Reunited By The Tycoon's Twins

He’d been a part of her family for years. But those years had happened to coincide with her later teenage ones, when she had spent as much time as humanly possible hidden in her room, avoiding her family. And anyone else for that matter.

Her teenage years hadn’t exactly been a happy time, and being forced to revisit them, by virtue of the constant reminder that was Finn, hadn’t been a part of her plan. But, as she had nowhere else to go, she was stuck with him, and the memories.

Finn was still making goofy faces at the baby, so she took another minute to look at him. To see the man, rather than the boy. There was no hiding from the fact that somewhere along the line he had become...beautiful. There was no other word for it. High cheekbones sloped down into a strong, stubble-covered jaw. Wide green eyes under dark brows, and a full mouth curved into a smile as he chatted gibberish to his son. It was a pretty picture. If you liked that sort of thing. And the warmth low in her belly was all the proof—if proof were needed—that Madeleine absolutely did like that sort of thing.

She wondered if it had all changed him. The money. The success. The business. Of course it must have changed him. But how had it changed him? she wondered. Had it made him hard? Had he had to become tough, in order to break the cycle of poverty, finish his education, start his business? If it had, she couldn’t see it now, with the sunshine streaming in through the windows and a baby chuckling goofily up at him. But that didn’t mean that it wasn’t lurking somewhere under the surface.

It didn’t matter, she told herself sternly. Because she was staying in his home, she was looking after his children, and what she thought about him personally was completely out of bounds. It didn’t matter if he was beautiful. It wouldn’t matter if he was tough. Because any sort of a relationship—even the shortest of flirtations, the most casual of flings—was completely off the cards.

And flings were the only sort of relationship that Madeleine could tolerate. Get in, have fun, get out before they could disappoint you. That was what ten years of working and dating in London had taught her. So she swiped right and accepted blind dates and chatted to guys in bars, always safe in the knowledge that she was going to cut ties before they had a chance to disappoint her.

And there was no question that she would always be disappointed in the end. She’d learnt that early on in her love life, before she had even left school. When it didn’t matter how sweet the boy was or how interested he pretended to be in her life; all he really wanted was to get a hand in her bra. And ever since she had worked that out, she had been happier. She accepted that no one saw past her body and her face, and all the assumptions that they would make about her. And as long as she didn’t expect more, she could have fun with them for a few weeks. Relationships happened on her terms, met her needs and ended when she decided. It had kept her bed warm and her evenings full since she had been in London, and she was happy with that.

Except...that would never lead to this, she thought, watching Finn with Hart. It didn’t lead to marriage and babies and a family of your own.

But she didn’t care about that, Madeleine reminded herself. Single dad of twins wasn’t exactly a nuclear family either. Nor were her brother and his husband and their adopted brood. She had other options if she decided that she wanted a family one day. Options that didn’t include pretending that the guys she hung out with were able to take her seriously enough to be interested in anything more than her body.

And that was before she even got started on her disastrous professional life, which had never recovered from her decision to quit university in her final year. Which had led to her not being able to get the political reporting internships that she had wanted, which had led to her being on the entertainment desk of a second-rate gossip website, which apparently hadn’t been generating enough income from its clickbait to actually continue paying its staff.

She shook herself, physically as well as metaphorically, causing Finn to look over at her.

‘Sorry, we were ignoring you,’ he said with a smile. ‘I got distracted.’

She smiled at the pair, who were really too cute to be real. She’d had no idea what the sight of a beautiful man with his baby could do to a girl’s ovaries, but she was pretty sure she’d just popped out an egg. And just as rapidly shut down those responses. This was just hormones. And stress. And...something of a dry spell. She wasn’t sure what else she should be blaming it on. It didn’t matter what the reasons were; the only thing that mattered now was that she shut it down.

‘It’s fine. I get it. I’m here to help, so just let me know what you want me to do.’

‘Will you watch him again for a few minutes?’ Finn asked, glancing at the clock on the wall. ‘I should really wake Bella. If she goes too far off his schedule then the whole day falls apart. Pick him up if he starts to grizzle.’ Which he started to do the minute that Finn moved away from him.

