Reunited by the Tycoon's Twins

His assistant was keeping the business ticking over, with him squeezing every minute of work into the day he possibly could, but there was only so long that that could carry on. He had built that business from the ground up and he wouldn’t see it founder because he couldn’t get proper childcare in place. With everything that the business had been through recently—their move to new premises, the enormous amount of money he had had to borrow to make that happen...

He had survived his divorce; he would survive this. But only if he stayed focused. Which was why he was so grateful that Madeleine had agreed to help him out. For the first time in weeks he could see himself actually getting back to the office some time this year, and without two babies strapped to him.

That was what he had to remember when he was tempted to sneak a look at her. When he was tempted to think of her as anything other than his best friend’s sister or his temporary sitter. He and his business had survived the breakdown of his marriage by the skin of his teeth. They were still only surviving because he was generating enough income to service the debt that he had accrued in order to separate his and Caro’s finances fairly and equitably. His company couldn’t withstand any more disruption. His life couldn’t stand any more disruption—he wasn’t opening himself up to that again. Ever. So this sudden and inconvenient attraction to Madeleine didn’t matter in the slightest.

He turned back to the kitchen island and smiled despite himself at the sight of Madeleine gazing thoughtfully at Hart. ‘You two getting to know each other?’ he asked, concentrating his gaze on the baby as the safest course of action.

‘Babies are weird. He’s a whole, real person,’ Madeleine said, a little line creasing her brow. ‘Only much, much smaller. And we don’t know who he is yet. Don’t you think that’s a little strange?’

‘A little,’ Finn agreed. ‘Don’t worry. Spend enough time with them and you’ll be too tired for philosophy.’

‘You know you’re really not selling this.’

‘Too late,’ he said with a laugh. ‘You’ve already agreed.’

She rolled her eyes. ‘I could change my mind.’

‘And leave me in the lurch? You wouldn’t. Jake would be mad.’

She huffed a little breath of a laugh. ‘Aren’t we a little old for threats like that?’

He smiled. ‘Probably. Here, do you want to try him with this?’

She took the proffered bottle from him and stroked it over Hart’s lips, then smiled down at him as he latched onto the teat, still only half awake. Madeleine beamed down at Hart, totally absorbed in watching him drink, and Finn forced down the warm feeling that was growing in his chest. It was just hormones, he told himself. It was natural to feel that when you were looking at a woman feed your baby. It was just nature. It didn’t mean anything. It definitely didn’t mean that he was interested in Madeleine because that would be more than inconvenient. It woul

d be a complete disaster.

CHAPTER TWO

SO...BABIES ARE OKAY, really, Madeleine thought, as she looked down at Hart drinking his milk, eyes rolling back in his head and cheeks wobbling. Yeah, babies are fine. It was the dads that were the problem. Well, one dad in particular. This one, whose eyes she could feel on her as she fed his son.

She was used to feeling men’s eyes on her. They followed her down the road, fixed on her in lifts. Judged her from across a desk at work. They scraped on her skin from the minute she left the house until the minute she locked the door behind her at night, breathing out a huge sigh of relief as she did so.

She felt Finn’s eyes on her occasionally since she’d arrived. Only, they didn’t scrape. They...nudged. Suggestively, enquiringly, in a way that she was actually in danger of enjoying.

With some coffee inside her, and the baby on her knee, she could feel the tension leaching from her muscles and the rough start to her day starting to fall from her. There was something about the rhythmic sucking from the baby that held her attention absolutely. It wasn’t until the bottle was empty and Hart was sucking on air that she looked up from him to find Finn watching her.

His eyes were fixed on her face, never wandering south, and she felt her cheeks warm.

‘See, you’re a natural,’ he said, taking the bottle and the baby from her and laying Hart on his shoulder.

‘I don’t know about that,’ Madeleine said with a shrug. ‘But I’m glad I can help out. Did your last nanny leave in a hurry? Jake didn’t tell me much...’

Like how you found yourself a single dad in the first place, she thought.

One minute Finn Holton had been the high-powered CEO of a company bringing ground-breaking technology to the world on a regular basis. The next he had been photographed with twin babies in a sling, and his wedding ring nowhere to be seen. The tabloids had gone understandably silly at this turn of events, but no one seemed to really know what had gone on. And she should know how hard they’d tried.

Not being a reality TV star or other such worthy, Finn’s story hadn’t made it to her desk at work. And thank God no one at the website had known about the childhood connection between her and Finn, otherwise they would have been harassing her for details that she didn’t have.

It might have saved her job, she thought for a second, if she could have dished some dirt on her brother’s friend. But she had none to dish. Jake had told her nothing, and Finn was hardly likely to tell her anything either. He knew that she was a journalist. To be honest, she was surprised that he had let her into his home at all. She couldn’t imagine that he was going to start spilling his guts to her.

If only he knew that she didn’t have the least interest in his personal life. She’d never wanted a career in celebrity gossip. But she’d left university without the double honours in politics and journalism she’d worked so hard for, and had found herself having to take any job she was offered. She’d thought the blog would be a stepping stone towards what she really wanted to be doing, serious political investigative journalism. But instead she’d found herself pigeonholed. Doors slammed in her face and job applications unanswered. So she’d written clickbait, filed her copy and gone home at night with the sensation that somehow she’d found herself living someone else’s life.

When the last round of redundancies had been announced, she’d been relieved as much as she had been concerned. A redundancy would give her a chance to make a change in her career. In her life. That was until her landlord had given her an eviction notice the following week, and she’d realised that she wasn’t going to be able to get a new flat without a regular source of income. If she decided to go freelance—scrabbling around for the same work as all her colleagues who had also just been let go—it would be years before she had enough of an accounting history to pass a credit check. When she had called her brother and whined on the phone to him, he’d told her he’d call her back with an idea—and he had.

Which was how she had found herself in Finn Holton’s kitchen with a baby on her knee, wondering about the details of his personal life.

I mean, she shouldn’t be curious. It was none of her business how one of the country’s leading technology moguls, and wealthiest men, had found himself a divorced single dad. If he had been a single mum, no one would have given a second thought to the fact that he was the one raising the babies. But he wasn’t a woman. And his situation was unusual. Which made her wonder.