Triple the Fun

by Maureen Child

  She sucked in a breath and held it. “What?”

  “I can’t just father a kid and walk away. I’ll have to be a part of my child’s life.”

  Part-time father, he told himself. All of the fun and little of the hassles.

  “Absolutely, Con. Agreed.”

  “All right then.” Connor swung her in a circle and Jackie shrieked with laughter. When he set her on her feet again, he gave her a fast, hard kiss and said, “Let’s make a baby.”

  They’d tried.

  But Jackie told him the insemination hadn’t taken. When he’d offered to help them try again, she’d turned him down. Said that she and Elena were moving to Northern California to get a fresh start. Then she’d sort of disappeared from his life. No phone calls. No nothing.

  He’d allowed it to happen, too, so he couldn’t throw all the blame on Jackie for that. “I should have checked,” he said again, hating that he hadn’t.

  “Yeah, well—” Colt leaned back against the low stone wall separating the patio from a wide swath of manicured lawn “—who would have expected Jackie to lie to you?”

  That was the hardest part to swallow, Connor admitted silently. He’d always trusted her. Had never doubted what she told him. And all this time, she’d hidden his children from him.

  Con shook his head and squinted into the wind. His heartbeat raced and the ice in his stomach was colder, deeper somehow than it had been only an hour before. And after all the lies, he couldn’t even yell at her. Because she and Elena were dead. He hadn’t been able to cut through most of the legalese in the damn letter from the lawyer, but that much he’d caught. Dina Cortez, the babies’ guardian, named by the late Jackie and Elena Francis, was the one suing him.

  How the hell could he mourn his friend when he was so furious with her all he wanted to do was rage at her for what she’d done?

  “So who’s Dina Cortez?” Colt folded his arms over his chest.

  “Elena’s sister,” Connor told him. “I met her at the wedding. She was Elena’s maid of honor and the only one of her family who showed up.” He frowned. He still couldn’t understand how family didn’t support family, no matter what. “Don’t remember much about her, really.”

  “Doesn’t matter, I guess,” Colt mused. “You’ll be getting to know her pretty damn well soon enough.”

  “True.” And he’d have plenty to say once he met up with Dina Cortez again.

  * * *

  “Sure,” Dina said into the phone. “We can cater your anniversary party on the twenty-fourth. No problem. If it’s all right with you, we can meet later this week to discuss the menu.”

  Idly tapping her pen against the desktop calendar already filled with doodles, squiggles and notes incomprehensible to anyone but her, Dina listened to her latest client talk with only half an ear.

  How could she concentrate when she knew that very soon, she was going to be clashing with one of the Kings of California? Connor King, father of the triplets even now playing on the floor beside her, was a member of a family with more money than God and far more power than she could ever hope to claim.

  She’d met him once before, when Dina’s sister, Elena, had married her longtime partner, Jackie Francis. Connor had been Jackie’s best man and he’d caught Dina’s attention from the moment she saw him. Of course, any woman would have been captivated by the man. He was gorgeous and possessed that innate sense of being in charge that was both alluring and irritating to a strong woman.

  His easy relationship with Jackie was one of long standing; they’d been best friends since high school. But what was more impressive to Dina at the time was that he had been so focused on being there for his friend. Most single guys used a wedding as an opportunity to pick up women. But Connor hadn’t paid attention to anyone but his friend.

  Of course, he might be feeling a little differently toward Jackie at the moment. What Jackie and Elena had done to him was unforgivable.

  While her client rambled on in her ear, Dina shifted her gaze to the babies behind a series of child gates. When the kids came to live with her, she had cordoned off a section of her work area in the kitchen. Blankets were piled on the floor, toys were scattered everywhere and three beautiful thirteen-month-old babies giggled and squealed and babbled to each other in a language no one but the three of them could possibly understand.

  In a few short months, those babies had become Dina’s whole world and it terrified her to think of what Connor King might do when he found out about them. Would he fight her for custody? Oh, boy, she hoped not. There was no way she could win in a legal battle with a King.

  Her client finally wound down and in the sudden silence, Dina said quickly, “Right. I’ll give you a call in a day or two and we’ll set up that meeting. Okay, great. Thank you for calling. Goodbye.”

  She hung up and her fingers rested lightly on the back of the receiver. Naturally, as soon as she was off the phone, the babies got quiet. Smiling, she looked at them, two boys and a girl, and felt a hard, swift tug at her heart. She loved her niece and nephews, but being a single mother wasn’t something she had planned for.

  But then, Jackie and Elena hadn’t planned to die, had they? Tears stung the backs of her eyes and she blinked them away. She looked at those shining, smiling faces watching her, and Dina felt such sorrow for her sister. She and Elena had been close, joined together against the chaos their mother had created. With their grandmother, the two sisters had formed a unit that had been shattered when Elena died.

