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

Until now.

Now he could only go with his gut. “I’ll be needing a paternity test.”

She sucked in a gulp of air. “You really think that’s necessary?”

“No,” he said shortly. Hell, all it had taken was one look at the triplets to convince him they were his. They weren’t identical, of course, but each of them had the distinctive King coloring. It was more than that, though. He’d felt a connection to those children right from the first and that was something he couldn’t deny.

“My lawyers will want it,” he said, not liking having to explain himself.

“Fine. Then what?”

“Then,” he said, setting the beer onto the closest table before standing up, “we’ll do what comes next.”

“And what’s that?” She stood, too, but kept her distance.

“I’ll let you know.”

“I think you mean we’ll decide what that is together.”

He laughed shortly. “I meant what I said. Those triplets in there are mine. They’re Kings. I’ll do the deciding here.”

Her cheeks flushed with color and he knew it wasn’t a blush but fury that fed the rosiness blooming across her face. “I’m their legal guardian,” she reminded him. “My sister and her wife wanted the babies in my care.”

Con didn’t have the time or the patience to fight this battle right now. “And your sister and her wife hid my children’s existence from me. For all I know, you were in on it.”

“I told you I wasn’t.”

“And I should believe you.”

She gulped in air. “Yeah, you should. Why would I lie?”

“Why would Jackie?” he countered and when she didn’t have an answer for that, he nodded sharply. “Right. Anyway. I’ll want time with the triplets while things are being settled.”

She nodded. “I thought you would.”

“And I want the letter Jackie left for me.”

Her features went stiff and cool, as if she were deliberately shutting off her emotions. He couldn’t blame her, because he wished to hell he could do the same. But everything he was feeling was too close to the surface. Too damn inflamed and sensitive to be buried—so instead he had to fight to push them aside.

Without another word, Dina walked across the room to a small secretary table holding a cobalt-blue bowl of fresh flowers. Connor joined her and waited as she opened the top drawer, withdrew an envelope, then handed it to him. Once she had, she crossed her arms over her chest again in what was obviously a self-protective stance.

Too bad she didn’t know that whenever she did it, all she really managed to do was hike her breasts up even higher, demanding his attention. Slowly, he lifted his gaze to meet hers.

“Look,” she said, “we didn’t get off to the best start, but I think we can both agree that we want what’s best for the triplets.”

Con looked from her to the envelope for a long minute, then tucked it carefully into his inside jacket pocket. He wasn’t going to read it here, with an audience.

“We do agree on that much,” he allowed, then added, “but we might have different ideas as to what the best actually is.”

“I guess we’ll have to work on that when the time comes, then.”

“Yeah.” He had no intention of working things out. Those were his children, not hers. He would decide what was going to happen from here on out and she could either go along with it or not. Her choice. Still, for now, he would keep communications open between them. No point in making an enemy this early in the game.

“I’m gonna go,” he said. “I’ll be in touch.”

“What’s that mean?”

Her question stopped him halfway across the room. He turned back to her. “It means, we’re not done. Not by a long shot.”

* * *

Over the next few days, Dina tried to keep the trips on the already shaky schedule she’d had going for the last three months. But it wasn’t easy, considering that Connor dropped in and out of their lives with no warning. He showed up for breakfast one morning, then went with them to a local lab where the tech took cheek swabs of each child to compare their DNA with Connor’s. It was ridiculous.

He knew darn well those babies were his, so she wasn’t sure what he was up to with the paternity test. The next day, he didn’t show up until bath time and left as soon as the babies were put to bed. Today, he’d insisted on going to the park with them. Rather than let him have the triplets all to himself—because, really, he was very rich, and how did she know he wouldn’t just take them to his house and refuse to give them back—she went with them.

Watching Connor interact with the triplets was endearing and irritating all at once. She had had to do a lot of adjusting when the babies had come into her life. But Connor seemed to be sailing through it. But it wasn’t only that she was bothered by. He was ignoring her completely.

Not that she wanted his attention, because at this point it would only add to the confusion of the situation. But it was the principle of the thing, really. She might as well have been the babies’ sixty-year-old nanny for all the awareness he showed her. Just as well, she reminded herself sternly. Dina had deliberately kept her distance from men like Connor King for most of her life. She’d seen, up close and personal, just what a strong man could do to a woman.