‘Of course,’ Madeleine said, taking Hart on her shoulder and rubbing his back out of instinct. Finn looked at her for a moment, and she felt herself starting to blush.

‘Jake was right. You really are a natural at this,’ he said, and Madeleine met his eyes, surprised.

‘Yeah, well, I’m the fun auntie. I have the easy job.’

Finn nodded, and Madeleine turned away, uneasy under his gaze. And a little embarrassed. She had assumed that he had been looking at her because, really, it was what she was used to. But of course he had been looking at his son.

Maybe Finn wasn’t attracted to her. That would certainly make life easier. Make the spark of attraction that she had felt for him a little less inconvenient too. Except...she had seen the way he had occasionally looked at her since she had arrived. It definitely wasn’t as brotherly as would be convenient for her right now.

She tried to think back to the times that their paths had crossed in her childhood home, long since sold so that her parents could pursue their adventures abroad. Had Finn ever looked at her with adolescent heat in his eyes? Had she ever thought of him as something other than her pain-in-the-butt brother’s pain-in-the-butt friend?

Of course not. Thinking back to her teenage years, it was unlikely that she’d peeled her eyes away from the floor for long enough to even get a proper look at him.

It had taken a long time for her to work out that the way to stop people looking at her was to stare them down rather than avoid their gaze. She had an expression that she knew could shame even the most hardened of voyeurs from fifty paces. It had taken time and practice to perfect, but she’d had no shortage of opportunities.

The pad of footsteps behind her made her spin on her stool, and Finn reappeared with another baby on his shoulder, the white of her Baby-gro as fresh and clean as the cotton of Finn’s T-shirt.

‘This sleepyhead here,’ Finn said, half spinning on the spot so that Madeleine could see the baby’s face, ‘is Bella. Bella, say hi to Madeleine.’

Madeleine smiled at the baby, because who could resist a six-month-old, with their chubby cheeks and their chunky limbs, all energy stored up for crawling and walking and the chaos that was to come? But, for a little while longer, she would still be this gorgeous little chunk of babbling perfection, personality shining out of her, even when she was still half asleep.

‘They’re both so gorgeous. I don’t know how you get anything done,’ Madeleine said with a smile.

‘I don’t.’ Finn laughed, though it sounded a little strained. ‘That’s why you’re here. I think it would be a good idea if we all spent some time together over the weekend, get them settled in. Then next week I’ll work from home but start building in a bit of time at the office. Get them used to it. Does that work for you?’

‘I work for you,’ Madeleine reminded him. ‘It works how you want it to work.’

Finn narrowed his eyes at her. ‘I’m not thinking of it that way. You’re not an employee, Madeleine. I don’t want this to be weird.’

‘It’s not weird.’ She shook off the suggestion, tried to pretend that she was completely comfortable around Finn. Not unsettled at all by the attraction she was feeling for him.

‘Good, because I thought we were just friends helping each other out. I’m really grateful for what you’re doing.’

‘And I’m grateful too, for the place to stay.’

‘Good. You know that Jake is like family to me, right. Which means you’re family too. Which means I want to help you out. Okay? The fact that you’re able to take care of the kids for a few weeks, and I’m able to make sure that you are fairly compensated for that, that doesn’t change how I see this, okay? If there’s anything you’re not happy with, if you change your mind or you find a new flat next week and you don’t want to stay, you just tell me, right?’

She nodded, forced a smile, but it didn’t matter what he said; this was already more complicated than he realised.

CHAPTER THREE

SHE LOOKED TRAPPED, and he hated that look on her face. Her expression when she said that she worked for him, he hated that too. He wasn’t sure what it was, that haunted, distrustful look that told him that not everyone she had worked for had treated her fairly. It reminded him of how she had looked when he had opened the door to her earlier, when she had been harassed by the driver of a van.

‘So...dinner tonight,’ Finn said, changing the subject. ‘My housekeeper, Trudy, has gone for the weekend, and I usually fend for myself.’

