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He had seen Adelaide taking advantage of his mother’s kindness and generosity, decided to investigate, just to reassure himself, and found even more corruption.
Claire and Gannon exchanged lawyerly looks. “Let’s all calm down, shall we?” Gannon said.
Claire nodded. “Nothing will be gained from fighting.”
Adelaide pushed her fingers through the dark strands of her hair. It spilled over her shoulders in sexy disarray. “You’re right. Let’s just focus on getting the annulment, which should be easy—” she paused to glare at Wyatt “—since we never consummated the marriage.”
Once again, she was a little shady on the details. “Not then,” Wyatt pointed out.
Adelaide paled, as if suddenly realizing what he already had.
Claire’s brow furrowed. “You’ve been together intimately in the ten years since?”
Wyatt nodded, as another memory that had been hopelessly sexy and romantic took on a nefarious quality. “Last spring. After a destination wedding we both attended in Aspen.”
A flush started in her chest and moved up her neck into her face. In a low, quavering voice, Adelaide admitted, “We have a penchant for making terrible mistakes whenever we’re alone together. But since we didn’t know we were married at the time, that can’t count as consummating the marriage.” She gulped. “Can it?”
Stepping in, Gannon stated, “Actually, whether or not you slept together really doesn’t affect the marriage’s legality in the state of Texas. Hasn’t for some time.”
Wyatt and Adelaide both blinked in surprise.
“Emotionally, it might have ramifications,” Claire interjected.
No kidding, Wyatt thought. Their one and only night together had sure left him feeling as if he had been rocketed to the moon, his every wish come true, and then...as soon as Adelaide had come to her senses...sucker punched in the gut by her. Again.
“Unless, of course, one of you is impotent and concealed it, which is clearly not the case,” Gannon continued.
No kidding, Wyatt thought, remembering the sparks that had been generated during his and Adelaide’s one and only night together.
“You’re saying we can’t get an annulment?” Adelaide asked.
“Too much time has elapsed—nearly ten years—for you to request one from the court,” Gannon said.
Claire soothed, “You can, however, get a divorce.”
Wyatt knew what Adelaide was thinking. An annulment was a mistake, quickly remedied. A divorce meant being part of a marriage that had failed. That didn’t sit well with her. He hated failing at anything, too.
“But we went to a lawyer at the time!” Adelaide protested.
Claire looked up from her computer. “Who, according to public record, has apparently not been a practicing member of the Nevada bar for nearly a decade.”
Wyatt nodded. “The private detective agency said Mr. Randowsky had quit his practice and left the state shortly after we saw him. His practice dissolved accordingly.”
Adelaide looked both shocked and crestfallen. “So there’s no record of us ever being in his office? No real proof we ever tried to get an annulment?”
“None,” Wyatt confirmed irritably. He had already been down that avenue with the private investigators. “I couldn’t even locate anyone who worked in his office at the time.”
Adelaide buried her head in her hands. “Which means that getting Mr. Randowsky or his former staff to testify on our behalf is a lost cause.”
“Plus, there are children involved now,” Claire pointed out.
Adelaide sat up abruptly, her pretty face a mask of maternal ferocity. “My children,” she stated tightly. “I went to a fertility clinic and was artificially inseminated two weeks before I saw Wyatt in Aspen.”
Gannon looked at Wyatt. “You knew about this when you were together?”
Even as Wyatt shook his head, he knew it wouldn’t have made any difference if he had. When he had seen her again that night, so happy and glowing and carefree, he had wanted her. She had wanted him, too. Recklessly. Wantonly.
And the rest was history.
“Adelaide didn’t tell me she was starting a family until after I slept with her in Aspen.” “Nice as this was, and it was nice, nothing else can happen, Wyatt. I’ve got other plans...”
She tossed her mane of glossy dark hair and gave him a defensive look. “It was a one-night stand, Wyatt. A kind of whimsical ‘what if’ for both of us ten years too late. I didn’t think my pregnancy was relevant.”
He hated her habit of downplaying what they had once meant to each other. Even if she hadn’t had the guts to follow through. He looked her up and down, refusing to let her pretend any longer. “Oh, it was as relevant as the protection I wore.”
Adelaide’s mouth opened in a round O of surprise. “Wyatt!”
