When Ellie looked at Ariel, she buried her face in Sloan’s chest. Alisha continued to stare, a leftover tear trembling on her lashes.
Ellie fell in love.
“They’re beautiful,” she said, forgetting that she wanted this man out of her life forever.
“They take after Marla.”
The prick of pain wasn’t overwhelming, as pain went, but it shocked Ellie back into the present in a hurry. The girls did take after their blond, beauty-queen mother. And Sloan had taken off after her, too. He’d asked Marla to his senior prom only a week after he’d introduced Ellie to the mysteries of making out.
“I really need your help, El.” Sloan’s eyes beseeched her.
“No.” She couldn’t. She wasn’t that strong. “I have no time as it is,” she said lamely. “I’m still getting settled in here. I’m going to school for my MBA. I haven’t even been out with my friends in weeks.”
No matter how compelling the argument sounded to Ellie, Sloan didn’t look convinced.
“Sounds familiar,” he said, smiling instead. “As I recall, you were in a similar predicament your sophomore year in high school.”
The year she’d met Sloan.
“You didn’t want to help with the homecoming float because you were in all the honor classes and were studying for early entrance into college, too. You hadn’t been to any of the parties with Beth since the beginning of the school year.”
And he’d talked her into helping with the float. It had been the start of the most wonderful—and most painful—time of her life. She’d felt valuable as a person, and as a woman, for the first time ever. In the end, though, she’d had her insecurities about her sexuality humiliatingly confirmed when Sloan had given her her first kiss and then told her the very next day that they couldn’t be friends anymore. He hadn’t even waited for the steam to clear before he’d asked Marla to the prom.
“You thanked me for showing you that there was more to life than books, Ellie.”
And he’d rewarded her gratitude with heartache. “I can’t help you, Sloan.” The babies were squirming, but she refused to look at them. She had to get rid of them before she turned traitor on herself, on all she’d learned, on all she’d painstakingly accepted about herself.
A picture of Sara’s lost gaze sprang to mind, but Ellie pushed it frantically away. Finding oneself, having meaning in one’s life did not mean being a fool.
“I don’t know how to handle them, Ellie,” he said, his gaze so compelling that she couldn’t look away. “They’re angels until I’m around, and then they transform into little she-devils. They don’t mind me. They don’t do what I tell them to do.”
She couldn’t help herself. She looked at the toddlers still perched, albeit precariously, on their father’s lap. Perfect little Ariel, and Alisha with her tiny curled cowlick. She saw Beth—and herself. The desire to hold them, to be a part of that private family unit, was so strong that it scared her to death.
“You walked out on me ten years ago, Sloan,” she said. Keep your mind on the things you can have. And off the things you can’t have. “You have no right to come back now just because you don’t know how to live with the consequences of your actions.”
“It was my senior year, Ellie—I knew I was going to be busy.” He stood, one baby on each hip. The girls, as though sensing the tension in the room, sat silently, their little faces turned toward their father. “And I know I don’t have the right to ask for your help. But this isn’t for me,” he continued. “It’s for them.”
Looking down at his daughters, Sloan swallowed. “You’re a twin, Ellie. You work with babies every day. You’re smart. And you were always able to see inside me. To help me see.”
He wasn’t being fair. Ellie swallowed, too, needing to run. She felt another panic attack coming on. Two in two days.
“You wouldn’t just come in and do what needed to be done, Ellie. You’d enable me to do it myself.” He was still holding her gaze, reaching inside her to the young girl only he’d ever known existed.
“No.” She stood, backed up. She just had to find the strength to turn away, then the interview would be over.
“I need you.”
She shook her head.
“They need you.”
As if on cue, both girls looked up curiously at Ellie. She started to shake; her hands and feet were tingling. She had to make him go.
“Those children are not my responsibility, Sloan. I can’t help you.”
Ellie’s relief when Sloan finally walked away lasted only long enough for her to recognize the woman lurking outside her open office door. Tattle Today TV reporter Chelsea Markum had heard every word.
Her stomach knotted painfully, and Ellie wondered just how big a price she was going to pay for sending Sloan away.
She wished it were only the television reporter she cared about.
CHAPTER THREE
“GOT A MINUTE?”
Ellie didn’t even bother looking up. “Go away, Chelsea.”
“Who was that man who just left here looking like his mother had died?” the reported asked, plopping down in the seat Sloan had just vacated.
“No one.”
“You sounded pretty upset for talking to no one,” Chelsea said.
Glancing up from the needle codes she was trying desperately to concentrate on, Ellie stared at the auburn-haired reporter. Only a year or two older than herself, Chelsea had the eyes of an old woman. A green-eyed avaricious old woman. And unfortunately they were pinned on Ellie.
“When are you going to give up and go away?” Ellie asked, too weary to deal with the Chelseas of the world today. The woman had been hounding the clinic since baby Cody had made his debut. And when she couldn’t get fresh leads on the baby, she turned her roving eye on Ellie, looking for a way to prove the charges of nepotism.
“Sounded like there might be some more abandonment going on.”
Chelsea would stop at nothing, it seemed, to get a story. To validate her existence, Ellie thought nastily.
“Not by anyone here,” Ellie hated herself for rising to Chelsea’s bait. “If you want their story, you’ll have to go see their mother in New York.”
“Still, it did sound as though you knew the man rather well, and that he wanted something from you.”
Ellie bit her tongue.
“That’s got to be the most gorgeous man ever to step foot in your office,” Chelsea baited her, refusing to give up.
“He’s a friend from high school,” Ellie said, exasperated. “Period.”
Crossing one shapely leg over the other, Chelsea nodded, letting the subject drop. “Heard from any of your brothers lately?” she asked.
“I see two of them right here every day,” Ellie replied, relaxing a bit as Chelsea reverted to the cat-and-mouse game the two of them had been playing for the past month.
“What about the third—Jake, isn’t it?”
Ellie smiled. “Haven’t heard from him.”
Chelsea sat forward, elbows on her knees. “So who do you think fathered that poor baby?” she