Double Trouble: Pregnancy Surprise: Two Little Miracles / Expecting Royal Twins! / Miracle: Twin Babies

She sucked her stomach in, but he tutted and ran his hand over it, his hot, dry palm flat against the skin, his fingers trailing fire. One finger flicked at the elastic of her little lace shorts. ‘What are these?’ he said, his voice unsteady.

‘I thought you might like them.’

‘You’re going to kill me,’ he whispered, and, drawing her into his arms, he brought their bodies into contact for the first time.

They both gasped, then sighed, and then eased closer, until finally he lifted his head and met her eyes.

‘Jules—I have to have you now, or I’m going to die, I swear it,’ he said unevenly. ‘I need you so damned much.’

His eyes were bright with fire, and his chest was heaving against hers, the candlelight picking out the sharp definition of his muscles and turning him to gold as he lifted her gently in his arms and laid her on the bed.

He followed her down, his eyes never leaving her face, and then finally he let them track over her, following the line of his hands as they stroked over her skin and left fire in their wake. He ran his knuckles over the edge of her bra, down the line of her cleavage, then turned his hand and cupped her breast, his thumb chafing lightly over her nipple until she thought she’d scream.

‘I want to taste you,’ he muttered gruffly. ‘Every day I watch the babies suckle from you, and…’

She wanted it, too. Ached for it. She undid the catch—front-fastening, she’d thought, for convenience, but she wondered now if she’d had this in mind all along—and he eased the cups away, then slid his hand inside and lifted one breast to his lips.

Milk dewed on her nipple, and he caught it on his tongue and tasted it, then closed his mouth over her and suckled hard.

She gasped, a shaft of white-hot need lancing through her with deadly accuracy, and he lifted his head, his eyes black now, his mouth taut.

For the longest moment they stayed like that, their eyes locked, and then with a desperate sound he stripped away her tiny lace shorts, ripped off his boxers and moved over her, his solid, muscled thighs hard against her legs as he nudged them apart.

‘Jules,’ he whispered.

And then he was there, inside her, filling her, and she felt the storm closing round them, the sensation overwhelming her until suddenly everything broke loose and her climax ripped through her.

He caught her scream in his mouth, trapped it against the savage groan that tore from his chest. And then he rolled her to her side and pulled her in close to him, their bodies still locked together, their hearts racing, and, when she finally opened her eyes, he was looking at her with wonder in his eyes, the lashes clumped with tears.

‘I love you,’ he whispered, and, drawing her close again, he tucked her head under his chin and wrapped his arms around her, his hands stroking slowly, rhythmically, against her spine until finally she fell asleep in his arms.

He’d missed her so much.

He’d never told her, hadn’t revealed just how hellish the last year had been. Oh, he’d said a few things, but nothing compared to what was locked up in his heart.

But she was back now, and, if it killed him, he’d make sure he didn’t fail her again.

His arm was going dead, but he didn’t want to disturb her. He was just enjoying the luxury of holding her, and he wasn’t sure how she’d be when she woke up. Distant? Full of regret?

Hell, he hoped not.

And then she stirred, opened her eyes and smiled at him, and he felt the tension ease out of him like a punctured balloon.

‘Hi.’

‘Hi,’ he answered, and feathered a kiss across her lips. ‘You all right?’

‘Mmm. You?’

‘Oh, yes. I’m very all right.’

‘My leg’s dead.’

‘Snap. My arm’s fallen off, I think.’

‘It’s going to hurt.’

‘Uh-huh.’

She grinned. ‘One, two, three—’

He gave a little groan and shifted further out of her way, then laughed and drew her back in to his side, so they lay with fingers intertwined and their heads together on the pillow. ‘Better?’

‘Mmm. Max?’

‘Yes?’

‘I love you.’

‘Oh, Jules.’ He rolled towards her, not caring about the pins and needles in his arm, and kissed her gently. ‘I love you, too.’

‘Good,’ she murmured, and, a second later, he heard a soft, almost imperceptible snore.

