by Penny Jordan
‘You and your baby have both been very lucky,’ the nurse told her when she came in a few minutes later to check up on her. ‘You sustained a nasty head injury, and when you were taken into hospital on Theopolis they feared that a blood clot had developed. It meant they would have to terminate your pregnancy. Your husband refused to give his consent. He arranged for you to be brought here to this hospital in Athens, and for a specialist to be brought from America to treat you. Your husband said that you would never forgive him and he would never forgive himself if your pregnancy had to be terminated.’
Sander had said that? Ruby didn’t know what to think.
‘I dare say he will be here soon,’ the nurse continued. ‘Initially he insisted on staying here in the hospital with you, but Professor Smythson told him to go home and get some rest once you were in the clear.’
As though on cue the door to her room opened and Sander was standing there. Discreetly the nurse whisked herself out of the room, leaving them alone together.
‘The twins…’ Ruby began anxiously.
‘They know that you had a fall and that you had to come to hospital to be “mended”. They’re missing you, of course, but Anna is doing her best to keep them occupied.’
‘The nurse was just telling me that it’s thanks to you I still have my baby.’
‘Our baby,’ Sander corrected her quietly.
Ruby didn’t know what to say—or think—so her emotions did both for her. Tears slid down her face.
‘Ruby, don’t,’ Sander begged, leaving the foot of her bed, where he had been standing, to come and take hold of her hand, now disconnected from the drip she had been on as she no longer needed it. ‘When I saw you falling down those steps I knew that no matter what I’d said, or what I thought I’d believed, the truth was that I loved you. I think I knew it that last night we spent in Athens, but I told myself that letting go of my doubts about you must be a slow and measured process. It took the realisation that I might have lost you to show me the truth. I deliberately blinded myself to what was real, just as you said. I wanted and needed to believe the very worst of you, and because of that—because of my fear of loving you and my pride in that fear—you and our child almost lost your lives.’
‘My fall was an accident.’
‘An accident that resulted from my blind refusal to accept what you were trying to tell me. Can you forgive me?’
‘I love you, Sander. You know that. What I want now is for you to forgive yourself.’ Ruby looked up at him. ‘And not just forgive yourself about me.’ Did she dare to say what she wanted to say? If she didn’t seize this opportunity to do so she would regret it, Ruby warned herself, for Sander’s sake more than for her own.
‘I know your mother hurt you, Sander.’
‘My mother never loved any of us. We were a duty she had to bear—literally as well as figuratively. My brother and sister and myself were the price she paid for my father’s wealth, and for living the life she really wanted—a life of shallow, gaudy excess, lived in luxury at someone else’s expense. The only time we saw her was when she wanted my father to give her more money. There was no room in her heart for us, no desire to make room there for us.’
Ruby’s heart ached with compassion for him.
‘It wasn’t your fault that she rejected you, Sander. The flaw was within her, not you.’
His grip on her hand tightened convulsively.
‘I guess I’ve always been distrustful of women—probably as a result of my relationship with my mother. When I saw you in that club I saw you in my mother’s image. I didn’t want to look beneath the surface. I believe now that a part of me did recognise how innocent and vulnerable you really were, but I was determined to reject it. I used you as a means of expressing my anger against my grandfather. My behaviour was unforgivable.’
‘No.’ Ruby shook her head. ‘Under the circumstances it was predictable. Had I been the experienced party girl you thought, I suspect I would have known that something more than desire was driving you. We both made mistakes, Sander, but that doesn’t mean we can’t forgive ourselves and put them behind us. We were both defensive when we got married. You because of your mother, and me because I was ashamed of the way I’d behaved with you—giving away my virginity to a man who couldn’t wait to throw me out of his bed and his life once he had had what he wanted.’
‘Don’t…’ Sander groaned remorsefully. ‘I’m sorry I said what I did about this new baby, Ruby. When you fell just before you lost consciousness you whispered to me—“my baby”—and I knew then that no matter what I had said, or thought I believed, the child inside you was mine, that it was impossible for it to have been fathered by anyone else. Can we start again? Can you still love me after the way I’ve behaved?’
In answer to his question Ruby lifted herself up off her pillows and kissed him gently, before telling him, ‘It would be impossible for me not to love you, Sander.’
