Reunited by the Tycoon's Twins

by Ellie Darkins

  ‘And so now you’re a full-time dad,’ she stated.

  ‘Well, I’m trying to work as much as I can,’ he said with a shrug, that pinched look back around his eyes. ‘But at the moment it’s just not enough. There’s definitely more dadding going on, and I’m grateful for the extra time with them, but I can’t let things slide any further with work. I’m hoping that’s where you come in, while I find someone more permanent, that is.’

  Madeleine nodded, thoughtful. ‘I bet people were surprised.’

  He frowned for a second before he guessed her meaning. ‘That I want to parent my children?’ he asked. She saw the hardness appear around his mouth and jaw and heard the sharpness in his tone, and realised that she had hit a nerve. But she hadn’t been criticising—either him or Caro. She was just surprised. ‘It’s just unusual that you’re doing it while Caro’s abroad,’ Madeleine said, pointing out the obvious. ‘I didn’t mean anything by it.’

  ‘She’s a good mum,’ Finn said, his face still hard. ‘She video calls every day. She comes home when she can. All that she wants is for them to be safe and happy. Thousands of men do the same thing every day and no one bats an eyelid.’

  Madeleine sat up straighter, a little indignant that he thought she was judging. ‘I wasn’t batting! I never questioned that Caro is a good mum. But you can’t deny that the situation is unusual, that’s all.’

  ‘Look at my life, Madeleine,’ Finn said, the muscle in his jaw finally relaxing. ‘Everything about it is unusual.’

  She nodded. ‘It’s definitely different from when we were growing up,’ she ventured, wondering how he would react to the reminder about his change in circumstances.

  ‘God, I know. If you’d told me then...’

  Madeleine smiled, sensing that this was as far as this conversation was going to go.

  ‘So, this pizza, then,’ she said, grasping for a change of topic. ‘Are these kiddies going to co-operate and let us eat with two hands? Should we wear them out before bedtime?’

  ‘That,’ Finn said, standing suddenly, ‘is an excellent idea. Let me give you the grand tour, and we can let them have a roll around on their play mat in the nursery while you get settled.’

  Madeleine stood and parked Hart on her hip, where he gurgled and babbled as he reached out to Finn and his sister.

  ‘I never knew they were so wriggly at this age,’ Madeleine said, pulling Hart in closer so he didn’t dive out of her arms.

  ‘You should try it with two of them,’ Finn said with a laugh as Bella decided it was her turn to try and escape.

  ‘Just promise you’re not going to leave me alone with them just yet,’ Madeleine said, her smile fading when she realised that she was basically asking him to spend time with her. That verged dangerously close to needy—and she hated needy.

  ‘I promise, not until you feel you’re ready,’ Finn said as he led them out of the kitchen and into the hallway, with its elegant sweeping staircase up to the first floor.

  ‘I thought you’d be most comfortable in here,’ Finn said, showing her into a guest room. The bed held an imposing number of soft furnishings, but it was the desk in front of the window that caught her eye. An elegant writing desk with a simple Scandinavian aesthetic sat in front of a Juliet balcony looking out on the garden.

  Finn must have caught the direction of her interest because he said, ‘I had Trudy bring that in here. I wasn’t sure if you’d want to write, or if you were working.’

  ‘That is so thoughtful. Thank you.’

  ‘And if there’s anything else that you need, just let me know, okay? I want you to feel at home here.’

  And, surprisingly, she thought that she might, for the few weeks that she was planning on staying, at least. The luxuries made that easy enough: the sparkling decanter of water on her nightstand, the toiletries that she could glimpse through the open door to her en suite bathroom. It was a far cry from the mould-infested flat that she’d just been evicted from. But it wasn’t just the luxury of the place. It just had...a vibe. She wasn’t sure what it was. But she felt comfortable here. Maybe it was that she’d known Finn for ever, that he had been a part of her family for as long as she could remember.

  But then she looked over at Finn and caught him looking at her. Not at her body—she could tell when men were doing that. But at her. And nothing felt comfortable any more. Because she wasn’t sure that she’d ever seen anyone look at her like that. If she’d ever felt a man’s eyes on her and not felt as if she was being flayed open and they were peering at her insides.

  It was the same reason, she told herself. Finn didn’t look at her like that because he’d known her before she had this body. When she’d been a child. Before everyone she met had started judging her on the curves of her breasts and her hips, as if they somehow broadcast something about her personality.

  But he noticed her body. She’d seen and cringed at enough reactions to her over the years to be able to read a man’s mind perfectly when he was looking at her. And Finn’s was no different. He saw her curves. He liked them. But she was starting to have the suspicion that he saw beyond them too. That he would still look at her like that whatever shape her body took.

  And that was deeply unsettling. Because if there was one thing that she had learnt over the years it was how reliably men reacted to her. What she should expect from them, and what she should ask of them in return. And if she was wrong about that, if Finn was going to tread outside of that familiar, safe territory that she had constructed for herself, then she wasn’t sure what to make of it.

  She met his eyes and he startled, and that gave her hope. Because, whatever this tension was between them, it seemed as if Finn was as wary of it as she was. And that was good. That meant that they were both going to be on their guard. That they were both going to be committed to keeping these feelings in their place.