He smiled. He’d tease her about that in the morning, he thought, and, shifting closer to her, he curled his hand over her hip and went to sleep.

The babies woke her, and she rolled to her back, opened her eyes and blinked.

It was broad daylight, and she could hear Max’s voice in their room. Getting out of bed and wincing at the unaccustomed aches, she pulled her dressing gown on hastily and went out to them.

‘Hello, my lovelies,’ she said, going into the room, and they beamed at her from their cots.

‘Am I included in that?’ he asked, looking much too sexy for his own good in nothing but a pair of boxers, and she chuckled.

‘You might be. How long have they been awake?’

‘A few minutes. I’ve changed their nappies and given them a bottle of juice, but I think they want their mum and something rather more substantial.’

‘I’m sure they do. Come on, my little ones. Shall we go downstairs and say hello to Murphy?’

She lifted Ava out of her cot and handed her to Max, and then pulled Libby up into her arms and nuzzled her. ‘Hello, tinker. Are you going to be good today?’

‘Probably not, if she’s like her sister,’ he said drily, and carried her downstairs. ‘I’ll do that stairgate this morning.’

‘Mmm. Please. I’d hate anything to happen. Hello, Smurfs! How are you, boy? Find anything nice to eat?’

‘I’m sure he will have given it his best shot,’ Max said wryly. ‘Won’t you, you old rascal?’

Murphy thumped and wagged and grinned at him, and she laughed. ‘He’s such a suck-up. Horrid dog, aren’t you? Horrid. Here, Libby, go to Daddy.’

‘Da-dad,’ she said, and they both stopped in their tracks.

‘Did I dream that?’ she asked, and he laughed and shrugged his shoulders.

‘Only if I did, too. I thought Ava said “Da-da” yesterday, but then I thought she was just babbling.’

‘Da-da!’ Ava chirruped from the playpen, hanging onto the edge and grinning furiously at him, and Julia felt her eyes fill with tears.

‘They said your name,’ she whispered, pressing her hand to her mouth, and he swallowed and grinned, and looked as if he’d crow at any minute.

‘Well, girls. How about that?’ he said, and put the kettle on.

Breakfast was over, they were all washed and dressed, and Max was trying not to think about the fact that he couldn’t take Jules back to bed for hours. Unless the girls had a sleep in the afternoon, of course.

‘Shall we do some house-hunting?’ he suggested to take his mind off it.

‘Sure. If I get the computer we can do it in here. We’ve got wireless.’ And she disappeared and came back a moment later with a laptop. John Blake’s?

No. Don’t get funny about it. He’s given your family a home.

‘Shove up,’ she said, and settled herself down on the sofa with the laptop. She keyed in a password, and he hated himself for memorising it without thinking. Hell, she was right not to trust him, he thought.

‘OK. I’m on one of the big property sites. What are we looking for, and how much?’

‘I wouldn’t put an upper limit on it. Start at the top and work down.’

‘Really?’

‘Well—yeah. Why not? Do you want to live in something horrible?’

‘No! I want to live in something normal!’ she retorted, and he sighed.

Wrong again. Two steps forward, three back, he thought, and wondered why he could never seem to get it right for more than a few minutes at a time.

‘Just put in the area you’re interested in, and let’s see what there is.’

Nothing. That was the simple answer. There was nothing that wasn’t either too small or too remote or too pushed-in or just plain wrong.

And nothing, but nothing, matched up to Rose Cottage.

‘I wish I could stay here,’ she said unhappily.

‘He wouldn’t sell it?’

‘Would you want it?’

He smiled at her wryly. ‘It’s not really up to me, is it? We’re talking about your home, your choice, somewhere for you and the babies. And I guess all I’ll do is visit you.’

Her eyes clouded, and she looked hastily away.

Now what? ‘Unless I work away during the week and come back for weekends. I’m not really into commuting. I’d rather work a short week.’

‘What—only six days, you mean, instead of seven?’

