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Her triangular face froze, long lashes sweeping down over her eyes while she processed an idea that seemed to strike her as extraordinary.
‘Surely you expected that?’
Erin glanced up and clashed with eyes that burned like a furnace in Cristo’s hard masculine face. ‘I hadn’t thought that far ahead.’
‘I’m coming to the hospital with you,’ Cristo decreed.
Erin winced at the prospect, picturing her mother’s astonishment, not to mention the prospect of explaining that she had lied about going to Scotland and had gone to Italy to be with Cristo instead.
‘There’s nothing else that I can do,’ Cristo added grimly.
Erin was mystified. Was curiosity or a sense of duty driving him? But then how on earth had she expected him to react to her revelation? Had she really believed that he might just walk away untouched by the news that he was a father?
‘I’m not expecting you to get involved with the twins,’ Erin muttered uncomfortably.
‘It is more a matter of what I expect of myself,’ Cristo countered with a gravity she had never seen in him before.
Oh, my word, what have I done? Erin wondered feverishly. What did he expect from himself in the parenting stakes? His own upbringing, after all, had been unusual. And he was a non-conformist to the marrow of his bones, shrugging off convention if it made no sense to him.
It was nine in the evening before they made it to the hospital. Deidre Turner was seated in a bland little side ward next to a bed in which a small still form lay. The older woman, her face grey with exhaustion and her eyes marked pink by tears, scrambled upright when she saw her daughter. ‘Erin, thank goodness! I was scared you mightn’t make it back tonight and I was worried about leaving Lorcan with Tamsin,’ she confided, only then noting the presence of the tall black-haired male behind Erin.
‘Mum?’ Erin murmured uncertainly. ‘This is Cristo Donakis. He insisted on coming with me.’
For once shorn of his social aplomb, Cristo came to a dead halt at the foot of the bed to gaze down at the little girl with the white-blonde curls clustered round her small head. She looked like Erin but her skin was several shades darker than her mother’s fair complexion. His attention rested on the small skinny arm bearing a colourful cast and he swallowed a sudden unfamiliar thickness in his throat. She was tiny as a doll and as he stared in growing wonderment her feathery lashes lifted to reveal eyes as dark a brown as his own.
‘Mummy …’ Nuala whispered drowsily.
‘I’m here.’ Erin hastily pulled up a seat and perched on the edge of it, leaning forward to pat Nuala’s little hand soothingly. ‘How did the surgery go, Mum?’
‘Really well. The surgeon was very pleased,’ Deidre confided. ‘Nuala should regain the full use of her arm.’
‘That’s a relief,’ Erin commented, turning her gaze back to her daughter’s small flushed face. ‘How are you feeling, pet?’
‘My arm’s sore.’ The little girl sighed, her attention roaming away from her mother to lock to the tall powerful man stationed at the foot of her bed. ‘Who is that man?’
‘I’m Cristo,’ Cristo muttered not quite steadily.
‘He’s your daddy,’ Deidre Turner explained without hesitation, a broad smile of satisfaction chasing the exhaustion from her drawn face.
Shock at that announcement trapped Erin’s breath in her throat and she shot the older woman a look of dismay.
‘Honesty is the best policy,’ Deidre remarked to noone in particular, rising from her seat to extend a hand to Cristo. ‘I’m Erin’s mother, Deidre.’
‘Daddy?’ Nuala repeated wide-eyed at the description. ‘You’re my daddy?’
In the simmering silence, Erin frowned. ‘Yes. He’s your daddy,’ she confirmed. ‘Mum? Could I have a word with you in private?’
A nurse came in just then to check on Nuala and, after mentioning that her daughter was complaining of pain, Erin stepped outside with her mother. ‘You must be wondering what’s going on,’ Erin began awkwardly.
‘What’s there to wonder? Obviously you’ve finally told the man he’s a father and that’s not before time,’ the older woman replied wryly.
Erin breathed in deep. ‘I’m afraid I lied to you about where I was this weekend—I wasn’t in Scotland with Tom and Melissa. I was with Cristo.’
‘And you didn’t know how to tell me, I suppose. Did you think I would interfere?’ Deidre enquired astutely. ‘He’s the twins’ father. Naturally you need to sort this situation out but you’ve taken the first step towards that and I’m proud of you.’
