Marriage: To Claim His Twins Read Free Page A

now.’
    The knowing look Sander was giving her made Ruby want to protest— You’re wrong. I’m not what you think. That wasn’t the real me that night. But common sense and pride made her hold back the words.
    â€˜I’m prepared to be very generous to you financially in return for you handing the twins over to me,’ Sander continued. ‘Very generous indeed. You’re still young.’
    In fact he had been surprised to discover that the night they had met she had been only seventeen. Dressed and made-up as she had been, he had assumed that she was much older. Sander frowned. He hadn’t enjoyed the sharp spike of distaste he had experienced against himself at knowing he had taken such a young girl to bed. Had he known her age he would have…What? Given her a stern talking to and sent her home in a cab? Had he been in control of himself that night he would not have gone to bed with her at all, no matter what her age, but the unpalatable truth was that he had not been in control of himself. He had been in the grip of anger and a sense of frustration he had never experienced either before or since that night—a firestorm of savage, bitter emotion that had driven him into behaviour that, if he was honest, still irked his pride and sense of self. Other men might exhibit such behaviour, but he had always thought of himself as above that kind of thing. He had been wrong, and now the evidence of that behaviour was confronting him in the shape of the sons he had fathered. Sander believed he had a duty to ensure that they did not suffer because of that behaviour. That was what had brought him here.And there was no way he was going to leave until he had got what he had come for.
    And just that?
    Ruby shook her head.
    â€˜Buy my children, you mean?’
    Sander could hear the hostility in Ruby’s voice as well as see it in her eyes.
    â€˜Because that is what you’re talking about,’ Ruby accused him, adding fiercely, ‘And if I’d had any thought of allowing you into their lives, what you’ve just said would make me change my mind. There’s nothing you could offer me that would make me want to risk my sons’ emotional future by allowing you to have any kind of contact with them.’
    Her words were having more of an effect on him than Sander liked to admit. A man of pride and power, used to commanding not just the obedience but also the respect and the admiration of others, he was stung by Ruby’s criticism of him. He wasn’t used to being refused anything by anyone—much less by a woman he remembered as an over-made-up and under-dressed little tart who had come on to him openly and obviously. Not that there was anything of that girl about her now, dressed in faded jeans and a loose top, her face free of make-up and her hair left to curl naturally of its own accord. The girl he remembered had smelled of cheap scent; the woman in front of him smelled of cleaning product. He would have to change his approach if he was to overcome her objections, Sander recognised.
    Quickly changing tack, he challenged her. ‘NothingI could offer you , maybe, but what about what I can offer my sons? You speak of their emotions. Have you thought, I wonder, how they are going to feel when they grow up to realise what you have denied them in refusing to let them know their father?’
    â€˜That’s not fair,’ Ruby objected angrily, knowing that Sander had found her most vulnerable spot where the twins were concerned.
    â€˜What is not fair, surely, is you denying my sons the opportunity to know their father and the culture that is their birthright?’
    â€˜As your bastards?’ The horrible word tasted bitter, but it had to be said. ‘Forced to stand in second place to your legitimate children, and no doubt be resented by your wife?’
    â€˜I have no other children, nor any wife.’
    Why was her heart hammering so heavily,