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But that had been then—when Rebecca was feeling all mixed-up and weary with the weight of impending birth. Something had happened in the interim which seemed to have invested her with the magical powers she had foolishly expected Xandros to bestow upon her.
She had become a mother. She had two tiny babies who were dependent on her. It should have scared the life out of her, but somehow it did the very opposite—it filled her with a kind of strength unlike anything she’d ever felt before. The strength to be able to stand up to a man—even one as dominating as Xandros.
‘Why didn’t you tell me you were coming?’ she questioned.
He looked up from where his lips seemed to have drifted automatically to the silken down of the baby’s head. ‘I wanted to surprise you.’
‘Or to check up on me?’ she questioned astutely.
The midwife frowned, as if interpreting the beginnings of a row. ‘You are supposed to be resting—’
‘Oh, I will ensure she rests,’ Xandros cut in with a soft arrogance. ‘And please—we must no longer keep you from your work. I should like a little time alone with the mother of my sons.’
Rebecca wanted to lash out—to tell him that decisions to rest or not to rest were down to her. And to protest at his rather cold-blooded description of her, which made her sound like little more than an incubator. But she did not want a scene. She could already sense that the midwife was on Xandros’s side—if the slightly awestruck look she was giving him as she left the room was anything to go by. And more than that, she felt weak—physically shattered, as if she had gone ten rounds in a boxing ring and emerged punch-drunk.
She stared at his powerful dark form and realised that she needed to rest. That being strong was one thing—but who could say how long she’d be able to remain like that?
‘Perhaps you’d like to come back later, Xandros?’ she questioned, forcing her voice to sound polite, as if he was nothing to her. Because he is nothing to you. He might be the father of her two new sons, but that did not mean there was anything left between them and she would be a fool to forget that.
He was still staring at their tiny, sleeping forms. ‘Have you thought of names?’ he demanded, as if she hadn’t spoken.
Of course she had thought of names—there had been plenty of thinking times during the long winter evenings when her bump had seemed to defy gravity and made moving around both difficult and uncomfortable. But it was hard enough choosing one name—
let alone two. And there had been no one to bounce ideas off. No one to say, ‘I hate that name’ which was what the giggling couples at the antenatal classes used to say.
And it had been difficult to imagine that the long, unplanned pregnancy would actually result in two little babies—even though every scan had confirmed that to be the case. But your mind could know something and your heart would refuse to accept it. It had felt like tempting fate to think ahead. To try to picture what the reality might be like. The doctors had fussed over her as it was—with a kind of fascinated horror. They had told her to take extra care and then had frowned with concern when she had told them that there was no father on the scene.
Would Xandros have come to her aid if she had told him she needed him during those months? Rebecca didn’t know and neither had she wanted to test it out. She really hadn’t wanted to see him. It would have stirred up unwanted emotions at a time when she had needed to keep all her sanity and her wits about her. And she had made a decision after her trip to New York—when he had made her feel like some inconsequential part of his former life. He had seen her vulnerable too many times in the past—and he would never see her vulnerable again.
‘Perhaps you would like me to draw up a list of names?’ he was asking, as if he had every right to do so.
Too tired after a long labour and taken aback by the unexpected visit, Rebecca was not in the mood for a fight—and, besides, surely they could manage to agree on something they both liked? She liked his name, didn’t she? ‘Yes, why don’t you do that—unless you have any immediate suggestions?’ she said wryly. ‘Like Alexandros I and Alexandros II.’
But it seemed that Xandros was no longer listening. To her astonishment—he was carefully replacing the baby in his crib and then bending down to pick up the second child. Rebecca stared in a kind of dazed disbelief at the contrast it made. How could such a large and powerful man adapt so quickly and skilfully to handling such little newborns? She felt her heart give a little wrench of pain at the thought of all it could have been—and never would.
‘You seem … you seem a remarkably quick learner,’ she said shakily.
‘Ne. All my life I have learned quickly,’ he said, in a matter-of-fact way. Xandros touched a gentle finger to the soft cheek of the infant. Soon he would begin to learn their individual faces and, though other people might claim that they looked exactly the same, he would know differently.
A tell-tale crumpling of the mouth. The way that one nose cast a certain shadow which the other did not, and which only the most discerning eye would notice. When you were born an identical twin, you spent your lifetime searching for differences, rather than similarities. He would know these two babies apart within days.
