Triple the Fun. Maureen Child

that it was her doing, and that wasn’t true at all.

      Over the years, whenever he had gone silent, Jackie had been the one to call and demand to know what was happening in his life. To say, Hello? You alive? But when she pulled back, he’d never said a word. He hadn’t called. He’d assumed that she was through with him and he let it go.

      Granted, friendships didn’t always last. Even the best of friends eventually hit a bump too big to navigate around and ended up drifting apart. But he hadn’t expected it to happen to him and Jackie. Now she was gone and he would never be able to talk to her again. To tell her he was sorry that he hadn’t called to find out what she was going through.

      “I don’t agree with what they did either,” Dina said softly, as if she knew what he was thinking.

      He shot her a look, bothered by the fact that she seemed to read him so easily. “They didn’t lie to you, though. They didn’t deliberately cut you out of their lives.”

      “No,” she said. “They didn’t. But Elena kept things from me, too. She never told me your name.”

      He sat up straighter, rested his forearms on his thighs and cradled his beer bottle between his palms. He’d been a secret all the way around. In spite of what Jackie had said to him in the beginning, they might as well have gone to a sperm bank, because he had become an anonymous donor anyway. He was DNA handily acquired and soon forgotten.

      There was a slap in the face as well as the heart. Damn it, why had Jackie done it? And why did he care? Whatever her reasons, they couldn’t make up for what his reality was now. Anger churned into a nasty brew inside him until it was hard to draw a breath and impossible to take another swallow of beer without choking on it.

      Connor needed some time to think. To plan. To gather the wildly racing thoughts circling his mind. Being here, with the kids, with the woman who was too much a distraction, wasn’t helping him lay out the immediate future.

      Connor liked knowing how things were going to play out. In the business he shared with Colt, Con was the guy who always thought two steps ahead. He laid out the path for their company to follow. He was the one who always knew what was coming next.

      Until now.

      Now he could only go with his gut. “I’ll be needing a paternity test.”

      She sucked in a gulp of air. “You really think that’s necessary?”

      “No,” he said shortly. Hell, all it had taken was one look at the triplets to convince him they were his. They weren’t identical, of course, but each of them had the distinctive King coloring. It was more than that, though. He’d felt a connection to those children right from the first and that was something he couldn’t deny.

      “My lawyers will want it,” he said, not liking having to explain himself.

      “Fine. Then what?”

      “Then,” he said, setting the beer onto the closest table before standing up, “we’ll do what comes next.”

      “And what’s that?” She stood, too, but kept her distance.

      “I’ll let you know.”

      “I think you mean we’ll decide what that is together.”

      He laughed shortly. “I meant what I said. Those triplets in there are mine. They’re Kings. I’ll do the deciding here.”

      Her cheeks flushed with color and he knew it wasn’t a blush but fury that fed the rosiness blooming across her face. “I’m their legal guardian,” she reminded him. “My sister and her wife wanted the babies in my care.”

      Con didn’t have the time or the patience to fight this battle right now. “And your sister and her wife hid my children’s existence from me. For all I know, you were in on it.”

      “I told you I wasn’t.”

      “And I should believe you.”

      She gulped in air. “Yeah, you should. Why would I lie?”

      “Why would Jackie?” he countered and when she didn’t have an answer for that, he nodded sharply. “Right. Anyway. I’ll want time with the triplets while things are being settled.”

      She nodded. “I thought you would.”

      “And I want the letter Jackie left for me.”

      Her features went stiff and cool, as if she were deliberately shutting off her emotions. He couldn’t blame her, because he wished to hell he could do the same. But everything he was feeling was too close to the surface. Too damn inflamed and sensitive to be buried—so instead he had to fight to push them aside.

      Without another word, Dina walked across the room to a small secretary table holding a cobalt-blue bowl of fresh flowers. Connor joined her and waited as she opened the top drawer, withdrew an envelope, then handed it to him. Once she had, she crossed her arms over her chest again in what was obviously a self-protective stance.

      Too bad she didn’t know that whenever she did it, all she really managed to do was hike her breasts up even higher, demanding his attention. Slowly, he lifted his gaze to meet hers.

      “Look,” she said, “we didn’t get off to the best start, but I think we can both agree that we want what’s best for the triplets.”

      Con looked from her to the envelope for a long minute, then tucked it carefully into his inside jacket pocket. He wasn’t going to read it here, with an audience.

      “We do agree on that much,” he allowed, then added, “but we might have different ideas as to what the best actually is.”

      “I guess we’ll have to work on that when the time comes, then.”

      “Yeah.” He had no intention of working things out. Those were his children, not hers. He would decide what was going to happen from here on out and she could either go along with it or not. Her choice. Still, for now, he would keep communications open between them. No point in making an enemy this early in the game.

      “I’m gonna go,” he said. “I’ll be in touch.”

      “What’s that mean?”

      Her question stopped him halfway across the room. He turned back to her. “It means, we’re not done. Not by a long shot.”

      * * *

      Over the next few days, Dina tried to keep the trips on the already shaky schedule she’d had going for the last three months. But it wasn’t easy, considering that Connor dropped in and out of their lives with no warning. He showed up for breakfast one morning, then went with them to a local lab where the tech took cheek swabs of each child to compare their DNA with Connor’s. It was ridiculous.

      He knew darn well those babies were his, so she wasn’t sure what he was up to with the paternity test. The next day, he didn’t show up until bath time and left as soon as the babies were put to bed. Today, he’d insisted on going to the park with them. Rather than let him have the triplets all to himself—because, really, he was very rich, and how did she know he wouldn’t just take them to his house and refuse to give them back—she went with them.

      Watching Connor interact with the triplets was endearing and irritating all at once. She had had to do a lot of adjusting when the babies had come into her life. But Connor seemed to be sailing through it. But it wasn’t only that she was bothered by. He was ignoring her completely.

      Not that she wanted his attention, because at this point it would only add to the confusion of the situation. But it was the principle of the thing, really. She might as well have been the babies’ sixty-year-old nanny for all the awareness he showed her. Just as well, she reminded herself sternly. Dina had deliberately kept her distance from men like Connor King for most of her life. She’d seen, up close and personal, just what a strong man could do to a woman.

      Her own mother had wasted her life