Surprised by that assurance, Erin gave her parent a quick embarrassed hug. ‘I’m sorry I wasn’t honest with you. Look, now I’m here, you should go home—’
‘And collect Lorcan and put him to bed,’ Deidre completed. ‘He was upset about Nuala. Will you stay the night here with her or will you come home later?’
‘I’ll see how Nuala is before I decide.’
‘She’ll be fine. She’s a tough little article,’ Erin’s mother pronounced fondly. ‘Lorcan cried when she fell because he got a fright and she called him a baby. By the time I got Nuala to the hospital they were fighting—at least it took her mind off the pain of the break.’
Erin saw the older woman into the lift and returned to the side ward.
‘What do daddies do?’ Nuala was asking plaintively.
‘They look after you.’
Erin’s daughter was unimpressed. ‘Mummy and Granny look after me.’
‘And now you have me as well,’ Cristo told his daughter quietly.
‘You can fix my arm with magic,’ Nuala told him in a tone of complaint.
‘Daddy doesn’t have his magic wand with him,’ Erin chipped in from the foot of the bed.
Nuala’s dark eyes rounded. ‘Daddy has a magic wand?’
Cristo skimmed Erin a pained glance. ‘I’m afraid I don’t.’
‘Never mind,’ Nuala said drowsily. ‘My arm hurts.’
‘The medicine the nurse gave you will start working soon,’ Cristo asserted soothingly.
Within minutes, Nuala had drifted off to sleep.
‘I’m sorry Mum just leapt in with her big announcement,’ Erin muttered uncomfortably.
‘Obviously she believes the twins are mine and, if that’s true, there are no regrets on my part,’ Cristo responded with a quality of calm she had not expected to see in him after the bombshell she had dropped on him. ‘It’s a bad idea to lie to children.’
Erin fell asleep in her chair and only wakened when the nurses began their morning round. She was surprised that Cristo had remained through the night, for she had expected him to leave late and make use of a hotel. Instead he had stayed with them and she was grudgingly impressed by his tenacity. His black hair was tousled, his tie loose where he had undone the top button of his shirt. A heavy dark shadow of stubble covered his strong jaw line, accentuating the sensual perfection of his mobile mouth. It shook her to open her eyes and see him and for her first thought to be that he was absolutely gorgeous. Her face flamed as his stunning dark golden eyes assailed hers. Her skin prickled with awareness, her breasts swelling and making her bra feel too tight. She tore her attention from him with a sense of mortification that she had so little control over her reactions to him.
‘Apparently the canteen opens soon. We’ll go down for breakfast once Nuala has had hers,’ Cristo said decisively.
The night had been long and his reflections deep and interminable, Cristo acknowledged heavily, fighting off the exhaustion dogging him. He had watched Erin and the child who might be his daughter sleep. He had remembered the early years of his own childhood with the fortitude of an adult, processing what he had learned from those unhappy memories, already knowing what he must do while striving to greet rather than flinch from the necessity.
Erin took Nuala into the bathroom to freshen up. She was stiff from spending the night in the chair and slow to respond to her daughter’s innocent chatter. She did what little she could to tidy herself but her raincoat, silk top and linen trousers were creased beyond redemption and without make-up she could do nothing to brighten her pale face and tired, shadowed eyes.
‘Obviously you’ll want DNA tests done,’ Erin said over breakfast, preferring to take that bull by the horns in preference to Cristo feeling that he had to make that demand. ‘I’ll agree to that.’
‘It would make it easier to establish the twins as my legal heirs,’ Cristo agreed, his expression grave. ‘But I believe that that is the only reason I would have it done.’
‘You’re saying that you believe me now?’ Erin prompted in a surprised undertone.
Cristo gave her a silent nod of confirmation and finished his coffee. By the time they returned to Nuala’s bedside the doctors’ round had been done and the ward sister informed them that they could take Nuala home as soon as they liked.
