DOUBLE THE TROUBLE Read online

  “Can’t believe you were married.”

  “You and me both,” he muttered, and turned his gaze back to the ocean, hoping for the calm that sight usually brought him. This time it didn’t work. “I figured there was just nothing to tell.”

  “Yeah, well, you were wrong.”

  Understatement of the century.

  “Looks that way.” He had kids. Two of them. He could do the math, so he’d already worked out that they were eight months old. Eight months of their lives and he’d never even seen them. Never even guessed that they might exist. Cold fury rose up inside him again and he struggled to breathe past what felt like an iron band, tightening around his chest.

  It had been close to two years since he’d seen Penny—though he’d thought about her far more often than he wanted to admit, even to himself. But at the moment, it wasn’t memories driving him. Or the desire he’d once felt for her. It was cold fury, plain and simple. The kind of raw rage he’d never felt before. She’d kept his children from him and she’d done it deliberately. After all, it wasn’t like he was hard to find. He was a King, for God’s sake, and the Kings of California weren’t exactly low profile.

  “Fine. So what’re you gonna do?”

  Colt turned his back on the ocean and faced his twin. Steely determination fired his soul and filled his voice as he said, “I’m going to see my ex-wife. Then I’m going to get my kids.”

  * * *

  Every time she moved, Penny felt a swift stab of pain. That didn’t stop her from trying, though. Wincing, she shifted around carefully until she could reach the rollaway table that held her laptop. Swinging it around, she then scooted up higher on the bed, moving much more slowly than she wanted to.

  Penny was more accustomed to moving through life at top speed. She had a business and a home and two babies to care for, so hurrying was the only way she could keep up. Being forced to lie still in a hospital bed she couldn’t afford was making her a little crazy.

  Every moment she was stuck here was another dollar sign ticking up on the bill she would soon be handed. Every moment here, her babies were without her. And though Penny trusted her younger brother and his fiancée, Maria, completely, she missed the twins desperately. Since she worked out of her home, she was with them all the time. Being away from them made her feel as if she were missing a limb.

  She reached out to pull the rolling table closer and gasped at the quick stab of pain slicing through her. “Ow!”

  “You probably should lie still.”

  “Oh, God.” Penny froze, hardly daring to breathe. She knew that voice. Heard it every night in her dreams. Clutching the edge of the table, only her eyes moved, tracking to the doorway where he stood. Colton King. The father of her children, the star of every one of her fantasies, her ex-husband and absolutely the last man on earth she wanted to see.

  “Surprised?” he asked.

  That word really didn’t cover what she was feeling. “You could say that.”

  “Well then,” he snapped, “you have some idea of how I feel.”

  Robert, she thought grimly. She was going to have to kill her little brother. Sure, she’d practically raised him and she loved him dearly. But for going to Colton and ratting her out, Robert had to pay. But dealing with her brother could come later. At the moment, she had to find a way to deal with her past.

  “What’re you doing here?”

  He walked slowly into the room, his long legs crossing the linoleum-covered floor in a few easy strides. He moved almost lazily, but Penny wasn’t fooled. She could feel the tension radiating off of him in thick waves and she braced herself for the confrontation that had been almost two years in the making.

  His hands were tucked into the pockets of his black jeans. His thick-soled boots hardly made a whisper of sound as he moved. His black hair was a little too long, curling around the collar of his bloodred pullover shirt. But it was his eyes that held her. That mesmerized her as they had nearly two years ago.

  They were the pale blue of an icy sky, fringed by lashes so thick and black any woman would have killed to have them. And right now, those cold eyes were fixed on her.

  He was still the sexiest man she’d ever met. Still had that air about him that drew women to him like metal shavings to a magnet. Still made her want to throw both herself and a rock at him.

  “Robert came to see me,” he said lightly, as if it didn’t mean a thing. But she knew better. Yes, they’d only been together for a week almost two years ago, but in those two years, Penny had relived every moment with him hundreds of times. At first, she had tried to forget him, because remembering only brought pain.

  But then she’d found herself pregnant, and forgetting was impossible. So instead, she’d reveled in her memories. Kept them fresh and alive by mentally deconstructing every conversation, examining every moment spent with him. She knew the tone of his voice. Knew the feel of his skin, the taste of his lips.

  And she knew, just by looking at him now, he was angry.

  Well then, they were a match. She didn’t want him here. Didn’t need him here. Penny took a deep breath and braced for the coming storm.

  He stopped at the foot of her hospital bed and met her gaze with a steely stare. “So,” he said. “What’s new?”

  Anger flashed in those cool blue eyes and a muscle in his jaw ticked spasmodically. One glance down to where his hands were closed over the footboard showed that his knuckles were white with the force of his grip.

  “Robert had no right to go to you.” Her fingers tugged at the thin green blanket covering her.

  Her brother had been after her since before the twins were born to go to Colt and tell him the truth. But she’d had her reasons for keeping her secret and nothing had changed. Well, nothing but for the fact that her little brother had turned traitor.

  “Well,” he said on a sharp, short laugh. “You’re right about that, anyway. You should have told me.”

