A Baby For The Billionaire: Triple the Fun / What the Prince Wants / The Blackstone Heir. Maureen Child

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      Dina gave Connor a look, but he shook his head as if to say later, so she let it go. Instead, she turned back to the limo and leaned inside. She unhooked the babies from their car seats and one at a time, she handed the kids out to Connor, who corralled them on the pristine lawn. But the triplets had been trapped for too long and refused to stand still. The three of them took off in different directions, toddling unsteadily across the grass, squealing and babbling as they went.

      “We should catch them before they ruin the flower beds or fall into the fountain—”

      “They’re fine,” Connor said, watching the three of them with a soft smile on his face. “Just exploring.”

      “Uh-huh.” She glanced back at the noble facade of the castle and could only imagine the luxurious furnishings inside. With that thought came the worry of just what three curious babies could do to elegant accommodations. “Maybe we should have found a smaller hotel. Triplets? Here?”

      “If you’ll pardon me, Mrs. King,” Sean said with a smile and a wink, “you’re not to worry about a thing. This is Ireland. Children are welcome everywhere.”

      With those words, she felt more than welcome, and nearly relaxed. Until she saw Sadie pulling flowers up and had to run to catch the little girl before she did too much damage. Connor ran after the boys at the same time and while the Irish wind blew all around them, they worked as a team to gather the babies.

      By the time they were settled in their palatial suite and had ordered room service dinner, the trips were ready for bed. Using teamwork, Connor and Dina got all three of them bathed and tucked in, then Connor poured two glasses of wine and they collapsed into lush green velvet wing-back chairs in the luxurious living room.

      Through the wide windows that overlooked what she’d learned was Lough Corrib, Dina saw the twilight sky and the tips of the trees guarding the castle dancing in the wind. Still watching the magical scene outside, she took a sip of her wine and said, “The manager seems to know you very well. You even have your usual suite.”

      “I stay here when I visit my cousin Jefferson and his family.” He eased back into the cushy armchair. “Maura’s sheep farm is only a half hour away, and the castle is comfortable.”

      She laughed a little. “Comfortable? It’s...I don’t even have a word for it.” Shaking her head, Dina said, “I’ve never been anywhere even remotely like it.”

      He stretched his legs out in front of him and crossed his feet at the ankles. “Wait until you see it at night with the moonlight on the lake. Pretty spectacular. Tomorrow, we can take the triplets down to the lake, let them throw rocks...”

      “Or fall in and go swimming?”

      “We’ll be with them. But that’s a good question. Have they taken swimming lessons yet?” he asked.

      “No,” she said, studying the gold-colored wine in her glass. “Elena was going to take them this summer, but—”

      He frowned, took a small sip of his own wine and said, “We’ll have to do it instead. My cousin Rafe is going to install a fence around my pool, but swimming lessons are pretty much life or death for kids, don’t you think?”

      “I agree.”

      “Good.” He gave her a fast smile that resonated inside her with a heat she really didn’t want to acknowledge. “I’ll arrange for a private instructor to come to the house starting next month.”

      “I don’t know that we’ll still be at your house next month,” she said.

      “Oh, I think we can count on it.” He tipped his head to one side and stared at her for a long moment or two.

      “Connor...” He wasn’t treating their move to his house as if it were temporary, but that was how she had to think of it. No matter what it felt like occasionally, she and Connor and the trips weren’t a family. They were...more like survivors of a shipwreck huddled together in what, at the moment, was a pretty fabulous lifeboat.

      She had to make him see that she couldn’t stay indefinitely at his house. But what could she say? She was too nervous to stay at his place? She didn’t trust herself around him? Oh, a man that sure of himself really didn’t need to hear anything like that. Muttering under her breath, she took a sip of her wine.

      “What was that?”

      “Nothing,” she said. “So what are we doing here in Ireland, exactly?”

      His mouth quirked as if he knew she was desperately trying to change the subject. “Well, I told you I’ve stayed here at the castle before, but this time I’ll be talking with management, gathering information about what kind of activities they offer families and in general seeing if Ashford Castle would be a good fit for our family adventure company.”

      “I can’t imagine anyone not enjoying staying here.”

      “Oh, it’s beautiful,” he agreed, shifting his gaze around the room, “but will it be enough to qualify as a family adventure? We’ll see.”

      “Maybe it doesn’t have to be so much about adventure as it does a family spending time together in an amazing place,” she said. “I know the castle itself would be enough to capture the imagination of any child. They’d picture themselves as knights and princesses...”

      He nodded. “You might be right about that. My brothers and I would have loved this place when we were kids.”

      Several seconds of silence passed before he asked, “Did you see much of the triplets before they came to live with you?”

      “What?” The change of subject threw her for a moment.

      He stared into his wine, then slowly lifted his gaze to hers. “The babies. Did you see much of them before Jackie and Elena died?”

      “Not a lot, because they were living in San Francisco,” she said quietly, sensing the shift in his mood to contemplative, “but they came to visit and I went to see them a few times.”

      “What were they like?” His voice was so soft, it was almost as if he regretted asking the question at all. “The babies, I mean.”

      Looking at him, Dina felt a twist of sympathy. Over the last week or so, he’d become so involved with the triplets. She’d stopped expecting him to give up and walk away. The man would never turn his back on those children and he was doing more and more to convince Dina that he was actually enjoying being a father.

      Bottom line was, Connor was changing his home, his world, to accommodate them and he had been cheated out of knowing them for the first year of their lives. Yes, cheated, she thought and sent a disgusted thought toward her sister, wherever she might be. Jackie and Elena had been wrong to keep the kids from him. Wrong to leave town and run rather than share the children with the man who had helped to create them. And if Dina had known the truth, she would have told Connor herself.

      So maybe, she thought, she was wrong to fight him so hard on the kids now. But what choice did she have, really? She couldn’t lose the triplets. Not even to their father. It would be like tearing her own heart out. He was watching her, waiting for to speak, to tell him about the children he hardly knew. She СКАЧАТЬ