had triplets, but still sons in the mix. Damn if I didn’t start wondering if it was secret water Cos Way was pumping up out of an under ground well just to spite me. Hates me, he does, and I hated him. I swear he kept that woman pregnant just to show me what a real man could achieve. Six sons, every one of them strap ping and healthy and tall as live oaks.” He took a deep breath. “No, I know you didn’t like me arranging the marriage, but I had to do it. You under stand, don’t you?”
Daphne’s heart froze in her chest. She waited forever for her husband’s reply.
“I do, Dad. Go to sleep now. Everything is going to be all right.”
Tears welled in Daphne’s eyes as cold shock spread through her. Everything was not going to be all right. She backed up quietly and hurried down stairs, wiping at the tears running down her face. When he said he liked my jeans, I should have known he meant genes, she thought wildly, running past the Banning Boors, still watching her coldly and aristocratically. She felt like turning the portraits to the wall, but it wouldn’t help. Nothing could help her.
Her husband had been forced to marry her.
Chapter One
Five months later
“We have located her, sir.”
The valet’s stiff voice held a ring of achievement, of a job done well. Alex Banning held in a sigh of relief. His heart sped up at the thought of finally seeing his wife again. “Good. Bring her, and our baby, to the mansion.”
“She’s very weak, but she is resisting us, sir.”
“Of course she is,” Alex said matter-of-factly. “Have you ever known Daphne Way to ever do the conventional thing? To go along quietly because someone asks her to?”
Sinclair chuckled. “No, sir.”
“Well, then! Do what you have to. Negotiate. But bring her here. And the baby,” he added as an after thought.
“Yes, sir.” The car phone was disconnected.
Alone in his mansion, his nerves on edge, Alex waited for the woman who had borne his child to be brought, probably kicking and screaming, to him. Months ago Daphne had run from their marriage. He’d nearly gone mad when she left, with only a short note telling him she wasn’t coming back. Though he’d gone several times to her parents’ house, they had said little except that she didn’t want to see him. His heart broke. His greatest fear was realized. They had married too quickly without allowing her time to get used to living in the Banning mansion. Without time to really get to know her husband. And when she had, she hadn’t wanted him.
Through a friend, he discovered she was pregnant. Realizing that Daphne had no intention of contacting him, he had sought her at the school where she taught.
She had responded by showing him the door. Then she quit her job and moved from her parents’ home. Her new phone number was unlisted.
The worst blow had been the delivery of divorce papers. A hundred knives had gone through him when he read them.
He’d re treated. He kept his eye on her through various means, none of them obvious enough to alert her to his knowledge of the baby growing inside her. Knowing Daphne, she’d leave the country, and then he’d have to go through serious maneuvers to keep in touch with her.
He’d kept quiet until the birth, though it nearly killed him. The thought that the woman he loved was bearing his child without him by her side was enough to drive him to complete insanity. There had been a complication, but he didn’t know what. Nurses went to the small apartment once a day, Sinclair reported, and Daphne went to the hospital much earlier than the due date Alex had circled on his calendar. It had been what he thought would be several months into her pregnancy, but since he had no idea when she’d gotten pregnant, he had no idea how far along the baby had been. Dear heaven, let it be healthy. Let Daphne be fine. He called the hospital, but they would give no information on her condition or the child’s.
Alex had been left with nothing to do but worry himself ill.
Today, Daphne had finally left the hospital. He had dispatched Sinclair at once.
Daphne Way was going to live in the enormous mansion in Green Forks, Texas, with him, whether she liked it or not. This place was big enough for the both of them and one tiny baby.
“I HAD NELLY take Miss Daphne—Mrs. Banning—upstairs,” Sinclair informed Alex when he arrived thirty minutes later.
Alex hovered in the marbled hallway, as nervous as if he’d been in the delivery room himself. Which he should have been, but there was nothing he could do about that now. “Is she all right?”
“Miss Daphne is weak, but not weak enough to forgo giving me a tongue-lashing. She doesn’t want to see you, sir.”
“I know. Where is my son?”
Sinclair looked at him oddly. “In the library.”
Alex grimaced. “I would have been down sooner, but I got caught on an overseas phone call.”
“Of course, sir. I will show you to your, er, child.”
Alex followed Sinclair into the library-turned-nursery, his hands trembling. He was a father! In time, another oil painting could be hung in the great hall along side the other portraits of Banning men of great accomplishments. His own son.
He stopped in his tracks at the sight of three little blankets spread across the floor with a tiny baby securely wrapped on each. There was a flurry of activity as servants pulled baby things from boxes and bags.
“What is going on?” Alex demanded. “What are those?” He pointed to the baby bundles. “Why are they lying on the floor?”
“We weren’t prepared for three.” Sinclair shrugged. “We only bought one crib and one set of baby accoutrements.”
A sinking sensation hit Alex. Perhaps an error had been made and the Banning mansion had been mistaken for an orphanage. “Those are not all mine, are they?”
“I’m afraid so. Trust Miss Daphne to do the ever-flam-boyant thing.”
“Oh, my God.” Alex couldn’t believe what he was hearing. “Are you sure?”
“They’re all tagged Banning, sir.”
“You didn’t accidentally grab up too many?”
“No, sir. They are all Daphne’s babies.”
Daphne Way was a hell of a woman, but he didn’t think she’d been capable of that.
“In poker it’s called a three of a kind, sir. Very advantageous. Congratulations.”
Alex ignored the felicitations and moved forward to eye the sleeping bundles. “Have you called for extra everything?”
“Yes.”
“Daphne didn’t require extra hospitalization?” He whirled to glance at Sinclair.
“No, but as I said, she is weak. In spite of your questionable methods, sir, I believe this is the best place for her.”
“Yes.” Alex blinked at the first bit of criticism Sinclair had ever leveled at him. He looked at his progeny. One tiny bundle squirmed in its blanket wrap pings, starting a chain reaction. Suddenly, all three pairs of eyes were open and staring around. “What are their names?”
Sinclair stepped close to examine the baby on the left. “That one, I believe, Miss Daphne called Yoda.”
“Yoda! She named my son after a fictitious intergalactic creature?” His roar set Yoda to crying and the help to a stand still. After an astonished second, a nanny came forward to pick up the child and comfort it with a malevolent glance at Alex.
“I don’t know her proper given name, sir. That’s all I heard Miss Daphne call the child.”
“Well.”