A D'Angelo Like No Other

It was unusual for anyone to argue with him, period, Michael being accustomed to issuing orders and having them obeyed rather than have people dispute them. Nor did he appreciate the added complication of this woman—a feisty young woman he acknowledged as being irritatingly beautiful—continuing to accuse him of fathering her sister’s babies.

It was an accusation Michael didn’t appreciate. He’d learnt his lesson many years ago when it came to the machinations of women. And he had Emma Lowther to thank that, for teaching him to never, ever trust a woman, when it came to contraception or anything else.

How many years ago was it since Emma had tried to blackmail him into marriage by claiming she was pregnant? Fourteen. And Michael still remembered every moment of it as if it were yesterday.

Not that he had ever thought of shirking his responsibility. Oh, no, Michael had been stupid enough to think he was actually in love with Emma, had even been pleased about the baby, and the two of them had been making wedding plans for weeks when he introduced Emma to an acquaintance at a party, and she had decided within days of that introduction that Daniel, his family richer even than Michael’s, would be a far better choice as a husband. Which was when she had told Michael there was no baby, that she had been mistaken. Three months later she had tried to use the same trick on Daniel.

The scene that had followed, once Emma had learnt that Michael had warned Daniel of her machinations, that there was no baby this time either, had not been pleasant!

Emma’s pregnancy had been a sham, a trick to make Michael marry her, and it had been enough of a warning for him never again to trust any woman to take care of contraception...

Which was why he could now confidently deny Eva Foster’s claim in regard to her sister’s babies.

‘Twins,’ she now corrected softly. ‘The babies are twins.’

They certainly looked of a similar age and colouring: both had silky heads of ebony dark hair and the same amazing violet-coloured eyes as their aunt. Their features weren’t completely formed as yet, but there were certainly enough similarities for Michael to accept Eva Foster’s claim that they were twins.

But whether they were twins or otherwise, they were not—most definitely not!—Michael’s children.

‘How old are they?’ he bit out tightly.

‘Trying to jog your memory?’ she scorned.

‘How old?’ Michael repeated through those gritted teeth.

She shrugged. ‘Six months.’

And if Rachel Foster had gone full term with her babies that would mean nine months to be added onto the six months, making it fifteen months ago he was supposed to have—

Damn it, why was Michael even bothering to do the maths? No matter what this woman might claim to the contrary, he had not impregnated any woman fifteen months ago or at any other time!

‘And you believe they’re mine because...?’ He kept his voice soft and even as Sophie’s lids began to flicker and her head dropped down sleepily onto his shoulder, the infant obviously tired out by her previous screeching.

That pointed chin rose another challenging notch. ‘Because Rachel told me they were.’

Michael nodded. ‘In that case, would you care to explain why your sister hasn’t come here and confronted me with this information herself?’

‘Because— Careful!’ Eva warned as she realised Sophie had fallen into the completely boneless sleep only babies seemed able to do, and was almost slipping off one of those broad shoulders as a result.

‘How did you do that?’ she breathed ruefully as she looked at the sleeping Sophie.

Usually the twins only fell asleep after she had walked them in their pushchair or bounced them up and down for hours; Eva couldn’t remember the last time she’d had even one uninterrupted night’s sleep. And those lazy Sunday mornings of dozing in bed until lunchtime, which she had once taken so much for granted, now seemed like a self-indulgent dream, a mirage, and one Eva was sure she was destined never to know again.

‘Do what?’ D’Angelo rasped softly.

‘Never mind,’ Eva muttered irritably. ‘Just put Sophie in the left side of the pushchair. She doesn’t like sitting on the right side,’ she supplied wearily as he paused to raise dark, questioning brows.

‘She’s asleep, so what does it matter?’

‘She knows when she wakes up,’ Eva dismissed impatiently.

‘Right,’ Michael drawled dryly, willing to take this woman’s word for it that a six-month-old baby was aware of which side of a pushchair she was sitting in.

He looked down at the baby after he had somehow managed to ease her down into the pushchair without waking her. Sophie was like a dark-haired angel, ebony lashes fanning across her flushed cheeks, her mouth a little pouting rosebud.

He straightened abruptly as he realised what he was doing. ‘What about that one?’ He indicated the baby in Eva Foster’s arms.

