Stella Bagwell - The Tycoon's Tots

Her gaze didn’t waver as she met his cool gray eyes. “The twins are home, Mr. Sanders. Like I said earlier, they’re Murdocks, and the Bar M has been our home for more than thirty years.”

She’d already told him her intention of adopting the twins, so it hardly surprised Wyatt to hear her calling this ranch their rightful home. But he had other ideas. The quicker Ms. Chloe Murdock realized that the better off they’d all be.

“I think you’re forgetting the babies are half Sanders.”

Like a mammy dog guarding her litter, Chloe stood her ground. “Excuse me, but your sister’s name was Waller, not Sanders.”

He grimaced as though Chloe’s point had little consequence on the matter. “She was married and divorced several years ago. But by any name, her babies are my niece and nephew.”

“And they’re my half brother and sister. I think even you can admit that.”

Groaning, Kitty reached for a nearby chair and wilted into it.

Wyatt turned his gaze back to the twins who were busily concentrating on eating graham crackers. Soggy crumbs dotted their bibs and cheeks and clung to their fingers in gooey clumps. They seemed perfectly contented and their sweet, intelligent faces went straight to Wyatt’s heart.

“How old are they?” he asked.

“Ten months,” she answered, then volunteered. “They can crawl and pull up now.”

Fascinated by the sight of them, Wyatt walked over and hunkered down to their level. The babies weren’t exactly identical, but close to it. They both had green eyes, chubby round faces and dimpled cheeks. The girl’s hair was a bright red cap of curls while the boy’s was the very same dark auburn as Chloe Murdock’s.

Even to him, it was plain to see they were her brother and sister. Wyatt couldn’t deny that. Yet they were a part of him, too. He couldn’t forget or dismiss that fact.

“Hello, you two,” he said, suddenly feeling awkward and foolishly emotional. “I’m your Uncle Wyatt.”

The sound of his voice caught the twins’ attention and both children stopped their chewing to give him a closer look.

“We named them Adam and Anna,” Chloe said as she came up behind the three of them.

He looked over his shoulder at her. “That isn’t what my sister named them?”

“No. For a long time we had no idea who they belonged to or what their names were. So we named them ourselves.”

One dark brow arched at her. “Don’t you think you were being rather presumptuous?”

Fury washed through Chloe but she tried her best to squash it down. “And don’t you think these two little darlings deserved something better than Baby Boy or Baby Girl? Don’t you think they deserved better than to be left in a laundry basket on a porch? There was no one around when your sister dumped them and to this day we still don’t know how long they had been there before my sister Justine found them. Apparently Belinda had no idea that a coyote or anything could have dragged them off and killed them. Or maybe she did,” Chloe couldn’t help adding.

Wyatt straightened to his full height and looked at her through narrow gray eyes. “Whatever my sister was, she wasn’t a murderer.”

“I don’t think you really know what your sister was,” she said flatly. “But that’s beside the point now. The babies are mine. You’ll not take them from this ranch.”

“Chloe, perhaps—” Kitty began only to have her niece wave a quieting hand at her.

“What makes you think you have a right to them?” Wyatt asked coolly.

“What makes you think you do?” she countered.

Wyatt glanced down at the babies, then turned his attention to the room they were in. It wasn’t anything like the spotless kitchen in his Houston condominium. There were pots and pans hanging on one wall, plants lining every available windowsill, and dirty dishes stacked on the table and cabinet counter. Something resembling pinto beans had boiled over on the cookstove and dripped down over the control knobs. In one corner an ironing board was piled with clothes. Whether they were clean or not, Wyatt couldn’t tell.

“I think the twins deserve a better life than this,” he said bluntly.

Ladies didn’t resort to physical violence be damned, Chloe thought, as she stepped up and jabbed her finger hard in the middle of Wyatt Sanders’s chest.

“And I think you wouldn’t know a better life if it reached up and bit you in the butt!”

Momentarily stunned by her unexpected response, Wyatt could only stare at her. She wasn’t only sexy, she was the wildest little thing he’d ever come across.

“And if you think this place is so bad,” she went on, “I suggest you leave. Now! Before I call the sheriff.”

Kitty gasped. “Chloe! There’s no need to call Roy. Mr. Sanders is—”

“Who’s Roy?” Wyatt asked, seemingly unruffled by her threat.

“The sheriff.”

“My brother-in-law.”

The two women spoke at once, but Wyatt managed to decipher the message. It irked him that she wanted to drag the law into this, even if the sheriff was her family. But it didn’t surprise him. Chloe Murdock didn’t appear to be a woman who’d give up or give in without a fight.

Before he could say anything, Anna began to whine and fuss. Wyatt instinctively turned toward the baby, but Chloe instantly leapt between them.

“Don’t you dare touch her!” she hissed at him, then lifted the little girl into her arms.

With a glare as cold as gray granite, Wyatt pulled a pen and small business card from a pocket inside his jacket, then quickly wrote something across the back.

“This is where I’ll be staying,” he said flatly. “When you decide to calm down, maybe we can talk about this sensibly.”

Calm down? She wanted to leave her handprint along the side of his face!

“I really doubt I’ll ever get the urge to talk to you, Mr. Sanders, so you might as well go back to Houston and play oilman.”

“We’ll see, Ms. Murdock,” he said, then turned and walked out the same door she’d brought him through earlier.

Once he was truly out of sight, Chloe glanced at her stricken aunt, then still holding Anna, raced out of the kitchen.

“Chloe!”

Kitty jumped from her chair and grabbing Adam hurried after her niece. She found her in the living room peering out the long paned windows which overlooked the front yard.

“What are you doing?”

Clutching Anna even tighter, Chloe watched the expensive dark blue car pull away from the house and head down the drive. “Making sure that—man is gone!”

“He’ll be back, Chloe,” Kitty said grimly. “You might as well get ready for it. Didn’t you notice how cool he was? I got the impression he’s here for the long haul.”

Chloe turned away from the windows, and for the first time since Wyatt Sanders had announced his intentions, she allowed the fear she was feeling to show on her face. “Dear God, what are we going to do, Aunt Kitty? There isn’t any way Wyatt Sanders can take the babies, is there?”

In a weary daze, Kitty sank onto the couch and wiped a hand across her forehead. “I have no idea, Chloe. Custody rights are very unpredictable nowadays.”

Chloe looked down at Anna’s sweet face. She couldn’t imagine her life without the babies. She refused to even try.

“Maybe you should call the lawyer who’s handling your adoption proceedings.”

Chloe set Anna on the tiled floor and the little girl immediately crawled over to the couch and pulled up beside her aunt’s knee.

“I’ll call him right now.” She snatched up the phone book, quickly searched for the number, then punched it through. After a few brief words with a secretary, she hung up. “He’s out of town and won’t be back for another week or more.”