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Which was why Eva had decided, rather than giving D’Angelo the opportunity to fob her off in a telephone call, to instead use the last of her savings to fly herself and the twins over to Paris yesterday, so that she might confront the babies’ father face to face with his responsibilities.
Much as Eva might hate having to do it, after much soul-searching, she knew she no longer had any choice but to try and seek D’Angelo’s help from a financial point of view, at least, for the good of the twins.
Michael stood up abruptly as he saw how pale Eva Foster’s face had become, adding to that air of fragility. Her sister’s death, caring for the twins, went some way to explaining those dark shadows beneath those beautiful violet-coloured eyes.
He crossed economically to the drinks cabinet in the seating area of his office to look at the array of bottles, deciding against offering her alcohol and instead choosing to bring her a bottle of water from the small fridge. He very much doubted Eva Foster would have accepted drinking a more reviving whisky, when she had two young babies in her care.
‘Here, let me take Sam, while you sit down over here,’ he rasped abruptly as he saw Eva Foster was swaying slightly on her canvas-shod feet. Not waiting for her reply, he took the baby from her unresisting arms before placing his free hand lightly beneath her elbow to guide her over to the seating area and eased her down onto the black leather sofa.
‘Sorry about that,’ Eva murmured shakily after taking a much-needed sip of the ice-cold water. It was very warm outside, and it had been a long walk to the Archangel gallery from the cheap hotel she had booked into with the twins yesterday. ‘I think I’m doing okay and then suddenly the grief just hits me again when I’m least expecting it.’
Although she should have realised that this meeting with Rachel’s lover was going to be far from easy. Just as coming to Paris at all, seeking out D’Angelo, hadn’t been an easy decision for her to make in the first place. In Eva’s eyes, it almost smacked of defeat.
But she’d had no other choice, she assured herself determinedly; this was for the twins’ benefit, not hers. As it was, she would far rather spit in this man’s eye than so much as have to speak to him, let alone ask him for help!
‘I’m sorry for your loss,’ D’Angelo murmured gruffly.
Was he? Considering he had denied all knowledge of Rachel just minutes ago, Eva found that a little hard to believe!
She still couldn’t quite come to terms with Rachel ever having been involved with this austerely cold man at all; Rachel had been outgoing and warm in nature, and this man was anything but. But maybe it had been a case of opposites attracting? D’Angelo was certainly attractive enough, and he possessed an inborn confidence, an arrogance, that Rachel might have found attractive, even challenging. This man’s controlled aloofness would represent a challenge to any red-blooded female.
Even Eva?
The last thing she wanted was to find the man who had fathered the twins in the least attractive!
Eva sat forward to place the bottle of water on the coffee table in front of her. ‘I think you can put him down too now...’ she drawled ruefully as she realised that Sam—the traitor!—had also fallen asleep on one of D’Angelo’s broad and muscled shoulders. All those hours of pacing and walking, a twin on each of her shoulders, and D’Angelo just had to hold them to have the twins instantly fall asleep!
Because they instinctively recognised who he was? Maybe. As Eva had learnt these past few months, babies were far more intuitive than she had ever realised; the twins had both certainly quickly picked up on Eva’s own nervousness in caring for them twenty-four seven, making a battle of their first few weeks together.
Michael turned to look at Eva Foster after he had secured the sleeping Sam in the pushchair beside his sister, relieved to see that, although the shadows beneath her eyes remained, those porcelain cheeks had at least regained a little of their colour, that pallor having been emphasised by straight and glossy ebony hair to just below her shoulders.
He was more than a little troubled himself to learn of the death of this woman’s sister, the mother of the sleeping babies. ‘How old was she...?’
Eva Foster looked at him blankly. ‘Who?’
‘Your sister Rachel.’
Derisive brows rose over those violet-coloured eyes. ‘The two of you were too busy to discuss ages?’
Michael drew in a sharp breath at the obvious derision in her tone. ‘I repeat that, to my knowledge, I didn’t so much as even meet your sister in order to be able to discuss our respective ages, let alone father her twins!’
‘And I repeat, I don’t believe you,’ Eva Foster stated coldly.
‘I can see that.’ Michael nodded grimly.
She drew in a shaky breath. ‘Rachel was just twenty-two when she died, three years younger than me,’ she stated huskily.
‘In childbirth?’
‘No.’ She grimaced. ‘They discovered, during a routine scan partway through the pregnancy, that Rachel had a tumour.’
‘God!’
Eva Foster nodded abruptly. ‘Rachel refused to have the pregnancy terminated, or to have treatment for the tumour, because of the danger of harming the babies. She...died when they were three months old.’ And the pain of that loss, of the consequences of her sister’s decision, was now etched into that creamy brow and in the lines of strain beside those violet eyes and sensuously sculptured mouth...