  She knew why she was so wary. But she wondered about Finn. She had strong suspicions that he was attracted to her. But it was equally clear that he had no intention of acting on that. Why? Was it the divorce? Was he still heartbroken over Caro? She didn’t think so. He had sounded a little sad when they had talked about her earlier. But he wasn’t yearning for her; she could read that much. But she still wondered what had happened—why they had broken up. They had been together for a couple of years before they had got married, so it wasn’t a flash-in-the-pan relationship.

  She could ask him, she supposed. But the way that he had shut down her questioning made clear that he didn’t want to talk about it, and it wasn’t her place to push him. She could ask her brother, but showing that level of interest would open her up to a whole lot of questions from Jake that she had no intention of answering.

  * * *

  Finn showed Madeleine around the apartment, wondering what on earth had made him think that it would be a good idea to spill the details of his marriage and divorce to a journalist. Because, despite their history and their shared childhood memories, Madeleine was a journalist. And, more than that, she was a journalist who had recently been made redundant and pitched into an enormously competitive job and freelance market. The woman had to eat, and if she chose to do that by selling the story that he had just willingly spilled to her then who could blame her? He certainly wouldn’t.

  Back in the day, there was very little that he wouldn’t have done to put food in his belly and a roof over his head. And a decade of more money than he needed had done nothing to dull the memories of those decades of deprivation. And then recently, with his divorce and the developments at work, having to leave the home that he and Caroline had bought together, having to dismantle the life they had created together, he’d found himself staring at his spreadsheets and feeling that familiar nag of worry. An instinct that he’d thought he’d lost years ago.

  And Madeleine hadn’t forgotten his old life either. He used to turn up at her house with an empty belly, desperate
ly ashamed of the fact that he would willingly raid their fridge for anything that he could get his hands on, and the fact that they all knew the score. They had always tried to cover it up. Looked the other way when their mum had given him the biggest portion at dinner. But they all knew, and he knew that they knew.

  The alternative was going hungry, going home to a cold empty house while his mother worked her second job in a futile attempt to make ends meet. And hunger had won out over pride every time. He felt hot at the memories of how low he had had to stoop at that time in his life, and grateful that his children would never ever know that feeling. His mother had done everything that she could for him. She had worked two jobs trying to provide for them, but it had never been enough. Without the Everleigh family, he would have been as lonely as he had been hungry. It was thanks to them that they had all made it through those years. Thanks to them that he had finished his homework and turned up at school.

  Now that he was the one with the warm home and the food and the luxury lifestyle, he would never begrudge any of them a single penny. He could never repay what they had given him, no matter how hard he tried. Giving Madeleine his spare room for a few weeks was nothing. Not compared to what she had given him, what she’d shared with him, back when she’d barely acknowledged his existence. She could take it all, as far as he was concerned, for as long as she needed it, and he would still be in her debt.

  Getting twin babies to sleep wasn’t an easy task at the best of times. When they were overstimulated by a new face and a new playmate who was in no way as immune to their babyish charms as he had had to learn to be, it was damn near impossible. Despite Finn having managed to get two babies into the bathroom at six-thirty, right on schedule, it had been half an hour before they had escaped that steam-filled room with two overtired, giggling, wriggly bundles wrapped in towels. And that had only been the start of the fun and games. It had taken nearly an hour of rocking, bouncing and pacing the hallways to get them both asleep, and in that time he and Madeleine had barely exchanged more than an exasperated glance as they’d passed one another in the hallway.

  He had seen the shock starting to fade and the reality of what she had let herself in for starting to sink in as the babies had fought sleep, or being put down in their cots, over and over. And over. By the time that they’d both slowly backed out of the nursery, breath held and the door gently closed, he was ready to sink into bed and call it a night. But Madeleine was his guest and he knew that Jake expected more of him than to leave her to fend for herself the first night she was here.

  That was all it was, he told himself. He owed it to Jake to make sure that Madeleine was settled and happy and had everything she needed. There was no other reason that the idea of sharing a pizza with her had sustained him all evening. It would be absolutely inappropriate for him to think of her as anything other than Jake’s sister and his temporary saviour. It absolutely was not—in any way—a date.

  So why did he feel so nervous?

  He didn’t even get nervous before dates. At least he didn’t think that he did. Since he and Caro had decided that their marriage was over, he hadn’t been on one. Until the twins were a couple of months old he had seen Caro almost as much as when they were married—just because he was no longer her husband didn’t mean that he wasn’t going to support her through the pregnancy and take care of her afterwards, until she was ready to take up her new job. But, all that aside, what would be the point in dating when he knew that he would never have a serious relationship again? The last—as amicably as it had ended—had threatened everything that he had worked for over the last decade. Had seen him taking on financial uncertainty that he still wasn’t sure that he was going to survive. He was never going through that again. He just couldn’t take the risk.

  Until he had opened the door to Madeleine Everleigh, and his decision to stay permanently single didn’t seem quite so simple.

