In The Tycoon's Bed: One Night, Two Heirs. Maureen Child
Чтение книги онлайн.
Читать онлайн книгу In The Tycoon's Bed: One Night, Two Heirs - Maureen Child страница 30
Название: In The Tycoon's Bed: One Night, Two Heirs
Автор: Maureen Child
Издательство: HarperCollins
Жанр: Современные любовные романы
isbn: 9781474004176
isbn:
“Are you going to let me pass?” she finally managed to grind out.
“Absolutely,” he said and stepped to one side, allowing her to slip past him and into the house.
“Where are they?”
“In their room,” he told her, following her as she headed for the wide staircase. “They’re perfectly happy. Elena made them dinner, they’ve had a bath and now they’re playing before bedtime.”
“Their beds are at home.”
“This is their home.”
The wall along the stairwell was lined with dozens of framed photos. Of Rick’s family, going back generations. This was the Pruitt home. Where Pruitt children were raised. Where his girls would grow up, he told himself firmly.
She stopped halfway up, pausing on a wide stair tread, and turned her head to fry him with another hot look. “You had no right.”
Rick grabbed her arm and held her in place. “I had every right. I’m their father.”
“You should have asked me.”
“Right!” He laughed shortly without a trace of humor. “Like you enjoyed just asking me to arrange visits with the girls? I’ll be damned if I’m going to ask permission every time I want to see my own kids.”
She huffed out a breath, threw a quick glance at the top of the stairs, then turned her gaze back on him. “Rick, we’re going to have to work this out. Legally. Visitation. Schedules.”
“Do I look like the kind of man who’s going to visit his kids according to a schedule some lawyer cooks up?” he asked her, keeping his voice low, so his daughters wouldn’t hear him arguing with their mother.
Pulling her arm free of his grasp, she said shortly, “You won’t have a choice. This is how things are done, Rick.”
“Not in my family,” he countered. “In my family, parents and children live together. They love each other. Those girls have a right to grow up on the ranch that will be theirs one day, Sadie. I want them to know it. To love it, like I do.” He waved one hand at the wall behind her. “Look at those pictures, Sadie. That’s family. The twins’ family. They belong here.”
“They will be here,” she said, clearly trying to ap pease him. “But they’re not going to live here with you fulltime, Rick. They’ll be with me. They need their mother.”
“Yeah, they do,” he acknowledged. “But they need me, too.”
He looked into those blue eyes and found himself fighting against his own instincts. Yes, he’d gone to her house to collect the children, not just because he’d wanted to be with them. But because he knew it would be a hard lesson for Sadie. He wasn’t going to be cheated out of his kids’ lives because their mother was too stubborn to do the right thing.
“I won’t be bought off with weekends and part of the summer. I won’t be a part-time visitor to my own children.”
“I didn’t say it would be like that.”
“Yeah? How do you see it going, then?”
She sighed heavily and he only now noticed the signs of weariness about her. Her eyes weren’t as clear as they usually were and there was a decided droop to her shoulders. Looked to him like she’d been getting by on very little sleep lately. Just like him. He didn’t know whether to feel bad about that, or to be pleased knowing that she was as affected by this battle between them as he was.
He went with pleased.
Sagging against the wall, she looked at him for a long minute and finally shook her head. “I came over here ready to skin you alive for taking the girls without so much as telling me what you were up to.”
Конец ознакомительного фрагмента.
Текст предоставлен ООО «ЛитРес».
Прочитайте эту книгу целиком, купив полную легальную версию на ЛитРес.
Безопасно оплатить книгу можно банковской картой Visa, MasterCard, Maestro, со счета мобильного телефона, с платежного терминала, в салоне МТС или Связной, через PayPal, WebMoney, Яндекс.Деньги, QIWI Кошелек, бонусными картами или другим удобным Вам способом.