‘What about your parents...?’ he prompted huskily.
‘They both died in a car crash eighteen months ago.’
Michael folded his lean length down into the armchair opposite the sofa, uncomfortable towering over Eva Foster in the circumstances, at the same time as he recognised she wouldn’t appreciate him sitting down beside her on the sofa. There was currently a defensive aura about Eva Foster, an invisible barrier that was preventing her from breaking down completely.
Not surprising, when first her parents had died and she had now lost her younger sister so tragically. Michael was the eldest of the three D’Angelo brothers, and he couldn’t imagine—didn’t want to imagine—the devastation he would feel if he should ever lose his parents so suddenly, or Gabriel or Rafe before they had all grown old and grey together.
Which still didn’t change the fact that he had absolutely no knowledge of Rachel Foster, or her babies. ‘Where did Rachel and the babies’ father meet?’ he prompted gruffly.
Eva Foster shot him an impatient glance. ‘Right here in the gallery.’
Michael did some mental arithmetic. ‘I wasn’t in Paris, or the gallery here, fifteen months ago.’
‘What...?’ Eva looked at him blankly.
He grimaced. ‘I wasn’t in Paris fifteen months ago, Eva,’ he repeated gently. ‘Until recently, my brothers and I have moved around the three galleries on a rotation basis,’ he added as she still stared at him dazedly. ‘I was at the New York gallery fifteen months ago, organising a gala exhibition of Mayan art.’
She gave a slow shake of her head. ‘I don’t— My sister said—’
‘Yes?’
Eva could barely breathe, a sinking, nauseous sensation in the pit of her stomach as she prompted warily, ‘Exactly who are you...?’
He gave a tight smile. ‘Isn’t it a little late to be asking me that when you’ve already accused me of having been “involved” with your sister and fathering your niece and nephew?’
Eva’s mouth had gone so dry she didn’t even have enough saliva left to moisten the stiffness of her equally dry lips. ‘I assumed— Who are you?’ she demanded to know shakily, her hands tightly clenched together as they rested on her thighs.
‘Michael D’Angelo.’
Michael D’Angelo? Michael not—
Eva thought she might actually be physically sick at the realisation that all this time she had been accusing the wrong D’Angelo brother of fathering the twins!
CHAPTER TWO
OH, GOOD GRIEF, why hadn’t Eva thought to ask this man for his full name? To find out which of the D’Angelo brothers she was actually talking to before—before—well, at least before she had launched into her accusations?
Unfortunately, Eva knew exactly why she hadn’t done any of those things...
Because this man—Michael D’Angelo—brought out a response in her, a physical awareness, she had considered as being entirely inappropriate in regard to the man she had believed to have been involved with Rachel.
Not that it was any less inappropriate now; he was still the brother of the man who had fathered the twins!
He was just so much larger than life, exuded a confidence, an aura of power, that caused Eva to be aware of everything about him: the way his hair was inclined to curl slightly at his ears and nape, the intensity of those black-on-black eyes, the harsh and yet somehow mesmerising sensual lines of his finely sculptured face, and as for the way his shoulders and chest filled out his perfectly tailored jacket, and the slim cut of his trousers emphasised the lean length of his long legs—
‘Drink some more water.’ Michael was suddenly down on his haunches beside Eva holding out the water bottle towards her.
Eva took the bottle with shaking fingers, drinking thirstily as she realised she was starting to hyperventilate just thinking about the way this man looked. At the same time she inwardly cringed as she recalled all of their conversation, the things she had said, the accusations she had made—and all to the wrong man!
His identity as Michael D’Angelo certainly explained why Eva hadn’t been able to imagine her fun-loving sister Rachel ever being attracted to such a coldly aloof man who was also so much older than her, let alone involved in the passionate affair with him that had resulted in the birth of the twins!
None of which helped the awkwardness of the situation Eva now found herself in. ‘It seems I owe you an apology,’ she murmured stiffly. ‘I— Obviously I made a mistake. I— It— I don’t know what else to say...’ She groaned self-consciously, unable to look Michael D’Angelo in the eye now.
Unable to look into that coolly arrogant face at all. A face, a man, she shouldn’t find in the least attractive.
Except Eva knew that she did...
She couldn’t stop herself from giving him a brief sideways glance, once again struck by the chiselled perfection of Michael D’Angelo’s features: those black obsidian eyes that revealed so little of the man’s thoughts or feelings, those sculptured cheekbones, his mouth—dear Lord, this man’s mouth was pure perfection, the top lip fuller than the bottom.
Possibly as an indication he had a deeply sensual nature?
If it was, then Eva was sure it was a sensuality this coldly aloof man always kept firmly under his own iron control!
This man...
Michael D’Angelo.
A man Eva knew she had to guard herself against being any more attracted to.
