My PA was still holding the envelope out to me and there was confusion in her eyes. I wanted to drop the envelope but then I thought of opening the envelope and reading the content.
“ From where did you say this came from? I asked.
“ From the doctor? My PA replied.
“ What business do ?I murmur.
“ You can go” I said.My PA took his leave.
I sat back and stare at the envelope. “ I hope it’s not some other sick wedding invitation from Sofia?
I open the envelope then there was just a picture, pictures of twin babies.
Laughter died instantly as he looked at the picture of two babies with black hair and pale blue eyes.
“What the hell?” Even while his brain started racing and his heartbeat stuttered in his chest, he read the scrawled message beneath the photo:
“Congratulations, Daddy. It’s twins.”
LUCIA
She wasn’t ready to give up the sun.
Lucia set her coffee cup down on the glass-topped table, turned her face to the sky and let the warm, late-morning sunshine pour over her like a blessing. Despite the fact that there were people around her, laughing, talking, diving into the pool, sending walls of water up in splashing waves, she felt alone in the light. And she really wasn’t ready to sink back into the belly of the ship.
But she’d sent her note to Dave. And she’d told him where to find her. In that tiny, less-than-closet-size cabin. So she’d better be there when he arrived. With a sigh, she stood, slung her bag over her left shoulder and threaded her way through the crowds lounging on the Verandah Deck.
Someone touched her arm and Lucia stopped.
“Leaving already?” Mary Curran was smiling at her, and Lucia returned that smile with one of her own.
“Yeah. I have to get back down to my cabin. I um, have to meet someone there.” At least, she was fairly certain Dave would show up. But what if he didn’t? What if he didn’t care about the fact that he was the father of her twin sons? What if he dismissed her note as easily as he’d deleted all of her attempts at e-mail communication?
A small, hard knot formed in the pit of her stomach. She’d like to see him try, that’s all. They were on a ship in the middle of the ocean. How was he going to escape her? Nope. Come what may, she was going to have her say. She was going to face him down, at last, and tell him what she’d come to say.
“Oh God, honey.” Mary grimaced and gave a dramatic shudder. “Do you really want to have a conversation down in the pit?”
Lucia laughed. “The pit?”
“That’s what my husband, Joe, christened it in the middle of the night when he nearly broke his shin trying to get to the bathroom.”
Grinning, Lucia said, “I guess the name fits all right. But yeah. I have to do it there. It’s too private to be done up here.”
Mary’s eyes warmed as she looked at Lucia and said, “Well, then, go do whatever it is you have to do. Maybe I’ll see you back in the sunshine later?”
Lucia nodded. She knew how cruise passengers tended to bond together. She’d seen it herself in the time she’d actually worked for Falcon Cruises. Friendships formed fast and furiously. People who were in relatively tight quarters stuck on a ship in the middle of the ocean tended to get to know each other more quickly than they might on dry land.
Shipboard romances happened, sure just look what had happened to her. But more often, it was other kinds of relationships that bloomed and took hold. And right about now, Lucia decided, she could use a friendly face.
“You bet,” she said, giving Mary a wide smile. “How about margaritas on the Calypso Deck? About five?”
Delighted, Mary beamed at her. “I’ll be there.”
As Lucia walked toward the elevator, she told herself that after her upcoming chat with Dave, she was probably going to need a margarita or two.
Dave jolted to his feet so fast, his desk chair shot backward, the wheels whirring against the wood floor until the chair slammed into the glass wall behind him.
“Is this a joke?”
Dave held the pale blue card in one tight fist and stared down at two tiny faces. The babies were identical except for their expressions. One looked into the camera and grinned, displaying a lot of gum and one deep dimple. The other was watching the picture taker with a serious, almost thoughtful look on his face.
And they both looked a hell of a lot like him.
“Twins?”
