Teresa Carpenter – Twin Ties, Twin Joys: The Boss's Double Trouble Twins / Twins for a Christmas Bride / Baby Twins: Parents Needed (страница 8)

“You’ve got babies?” He said it as though he was sure there had to be some sensible answer to this puzzle, hopefully one he could accept.

“Bring them out, Darcy,” Mimi was urging. “Let Mitch see them.”

She licked her dry lips. This was not the right way to do it. “Uh, they’re sleeping.”

“Already?” Mimi looked skeptical. “You just put them in there. How did you get them to sleep so fast?”

“Magic powers?” she quipped, still hanging on to her last shred of hope.

The sound of a crash came from the bedroom, and hope was gone.

“Noisy sleepers,” Mitch said dryly, his steel-colored eyes penetrating. “I’m guessing your powers aren’t quite what you thought they were.”

Darcy managed a tremulous smile, then turned on her heel and headed for the bedroom to see what had happened. Mimi and Mitch were close behind her. There was no way to stop this now. He was going to see the boys. And what was he going to see when he looked into their blue eyes, so like his own? Was he going to recognize parts of himself staring back at him? And if he did, what was he going to do about it? Apprehension shivered through her.

She opened the bedroom door to reveal a scene of minor chaos. Somehow, Sammy had gotten out of the crib and made his way to the changing table, which he had tried to climb, knocking down the baby powder, which landed on his head. There he sat on the floor, covered with powder and grinning broadly, very pleased with himself. Meanwhile Sean sat in his own crib, looking through the bars at his brother and laughing with a silly hiccuping sound. Sammy tried to clap his hands. He missed, but he did manage to send up a cloud of baby powder, making Sean laugh even harder.

“He climbed out!” Darcy cried, looking at the extra-high bars she’d paid extra for. “How did he do that?”

“Oh my,” Mimi said, shaking her head. “How could one little boy do so much damage in such a short time?”

It took a few moments and Mimi’s help to get things back in order. Darcy murmured a few stern words, then a few more soft reassurances to Sammy as she cleaned him up and then safely installed him back in bed. In the meantime she’d forgotten all about Mitch standing there, watching it all, until she turned and saw him leaning against the doorjamb.

Meeting his gaze, she tried to read what he was thinking from the look in his eyes, but his gaze was hard, hooded. She deliberately lifted her chin. She was proud of these little guys and she wanted to show that.

“Mitch, this is Sammy and this is Sean. My boys.” She made a flourish and waited to see what he would say.

Mitch was numb. This changed everything. Darcy had children. Twin boys. And they looked way too familiar for comfort.

His first thought was that these must be Jimmy’s children. After all, Darcy was living here with Jimmy’s mother. It seemed logical. But there was a problem with that theory. He couldn’t remember exactly what color eyes Jimmy had, but he was pretty sure they weren’t blue. Darcy had eyes that flashed almost ebony. And these little boys had the bluest eyes he’d ever seen—outside of his own baby pictures. In fact, these babies could have been stand-ins for him and his brother.

He turned and looked at Darcy. She looked at him. There was an air of defiance in her face. He felt like he couldn’t pull a breath in all the way.

“We need to talk,” he said softly.

She nodded.

“Why didn’t you want me to know?” he asked her bluntly as soon as they were far enough away from the house to speak freely.

Biting her lip she kept her head down. They were walking between two houses, heading for the open area of scrub pine that lined the canyon that ran just north of the neighborhood. Mimi had agreed to watch the babies for a while, to give them time to take a walk.

“I was going to tell you tomorrow, when we went for coffee,” she said, wishing it didn’t sound like an excuse.

He shook his head, rejecting her statement. “I don’t know, Darcy. You weren’t acting like someone who wanted to come clean.” There was a real flash of anger in his voice. “You don’t contact me for two years. You move to the place you know I’ve sworn I’ll never go to again. When I show up, you act cagey.” He turned to face her. His eyes were troubled and the muscles of his neck stood out like cords. “I don’t buy it. You didn’t want me to know.”

