The Tycoon's Tots

“His mother is dead. My sister Rose and I take turns hand-feeding him.” Chloe didn’t go on to tell him that Martin’s mother was killed when Belinda torched a section of the ranch. It was a horrible scene she hated to think about, much less relate to him.

A few moments later, the two of them entered a small courtyard landscaped with an assortment of desert plants, a couple of piñon pines and redwood lawn furniture.

A ground-level porch made a square with the back of the house. Wyatt followed her across one end of it, through a screen door and into a warm, cluttered kitchen. Two steps inside the room, Wyatt stopped dead in his tracks as he spotted two red-headed babies sitting side by side in a pair of high chairs.

These were his sister’s children, the only close relatives he had left. Yet incredibly they looked like the woman standing next to him.

“Aunt Kitty, this is Wyatt Sanders.”

Wyatt tore his gaze away from the babies to see the petite gray-haired woman had joined them. She was wiping her hands on a tea towel and looking Wyatt over with open suspicion.

“Yes, he told me his name when he came to the door. I see you found Chloe,” she told him.

He nodded politely toward the older woman, but before he could get a word out, Chloe said, “Did he tell you he’s Belinda Waller’s brother?”

Kitty’s face grew ashen and her wide gaze flew from her niece to the dark-haired stranger. “Belinda’s brother?” she asked in a hoarse whisper. “We didn’t know she had a brother! What are you doing here?”

Wyatt turned to Chloe and wondered, not for the first time, what his next words were going to do to her.

“I’m here to take the twins home. With me,” he said quietly.

Chapter Two (#ulink_e014b0d7-2d13-5411-a973-e2f780684682)

Now was not the time for Chloe to panic or lose her temper. She had to show this man he didn’t scare her. The twins were hers! He couldn’t simply walk in and take them away from her!

Her gaze didn’t waver as she met his cool gray eyes. “The twins are home, Mr. Sanders. Like I said earlier, they’re Murdocks, and the Bar M has been our home for more than thirty years.”

She’d already told him her intention of adopting the twins, so it hardly surprised Wyatt to hear her calling this ranch their rightful home. But he had other ideas. The quicker Ms. Chloe Murdock realized that the better off they’d all be.

“I think you’re forgetting the babies are half Sanders.”

Like a mammy dog guarding her litter, Chloe stood her ground. “Excuse me, but your sister’s name was Waller, not Sanders.”

He grimaced as though Chloe’s point had little consequence on the matter. “She was married and divorced several years ago. But by any name, her babies are my niece and nephew.”

“And they’re my half brother and sister. I think even you can admit that.”

Groaning, Kitty reached for a nearby chair and wilted into it.

Wyatt turned his gaze back to the twins who were busily concentrating on eating graham crackers. Soggy crumbs dotted their bibs and cheeks and clung to their fingers in gooey clumps. They seemed perfectly contented and their sweet, intelligent faces went straight to Wyatt’s heart.

“How old are they?” he asked.

“Ten months,” she answered, then volunteered. “They can crawl and pull up now.”

Fascinated by the sight of them, Wyatt walked over and hunkered down to their level. The babies weren’t exactly identical, but close to it. They both had green eyes, chubby round faces and dimpled cheeks. The girl’s hair was a bright red cap of curls while the boy’s was the very same dark auburn as Chloe Murdock’s.

Even to him, it was plain to see they were her brother and sister. Wyatt couldn’t deny that. Yet they were a part of him, too. He couldn’t forget or dismiss that fact.

“Hello, you two,” he said, suddenly feeling awkward and foolishly emotional. “I’m your Uncle Wyatt.”

The sound of his voice caught the twins’ attention and both children stopped their chewing to give him a closer look.

“We named them Adam and Anna,” Chloe said as she came up behind the three of them.

He looked over his shoulder at her. “That isn’t what my sister named them?”

“No. For a long time we had no idea who they belonged to or what their names were. So we named them ourselves.”

One dark brow arched at her. “Don’t you think you were being rather presumptuous?”

Fury washed through Chloe but she tried her best to squash it down. “And don’t you think these two little darlings deserved something better than Baby Boy or Baby Girl? Don’t you think they deserved better than to be left in a laundry basket on a porch? There was no one around when your sister dumped them and to this day we still don’t know how long they had been there before my sister Justine found them. Apparently Belinda had no idea that a coyote or anything could have dragged them off and killed them. Or maybe she did,” Chloe couldn’t help adding.

Wyatt straightened to his full height and looked at her through narrow gray eyes. “Whatever my sister was, she wasn’t a murderer.”

“I don’t think you really know what your sister was,” she said flatly. “But that’s beside the point now. The babies are mine. You’ll not take them from this ranch.”

“Chloe, perhaps—” Kitty began only to have her niece wave a quieting hand at her.

“What makes you think you have a right to them?” Wyatt asked coolly.

“What makes you think you do?” she countered.

Wyatt glanced down at the babies, then turned his attention to the room they were in. It wasn’t anything like the spotless kitchen in his Houston condominium. There were pots and pans hanging on one wall, plants lining every available windowsill, and dirty dishes stacked on the table and cabinet counter. Something resembling pinto beans had boiled over on the cookstove and dripped down over the control knobs. In one corner an ironing board was piled with clothes. Whether they were clean or not, Wyatt couldn’t tell.

“I think the twins deserve a better life than this,” he said bluntly.

Ladies didn’t resort to physical violence be damned, Chloe thought, as she stepped up and jabbed her finger hard in the middle of Wyatt Sanders’s chest.

“And I think you wouldn’t know a better life if it reached up and bit you in the butt!”

Momentarily stunned by her unexpected response, Wyatt could only stare at her. She wasn’t only sexy, she was the wildest little thing he’d ever come across.

“And if you think this place is so bad,” she went on, “I suggest you leave. Now! Before I call the sheriff.”

Kitty gasped. “Chloe! There’s no need to call Roy. Mr. Sanders is—”

“Who’s Roy?” Wyatt asked, seemingly unruffled by her threat.

“The sheriff.”

“My brother-in-law.”

The two women spoke at once, but Wyatt managed to decipher the message. It irked him that she wanted to drag the law into this, even if the sheriff was her family. But it didn’t surprise him. Chloe Murdock didn’t appear to be a woman who’d give up or give in without a fight.

Before he could say anything, Anna began to whine and fuss. Wyatt instinctively turned toward the baby, but Chloe instantly leapt between them.

“Don’t you dare touch her!” she hissed at him, then lifted the little girl into her arms.