Her own mother had wasted her life trying to change to be whatever the man she was with at the moment wanted or needed. Helen Cortez had slowly faded away, losing herself in the never-ending quest to please a man. Dina had watched as her mother eventually lost her own identity as she depended on man after man to take care of her. Which they never did. By the time Helen died eight years ago, she was just a shadow of herself.

In response to how her mother had lived and died, Dina had vowed to be independent. To count on no one but herself. Strong men could swallow a woman whole, and she had no intention of being devoured. So it wasn’t as though she wanted Connor—her pride was wounded, that was all.

Frowning slightly, she shifted her gaze from Connor and the triplets to the tablet on her lap. While he played with the kids, Dina took the opportunity to go over business files. An independent business owner had to stay on top of things, especially when the bottom line was looking less than enthusiastic.

Flipping through her calendar, she made notes on the different jobs listed there. She still had to contact the Johnsons about the menu for their anniversary party and then put in a bid on a big class reunion being held at the Hyatt at the end of the month. She had a wedding reception to cater in two weeks and a sixteenth birthday party three days later. None of the jobs she had lined up were exactly high paying, but she was in no position to turn a job down, either. She just wished she had more time to devote to growing her business. Instead, she spent most of her waking hours trying to get more jobs and handling the millions of details that seemed to crop up with depressing regularity.

She had thought running her own business would give her freedom. Instead, she was being strangled by all the tiny strings that were forever coming undone. She spent more time on bookkeeping and client hunting than she did actually cooking anymore, and she really missed that. But between taking care of the babies, worrying about Connor’s new role in their lives and paying the bills that never stopped coming, who had time to cook?

A shriek of pain grabbed her. Dina looked up and saw Connor holding Sage while the baby screamed and cried wildly. Tossing her tablet to the park bench, she raced across the sand, feet sliding on the uneven ground until she reached Connor. When Sage lunged at her, she grabbed him, held him close and instantly began to soothe his tears. The tiny boy’s breath shuddered in and out of his lungs as tears streaked his cheeks. Patting his back and rocking side to side, she looked up at Connor. “What happened?”

“He fell. He scooted out of the swing and fell about a foot to the sand.” Con lifted Sadie out of the baby swing and set her in the sand beside Sam.

Sage’s howls had died down to whimpers now and he snuggled his face into the curve of her neck.

“He was okay, I swear. I don’t know how he moved that fast in the first place, but he was okay. In fact, he laughed at first. Then, you’d have thought he’d landed on broken glass,” Connor was saying.

Dina shook her head. Finally, a chink in the perfect father armor. “He’s not hurt. He’s scared.” She slid the palm of her hand up and down Sage’s back. “He’s not used to the swings and he’s too small to be in a regular one anyway...”

Connor frowned, muttered, “I should have known that.” Then he bent to look at Sage. “Hey, buddy, you okay?”

Sage only burrowed closer to Dina and she gave him an extra squeeze for it. The triplets might be enamored by the new man in their lives, but clearly when they wanted comforting, it was her they turned to. Her heart swelled with love for the three tiny people who had brought such contained chaos into her life.

“Is he all right?” Connor asked with a sigh.

“He’s fine,” she said. “But it’s nap time, so I should get them home.”

“Right.” Connor nodded, his expression thoughtful. “Home.”

Still holding Sage tight, Dina turned to pick up their things and head to the car. But first she glanced over her shoulder and said, “You might want to stop Sam from eating sand.”

“What?”

She smiled, listening to Connor’s frantic yelp as he dealt with his sand-eating son.

* * *

Con still hadn’t read Jackie’s letter.

He’d planned to, that first night, but he’d been too angry at her to read whatever it was she had to say. Too twisted up over his first visit with his kids and too distracted by thoughts of Dina. Besides, how could Jackie possibly explain away lying to him about his own children? There was no reason good enough, he told himself. No excuse that would take away the pain and the fury of the betrayal still raging inside him.

For years, Jackie was the one woman he’d trusted. The one friend he could count on no matter what. To find out now that she’d used him just as so many other women had tried to tore at him.