“Don’t mind us,” Gannon said dryly. “We’re lawyers.”
Claire added, “We’ve heard it all.”
“Anyway,” Wyatt stated, “I know what you’re thinking.” What he’d thought before reality and statistical probability crept in, given the fact that she’d already been inseminated and he’d worn a condom every time. “But the twins are not mine.”
And he was glad of that. Wasn’t he? Given the fact he still felt he couldn’t quite trust her?
Adelaide’s slender shoulders slumped slightly. “Thank heavens for small miracles!” she muttered with a beleaguered sigh.
She turned her glance away, but not before he saw the look of defeat in her eyes.
Wyatt felt a pang of remorse. So, the situation had ended up hurting her, too—despite her initial declarations to the contrary. Maybe he should try to go a little easier on her.
Certainly, they had enough strife ahead of them...
Oblivious to the ambivalence within him, Claire went back to taking notes. “So this...Adelaide’s decision to have children via artificial insemination and sperm bank...is why you parted acrimoniously. Again.”
Wyatt only wished it had been that simple. “I wouldn’t have cared about that,” he said honestly, ignoring Adelaide’s embarrassment and looking her square in the eye.
Adelaide returned his level look. “Over time, you might have.” She glanced at the baby monitor, as if hoping it would radiate young voices. It was silent. She cleared her throat, turned to regard their lawyers. “In any case, the insemination at the clinic took place before Wyatt and I ever saw each other again and were...reckless.”
Reckless was one way to describe it, Wyatt mused. There was also passionate. Tender. Mind-blowing...
“And I was already sure I was pregnant...from the way I was feeling...”
Which was why, Wyatt thought, she’d been so happy. In retrospect, he could see that it’d had little to do with seeing him again.
And for reasons he couldn’t explain, and didn’t want to examine, that stung, too.
More lawyerly looks were exchanged between the two attorneys.
Clearly, Wyatt noted, there was another problem.
Claire’s brow furrowed. “Is the donor’s name on the birth certificate?”
Adelaide shook her head. “No. Just mine. But I know exactly who the biological father is. Donor #19867 from the Metroplex Fertility Clinic’s sperm bank, where I was inseminated.”
More glances between attorneys.
“This is a problem,” Claire said.
Gannon agreed. “Under Texas law, any children born during a marriage are legally the offspring of the husband, unless and until proved otherwise. Meaning court-ordered DNA tests are going to be necessary.”
“Why court-ordered?” Wyatt asked, his impatience matching Adelaide’s. “Can’t we just have them done on our own?”
“Not if you want them to be part of any legal record,” Gannon said. “When DNA tests are court-ordered, a strict chain-of-custody procedure is followed, ensuring the integrity of the samples. Everyone who has contact with them has to sign. This protects against tampering, or ill-use.”
Made sense.
“Then court-ordered it is,” Adelaide said grimly, as Wyatt nodded.
“Luckily, we can formally request this online.” Gannon was already typing. “I’ll follow it up with a call to the judge to make sure it goes through immediately.”
“While you do that, I’ll call my cousin Jackson McCabe, who is chief of staff at Laramie Community Hospital, and ask him to write the medical orders for the blood tests.” Claire rose, cell phone to her ear. “And arrange to have them done as soon as possible.”
Not that it would matter, Wyatt thought, as Claire stepped into the next room and Gannon, when finished, walked out onto the front porch. They all knew what the tests were going to reveal. Once that happened, he and Adelaide would go their separate ways.
Forever.
* * *
UNABLE TO SIT still a moment longer, Adelaide rose, gathered the mugs and took them to the kitchen sink. “I wasn’t finished with that,” Wyatt called after her.
No one had been, Adelaide knew. But she needed something to do before she exploded with tension. “Hold your horses,” she said over her shoulder. “You’ll get a fresh mug in a minute, and more hot coffee to go with it. Unless you’d prefer something more dainty.” She turned his way to give him a too-sweet look. “Like tea?”
He shot her a deadpan look.
They both knew he hated tea. All kinds.
He didn’t like iced coffee, either.
Or at least he hadn’t.
What if he had changed?
Then again... Doubtful.
