Hot Picks: Secrets And Lies. Dani Collins

for expecting things of me, you expected me to behave badly and set me up to do so.” He pushed his hands into his pockets. “How long did you think you could hide this? I can see if you had a single baby, you might have convinced the press it was someone else’s, maybe pretended your infidelity was the reason we broke up. But twins? Of course they’ll assume they’re mine and go stark raving mad! How did that even happen?” He tried to wrap his brain around it. “Are they identical? Do you know?”

      “One placenta,” she said with a bemused shrug. “I realize it’s like your family has been struck by lightning three times. I’m buying lotto tickets, but I’m told that’s not how it works…”

      Her joke fell flat.

      She had finished her sandwich and was nursing her tea, brow furrowed in contemplation. He always had an urge to kiss that little wrinkle in her brow when she looked like that. She always tsk-tsked at him when he did, complaining it broke her train of thought.

      Because he invariably wound up kissing her mouth next, and that led to making love.

      That’s probably why he liked to kiss her brow.

      Could they make love? What the hell was wrong with him that that was all he could think about as he faced such a daunting prospect? Escape, he supposed. Making love with Cinnia had always provided him with a sense of peace to balance the rapid juggling of priorities that was the rest of his life.

      She rubbed between her brows with two fingers, like tension sat there.

      “I knew I’d have to tell you,” she mumbled in a disheartened tone. “I was putting it off because I know what you’re going to say, and…” She dropped her hand and said firmly, “I don’t want to marry you.”

      In his lifetime, there were a handful of words that had gone through him like bullets. Trella’s been taken. Your father is gone. Now, I don’t want to marry you.

      He’d been trying to ignore what she’d said earlier about wanting children with the man she loved. He had been fairly convinced she was in love with him, even though she’d never said the words. Then she had left him.

      Today, all that rage she’d aimed at him? His brain told him that came from a scorned heart. He had scorned her. Bye-bye, Cinnia. Yes, he had let her go without a fight. What was he supposed to have done? Denied her the family she had told him from the beginning that she wanted? If she had been telling the truth on her way out the door, and really had wanted to run off and find Mr. Right, to make a family with that unknown man, Henri had been honor bound to let her.

      She hadn’t been telling the truth, though. She’d been testing him.

      He’d failed, obviously.

      Had his rejection killed whatever she had felt?

      He pinched the bridge of his nose. It didn’t matter.

      “You still have to do it,” he informed her.

      “No. I—”

      “Cinnia,” he interrupted, unequivocal. “I will accommodate your career if you want to keep working. Dorry can be our nanny. I will give you just about anything you ask of me, but you know that you are coming with me today. Our children must be protected. You know I won’t negotiate on this.”

      “No.”

      Cinnia had never been a pushover, something he had always admired in her, but Henri had written the book on how to get your way. He didn’t bother saying anything, only gave her a look that warned she was wasting both their time.

      “Divorced people raise children apart. If you want to amp up my security, that’s your prerogative, but I’m handling things just fine.”

      “Are you?” He scratched his cheek and glanced toward the draped window. “Shall I open those curtains and we’ll see how well you’re keeping the world at bay?”

      “Oh, you didn’t drag a swarm of those buzzards here, did you?”

      He could have taken steps to lose the cameras they’d picked up at the airport, but he’d been too intent on getting here. “You know what my life is like.”

      “I do!” she asserted with a crack in her voice as the words burst out of her. “And I put up with your guards and all the awful trolls who post those nasty things and I never made a peep because it was my choice to be with you. I could have walked away anytime if I didn’t like it. And I did! So don’t ask me to sign up for a lifetime of it. Don’t try to make me.”

      His fuse, the one that had slowly been burning down since Killian had set a match to it, reached powder.

      “Do you honestly think either of us has a choice?” He managed to keep his voice under a roar, but it was fierce with the bitter vehemence he normally kept pent up. “Don’t tell me how hard it is to live under such attention. I know, damn you.”

      She sat back, intimidated by his muted explosion, but he couldn’t contain it. Not if she was going to throw it in his face as the reason she didn’t want to marry him. Damn it, she would understand, if nothing else, that it wasn’t just a nuisance, but a life-threatening menace.

      “Trella wasn’t kidnapped because we’re rich. We were valuable because we’d been portrayed as a national treasure. I didn’t sign up for that. None of us did! And did they have the decency to give us privacy after she was rescued? Hell, no! It was worse!”

      He thought of all the ugly conjecture that had followed them for years.

      “They pushed her into a breakdown and I swear they caused my father’s death. He might have withstood nearly losing his child, but trying to keep us out of that microscope? There was no pity for the pressure he was under! If he showed signs of cracking, they turned it higher. I know.” He smacked his hand into his chest. “I stepped into his shoes. The corporation is enough for any man and then to be worried sick for the rest of your life that another attempt would be made? All because those vipers insist on making us into demigods?”

      He threw an accusatory point at the closed curtain, vainly wishing, yearning, for the ability to incinerate every camera on earth.

      “I hate them. I bloody well hate them. They’re vile and they set us up to be victimized in every way—by trolls, by opportunists, by criminals who want to steal a child for profit.”

      He ran his hand down his face, trying not to think of such a thing happening to his child. He pointed a railing finger at her.

      “You have no idea what they’re really capable of. And you definitely don’t have the resources to hold them at a decent distance. So, no. Do not think for a minute that I will leave it to you to ‘handle’ security. I can’t even say I will take the babies and let you live your life away from us because you are part of this now, like it or not. So you will come to Paris with me and I will handle security.”

      At some point she had pulled a cushion across her chest and had drawn her knees up, buffering herself against his outburst.

      He pushed his fingers through his hair, scratching at his tight scalp, feeling like a bully now that the worst of his temper was spent, but—

      “This was why I didn’t want children. This is how I knew it would be.” He was defeated by circumstance. “But we’re here now, so we’ll do what we must. You’ll marry me.”

      “No,” she said in a husk of a voice, lips white.

      He drew in a tested breath, frustration returning in a flood of heat. “Did you hear what I just said? You can’t stay here.”

      “Yes, I heard you. Fine. I’ll live behind your iron curtain, but—” She swallowed. “But I won’t marry you.” Her chin came up in what he knew was her stand-ground face.

      His ears buzzed as he sifted through her words. “What do you mean?”

      “I mean I’ll live with you, but I won’t live with you.” She flushed and pulled her shoulders