“I think you should go.”
“Not gonna happen,” Con told her. He glanced at the babies, who were now staring at the two of them with tiny worried frowns creasing each of their faces. Deliberately, Connor dialed back on the anger churning inside him. He wasn’t going to traumatize his kids. “I’ll tell you what is going to happen, though. You and the triplets are moving to my house. Starting today.”
“You’ve got to be kidding.”
“Nope. Dead serious.” He planted both hands on the table and leaned toward her. “I’m not going to disappear from my kids’ lives. I’m not going to be the last one you think of when you need backup to take care of them. And most importantly, I’m not going to try to sleep on that torture rack you call a couch again.”
“You can’t just decide something like this and expect me to go along—”
“Did you or did you not just say that the babies would always be taken care of no matter what you had to do?”
“Yes,” she snapped. “But I didn’t mean this.”
He held up one hand for silence, and damned if he didn’t get it. Con figured she was too surprised to argue. “Your house is too small for all of us and you know it.”
“You weren’t invited to stay,” she pointed out.
“I’m their father. They stay with me.”
“I’m their guardian. They stay with me.”
“There you go,” he said. “Neither one of us is going to give on this, so my solution works best.”
“Because you say so.”
“Because your whole house is the size of my closet.” He pushed off the table and folded his arms across his chest. “You won’t be bought off—which I admire, by the way.”
“Wow.” She tipped her head to one side and gave him a look that should have set fire to his hair. “Thanks.”
He ignored the sarcasm. “You want the kids. So do I. The answer is, we both stay with them. We can’t do that here, so my house is the logical move.”
“Logical. That’s all this is about?”
“What else?”
“And this new living situation,” she said. “How would it affect us?”
“You’re talking about the kiss last night?”
“No, I’m talking about what you might expect after the kiss last night.”
A little insulted at the notion that he would maneuver her and the kids to his house as a way of forcing her into his bed, Connor frowned at her. “Relax. You’ll have your own suite. I don’t need to trick women into my bed. Or force them. They come willingly enough.”
If she gritted her teeth any harder, her jaw might snap.
“I won’t,” she finally said and those two words, along with the situation, tugged a smile at the corner of his mouth.
“Yeah, I seem to remember you kissing me back last night.”
“A minor bump in the road.”
“Yeah we’ll see about that.”
“Trust me on this,” she said, eyes flashing. “I won’t be one of the legions of women who have rolled out of your bed.”
“Don’t paint yourself into a corner,” Connor said. “Or make vows you’ll just have to take back later.”
“That won’t happen.”
“But the move will,” he told her flatly and waited for her response.
She looked at the kids, each of them with banana smooshed across their tiny features. He could see her heart in her eyes as she looked at those children, and he knew the moment she made the decision to go along with his plan.
“Fine,” she said tightly. “We’ll come. Temporarily.”
“What’s your definition of temporary?”
“I guess we’ll find out, won’t we?”
One eyebrow lifted. Once those triplets were in his house, they wouldn’t be leaving again. Whether or not Dina stayed with them would be up to her. But one thing Con was sure of, in spite of her denials, was that before whatever this was between them ended, he would have her in his bed.
“This is a mistake.”
Dina’s grandmother looked up from packing the babies’ clothes and clucked her tongue. “That is not the right attitude to take.”
“What other one is there?” Dina’s insides were churning and she had a pounding headache. No doubt caused by last night’s sleeplessness, the argument with Connor and now this hurried move that she was sure was going to turn into a disaster. “Living with Connor King? Even temporarily? Bad move. I can feel it.”
Actually, what she felt was worry. Ever since he’d kissed her, she’d felt herself teetering on a shaky ledge. Moving into his house, onto his turf, sleeping in a room close to his...no way was this going to end well. Especially because as infuriating as the man was, as frustrating to deal with, he was also way too tempting.
And that wasn’t even taking the triplets into consideration. He was getting the babies into—for lack of a better phrase—his possession. Surely that was going to mean something if he really did sue for custody. Any judge in the world would leave the babies in a palatial home cared for by a billionaire who could afford an army of nannies rather than with a nearly broke caterer living in a rented bungalow that was too small for one, let alone four, people.
“Oh, God.”
Her grandmother did the tongue clucking thing again and Dina winced. “This is an opportunity for you to get to know the father of the children you love,” the older woman said. “Use it. Learn what you can.”
“You mean to use against him later?” She tapped her finger against her chin as she considered it. Dina couldn’t risk Connor taking too much of the upper hand. As it was, she’d be living at his house, sharing the kids with him and reluctantly giving him a greater standing in the custody issue. She had to go into this ready to defend herself if need be.
“No,” her grandmother said with a sigh. “I mean, get to know him. The two of you are now linked through these children. You will be a part of each other’s lives always. Isn’t it smart to know the person rather than to assume the worst and act on it?”
Dina groaned and plopped onto the bed, hands in her lap. “I hate it when you’re rational.”
The older woman chuckled and went back to folding tiny T-shirts and pants. “You don’t want to admit he’s right, either, do you?”
“He’s not right. About what?”
“About this house. It is much too small for you and three growing babies. You know this, Dina. You just don’t want it thrown in your face.”
True. The bungalow felt stifling most of the time. She had rented it three years ago for herself as a stepping-stone. A way to save money—since the rent then was reasonable—so she could save to buy her own place. With her business doing well, it wouldn’t have taken her long to afford a nice condo somewhere. She’d built up a savings account, opened the catering company and was sure that all of her plans were going to sail on nicely.
But then the babies came, the rent went up, her business went down and she’d been pretty much stuck here. When Connor had said that her business was sinking and taking her dreams of a restaurant along with it, he’d really