From temporary nanny...

...to forever mom!

Unexpectedly laid off, journalist Madeleine Everleigh finds herself under billionaire Finn Holton’s roof—as nanny to his tiny twins! Maddie’s always seen her brother’s best friend as forbidden fruit and consigned him to the periphery of her life, but sharing his home makes ignoring him impossible... Maddie needs the job and Finn needs her help—what they don’t need is the simmering tension that threatens to change everything!

ELLIE DARKINS spent her formative years devouring romance novels and, after completing her English degree, decided to make a living from her love of books. As a writer and editor, she finds her work now entails dreaming up romantic proposals, hot dates with alpha males and trips to the past with dashing heroes. When she’s not working she can usually be found running around after her toddler, volunteering at her local library or escaping all of the above with a good book and a vanilla latte.

Also by Ellie Darkins

Frozen Heart, Melting Kiss

Bound by a Baby Bump

Newborn on Her Doorstep

Holiday with the Mystery Italian

Falling for the Rebel Princess

Conveniently Engaged to the Boss

Surprise Baby for the Heir

Falling Again for Her Island Fling

Discover more at millsandboon.co.uk.

Reunited by the Tycoon’s Twins

Ellie Darkins

www.millsandboon.co.uk

ISBN: 978-0-008-90339-8

REUNITED BY THE TYCOON’S TWINS

© 2020 Ellie Darkins

Published in Great Britain 2020

by Mills & Boon, an imprint of HarperCollinsPublishers 1 London Bridge Street, London, SE1 9GF

All rights reserved including the right of reproduction in whole or in part in any form. This edition is published by arrangement with Harlequin Books S.A.

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, locations and incidents are purely fictional and bear no relationship to any real life individuals, living or dead, or to any actual places, business establishments, locations, events or incidents. Any resemblance is entirely coincidental.

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For my girls

Contents

Cover

Back Cover Text

About the Author

Booklist

Title Page

Copyright

Note to Readers

Dedication

CHAPTER ONE

CHAPTER TWO

CHAPTER THREE

CHAPTER FOUR

CHAPTER FIVE

CHAPTER SIX

CHAPTER SEVEN

CHAPTER EIGHT

CHAPTER NINE

CHAPTER TEN

CHAPTER ELEVEN

CHAPTER TWELVE

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

EPILOGUE

Extract

About the Publisher

CHAPTER ONE

‘MADELEINE, WHAT’S WRONG?’

Finn took in the scowling face of the woman on his doorstep and tried to reconcile it with the girl he had first met more than two decades ago and hadn’t seen in more than two years. And then she let loose an impressive string of expletives and Finn’s eyes widened.

This definitely wasn’t the girl he remembered from his teenage years, loafing around her house with her brother.

He covered the ears of the baby he was snuggling on his shoulder, but the tirade came to an end and he breathed a sigh of relief, removed the emergency ear muffs and stepped aside so that Madeleine could follow him into the hallway of the townhouse, and then on into his apartment.

‘Are you okay?’ Finn asked, wondering why Madeleine Everleigh had turned up on his doorstep fuming mad.

When his best friend Jake had talked him into letting his sister stay and help with the babies for a few weeks, he had thought that he was doing her a favour.

‘An idiot in a white van beeped at me,’ Madeleine said, following him into the apartment. ‘It’s nothing.’

No doubt she had to put up with this crap all the time. He’d known Madeleine for ever, and it had not exactly been possible to ignore that she was a woman with lush curves and a beautiful face, however hard he tried.

‘It’s not nothing; you shouldn’t have to put up with that. I’m sorry it happened,’ Finn said, shaking his head and wishing he could take back the last few minutes. ‘Come through. I’ll put the kettle on.’

