Chapter 2: Still beautiful
A commotion sounded outside, and the twins looked uneasy for the first time. She rushed into the room. Rafe stood up so fast, and his chair crashed against the wall-to-ceiling window behind him. His brows snapped together, and his neck muscles tensed. It was like a punch to his gut.
Lindi, the woman who'd betrayed him in the worst way a woman can betray her man. A way he never thought she'd stoop to. She was the first person he'd ever fully trusted, and she'd betrayed him. He never thought to see her again after their breakup had forced him not to try to find out where she was.
She wasn't the slim teenager he'd known before. In the five years since he'd last seen her, she'd filled out, become even more beautiful, exuding the same self-assurance he'd seen in the twins.
Her slim figure had become hourglass-shaped, and she wore her hair shorter. His body stirred, and he had to concentrate not to tighten his hands into fists. Nothing would induce him to let her see the effect she still had on him. That she still got to him after all this time. She'd become a woman, a woman with self-confidence. A woman who was the mother of another man's children. He scowled; his hands tingled with the need to know this self-assured woman. To span her slender waist and cup her lush hips. To press her so tight against his chest, he could feel her nipples through her bra.
Rafe drew a deliberate breath and with ruthless determination stopped any thought of feeling her against him. He didn't give second chances. There would be no touching of those dangerous curves.
Her blond hair was up in a fancy roll at the back of her head. A silky string had escaped and curled over her cheek and spiraled past her chin. It only added to the overall picture of sex on legs. She was dressed in a suit with a slim, cream-colored skirt and heels that did amazing things for her already stunning legs. She used to wrap those long legs around his hips, held him deep inside her, had sighed that he was the only man she would ever love, that she'd never wanted him to leave her. And fool that he was, he'd believed her lies.
She didn't even glance at Rafe, her focus on the two kids shuffling their feet. He didn't like being ignored by this woman who had haunted his thoughts these last five years.
"Rafael, Donatello, what on earth are you doing here? How did you get away from the receptionist? I told you to sit quietly and wait for me." Lindi's voice rose, and she grabbed the arm of each and shook them softly, fear stark in her every action. Rafe was about to intervene when she shuddered, closed her eyes, and abruptly knelt before them and hugged them, fear still etched on her face. "How would I live without you guys?" She rose and kept her hands on their shoulders. "Don't scare me like that. I can't lose you." She took a shuddering breath. "You can't do things like this."