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

“What was that?”

“Nothing,” she said. “So what are we doing here in Ireland, exactly?”

His mouth quirked as if he knew she was desperately trying to change the subject. “Well, I told you I’ve stayed here at the castle before, but this time I’ll be talking with management, gathering information about what kind of activities they offer families and in general seeing if Ashford Castle would be a good fit for our family adventure company.”

“I can’t imagine anyone not enjoying staying here.”

“Oh, it’s beautiful,” he agreed, shifting his gaze around the room, “but will it be enough to qualify as a family adventure? We’ll see.”

“Maybe it doesn’t have to be so much about adventure as it does a family spending time together in an amazing place,” she said. “I know the castle itself would be enough to capture the imagination of any child. They’d picture themselves as knights and princesses...”

He nodded. “You might be right about that. My brothers and I would have loved this place when we were kids.”

Several seconds of silence passed before he asked, “Did you see much of the triplets before they came to live with you?”

“What?” The change of subject threw her for a moment.

He stared into his wine, then slowly lifted his gaze to hers. “The babies. Did you see much of them before Jackie and Elena died?”

“Not a lot, because they were living in San Francisco,” she said quietly, sensing the shift in his mood to contemplative, “but they came to visit and I went to see them a few times.”

“What were they like?” His voice was so soft, it was almost as if he regretted asking the question at all. “The babies, I mean.”

Looking at him, Dina felt a twist of sympathy. Over the last week or so, he’d become so involved with the triplets. She’d stopped expecting him to give up and walk away. The man would never turn his back on those children and he was doing more and more to convince Dina that he was actually enjoying being a father.

Bottom line was, Connor was changing his home, his world, to accommodate them and he had been cheated out of knowing them for the first year of their lives. Yes, cheated, she thought and sent a disgusted thought toward her sister, wherever she might be. Jackie and Elena had been wrong to keep the kids from him. Wrong to leave town and run rather than share the children with the man who had helped to create them. And if Dina had known the truth, she would have told Connor herself.

So maybe, she thought, she was wrong to fight him so hard on the kids now. But what choice did she have, really? She couldn’t lose the triplets. Not even to their father. It would be like tearing her own heart out. He was watching her, waiting for to speak, to tell him about the children he hardly knew. She took a breath and said, “The babies were always so cute. But oh, boy, were they tiny when they were born.”

A wistful smile curved his mouth as he tried to picture it. “I bet Jackie was afraid to pick them up.”

“She was,” Dina said with a laugh. “For a while, but she got over it because Elena insisted.”

“What kind of mom was she? Jackie?”

“A little crazy. Fun.” Dina smiled at the memories and tried to make them feel real for Connor. “Elena was the one with the schedule. She wrote everything down. What time the trips ate, napped, play time, bath time. My sister loved schedules.” Now it was her turn to be wistful. Only three months since she’d lost her big sister and Dina missed her. “But Jackie was fun. As the kids got older, she would dress up to read them bedtime stories. She bought them all miniature baseball bats so they’d be ready to play as soon as they could walk...”

“Sounds like Jacks. She used to play shortstop. She was really good, too.” His smile faded into a thoughtful frown.

Twilight crept into the luxuriously appointed room, and shadows lengthened. It felt intimate, sitting here in the half light with Connor, sharing memories with him so that he could hold the images in his mind. But, she realized suddenly, she could do better.

Reaching to the table beside her, she turned on a lamp that sent shards of light glancing off its carved crystal base. He scowled a little at the sudden brightness, but Dina ignored that and picked up her purse. Pulling her phone free, she turned it on, went to the gallery and asked, “Would you like to see pictures?”

His eyes flashed with interest and a warm smile curved his mouth. “Are you serious?”

She answered the smile with one of her own, then held her phone out to him. “I never delete anything,” she said wryly, “so there are photos of them from newborn on.”

He was already looking at the pictures, swiping his finger across the screen to look at more.

“Some of them I took, others Elena emailed to me.”

He laughed.

“What?”

Connor looked up at her, a mixture of amusement and regret in his eyes. “This picture. Last Christmas, I guess.”

Dina knew which photo he was talking about, but she went to him anyway, knelt at his side on the thick rug and looked at the phone screen. Three babies, dressed in candy-cane-striped footie jammies, each of them with a Santa hat on their heads and tiny white beards on their faces.

Still laughing, Connor asked, “Even Sadie had a beard?”

Dina smiled at the memory. She’d been at her sister’s house when the two women took that picture to use as their Christmas card. “Jackie didn’t want Sadie to feel left out,” she said quietly.

“Sounds like her,” he agreed. Slowly, he flipped through the rest of the pictures, not speaking again.

Dina stayed where she was, watching—his expressions, not the phone screen. Every emotion he felt flickered over his face, shining in his eyes, curving his mouth. On a too-small screen, he watched his children change and grow and it was clear that those pictures touched something inside him. When he’d finally come to the end—she really did need to delete at least some of those pictures—he handed her the phone.

“I missed so much already.”

“You didn’t know, Connor.”

“Doesn’t change anything.” He turned his head to look at her. His eyes shone with sadness, but a glint of determination was there, too, and Dina braced herself for what he might say next.

“I won’t miss any more time with my children, Dina.”

Her hand closed around her phone and held it tightly. Wow, just a couple of minutes ago, she’d been feeling bad for him, taking his side against the memory of her own sister. But looking into his eyes now, she saw that this man didn’t need her sympathy. “Meaning?”

“Meaning,” he said quietly, “I’ll never get back their first Christmas. They got their first teeth, took their first steps, all without me even knowing of their existence.”

“I know, Connor and it’s terrible, but—”

He shifted in his chair, cupped her chin in his palm and lifted her face to his. “You and me, Dina, we’re going to have to come to an understanding.”

“What kind of understanding?”

“Well, that’s the question, isn’t it?” he whispered. “I know what kind I’m interested in. I guess all we need is for you to decide for yourself what it is you want here.”

Oh, she knew what she wanted. Dina just didn’t know if getting what she wanted would make things better...or worse.

* * *

Watching Connor with his family was a revelation. Oh, she knew he was close to his twin—why wouldn’t he be? But Jefferson King was a cousin and yet he and Connor seemed as close as brothers. Obviously, family was vastly important not only to Connor but to the Kings in general. That acknowledgement underscored what she’d felt only the night before. As his children, the triplets weren’t something Connor would risk losing.

“Lovely, aren’t they?”

Dina glanced at Maura King. The woman was short and gorgeous, in spite of her heavy rubber boots, and the oversize jacket she wore over a thick red knit sweater. June in Ireland, just as Connor had told her, meant clouds, wind, cold and spatters of rain.

They’d gone shopping in the village of Craic only that morning, buying the triplets warmer clothing, since a California wardrobe didn’t prepare anyone for the damp chill. Ireland was beautiful and wild in a way that California never could be, and Dina loved it already.