It was just over a month since Ruby, fully recovered from her fall, had returned to the island, and each day her happiness grew. Or so it seemed to her. Sander had already proved to her that he was a loving father to the twins, and now, in addition to proving to her that he intended to be an equally good father to the child she was carrying, he had also dedicated himself to proving to her that he was a wonderfully loving husband.
Lying next to him in their bed, Ruby felt her heart swell with joy and love. Smiling in the darkness, she turned toward Sander, pressing a loving kiss against his chin.
‘You know what will happen if you keep on doing that,’ he warned her mock-seriously.
Ruby laughed. ‘I thought I was the one who was unable to resist you, not the other way round,’ she teased as she nestled closer to him, the soft curves of her naked body a sweet, warm temptation against his own.
‘Does it feel like I’m able to resist you?’ Sander asked her.
His hands were already stroking her skin; his breath was warm against her lips. Eagerly Ruby moved closer to him. It was still the same—that heart-stopping feeling of anticipation and longing that filled her when she knew he was going to kiss her.
‘I love you…’
The words were breathed against her ear and then repeated against her lips, before Sander finally slowly stroked his tongue-tip against them deliberately, until Ruby couldn’t wait any longer and placed her hands either side of his head. Her lips parted, a little shudder of longing rippling through her.
The sound of the accelerated speed of their breathing mingled with the movement of flesh against fabric, soft whispering sounds of sensuality and expectant desire.
As always, the sweetness of Ruby’s arousal increased Sander’s own desire. She showed her love for him so naturally and openly, with her desire whispered in soft words of love and longing, and encouragement and promises filling the air, breathed against his skin in an erotic litany of emotion. He could now admit that part of him had responded to that in her from the very start, and had in turn loved her for it, even if he had barricaded that knowledge away from himself.
The shape of her body was changing now, and her pregnancy was a gentle swell that he caressed gently before he kissed her growing bump.
Looking down at his dark head, Ruby stroked the smooth flesh at the nape of his neck. She knew now how much both she and this new baby meant to him.
Lying down beside her, Sander cupped her breast, allowing his lips to tease her nipple provocatively, his fingertips drifting tormentingly across her lower belly in a caress he knew she loved. Ruby closed her eyes and clung to him, riding the wave of her own desire as it swelled and pulsed inside her, smiling at the now familiar torment of building pleasure, of raw, sensual need that Sander knew exactly how to stretch out until it became almost unbearable.
Sander knew that if he placed his hand over her mound now he would be able to feel the insistent pulse it covered—just as he knew that the unsteady increase in her breathing meant that the stroke of his fingers within her would bring her alm
ost immediately to orgasm, and that after that orgasm he would re-ignite her desire so that he could satisfy them both with the thrust of his body within hers. He could feel his self-control starting to give way.
His hand moved further down her body. The soft, scented wetness of her sex and the way she offered it to him with such sensual generosity turned his heart over inside his chest. He looked up at her as he parted the folded outer lips. A shudder ripped through her eyes, dark and wild with need. His fingertips stroked slowly through her wetness and then back again, to rub against the source of her desire, hard and swollen beneath his touch, making his own body throb in increasingly insistent demand. His lips caressed her nipple more urgently, his gaze registering the flush staining her skin and the growing intensity of the small shudders gripping her body.
‘San—der…’
It was the way she said his name that did it—a soft plea of longing plaited with a tormenting thread of enticement that smashed through what was left of his self-control.
Ruby shuddered wildly beneath the sensation of Sander’s mouth on her skin—her breasts, her belly, her thighs, and then finally her sex, where his tongue-tip stroked and probed and possessed until the pleasure made her gasp and then cry out.
Sander couldn’t wait any longer. As it was he had to fight against himself to draw out their shared pleasure instead of giving in to the demand of his own flesh and its need to lose itself within her, holding them both on the rack of their shared longing before finally thrusting slowly into her, letting the responsive muscles of her body take him and possess him until they were riding the pleasure together to the ecstasy of shared love and release.
‘I love you.’
‘I love you.’
‘You are my life, my world, light in my darkness, my Ruby beyond price.’
Held safe in Sander’s arms, Ruby closed her eyes, knowing that when she woke in the morning and for every morning, of their lives together, she would wake up held safe and loved.
EPILOGUE
‘OH, RUBY, she’s beautiful.’
Smiling proudly, Ruby looked on as her sisters admired their new niece, who was now just over one month old.
It had been a wonderful surprise when Sander had told her that he had arranged for her sisters and their husbands to visit the island, and Ruby thought it the best present he could have given her—barring, of course, his love and their new daughter.