Con wandered through his darkened house. He didn’t need lights since he knew the position of every stick of furniture in the place. He didn’t want lights because right now his mood was so dark that light would be offensive. The quiet was overpowering—especially after having been in Dina’s tiny, too crowded bungalow only an hour ago. A smile teased his mouth briefly as he remembered the chorus of noises created by the busy triplets and for a second, he tried to imagine those sounds here, in his big, empty house.

“Funny,” he murmured, just to shatter the silence, “this place never seemed empty before. Just...roomy.”

Sure, he knew a man alone didn’t need a huge house. But why buy a small one? Con had always had some vague, nebulous idea of finding a woman at some point, getting married and having kids. But he’d been in no rush for that. Now he had the kids, but no wife—just two women on his mind. The memory of one haunting him and the other, one he couldn’t stop wanting.

He walked through the living room, skirted the wide coffee table and stepped through a set of French doors onto the patio. Out here, there were solar lights circling the area, but the illumination was so pale, he didn’t really mind it. Barefoot, he felt the cold damp of the flagstones beneath his feet and accepted the chill as part of the June night. Moonlight sifted through a covering bank of clouds and lay across the dark ocean like a pale ribbon tossed on top of black velvet. The pounding waves slamming into the cliffs below were a heartbeat. The wind off the sea was cold and cut right through the fabric of his T-shirt, but he didn’t care. He had too much to work out to bother about being cold.

For three days, he’d been the part-time father he’d thought he would be. Coming and going from the lives of the triplets and Dina like a ghost. He could drop in, harass Dina a little, play with the kids, then leave it all behind and go to his office. There, his new responsibilities were buried beneath contracts, dealing with clients, new business ventures and a hundred other things that demanded his attention.

But always, the triplets and their guardian came sliding back into his consciousness. And every time he left that cottage in Huntington Beach, it was harder to go. Con scraped one hand across the back of his neck as that realization sank in. However it had started—outrage, betrayal, duty—it had become something else. What, exactly, he wasn’t ready to admit yet. But he knew he was deeper into this situation than he would have thought possible three days ago. He knew that he missed those kids when he wasn’t around them.

And yeah, he missed being around Dina, too. Damn, but the woman was fascinating. She was on edge around him most of the time, but that didn’t do anything to dull the desire he felt every time he looked at her. She was prickly, defensive and her temper made those dark brown eyes of hers flash. Damned if he didn’t enjoy that, too.

Then there was today at the park. When Sage was hurt and scared, he hadn’t wanted Con. He’d wanted Dina. Her connection to the babies was deep despite the fact that she’d been their guardian only three months. So Con had to work with that, as well. Did he take those kids away from her? Or did he try to find a way to work with her?

“Hell, this whole mess could have been avoided if Jackie had just told me the damn truth.” He tipped his head back, stared up at the sky and said, “You know you did this, right? You enjoying the show?”

He couldn’t get an answer from the night. The only one he might get was in the house, in Jackie’s letter. And it was time to finally read it. See what his friend had to say to him.

Whatever it is, it’s too little, too late, as his mother used to say.

Shaking his head, Con stalked across the patio to the house, then walked into his bedroom and snatched Jackie’s letter off the dresser. He hit the wall switch, flooding the huge room with light from the ironwork chandelier overhead. He took a seat on the edge of his bed and pulled the letter free. His gaze swept over the familiar handwriting and in his head, he heard Jackie’s voice...

“Con, if you’re reading this, Elena and I are both gone, so no offense, but I hope you never read this. But if you are, I know you’re pissed, and I can’t blame you. Yes. I lied.”

Anger spat at him again.

“I didn’t tell you about the pregnancy or the babies because Elena and I wanted them all to ourselves. Yeah, selfish. I can almost hear you thinking it. And maybe it was, I don’t even know. But when you said you wanted to be a part of the babies’ lives, it made both of us realize that you would only confuse things.

“Wasn’t it enough that they would have two mommies? Did they really need an on-again, off-again daddy, too? Besides, we both know babies aren’t really your thing. Remember how you gave Colt such a hard time over the twins? We named Dina guardian because of the usual sexist reasons.”

Connor laughed in spite of himself.

