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

Чтение книги онлайн.

СКАЧАТЬ he tried to picture it. “I bet Jackie was afraid to pick them up.”

      “She was,” Dina said with a laugh. “For a while, but she got over it because Elena insisted.”

      “What kind of mom was she? Jackie?”

      “A little crazy. Fun.” Dina smiled at the memories and tried to make them feel real for Connor. “Elena was the one with the schedule. She wrote everything down. What time the trips ate, napped, play time, bath time. My sister loved schedules.” Now it was her turn to be wistful. Only three months since she’d lost her big sister and Dina missed her. “But Jackie was fun. As the kids got older, she would dress up to read them bedtime stories. She bought them all miniature baseball bats so they’d be ready to play as soon as they could walk...”

      “Sounds like Jacks. She used to play shortstop. She was really good, too.” His smile faded into a thoughtful frown.

      Twilight crept into the luxuriously appointed room, and shadows lengthened. It felt intimate, sitting here in the half light with Connor, sharing memories with him so that he could hold the images in his mind. But, she realized suddenly, she could do better.

      Reaching to the table beside her, she turned on a lamp that sent shards of light glancing off its carved crystal base. He scowled a little at the sudden brightness, but Dina ignored that and picked up her purse. Pulling her phone free, she turned it on, went to the gallery and asked, “Would you like to see pictures?”

      His eyes flashed with interest and a warm smile curved his mouth. “Are you serious?”

      She answered the smile with one of her own, then held her phone out to him. “I never delete anything,” she said wryly, “so there are photos of them from newborn on.”

      He was already looking at the pictures, swiping his finger across the screen to look at more.

      “Some of them I took, others Elena emailed to me.”

      He laughed.

      “What?”

      Connor looked up at her, a mixture of amusement and regret in his eyes. “This picture. Last Christmas, I guess.”

      Dina knew which photo he was talking about, but she went to him anyway, knelt at his side on the thick rug and looked at the phone screen. Three babies, dressed in candy-cane-striped footie jammies, each of them with a Santa hat on their heads and tiny white beards on their faces.

      Still laughing, Connor asked, “Even Sadie had a beard?”

      Dina smiled at the memory. She’d been at her sister’s house when the two women took that picture to use as their Christmas card. “Jackie didn’t want Sadie to feel left out,” she said quietly.

      “Sounds like her,” he agreed. Slowly, he flipped through the rest of the pictures, not speaking again.

      Dina stayed where she was, watching—his expressions, not the phone screen. Every emotion he felt flickered over his face, shining in his eyes, curving his mouth. On a too-small screen, he watched his children change and grow and it was clear that those pictures touched something inside him. When he’d finally come to the end—she really did need to delete at least some of those pictures—he handed her the phone.

      “I missed so much already.”

      “You didn’t know, Connor.”

      “Doesn’t change anything.” He turned his head to look at her. His eyes shone with sadness, but a glint of determination was there, too, and Dina braced herself for what he might say next.

      “I won’t miss any more time with my children, Dina.”

      Her hand closed around her phone and held it tightly. Wow, just a couple of minutes ago, she’d been feeling bad for him, taking his side against the memory of her own sister. But looking into his eyes now, she saw that this man didn’t need her sympathy. “Meaning?”

      “Meaning,” he said quietly, “I’ll never get back their first Christmas. They got their first teeth, took their first steps, all without me even knowing of their existence.”

      “I know, Connor and it’s terrible, but—”

      He shifted in his chair, cupped her chin in his palm and lifted her face to his. “You and me, Dina, we’re going to have to come to an understanding.”

      “What kind of understanding?”

      “Well, that’s the question, isn’t it?” he whispered. “I know what kind I’m interested in. I guess all we need is for you to decide for yourself what it is you want here.”

      Oh, she knew what she wanted. Dina just didn’t know if getting what she wanted would make things better...or worse.

      * * *

      Watching Connor with his family was a revelation. Oh, she knew he was close to his twin—why wouldn’t he be? But Jefferson King was a cousin and yet he and Connor seemed as close as brothers. Obviously, family was vastly important not only to Connor but to the Kings in general. That acknowledgement underscored what she’d felt only the night before. As his children, the triplets weren’t something Connor would risk losing.

      “Lovely, aren’t they?”

      Dina glanced at Maura King. The woman was short and gorgeous, in spite of her heavy rubber boots, and the oversize jacket she wore over a thick red knit sweater. June in Ireland, just as Connor had told her, meant clouds, wind, cold and spatters of rain.

      They’d gone shopping in the village of Craic only that morning, buying the triplets warmer clothing, since a California wardrobe didn’t prepare anyone for the damp chill. Ireland was beautiful and wild in a way that California never could be, and Dina loved it already.

      Maura King had been a sheep farmer when Jefferson, scouting a location for one of the movies King Studios made, met her for the first time. Since she still ran her farm and Jefferson worked from the manor house, Dina assumed that marrying one of the wealthiest men in the world hadn’t changed Maura Donohue King much.

      “Lovely?” Dina repeated, glancing back to where Connor, Jefferson and six children—Maura and Jefferson had three of their own and another on the way—raced madly around the yard alongside a galloping black-and-gray Irish wolfhound named King. Dina had thought his name to be an odd choice, but Maura had explained that she’d gotten the wolfhound when she and Jefferson were on the outs and that she had named the dog after him because, she said, like Jefferson, the dog was a “son of a bitch.”

      The sheer size of the dog had intimidated Dina at first. She’d never seen such a big animal. But as Maura promised, a wolfhound was the original gentle giant. In no time at all, the triplets were crawling across the big dog, pulling his ears and stepping on his huge feet, and King never made a sound. Rather, he acted like a nanny, herding the kids back into the center of things when they wandered too far on their own.

      “Yeah,” Dina said, smiling at Connor’s hoot of laughter as Jefferson’s oldest son, Jensen, sneaked up behind his father and gave him a swat. “I guess they are lovely. So’s your home, by the way,” she added, turning her face to look out across the pewter-colored waters of Lough Mask, spread out beneath gray skies.

      Trees СКАЧАТЬ