Read Online The Real Father (Twins) (Harlequin Superromance No. 927) by Kathleen O`Brien - Free Book Online Page A

should he feel guilty? She wasn’t Beau’s girl anymore. Beau was gone. He’d been gone for ten years—long enough, surely, for his claim on Molly to fall forfeit. Surely the invisiblewalls behind which Beau had cloistered her had long since crumbled to dust.
    Damn it, no more guilt. He exhaled hard, his breath materializing, silver and ghostly, in front of him. He raised his hand and knocked twice. Low, in case Liza was sleeping. But definite. Unashamed.
    He heard her light footsteps as she came toward the door, and he ordered his heart to beat in even time.
    No more guilt. He was betraying no one. He had every right to be here, to offer pizza, to offer help, to offer friendship.
    To offer, in fact, whatever the hell he wanted.

CHAPTER FOUR
    â€œO H, YOU WONDERFUL , wonderful man.” As soon as she opened the door, Molly tilted her head back, closed her eyes and inhaled a long, deep, sensual breath of the pizza-scented night air. Her hair streamed unbound over her shoulders and twinkled in the light, as if she’d stood in a shower of glitter. “I could just kiss you.”
    Jackson gripped the pizza box a little more tightly, hoping he wouldn’t end up with tomato sauce all over his shoes. But the sight of her was enough to make his fingers numb.
    How could she have become even more beautiful? Ten years ago he would have said it wasn’t possible. But if Molly at eighteen had been a fairy princess, the woman before him was the Gypsy queen. Her coltish, utterly virginal body had softened in all the right places, and each curve seemed to be issuing wordless invitations to his hands.
    The pizza box buckled at one corner.
    â€œWell, by all means,” he said, somehow managing to keep his voice from squeaking like a kid’s. “Feel free.”
    She laughed, a low trickle of warmth that slid across his skin like sunshine. “It’s actually real!”She put one hand on the box and breathed deeply again, as if she couldn’t get enough of the scent. “I thought I smelled pizza, but then I thought, no, I must be dreaming. Like the man in the desert who thinks he sees water.”
    Jackson chuckled. “I gather you and I have approximately the same opinion of spinach-and-chickpea casserole.”
    â€œPlease don’t tell Lavinia.” She stepped back, opening the door wider to let him enter. “I managed two bites, then I gave the rest to Liza. Believe it or not, she absolutely loved the stuff.”
    â€œGood God, what’s wrong with her?” Jackson grimaced. “I slipped mine under the table. Stewball and I have a pact. I won’t tell Vinnie he sleeps on the Chippendale sofa if he’ll clean my plate for me.”
    Molly was already opening the box and peeling apart the gooey slices hungrily. She handed one to Jackson. “Poor Stewball,” she said as she bit into the hot cheese. She moaned with delight. “Mmm. Mushroom. You remembered I love mushroom.”
    Jackson busied himself piling melting strands of cheese on top of the crust. Of course he remembered. Molly would probably never believe how little he had forgotten. He remembered how, back when they were kids, she used to sign her name with a smiley-face inside the O. He remembered the opening lines of the sonnet she’d written for senior English. He remembered how her mascara used to smudge around her lower lashes when sad movies or stray dogs—or Beau—made her cry.
    And about a million other things. It was a wonder he had ever been able to learn how to build buildings, considering all the Molly trivia that still cluttered his feeble mind.
    And yet, tantalizingly, he sensed that there were a million new things to learn about her, too. That womanly quality in her body, for instance. The faint shadows in her face, where pain had left its mark. The deep, satisfied glow in her eyes when she looked at Liza.
    The Gypsy queen knew things the fairy princess hadn’t