“She’s a girl. Kids need a mommy. Sue me. Give her a chance. You might like her.

“Con, I didn’t want you to think you had to support them. Or had to do a damn thing. You’d already done enough. You gave us our family and we’re grateful. We gave you your freedom because we thought it was best.

“But never doubt that we thought of you every day. Every time we looked into the triplets’ faces, there you were. So forgive me if you can—and if you can’t, I understand. I still love you—Jackie.”

Pain swamped the anger and for the first time in days, Con felt calm. She was wrong to do it, but he understood. He didn’t want to forgive her, but how could he not?

Holding the letter, he smoothed his fingertip across the boldly slanted writing and murmured, “I love you, too, Jacks.”

Four

“Jackie made it clear in her letter that they wanted Dina to have custody,” Colt said quietly when he’d finished reading it. He handed the paper over to Con, who stared at it for a long minute.

“They’re my kids, Colt. My blood.”

Con couldn’t get past that one truth, which kept repeating over and over in his mind, and honestly, he didn’t want to. After reading Jackie’s letter the night before, his thoughts hadn’t been able to settle. He hadn’t slept and he was just killing time here at work. God knew there were details of new contracts to work out, but how the hell could he concentrate on that when the bulk of his life was up in the air?

He hadn’t forgiven Jackie for what she’d done. Did he understand why she did it? A part of him did. The cool, rational, logical voice in his mind could even agree with her. But the reality was, emotion was running the show right now. And he couldn’t get past the fact that he’d lost more than a year of his children’s lives. He’d never get it back. He was a visitor in that house near the beach. A stranger. And that just burned him.

Behind him, there was a wide window, offering a spectacular view of the beach and the ocean, but it might as well have been a blank wall for all the attention he’d paid it that morning. Sunlight streamed through the tinted glass, painting the office a soft gold that glittered in his twin’s eyes as Colt stared at Connor, waiting.

Finally, Con spoke again. “You know that Sage hates taking a bath?”

“What?” Colt frowned at him.

“Sage. He hates the water. Why? I should know that, but I don’t.” He pushed out of his desk chair and stalked around the perimeter of his office. It was a plush room with thick carpeting, framed photographs of their many adventure sites dotting the walls and comfortable furniture for clients. “Sadie loves taking a bath. She splashes and squeals.” He smiled to himself, remembering. “Sam couldn’t care less either way, but Sage...” He shook his head, then whipped a look at Colt. “Did something happen to him? Did he get scared? Of what? By who?”

“You’re overreacting, Con,” his twin said. “Kids are wildly unpredictable. Who the hell knows what they’re thinking or why they react to things the way they do? Trust me on this. Like, for instance, right now, Reid won’t wear shoes.” He laughed to himself. “Takes ’em off the minute you put them on him. It’s driving Penny nuts. But maybe it’s because last week he walked through a deep puddle and his sneakers were squishing. I think he hated the sound so much, it creeped him out.”

“See?” Con jabbed a finger toward his twin as fresh fury erupted inside him. “That’s what I’m saying. Reid has an issue and you know why! Sage hates water, I don’t have a clue.” He threw his hands up in frustration. “I’ve known my own kids for three lousy days. I’m a damn stranger to them, Colt. They’re nuts about Dina and they don’t even know me.”

“That’ll change,” Colt told him.

“Damn straight it will.” Con jammed his hands into his pockets and rocked back on his heels. The wheels were in motion now and things should start happening.

After reading Jackie’s letter, he’d been up all night. And this morning, he’d made his decision. He’d called his lawyers, telling them to put together whatever it was they had to do to get him custody of the triplets. But his lawyer had told him that Dina had good ground to stand on, too. She was the legal guardian. The kids’ aunt. They were settled with her. But it didn’t have to stay that way.

“You’ve already called Murdoch and Sons in on this, haven’t you?”

Con shot his brother a sly smile. “Best team of lawyers in the state.”

“Yeah, I know,” Colt said, standing up to face his brother. “But think about it for a minute. Remember how mad you were when Dina went through a lawyer and sued you instead of just talking to you?”

“Yeah, I remember.” His scowl deepened. “This is different.”

“Always is,” Colt muttered, then said more loudly, “You can’t cut Dina Cortez out of this, Con.”