‘My goodness, such a modern man,’ Madeleine said with an eye roll. ‘I’m sure I’m very impressed.’

‘Save it for the stand-up routine,’ Finn said, grinning. ‘Fending for myself usually involves ordering pizza. If you’re nice to me, I’ll let you share.’

‘Wow. Those millions sure have made you generous.’ She smiled, but then felt awkward, seeing the look on his face when she mentioned money.

‘I’m still just me,’ he said, his voice low and serious.

‘I know,’ she said and smiled, reassuring him. Even though, to be honest, she didn’t really know him at all. But she knew entitled, privileged jerks when she saw them, and so far he didn’t seem to be one. ‘However fancy your kitchen gadgets. I like the apartment, by the way. How long have you been here?’

He produced a smile that didn’t look quite natural. ‘Since just before the babies were born. We sold the house when Caro and I...’

‘Right, of course.’ Madeleine tried to cover the awkward pause that inevitably followed accidentally bringing up someone’s fairly recent divorce, not wanting to pry. But, at the same time, she was living with this man—albeit temporarily—and couldn’t deny that she was curious about what had happened. I mean, she was only human.

‘It was all very amicable,’ he said, though a line had appeared between his eyebrows. ‘We’re still friends, of course. The twins, you know.’

Madeleine narrowed her eyes as she watched Finn. That all sounded too easy, and none of it explained the slightly pinched expression that he had assumed. The look of someone who had had too little sleep and too much worry in recent months, if she had to guess.

‘It sounds like you were very grown-up about the split.’

Finn shrugged and gave a half-smile that came nowhere close to convincing her. ‘We were, really. What choice did we have? She wanted to go; I couldn’t make her stay. Squabbling over how we divided things up wasn’t going to change that. I just needed it to be over. To concentrate on getting back on track.’

‘And the babies?’ Madeleine asked, surprised that Finn was opening up to her. And more than a little intrigued about what exactly it was that Caro had hated so much about her life with Finn. From where Madeleine was sitting, it had quite a lot going for it. And she wasn’t thinking about the perfect espresso she’d just downed in two gulps.

‘She didn’t find out that she was pregnant until quite late on,’ Finn said, and once again Madeleine was struck by his honesty. She couldn’t believe that he was trusting her with the details of his marriage. Wasn’t he worried that she was going to sell him out? ‘By then our marriage was already over, and she had accepted a job doing emergency aid work abroad. She wanted the kids raised here, where it was safer. We both did. And she didn’t want to turn down a job where she knew she could save thousands of lives.’

So their marriage was already over. That was interesting. She’d assumed that their breakup was a recent thing, with the babies and all, but it sounded as if it must have happened more than a year ago. And all of a sudden, sleeping in his home, with this spark of attraction she was finding hard to ignore, was seeming like a less and less good idea.

‘And so now you’re a full-time dad,’ she stated.

‘Well, I’m trying to work as much as I can,’ he said with a shrug, that pinched look back around his eyes. ‘But at the moment it’s just not enough. There’s definitely more dadding going on, and I’m grateful for the extra time with them, but I can’t let things slide any further with work. I’m hoping that’s where you come in, while I find someone more permanent, that is.’

Madeleine nodded, thoughtful. ‘I bet people were surprised.’

He frowned for a second before he guessed her meaning. ‘That I want to parent my children?’ he asked. She saw the hardness appear around his mouth and jaw and heard the sharpness in his tone, and realised that she had hit a nerve. But she hadn’t been criticising—either him or Caro. She was just surprised. ‘It’s just unusual that you’re doing it while Caro’s abroad,’ Madeleine said, pointing out the obvious. ‘I didn’t mean anything by it.’

‘She’s a good mum,’ Finn said, his face still hard. ‘She video calls every day. She comes home when she can. All that she wants is for them to be safe and happy. Thousands of men do the same thing every day and no one bats an eyelid.’