The baby on his shoulder gave out a little squeak and Finn shushed him and bounced on the spot, only slightly frantically, hoping for just five more minutes before his son woke. He’d only been asleep for half an hour—if his routine went out then his sister’s routine went out and then the rest of the day and probably the night would be complete and utter chaos. They’d all spent the three months since his ex-wife had moved abroad trying to build a routine, but losing his nanny when they’d only just settled into one again had thrown a spanner in the works and, without help, everything was at risk of descending into madness.

‘Look, I appreciate it and everything but...’ She cast a look at Hart that reminded Finn of how he had looked at babies before he’d found himself the single parent of two of his own. She was not exactly ideal nanny material, but he had promised his best friend that he’d give his sister somewhere to stay and a regular wage while she was between jobs. Jake hardly ever asked for favours and after twenty years of friendship it was really the least that Finn could do.

‘This is Hart, by the way,’ he said, giving the baby a gentle pat on the bum. ‘Bella’s asleep too, but this one is allergic to his crib.’

He laughed at the horrified expression on her face.

‘Only metaphorically,’ he reassured her. ‘I’ve tried everything but a lot of the time he’ll only sleep on me. Which is why I need the help.’

‘Yeah, I don’t know if Jake mentioned but I really don’t have any experience with babies. I mean, his were all older than this when he adopted them.’

Finn smiled, and hoped it didn’t look too forced. ‘Yeah, he did mention it and it’s fine, honestly. I just need an extra pair of hands for a few weeks until I can find a permanent nanny—I don’t want to rush into hiring someone so it’s great that you could help out at such short notice.’

Her face tightened, and Finn could have kicked himself for causing that reaction.

‘Well, one of the great things about being fired,’ Madeleine said, ‘is that you can be super flexible. Really, I can recommend it...’

He reached his free hand towards her, then let it fall, realising he didn’t know what he had been planning on doing with it. There was something about being around Madeleine that was making him feel like a kid again, and he couldn’t say that he liked it. Everything that he had said in the last five minutes had been utterly the wrong thing and he didn’t seem to be able to get off the back foot. And he’d invited her to stay, in his home, for at least a few weeks. He must be completely mad. ‘I’m sorry, Madeleine. Jake told me that they made cutbacks at the website...’

‘Yep.’ She folded her arms across her body, and her expression went from irritated to full on angry. ‘I don’t know why I’m surprised. I escaped the last round, but everyone knows that there’s no such thing as job security in journalism any more. I knew it was coming but it was still a shock.’

‘Of course it was. It’s a lot to take in. But is it too much of a cliché if I say that their loss is my gain? You’re doing me a massive favour,’ Finn said, smiling, hoping to ease her bad mood, ‘and I truly appreciate it.’

She did smile at that, and he saw her shoulders relax a fraction. That was good; he wanted her to be comfortable here. He was hardly doing Jake a favour if his sister was so on edge the whole time that she was here that she couldn’t even get through the door without worrying about him ogling her.

‘You’re the one giving me a place to stay. I think you’re the one doing the favour really.’

He didn’t remember her being so prickly when they were kids. Of course she wasn’t, back then. Nobody made it into adulthood without a major dose of reality to knock the idealism out of them. Or maybe that was just his divorce talking.

‘Wait until the twins are both up at three in the morning. We’ll talk then about who’s helping out who,’ he said with a wry smile. ‘Anyway, can I take your bag? Let’s go through to the kitchen—I’m desperate for caffeine—then I’ll show you your room. Do you want tea or coffee?’ he asked as he gestured for Madeleine to take a seat at the kitchen island, but she stayed standing.

‘You sit,’ she said. ‘You’ve got the baby.’

He smiled. ‘I’ve barely managed a sip of water all day so I’m not going to argue with you. See, this is working out perfectly already.’ He watched as she grabbed cups from the top of the coffee machine, slotted in a pod and made a couple of espressos. He took one from her gratefully and she finally took a seat beside him.

‘I’m sorry,’ she said, as she drank half the coffee in one go, then let out a long sigh as she relaxed back on her stool. ‘I turned up in a bad mood and I shouldn’t have taken it out on you.’

