Read Daddy's Double Duty for Free Online

actually wanted to hold the babies and was stupidly pretending indifference or because he was disheartening her at this special time, he didn’t know.
    Frowning, she asked, “You don’t like babies or something?”
    â€œOf course I do. I have baby nieces and nephews. But I didn’t hold them when they were this small. Come to think of it…none of them were ever this small.” He gestured toward the twins. “I might do it all wrong.”
    â€œI might do it all wrong, too,” she suggested. “So we might as well try together.”
    Realizing it would look strange if he kept protesting, he said, “All right. I’ll watch you first.”
    She bent over Rose’s cradle and after carefully placing a hand beneath the baby’s head, lifted her out of the bed and into her arms. After a moment, Conall moved up to the other cradle and, in the same cautious manner, reached for the boy.
    Once he had the child safely positioned in the crook of his arm, he adjusted the thin blue blanket beneath little Rick’s chin so that he could get a better look at his face. It was perfectly formed with a little pug nose and bow-shaped lips. Faint golden brows framed a set of blue eyes that were now wide open and appeared to be searching to see who or what was holding him.
    Vulnerable. Needy. Precious. As he held the child, memories carried him back to when he and Nancy had first married. In the beginning, he’d had so many dreams and plans. All of them surrounding a house full of children to carry on the Donovan name and inherit the hard-earned rewards of the Diamond D. But those dreams had slowly and surely come crashing down.
    Now as Conall experienced the special warmth and scent of the baby boy lying so helplessly in the crook of his arm, Conall wasn’t sure that Vanessa yet realized what a treasure she’d been handed. But he did. Oh, how he did.
    â€œConall?”
    Reining in his thoughts, he pulled his gaze away from the baby to find her staring at him with a faintly puzzled look on her face. Had she been reading his mind? Conall wondered. Surely not. Down through the years he’d perfected the art of shuttering his emotions. Baby Rick wasn’t strong enough to make him change the longtime habit.
    â€œAm I doing something wrong?” he asked.
    For the first time Conall could remember, his secretary actually smiled at him with those big brown eyes of hers.
    â€œNo. You look like you were tailor-made for the job of Daddy.”
    Her observation struck him hard, but he did his best to keep the pain hidden, as though there was no wide, empty hole inside him.
    â€œNot hardly,” he said gruffly. “I’m not…daddy material.”
    One delicate brow arched skeptically upward. “Oh? You don’t ever plan to have children of your own?”
    For some reason her question made him pull the baby boy even closer to his chest. “That’s one thing I’m absolutely certain I’ll never have.”
    Clearly taken aback by his response, her gaze slipped away from his and dropped to the baby in her arms. “Well, everyone has their own ideas about having children,” she said a bit stiffly. “I just happen to think you’re making a sad mistake.”
    A sad mistake. Oh, yes, it was a sad mistake that she was misjudging him, Conall thought. And sad, too, that he couldn’t find the courage to tell this woman that at one time he’d planned to have at least a half-dozen children.
    But if he let her in on that dream, then he’d have to explain why he’d been forced to set it aside. And why he planned to live the rest of his life a lone bachelor.
    Hardening himself to that certain reality had changed him, he knew. Even his family often considered him unapproachable. But none of them actually understood the loss he felt to see his siblings having children of their own, while knowing he would always be cheated out of one of