Triplets Under The Tree

“He’ll warm up, I promise.” She slid Leon back into the baby seat and picked up the next one.

The pink outfit filled his vision and stung his eyes. He had a daughter. The heart he could have sworn was already full of his son grew so big, he was shocked it hadn’t burst from his rib cage.

“This is Annabelle. I always wanted to have a daughter named Annabelle,” Caitlyn informed him casually, as if they were discussing the weather instead of this little bundle of perfection.

“She has red hair, too,” he murmured. “Like her brother.”

Her beautiful face turned up at the sound of his voice and he got lost in her blue eyes.

He had a very bad feeling that the word no had just vanished from his vocabulary, and he looked forward to spoiling his daughter to the point of ridiculousness.

“Yes, she and Leon take after Vanessa. Which means Annabelle will be a knockout by the time she’s fourteen. Be warned,” she said wryly with a half laugh.

“I know martial arts,” he muttered. “Any smarmy Romeo with illicit intentions will find himself minus a spleen if he touches my daughter.”

Caitlyn smirked. “I don’t think a male on the planet would come within fifty yards of Annabelle if they knew you were her father. I was warning you about her.”

With that cryptic comment, she spirited away his daughter far too quickly and replaced her with the third baby, clad in blue.

“This is Antonio Junior,” Caitlyn said quietly and moved closer to present his other son. “He looks just like you, don’t you think?”

Dark hair capped a serious face with dark eyes. Antonio studied this third child and his gut lurched with an unnatural sense of recognition, as if the missing pieces of his soul had been snapped into place to form this tiny person.

“Yes,” he whispered.

And suddenly, his new lease on life had a purpose.

When he’d set off from Indonesia to find his past, he’d never dreamed he’d instead find his future. A tragic plane crash had nearly robbed these three innocent lives of both their parents, but against all odds, Antonio had survived.

Now he knew why. So he could be a father.

* * *

As promised, Caitlyn rounded up the babies and sent them upstairs with Brigitte so Antonio could decompress. Brigitte, bless her, didn’t ask any more questions about Antonio’s presence, but Caitlyn could tell her hurried explanation that he’d been ill and unable to travel home hadn’t satisfied the au pair. Neither would it be enough for the hordes of media and legal hounds who would be snapping at their heels soon enough.

The amazing return of Antonio Cavallari would make worldwide headlines, of that she was sure. But first, he needed to rest and then see a discreet doctor. The world didn’t have to know right away. The household staff had signed nondisclosure agreements, and in Hollywood, that was taken so seriously, none of them would ever work again if they broke it. So Caitlyn felt fairly confident the few people who knew about the situation would keep quiet.

She showed him to the master suite, glad now that she’d never cleaned it out, though she’d have to get Rosa to pack up Vanessa’s things. It was too morbid to expect him to use his former bedroom with his late wife’s clothes still in the dresser.

“I’ll send Rosa, the housekeeper, up with something to eat,” she promised and left him to clean up.

She wandered to the sunroom and pretended to read a book about parenting multiples on her e-reader, but she couldn’t clear the jagged emotion from her throat. Antonio’s face when he’d met his children for the first time... It had been amazing to see that much love crowd into his expression instantly. She wished he could have been there in the delivery room, to hold her hand and smile at her like that. Tell her everything would be okay and he’d still think she was beautiful even with a C-section scar.

Except if he had been there, he’d have held Vanessa’s hand, not hers, and the reality squelched Caitlyn’s little daydream.

The babies were his. It wouldn’t take long for a judge to overturn her custody rights, not when she’d signed a surrogacy agreement that stated she’d have no claim over the babies once they were born.

But the babies were hers, too. The hospital had listed her name on their birth certificates as their mother—who else would they have named? She’d been their sole parent for nearly eight months and before that, carried them in her womb for months, knowing they weren’t going home with Vanessa and Antonio as planned, but with her.

It was a mess, and more than anything, she wanted to do what was best for the babies. Not for the first time, she wished her mother was still alive; Caitlyn could use some advice.

An hour later, Antonio reappeared.

He filled the doorway of the sunroom and the late-afternoon rays highlighted his form with an otherworldly glow that revealed the true nature of his return to this realm—as that of an angel.

She gasped, hand flying to her mouth.

Then he moved into the room and became flesh and blood once again. But no less beautiful.

He’d trimmed his full beard, revealing his deep cheekbones and allowing his arresting eyes to become the focal point of his face. He’d swept back his still long midnight-colored hair and dressed in his old clothes, which didn’t fit nearly as well as they once had, but a man as devastatingly handsome as Antonio could make a bedsheet draped over his body work.

Heat swept along her cheeks as she imagined exactly that, and it did not resemble the toga she’d meant to envision. Antonio, spread out on the bed, sheet barely covering his sinewy, drool-worthy fighter’s physique, gaze dark and full of desire...for her... She shook her head. That was the last thing she should be thinking about for a hundred reasons, but Antonio Junior, Leon and Annabelle were the top three and she needed to get a few things straight with their father. No naked masculine chests required for that conversation.

“You look...different,” she squawked.

Nice. Tip him off that you’re thinking naughty thoughts.

“You kept my clothes?” He pointed to the jeans slung low on his lean hips. “And my shaving equipment?”

All of which he apparently remembered just fine as he’d slipped back into his precrash look easily. Antonio had always been gorgeous as sin, built like a lost Michelangelo sculpture with a side of raw, masculine power. And she was still salivating over him. A year in Indonesia hadn’t changed that, apparently.

She shrugged and tried to make herself stop staring at him, which didn’t exactly work. “I kept meaning to go through that room, but I thought maybe there would be something the babies would want. So I left it.”

“I’m glad you did. Thank you.” His small smile tripped a long liquid pull inside and she tamped it down. Or she almost did. It was too delicious to fully let it go.

Serious. Talk. Now, she told herself sternly.

“I had a gym,” he said before she could work up the courage to bring up item one on her long list of issues. “Did you leave it alone, too?”

“It’s untouched.”

“I need to see it. Will you come with me?”

Surprised, she nodded. “Of course.”

Was it wrong to be thrilled he’d asked her to be with him as he delved into his past?

Well, if that was wrong, it was probably just as wrong to still have a thing for him all these years later. If only she hadn’t given up so easily when she’d first met him—it was still one of her biggest regrets.

But then, her relationship rules didn’t afford much hope unless a man was interested enough to hang around for the long haul. She’d thought maybe Antonio might have been, once upon a time. The way he’d flirted with her when they’d met, as though he thought she was beautiful, had floored her...and then Vanessa had entered stage left, which had dried up his interest in the chaste sister.

She followed him as he strolled directly to the gym, mystified how he remembered the way, and halted next to him as he quietly took in the posters advertising his many fights, his championship belts and publicity shots of himself clad in shorts and striking a fierce pose.

There was something wicked about staring at a photo of Antonio half clothed while standing next to the fully dressed version, knowing that falcon tattoo sat under his shirt, waiting to be discovered by a woman’s fingers. Her fingers. What would it feel like?

Sometimes she dreamed about that.

“Do you remember any of this?” she asked as the silence stretched. She couldn’t keep thinking about Antonio’s naked chest. Which became more difficult the longer they stood there, his heat nearly palpable. He even smelled like sin.