Marriage: To Claim His Twins - Page 15

She was just about to pour herself a cup of tea when she saw the twins hurrying towards her followed by Sander. His hair, like the twins’, was damp, as though he had just stepped out of the shower. Her heart lurched into her ribs. Her hand had started to tremble so badly that she had to put down the teapot. The twins were clamouring to tell her about their day, but even though she tried desperately to focus on them her gaze remained riveted to Sander, who had now stopped walking and was looking at her.

It wasn’t her changed appearance that had br

ought him to an abrupt halt, though.

In Sander’s eyes the new hairstyle and pretty make-up were merely window-dressing that highlighted what he already knew and what had been confirmed to him when Ruby had opened the door of her home to him a few days earlier—namely that the delicacy of her features possessed a rare beauty.

No, what had caused him to stop dead almost in mid-stride was the sense of male pride the sight of the trio in front of him brought. His sons and their mother. Not just his sons, but the three of them. They went together, belonged together—belonged to him? Sander shook his head, trying to dispel his atavistic and unfamiliar reactions with regard to Ruby, both angered by them and wanting to reject them. They were so astonishingly the opposite of what he wanted to feel. What was happening to him?

Her transformation passed him by other than the fact that he noticed the way she was wearing her hair revealed the slender column of her throat and that her face had a bit more colour in it.

Ruby, already self-conscious about the changes to her appearance, held her breath, waiting for Sander to make some comment. After all the sight of her had brought him to a halt. But when he reached the table he simply frowned and demanded to know why she hadn’t ordered something to eat.

‘Because all I wanted was a cup of tea,’ she answered him. Didn’t he like her new haircut? Was that why he was looking so grim? Well, she certainly wasn’t going to ask him if he approved of the change. She turned to the boys, asking them, ‘Did you like the Natural History Museum?’

‘Yes,’ Harry confirmed. ‘And then Daddy took us swimming.’

Swimming? Ruby directed a concerned look at Sander.

‘There’s a pool here in the hotel,’ he explained. ‘Since the boys will be living on an island, I wanted to make sure that they can swim.’

‘Daddy bought us new swimming trunks,’ Freddie told her.

‘There should be two adults with them when they go in a pool,’ Ruby couldn’t stop herself from saying. ‘A child can drown in seconds and—’

‘There was a lifeguard on duty.’ Sander stopped her. ‘They’re both naturals in the water, but that will be in their genes. My brother swam for Greece as a junior.’

‘Mummy’s hair is different,’ Harry suddenly announced.

Self-consciousness crawled along her spine. Now surely Sander must say something about her transformation, give at least some hint of approval since he was the one who had orchestrated her makeover, but instead he merely stated almost indifferently, ‘I hope you got everything you are going to need, as there won’t be time for any more shopping. As I said, I’ve arranged for us to fly to the island the day after the marriage ceremony.’

Ruby nodded her head. It was silly of her to feel disappointed because Sander hadn’t said anything about her new look. Silly or dangerous? His approval or lack of it shouldn’t mean anything to her at all.

The boys would be hungry, and she was tired. She was their mother, though, and it was far more important that she focused on her maternal responsibilities rather than worrying about Sander’s approval or lack of it.

‘I’ll take the boys up to the suite and organise a meal for them,’ she told Sander.

‘Good idea. I’ve got some ends to tie up with the Embassy,’ he said brusquely, with a brief nod of his head.

‘What about dinner?’ Ruby’s mouth had gone dry, and the silence that greeted her question made her feel she had committed as much of a faux pas as if she’d asked him to go to bed with her.

Feeling hot and angry with herself for inadvertently giving Sander the impression that she wanted to have dinner with him, she swallowed against the dry feeling in her mouth.

Why had Ruby’s simple question brought back that atavistic feeling he had had earlier? Sander asked himself angrily. For a moment he let himself imagine the two of them having dinner together. The two of them? Surely he meant the four of them—for it was because of the twins and only because of them that he had decided to allow her back into his life. Sander knew better than to allow himself to be tricked by female emotions, be they maternal or sexual. As he had good cause to know, those emotions could be summoned out of nowhere and disappear back there just as quickly.

‘I’ve already arranged to have dinner with an old friend,’ he lied. ‘I don’t know what time I’ll be back.’

An old friend, Sander had said. Did that mean he was having dinner with another woman? A lover, perhaps? Ruby wondered later, after the boys had eaten their tea and she had forced herself to eat something with them. She knew so little about Sander’s life and the people in it. A feeling of panic began to grow inside her.

‘Mummy, come and look at our island,’ Freddie was demanding, standing in front of a laptop that he was trying to open.

‘No, Freddie, you mustn’t touch that,’ Ruby protested,

‘It’s all right, Mummy,’ Harry assured her adopting a heartbreakingly familiar pose of male confidence. ‘Daddy said that we could look.’

Freddie had got the laptop lid up—like all children, the twins were very at home with modern technology—and before Ruby could say anything the screen was filled with the image of an almost crescent shaped island, with what looked like a range of rugged mountains running the full length of its spine.

In the early days, after she had first met him, Ruby had tried to find out as much as she could about Sander, still refusing to believe then that all she had been to him was a one-night stand.

Tags: Penny Jordan Billionaire Romance
Source: readsnovelonline.net
readsnovelonline.net Copyright 2016 - 2024