Free Twin Temptations by Elizabeth Lapthorne Page A

back at the main house.
    “I’m not helping you jilt the poor guy, am I, Sammi?” Dominic grinned as he teased her.
    Samantha smiled in return, but replied honestly. “No, Uncle Dom. I just need to breathe. Bella is…a bit fretful.” Samantha had to swallow the news of her sister-in-law’s pregnancy. “It’s all such a buzz in there—I can’t breathe. I know I’m doing the right thing, but I’ve never wanted a huge white wedding. I never really wanted any wedding.
    “Dom, I love Callum, but why the hell do I need to go through with this? He knows I love him, knows I’ve marked him. I’ll happily wear his rings. I just don’t think I can do this.”
    Samantha continued to walk through the forest, each section as familiar as her own face. She had grown up here, played forever in these woods, run here every month for as long as she could remember. She felt the wind in her face and she could scent each individual flower as she passed it.
    Finally, she came to a glade that she had often dreamed in, spent alone time in, as a child. Samantha hadn’t been purposely heading here, or not consciously anyway, but somehow it felt right being here as she closed one chapter on her life and opened a new one.
    After a rather heated discussion about her twin’s matchmaking skills, or lack thereof, the entire mess with the “kidnapped” cubs had been laid to rest. The cubs had been safe and secreted away, both Bella and Alexander had been taking good care of
    them. It had also been near to impossible to chew her brother a new asshole when he continued to smirk about how deeply in love she had fallen with Callum. Bella too had been ecstatic that everything had fallen into place so perfectly, and it had been her idea to have a double wedding. Samantha had hesitated at first, mostly because she knew the large, white, traditional wedding was one of Bella’s dreams, and she didn’t want to dampen Bella’s enthusiasm.
    Everything had been working perfectly, she had never been as happy as she was with Callum and they were both madly, irrevocably in love, and yet something niggled in the back of her mind, something she seemed to be missing. With a strangled cry, Samantha dropped down onto a particularly grassy spot and started sobbing. She felt even more grateful as Dominic merely sat down beside her, uncaring of the stains probably gathering on his tux. He didn’t touch her or coddle her, but let her sob her worries out.
    After a moment, she turned away from her uncle, dry retched, and felt a strange, calming peace settle over herself. She turned back, smiled weakly at the worried expression on Dom’s face, sighed and leaned on Dom’s strong shoulder, and he finally put a warm, soothing arm around her.
    “You do realize you’re pregnant, don’t you, Sammi?” Samantha chuckled again at the casual, almost disinterested way her uncle said this. “Mary was incredibly hormonal with the first baby. Seems to be a running theme in Rutledge women.”
    “I can’t be,” she said softly, wondering… She placed a hand on her flat stomach and closed her eyes, breathing deeply. Searching inside herself, Samantha smiled, almost certain her uncle was wrong, until she found two tiny little beings. Completely shocked, Samantha choked, gasped and placed her other hand over her first to make absolutely certain she wasn’t mistaken.
    Utterly disbelieving, she sat there as the minutes ticked by, utterly lost in the joy of the little beings she and Callum had made in their love.
    “If you’re really that panicked over the wedding, why not get the priest to come out here and marry you? I seriously doubt Bella or Alex would mind, and you know Callum is so besotted with you he’d agree to almost anything.”
    Samantha looked up to her uncle and burst into tears again, throwing both her arms around him and holding him tight. “Do you really think so, Uncle Dom? Are you sure Callum won’t mind?”
    “I know I sure as hell don’t mind,”