He was already looking at the pictures, swiping his finger across the screen to look at more.
“Some of them I took, others Elena emailed to me.”
He laughed.
“What?”
Connor looked up at her, a mixture of amusement and regret in his eyes. “This picture. Last Christmas, I guess.”
Dina knew which photo he was talking about, but she went to him anyway, knelt at his side on the thick rug and looked at the phone screen. Three babies, dressed in candy-cane-striped footie jammies, each of them with a Santa hat on their heads and tiny white beards on their faces.
Still laughing, Connor asked, “Even Sadie had a beard?”
Dina smiled at the memory. She’d been at her sister’s house when the two women took that picture to use as their Christmas card. “Jackie didn’t want Sadie to feel left out,” she said quietly.
“Sounds like her,” he agreed. Slowly, he flipped through the rest of the pictures, not speaking again.
Dina stayed where she was, watching—his expressions, not the phone screen. Every emotion he felt flickered over his face, shining in his eyes, curving his mouth. On a too-small screen, he watched his children change and grow and it was clear that those pictures touched something inside him. When he’d finally come to the end—she really did need to delete at least some of those pictures—he handed her the phone.
“I missed so much already.”
“You didn’t know, Connor.”
“Doesn’t change anything.” He turned his head to look at her. His eyes shone with sadness, but a glint of determination was there, too, and Dina braced herself for what he might say next.
“I won’t miss any more time with my children, Dina.”
Her hand closed around her phone and held it tightly. Wow, just a couple of minutes ago, she’d been feeling bad for him, taking his side against the memory of her own sister. But looking into his eyes now, she saw that this man didn’t need her sympathy. “Meaning?”
“Meaning,” he said quietly, “I’ll never get back their first Christmas. They got their first teeth, took their first steps, all without me even knowing of their existence.”
“I know, Connor and it’s terrible, but—”
He shifted in his chair, cupped her chin in his palm and lifted her face to his. “You and me, Dina, we’re going to have to come to an understanding.”
“What kind of understanding?”
“Well, that’s the question, isn’t it?” he whispered. “I know what kind I’m interested in. I guess all we need is for you to decide for yourself what it is you want here.”
Oh, she knew what she wanted. Dina just didn’t know if getting what she wanted would make things better...or worse.
* * *
Watching Connor with his family was a revelation. Oh, she knew he was close to his twin—why wouldn’t he be? But Jefferson King was a cousin and yet he and Connor seemed as close as brothers. Obviously, family was vastly important not only to Connor but to the Kings in general. That acknowledgement underscored what she’d felt only the night before. As his children, the triplets weren’t something Connor would risk losing.
“Lovely, aren’t they?”
Dina glanced at Maura King. The woman was short and gorgeous, in spite of her heavy rubber boots, and the oversize jacket she wore over a thick red knit sweater. June in Ireland, just as Connor had told her, meant clouds, wind, cold and spatters of rain.
They’d gone shopping in the village of Craic only that morning, buying the triplets warmer clothing, since a California wardrobe didn’t prepare anyone for the damp chill. Ireland was beautiful and wild in a way that California never could be, and Dina loved it already.
Maura King had been a sheep farmer when Jefferson, scouting a location for one of the movies King Studios made, met her for the first time. Since she still ran her farm and Jefferson worked from the manor house, Dina assumed that marrying one of the wealthiest men in the world hadn’t changed Maura Donohue King much.
“Lovely?” Dina repeated, glancing back to where Connor, Jefferson and six children—Maura and Jefferson had three of their own and another on the way—raced madly around the yard alongside a galloping black-and-gray Irish wolfhound named King. Dina had thought his name to be an odd choice, but Maura had explained that she’d gotten the wolfhound when she and Jefferson were on the outs and that she had named the dog after him because, she said, like Jefferson, the dog was a “son of a bitch.”
The sheer size of the dog had intimidated Dina at first. She’d never seen such a big animal. But as Maura promised, a wolfhound was the original gentle giant. In no time at all, the triplets were crawling across the big dog, pulling his ears and stepping on his huge feet, and King never made a sound. Rather, he acted like a nanny, herding the kids back into the center of things when they wandered too far on their own.
“Yeah,” Dina said, smiling at Connor’s hoot of laughter as Jefferson’s oldest son, Jensen, sneaked up behind his father and gave him a swat. “I guess they are lovely. So’s your home, by the way,” she added, turning her face to look out across the pewter-colored waters of Lough Mask, spread out beneath gray skies.
Trees bent in the ever-present wind and tiny whitecaps formed on the lake’s surface. Narrow roads lined with gorse bushes boasting tiny yellow flowers spilled through green fields dotted with rock walls like thread loosed from a spool. The farmhouse itself was big and old and behind it rose the Partry Mountains, looking like a purple smudge on the horizon.
“Thank you,” Maura said, giving her house a quick glance over her shoulder. “I like it, too, just as it is, but Jefferson is forever adding this or changing that, until I’m never sure what I’ll find when I come in from the fields.”
“But you don’t really mind.”
“Not a’tall, but don’t tell him I said that.” She winked and smiled. “The man is too sure of himself already.”
Dina laughed. “I think that’s a King thing.”
“Perhaps,” Maura said, leaning on the fence that surrounded the front yard. “Since all of his brothers are exactly the same and the few cousins I’ve met as well. Still, I wouldn’t change him for the world. I find I like a man who angers me as often as he attracts me.”
“In that, Connor and Jefferson are alike,” Dina mused, thinking of the many arguments she and Connor had had in the short time they’d known each other. And yes, like Maura, Dina was attracted even when she was furious with the man.
“I’ve seen the way he looks at you and you at him.” Maura smiled and tapped her fingers against the top rail on the fence.
Dina didn’t even comment on that—what could she say? That it wasn’t true? Hardly.
“And the children are sweet.”
“They are. But so are yours,” Dina said, turning to look at the kids as they raced around the yard in the sharp, cold wind.
Maura chuckled. “Wild heathens they are, and treasures, each and every one of them. Jensen was the first—he’s four now—and then Julie came along a year or so later and then James.”
Dina watched the kids playing and laughing and felt her heart turn over at the sight. How would it be, she wondered, to actually be a part of that group? Oh, she belonged, through the triplets. She was their aunt as well as their guardian and that would never end. But Maura, Jefferson and their children and Connor and the triplets were family, and that connection continued to