Lorcan, already prepared by his grandmother for the truth that he was about to meet his father, was in full livewire mode, behaving like a jumping bean from the instant Cristo entered the small sitting room of Deidre and Erin’s terraced home. Lorcan scrambled onto a stool and stood up to get closer to the tall black-haired male but, dissatisfied with the height differential, leapt off the stool and clambered onto the coffee table instead.
‘Get down, Lorcan,’ Erin instructed, stooping to gather up the pile of magazines that her son had sent flying to the floor while her mother cooed over Nuala like a homing pigeon. ‘Right now …’
When Cristo focused on the little boy he felt as if he had been punched in the stomach. With his coal-black curls and impish dark eyes, Lorcan was a dead ringer for every photograph Cristo had ever seen of himself at the same age. His stare darkened in intensity, shock reverberating through his big powerful length as he made that final step towards accepting what he was seeing as fact: he was a father.
‘I’m going to count to five, Lorcan,’ Erin warned, her tension level rising. ‘One … two …’
Lorcan performed a handstand and grinned with delight at Cristo from upside down. ‘Daddy do this?’ he asked expectantly.
‘Don’t!’ Erin gasped as Cristo bent down.
But, mercifully, Cristo had not been about to perform a handstand. He had merely bent to lift his son off the coffee table and turn him the right side up while Lorcan shrieked with excitement. ‘Hello, Lorcan,’ Cristo murmured evenly. ‘Calm down.’
Unfortunately Lorcan was in no mood to calm down. When Cristo returned him to the floor, Lorcan began to scramble over every piece of furniture in the room at high speed while loudly urging Cristo to watch what he could do. Erin almost groaned out loud as Nuala bounded from her side to try and join in the ruckus. Cristo snatched his daughter out of harm’s way. ‘Show Lorcan your arm,’ he instructed her.
Nuala showed off her cast, small mouth pouting. ‘Hurts,’ she informed her brother, who moved closer to inspect the injured arm.
Erin crouched down. ‘And we have to be very careful with Nuala’s sore arm,’ she told her son.
Lorcan touched the cast enviously. ‘Want it,’ he said.
‘You should take them out to the park to let off some steam,’ Deidre Turner suggested, beaming at Cristo, who was returning the cushions Lorcan had knocked off the sofa. ‘Oh, never mind about that—I’m used to tidying up every five minutes!’
Erin swallowed a yawn. ‘The park? That’s a good idea. I’ll just go and get changed first.’
Hurtling upstairs to her small bedroom, Erin could not quite come to grips with the knowledge that Cristo was in her home. It felt like some crazy dream but there was something horribly realistic about the fact that both her children were acting up like mad and revealing their every wild and wonderful fault. What did Cristo really think about them? How did he really feel? And why did she care about that side of things? After all, naturally he wanted to see both children to satisfy his curiosity, but she doubted that his interest went much deeper than that. Respecting the cool temperature of a typical English spring, Erin donned straight-leg jeans, knee-length boots and a blue cable knit sweater. She brushed her hair, let it fall round her shoulders and made use of a little blusher and mascara before she felt presentable. Presentable enough for what? For Cristo? Shame engulfed her like a blanket. Why was she so predictable? Why was she always worrying about what Cristo thought of her? Only last month she had seen Cristo in a gossip column squiring a beautiful model with hair like gold silk and the glorious shape of a Miss World! Cristo specialised in superstar women with the kind of looks that stopped traffic. His ex-wife, Lisandra, was an utterly ravishing brunette. Erin had never been in that class and had often wondered if that was why he had lost interest in her.
But now she knew different, she reminded herself wretchedly as she went downstairs. Now she knew that Cristo had dumped her because he believed she was a total slut who had gone behind his back and slept with another man. Was it better to know that or worse?
A twin apiece, they walked a hundred yards to the park. Cristo had sent his limo driver off to locate and buy car seats for the children. Lorcan took exaggerated big steps as he concentrated on stepping only on the lines between the flagstones. Nuala hummed a nursery rhyme and pulled handfuls of leaves off the shrubs they passed until Cristo told his daughter to, ‘Stop it!’
Without hesitation, Nuala threw herself down on the pavement and began to kick and scream.
‘You shouldn’t have said that,’ Erin hissed in frustration. ‘She’s tired and cross and her arm’s hurting her. Of course she’s not in a good mood.’