Madeleine sat up straighter, a little indignant that he thought she was judging. ‘I wasn’t batting! I never questioned that Caro is a good mum. But you can’t deny that the situation is unusual, that’s all.’

‘Look at my life, Madeleine,’ Finn said, the muscle in his jaw finally relaxing. ‘Everything about it is unusual.’

She nodded. ‘It’s definitely different from when we were growing up,’ she ventured, wondering how he would react to the reminder about his change in circumstances.

‘God, I know. If you’d told me then...’

Madeleine smiled, sensing that this was as far as this conversation was going to go.

‘So, this pizza, then,’ she said, grasping for a change of topic. ‘Are these kiddies going to co-operate and let us eat with two hands? Should we wear them out before bedtime?’

‘That,’ Finn said, standing suddenly, ‘is an excellent idea. Let me give you the grand tour, and we can let them have a roll around on their play mat in the nursery while you get settled.’

Madeleine stood and parked Hart on her hip, where he gurgled and babbled as he reached out to Finn and his sister.

‘I never knew they were so wriggly at this age,’ Madeleine said, pulling Hart in closer so he didn’t dive out of her arms.

‘You should try it with two of them,’ Finn said with a laugh as Bella decided it was her turn to try and escape.

‘Just promise you’re not going to leave me alone with them just yet,’ Madeleine said, her smile fading when she realised that she was basically asking him to spend time with her. That verged dangerously close to needy—and she hated needy.

‘I promise, not until you feel you’re ready,’ Finn said as he led them out of the kitchen and into the hallway, with its elegant sweeping staircase up to the first floor.

‘I thought you’d be most comfortable in here,’ Finn said, showing her into a guest room. The bed held an imposing number of soft furnishings, but it was the desk in front of the window that caught her eye. An elegant writing desk with a simple Scandinavian aesthetic sat in front of a Juliet balcony looking out on the garden.

Finn must have caught the direction of her interest because he said, ‘I had Trudy bring that in here. I wasn’t sure if you’d want to write, or if you were working.’

‘That is so thoughtful. Thank you.’

‘And if there’s anything else that you need, just let me know, okay? I want you to feel at home here.’

And, surprisingly, she thought that she might, for the few weeks that she was planning on staying, at least. The luxuries made that easy enough: the sparkling decanter of water on her nightstand, the toiletries that she could glimpse through the open door to her en suite bathroom. It was a far cry from the mould-infested flat that she’d just been evicted from. But it wasn’t just the luxury of the place. It just had...a vibe. She wasn’t sure what it was. But she felt comfortable here. Maybe it was that she’d known Finn for ever, that he had been a part of her family for as long as she could remember.

But then she looked over at Finn and caught him looking at her. Not at her body—she could tell when men were doing that. But at her. And nothing felt comfortable any more. Because she wasn’t sure that she’d ever seen anyone look at her like that. If she’d ever felt a man’s eyes on her and not felt as if she was being flayed open and they were peering at her insides.

It was the same reason, she told herself. Finn didn’t look at her like that because he’d known her before she had this body. When she’d been a child. Before everyone she met had started judging her on the curves of her breasts and her hips, as if they somehow broadcast something about her personality.

But he noticed her body. She’d seen and cringed at enough reactions to her over the years to be able to read a man’s mind perfectly when he was looking at her. And Finn’s was no different. He saw her curves. He liked them. But she was starting to have the suspicion that he saw beyond them too. That he would still look at her like that whatever shape her body took.

And that was deeply unsettling. Because if there was one thing that she had learnt over the years it was how reliably men reacted to her. What she should expect from them, and what she should ask of them in return. And if she was wrong about that, if Finn was going to tread outside of that familiar, safe territory that she had constructed for herself, then she wasn’t sure what to make of it.

She met his eyes and he startled, and that gave her hope. Because, whatever this tension was between them, it seemed as if Finn was as wary of it as she was. And that was good. That meant that they were both going to be on their guard. That they were both going to be committed to keeping these feelings in their place.