  Ice coated his words as well as his eyes. No doubt he was waiting for her to quiver and shrivel up beneath his hard gaze. Well, Penny refused to back down or to feel guilty about her decision. When she’d first discovered she was pregnant, she’d gone around and around in her mind, trying to figure out the best course of action.

  She had argued with herself for weeks over what was the right thing to do. Yes, she might have had an easier time of it the last couple of years if she had gone to Colt in the beginning. But she also might have spent the last two years tangled up in hard feelings, accusations and arguments. Not to mention a custody battle she wouldn’t have stood a chance in. He was a King, for heaven’s sake, and she didn’t have enough money to buy lunch out!

  So she’d chosen to keep the truth from him and she didn’t regret it. How could she, when she knew she had done what she felt was in the best interests of her children?

  With that thought firmly in mind, she got a grip on her own feelings as anger and frustration began to churn inside. “I understand how you feel but—”

  “You understand nothing.” He cut her off as neatly as if he’d used a knife. “I just found out I’m a father. I have twins and I’ve never seen them.” His white-knuckled grip on the foot rail of the bed tightened further and still his voice remained as cool and detached as the icy glare he had pinned on her. “I don’t even know their names.”

  She flushed. Fine. Yes. She could see how he felt. But that didn’t mean what she’d done was wrong. Naturally, he wouldn’t see it that way, but what Colton King thought of her really didn’t matter, did it?

  He never blinked. He only stared at her, with those ice-blue eyes narrowed as if he were focusing in an attempt to see into her mind and read all of her secrets. Thank heaven he couldn’t.

  “Their names, Penny. I’ve got a right to know the names of my children.”

  She hated this. Hated feeli
ng as though she were setting her babies up to be let down by a father who didn’t really want them. But she couldn’t ignore his demand, either. Now that he knew about the twins, what was the point of trying to protect their anonymity?

  “Okay. Your son’s name is Reid and your daughter is Riley,” she said.

  He swallowed hard, took a deep breath and hissed it out again. “Reid and Riley what?”

  She knew exactly what he meant. “Their last name is Oaks.”

  His mouth flattened into a grim line and it looked to Penny as if he were counting to ten. Slowly. “That’ll change.”

  Panic shot through her, riding a lightning bolt of anger. “You think you can take over and change their names? No. You can’t just walk back into my life and try to decide what’s best for my children.”

  “Why the hell not?” he countered coldly. “You made that decision for me nearly two years ago.”

  “Colt—”

  “Did you bother to list me as the father on their birth certificates?”

  “Of course I did.” Her twins had the right to know who their father was. And she would have told them...eventually.

  “That’s something at least,” he muttered. “I’ll have my lawyers take care of the legal name change.”

  “Excuse me?” She struggled to push herself upright and gasped as another sharp stab of pain hit in her abdomen. Breathless, she dropped back against her pillows.

  He was at the side of the bed in an instant. “Are you all right? Do you need a nurse?”

  “I’m fine,” she lied tightly as the pain began to ebb into a just barely tolerable ache. “And no, I don’t need a nurse.” She needed pain medication. Privacy so she could cry. An eight-ounce glass of wine. “What I need is for you to leave.”

  “Not gonna happen,” he told her.

  She closed her eyes and muttered, “I could kill Robert for this.”

  “Yeah,” Colt countered. “Someone finally being honest with me. There’s a crime.”

  Her gaze snapped back to his. He was studying her as he would a bug under a microscope. Damn it, couldn’t he have gotten fat in the last couple of years? Lost his hair? Something? Why did he still have to be the most gorgeous man she’d ever met? And wouldn’t you just know that she’d have the conversation she had been dreading for nearly two years while trapped in a hospital bed? Wearing a god-awful gown? She was in pain, she was hungry because hospital food was appalling and God knew what her hair looked like.

  Oh, that’s good. Be worried about how you look, Penny.

  Hard not to worry about it though, she told herself glumly. Especially when Colton King was standing right in front of her looking even better than he had two years ago. He’d taken her breath away the first time she’d seen him and apparently he had the same effect on her today.

  “So when do you get out of here?” he asked, shattering her thoughts.

  “Tomorrow probably.” And she couldn’t wait. Yes, she was in pain but she hated being in the hospital. She missed her babies. Plus, Penny didn’t like having to ask Robert and Maria to watch her children. They had enough going on, with their wedding only a few weeks away.

  In hindsight, she should have known that Robert would go to Colt. Should have guessed that her brother, thinking he was doing the right thing, would betray her secrets to the one man who should never have found out the truth. Oh, she was going to have plenty to say to her little brother once she was released from this antiseptic prison.

  “Fine, then,” Colt said flatly. “We’ll continue this discussion once you’re home.”

  Well, that caught her attention.

  “No, we won’t. This conversation is over, Colt.”

  “Not by a long shot.” He stared down at her until Penny twitched uneasily, and then he warned, “You’ve got a hell of a lot of explaining to do.”

  “I don’t owe you anything.” But those words sounded hollow even to her.