He straightened abruptly. ‘As I said earlier, maybe we should both take a few deep breaths, a step back, and calm this situation down?’
Eva still felt as if she was on the edge of hyperventilating again rather than calming down!
Having made the hard decision to come to Paris in the first place, she had planned out in her mind exactly how her meeting with D’Angelo was going to proceed once she arrived here.
She would find a way to confront D’Angelo.
Which she had done.
He would deny any and all involvement with Rachel.
Which he had done.
Eva would then scorn that denial, with the twins as proof of that ‘involvement’.
Which she had done.
D’Angelo’s accusation that she and Rachel were trying to pull some sort of scam on him, by claiming the babies were his, had been unexpected...
As much as Eva’s response, slapping his face, had been; she had never thought of herself as being a person capable of violence until today!
And the conversation had seemed to go downhill from there...
She drew in several deep and steadying breaths before speaking again, determined not to lose complete control of this situation.
‘That’s all well and good, Mr D’Angelo, but I think you’re still missing the point here.’
Michael D’Angelo quirked one dark and arrogant brow. ‘Which is?’
Eva straightened her shoulders determinedly as she met his gaze unblinkingly. ‘That you may be correct in claiming not to be the twins’ father—’
‘I assure you, I am not their father,’ he bit out hardly.
‘—but that doesn’t change the fact that one of your brothers most certainly is,’ Eva continued firmly, her gaze meeting his challengingly now.
At the same time, she inwardly questioned just how Michael D’Angelo could speak so certainly of never having fathered a baby by Rachel. Eva certainly didn’t believe it was from physically abstaining. Beneath this man’s aloofness she sensed that sensuality, deep and dark, an indication that, once aroused, he would be the type of lover who would demand and possess a woman completely.
He was also, Eva acknowledged with a frown, a man who would need to be in control at all times, and as such he would no doubt ensure that he would never forget to take the necessary precautions to ensure that no unwanted pregnancy ensued from any of his relationships with women.
Something Eva should probably have realised before she accused him of being the twins’ father!
Michael’s breath left him in a hiss as he took in the full ramifications of Eva Foster’s revelations. Almost wishing now—almost!—that he had been the one responsible for fathering Rachel Foster’s twin babies. Because for either of his younger brothers to be the father—his now both very much married younger brothers—would be a disaster of unthinkable proportions.
Not that Gabriel or Rafe had been married fifteen months ago, when the twins were conceived, but they were now, Gabriel for just five weeks, Rafe for only a matter of days. And it would surely be asking a lot—too much, perhaps—for either Bryn or Nina to accept that either of their respective husbands had fathered the now six-month-old twins with another woman!
His mouth thinned. ‘I think, having already made one mistake, that you need to be a little more certain of your facts before you go around making any more accusations.’
Colour warmed Eva Foster’s porcelain cheeks. ‘My mistake—for which I’ve apologised—’ she added uncomfortably, ‘doesn’t alter the fact that one of your brothers fathered Sophie and Sam.’
Michael turned away to give himself the privacy for the emotions he was sure must be apparent on his face: dismay, concern, and not a little anger, all of them directed towards whichever of his brothers had caused this current situation.
He thrust his hands in the pockets of his trousers as he walked over to stand in front of the windows, for once totally blind to the magnificent view outside. Because he could never remember feeling quite so helpless, so out of his depth with a situation. Until now.
As the eldest brother, even if only by a year and two years respectively, he had always been protective of Rafe and Gabriel—sometimes too much so for their liking. But in this present situation—surely a disaster just waiting to happen, no matter which of his brothers Eva Foster was accusing?—he couldn’t think of any way in which to avert the coming disaster.
But for which one of his brothers...?
The outwardly light-hearted but inwardly determined and assertive Rafe, who had finally found, fallen in love with and married the beautiful Nina, the perfect woman to counterbalance those apparent contradictions in his mercurial nature?
Or Gabriel, in love with Bryn for the past five years but thinking it an impossible love, a lost love, that he had no right to, only for the two of them to meet again and learn that it wasn’t, now happily married to each other?
Whichever of his brothers was responsible it was sure to cause—
‘Rafe.’
Michael’s eyes were narrowed as he turned sharply back to face Eva Foster. ‘What?’ he rasped harshly, coldly, already knowing what her answer was going to be but wishing—so much wishing—that he didn’t.
‘It was Rafe that Rachel was involved with fifteen months ago,’ Eva Foster supplied abruptly.
Michael had already worked out in his mind which of his two brothers had been in charge of the Paris gallery fifteen months ago, and it now took tremendous effort of will on his part to keep his expression remote and unemotional as Eva Foster confirmed his worst fear.
Oh, Michael had no doubt that Nina loved Rafe unconditionally, and that his brother loved Nina in the same way, and that somehow, between the two of them, they would find a way to deal with this situation, for their marriage to survive the blow.