The baby in his arms began to squawk and, as if by reflex, Rebecca felt the sudden heavy aching in her breasts and she held her arms out. ‘He needs feeding,’ she said awkwardly, her cheeks growing pink—which seemed bizarre under the circumstances. This, after all, was a man who knew her breasts better than anyone—so why was she suddenly feeling as shy as if there were a stranger standing in the room?
Xandros narrowed his eyes and then carefully bent down and handed the infant over to her. And for the first time he really looked at Rebecca as she began to move the nightgown aside and latch the baby onto her breast with fingers which still seemed a little hesitant about this new part of her life.
Her cheeks were all flushed and her honeyed hair had been caught back in a blue ribbon, though silken strands of it were falling down. And she was suckling his child. Had not that same breast borne the imprint of his mouth? Had she not cried out with pleasure when it had done so?
A fierce shaft of something he didn’t recognise rocked him. Was it the shock of seeing her as a mother—the mother of his children—rather than simply as a sexually desirable woman?
His hard mouth twisted as he turned away from the picture-perfect image. Because things were never as they appeared. Never. Didn’t he know that better than anyone?
He walked over to stare at the other infant, who had begun to stir. What if they both wanted feeding at the same time? How the hell would she be able to manage that? He turned back to find Rebecca watching him, her violet-blue eyes dark.
‘You will bottle-feed them, I suppose?’ He spoke with the tone of a man entering unfamiliar territory and for Xandros it was as close as he had ever come to hesitation.
Rebecca shook her head. ‘I’m planning to continue nursing them myself.’
He was surprised, though he did not say so. The wives of his friends and colleagues had mostly abandoned their breast-feeding—mainly because they either had their careers or social lives to return to—but apparently it also did little to enhance the appearance of the breasts. Xandros remembered the genuine shock he’d experienced when a woman had informed him that her breasts had been surgically ‘enhanced’ and that she was therefore unable to feed her child. It had seemed the price she had been willing to pay for keeping a pert figure.
‘You will manage two babies?’ he questioned.
‘Well, nature has equipped me to do that at least,’ she said wryly. ‘Just imagine if I’d had triplets!’
Unbelievably, he found his lips curving into a smile and suddenly he found himself wanting to get away from this uncomfortably intimate scene—and at the same time strangely reluctant to leave. Was that nature—that powerful and ungovernable force—exerting her strong will to pull him towards his sons?
‘When will you be discharged?’ he questioned.
Rebecca delayed answering—but she could hardly lie about it, could she? Or demand to know what business it was of his? She had made it his business when she’d told him about the pregnancy, and that decision—like everything else in life—had its consequences. Whether she liked those consequences was neither here nor there.
She would provide him with facts, pure and simple—beyond that she owed him nothing.
‘After three days, hopefully,’ she said. ‘Provided that they’re pleased with mine and the boys’ progress, of course.’
He registered the ways she’d said the boys—like an exclusive little club which he was not permitted to join, and Xandros felt his body prickle its silent objection to her high-handedness. We’ll see about that, he thought grimly.
He nodded. ‘I will come and collect you,’ he stated.
‘But, I don’t need—’
‘Yes, you do. I’m not arguing with you, Rebecca—because there is no alternative.’ His implacable words cut through her protest. ‘I will be taking you all home from hospital and that is final.’ His black eyes glittered with sudden, new intent. ‘And now we need to discuss the names of my sons.’
CHAPTER SEVEN (#ulink_0b520f8a-5380-5c11-8bef-4cfc69685989)
‘I DO not care what you say!’ Xandros stormed. ‘You cannot possibly stay here—and what is more, I will not let you!’
Rebecca sighed. If she’d had the energy she might have objected to the condemnatory tone of his voice—just as she might have objected to him standing there, dominating the sitting room of her little flat as he seemed to dominate every place he went.
Wishing he would go away—because he was so damned…so damned everything. Single-minded, stubborn … and gorgeous. So gorgeous. And she must never forget the power of his sexuality—no matter how many times she told herself that it was no longer relevant to either of them. Because he would use it as a weapon if he needed to, she recognised weakly. He would do anything he needed to do to get his own way.