  Which left his love life...where? In the realm of hook-ups and one-night stands and casual flings? And when it came to Madeleine...he couldn’t think of a less appropriate relationship to have with his best friend’s sister. Jake had been best man at his wedding. He couldn’t even think about a casual hook-up with the man’s sister. Except...he was thinking about it.

  Oh, was he thinking about it.

  And it wasn’t even Madeleine’s body he was thinking about. It was her eyes that he couldn’t get out of his mind. The way that she looked at him and saw the smooth businessman and the frazzled dad and the scared kid all at once. They weren’t separate people to her, the way that they were to everyone else in his life. The circles of his business life and his childhood friends and his social life never crossed. He squeezed himself into those different personas as he put on his suit for work or clipped himself into a baby carrier and headed to a playgroup. But not with Madeleine.

  He’d never felt the strangeness of that with Jake. Maybe because he had never looked at Jake and had the instant flash of desire he had with Madeleine. With Madeleine? It was hard to think about anything else. Especially now she was here in his home, settling in with her things, playing with his kids and drinking his coffee. Merging their lives for the next few weeks.

  Even with Caro there had been barriers between the different parts of his life. She had accompanied him to work functions. Slipped smoothly through the networking and the business dinners that were expected of her. But she had never slipped so comfortably into his past, the parts of his life that were harder to face. She’d never been comfortable with his mother. He could never have taken her to see the tiny flat where he had grown up.

  Absurd, really, given that she was dedicating her life to ending child poverty. She wouldn’t have judged him. But he didn’t want to be a project to her. He didn’t want to be one of the kids she was rescuing.

  With Madeleine, nothing had to be said. Or hidden. Or tiptoed around. She knew it all. She knew how bad it had been, and how high he had risen, and she saw that he was the same person wherever he was living. And the thought of that, of the two parts of his life being reconciled, was troubling. And intoxicating.

  He showed Madeleine back down to the kitchen and hunted out the pizza menus he kept in a drawer for weekends when he couldn’t be bothered to cook. It wouldn’t be long now before the babies were eating real food and he would actually have to produce something that they could all eat together, rather than just steaming them some carrot sticks. But for a few more weeks, at least, his weekends could be eighty per cent pepperoni. He handed Madeleine a menu and headed to the fridge to find them both a beer.

  ‘We can take the drinks out on the balcony if you like,’ Finn suggested, glancing over at Madeleine. ‘There’s a nice view of the park.’

  ‘Sure,’ she replied with a shrug, eyes still on the menu. ‘Sounds like a plan. I’ll bring my phone and we can order from there.’

  CHAPTER FOUR

  MADELEINE FOLLOWED FINN up the stairs, still trying to keep her mind on the pizza menu in order to stop it wandering anywhere more dangerous than that. Like up a couple of steps to where Finn’s behind was almost exactly at her eye line, and way, way too tempting to look at. He might have been a skinny kid when she’d first known him, but he wasn’t any longer. He’d shown her the gym in the basement of the apartment building, and it seemed he made good use of it. She knew that if she let her gaze wander up over the edge of the menu she would see strong, thick thighs and a perfect firm backside.

  All that from sneaking glances, then stopping herself as soon as she realised what she was doing. And it had been enough all day to keep her cheeks colouring, and illicit thoughts in her brain. She thought that she might combust if she actually allowed herself to get a proper eyeful.

  Finn turned right at the top of the stairs, taking her down a corridor they hadn’t covered in their tour earlier. And when he pushed open a door it took her a few moments to realise what she was looking at.

  The duvet
had been hastily pulled back on the bed, a phone was charging on the bedside table beside a creased paperback and half-empty glass of water. A pile of clothes had been discarded on the way to the bathroom, the door to which stood ajar on the far wall.

  She took a step back, her heart caught in her throat as she tried to process this information. She’d thought they were going out onto the balcony for a drink. But instead he had brought her here, to what was unmistakably his bedroom. Was this a trick? She took another step back, her heart pounding in her chest as she tried to assess her options. She could just head for the front door. Run out and not look back. She could back away slowly, and hope that he didn’t turn nasty when he didn’t get what he wanted.

  How many years had she been making these calculations—trying to find a way out of trouble when her body gave men ideas that she had no intention of going along with? Somehow, somewhere along the line, it had become her job to let them down gently. To avoid the nasty consequences she knew could follow if she didn’t handle their fragile little egos carefully enough as she rejected their advances.

  How had she really misread the situation here so badly? she asked herself. Sure, she had sensed that spark of interest from Finn. She guessed that he liked her body. But somehow she hadn’t sensed danger here. Was that because she had been attracted to him too? Had that put her off her guard, led her into this dangerous situation? She tried to think again whether she had said something or done something to make him think that this was what she wanted.

  Because this wasn’t what she wanted. Just because she might have fantasised about more at some point, that didn’t mean that that was where she was at right now. She wasn’t so stupid to think that she could just have desires and act on them.

  She heard a weird gargle form in her throat and had just about made up her mind to run when Finn turned and looked at her. She saw the expression in his eyes change from confusion to shock when he took in her expression. She gripped a little tighter to her phone, just in case she had to use it, and inched back when Finn squared up to her.