“Bye then.”
“I said almost.” Sinking to his heels beside the couch, he met her eyes and said, “As much as you hate the idea, you need me. Damn it, I had to carry you into the house.”
“I could have walked.”
“What is bothering you the most?” he asked. “Needing help? Or needing me?”
“You’re wrong, Colt,” she said. “I don’t need you. Okay, maybe I need some help, but I don’t need you.”
“Tough.” He straightened up again, looming over her and forcing her to keep her head tipped back just to meet his eyes.
“’Cause you’ve got me. Until we get this whole mess straightened out, I’m not going anywhere.”
She huffed out an impatient breath. “Don’t you have a mountain to climb? A building to jump off of?”
For one split second, thoughts of Mount Etna and his Sicilian trip floated through his mind. Then he let it go. “There’s plenty of time for that. Right now, you’re the only adventure in my future.”
“Swell.” She leaned forward, braced one hand on the arm of the couch and hissed in a breath.
“What’re you doing?”
She flashed him a look of pure irritation. “I’m going to check on the twins. Then change clothes. Put on something a little less constricting than my jeans.”
Frankly, he preferred her in something more constricting. Like a suit of armor with a chastity belt. That would be good. But since that wasn’t going to happen, he took a breath and got a grip on his rampaging thoughts. What he had to do here was focus on his anger, he told himself firmly. Just remember that she’d lied to him. Hidden his children from him. That should take care of the raging need clawing at him.
“All right, let’s go.”
She paused and looked up at him. “I can do it myself.”
“Sure you can. You’re a superhero.” He drew her to her feet. “So do me a favor. Stop fighting this so hard. Pretend to need my help. Make me feel manly.”
She snorted a laugh. “Like you need help with that.”
“I think that was a compliment,” he said, following her toward the hall and presumably, her bedroom.
“You don’t need a compliment, either.”
“Harsh,” he said, amused in spite of the conversation. Walking behind her, his gaze dropped to the curve of her behind, defined by the worn, faded denim that clung to her body like a second skin. His body stirred again and he gritted his teeth.
She walked slowly and he could sense the pain that accompanied every movement. Didn’t seem to stop the sexual thoughts dancing through his mind. But a part of him admired her steely determination to keep going in spite of whatever pain was gnawing on her. She refused to surrender to it. Refused to give in to what had to be an urge to curl up somewhere and whimper.
Hell, she was stronger than him. When he broke his leg off the coast of Monaco in a car wreck during a race, Colt had bitched about the pain to anyone who would listen.
Even Connor had lost all patience with him by the time his leg had finally healed. But in his defense, Colt thought, he wasn’t the kind of guy to be content sitting in a damn chair and watching TV. He needed to be moving. Doing. Chasing risk and searching for that next shot of adrenaline. Life was too short to not try to wring every last drop of pleasure out of it.
Too damn short. Those three words rippled through his mind, dragging up the past from the shadows where he’d hidden it. Smothering a tight groan, Colt shoved that past back down again, refusing to acknowledge it. Refusing to even look at it.
The past was done. What counted was now.
Of course, the past was what had brought him here, to this house, today.
He watched her quietly approach a closed door off the hallway and carefully turn the knob, making no sound as she stepped inside. Colt hesitated, knowing that his children were in there. Emotions choked him as she turned to look at him, a quizzical look on her face.
Colt knew she was expecting him to follow her in and see the twins as they slept. But he wasn’t interested in seeing his kids for the first time while in front of an audience. He could wait a bit longer to see the babies who had brought him here. And he’d do it in his own time.
Hell, he realized with a start, he was actually nervous. He couldn’t even remember the last time he’d felt the skitter of nerves racking his body. Colt had faced down volcanoes, killer surf, parachutes that didn’t open and broken skis on the steep face of a so-called un-skiable mountain. Yet the thought of meeting his children for the first time had him backing away from an open doorway as if it were a gateway to some black, dangerous pit.
So he waited while she fiddled with blankets and murmured soft sounds of comfort and love. He was finding it hard to breathe past a knot of sensation that he recognized as it grew inside him. This wasn’t nerves. This was a familiar, buzzing feeling settling into the pit of his stomach. He felt it every time he stood at the tip of a mountain, jumped off a cliff, rode forty-foot surf. It was that surge of adrenaline that let him know he was alive. That he was about to risk it all. About to put his life on the line and either change it—or end it.
He didn’t care which.
“Colt?”
She was back in the hall, with the babies’ door closed, and she was looking at him. He stared down into those green eyes he’d never really been able to forget. “What?”
“I just thought you’d want to see the twins...”
“I do,” he assured her, getting a tight rein on the runaway sensations pouring through him. “Later.”
“Okay then.” She walked past him slowly, heading to the end of the hall and another closed door. Looking back at him over her shoulder, she reluctantly acknowledged, “You were right before. I think I will need your help getting out of these clothes.”
In different circumstances, getting her undressed would have been Colt’s highest priority. But things were different now. They weren’t lovers. They were...what? Enemies? Maybe. Sure weren’t friends. Exes with children. He looked at Penny and saw misery in her eyes and it wasn’t hard to identify the reason. Couldn’t have been easy for her to admit to him that she needed help. Especially from him. Right now, things between them were strained so tight, the tension in the air between them flavored every breath.
And it wasn’t only the situation with the twins that had them each walking a fine line. It was the sexual chemistry still buzzing between them. But chemistry didn’t have to be acted on, did it? Nodding, he said, “Fine.”
His brain was busy, racing with too many thoughts to sort out, and that was just as well. If he kept his anger burning, he’d be able to ignore the rush of desire already pulsing inside him.
He followed Penny into her bedroom and took a second or two to look around. A full-size bed on one wall, bedside tables and a tall dresser. There were framed photos on the walls—hers, he was willing to bet—of the beach, parks and two smiling babies.
They were beautiful. Both of them. His heart gave an unexpected leap that staggered him. His children. Yes, he’d get a paternity test, but just looking at those two faces caught forever and trapped behind glass, he knew they were his. They looked like him. They each had the King black hair and blue eyes and he could see his own features replicated in miniature.
“They look like you,” she said softly.
His