She knew why she was so wary. But she wondered about Finn. She had strong suspicions that he was attracted to her. But it was equally clear that he had no intention of acting on that. Why? Was it the divorce? Was he still heartbroken over Caro? She didn’t think so. He had sounded a little sad when they had talked about her earlier. But he wasn’t yearning for her; she could read that much. But she still wondered what had happened—why they had broken up. They had been together for a couple of years before they had got married, so it wasn’t a flash-in-the-pan relationship.

She could ask him, she supposed. But the way that he had shut down her questioning made clear that he didn’t want to talk about it, and it wasn’t her place to push him. She could ask her brother, but showing that level of interest would open her up to a whole lot of questions from Jake that she had no intention of answering.

Finn showed Madeleine around the apartment, wondering what on earth had made him think that it would be a good idea to spill the details of his marriage and divorce to a journalist. Because, despite their history and their shared childhood memories, Madeleine was a journalist. And, more than that, she was a journalist who had recently been made redundant and pitched into an enormously competitive job and freelance market. The woman had to eat, and if she chose to do that by selling the story that he had just willingly spilled to her then who could blame her? He certainly wouldn’t.

Back in the day, there was very little that he wouldn’t have done to put food in his belly and a roof over his head. And a decade of more money than he needed had done nothing to dull the memories of those decades of deprivation. And then recently, with his divorce and the developments at work, having to leave the home that he and Caroline had bought together, having to dismantle the life they had created together, he’d found himself staring at his spreadsheets and feeling that familiar nag of worry. An instinct that he’d thought he’d lost years ago.

And Madeleine hadn’t forgotten his old life either. He used to turn up at her house with an empty belly, desperately ashamed of the fact that he would willingly raid their fridge for anything that he could get his hands on, and the fact that they all knew the score. They had always tried to cover it up. Looked the other way when their mum had given him the biggest portion at dinner. But they all knew, and he knew that they knew.

The alternative was going hungry, going home to a cold empty house while his mother worked her second job in a futile attempt to make ends meet. And hunger had won out over pride every time. He felt hot at the memories of how low he had had to stoop at that time in his life, and grateful that his children would never ever know that feeling. His mother had done everything that she could for him. She had worked two jobs trying to provide for them, but it had never been enough. Without the Everleigh family, he would have been as lonely as he had been hungry. It was thanks to them that they had all made it through those years. Thanks to them that he had finished his homework and turned up at school.

Now that he was the one with the warm home and the food and the luxury lifestyle, he would never begrudge any of them a single penny. He could never repay what they had given him, no matter how hard he tried. Giving Madeleine his spare room for a few weeks was nothing. Not compared to what she had given him, what she’d shared with him, back when she’d barely acknowledged his existence. She could take it all, as far as he was concerned, for as long as she needed it, and he would still be in her debt.

Getting twin babies to sleep wasn’t an easy task at the best of times. When they were overstimulated by a new face and a new playmate who was in no way as immune to their babyish charms as he had had to learn to be, it was damn near impossible. Despite Finn having managed to get two babies into the bathroom at six-thirty, right on schedule, it had been half an hour before they had escaped that steam-filled room with two overtired, giggling, wriggly bundles wrapped in towels. And that had only been the start of the fun and games. It had taken nearly an hour of rocking, bouncing and pacing the hallways to get them both asleep, and in that time he and Madeleine had barely exchanged more than an exasperated glance as they’d passed one another in the hallway.

He had seen the shock starting to fade and the reality of what she had let herself in for starting to sink in as the babies had fought sleep, or being put down in their cots, over and over. And over. By the time that they’d both slowly backed out of the nursery, breath held and the door gently closed, he was ready to sink into bed and call it a night. But Madeleine was his guest and he knew that Jake expected more of him than to leave her to fend for herself the first night she was here.

That was all it was, he told himself. He owed it to Jake to make sure that Madeleine was settled and happy and had everything she needed. There was no other reason that the idea of sharing a pizza with her had sustained him all evening. It would be absolutely inappropriate for him to think of her as anything other than Jake’s sister and his temporary saviour. It absolutely was not—in any way—a date.