Finn's Twins!

“No, actually I’m not.”

He didn’t say anything for a moment. He shoved both hands through his hair again, spiking it further. Then, “Yeah, right,” he said at last. He took a steadying breath and then gave her look of tolerant amusement. “So where’s Meg? Hiding in the elevator waiting for me to flip out completely?” A corner of his mouth lifted.

“She’s in Bora Bora,” Izzy said.

All his amusement vanished in a flash. “What?”

Izzy took a step backward, almost toppling over when the twins’ clinging made her lose her balance for a second. She steadied herself, cursing Meg for having stuck her in this mess. She shrugged helplessly. “She left last night with her fiancé. She said you’d encouraged her to go,” she added accusingly.

“That conniving, sneaky, two-faced little—”

“Mis-ter MacCauley!” It wasn’t all that far off Izzy’s view of her ditzy neighbor, but she would never say so in front of the woman’s daughters.

He bit off the rest of the sentence, jammed his fists into the pockets of his jeans and stormed around the receptionist’s desk. She watched him warily from within the eye of the hurricane.

There was a sudden buzz from the doorbell. Automatically the receptionist responded. The door burst open and two chestnut-haired buxom bombshells in Day-Glo miniskirts trooped in.

“Oh, Finn, dear, sorry we’re late! So much traffic coming down Seventh Avenue you just wouldn’t believe!” the taller one said breathlessly.

They both brushed past Izzy and the twins as if they were pieces of furniture, skittering up to press kisses on Finn MacCauley’s tan cheeks and ruffle his already ruffled hair with their long fingernails.

“Tony sends his love. He says thanks so much for the favor. Where do you want us?” The shorter one was already tugging her skimpy scoop-neck shirt over her head as she headed through the door Finn had emerged from. The taller one paused long enough to bat her lashes at him, then followed her friend.

No one moved in their wake. Then Finn rubbed a hand over his mussed hair in a vain attempt to comb it. He fixed the twins with a hard stare. “Sit there,” he commanded, his gaze flicking from them to the bench alongside the seven-foot Rapunzel. They gulped audibly, then scurried to obey.

“You, too,” he said to Izzy.

“I have to go,” she objected. “I was only supposed to deliver—”

“Sit there and wait or take them with you.”

Izzy’s chin jutted. “I’m not taking—”

“Then you’ll wait, damn you.” Finn MacCauley’s chin stuck out even farther. They glowered at each other. Izzy’s glare turned decidedly mutinous.

“If you don’t,” Finn said, apparently no stranger to mutiny when he saw it, “I’ll find you if I have to track you to the ends of the earth.”

And he would, too, damn it, Finn thought savagely as he fumbled with one of the lights he was aiming at a pair of shapely almost bare backsides.

“Aren’t you finished yet?” one of the girls whined. “I’m tired.”

“You’ve been fiddling with those lights for hours,” the other one complained. “It’s late. Tony was expecting us at six.”

“Tough.” It hadn’t been much over an hour. It just seemed like forever. Finn finished setting the light and stepped back. “Stop wriggling around, for heaven’s sake.”

“But it’s hot.”

“Tony never said it would take so long... or be so boring,” the shorter one said grumpily. “The lights hurt my eyes.”

“Too bad.” Finn stamped back to the camera.

Tony’s girls were still wriggling—and pouting. He sighed. He’d probably got as much work out of them as he was going to. He never would have used them at all, except he owed Tony a favor for talking Angelina Fiorelli into spending an entire afternoon of her very busy New York jaunt in his studio. Of course it looked like the shots he took would end up being profitable for both of them, so Angelina was happy. But he still owed Tony, and shooting a couple of eager wannabes for a sunscreen ad that only required lots of honey-toned skin and absolutely no expression seemed an easy way to accomplish the payback. That was before he’d spent the last hour with them.

But they were preferable to what was waiting for him once he was done.

Damn Meg anyway! How could she have done this to him? What did she think he was going to do with a pair of five- (or were they six?) year-old girls while she went off blithely to Bora Bora?

It was patently clear what she thought—that he’d take care of them, just like he took care of everything else in her life. She had only to dump them on his doorstep and good old Finn would have no choice—he’d come leaping to the rescue once more.

He scowled fiercely through the lens. “Sucker,” he muttered.

Both girls started. “I will not!” one exclaimed, jumping up and giving him an outraged glare. The other looked at him in consternation.

Finn straightened and raked a hand through his hair. “Oh, hell. We’re done. Go on, get out of here.”

They left, shooting him wary, worried glances over their shoulders as they went. Finn sorted and finished labeling the used rolls of film for Strong to send to the lab. Then he straightened the set, put away the pillows, moved the baffles, the lifts, the lights. Did whatever he could to delay the inevitable—the twins.

At least their minder was still there—this woman who’d brought disaster to his doorstep. He could hear her even now. There were piping childish voices prattling on while he wound up an extension cord, then Isobel Rule’s soft voice in reply.

She sounded mature enough, but she didn’t look much older than the twins. Maybe it was the clothes she was wearing. They looked like she’d found them in a thrift shop—or a dustbin. They were the sort of vaguely dowdy, slightly hippyish togs that he’d thought went out in the 70s.

She looked like some sort of out-of-work folk singer with her long springy brown hair, parted in the middle, and her fresh scrubbed face. She did have nice skin, rosy with just a few freckles and otherwise absolutely flawless. Probably too young to get zits yet, he thought grimly. What the hell had Meg been thinking of sending the twins with a child like her? What had Meg been thinking of sending the twins at all?

And how dare the hippyish Isobel Rule look down her freckled nose and chastise him for his language in front of them?

It was mild compared to what he was thinking!

Maybe Strong would take them home with her until he could figure out how to drag his sister and her presumably new fiancé back from their Polynesian paradise.

Yeah, that was it. Strong was a family woman. She had a husband. At least he thought she did.

It didn’t matter, Finn decided, making up his mind. With his connections, it shouldn’t take him longer than a day or two to move enough heaven and earth to get Meg back to face the music.

In the meantime, he could stick them with Strong.

She was gone.

“Where’s Strong?” he demanded, glowering down at Isobel Rule.

His receptionist was certainly nowhere in sight. In fact one of the little redheads was sitting in her chair—or had been until he’d opened the door. Then she’d taken one look at him and had scurried to duck behind Isobel Rule once more.

The apparently unflappable Isobel was sitting in a straightback chair next to the larger-than-life portrait he’d done of last year’s supermodel, Tawnee Davis. It had graced the cover of the upstart glamour mag, Hi Society, and had won him industry acclaim for what he’d accomplished with Tawnee’s lovely curves, a few shadowy angles and some artfully arranged blond hair.

Isobel Rule was a complete counterpoint. Rounded where Tawnee was curvy, covered where Tawnee was bare. Her curly brown hair not the least bit artful, her unlined eyes bespeaking innocence rather than seduction.

Not that she seemed to care. Her gaze met Finn’s. “I sent her home.”

“You...sent her home?”