Claimed for the De Carrillo Twins

Then he looked up and saw another figure, curled in the armchair near the beds. Trinity. She was asleep, her head resting on her shoulder. A book lay open on her thigh and he looked at it: The A-Z of Toddlers.

For a moment he felt blindsided at this evidence of her dedication. That sense of poignancy he’d felt earlier gripped him again, and it was deeply disturbing and exposing.

Something else prickled under his skin now. If she was playing a game then it was a very elaborate one.

He recalled her coming into his office last night and her words: ‘All that stuff that Rio told you about me being a gold-digger...none of it is true.’

Cruz’s rational mind reminded him that there was evidence of her treachery. Her name on receipts. Demands she’d made. Rio’s humiliation. Maybe this was her game—she was trying to convince him she was something she wasn’t and would wriggle under his skin like she had with Rio until he too felt compelled to give her everything...

‘Cruz?’

She was awake now, blinking up at him. She sat up, looking deliciously dishevelled, compounding the myriad conflicting emotions she evoked.

His voice was gruff when he spoke. ‘Go to bed, Trinity. I’ll sit up with them.’

She looked flustered. ‘No!’ She lowered her voice. ‘You don’t have to do that. It’s fine... I think they’re okay now, anyway. Their temperatures were normal last time I checked.’

‘Go to bed. I’ll let you know if anything happens.’

She looked up at him helplessly and he offered ruefully, ‘I’m going to have to get used to doing this kind of thing. I’m their uncle, and I don’t intend to treat them like guests in my home.’

For the first time since Rio had died it struck Cruz forcibly that he hadn’t really thought about how taking responsibility for his nephews would affect him until now. And this was what it meant, he realised with a kind of belated wonder. Being concerned. Sitting up all night to watch over them if need be.

Trinity eyes were wide, and even in this light Cruz could see the smudges of fatigue under them. From this angle he could also see down her shirt to the bountiful swells of her breasts. His body reacted.

He gritted out, ‘Just go.’

She stood up jerkily, as if her muscles were protesting. ‘You’ll let me know if they wake?’ She sounded uncertain.

Cruz nodded and took her place on the chair, stretching out his long legs and picking up the book. He gestured with it for her to go.

* * *

Feeling more than a little discombobulated at having woken to find Cruz standing over her, looking exactly like the sexy fantasy she’d envisaged earlier, Trinity eventually moved towards her own room, glancing back to see Cruz tipping his head back and closing his eyes, hands linked loosely across his flat abdomen.

Her footsteps faltered, though, as she was momentarily transfixed by the fact that he had insisted on staying. Emotion expanded in her chest at the domestic scene—dangerous emotion—as she thought how incongruous he looked here, yet how right.

His willingness to forge a bond with his nephews made that emotion turn awfully poignant... She had a vision of going over to him, smoothing his hair back...of him looking up at her and reaching for her, smiling sexily as he pulled her down onto his lap...

Shock at the vividness of this fantasy made her breathless. And at how much she yearned for it. When it was only his nephews he cared about. Not her.

Without opening his eyes, Cruz said softly, ‘Go to bed, Trinity.’

And she fled before he might see any vestige of that momentary fantasy on her face.

* * *

When Trinity woke the following morning it was later than she’d ever slept since she’d started looking after the twins. And they were her first thought.

She shot out of bed and went into their room, to see that their beds were empty and their pyjamas were neatly folded on their pillows.

She washed quickly and got dressed in jeans and a T-shirt, pulling her hair back into a low ponytail as she went down to the dining room, where she found Mrs Jordan and the twins.

‘Mummy!’ they both screeched in unison when they saw her, and her heart swelled.

She went over and kissed them both. She looked at the older woman. ‘You should have woken me.’

Mrs Jordan waved a hand. ‘Cruz wouldn’t hear of it. He insisted that you sleep in and I agreed. You’ve been looking tired lately.’