She stopped and stared up at him, mouth open with astonishment. “What are you talking about? You’re the one who stepped out into a crowd in Paris and never looked back. You might as well have stepped off the face of the earth. You certainly disappeared from my life without a second thought. I … I tried for months to find you.”

She paused to steady her voice. She wasn’t going to let emotions take over and the last thing in the world she wanted to do was cry.

“That had to be a very deliberate disappearing act to let you vanish so completely,” she pointed out.

“You knew where I was going.”

“Oh sure. Brazil.” She threw up her hands and started walking again, mostly so she wouldn’t have to look into his eyes. “It’s a big country. But I suppose I could have called up the Brazilian phone company and asked to be connected to that tall, handsome American who went by various names but might have entered the country as Mitch Carver.” She flashed a scathing look over her shoulder. “I’m sure they would have found you right away.”

He sighed, shoving his hands down into his pockets. “Okay, I guess I wasn’t the easiest person to find at the time,” he admitted gruffly, his long stride keeping pace with her quick steps. “But you knew the kind of work I do. You knew I was going to be melting into other cultures. I told you what my life was like.”

“You did. And that’s fine. I can understand that.”

She could understand it on a certain level. But she couldn’t forgive the fact that he hadn’t felt the need to contact her in any way. Had he forgotten her the moment he’d stepped on the plane? Had the time they spent together, time that had changed her life for good, been so meaningless to him? Was she just another woman in a string of affairs? Her heart cracked when she thought that way.

“I understand that you can’t be tied down,” she was saying. “I never really expected that of you. Not while I was sane, at any rate,” she added, letting a note of sarcasm creep into her tone. “And I don’t expect it now.”

He swore softly, shaking his head. “What I don’t get is, what made you so sure …?”

“That they’re yours?” She swung around to face him, her eyes glittering. “I can’t believe you could ask such a thing!”

He stared at her. “Darcy, I didn’t ask it. I can see they’re mine. You don’t have to prove anything to me.”

“Oh. Well, good.” Her cheeks filled with color and heat, but the relief that also filled her blotted out any embarrassment. She hadn’t really let herself formulate the fear, but now she knew she’d been dreading that he would want explanations and promises. And if he had demanded those things, she was ready to hate him.

As if that were possible.

Well, anyway, she’d been planning to be really, really angry. Only now, she didn’t have to be. That left her with an empty space inside, but it quickly filled up with more yearning. She just couldn’t help it. Even when she was angry with him, she couldn’t turn off the feelings that surged in her when she looked at him.

They reached the edge of the canyon and both stopped, looking down at the sharp drop off into wild brush. Mitch’s mind went back for a moment to when he and Jimmy had spent hours in all that wilderness as boys, losing themselves in adventure fantasies. He hadn’t realized at the time that he would grow up to live some of those playacting scenes out in real life. He kicked at a rock and listened as it skittered down the side of the canyon, until it got lost in the underbrush.

“I guess we weren’t as careful as we should have been, were we?” he mused, remembering that for the short amount of time they’d spent together, there had been an awful lot of chances to forget to be careful. Once they’d begun, they’d both been insatiable—probably because they knew they had so little time. What else could have made them so crazy?

“So what now?” he asked gruffly. “Do we get married, or what?” “Oh!”

She let the small word out with so much outrage, he looked up in surprise. He was only trying to figure out what was expected in situations like this. He’d never been here before. Was he supposed to know everything?

“I wouldn’t marry you if you were …” She clamped her lips shut, cutting off the cliché, but they both knew it by heart. She took a deep breath. “Let me put it this way,” she said more carefully. “There are men who are fathers, and there are men who are biological donors.” She glared at him. “We’ll just put you into the latter category, okay? You’ve made your most important contribution. Now all we need from you is health information and maybe an occasional financial donation. And that, only when absolutely necessary.”

He frowned. He didn’t like the way she was putting things, but right now, he hadn’t thought the situation through well enough to know what he wanted to say in rebuttal. Still, he did know he didn’t want to shirk his duty in any way.