Finn smiled, grateful for the change in atmosphere. ‘You’ve been through a lot. It’s understandable.’

Madeleine quirked her eyebrows in a gesture that spoke of untold cynicism. ‘None of it’s your fault, though,’ she said. ‘You’ve already been better too good to me.’

Finn frowned. ‘Don’t say things like that. You deserve good things happening to you, Madeleine. I don’t like that someone’s made you think otherwise.’

He held her gaze for a moment too long, feeling the atmosphere between them grow heavy, and then Hart turned his head and nuzzled into Finn’s shoulder, and he knew that they were on borrowed time.

‘Could you take him while I make up a bottle?’ he asked, and laughed at Madeleine’s wide-eyed reaction. He chuckled softly as he transferred the baby into her arms. ‘It’s fine,’ he said. ‘Just bounce him a bit if he starts to cry. He’s going to wake up hungry and that’s not the best time to be showing you how to make up a bottle. We’ll go through it all after.’

‘Um, okay, I guess?’ Madeleine said, bouncing the baby awkwardly in her arms. Finn laughed. ‘Don’t look so terrified, Madeleine. Jake said you didn’t have much experience, but he didn’t mention a mortal fear of children.’

‘I’m not afraid!’ Madeleine said with a flash of defiance that hit him straight in the gut. God, he liked that. But this was definitely not an appropriate thought to have about his best friend’s sister. Or about his kids’ babysitter for that matter. Temporary or not. He concentrated on the formula machine, pressing buttons and moving bottles on autopilot, until he had two bottles made up. If Hart was hungry, no doubt he would be hearing from Bella soon enough too.

With Madeleine taking care of Hart for a second, he allowed himself a moment to lean against the worktop and feel—really feel—how tired he was. If anything was going to distract him from his completely inappropriate thoughts about Madeleine, it would be that. Most of the time he managed to keep the fatigue at bay. But since his last nanny had left a week ago, he’d barely managed a minute’s break.

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 would 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.

Her career might have focused more on celebs falling out of nightclubs than on the business pages, but that didn’t mean she didn’t have a journalist’s instincts at all.

‘Jake was right, though. You’re good at this,’ Finn said as he put the baby down in the Moses basket in the corner. ‘My children might be younger than his, but you’ve got the knack.’

‘Must be an auntie thing,’ Madeleine said. ‘I’ve had enough practice with his brood. Who has four kids, really?’

‘They are great kids, though.’

She smiled but could feel her eyebrows pulling together even as she did so. Finn was not what she had been expecting. At all. When she thought back to the kid she had seen occasionally in her kitchen at home, demolishing a loaf of bread’s worth of toast with her brother as they messed about on her family’s computer, there hadn’t seemed much remarkable about him at all. She was pretty sure that she’d never paid him more than fleeting attention. I mean, who did, to their snotty little brother’s mates?

If she’d known then the success that he was going to achieve, the enigmatic figure that he was going to become, would she have paid more attention?

Probably not, she admitted, letting her smile spread to her eyes. Teenage boys were unbearable. It didn’t matter who they were going to grow up to be. She wondered if Finn remembered her as a teenager. Trying to swamp her emerging curves in giant T-shirts and baggy jeans. Whether he’d been one of the boys at school who had taken bets on whether they could sneak into the changing rooms while she was in PE and steal one of her bras.

No. Jake would have known. And he would never have allowed Finn in the house if that had been the case.

He looked nothing like the spotty, awkward-looking kid in worn-out trainers he had been then. She sneaked another glance at him while he was distracted by the baby, her journalist’s eye taking a quick inventory, hitting the important points. Designer jeans, discreet but expensive watch, crisp white T-shirt, showing no sign of doing battle with two babies. Really, that wasn’t fair. She was pretty sure her shirt had milk on it already and she’d only been here for an hour. But the clothes were all window-dressing, really.