Gannon walked back in, just as she sat four fresh mugs and a platter of cookies on the table. “We’ve got the court order.”
Claire returned, too. “Jackson expedited everything on the hospital’s end. The hospital lab will be open until eight this evening, so you can both go over now if you like.” She paused. “If you want to write this down...?”
Adelaide plucked a notepad and pen from the charging station, then returned to the table, carafe in hand. She slid the former across the table to Wyatt.
He ignored her helpful gesture. “I’ll just type it in.” He pulled out his smartphone, gaze trained on the oversize screen, paused again, then brought up the appropriate menu.
Just scribbling the info on paper would have been faster. Then again... “It’s probably best,” Adelaide quipped, in an effort to lighten the mounting exasperation. “No one can read his chicken scratches anyway.”
Wyatt squinted at her, his expression partly annoyed and the rest inscrutable.
“Unless something’s changed?” she continued, determined to be just as provoking and ornery as he was being.
It hadn’t just been the love notes he’d passed to her in class she hadn’t been able to decipher. It had been anything and everything he wrote. Worse, he had seemed to take perverse delight in everyone else’s frustration. Just as he was enjoying her impatience now. She didn’t know why he had to be such a pain sometimes.
“You’ve taken a class in penmanship...?” she taunted lightly, aware they had temporarily reverted to their worst selves from their teenage years.
“You wish.” Smugly, Wyatt looked at Claire, his fingers poised over the keyboard on his man-size smartphone. “Ready when you are.”
Barely suppressing her own exasperation, Claire returned to her own handwritten notes. “The tech who’s going to be doing the test is Martie Bowman. The outpatient lab is on the first floor of the main building of the hospital, in the east wing. Suite 111.”
Wyatt quickly typed in the information. “Do you want to email that to me, too?” Adelaide asked.
“Not necessary,” Wyatt said. “I’ve got it.”
He was also as impossibly chauvinistic as ever. Adelaide sighed. “How long until we have the results?”
“They’re going to put a rush on it. So three or four days at most.”
“What about the rest of it?” Adelaide asked.
“It would be advisable to proceed with the divorce only when the DNA results are back,” Gannon said.
Adelaide decided to give it one last try. “Are you sure it has to be divorce? Can’t we remedy this mistake—” and it had been a big one, the biggest of her life “—some other way? Maybe just invalidate the marriage on some technicality, or...I don’t know...” She was grasping at straws, and she knew it.
Wyatt grimaced. “I agree. I’d prefer to find another way to end this, too.”
“There isn’t one,” Gannon decreed.
“You’ve not only consummated the marriage, but had children during the term of the union, which has lasted nearly ten years,” Claire reminded sagely.
Gannon agreed. “Like it or not, divorce is the only way to dissolve your marriage.”
* * *
NO SOONER HAD Claire and Gannon left them to discuss their pending trip to the hospital lab than a wail sounded on the baby monitor. A second swiftly followed.
Adelaide looked at the alarmed expression on Wyatt’s face. Suddenly, she was in no hurry to have cheeks swabbed or blood drawn. At least with him standing right next to her. “I’ve got to feed the twins, so...” She waved him off. “If you want, you can go ahead to the hospital without us.”
He stood firm. “I prefer we all go together. Just get it done.”
It wasn’t as if they didn’t already know the results.
Irritated, she took the stairs quickly, as the cries quickly escalated to a fever pitch. “Well, some things won’t wait.”
He lagged behind at the foot of the stairs. “How long...?”
Adelaide threw the words over her shoulder. “If you want to make it fast, then give me a hand, cowboy.”
Never in a million years did she think he would take her up on the suggestion. By the time she bypassed the tiny master and reached the even tinier room with the twin cribs, the volume had been turned up nearly as loud as their little lungs could go.
Unable to bear to hear her children sobbing, Adelaide quickly picked up little Jake and snuggled him in one arm. His sobs subsiding, she walked over to Jenny’s crib and scooped her up, too. Hence, it was suddenly blissfully quiet, as she carried both to the changing stations set up side by side.
“You’re going to change both their diapers simultaneously?” Wyatt lingered in the doorway, the same cautious, awestruck expression he had on his face whenever he saw a new foal.
Except this wasn’t one of the cutting horses he bred on his ranch.