He shot his twin a hard look. “What makes you think I’m considering it?”

Colt laughed shortly. “Because I know you? Because when I found out about Penny and the twins, that was my first thought?”

“Okay.” Con rubbed the back of his neck. Maybe he had thought of it, but he was willing to be reasonable about all this. If she fought him on custody, though, he wouldn’t make any promises.This would all be a lot easier if he didn’t want Dina so much. Every time he saw her it was harder to keep his hands off her—but this was about the kids and he had to keep focused.

“You think you can pull it off.” Colt shook his head. “Delusional. That usually doesn’t happen until you start losing sleep because of the kids invading your life. But kudos for managing on your own.”

“Funny.”

“Seriously, Con, she’s not just their guardian, she’s their aunt. You really think she’s going to just walk away because it would be easier on you?”

“No.” He sat back and shook his head. “The last thing she wants to do is make anything easy on me.”

“There you go. This means you’re going to have to find a way to work with her—or around her.”

Con slanted him a look. “As in...”

Colt shrugged, “As in, you could try buying her off.”

Frowning, Connor thought about that for a minute or two.

He’d seen her house. It was too small and gave every indication that money was tight. According to his lawyer, her catering business was barely above water. He knew she couldn’t afford to take care of the babies on her own, and he wasn’t about to settle for being nothing more than a monthly check in the lives of his kids.

According to the King family lawyer, the best thing for him to do, as far as a custody hearing went, was to become an everyday part of the children’s lives. To stake a claim, basically. Well, that worked for Con. He just had to figure out the best way to go about it.

The easiest way, of course, would be to bring the triplets to his place. He already had his housekeeper setting up a temporary nursery in one of the guest rooms. A more permanent room was in the works, too. Their cousins Rafe, Nick and Gavin owned King Construction and Con was going to have them build a full nursery suite for the triplets as soon as possible. Meanwhile, the rest of Con’s house was being babyproofed as well. He’d seen what Colt and Penny had gone through at their house, making sure everything was safe for a set of curious twins, so he had a good idea of what was needed.

The obstacle to overcome would be Dina. But he had an idea on that, as well.

“Whose side are you on in this, anyway?”

“Yours.” Colt lifted both hands in the classic surrender pose and smiled at his brother. “I’m just saying that if you try to cut Dina out, you’re inviting open war, and once that happens, nobody wins.”

“I’ll win.”

“Really?” Colt shook his head and stood up. “She’s their aunt, Con. You cut her out, the kids get hurt. You become enemies and this battle will get uglier and uglier.”

“That’s the thing though,” Con said. “It is a battle. Or will be as soon as Dina realizes I’m not taking a backseat in all this. Damn it, if Jackie—”

“Let it go already,” Colt muttered. “Jackie did what she thought she had to and so will you.”

“Damn right I will.”

“But you could listen to your older and wiser brother.”

Con snorted. “Five extra minutes of life makes you the expert?”

“No,” Colt corrected. “Going through practically the same thing you are and surviving makes me the expert. Penny and I were able to work things out between us—”

“Yeah, but you were already in love with Penny, you just didn’t want to admit it.”

“Good point and yeah, I know you don’t love Dina.” Colt gave him a grin. “But you do want her.”

Did he ever. The desire he’d felt for her from the start had become a need that he really didn’t want to admit to, because it just made everything else that much more convoluted. But just thinking about Dina made him hard and hungry.

“Mess this up and you’ll never have her.”

“Fine, fine.” Con waved one hand at his twin. He hated to admit that his brother had a point. “Don’t make her an enemy. Go slow.” He paused. “I don’t like slow.”

“You’re not used to it, that’s for sure.”

“True.” He pushed one hand through his hair. “I want to get moving on this but I know I’ve got to make the right steps.”

“That’s something, anyway,” Colt said wryly.

“I got the DNA results,” Con said.

“That was fast.”

“Money talks.” Ordinarily, it would have taken a week, maybe two, to get the results from the private lab. But with the King family fortune pushing buttons, it had only been days. He paused. “The kids are mine.”

“You had a doubt?”

“Of course not. But now it’s legal. It’s ammunition for a custody fight.”

“Con...”