  Heart aching, Dina thought about her big sister and wished desperately that things were different. Elena had wanted nothing more, for most of her life, than to be a mother. She’d dreamed of having her own family.

  Then she and her wife, Jackie, had finally succeeded in having the children that completed them, only to die before their triplets were a year old. The unfairness of it ripped at Dina and lodged a hard knot of pain in the center of her chest. But crying wouldn’t help. She should know. Dina had cried an ocean of tears in the first couple of weeks after her sister and her wife died unexpectedly. So she was done with tears, but not panic.

  Panic wasn’t going anywhere. It came to haunt her in the middle of the night when she lay awake trying to figure out how to care for three babies all on her own. It walked beside her when she took the kids for a walk in their triple stroller. It whispered in her ear every time she bid on a catering job and didn’t get it.

  Which was one of the reasons she had decided to sue Connor King. He had money. Besides, he had been a big part of Jackie and Elena’s lives. He had been prepared to be a part of the kids’ lives. He owed it to his children to help pay for their support. With fewer financial worries, she could hire a part-time nanny to assist her in taking care of the triplets. Not that she was looking to bail out of caring for them—she wasn’t. But she had to work and leaving them with a babysitter—even a great one like Jamie, the teenage girl who lived next door—just wasn’t a permanent solution.

  Sadie, Sage and Sam were all looking to her for protection. For safety. For love. She wouldn’t fail them. Smiling down as the boys wrestled and Sadie slapped her teddy bear, Dina promised, “You’ll know who your mommies were, sweet babies. I’ll make sure of it. They loved you so much.”

  Sadie chewed on her bear’s ear and Dina huffed out a sigh. Raising three babies alone wouldn’t be easy, but she would do it. The triplets were what was important now, and Dina would do whatever she had to do to protect them. And on that thought, she stood up and announced, “You guys ready for a treat?”

  Three heads spun toward her with identical expressions of eager anticipation. She laughed a little as Sadie pulled herself to her feet and demanded, “Up!”

  “After your snack, okay, sweet girl?” The sweet girl in question’s bottom lip quivered and Dina had to steel her heart against giving in. If she got Sadie up, then
Sage and Sam would want out, too, and instead of a snack, she’d spend the next half hour chasing the three of them through her house. And, since it was closing in on their bedtime, she didn’t want them getting all worked up anyway.

  Before any of them could start complaining—loudly—Dina hustled to the counter to slice up a couple of bananas and pour milk into three sippy cups. Thank heaven Elena and Jackie had weaned them off bottles early. As soon as the kids were settled, gnawing happily on bananas and laughing together, the doorbell rang.

  “You guys be good,” she said and headed down the hall to the front door. She took a quick peek out the side window at the man on her porch and gasped. Connor King. The image of him was so clear and sharp in her memory, it was almost weird to see him standing on her porch.

  Panic swam through her veins and she wasn’t even surprised. She was becoming used to that out-of-control sensation, and she was pretty sure that wasn’t a good thing. Somehow, Dina hadn’t expected this meeting to happen so quickly. Maybe she should have. He was a King and he’d just found out he was the father of three children. Of course he would show up. Of course he would start pushing his metaphorical weight around. She knew enough about him and his family to know that he was going to be a formidable opponent, no matter what.

  And since there was no ignoring him, she squared her shoulders, lifted her chin and yanked the door open. “Connor King,” she said. “I wasn’t expecting you.”

  “You should have been,” he ground out tightly, then pushed past her into the house. “Where are my kids?”

  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. Ge
tting 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.”

  “Probably won’t last,” she mused.

  Con thought of all that had to be settled between them—of the triplets and their welfare, of his still simmering rage at having been lied to for two years—and he had to agree. “Probably not.”

  Nodding, Dina accepted that and asked, “So where does that put us right now?”

  “Opposite sides of a fence,” Connor answered.

  “That’s honest, anyway.”

  “I prefer honest. Lies always end up getting...messy.” He didn’t say it, but judging by Dina’s expression, she heard the implication. That it was her sister and Jackie’s lies that had brought them here, tangling the two of them up in a situation that was only going to get more chaotic.

  Connor was here to claim his children. To do the right thing no matter who got in his way. That included Dina Cortez.

  His stomach clenched as he heard a squeal of laughter soaring from the other room.

  God, he was a father, and the ramifications of that hadn’t sunk in yet. He’d only had a few hours to try to wrap his head around the fact that everything he knew had changed with the simple act of opening that envelope from Dina’s lawyer.

  He’d helped Jackie and Elena because he wanted to. And, he remembered, because he thought it might be fun to be on the periphery of a child’s life—more as a benevolent uncle than a father. But things were different now and they’d all have to adjust.

  “So, is this a truce?”