  She’d kept a huge secret from him and she’d done it deliberately. She knew that anyone standing on the outside of this relationship would call her some really descriptive names. But they wouldn’t know why she’d done it. She hadn’t even told Robert everything. Penny’d had reasons for her decisions and they were good ones. Ones she wouldn’t regret, even while staring up into the cool blue eyes that still haunted her dreams.

  He was angry and he had the right. But she’d had the right to do what she’d thought best for her children. And she wouldn’t start second-guessing herself now.

  “You’re wrong about that,” he told her softly, but the gentle tone of his voice did nothing to hide the fury crouched inside him.

  A nurse bustled into the room, all business. “I’m sorry, you’ll have to wait outside while I examine Ms. Oaks.”

  Penny’s gaze never left Colt’s and for a second or two, she thought he would argue, refuse to leave. Then he took a step back and nodded.

  “Fine. I’ll be back tomorrow to pick you up.”

  Panic shot through her. “Not necessary. Robert will pick me up.”

  The nurse was hovering and Penny could feel her gaze moving back and forth between the two of them.

  “We don’t need Robert’s help. I’ll be here in the morning.”

  “Oh,” the nurse piped up, “she probably won’t be released until early afternoon.”

  Colt paid no attention. “I’ll be here tomorrow.”

  Then he stalked out of the room and didn’t look back. Penny knew because she watched him go and continued to stare at the empty doorway long after the sound of his footsteps had faded.

  “Wow,” the nurse murmured. “Is that your husband?”

  “No,” Penny said. “He’s—” What? A friend? An enemy? The father of her children? Her past come back to wreak havoc with her present? Since she couldn’t say any of that, she said only, “He’s my ex.”

  The nurse sighed. “Wow, can’t believe you let that one get away.”

  It wasn’t as if she’d had a choice. Still, to avoid more conversation, Penny closed her eyes and let the nurse get on with the examination.

  But her mind wouldn’t stop. Thoughts of Colt jammed up in her brain until all she could see were his eyes. Cold. Icy. Fixed.

  And furious enough to make Penny wish tomorrow were years away.

  Two

  He didn’t go to see his twins.

  He wasn’t up for that just yet.

  Colt didn’t want his children’s first subconscious memory of their father to be of him furious.

  So instead, he went to the beach. He needed to burn off some of the fury pumping through him. But the calm waves at Laguna weren’t going to be enough to soothe the temper riding him. What he needed for that was blood-pumping action with a thread of danger. Enough to make his adrenaline high enough to swamp the anger chewing at him.

  In Newport Beach, the Wedge was just at the end of the Balboa Peninsula and the waves there could reach thirty feet or more. Because of some “improvements” to the jetty in Newport Harbor sometime in the thirties, the waves here were highly unpredictable. One wave combined with another and then still another until the resulting wave was higher than anywhere else on the coast. Best part was, no two waves were alike, and where they would break was anybody’s guess. Inexperienced surfers avoided the Wedge if they had any brains. As for Colt and the handful of other surfers out on this cold, autumn day...

  The danger added to the fun.

  Usually, anyway. Today, as he took wave after wave, riding the crest, being tossed into the sea and coming up in a froth of foam, his mind was too distracted to enjoy the rush. Images of Penny flashed through his mind on a continual loop. Visions of babies were there, too. Crying, laughing, sleeping. He couldn’t clear his brain of the thoughts plaguing him, so he pushed himself harder, hoping for clari
ty. It didn’t come though, and after a few hours in the punishing tempest of the sea, Colt had had enough. He dragged his board onto the sand and flopped down onto it.

  Wrapping his arms around his knees, he stared out at the water and tried to make sense of what had happened that day. He’d never expected to see Penny Oaks again. Colt scrubbed one hand across his face and let himself remember her, lying in that hospital bed.

  Through the anger, through the frustration and shock, he still had felt that jolt of sexual insanity he associated only with Penny. And insanity was the only word he could use to describe what she made him feel.

  Penny, with her jeans and T-shirts and her lack of makeup or artifice of any kind, was just not the type of woman he was usually drawn to. He liked his women fast and sleek, with no expectations other than a great time in bed. Penny, though, was something else again. He’d known it instantly. But from that first moment at the convention nearly two years ago, he’d had to have her. One look at her and all he’d been able to think about was her long legs, wrapped around his waist. Her mouth pressed to his. Her breath warm against his skin.

  And damned if she still didn’t affect him that way.

  Even lying in a hospital bed, with her long, dark red hair a tangle about her head, with her green eyes shining with both pain and panic, he’d wanted her so badly he’d had a hell of a time just walking out of the hospital.

  After Vegas, he’d buried her memory and lost himself in dozens of temporary women. Yet he’d never really been able to wipe Penny from his mind entirely. And now she was back—with his children—and he’d be damned if he’d be cut out of his kids’ lives. Even if, he was forced to admit, he was hardly father material.

  The beach was nearly empty and the sunset stained the white clouds varying shades of pink and orange. The waves crashed relentlessly onto the shore, and out beyond the breakers, a few remaining surfers chased the next ride.

  “You’re an idiot.”