“I know, avoid a fight if I can.” He held up one hand to stop his brother before he could get going again. “And I will. But I like knowing I’ve got an ace in the hole.”

“Okay, clearly you’re going at this full tilt and nothing I say is going to make any difference,” Colt said. “So I’m going to say one more thing.”

“Naturally.”

“Go easy on this or you’ll lose.”

“You’re wrong. I don’t lose.”

* * *

“I’m really sorry, Abuela,” Dina said, “but the babysitter canceled on me at the last minute and I have to be at this party.” She unloaded all of the supplies she’d brought for the triplets as her grandmother sat on the floor, playing with the babies.

“Dina, you don’t have to apologize,” she said, throwing her granddaughter a quick glance over her shoulder. “I love having the children here.”

“Yeah, but you were going to dinner with your friends.”

“Pish. I can eat anytime.” She reached out and caught Sage up in a quick hug. “It’s not every day I get snuggles from los niños.”

Dina smiled as the triplets crawled all over the older woman. At seventy-five, Angelica Cortez was trim, with stylishly cut gray hair that swung at her jawline. Her brown eyes were shrewd and her striking face remained remarkably unlined, which gave Dina hope for her own future.

Angelica’s English was lightly flavored with her native Mexico; Spanish and English mingled happily in everything she said. She did love seeing the babies and if Dina and the kids were here strictly for a visit, it would be different. Dina would be here, too, taking care of them rather than expecting her grandmother to pick up the slack. But with her babysitter sick, Dina just didn’t have a choice. She was catering an anniversary party tonight and if it went well, there was a chance she’d get more jobs out of it.

A headache began to blossom behind her eyes and that didn’t bode well for the long night she had ahead of her. Guilt pinged around inside her like a crazed Ping-Pong ball. Guilt for leaving the kids, for making her grandmother change her own plans to watch them—and then there was the guilt for choosing work over the babies. But on the other hand, if she wanted to be able to feed them, she had to get as many jobs as she could.

Her grandmother’s duplex in Naples was two blocks from the ocean. It was decorated in a blend of Mexican and American styles and was warm and inviting. Furniture was overstuffed; the walls were painted a rich brick red with white crown molding. It should have been dark and depressing, Dina had thought more than once. Instead, it was like being enveloped in a hug. Angelica owned the building and lived in the front apartment while renting the second to one of her best friends. Between the two women, the gardens were so lush and beautiful, they regularly had tourists stopping out front to take pictures.

Naples was small, and elegant, and there were canals winding through the neighborhood much like its Italian namesake. The Christmas parade through the canals was amazing, with the houses and boats decorated with millions of colored lights. Dina was looking forward to taking the triplets to see the spectacle.

“So what is the job tonight?”

“An anniversary party in Newport Beach.”

Which was about a half hour away, and that meant Dina would have to leave soon to get to the site early enough to set up.

Not too long ago, Dina had been the owner of a great little food truck. Business had been good enough that she’d decided to move on and open the catering business she’d always wanted. And it had been doing well, too. She’d had more jobs than she could count, her reputation was growing—and then...

She looked to where the babies were clustered around their great-grandmother. Dina’s world had crashed every bit as much as her sister’s plane had three months ago. When she had taken custody of the trips, Dina had had to cancel a lot of jobs. She simply hadn’t been able to keep up the pace when faced with caring for the three kids. Though her income had been slashed, the bills hadn’t stopped coming. Her rent had gone up, her car broke down, and with the triplets, there were more bills. Doctors, clothes, diapers—the list was never ending, and it was scary being the sole responsible one.

Now she was having to scramble to get jobs, which meant she was bidding on parties she might have ignored a few months ago. But she needed the work to take care of the babies and make sure they were safe.

“Don’t worry so much, nieta,” her grandmother said, and Dina had to smile in spite of the anxiety that never quite left her. “Things happen whether you’re ready or not. You simply have to do what you can to keep up.”

“Yeah,” Dina said, dropping to her knees to gather Sam up into her arms. The tiny boy sagged into her, wrapping his little arms around her neck and smacking her cheek with an openmouthed kiss that left drool behind on her skin and warmth in her heart. She kissed him back, then set him down on the floor beside his brother and sister.