Double the Trouble. Maureen Child

the head with a two-by-four, himself.

      “You got married?” Connor pushed away from the doorjamb and stalked into the room. “And you didn’t bother to tell me?”

      “It lasted, like, a minute,” Colt said. Even now he couldn’t believe that he’d surrendered so deeply to the passion he’d found with Penny that he’d actually married her. He hadn’t said anything to Connor because he hadn’t even been able to explain to himself what he’d done.

      Shaking his head, he turned and looked out the window at the ocean beyond the glass. Surfers rode their boards toward shore. Tourists strolled along the beach, snapping pictures as they went, and farther out on the water, sailboats skimmed the surface, bright sails fluttering in the wind.

      The world was going on just as it always had. Everything looked completely normal. Nothing out of place. And yet...for him, nothing would ever be the same again.

      “Colt, it’s been nearly two years, and you never said a word?”

      He glanced over his shoulder at his twin. “Never could find a way to say it. Con, I still don’t know what the hell happened.” Shaking his head again, he huffed out a breath and tamped down the anger still rising within him. “I came home, got a divorce and figured it was done. No point in telling you about it when it was over.”

      “Can’t believe you were married.”

      “You and me both,” he muttered, and turned his gaze back to the ocean, hoping for the calm that sight usually brought him. This time it didn’t work. “I figured there was just nothing to tell.”

      “Yeah, well, you were wrong.”

      Understatement of the century.

      “Looks that way.” He had kids. Two of them. He could do the math, so he’d already worked out that they were eight months old. Eight months of their lives and he’d never even seen them. Never even guessed that they might exist. Cold fury rose up inside him again and he struggled to breathe past what felt like an iron band, tightening around his chest.

      It had been close to two years since he’d seen Penny—though he’d thought about her far more often than he wanted to admit, even to himself. But at the moment, it wasn’t memories driving him. Or the desire he’d once felt for her. It was cold fury, plain and simple. The kind of raw rage he’d never felt before. She’d kept his children from him and she’d done it deliberately. After all, it wasn’t like he was hard to find. He was a King, for God’s sake, and the Kings of California weren’t exactly low profile.

      “Fine. So what’re you gonna do?”

      Colt turned his back on the ocean and faced his twin. Steely determination fired his soul and filled his voice as he said, “I’m going to see my ex-wife. Then I’m going to get my kids.”

      * * *

      Every time she moved, Penny felt a swift stab of pain. That didn’t stop her from trying, though. Wincing, she shifted around carefully until she could reach the rollaway table that held her laptop. Swinging it around, she then scooted up higher on the bed, moving much more slowly than she wanted to.

      Penny was more accustomed to moving through life at top speed. She had a business and a home and two babies to care for, so hurrying was the only way she could keep up. Being forced to lie still in a hospital bed she couldn’t afford was making her a little crazy.

      Every moment she was stuck here was another dollar sign ticking up on the bill she would soon be handed. Every moment here, her babies were without her. And though Penny trusted her younger brother and his fiancée, Maria, completely, she missed the twins desperately. Since she worked out of her home, she was with them all the time. Being away from them made her feel as if she were missing a limb.

      She reached out to pull the rolling table closer and gasped at the quick stab of pain slicing through her. “Ow!”

      “You probably should lie still.”

      “Oh, God.” Penny froze, hardly daring to breathe. She knew that voice. Heard it every night in her dreams. Clutching the edge of the table, only her eyes moved, tracking to the doorway where he stood. Colton King. The father of her children, the star of every one of her fantasies, her ex-husband and absolutely the last man on earth she wanted to see.

      “Surprised?” he asked.

      That word really didn’t cover what she was feeling. “You could say that.”

      “Well then,” he snapped, “you have some idea of how I feel.”

      Robert, she thought grimly. She was going to have to kill her little brother. Sure, she’d practically raised him and she loved him dearly. But for going to Colton and ratting her out, Robert had to pay. But dealing with her brother could come later. At the moment, she had to find a way to deal with her past.

      “What’re you doing here?”

      He walked slowly into the room, his long legs crossing the linoleum-covered floor in a few easy strides. He moved almost lazily, but Penny wasn’t fooled. She could feel the tension radiating off of him in thick waves and she braced herself for the confrontation that had been almost two years in the making.

      His hands were tucked into the pockets of his black jeans. His thick-soled boots hardly made a whisper of sound as he moved. His black hair was a little too long, curling around the collar of his bloodred pullover shirt. But it was his eyes that held her. That mesmerized her as they had nearly two years ago.

      They were the pale blue of an icy sky, fringed by lashes so thick and black any woman would have killed to have them. And right now, those cold eyes were fixed on her.

      He was still the sexiest man she’d ever met. Still had that air about him that drew women to him like metal shavings to a magnet. Still made her want to throw both herself and a rock at him.

      “Robert came to see me,” he said lightly, as if it didn’t mean a thing. But she knew better. Yes, they’d only been together for a week almost two years ago, but in those two years, Penny had relived every moment with him hundreds of times. At first, she had tried to forget him, because remembering only brought pain.

      But then she’d found herself pregnant, and forgetting was impossible. So instead, she’d reveled in her memories. Kept them fresh and alive by mentally deconstructing every conversation, examining every moment spent with him. She knew the tone of his voice. Knew the feel of his skin, the taste of his lips.

      And she knew, just by looking at him now, he was angry.

      Well then, they were a match. She didn’t want him here. Didn’t need him here. Penny took a deep breath and braced for the coming storm.

      He stopped at the foot of her hospital bed and met her gaze with a steely stare. “So,” he said. “What’s new?”

      Anger flashed in those cool blue eyes and a muscle in his jaw ticked spasmodically. One glance down to where his hands were closed over the footboard showed that his knuckles were white with the force of his grip.

      “Robert had no right to go to you.” Her fingers tugged at the thin green blanket covering her.

      Her brother had been after her since before the twins were born to go to Colt and tell him the truth. But she’d had her reasons for keeping her secret and nothing had changed. Well, nothing but for the fact that her little brother had turned traitor.

      “Well,” he said on a sharp, short laugh. “You’re right about that, anyway. You should have told me.”

      Ice coated his words as well as his eyes. No doubt he was waiting for her to quiver and shrivel up beneath his hard gaze. Well, Penny refused to back down or to feel guilty about her decision. When she’d first discovered she was pregnant, she’d gone around and around in her mind, trying to figure out the best course of action.

      She had argued with herself for weeks over what was the right thing to do. Yes, she might have had an easier time of it the last couple of years if she had gone