‘His name’s Sam,’ she supplied somewhat tartly. ‘And he’s just fine where he is.’ She looked down indulgently at the baby now snuggled into her throat. ‘Sam is more placid than Sophie,’ she explained waspishly as she obviously saw Michael’s mocking expression. ‘What did you say?’ she prompted softly as he muttered under his breath.

‘I said that’s probably because he’s a man,’ Michael repeated unabashedly.

Eva Foster gave a scathing snort. ‘It’s been my experience that men tend to be lazy, not placid!’

‘I beg your pardon?’ Michael’s brow lowered.

‘I’m sure you heard me the first time,’ she came back with feigned sweetness.

He had, and he hadn’t liked it either; he and his two brothers had worked damned hard the past ten years to develop the one gallery they had then owned into three, spread across London, New York and Paris, and to build them up to become some of the most prestigious private galleries and auction houses in the world. And the three brothers were now reaping some of the benefits of that hard work, all of them extremely wealthy and able to live a lifestyle befitting that wealth, then it certainly wasn’t because it had just been handed to them on a silver platter.

The scornful expression on Eva Foster’s delicately lovely face showed she obviously thought otherwise!

As she was also under some strange delusion that Michael was the father of her niece and nephew...

It was time—past time!—that he took control of this situation. ‘In your opinion.’ He nodded tersely as he moved to sit behind his black marble desk. ‘You were about to tell me why you’re here instead of your sister...?’

Eva was well aware of the fact that D’Angelo had deliberately chosen to resume his seat behind his desk, as a way of putting some distance between the two of them at the same time as it put their conversation onto a businesslike footing. Although how anyone could think, or talk, of babies in a ‘businesslike’ way was beyond her!

D’Angelo wasn’t at all what she had been expecting of the man who had first charmed and then impregnated her younger sister. Rachel had been fun-loving, and, yes, slightly irresponsible, having decided to travel around the world for a year once she had finished university, only to come back to London ten months later, alone and pregnant. With this man’s baby—which had turned out to be babies, plural.

The man seated behind the desk wasn’t what Eva had imagined when her sister had talked so enthusiastically of her lover’s charm and good looks, and the fun they’d had together in Paris. Oh, this man was certainly handsome enough, dark and brooding—dangerously so, she would hazard a guess, and causing Eva to give an inner wince as she looked at the mark her hand had left on one of those perfectly chiselled cheeks. No doubt that dangerous aura this man exuded was counteracted by the tight control he also showed, otherwise she might have found herself with a similar imprint on her own cheek!

His was such an austere handsomeness: icy black eyes, harshly etched features, his manner rigidly controlled, and there was a cool aloofness to him that it was difficult for Eva to imagine ever melting, even—especially!—when he made love with a woman.

She certainly couldn’t imagine him and the slightly irresponsible Rachel as ever having gone out together, let alone—

Maybe it would be better, for all concerned, if Eva’s thoughts didn’t dwell on the physical side of Rachel’s relationship with this man. A physical relationship he continued to deny!

Her mouth thinned as she answered him. ‘I’m here instead of Rachel because my sister is dead.’

He gave a visible start. ‘What...?’

If Eva had thought to make him feel guilty, to get some reaction other than shock with the starkness of her statement, then she was disappointed; he looked suitably shocked, but in a distant way, rather than as a man hearing of the death of an ex-lover.

Eva drew in a sharp, shaky breath as she attempted to keep her own emotions under control. It was some weeks since she had needed to explain to anyone that her sister had died, and to do so now, to the man who had once been Rachel’s lover—even if he denied all knowledge of it—was particularly hard.

Just as Eva still found it impossible to believe, to accept, that her sister Rachel, only twenty-two, and supposedly with all of her life still ahead of her, had died, quite peaceably in the end, just three short months ago.

And Eva had been trying to cope ever since with her own grief as well as the care of the twins. It was a battle she had finally had to accept she was losing, physically as well as financially. First Rachel had been so ill, and then she had died, and it had been—and still was—almost impossible for Eva to work when she had cared for Rachel and then had the full-time day-to-day care—and the sleepless nights—of the twins to cope with. Her savings had now dwindled almost to nothing, certainly quicker than she was able to replenish them with the few photographic assignments she had been free to accept these past six months. Assignments when she had been able to take the twins with her, which was becoming increasingly difficult the bigger and more vocal they got.