Mothers In A Million. Michelle Douglas
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She pondered for a second. Then she gasped. “Wyatt?”
He rocked back on his heels with a chuckle. “In the flesh.”
Her gaze fell to his black leather jacket and jeans, as well as the black helmet he held under his arm.
She frowned, as if unable to reconcile the sexy rebel he now dressed like with the geek she knew in high school. “Wyatt?”
Taking off his sunglasses so she could get a better look at his face, he laughed. “I’ve sort of changed.”
She gave him another quick once-over and everything inside of Wyatt responded. As if he were still the teenager with the monster crush on her, his gut tightened. His rushing blood heated to boiling. His natural instinct to pounce flared.
Then he glanced down at the little boy.
And back at Missy. “Yours?”
She ruffled Owen’s spiky hair. “Yep.”
“Mom! Mom!” A little blond girl ran over. Tapping on Missy’s knee, she whined, “Lainie hit me.”
A dark-haired little girl raced up behind her. “Did not!”
Wyatt’s eyebrows rose. Three kids?
Missy met his gaze. “These are my kids, Owen, Helaina and Claire.” She tapped each child’s head affectionately. “They’re triplets.”
Had he been chewing gum, he would have swallowed it. “Triplets?”
She ruffled Owen’s hair fondly. “Yep.”
Oh, man.
“You and your husband must be so…” terrified, overworked, tired “…proud.”
Missy Johnson Brooks turned all three kids in the direction of the house. “Go inside. I’ll be in in a second to make lunch.” Then she faced the tall, gorgeous guy across the hedge.
Wyatt McKenzie was about the best looking man she’d ever seen in real life. With his supershort black hair cut so close it looked more like a shadow on his head than hair, plus his broad shoulders and watchful brown eyes, he literally rivaled the men in movies.
Her heart rattled in her chest as she tried to pull herself together. It wasn’t just weird to see Wyatt McKenzie all grown up and sexy. He brought back some memories she would have preferred stay locked away.
Shielding her eyes from the noonday sun, she said, “My husband and I are divorced.”
“Oh, I’m sorry.”
She shrugged. “That’s okay. How about you?”
His face twisted. “Divorced, too.”
His formerly squeaky voice was low and deep, so sexy that her breathing stuttered and heat coiled through her middle.
She stifled the urge to gasp. Surely she wasn’t going to let herself be attracted to him? She’d already gone that route with a man. Starry-eyed and trusting, she’d married a gorgeous guy who made her pulse race, and a few years later found herself deserted with three kids. Oh, yeah. She’d learned that lesson and didn’t care to repeat it.
She cleared her throat. “I heard a rumor that you got superrich once you left here.”
“I did. I write comic books.”
“And you make that much money drawing?”
“Well, drawing, writing scripts…” His sexy smile grew. “And owning the company.”
She gaped at him, but inside she couldn’t stop a swoon. If he’d smiled at her like that in high school she probably would have fainted. Thank God she was older and wiser and knew how to resist a perfect smile. “You own a company?”
“And here I thought the gossip mill in Newland was incredibly efficient.”
“It probably is. In the past few years I haven’t had time to pay much attention.”
He glanced at the kids. One by one they’d ambled back to the hedge and over to her, where they currently hung around her knees. “I can see that.”
Slowly, carefully, she raised her gaze to meet his. He wasn’t the only one who had changed since high school. She might not be rich but she had done some things. She wasn’t just raising triplets; she also had some big-time money possibilities. “I own a company, too.”
His grin returned. Her face heated. Her heart did something that felt like a somersault.
“Really?”
She looked away. She couldn’t believe she was so attracted to him. Then she remembered that Wyatt was somebody special. Deep down inside he had been a nice guy, and maybe he still was underneath all that leather. But that only heightened her unease. If he wasn’t, she didn’t want her memories of the one honest, sweet guy in her life tainted by this sexy stranger. Worse, she didn’t want him discovering too much about her past. Bragging about her company might cause him to ask questions that would bring up memories she didn’t want to share.
She reined in her enthusiasm about her fledgling business. “It’s a small company.”
“Everybody starts small.”
She nodded.
He smiled again, but looked at the triplets and motioned toward his motorcycle. “Well, I guess I better get my bike in the garage.”
She took a step back, not surprised he wanted to leave. What sexy, gorgeous, bike-riding, company-owning guy wanted to be around a woman with kids? Three kids. Three superlovable kids who had a tendency to look needy.
Though she was grateful he was racing away, memories tripped over themselves in her brain. Him helping her with her algebra, and stumbling over asking her out. And her being unable to keep that date.
The urge to apologize for standing him up almost moved her tongue. But she couldn’t say anything. Not without telling him things that would mortally embarrass her. “It was nice to see you.”
He flashed that lethal grin. “It was nice to see you, too.”
He let go of the hedge he’d been holding back. It sprang into place and he disappeared.
With the threat of the newcomer gone, the trips scrambled to the kitchen door and raced inside. She followed them, except she didn’t stop in the kitchen. She strode through the house to the living room, where she fell to the sofa.
Realizing she was shaking, she picked up a pillow, put it on her knees and pressed her face to it. She should have known seeing someone she hadn’t seen since graduation would take her back to the worst day in her life.
Her special day, graduation…her dad had stopped at the bar on the way home from the ceremony. Drunk, he’d beaten her mom, ruined the graduation dress Missy had bought with her own money by tossing bleach on it, and slapped Althea, knocking her into a wall, breaking her arm.
Her baby sister, the little girl her mom had called a miracle baby and her dad had called a mistake, had been hit so hard that Missy had taken her to the hospital. Once they’d fixed up her arm, a social worker had peered into their emergency room cubicle.
“Where’s your mom?”
“She’s out for the night. I’m eighteen. I’m babysitting.”
The social worker had given Missy a look of disbelief,so she’d produced her driver’s license.
When the social worker was gone, Althea had glared at her. She wanted to tell the truth.
Missy had turned on her sister. “Do you want to end up in foster care? Or worse, have him beat Mom until she dies? Well, I don’t.”
And the secret had continued… .
Her