He sighed. ‘Can we start again?’

She looked away and bit her lips. ‘Sorry. It’s just—we seem to be getting on so well, and then the future rears its ugly head and there’s no way round it.’

And the babies were fussing and bored.

‘Let’s dress them up and go for a walk,’ he suggested. ‘We could use the slings.’

They’d bought slings the day before, to carry the babies on their fronts so they could go for walks without taking the buggy, and so they sorted them out. He ended up with Ava and Julia with Libby.

They swapped them all the time, he realised, as if neither of them wanted to create a closer bond with just one of the twins. Odd, how it had just happened and they hadn’t talked about it, but then it had always been like that with them. They’d hardly ever needed to discuss things, they’d just agreed.

Until now, and it seemed that sharing the babies equally was the only thing they could agree on.

Well, out of bed, at least. That, he was relieved to know, was still as amazing as ever. And he wasn’t going to think about it now.

They strolled along the riverbank for a way, while Murphy rushed around and sniffed things and dug a few furious holes in search of some poor water-vole or other unfortunate creature, and then they walked back to the house.

‘Do any of these barns belong to the house?’ he asked, and she nodded.

‘Yes, all of them. It was a farm—Rose Farm—but the farmland was all sold off and they took the name, so it was renamed Rose Cottage. Which is silly, really, because it’s a bit big to be a cottage, but there you go.’

He looked around curiously. There were lots of buildings that were too small to do anything specific with, but others—like the range of open-fronted, single-storey brick cartlodges—could be converted into office accommodation.

If only they could find something like it for sale, then there was a possibility that he could work from home. Not just him, but one or two other members of the team—a sort of satellite office. He knew lots of people who’d scaled down their operations and ‘gone rural’, as one of them had put it, but he’d never seen the attraction.

Until now.

‘Come and see the garden,’ she said, and led him through the gate at the side.

He’d been out there with the dog, of course, but he’d never really examined it, and, as she walked him through it and talked about it, he began to see it through her eyes.

And it was beautiful. A little ragged round the edges, of course, in the middle of winter, but even now there were daffodils and crocuses coming up, and buds were forming on the rose bushes, and, if he looked hard, he could imagine it in summer.

‘I’ve got photos of it with the roses all flowering,’ she said. ‘It’s stunning.’

It would be. He could see that. And he remembered what she’d said, on the day that she’d left him.

I want…a house, a garden, time to potter amongst the plants, to stick my fingers in the soil and smell the roses…We never stop and smell the roses, Max. Never.

Well, she had her garden now, and her roses. Watching her talk about them, he could see the change in her, the glow in her eyes, the warmth in her skin, the life in her. Real life, not just the adrenaline high of another conquest, but genuine satisfaction and contentment.

And what shocked him more than any of that was that he wanted it, too.

‘Why don’t you have a day out with Jane?’

‘What?’ She shifted forward on the sofa and stared down at him on the floor; he was lying at right angles to her with his hands linked behind his head and Libby sprawled asleep on his stomach.

‘You heard. I’ll look after the girls. We’ll be fine.’

‘Are you sure?’ she asked doubtfully.

‘Yeah, we’ll be great. Don’t you trust me?’

‘Well, of course I trust you. I’m just not sure you know what you’re letting yourself in for.’

‘Undiluted hell, I expect, but I’m sure we’ll all survive.’

She thought about it, and shook her head. ‘No. But I might meet her for a coffee,’ she suggested, toning it all down a little and going for something more manageable. ‘Besides, she’s got the baby, and the others will need dropping off at school and picking up again, and she’s always really busy. But I’ll ask her. When were you thinking of?’

‘Whenever you like. Tomorrow?’

Tomorrow was Monday. One week since he’d arrived. It was two days since they’d ended up in bed. And it had been incredible, but she was letting herself get too addicted to it, and there were other things to think about. Like him in London and her here with the children.

Still, it could work. Lots of couples did it.

But she didn’t want to! She wanted it all!

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