In the end she had been pathetically grateful for his insistence that he collect her, Alexius and Andreas from the hospital. In fact, she wondered how on earth she could have managed without him. She literally couldn’t have carried the two babies along with all her hospital stuff and managed even something as simple as opening the front door with a key which had always gone stiffly into the lock, but which had never seemed to matter until now.
As it was, on several occasions she’d had to bite back tears of frustration—telling herself that her emotions were only see-sawing all over the place because of her fluctuating hormone levels and the fact that she had recently given birth.
Xandros had organised a car, which she had accepted, and he had also offered to bring along a maternity nurse, which she had refused. That had vexed him, as had so much else—but nothing had irked him quite so much as looking round at her tiny home now that it had acquired two extra small human beings, along with all their assorted paraphernalia. There were giant, ugly plastic bags of nappies—and bottles of baby bath and packets of baby wipes. Why did everything have to be made out of plastic? he had wondered sourly more than once.
‘Look at it!’ he raged. ‘You cannot possibly stay here!’
‘I don’t have any alternative,’ said Rebecca. ‘Lots of babies are brought home to places like this.’
‘Not usually two babies at the same time! How the hell are you going to manage?’ he demanded.
‘I’ll manage,’ she said tiredly.
‘You had enough difficulty getting back from hospital,’ he pointed out. ‘And you might just about cope with the babies since that is what nature has equipped you to do, as you keep telling me—but what about you? There is very little food in the fridge—and no fresh fruit or vegetables at all! It is outrageous!’
‘We can’t all have fleets of servants at our beck and call,’ she said flippantly, in an effort to hide the hurt. ‘Perhaps you’d like to do a quick supermarket shop for me?’
‘Oh, I can do better than that,’ he said grimly, sliding the phone from his pocket.
Within the hour, one of London’s most chi-chi stores had delivered the kind of food which Rebecca could never have afforded, not even at Christmas, and for the first time in years, Xandros found himself unpacking it himself—and using every one of his spatial skills to try to fit most of it into her shoebox of a fridge.
He heated them both some soup and gave Rebecca some fruit juice while he drank a glass of wine and then watched as she fed the babies again. He cleared their supper away while she changed them—because his macho Greekness rebelled at that. As it was, it had been many years since he had washed dishes—and in a funny kind of way, he enjoyed it.
But when he walked back into the sitting room, he could see the exhaustion which had made her face paper-pale and the shadows underneath her eyes nearly as violet dark as her eyes—and never had he felt so … ineffective.
‘You’re tired,’ he observed.
‘Yes, I am. Thank you for all your help, Xandros—and I’ll see you soon.’
He heard the dismissal in her voice and his mouth twisted into an odd kind of smile. ‘Oh, but it isn’t over yet, agape,’ he said grimly. ‘Because I am not going anywhere.’
‘Wh-what are you talking about?’
‘I shall sleep on the sofa tonight.’
She stared at him in alarm. ‘But you can’t!’
‘Can’t? Did you really imagine for one second that I would leave you here alone on your first night back at home—with two tiny babies? What if something happens to you? What if you should suddenly get sick?’
His protectiveness made her want to weep with a terrible kind of yearning—as she couldn’t help but imagine how it would feel if his words were inspired by love, rather than paternal duty. But that was selfish, wasn’t it? Her own fiery dreams of love with Xandros lay in ashes—but she must rise above all that and do the best for Alexius and Andreas. They both owed them that.
‘I’ll find you a duvet,’ she said awkwardly.
‘Thank you.’
Xandros could never remember spending such an uncomfortable night—not even when he used to sleep on the beach under the stars, on those balmy nights back in Greece, when the air had been so thick and so warm that it had been impossible to stay inside.
But back then he had been a teenager, his still-growing body adaptable to just about anything. In the intervening years he had become a man used to only the very finest things.
So should he be grateful for this opportunity to remind him of what life could be like for others less fortunate?
By morning, there was no question of gratitude. He had barely slept a wink—woken up by a dust-cart outside the window, which had seemed determined to give him the entire repertoire of its noisy engine, and then by the sound of rain beginning to thunder down.
For a while, he lay staring at his surroundings in a kind of dazed disbelief until he could hear the sound of Rebecca moving around and so he washed and dressed, and made coffee for them both. But the delicious smell of it did little to soothe his frayed nerves—serving only to remind him how this situation could not be allowed to continue.
