CHAPTER 6

My PA was still holding the envelope out to me and there was confusion in her eyes. I wanted to drop the envelope but then I thought of opening the envelope and reading the content.

“ From where did you say this came from? I asked.

“ From the doctor? My PA replied.

“ What business do ?I murmur.

“ You can go” I said.My PA took his leave.

I sat back and stare at the envelope. “ I hope it’s not some other sick wedding invitation from Sofia?

I open the envelope then there was just a picture, pictures of twin babies.

 Laughter died instantly as he looked at the picture of two babies with black hair and pale blue eyes.

“What the hell?” Even while his brain started racing and his heartbeat stuttered in his chest, he read the scrawled message beneath the photo:

“Congratulations, Daddy. It’s twins.”

LUCIA

She wasn’t ready to give up the sun.

Lucia set her coffee cup down on the glass-topped table, turned her face to the sky and let the warm, late-morning sunshine pour over her like a blessing. Despite the fact that there were people around her, laughing, talking, diving into the pool, sending walls of water up in splashing waves, she felt alone in the light. And she really wasn’t ready to sink back into the belly of the ship.

But she’d sent her note to Dave. And she’d told him where to find her. In that tiny, less-than-closet-size cabin. So she’d better be there when he arrived. With a sigh, she stood, slung her bag over her left shoulder and threaded her way through the crowds lounging on the Verandah Deck.

Someone touched her arm and Lucia stopped.

“Leaving already?” Mary Curran was smiling at her, and Lucia returned that smile with one of her own.

“Yeah. I have to get back down to my cabin. I um, have to meet someone there.” At least, she was fairly certain Dave would show up. But what if he didn’t? What if he didn’t care about the fact that he was the father of her twin sons? What if he dismissed her note as easily as he’d deleted all of her attempts at e-mail communication?

A small, hard knot formed in the pit of her stomach. She’d like to see him try, that’s all. They were on a ship in the middle of the ocean. How was he going to escape her? Nope. Come what may, she was going to have her say. She was going to face him down, at last, and tell him what she’d come to say.

“Oh God, honey.” Mary grimaced and gave a dramatic shudder. “Do you really want to have a conversation down in the pit?”

Lucia laughed. “The pit?”

“That’s what my husband, Joe, christened it in the middle of the night when he nearly broke his shin trying to get to the bathroom.”

Grinning, Lucia said, “I guess the name fits all right. But yeah. I have to do it there. It’s too private to be done up here.”

Mary’s eyes warmed as she looked at Lucia and said, “Well, then, go do whatever it is you have to do. Maybe I’ll see you back in the sunshine later?”

Lucia nodded. She knew how cruise passengers tended to bond together. She’d seen it herself in the time she’d actually worked for Falcon Cruises. Friendships formed fast and furiously. People who were in relatively tight quarters stuck on a ship in the middle of the ocean tended to get to know each other more quickly than they might on dry land.

Shipboard romances happened, sure just look what had happened to her. But more often, it was other kinds of relationships that bloomed and took hold. And right about now, Lucia decided, she could use a friendly face.

“You bet,” she said, giving Mary a wide smile. “How about margaritas on the Calypso Deck? About five?”

Delighted, Mary beamed at her. “I’ll be there.”

As Lucia walked toward the elevator, she told herself that after her upcoming chat with Dave, she was probably going to need a margarita or two.

Dave jolted to his feet so fast, his desk chair shot backward, the wheels whirring against the wood floor until the chair slammed into the glass wall behind him.

“Is this a joke?”

Dave held the pale blue card in one tight fist and stared down at two tiny faces. The babies were identical except for their expressions. One looked into the camera and grinned, displaying a lot of gum and one deep dimple. The other was watching the picture taker with a serious, almost thoughtful look on his face.

And they both looked a hell of a lot like him.

“Twins?”

In an instant, emotions he could hardly name raced through him. Anger, frustration, confusion and back to anger again. How the hell could he be a father? Nobody he knew had been pregnant. This couldn’t be happening. He glanced up at the empty office as if half expecting someone to jump out, shout, “You’ve just been punk’d,” and let him off the hook. But there were no cameras. There was no joke.

This was someone’s idea of serious.

Well, hell, he told himself, it wasn’t the first time some woman had tried to slap him with a paternity suit. But it was for damn sure the first time the gauntlet had been thrown down in such an imaginative way.

“Who, though?” He grabbed the envelope up, but only his name was scrawled across the front in a small, feminine hand. Turning over the card he still held, he saw more of that writing:

“We need to talk. Come to cabin 2A on the Riviera Deck.”

“Riviera Deck.” Though he hated like hell to admit it, he wasn’t sure which deck that was. He had a lot of ships in his line and this was his first sail on this particular one. Though he meant to make Falcon’s Pride his home, he hadn’t had the chance yet to explore it from stem to stern as he did all the ships that carried his name.