The Seal's Secret Heirs

“I like it black, thanks.” He sipped and added good coffee to his list of things he was thankful for. “Tell me the things I need to know about my kids.”

“Okay.” She nodded and went over a list of basics, which Kyle committed to memory. Eating. Bathing. Sleeping. Check, check, check. Stuff all humans needed, but his little humans couldn’t do these things for themselves. He just had to help them, the way he would a wounded teammate.

“Can I see them?” he asked. Felt weird to be asking permission, but he didn’t want to mess up anything.

“You can. They’re sleeping, but we can sneak in. You can be quiet, right?”

“Quiet enough to take out a barracks full of enemy soldiers without getting caught,” he said without a trace of irony. Hadley just smiled as though he was kidding.

He followed Hadley to the nursery, a mysterious place full of pink and tiny beds with bars. The girls were asleep in their cribs, and he watched them for a moment, his throat tight. Their little faces—how could anything be that tiny and survive? A better question was, how did your heart stay stitched together when it felt as if it would burst from all the stuff swelling up inside it?

“I was their nanny first, you know,” she whispered. “Before I married Liam.”

What did a nanny even do? Was she like a babysitter and a substitute mom all rolled up into one? If so, that seemed like a bonus, and he’d be cutting off his nose to spite his face to relieve her of her duties. She could keep on being the nanny as far as he was concerned, as long as Grace was okay with it. She must be. Liam had hired Hadley, after all, and Grace seemed pretty impressed with them as a team.

“I’m not trying to take away your job,” he mumbled.

Did she see it as a job? If she and Liam wanted to adopt the girls, she’d obviously grown very attached to them. Was it better to cut off their contact with the babies instead? Get them used to the idea?

If so, he couldn’t do it. It seemed unnecessarily cruel and besides, he needed the help.

“I didn’t think you were. It’s admirable that you want to care for them, but there’s a huge learning curve and they won’t do well with a big disruption. Let’s take it one step at a time.”

He could do that. You didn’t drop a green recruit into the middle of a Taliban hotbed and expect him to wipe out the insurgents as his first assignment. You started him out with something simple, like surveillance. “Can I watch you feed them?”

“Sure, when they wake up.”

They tiptoed from the room and Kyle considered that a pretty successful start to Operation: Fatherhood.

Next up, Operation: Do Something About Grace. Because he’d lain awake last night thinking about her more than he’d wanted to, as well. Somehow, he had to shut down the spark between them. Or hose it off with a big, wet kiss.

* * *

Grace sat in her car outside of Wade House and pretended that she was going over some notes in her case file. In truth, her stomach was doing a cancan at the prospect of seeing Kyle again, and she couldn’t get it to settle.

She’d gone a long time without seeing him. What was so different now?

Nothing. She was a professional and she would do her job. Get out of the car, she admonished herself. Get in there and do your assessment. The faster she gathered the facts needed to remove the babies from Kyle’s presence and provide a recommendation for their permanent home, the better.

Hadley let her into the house and directed her to the second floor, where Kyle was hanging out with the babies. Perfect. She could watch him interact with them and record some impartial observations in her files.

But when Grace poked her head into the nursery with a bright smile, it died on her face. Kyle dozed in the rocking chair, Maddie against one shoulder, Maggie the other. Both babies were asleep, swaddled in soft pink blankets, an odd contrast to Kyle’s masculine attire.

But that wasn’t the arresting part. It was Kyle. Unguarded, vulnerable. Sweet even, with his large hands cradled protectively around each of his daughters. He should look ridiculous in the middle of a nursery decorated to the nth degree with girlie colors and baby items. But he looked anything but. His powerful body scarcely fit into the rocking chair, biceps and broad shoulders spilling past the edges of the back. He’d always been incredibly handsome, but on the wiry side.

No more. He was built like a tank, and she could easily imagine this man taking out any threat in a mile-wide radius.

It was a lot more affecting than she would ever admit.