Adelaide shrugged. “Neither one of them is all that keen on going second.”
“Then how do you...?”
“When I was nursing, I put one on each breast.”
She knew it was too much information. She also figured too much information might incent him to leave.
He seemed to know that was what she wanted, so, as ornery as ever, he strolled languidly into the room.
Jenny and Jake lay on their backs while she worked at unsnapping their onesies, letting their legs go free. Fortunately, both diapers were just wet.
“They look like you,” Wyatt said softly.
No surprise there. She had picked a donor with the same shaped facial features, dark wavy hair and bittersweet chocolate eyes as her own.
The tender regard in his expression made him all the more handsome. “Their eyes are blue, though.”
Pure blue.
His were blue-gray.
The wistfulness he was suddenly evidencing forced her to recall he had always wanted kids, too. “Most fair-skinned babies are born with dark blue or dark gray eyes that can change color several times before their first birthday.”
He stuck his hands in his pockets. “Did not know that.”
Did not know a lot of things. Finding it a relief to be able to distract themselves with information, she explained, “An infant’s eye color changes as he or she gets older and melanin levels increase.”
He watched as Adelaide eased away the wet diapers, quickly wiped down their diaper area and slid on the new.
Wyatt turned to her, his broad shoulder nudging hers in the process. “When will you find out?”
Ignoring the electricity of the brief contact, she fastened one, then the other. “By their first birthday, I’ll know if their eyes are going to be blue or brown or green or gray.”
Not that it mattered.
They would be adorable regardless.
She turned back to the man she had once loved. Suddenly, he wasn’t the only one feeling wistful. Had their elopement worked out, the way they both had hoped, these children could have been theirs. But they weren’t. So...
She sighed, aware Wyatt had gone back to observing her children. He leaned closer, regarding them contentedly. For a person who’d had zero interest in ever laying eyes on the two babies she’d had on her own, he was certainly fascinated.
“I think they have your nose, too. See the way it turns up slightly at the end?”
She certainly recalled Wyatt kissing her nose. And her cheek, and her temple, and...
Best she not go there.
She really should not go there.
“Your eyelashes, too,” he mused.
Aware this situation was getting far too intimate too fast, she challenged him with a droll look. “Is that a good thing or bad?”
He straightened. As their gazes collided, it was hard to tell what he was feeling.
“Fact.”
“Whew!” She pretended to wipe perspiration from her forehead. “For a moment, I thought you were paying me compliments.”
His low laugh filled the room, bringing back a slew of unwanted memories.
Simmering with emotion, Adelaide scooped up Jenny in one arm, Jake in her other. She headed down the hall. He followed, close enough she could feel his steady male presence. “You’re really going to go down the stairs like that?”
He was a man. Of course he wanted to take charge. “Very carefully. And yes, I am.”
He still looked skeptical.
With good reason, had she not already done this dozens of times.
Figuring as long as she had a pair of helping hands nearby she might as well use them, Adelaide turned and handed off little Jake. For a moment, Jake gazed up at Wyatt mutely, studying the handsome rancher’s unfamiliar face.
Blinking in confusion, Jake let out a howl loud enough to wake the entire neighborhood.
“Now what?” Wyatt mouthed, looking every bit as panicked as Adelaide had felt the first moment she was confronted with two in the hospital. When all she had ever signed up for was one baby. Until Mother Nature had intervened. Adelaide held out her free arm.
Wyatt slid Jake back into her hold.
To everyone’s relief, the crying ceased.
Adelaide continued on downstairs, as originally planned. Once in the kitchen, she had no choice but to put both babies down in their infant seats, as she prepared their bottles. Luckily, they were so focused on watching her, each other and their visitor, both forgot to voice their immense impatience, as per usual.
Wyatt stood next to her, his arms braced on the counter on either side of him. Was it her imagination, or did he look completely besotted by her precious offspring?
“When did you stop nursing?”
“Our doctors made me stop when they reached four and a half weeks. I wasn’t able to provide enough milk for both and trying to do so was having an adverse effect on my health.” She sighed her regret. “Since I’m all they’ve got, I had to do what was best for all of us. Even if that meant making concessions I would really have rather not.” She paused to give her babies adoring looks. “I thought it might be hard for them, moving from breast to bottle, but they adjusted really easily. Maybe because they were already getting supplemental formula feedings.”