In an instant, emotions he could hardly name raced through him. Anger, frustration, confusion and back to anger again. How the hell could he be a father? Nobody he knew had been pregnant. This couldn’t be happening. He glanced up at the empty office as if half expecting someone to jump out, shout, “You’ve just been punk’d,” and let him off the hook. But there were no cameras. There was no joke.
This was someone’s idea of serious.
Well, hell, he told himself, it wasn’t the first time some woman had tried to slap him with a paternity suit. But it was for damn sure the first time the gauntlet had been thrown down in such an imaginative way.
“Who, though?” He grabbed the envelope up, but only his name was scrawled across the front in a small, feminine hand. Turning over the card he still held, he saw more of that writing:
“We need to talk. Come to cabin 2A on the Riviera Deck.”
“Riviera Deck.” Though he hated like hell to admit it, he wasn’t sure which deck that was. He had a lot of ships in his line and this was his first sail on this particular one. Though he meant to make Falcon’s Pride his home, he hadn’t had the chance yet to explore it from stem to stern as he did all the ships that carried his name.
For now, he stalked across the room to the framed set of detailed ship plans hanging on the far wall of his office. He’d had one done for each of the ships in his line. He liked looking at them, liked knowing that he was familiar with every inch of every ship. Liked knowing that he’d succeeded in creating the dream he’d started more than ten years before.But at the moment, Dave wasn’t thinking of his cruise line or of business at all. Now all he wanted to do was find the woman who’d sent him this card so he could assure himself that this was all some sort of mistake.Narrowing his pale blue eyes, he ran one finger down the decks until he found the one he was looking for. Then he frowned. According to this, the Riviera Deck was below crew quarters.“What the hell is going on?” Tucking the card with the pictures of the babies into the breast pocket of his white, short-sleeved shirt, he half turned toward the office door and bellowed, “Teresa!”The door flew open a few seconds later and
He got a grip on his hormones, took two steps until he was at the side of a bed built for a sixth-grader, then turned around to glare at her. God, the cabin was so small it felt as though the walls were closing in on him and, truth to tell, they wouldn’t have far to move. He felt as if he should be slouching to avoid skimming the top of his head along the ceiling. Every light in the cabin was on and it still looked like twilight.But Dave wasn’t here for the ambience and there was nothing he could do about the rooms at the moment. Now all he wanted was an explanation. He waited for her to shut the door, sealing the two of them into the tiny cracker box of a room before he said, “You left without telling me, so what’s the game this time, Lucia?”“This isn’t a game, Dave,” she said, folding her arms over her chest. “It wasn’t a game then, either.”“Right.” He laughed and tried not to breathe deep. The scent of her was already inside him, the tiny room making him even more aware of it th
“I—” He frowned down at the stack of papers.She took advantage of his momentary speechlessness. “I’ve been trying to reach you since I first found out I was pregnant, Dave.”“How was I supposed to know that this is what you were trying to tell me?”“You might have read one or two of them,” Lucia pointed out and managed to hide the hurt in her voice.He scowled at her. “How the hell could I have guessed you were trying to tell me I was a father? I just thought you were wanted money instead of us.”She hissed in a breath as the insult of that slapped at her. Bubbling with fury, Lucia really had to fight the urge to give him a swift kick. How like Dave to assume that any woman who was with him was only in it for what she could get from him. But then, he’d spent most of the past ten years surrounding himself with the very users he’d suspected her of being. People who wanted to be seen with him because he was one of the world’s most eligible billionaires. Those hangers-on wanted to be in