And then his eyelids blinked open. He didn’t move a muscle otherwise, but his keen gaze zeroed in on her. Fully alert. Those hard green eyes cut through her, leaving her feeling exposed and much more aware of Kyle than she’d been a minute ago. Which was saying something, given her thoughts had already been pretty graphic.

It was heady to be in his sights like that. He’d always looked at her as if they shared something special that no one else could or would be involved in. But he’d honed his focus over the years into something new and razor sharp. Flustered, she wiggled her fingers in a half wave, and that’s when he smiled.

It hit her in the soft part of her heart and spread a warmth she did not want to feel. But oh, my, it was delicious. Like when he’d taken her hand in the parking lot last night. That feeling—she’d missed it.

She’d lain awake last night imagining that he’d kissed her the way she’d have sworn he wanted to as they stood under that streetlight. It was all wrong between them. Kissing wasn’t allowed, wasn’t part of the agenda, wasn’t what should happen. But it didn’t stop her from thinking about it.

She was in a lot of trouble.

“Hi,” she murmured, because she felt that she had to say something instead of standing there ogling a gorgeous man as he rocked his infant daughters against an explosion of pink.

“Hi,” he mouthed back. “Is it time for our visit already?”

She nodded. “I can come back.”

She didn’t move as he gave a slight shake of his head. Carefully, he peeled his body from the chair, not jostling even one hair on the head of his precious bundles. As if he’d done it a million times, he laid first one, then the other in their cribs. Neither one woke.

It was a sight to see.

He turned and tiptoed toward the door, but she hadn’t moved from her frozen stance in the doorway yet. She should move.

But he stopped right there in front of her, a half smile lingering on his lips as he laid a hand on her arm, presumably to usher her from the room ahead of him. His palm was warm and her skin tingled under it. The feeling threatened to engulf her whole body in a way that she hadn’t been engulfed in a long time.

Not since Kyle.

Goodness, it seemed so ridiculous, but the real reason it hadn’t been hard to stop dating was because no one compared. She was almost thirty and had only had one lover in her life—this man before her with the sparkling green eyes and beautiful face. And she’d take that secret to the grave.

Her cheeks heated as she imagined admitting such a thing to a guy who had likely cut a wide swath through the eligible women beating a path to his door. He hadn’t let the grass grow under his feet, now, had he? Fathering twins with a woman he’d written off soon after spoke loudly enough to that question.

If she told him, he’d mistakenly assume she still had feelings for him, and that wasn’t exactly true. She just couldn’t find a man who fit her stringent criteria for intimacy. Call it old-fashioned, but she wanted to be in love before making love. And most men weren’t willing to be that patient.

Except Kyle. He’d never uttered one single complaint when he found out she wasn’t hopping into his bed after a few weeks of dating. And oh, my, had it been worth the wait.

The heat in her cheeks spread, and the tingles weren’t just under his palm. No, they were a good bit more in a region where she shouldn’t be getting so hot, especially not over Kyle and his brand-new warrior’s body, laser-sharp focus and gentle hands.

Mercy, she should stop thinking about all that. Except he was looking at her the way he had last night, gaze on her lips, and she wondered if he’d actually do it this time—kiss her as he had so many times before.

One of the babies yowled and the moment broke into pieces.

Kyle’s expression instantly morphed into one of concern as he spun toward the crib of the crying infant. Maddie. It was easy to tell them apart if you knew she was the smaller of the two girls. She’d worn a heart monitor for a long time but Grace didn’t see the telltale wires poking out of the baby’s tiny outfit. Hopefully that meant the multiple surgeries had been successful.

“Hey, now. What’s all this fuss?” he murmured, and scooped up the bundle of pink, holding her to his shoulder with rocking motions.

The baby cried harder. Lines of frustration popped up around Kyle’s mouth as he kept trying different positions against his shoulder, rocking harder, then slower.

“You liked this earlier,” he said. “I’m following procedure here, little lady. Give me a break.”

Grace hid a smile. “Maybe her diaper is wet.”