Marriage: To Claim His Twins. PENNY JORDAN

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      The familiar sound of a car drawing up outside and doors opening had Ruby ignoring Sander to hurry to the door. She suddenly realised what time it was, and that the twins were being dropped off by the neighbour with whom she shared school run duties. Opening the door, she hurried down the drive to thank her neighbour and help the twins out of the car, gathering up school bags and lunchboxes as she did, clucking over the fact that neither boy had fastened his coat despite the fact that it was still only March and cold.

      Identical in every way, except for the tiny mole behind Freddie’s right ear, the boys stood and stared at the expensive car parked on the drive, and then looked at Ruby.

      ‘Whose car is that?’ Freddie asked, round-eyed.

      Ruby couldn’t answer him. Why hadn’t she realised the time and got rid of Sander before the twins came home from school? Now they were bound to ask questions—questions she wasn’t going to be able to answer honestly—and she hated the thought of lying to them.

      Freddie was still waiting for her to answer. Forcing a reassuring smile, she told him, ‘It’s just…someone’s. Come on, let’s get inside before the two of you catch cold with your coats unfastened like that.’

      ‘I’m hungry. Can we have toast with peanut butter?’ Harry asked her hopefully.

      Peanut butter was his current favourite.

      ‘We’ll see,’ was Ruby’s answer as she pushed then gently into the hall in front of her. ‘Upstairs now, boys,’ she told them both, trying to remain as calm as she could even as they stood and stared in silence at Sander, who now seemed to be taking up a good deal of space in the hallway.

      He was tall, well over six foot, and in other circumstances it would have made her smile to see the way Harry tipped his head right back to look up at him. Freddie, though, suddenly very much the man of the family as the elder of the two. He moved closer to her, as if instinctively seeking to protect her, and some silent communication between the two of them caused his twin to fall back to her other side to do the same.

      Unwanted emotional tears stung Ruby’s eyes. Her darling boys. They didn’t deserve any of this, and it was her fault that things were as they were. Before she could stop herself she dropped down on one knee, putting an arm around each twin, holding them to her. Freddie was the more sensitive of the two, although he tried to conceal it, and he turned into her immediately, burying his face in her neck and holding her tightly, whilst Harry looked briefly towards Sander—wanting to go to him? Ruby wondered wretchedly—before copying his brother.

      Sander couldn’t move. The second he had seen the two boys he had known that there was nothing he would not do for them—including tearing out his own heart and offering it to them on a plate. The sheer force of his love for them was like a tidal wave, a tsunami that swept everything else aside. They were his—of his family, of his blood, of his body. They were his. And yet, watching them, he recognised immediately how they felt about their mother. He had seen the protective stance they had taken up and his heart filled with pride to see that instinctive maleness in them.

      An old memory stirred within him: strong sunlight striking down on his bare head, the raised angry voices of his parents above him. He too had turned to his mother, as his sons had turned to theirs, but there had been no loving maternal arms to hold him. Instead his mother had spun round, heading for her car, slamming the door after she’d climbed into it, leaving him behind, tyres spinning on the gravel, sending up a shower of small stones. He had turned then to his father, but he too had turned away from him and walked back to the house. His parents had been too caught up in their own lives and their resentment of one another to have time for him.

      Sander looked down at his sons—and at their mother.

      They were all their sons had. He thought again of his own parents, and realised on another surge of emotion that there was nothing he would not do to give his sons what he had never had.

      ‘Marriage it is, then. But I warn you now it will be a marriage that will last for life. That is the measure of my commitment to them,’ he told her, looking at the boys.

      If she hadn’t been holding the twins Ruby thought she might well have fallen down in shock—shock and dismay. She searched Sander’s face for some sign that he didn’t really mean what he was saying, but all she could see was a quiet, implacable determination.

      The twins were turning in her arms to look at Sander again. Any moment now they would start asking questions.

      ‘Upstairs, you two,’ she repeated, taking off their navy duffel coats. ‘Change out of your uniforms and then wash your hands.’

      They made a dash past Sander, deliberately ignoring him, before climbing the stairs together—a pair of sturdy, healthy male children, with lean little-boy bodies and their father’s features beneath identical mops of dark curls.

      ‘There will be two conditions,’ Sander continued coldly. ‘The first is that you will sign a prenuptial agreement. Our marriage will be for the benefit of our sons, not the benefit of your bank account.’

      Appalled and hurt by this fresh evidence of how little he thought of her, Ruby swallowed her pride—she was doing this for her boys, after all—and demanded through gritted teeth, ‘And the second condition?’

      ‘Your confirmation and proof that you are taking the birth control pill. I’ve seen the evidence of how little care you have for such matters. I have no wish for another child to be conceived as carelessly as the twins were.’

      Now Ruby was too outraged to conceal her feelings.

      ‘There is no question of that happening. The last thing I want is to have to share your bed again.’

      She dared to claim that, after the way she had already behaved?

      Her outburst lashed Sander’s pride into a savage need to punish her.

      ‘But you will share it, and you will beg me to satisfy that hunger in you I have already witnessed. Your desire for sexual satisfaction has been honed in the arms of far too many men for you to be able to control it now.’

      ‘No! That’s not true.’

      Ruby could feel her face burning. She didn’t need reminding about the wanton way in which she had not only given herself to him but actively encouraged him to take her. Her memories of that night were burned into her conscience for ever. Not one of her senses would ever forget the role they had played in her self-humiliation—the way her voice had sobbed and risen on an increasing note of aching longing that had resulted in a cry of abandoned pleasure that still echoed in her ears, the greedy need of her hands to touch and know his body, the hunger of her lips to caress his flesh and taste his kisses, the increased arousal the scent of his skin had brought her. Each and all of them had added to a wild torrent of sexual longing that had taken her to the edge of her universe and then beyond it, to a place of such spectacular loss of self that she never wanted to go there again.

      Shaking herself free of the memories threatening to deluge her, Ruby returned staunchly, ‘That was different…a mistake.’ Her hands curled into her palms in bitter self-defence as she saw the cynical look he was giving her. ‘And it’s one that I never want to repeat. There’s no way I’d ever want to share your bed again.’

      Her СКАЧАТЬ