‘She’s the image of Sander,’ Lizzie announced, with an eldest sister authority that Ruby had no desire to refute.
After all, it was true that Hebe was the image of her father and her twin brothers, and, whilst Sander had said prior to her birth that if they had a girl he would like her to look like her mother, Ruby rather thought that he didn’t mind one little bit that she was a dark-haired, dark-eyed daddy’s girl.
‘It looks as though she can wind Sander and the boys round her little finger already.’ Charlotte joined the conversation, adding ruefully, ‘I’m itching to cuddle her properly, but this one—’ she patted the bulge of her seven-month pregnancy ruefully ‘—obviously doesn’t want me to. He kicked so hard when I tried.’
‘Ah, so it is a boy, then.’
Ruby and Lizzie pounced in unison, laughing when their middle sister tried to protest and then glanced toward her husband, Raphael. He was standing with Sander, and Lizzie’s husband Ilios, who was holding their two-month-old son Perry with the deftness of experienced fatherhood. The three men laughed and talked together.
‘Well, yes, I think so from what I saw at the last scan!’ she admitted ruefully. ‘Of course I could be wrong, and the truth is that Raphael doesn’t mind whether we have a boy or a girl, although personally…’ She gave a small sigh and then said softly, ‘I know it’s silly, but I can’t stop myself from imagining a little boy with Raphael’s features.’
‘It isn’t silly at all,’ Ruby immediately defended her. ‘It’s only natural. I love the fact that the twins and Hebe look like Sander.’
‘I feel the same way about Perry,’ Lizzie agreed, adding, ‘That’s what love does for you.’
Automatically they all turned to watch their husbands. ‘It’s lovely that our three babies will be so close in age—especially as the twins have one another,’ Ruby added.
‘Sander is so proud of the boys, Ruby. And proud of you, for the way you brought them up alone.’
‘I wasn’t alone,’ Ruby objected, pointing out emotionally, ‘They and I had both of you to support us and love us. I could never have managed without you.’
‘And we would never have wanted you to—would we, Charlotte?’ Lizzie told her.
‘Never,’ Charlotte agreed, squeezing Ruby’s hand.
For a moment it was just the three of them again, sisters bonded together by the tragedy they had shared, and by their love and loyalty for one another, but then Charlotte broke the silence, enclosing them all to say softly, ‘I think we must have some very special guardian angels watching over us.’
Once again they looked toward their husbands, before turning back to one another.
‘We’ve certainly been lucky to meet and fall in love with such very special men,’ Ruby said.
‘And all the more special because they think they are the lucky ones in having met us.’ Lizzie shook her head and then said ruefully, ‘None of us could have imagined how things were going to turn out when I was worrying so much about having to go out to Thessalonica.’
The look she gave Ilios as she spoke said very clearly to her sisters how much she loved her husband, causing both of them to turn and look at their own husbands with similar emotion.
‘There is something other than how happy we are now that we do need to discuss,’ she continued, explaining when Charlotte and Ruby looked at her, ‘The house. Ilios insisted on clearing the mortgage for me, because at that stage I still thought that you would both need it, and I transferred it into your joint names. Since none of us need it now, what I’d like to suggest is that we donate it to charity. I’ve been making a few enquiries, and there is a Cheshire-based charity that provides help for single mothers. If we deed the house to the charity then they can either use it to provide accommodation or sell it and use the money in other ways. What do you think?’
‘I think it’s an excellent idea.’
‘I agree.’
‘So that’s decided, then.’
‘There might be one small problem,’ Ruby warned. ‘Since Ilios cleared the mortgage, I rather suspect that Sander and Raphael will want to match his donation.’
Once again all three of them looked towards their husbands, exchanging smiles when the men looked back.
Three such male and strong men—strong enough to admit that they had been conquered by love and to show openly just how much that love meant to them.
‘We are so very lucky,’ Ruby announced, knowing that she was speaking for her sisters as well as for herself.
Sander, who had detached himself from Ilios and Raphael and was on his way towards them, overheard her, and stopped to tell her firmly, ‘No, it is we who are the lucky ones. Lucky and blessed by the gods and by fate to have won the love of three such true Graces.’
ISBN: 978-1-4268-6574-9
MARRIAGE: TO CLAIM HIS TWINS
First North American Publication 2010.
Copyright © 2010 by Penny Jordan.
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