley’s wispy hair and straightened the tiny pink bow lying tilted on the side of her head. “But it’s over now and I just have to learn to live with the reality.”
Robert put his arm around her and she gratefully went into a warm hug meant to comfort and soothe. Riley patted her face as if the baby girl knew he
r mommy needed the extra attention. In the living room, she could hear Reid laughing with Maria and in spite of the giant hole in her heart, Penny smiled. And she would keep smiling, for the sake of her kids if nothing else.
“If he comes back, what will you do?”
“He won’t.” Even her hopes weren’t strong enough to convince her of that.
“He came back once,” Robert reminded her. “And it wasn’t just for the kids. You didn’t see his face when I told him you were in the hospital. He cares, Penny. A lot more than he knows, I think. So yeah. He might come back again if he thought you were willing to take a chance.”
How could she open herself up to trusting Colt? She had taken that leap of faith once and he’d walked away from her and their newborn marriage. If she risked it again, she wouldn’t be the only one to suffer. She would be putting her children’s hearts on the line, too, and she didn’t know if she could do that.
“No, Robert,” she said firmly, trying to convince not only her brother, but herself. The sooner she accepted the hard truth, the sooner she could start dealing with the pain that was already swamping her. She wished things were different, but wishing wasn’t going to change a thing. “He’s not coming back. Not this time.”
But if he ever did, she would gladly take that risk again.
* * *
Colt’s heart felt like a stone, cold and hard in his chest.
It was as though he’d been emptied out. He’d spilled his darkest secrets and shame and Penny had dismissed it all. For some damn reason, he’d expected her at least to understand what it cost him to go.
But she hadn’t.
Her words were still ringing in Colt’s ears two days later. He tried to pretend she hadn’t been right but how could he? He lived his life with one foot out the door at all times. More than three weeks in one place and the walls started closing in on him. He had been in constant motion for ten years. Never staying put. Never settling down. Most important, never allowing anyone to depend on him for anything.
Now it killed him to know that Penny refused to depend on him.
“She’s right,” he mumbled, “it doesn’t make any sense at all.”
The jet’s engine was a steady, throaty roar of background noise that seemed to rumble through his brain, which was jostling already chaotic thoughts. On the way to Sicily at last, Colt realized that normally, he’d have a map of the area spread out in front of him. He’d be laying out his plans for the trip—feeling that rush of anticipation that had been his near-constant companion for the last ten years. Today, though, there was nothing.
Just the solitude inside the jet and his own misery. He couldn’t bring himself to care about Mount Etna or the challenge of skiing down the wicked slopes of a very active volcano. Instead, he could only wonder what Penny and the twins were doing. Had she gone back to the doctor? Had Reid started talking? Was Riley crawling through every mud puddle in the backyard?
Did they miss him?
Colt sprawled on one of the gray leather couches and stared out the window. Travel time was long, going from Orange County, California, to Italy. First to New York, then refuel and on to Sicily. From the airport in Catania, he’d take a helicopter to Mount Etna and do what he’d come to do: ski down the sharp face of a volcano on the verge of eruption. His gaze fixed on the clouds that lay stretched out like a path across the sky. Far below was Italy, a blur of green and brown. He hardly noticed the view, though.
Instead, he was seeing Penny’s face. Hearing her voice asking him why he was chasing death. Saying that his mother had no doubt been grateful that he wasn’t on the mountain on that fateful day. And though it had pissed him off then, he’d had time enough to think about it now and reluctantly he had to admit that Penny was right. If it had been him, caught by an avalanche, in those last few minutes, he would have been grateful that his kids would still live on. That Penny was safe.
You’ve forgotten how to live.
He scrubbed one hand across his face, but the action did nothing to wipe away the echoes of her voice or the image of her face. Was she right about that, too? Had he been trying to die to make it up to his parents for failing them? He squirmed uncomfortably. Sounded so damned stupid. So...pointless.
By spending so much time running from life, he’d been pretty much dead already, hadn’t he?
Jumping to his feet, Colt paced up and down the length of the private jet. Having the luxury of a plane to himself was something he usually enjoyed. Today, not so much. Being alone made it impossible to avoid all of the conflicting thoughts crashing in his mind. He’d been running for so long that the thought of...standing still was almost unthinkable. But what had running gotten him?