Just thinking about her boys brought an ache to Dave’s heart. She’d never left them before, and though she knew the twins were in good hands, she hated not being with them.“But I’m on this boat for their sakes,” she reminded herself sternly.With that thought in mind, her gaze swept the interior of Captain Jack’s Bar and Lounge. Like everywhere else on this ship, Dave hadn’t skimped. The walls were pale wood that gleamed in the light glinting down on the crowd from overhead chandeliers shaped like ship’s wheels. The bar was a slinky curve of pale wood with a granite top the color of molten honey.Conversations flowed in a low rumble of sound that was punctuated by the occasional clink of crystal or a high-pitched laugh. First day at sea and already the party had begun.Well, for everyone but Dave. She hadn’t exactly been in celebration mode after Dave left her cabin.In fact, Dave’d spent most of the day lying on a chaise on the Verandah Deck, trying to get lost in the book she’d pic
“It’s not?” Lucia set her glass down onto the table and watched as Mary’s eyes actually sparkled even harder than they had been.“Oh, no. Mr. wilson said that most of the cabins were already full, which is how we got stuck in those tiny ones in the first place. So he moved us into a luxury suite!”“He did?”“It’s on the Splendor Deck. The same level as Mr. Wilson’s himself. And Jenna, our suite is amazing! It’s bigger than my house. Plus, he said our entire cruise is on him. He’s refunding what we paid for that hideous cabin and insisting that we pay nothing on this trip.”“Wow.” Dave had always taken great pride in keeping his passengers happy, but this was…well, to use Mary’s word, amazing. Cruise passengers usually looked forward to a bill at the end of a cruise that could amount to several hundred dollars. Oh, the food and accommodations were taken care of when you rented your cabin. But incidentals could really pile up on a person if they weren’t paying attention.By doing this,
“Yes,” she said, attempting to draw his attention back to her. “I just came from my cabin and my key card didn’t work, so….”“Ms.Lucia,” he said, his attitude changing from flirtatious and friendly to crisp professionalism. “There’s a notation here asking that you be escorted to the Splendor Deck.”Where Mary’s new cabin was. So Dave had upgraded Lucia, as well? Unexpected and frankly, a relief. A suite would be much more comfortable than the closet she’d been assigned.But…“All of my things are still in my cabin, so I really need to get in there to pack and….”“No, ma’am,” Jeff said quickly, smiling again. “Your cabin was packed up by the staff and your luggage has already been moved. If you’ll just take that elevator” he paused to point at a bank of elevators opposite them “to the Splendor Deck, you’ll be met and directed to your new cabin.”Strange. She didn’t know how she felt about someone else rooting through her things, but if it meant she could get into a shower, change clothe
Teresa smiled tightly. “True. I do defend him. I do what I can to help him. He’s a good boss. And he’s been good to me. I’m not saying that how he handled the…situation with you was right—”Dave stopped her, holding up both hands. “You know what? Never mind. It was more than a year ago. It’s over and done. And whatever Dave and I had has ended, too.”Teresa cocked her head to one side and looked at her thoughtfully. “You really think so, hmm?”“Trust me on this,” Lucia said as they started walking again. “Dave is so over me.”“If you say so.” Teresa stopped in front of a set of double doors. Waving one hand at them as if she were a game show hostess displaying a brand-new refrigerator, she said, “Here we are. Your new quarters. I hope you like them.”“I’m sure they’ll be great. Way better than the Riviera Deck anyway.”“Oh,” Teresa said with a smile, “that’s certainly a fair statement. You go on in, your things have been unpacked. I’m sure I’ll be seeing you again.”“Okay.” Lucia stoo
He looked her up and down and could admit at least to himself that she looked damn good to him. Her dark blond hair was a little windblown, stray tendrils pulling away from her braid to lay against her face. Her eyes were wide and gleaming with suspicion, and, strangely enough, that didn’t do a damn thing to mitigate the attraction he felt as he drew in a breath that carried her scent deep into his lungs. “I’ll stay here, but I’m not sleeping with you,” she announced suddenly. Dave shook his head and smiled. “Don’t flatter yourself. I said you’re staying in my suite, not my bed. As it happens, there are three bedrooms here besides my own. Your things have been unpacked in one of them.” She frowned a little and the flush of color in her cheeks faded a bit. “Oh.” “Disappointed?” Nick asked, feeling a quick jolt of something hot and reckless punch through him. “Please,” she countered quickly. “You’re not exactly irresistible, Dave.” He frowned at that, but since he didn’t actually b