Her Colton P.i.. Amelia Autin

when she’d shown up at the McCays’ house shaken and trembling to pick up the twins, she’d sensed the McCays’ surprise...that she was still alive. And she’d known in that instant they were trying to kill her.

      In the way of dreams, Holly suddenly found herself at the Rosewood Rooming House with Chris. He was holding her, but not the way he had in real life. This time his strong arms were surrounding her in comforting fashion as he pressed her head against the solid wall of his oh-so-warm chest and promised her she was safe. “I won’t let them hurt you,” he said, referring to her in-laws. “And I won’t let them get custody of Ian and Jamie.”

      The sense of relief she felt was incredible, and all out of proportion to her real life. Holly didn’t subscribe to the theory that a woman couldn’t take care of herself, that she needed a man to look after her. She was a software engineer, for goodness’ sake! She’d supported herself after her missionary parents had been killed in one of their trips to South America—leaving very little in the way of life insurance—and had put herself through college. After graduation she’d held down a challenging job for NASA at the Johnson Space Center in Clear Lake City, Texas, before she’d taken maternity leave when the twins were born. She didn’t need “rescuing” from her life...as a general rule.

      But that was before the McCays had tried to kill her. The situation she found herself in now was so totally outside her experience, so much like one of the thrillers Grant had loved to read but that Holly had always avoided, that she recognized she couldn’t do it all on her own. Single mother? Check. Guardian of her children’s financial future? Check. Putting attempted murderers behind bars? Not so much.

      Maybe that was why when Chris had held Holly in the shelter of his arms in her dream and promised she and the boys were safe, she’d believed him...because she wanted to believe him. Because she needed to believe him.

      Then he’d kissed her.

      No one had ever kissed her that way, with an intensity that shattered everything she’d thought she knew about men and women. Chris’s kiss exploded through her body, as if she were gunpowder and he were a lighted match. He was hard everywhere she was soft, and it made her want to get closer...impossibly closer. Her nipples tightened and her insides melted as Chris tilted her head back and his lips trailed down, down, to brush against the incredibly sensitive hollow of her throat. Then lower.

      Holly moaned in her sleep and curled onto her side, pressing her legs together against the throbbing she felt there. And the dream suddenly vanished.

      * * *

      She woke to the mouthwatering aroma of baked chicken, Ian and Jamie’s chorus of “Ma-ma-ma-ma-ma” as they stood and banged on the sides of their cribs to get her attention and the guilty memory of Chris’s dream kiss. Not the kiss so much as her reaction to it, she acknowledged as a flush of warmth swept through her body. As if...

      A tap on the door frame drew her attention, and there stood Chris in the doorway, almost as if she’d dreamed him into existence. Holly quickly hid her face with her hands and rubbed at her eyes, pretending she needed to wake up that way. She didn’t—she just didn’t want Chris to see her flaming cheeks.

      “Dinner’s ready” was all Chris said, and as he walked farther into the room, Holly scrambled off the bed. “I’ll take Ian for you,” he said, lifting the older of the twins—older by three minutes—out of his crib.

      “How do you know that’s Ian?” she asked, moving to grab Jamie. “They’re identical. Most people can’t tell the difference. Peg can, but it took her a week.”

      The intimate smile Chris gave her curled her toes. “Ian looks up when he sees me. Jamie looks away.”

      “That’s it? That’s how you can tell them apart?”

      “Well...that and the fact that Ian’s ears stick out just a little more than Jamie’s, and Jamie’s hair is just a shade lighter than Ian’s.”

      Holly stopped short, glancing from the toddler in Chris’s arms to the one in her own arms. “You’re right,” she said after a minute. “I never realized about the ears...but you’re right.”

      “So how do you tell them apart? Motherly instinct?”

      She adjusted Jamie to balance him against her hip and popped a kiss on his rosebud mouth. “I can’t really tell you,” she confessed. “I just know.”

      Chris nodded as if she’d given him the answer he expected. “Motherly instinct,” he repeated, but this time it wasn’t a question. He turned toward the doorway. “Come on, dinner will be getting cold.”

      “I was going to make dinner,” she protested as she followed Chris into the kitchen, feeling guilty.

      “You were fast asleep every time I came to check on you, and I didn’t have the heart to wake you.” Chris settled Ian in one of the two high chairs he’d pulled up beside the kitchen table and strapped him in. “Hang tight, buddy,” he told the boy as Ian began banging on the tray and shouting, “Din-din-din-din-din!”

      Jamie took up the chant as Holly got him settled. “Sorry,” she told Chris over the boys’ urgent demands. “I usually feed them a little earlier. I must have been more exhausted than I thought.”

      “Adrenaline will do that to you,” Chris said as he grabbed two child-sized plates that were sitting in the microwave, added the baby cutlery she’d used at lunch from the rack on the drain board—he must have washed the lunch dishes, Holly realized with another little dart of guilt—and whisked the plates in front of Ian and Jamie. Baked chicken, cut into baby-sized bites, sat next to miniature mounds of mashed potatoes. Peas with a tiny dollop of melted butter rounded out the servings.

      “Are you sure you’re not a nanny in disguise?” Holly joked as the twins’ eyes lit up and they dug in, soon making a mess out of feeding themselves. “How do you know—”

      “Don’t even think about finishing that sentence,” Chris told her in a stern voice, but the twinkle in his eyes gave the lie to his tone. “I’m the second oldest of seven. That many kids in a family—you need a lot of hands to get all the work done. My twin sister, Annabel, and I used to help Mama with the younger kids, especially my baby sister, Josie.”

      He turned away to take the rest of the chicken out of the oven, but not before Holly saw a troubled expression slide over his face. More land mines, she warned herself. He doesn’t want to talk about his childhood. That made sense given what he’d told her this morning—that his father was a notorious serial killer who’d killed Chris’s mother, too.

      She cast about in her mind for a safe topic of conversation as she filled a plate for herself from the chicken pan and the pots on the stove, and Chris filled Wally’s bowl with fresh water. “I didn’t realize you’re a twin,” she said as she seated herself at the table.

      Chris started to respond, but Holly leaned over to Jamie, who was rolling his peas across his high-chair tray and then smashing them flat with the tip of one chubby pointer finger. “You’re going to eat those, mister,” she told him in a no-nonsense voice. “So you just peel them up and pop them into your mouth.” She waited until Jamie obediently scooped up two peas and ate them before she glanced up at Chris. “Sorry. It’s a constant battle with boys this young. They want to feed themselves, but... What were you going to say?”

      “I was just about to say that yeah, I’m a twin myself. Not identical, of course, but there is an unbreakable bond.”

      “I’ve seen that with Ian and Jamie already.”

      “Not surprised. It starts early.”

      “What does your sister do? Is she a PI like you?”

      Chris shook his head. “She’s a cop.” He hesitated. “My brothers and I—we didn’t want that for her. I know it’s chauvinistic in this day and age, but this is Texas. We wanted her to be safe, you know? I had a big argument about it with her. And—” he had the grace to look ashamed “—none of us except