He heard her footsteps and turned round as she came into the sitting room. She had tied her hair into two thick plaits, which hung down by the sides of her unmade-up face, and she was wearing a simple pair of linen trousers and a pale T-shirt. He thought how ridiculously young she looked, and oddly wholesome, too—and while wholesome was not a word he usually liked or associated with his women, perhaps it was the best to be hoped for under these particular circumstances.
‘How did you sleep?’ she asked, thinking how he seemed to dominate the room with his presence and how unsettling it had been to imagine him sleeping on the other side of the paper-thin walls.
‘How do you think I slept?’ he grated.
‘I did try to warn you—’
‘You are missing the point, Rebecca.’
He was not going to intimidate her in her own home. ‘And what point is that, Xandros?’
‘I told you yesterday—you can’t possibly live like this!’
‘Like what?’
He wanted to tell her not to play dumb with him—but instead he made a sweeping movement with his hand intended to draw attention to the minute size of the accommodation as his mouth flattened into a disapproving line.
As an architect, he had been schooled in aesthetics—but for Xandros the love of beauty had always been instinctive, rather than taught. He knew that taste was a purely subjective matter—but his early life in Greece had made him appreciate space and simplicity. Whereas this…
The clutter of her home was unbelievable—and the early-morning light picked it out with cruel clarity. It wasn’t just the baby stuff—it was all the candles and knick-knacks she had everywhere. Not only was every surface covered with something which to his eyes seemed completely unnecessary—but now there was a double buggy to contend with.
The last time he’d been here he had barely noticed the jostle for space—for he had only been interested in taking her to bed and then getting the hell out of there. But where she lived affected his children.
‘It’s a mess!’ he snapped.
‘Well, it’s my mess!’ she said defiantly.
‘Not necessarily.’
Rebecca stared at him—wondering how she could be so tired when she’d only just got up. They had told her at the hospital that she would get weary, but somehow she had thought that she’d be able to overcome any rogue fatigue through a sheer sense of will and determination. And she had been wrong. She had just fed, bathed and changed her two adorable little black-haired babies and now felt as if she had been wrung out to dry and then rained on all over again.
But Xandros’s words made her eyes narrow with suspicion—because she had come to recognise the menace which underpinned that particularly silky tone of his. Her fatigue suddenly receded into the background. ‘What do you mean?’ she questioned.
He paused to give his statement significance—as he had done at high-powered boardroom meetings all his life. ‘Just that what you choose to do in your life is entirely up to you, agape mou—but when it involves my children, then I surely have some say in the matter? Some influence as to how I think they should be brought up. And where.’
Rebecca swallowed, suddenly nervous as her mind skittered over all the possible replies she might make—knowing that it had to be the right reply when she was dealing with a man like Xandros. If she objected on the grounds that they weren’t together as a couple any more—mightn’t he think she was hinting that she’d like them to be? And yet—did he really have any rights to lay down the law about the twins’ upbringing? Soon he would be gone—back to America and the life he had there. A life which did not include her or the boys, and never would.
‘Do you really think it’s any of your business?’ she questioned.
He felt the sudden stirring of battle-lines being drawn and the adrenalin began to course through his veins. He had expected to feel nothing but impartial interest towards these two children who had sprung from his loins. He had told himself that it was simply curiosity which had compelled him to fly to Britain to see them. But he had been wrong.
During the three nights when she had been with them in hospital his thoughts had run riot in a way which was uncharacteristic—but the one thought which had overridden every other was that he wanted some part of his sons’ lives.
‘I plan to make it my business,’ he said.
Rebecca heard the unmistakable challenge in his voice and something inside her quailed because she didn’t doubt him, not for a moment. Imagine all the resources a man like Xandros could summon up to support any claim he might wish to make. It would need a strong and very rich woman to fight him—and, while she was working on the strength bit, she couldn’t just snap her fingers to put herself on an equal financial footing with the Greek billionaire.
Wouldn’t it be better to try to accommodate his wishes, rather than engaging in some kind of battle which he would be bound to win? He lived in America, for heavens’ sake! Contact with him would be minimal, if she played this carefully. So do it.
‘What did you have in mind?’ she asked cautiously.
He glared at the door which led through to the tiny kitchenette. ‘Well, for a start—this place is much too small.’