‘You can’t let her vandalise people’s gardens,’ Cristo replied drily and he bent down and picked Nuala up. Her daughter squirmed violently, flailed her fists and screamed full throttle.
Cristo took a couple of fists in the face before he restored order. ‘No,’ he said again.
‘Yes!’ Nuala shrieked back at him, unleashing the full tempest of her toddler temper.
Erin was trying not to cringe and cave in to her daughter’s every demand as she saw faces appearing at windows overlooking the street.
‘Want slide,’ Lorcan whinged, tugging at his mother’s jacket. ‘Want swings.’
‘So, this is what it feels like to be a parent,’ Cristo commented, flexing his bruised jaw with a slight grimace, his stunning eyes pure black diamond brilliance as if on some weird level he was actually enjoying the challenge.
‘They’re a handful sometimes … not all the time,’ Erin stressed, walking on, keen to reach the park where noisy childish outbursts commanded less attention.
Lower lip thrust out, Nuala told Cristo, ‘Want down.’
‘Say please,’ Cristo traded.
‘No!’ Nuala roared.
‘Then I’ll carry you the rest of the way like a baby.’
Nuala lost her head again and screamed while her brother chanted delightedly, ‘Nuala’s a baby!’ as he walked by his mother’s side.
Silence fell only as they reached the gates of the park.
‘Please,’ Nuala framed as if every syllable hurt.
Cristo lowered his daughter slowly back onto her own feet.
‘I hate you!’ Nuala launched at him furiously, snatching her hand free of his and grabbing her mother’s free hand in place of it. ‘I don’t want a daddy!’
As Cristo parted his lips to respond Erin cut in, ‘Just ignore it … please.’
Once she sat down on the mercifully free bench in her accustomed spot, Erin murmured, ‘The best way to handle the twins is with distraction and compromise. Going toe to toe with them simply provokes a tantrum.’
‘Thanks for the heads-up. I’m going to need it. I believe I used to throw tantrums,’ Cristo confided. ‘According to my foster mother, I too was a challenging child.’
‘Tell me something I couldn’t have guessed.’ Erin laughed, abstractedly watching the breeze ruffle his cropped hair into half curls, so very similar to his son’s. As she met his spectacular amber and honey coloured eyes framed by sooty lashes, it was as if a hand grabbed her heart and squeezed and possibly that was the moment that she understood that she would never be entirely free of Cristo Donakis. That was not simply because she had given birth to children who had inherited his explosive personality. It was because she enjoyed his forceful character, his strength of purpose and persistence and the very fact he could sit on an old bench in a slightly overgrown and rundown park and seem entirely at home there in spite of his hand-stitched shoes, gold cufflinks and a superbly well-cut suit that still looked a million dollars even after he had sat up all night in it. He might be arrogant but he was hugely adaptable, resourceful and willing to learn from his mistakes.
‘I should tell you about my marriage,’ Cristo said flatly.
‘You never mention your ex-wife,’ she remarked helplessly, disconcerted by the sudden change of subject and the intimacy of the topic as she watched Lorcan play on the swings and Nuala head down to the sandpit, her cast protected by the cling film Erin had wrapped round it. It wasn’t like Cristo to volunteer to talk about anything particularly private.
‘Why would I? We were only married for five minutes and now we’re divorced,’ Cristo fielded coolly.
‘Have you stayed friends?’
‘We’re not enemies,’ Cristo stated after a moment’s thought on that score. ‘But we move in different social circles and rarely see each other.’
‘Was it a case of marry in haste and repent at leisure?’ Erin pressed tautly. ‘Did you know her well before you married her?’
‘I thought I did.’ Cristo bit out a sardonic laugh. ‘I also thought it was time I got married. My foster parents, Vasos and Appollonia, had been urging me to marry for a couple of years. It was the only thing they had ever tried to influence in my life and I did want to please them,’ he admitted gruffly. ‘I met Lisandra at a dinner party at their home. I already knew her but not well. We seemed to be at the same stage in life, bored with the single scene. We got married three months later.’
‘So what went wrong?’ she almost whispered, recognising the shadow that crossed his lean, darkly handsome face.
