She stopped in front of her car and glanced around. When she spotted me, she squared her shoulders and advanced, like a brave warrior marching into battle.

I wouldn’t make this easy on her. She’d done the unthinkable in my book. She’d kept my child a secret from me. A guy didn’t forget or forgive such a betrayal easily.

“Easton.” Her voice was calm and cool, as if our meeting were nothing more than a minor business transaction. I steeled myself against the conflict raging inside me and presented my best poker face, the very one I used when the veterans were giving me shit on and off the ice.

“Caro.” I was relieved my own voice was as cool and unemotional as hers.

She started to sit across from me, and I whipped off my coat. “It’s wet. Sit on this.”

She hesitated, caught off guard by my chivalry, then reached for the coat. For the briefest of moments our fingers touched. Old feelings and memories slammed into me with the force of a head-on collision. And for me, that collision was a near fatality.

I remembered too much. The feel of her soft skin sliding across mine. The little moans she made when I pushed inside her. The way she looked at me as if I were the only man on earth.

Oh, God. Fuck. Damn it to hell.

She was not that girl anymore, and I wasn’t that boy. Nothing would ever be the same between us. We’d had puppy love. My memories were clouded by a false perception. The dream was likely far better than the reality.

Unfortunately, that reality looked pretty damn fucking good to me.

But I was wrong. She was deceptive, a schemer. She wanted something from me, but I wanted something in exchange. I had to keep my end goal in mind.

She sat opposite me and stared at her hands clasped in front of her on the table. I waited for her to speak, not giving her the benefit of breaking the ice first.

“Easton,” she croaked and cleared her throat. She swallowed, still staring downward, not meeting my gaze. She was nervous. I saw the slight tremor in her hands. Her composure had been an act. Only a bastard would enjoy her discomfort, and I guess at this point in time, I was a bastard.

“I have— You have twins. A boy and a girl.”

My smug smile fell off my face, and I shed my composure faster than a stripper sheds her clothes. “How do you know they’re mine?” I heard my husky, tense voice and hardly recognized it.

“DNA.” She didn’t explain further, and I didn’t ask, but there was a question of how she would’ve gotten my DNA to test.

“I’ll want to do my own test.”

“We can do that.”

“Why are you coming to me now? Why tell me at all since you obviously planned on keeping their father a secret from them indefinitely?”

She cringed and met my angry gaze. “I’m sorry. I didn’t know.”