Colton's Twin Secrets. Justine Davis

crashed in on him at once, and he sank down in his desk chair. Gemma looked back up at him.

      “Are you all right?” she asked, sounding startled. “You look a bit...pale.”

      “Ashen is the word you’re looking for,” he said shakily. “Because it all just hit me.”

      “All?”

      “That my brother is gone.” He looked at the girls. “That the rest of my life is no longer mine.”

      She looked from him to the girls and back. “No,” she agreed quietly. “I guess it’s not.”

      “I don’t even know why he did it. Why he chose me for them.”

      Any more than he knew why he was telling her this. He never spilled his guts like this, not even to his friends, let alone a virtual stranger.

      “You’re his brother,” Gemma said, sounding a little puzzled.

      “Yeah, but...” He drew in a deep breath, steadying himself. “Never mind.”

      “You’re probably feeling what Blake felt when he found out about Pandora. Shocked, and a little terrified.”

      “That fits,” he muttered wryly. “Especially the terrified part.”

      “He said learning he was a father stunned him even more since she was already here.” She waved at the girls. “Like they are. No months of waiting to prepare, get used to the idea.”

      “I’m only their uncle,” he said, not even sure why.

      “But you’re going to have to be more.”

      He shifted his gaze from the girls—now giggling quietly at Flash, who was looking at them, head tilted and wearing his most quizzical expression—back to Gemma.

       She’s got depth to her...

      He was seeing that now. Never in a million years would he have expected to be having this kind of conversation with the spoiled youngest daughter of Fenwick Colton.

      “I always thought I’d have kids. Someday. But not now.”

      She gave him a look that bordered on surprise, but only nodded. Then, after a moment, she said softly, “Maybe it doesn’t matter when you become a father, only that you do.”

      He stared at her. She was rattling him, this pampered yet unexpectedly sweet heiress, and he didn’t know what to think of her. Quickly he looked at the babies. They were making soft sounds now, simple ohs and ehs and ahs, but in turns, looking at each other, as if they were carrying on some sort of secret twin conversation. As perhaps they were.

      “Maybe if they were boys,” he muttered. “I’d know something about that.”

      “Then it’s lucky you have me, isn’t it?” Gemma said airily.

      Dante looked back at her. She looked...at home on the floor next to his desk, Flash at her side and the two girls in front of her. He caught himself picturing this same tableau in his living room, maybe before the fireplace, the flames throwing a soft glow over them.

      He yanked himself off the uncharacteristic and unwanted path. He wasn’t sure she was qualified, or that she wouldn’t get bored and walk out within the week. But he needed help right now. And just because she seemed to screw up his thinking was no reason to refuse her offer.

      Desperate times called for desperate measures.

      “Okay,” he said, surrendering to what now seemed inevitable. “You’re hired.” For now, at least.