It was the face that interested her. Because you could change your clothes. You could drag yourself out of poverty and change your life and wear a new wardrobe. But you couldn’t change your face. And when she looked at Finn, she could see him. The lost little boy who had spent more time in her family’s kitchen than his own. Who had turned up starving, and had left stuffed to the gills with food by her mum, who’d known that he was probably going back to a cold house and an empty fridge. Who’d been packed off with clothes that Mum had just happened to find at the charity shop next door to her work, that wouldn’t fit Jake and couldn’t be returned.

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.

So why did he feel so nervous?

He didn’t even get nervous before dates. At least he didn’t think that he did. Since he and Caro had decided that their marriage was over, he hadn’t been on one. Until the twins were a couple of months old he had seen Caro almost as much as when they were married—just because he was no longer her husband didn’t mean that he wasn’t going to support her through the pregnancy and take care of her afterwards, until she was ready to take up her new job. But, all that aside, what would be the point in dating when he knew that he would never have a serious relationship again? The last—as amicably as it had ended—had threatened everything that he had worked for over the last decade. Had seen him taking on financial uncertainty that he still wasn’t sure that he was going to survive. He was never going through that again. He just couldn’t take the risk.

Until he had opened the door to Madeleine Everleigh, and his decision to stay permanently single didn’t seem quite so simple.

Which left his love life...where? In the realm of hook-ups and one-night stands and casual flings? And when it came to Madeleine...he couldn’t think of a less appropriate relationship to have with his best friend’s sister. Jake had been best man at his wedding. He couldn’t even think about a casual hook-up with the man’s sister. Except...he was thinking about it.

Oh, was he thinking about it.

And it wasn’t even Madeleine’s body he was thinking about. It was her eyes that he couldn’t get out of his mind. The way that she looked at him and saw the smooth businessman and the frazzled dad and the scared kid all at once. They weren’t separate people to her, the way that they were to everyone else in his life. The circles of his business life and his childhood friends and his social life never crossed. He squeezed himself into those different personas as he put on his suit for work or clipped himself into a baby carrier and headed to a playgroup. But not with Madeleine.

He’d never felt the strangeness of that with Jake. Maybe because he had never looked at Jake and had the instant flash of desire he had with Madeleine. With Madeleine? It was hard to think about anything else. Especially now she was here in his home, settling in with her things, playing with his kids and drinking his coffee. Merging their lives for the next few weeks.

Even with Caro there had been barriers between the different parts of his life. She had accompanied him to work functions. Slipped smoothly through the networking and the business dinners that were expected of her. But she had never slipped so comfortably into his past, the parts of his life that were harder to face. She’d never been comfortable with his mother. He could never have taken her to see the tiny flat where he had grown up.

Absurd, really, given that she was dedicating her life to ending child poverty. She wouldn’t have judged him. But he didn’t want to be a project to her. He didn’t want to be one of the kids she was rescuing.

With Madeleine, nothing had to be said. Or hidden. Or tiptoed around. She knew it all. She knew how bad it had been, and how high he had risen, and she saw that he was the same person wherever he was living. And the thought of that, of the two parts of his life being reconciled, was troubling. And intoxicating.

He showed Madeleine back down to the kitchen and hunted out the pizza menus he kept in a drawer for weekends when he couldn’t be bothered to cook. It wouldn’t be long now before the babies were eating real food and he would actually have to produce something that they could all eat together, rather than just steaming them some carrot sticks. But for a few more weeks, at least, his weekends could be eighty per cent pepperoni. He handed Madeleine a menu and headed to the fridge to find them both a beer.

‘We can take the drinks out on the balcony if you like,’ Finn suggested, glancing over at Madeleine. ‘There’s a nice view of the park.’

‘Sure,’ she replied with a shrug, eyes still on the menu. ‘Sounds like a plan. I’ll bring my phone and we can order from there.’

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