He stopped in front of the wet bar, poured a generous splash of scotch into a crystal tumbler and drained it like medicine. Liquid fire rushed through his system, momentarily chasing away the chill icing his bones. Maybe he’d been coming at this all wrong from the beginning. Maybe he’d wasted ten years of his life chasing risk, and he’d never even noticed that he wasn’t running toward anything. Instead he was running away from the greatest risk of all.
Love.
Risking death was nothing, he told himself. Risking a life with someone was the real step that took courage. And while he held himself back, Penny took that chance. She was strong in spite of what she’d gone through when she was a kid. How could he be less?
Slamming the glass down onto the bar top, he stalked to the closest window and looked down on the world below. In his mind, the image of Mount Etna rose up, snowy peaks, smoking calderas. Then right beside that image was the memory of Penny’s eyes when he was inside her. The warmth, the love, the promise of everything shining in those green depths.
Life? Or death?
No contest, he realized with a jolt. He didn’t need a damn volcano to challenge him. Living with a woman as strong as Penny was going to be the real adventure. If, he thought, he could convince her to let him prove himself to her. To let him back into her life. Their kids’ lives. But he couldn’t very well do that from Sicily, could he?
He strode to the cockpit and opened the door.
The copilot turned in his seat and smiled.
Colt ignored the friendly gesture. “Where exactly are we?”
“We’ll be landing at Catania, Sicily, in about an hour.”
“Right.” Colt nodded and for the first time in ten long years, listened to his heart. He knew what he had to do. Knew what he wanted to do. Decision made, he said, “When we land, refuel as quickly as you can. We’re going back.”
* * *
After the longest plane ride of his life, Colt stormed into King’s Extreme Adventures and walked into his twin’s office without bothering to knock.
“I thought you were in Sicily.” Con sat back in his desk chair, a surprised expression on his face.
“Yeah, change of plans,” Colt said and paced to the wide window that overlooked the ocean. “Tell me something. You’ve always said that mom and dad’s accident wasn’t my fault. Did you mean it?”
“Of course I meant it.” Con’s voice was sharp and sure. “What’s this about?”
Down below, at street level, waves rushed toward shore, cars lined the Pacific Coast Highway and pedestrians wandered up and down crowded sidewalks.
“Penny.” Colt shook his head and rubbed his eyes. His twin, his brothers and his cousins had all tried to reach him over the years. Tried to make him see that accidents happen and no matte
r how hideous it had all been, it wasn’t Colt’s fault. But he’d never been willing to listen before. Now he had to know. “She’s got me thinking. Wondering. And I need to know if that’s really how you and all of the others feel.”
Con’s voice was soft, but the power behind the words reverberated in the air. “Colt, you didn’t cause the avalanche. Even you don’t have superpowers.”
Smiling briefly, Colt glanced at his twin. “If I’d been there, though, I could’ve made sure they took a safer run.”
Con laughed shortly, then shrugged. “I don’t know whose parents you’re remembering, but our father never took the safe route in his life.”
Colt frowned as Con stood up and came toward him. “Your being with them wouldn’t have changed anything. Dad was just as damned crazy adventurous as you are—where do you think you got it?”
Colt had never really thought about it like that. But now that he was...he wondered.
“The only thing that would have been different,” Con added, slapping his twin on the shoulder, “is that you would have died, too. And I’d have missed you, you big idiot.”
A small smile curved Colt’s mouth. All of the Kings did go for adventure, thrived on adrenaline, he thought, as he finally began to let go of the cloak of guilt he’d been wrapped in for years. “You’re right. About Dad, I mean.”
Con applauded slowly, deliberately, and gave his twin a smile. “Well, at long last. And it only took ten years to convince you. I always said I was the smart one.”
“Funny.” Colt drew a breath and knew that it would take time to finally and completely let go of the past. But at least now he had a shot at it. “Look, I’m going out to Penny’s place. But I’ve got a few things to do first. One of which is to talk to you about an idea I had on the flight home.”
DOUBLE THE TROUBLE Page 15
