He nodded. Understanding in a way she didn’t expect.
Telling herself this was no time to start feeling kindly toward him, Adelaide put one bottle in the warmer, waited for it to ding, then added the other. Finished, she tested the liquid of both on the inside of her wrists. Scooping up both babies, she inclined her head at the bottles. “Mind bringing those in for me? You’ll save me a trip.”
“Sure.”
Adelaide walked over to the sofa and settled both infants into the supportive indentions on the extra-large twin nursing pillow already there, then she sat and carefully moved it onto her lap. Wyatt handed over the bottles one at a time, and she tipped the nipples into Jake and Jenny’s mouths. Then all was silent as they drank. For the first time in a while, Adelaide felt herself begin to relax and really breathe. Until she looked up again and saw Wyatt watching her with the kind of respect she had always yearned to see.
Telling herself that his newfound admiration didn’t matter, that this situation would be over as quickly as their one-night stand had been, Adelaide bent her head and did not look up at him again.
* * *
AN HOUR LATER, they were on their way. Thankfully in separate vehicles. Four cheek-swab DNA tests later, they again split up. Wyatt returned to his horses and his ranch. Adelaide took the twins home and thus began the wait for results.
They came in late on the third day.
On the morning of the fourth, she found herself back at the hospital. This time in Dr. Jackson McCabe’s office. To her surprise, Wyatt was there, too.
Jackson indicated they should sit, even as Adelaide’s palms began to sweat. “I understand you requested this test to disprove Wyatt’s paternity of the twins.”
Wyatt and Adelaide nodded.
“It proved the opposite. Adelaide Smythe is their biological mother, Wyatt Lockhart their biological father.”
“But that’s...” Adelaide sputtered. She thought this was just a formality! “I was artificially inseminated before Wyatt and I ever hooked up. So it can’t be! He can’t be!”
* * *
SHE SLANTED A look at Wyatt, who was not moving or reacting in any way.
“Apparently the AI did not take,” Jackson explained.
That was impossible. “We used protection when we were together!”
Not because she had felt she needed it, since she had been convinced she was already pregnant by then, but because she hadn’t wanted to stop and explain her circumstances, a move that surely would have spoiled the romantic aura of the evening, as surely as it had the morning after. And she had wanted that one night with Wyatt so very badly. To make up for everything heartbreaking and awful that had come before.
“No birth control method is one hundred percent effective.” Jackson handed over two sets of lab results. “The tests were conclusive. Both children are Wyatt’s. So—” he rose, reaching across the desk and shaking their hands “—congratulations to both of you.”
Wyatt was still reeling from the news that he was a dad, when his younger sister met them at the door of Adelaide’s home, where she had been babysitting the twins. Sage caught the equally shell-shocked look on Adelaide’s face. “What happened to you?” Immediately incensed, his sister swung back to him and demanded, “Are you responsible?”
If Sage only knew, Wyatt thought ironically. Feeling joy—that he finally had the kids he had secretly wanted for a long time. And shock—that the woman he’d once thought—erroneously—was the love of his life, was the mother who had provided them.
He had no idea why fate kept propelling them together this way. When it was abundantly clear he and Adelaide could not be more wrong for each other.
Yet there was nothing of the cruel joke of nature when it came to the sweetly slumbering children, he thought, gazing down at Jenny and Jake in reverence and awe.
They were perfect.
And they were his.
As well as Adelaide’s...
Oblivious to the ambivalent nature of his thoughts, Adelaide turned back to Sage and made a shushing motion with her hand. “It’s complicated,” she told his sister.
Sage looked them both up and down. Sighed, as a twinkle came into her eyes. “Isn’t it always with the two of you?”
Reluctantly, Wyatt turned away from the twins, who were still sleeping angelically in their Pack ’N Plays. Eager for some time alone with them, he grabbed his sister’s coat and bag and ushered her toward the door. “Thanks for babysitting.”
Sage dug in her heels. “I can stay awhile longer if you need me.”
Adelaide’s expression broadcast the need for privacy. “Wyatt and I have some things we need to discuss.”
Which probably, Wyatt admitted grudgingly, should be done before the twins woke up.
“Uh-huh.” Sage shrugged on her coat and patted Wyatt’s arm. “Be good to Adelaide, big brother.”
As if he had ever wanted to be anything but, Wyatt thought grumpily. Even if things hadn’t worked out.
Sage shut the door behind her.
Adelaide’s small house felt even tinier.
Looking as tense and upset as he felt, she went to the kitchen, stood on tiptoe and pulled out a bottle of Kahlua. Wyatt knew how she felt. He could use a good stiff drink himself. Even if it was barely ten in the morning.
Hands trembling, she made two drinks. Wordlessly, they each took a stool at her kitchen island. “What are we going to do?” she asked in a low, jittery voice, lifting the glass to her lips.
He sipped the concoction of milk, ice and coffee-flavored rum. “The only thing we can. Raise them together.”
She looked down her nose at him. “I’m not staying married for all the wrong reasons.”
He grimaced as the too-sweet mixed drink stayed on his tongue. “I’m not asking you to stay married,” he retorted in exasperation. “I still think we should get a divorce.”
“Good.” Relief softened her slender frame. “I’m glad we agree on that, because the last thing I want Jenny and Jake to suffer through is a marriage like my parents had,” she vowed, her cheeks turning an enticing pink. “With both of them fighting all the time.”
He gazed into her eyes. “I promise you. For the sake of the kids, we won’t fight.” And especially not the way Paul and Penny Smythe had, before Penny had died in that Jet Ski accident when Adelaide was fourteen. He could still remember how unmaternal Adelaide’s mother had been, her dad only a little more interested in their only child. Had it not been for the teachers, camp counselors and horse-riding instructors who had taken an interest in the shy but eager to please little girl, he wasn’t sure what would have happened to Adelaide.
Her face grew pinched. “I promise you, too. We’ll keep things civil in the way we haven’t managed to in the past.”
Regret tightened his gut. It wasn’t the first time he had felt remorse over having given her such a hard time. “Then, we had no reason to buck up,” he admitted shamefully.
She nodded, accepting her own culpability in the ongoing tension between them. “Now, we certainly do.”
The unmistakable ache in her tone caught him unawares. He studied her, realizing for the first time she might wish that things had turned out different for them, too, despite her avowals to the contrary.
Silence.