Maureen Child - Double the Trouble

She knew exactly what he meant. “Their last name is Oaks.”

His mouth flattened into a grim line and it looked to Penny as if he were counting to ten. Slowly. “That’ll change.”

Panic shot through her, riding a lightning bolt of anger. “You think you can take over and change their names? No. You can’t just walk back into my life and try to decide what’s best for my children.”

“Why the hell not?” he countered coldly. “You made that decision for me nearly two years ago.”

“Colt—”

“Did you bother to list me as the father on their birth certificates?”

“Of course I did.” Her twins had the right to know who their father was. And she would have told them...eventually.

“That’s something at least,” he muttered. “I’ll have my lawyers take care of the legal name change.”

“Excuse me?” She struggled to push herself upright and gasped as another sharp stab of pain hit in her abdomen. Breathless, she dropped back against her pillows.

He was at the side of the bed in an instant. “Are you all right? Do you need a nurse?”

“I’m fine,” she lied tightly as the pain began to ebb into a just barely tolerable ache. “And no, I don’t need a nurse.” She needed pain medication. Privacy so she could cry. An eight-ounce glass of wine. “What I need is for you to leave.”

“Not gonna happen,” he told her.

She closed her eyes and muttered, “I could kill Robert for this.”

“Yeah,” Colt countered. “Someone finally being honest with me. There’s a crime.”

Her gaze snapped back to his. He was studying her as he would a bug under a microscope. Damn it, couldn’t he have gotten fat in the last couple of years? Lost his hair? Something? Why did he still have to be the most gorgeous man she’d ever met? And wouldn’t you just know that she’d have the conversation she had been dreading for nearly two years while trapped in a hospital bed? Wearing a god-awful gown? She was in pain, she was hungry because hospital food was appalling and God knew what her hair looked like.

Oh, that’s good. Be worried about how you look, Penny.

Hard not to worry about it though, she told herself glumly. Especially when Colton King was standing right in front of her looking even better than he had two years ago. He’d taken her breath away the first time she’d seen him and apparently he had the same effect on her today.

“So when do you get out of here?” he asked, shattering her thoughts.

“Tomorrow probably.” And she couldn’t wait. Yes, she was in pain but she hated being in the hospital. She missed her babies. Plus, Penny didn’t like having to ask Robert and Maria to watch her children. They had enough going on, with their wedding only a few weeks away.

In hindsight, she should have known that Robert would go to Colt. Should have guessed that her brother, thinking he was doing the right thing, would betray her secrets to the one man who should never have found out the truth. Oh, she was going to have plenty to say to her little brother once she was released from this antiseptic prison.

“Fine, then,” Colt said flatly. “We’ll continue this discussion once you’re home.”

Well, that caught her attention.

“No, we won’t. This conversation is over, Colt.”

“Not by a long shot.” He stared down at her until Penny twitched uneasily, and then he warned, “You’ve got a hell of a lot of explaining to do.”

“I don’t owe you anything.” But those words sounded hollow even to her.

She’d kept a huge secret from him and she’d done it deliberately. She knew that anyone standing on the outside of this relationship would call her some really descriptive names. But they wouldn’t know why she’d done it. She hadn’t even told Robert everything. Penny’d had reasons for her decisions and they were good ones. Ones she wouldn’t regret, even while staring up into the cool blue eyes that still haunted her dreams.

He was angry and he had the right. But she’d had the right to do what she’d thought best for her children. And she wouldn’t start second-guessing herself now.

“You’re wrong about that,” he told her softly, but the gentle tone of his voice did nothing to hide the fury crouched inside him.

A nurse bustled into the room, all business. “I’m sorry, you’ll have to wait outside while I examine Ms. Oaks.”

Penny’s gaze never left Colt’s and for a second or two, she thought he would argue, refuse to leave. Then he took a step back and nodded.

“Fine. I’ll be back tomorrow to pick you up.”

Panic shot through her. “Not necessary. Robert will pick me up.”

The nurse was hovering and Penny could feel her gaze moving back and forth between the two of them.

“We don’t need Robert’s help. I’ll be here in the morning.”

“Oh,” the nurse piped up, “she probably won’t be released until early afternoon.”

Colt paid no attention. “I’ll be here tomorrow.”

Then he stalked out of the room and didn’t look back. Penny knew because she watched him go and continued to stare at the empty doorway long after the sound of his footsteps had faded.

“Wow,” the nurse murmured. “Is that your husband?”

“No,” Penny said. “He’s—” What? A friend? An enemy? The father of her children? Her past come back to wreak havoc with her present? Since she couldn’t say any of that, she said only, “He’s my ex.”

The nurse sighed. “Wow, can’t believe you let that one get away.”

It wasn’t as if she’d had a choice. Still, to avoid more conversation, Penny closed her eyes and let the nurse get on with the examination.

But her mind wouldn’t stop. Thoughts of Colt jammed up in her brain until all she could see were his eyes. Cold. Icy. Fixed.

And furious enough to make Penny wish tomorrow were years away.

Two

He didn’t go to see his twins.

He wasn’t up for that just yet.

Colt didn’t want his children’s first subconscious memory of their father to be of him furious.

So instead, he went to the beach. He needed to burn off some of the fury pumping through him. But the calm waves at Laguna weren’t going to be enough to soothe the temper riding him. What he needed for that was blood-pumping action with a thread of danger. Enough to make his adrenaline high enough to swamp the anger chewing at him.

In Newport Beach, the Wedge was just at the end of the Balboa Peninsula and the waves there could reach thirty feet or more. Because of some “improvements” to the jetty in Newport Harbor sometime in the thirties, the waves here were highly unpredictable. One wave combined with another and then still another until the resulting wave was higher than anywhere else on the coast. Best part was, no two waves were alike, and where they would break was anybody’s guess. Inexperienced surfers avoided the Wedge if they had any brains. As for Colt and the handful of other surfers out on this cold, autumn day...

The danger added to the fun.

Usually, anyway. Today, as he took wave after wave, riding the crest, being tossed into the sea and coming up in a froth of foam, his mind was too distracted to enjoy the rush. Images of Penny flashed through his mind on a continual loop. Visions of babies were there, too. Crying, laughing, sleeping. He couldn’t clear his brain of the thoughts plaguing him, so he pushed himself harder, hoping for clarity. It didn’t come though, and after a few hours in the punishing tempest of the sea, Colt had had enough. He dragged his board onto the sand and flopped down onto it.

Wrapping his arms around his knees, he stared out at the water and tried to make sense of what had happened that day. He’d never expected to see Penny Oaks again. Colt scrubbed one hand across his face and let himself remember her, lying in that hospital bed.