He nodded. Understanding in a way she didn’t expect.
Telling herself this was no time to start feeling kindly toward him, Adelaide put one bottle in the warmer, waited for it to ding, then added the other. Finished, she tested the liquid of both on the inside of her wrists. Scooping up both babies, she inclined her head at the bottles. “Mind bringing those in for me? You’ll save me a trip.”
“Sure.”
Adelaide walked over to the sofa and settled both infants into the supportive indentions on the extra-large twin nursing pillow already there, then she sat and carefully moved it onto her lap. Wyatt handed over the bottles one at a time, and she tipped the nipples into Jake and Jenny’s mouths. Then all was silent as they drank. For the first time in a while, Adelaide felt herself begin to relax and really breathe. Until she looked up again and saw Wyatt watching her with the kind of respect she had always yearned to see.
Telling herself that his newfound admiration didn’t matter, that this situation would be over as quickly as their one-night stand had been, Adelaide bent her head and did not look up at him again.
* * *
AN HOUR LATER, they were on their way. Thankfully in separate vehicles. Four cheek-swab DNA tests later, they again split up. Wyatt returned to his horses and his ranch. Adelaide took the twins home and thus began the wait for results.
They came in late on the third day.
On the morning of the fourth, she found herself back at the hospital. This time in Dr. Jackson McCabe’s office. To her surprise, Wyatt was there, too.
Jackson indicated they should sit, even as Adelaide’s palms began to sweat. “I understand you requested this test to disprove Wyatt’s paternity of the twins.”
Wyatt and Adelaide nodded.
“It proved the opposite. Adelaide Smythe is their biological mother, Wyatt Lockhart their biological father.”
“But that’s...” Adelaide sputtered. She thought this was just a formality! “I was artificially inseminated before Wyatt and I ever hooked up. So it can’t be! He can’t be!”
* * *
SHE SLANTED A look at Wyatt, who was not moving or reacting in any way.
“Apparently the AI did not take,” Jackson explained.
That was impossible. “We used protection when we were together!”
Not because she had felt she needed it, since she had been convinced she was already pregnant by then, but because she hadn’t wanted to stop and explain her circumstances, a move that surely would have spoiled the romantic aura of the evening, as surely as it had the morning after. And she had wanted that one night with Wyatt so very badly. To make up for everything heartbreaking and awful that had come before.
“No birth control method is one hundred percent effective.” Jackson handed over two sets of lab results. “The tests were conclusive. Both children are Wyatt’s. So—” he rose, reaching across the desk and shaking their hands “—congratulations to both of you.”
Chapter Three
Wyatt was still reeling from the news that he was a dad, when his younger sister met them at the door of Adelaide’s home, where she had been babysitting the twins. Sage caught the equally shell-shocked look on Adelaide’s face. “What happened to you?” Immediately incensed, his sister swung back to him and demanded, “Are you responsible?”
If Sage only knew, Wyatt thought ironically. Feeling joy—that he finally had the kids he had secretly wanted for a long time. And shock—that the woman he’d once thought—erroneously—was the love of his life, was the mother who had provided them.
He had no idea why fate kept propelling them together this way. When it was abundantly clear he and Adelaide could not be more wrong for each other.
Yet there was nothing of the cruel joke of nature when it came to the sweetly slumbering children, he thought, gazing down at Jenny and Jake in reverence and awe.
They were perfect.
And they were his.
As well as Adelaide’s...
Oblivious to the ambivalent nature of his thoughts, Adelaide turned back to Sage and made a shushing motion with her hand. “It’s complicated,” she told his sister.
Sage looked them both up and down. Sighed, as a twinkle came into her eyes. “Isn’t it always with the two of you?”
Reluctantly, Wyatt turned away from the twins, who were still sleeping angelically in their Pack ’N Plays. Eager for some time alone with them, he grabbed his sister’s coat and bag and ushered her toward the door. “Thanks for babysitting.”
Sage dug in her heels. “I can stay awhile longer if you need me.”
Adelaide’s expression broadcast the need for privacy. “Wyatt and I have some things we need to discuss.”