The Billionaire's Illicit Twins - Holly Rayner Page 0,53

quick work—like, we’ve-been-working-together-for-our-entire-life-level work—of unpacking the things we needed.

“Spaghetti noodles, check. Ground beef, check. Diced tomatoes, fresh tomatoes, tomato sauce, check,” I said, going through the things on my side of the island.

She pointed to her ingredients. “Oil, bread, garlic salt, butter, and all the makings for the most awesome salad ever,” she added, pointing to each ingredient as she went. “Let’s get this done.”

I moved directly to the stove and the enormous pot I had already placed there, taking the ground beef with me and unwrapping it as I went while Bella went to work with the tomatoes, making what she claimed was her famous tomato sauce.

“So, what exactly makes it famous?” I asked, turning the heat on under the water and adding a very generous dash of salt. “Who is it famous with?”

I heard a short pause. “My dad, of course,” she finally said.

I nodded as if that was all I needed to know. “Right. So not actually so famous after all.”

Suddenly she was behind me and poking me in the ribs.

“You are going to have your socks blown off, so I don’t want to hear it,” she said, reaching around me and grabbing for several bottles of spices.

I stiffened and did everything I could not to turn around right there, grab her, and pull her up against me. Because it would have been so easy. So natural. And any other couple who was cooking together—and joking while they cooked—would have fallen right into that sort of action.

God, any other man who had his woman pressed up against him from behind like that would turn around, scoop her up, and make for the bedroom immediately.

But we weren’t a couple. Not yet. We were just two people who happened to be having twins together and who had made some crazy agreement to get to know each other better before the actual birth arrived. We were two people who were having an insanely good time together… but who, according to Bella, risked too much if we actually became a thing. In short, Bella was one person who had a specific plan in life, and who didn’t want to do anything to risk that plan.

Anything more than she already had.

So I held myself perfectly still while she reached around me for spices, and then kept myself from grabbing for her when she disappeared again. And I wondered if she realized that we were acting like boyfriend and girlfriend rather than just two people who happened to have made a mistake at the same time.

I wondered if she realized how perfect we were when we were like this. Or if that was something she wouldn’t give the time of day because it didn’t fit into her plan.

Instead of bringing it up, I broke the spaghetti noodles in half and dropped them into the boiling water.

“Tell me about your dad,” I said, building on the subject she’d already brought up.

I heard her snort. “He was a workaholic. Plain and simple.”

I nodded. “So that’s where you get it.”

“Probably. I never saw him go a day without working. But it was always because he loved me and wanted to provide for me. I don’t think he loved the work. It was that he knew he had to do it to keep us safe.”

“And that’s where you get that,” I noted quietly.

“Maybe,” she said after another pause. “I think that when you grow up knowing what it’s like to not have enough, though, it leaves a mark. You spend the rest of your life trying to erase that mark and learn to live without being scared. And it’s sort of a toss-up whether you can or not.”

She appeared suddenly at my side, another pot in one hand and a bowl full of various tomato goodness in the other. One expert move and she’d placed the pot on the stove and dumped the contents of the bowl into it.

“Wow, you really are good,” I noted. “How many times have you done that?”

She cast a sideways glance and a grin in my direction. “When you’re a starving law student who has no money, you spend a lot of time perfecting spaghetti. I’ve made that sauce so many times I could probably do it in my sleep. Or drunk. Or hungover. Or so sick I could hardly stand up.”

I laughed with her—and vowed that at some point, I would take away that fear of not being safe. I would find that mark and erase it for her. Just to