Allan hugged her tight against him. Talking about this wasn’t going to help either of them. It was time to move on, begin a new chapter…
“Riana, what happened to the baby?” He held his breath, afraid of what she’d say.
Allan could feel her lips stretch into a smile as she pressed them against his chest. He let go of the breath, taking that as a good sign. She moved to straddle him, wrapping her arms around his neck.
“You have a beautiful little girl. With brown eyes, a smile that lights up a room, and expressions that make her look like her daddy more every day,” she said sweetly, and with such love in her voice it made him tear up.
“A daughter?” he said hoarsely.
Riana nodded with a grin. “Loraine calls her a hellion! She is justified. That girl can tear up a room within seconds of entering it!” Riana playfully punched him in the shoulder. “She certainly doesn’t get that from me. Reno says I was a peaceful, loveable baby. My poor big brother was her constant target. It’s a wonder he didn’t ship us back to the States after she wreaked havoc at his hotel!”
Allan tossed his head back and barked out a laugh. Riana was right. His daughter got her destructive nature from him. He can remember his mother calling him a hellion more than one time.
My daughter.
It felt wonderful to know their baby survived, that he was a father. He couldn’t wait to meet her. And like a tornado, all his insecurities came crushing down on him.
“Allan, what’s wrong?”
“What if she doesn’t like me? She doesn’t even know me! How am I going to introduce myself to her? What if I suck at being a dad?”
Riana chuckled, pressing a feather-light kiss on his lips. “Aurora loves you because she already knows you. I told her all about you and your family. And you are not going to suck at being a dad, so stop freaking out!”
Allan felt an overwhelming emotion fill him. “You named her after my mother?”
She smiled and nodded. “Aurora Cora Sinclair.”
Allan went quiet. He was trying to soak in all this information. He was also trying to understand this feeling that consumed him knowing he had a child, a daughter.
“You are not disappointed that…that she’s a girl? Most fathers want to have sons first then—”
Allan laughed. Oh how he’d missed her rambling. “You gave me a gift. A child. Girl or boy, I’ll love that child more than my own life!”
“And…and…I know you didn’t want me to get pregnant because you thought I’d—”
Allan groaned, wishing she hadn’t reminded him of that. One of the things he was thinking about was demanding—not asking, they were past that—she marry him immediately. But now she’d just think he was doing it for their daughter more than for love. He’d have to wait and show her he wasn’t feeling trapped.
“Don’t even think about that. All I want is to be a family, and raise our daughter together.”
Riana sighed with relief. “Good.”
She squealed bouncing on his lap excitedly. Allan groaned, grabbing hold of her hips and stilling her. Watching her bounce on him turned him on, wishing he were inside her while she was doing that.
“I’m so excited! Aurora is going to be so happy to see you!”
And flat! Who knew talking about your daughter was a major turn off—unless they were discussing giving her siblings. Now that he’d have fun doing. But meeting his daughter for the first time did make him anxious.
She rubbed his hairy jaw. “But we have to get rid of this first. She won’t recognize you with all this hair.”
Then her eyes moved to his shoulder and he saw the joy seep out of her eyes. He cupped her cheek and turned her head away, but her eyes stayed rooted on his scar. She lifted her hand to touch it again but he caught it before she could.
“Riana,” he groaned when he saw the tears start to fall. “Please don’t cry.”
“Can you get them removed?” she whispered before she turned her eyes to him, “I don’t…I don’t want a reminder and I don’t want Aurora to ever see them.”
He nodded. While he was at it, he was going to get tested for the cancer gene. He had a family, and he needed to make sure Aurora and the other children he was sure they would have were risk free. He wouldn’t be able to handle it if he passed something so horrible to them.
“I’ll get it done as soon as possible, I promise.”
She nodded wiping her face dry, and then leaned against him, her head tucked under his chin. “Good.”
Chapter Fourteen
Riana couldn’t stop laughing.
“Will you quit it?”
Riana knew he was getting irate with her but she just couldn’t stop laughing. Getting his hair cut and shaving his beard were understandable. In fact, they were a necessity. But what she didn’t get was his insistence to wear a suit and get all fashioned up like he was going to a business meeting and not to meet his daughter.
It took a lot of convincing, but she got him to dress in jeans and a black T-shirt. After she warned him of Aurora messing up his suit with sticky fingers and food, he thought it best not to wear white.
She borrowed some of Melody’s clothes, hoping that she really wouldn’t mind—as Allan had promised—and also stayed away from the whites.
He looked even more anxious and pale standing at her door than on their trip to her apartment.
The moment the sun was up they had left the hotel and went to his apartment. The first thing he did was go into the bathroom to shave. He’d already lathered the cream when she asked him to let her do the honors. It was something she did for her brother that bonded them even tighter when she was younger.
Shaving was a rite of passage a teenage boy shared with his father. Their mother had cried so much because of it, and all the other things a father was to share with his children that they were denied. But Reno and Riana hadn’t dwelled on it because they had decided long ago they wouldn’t let that man make them feel like they’d missed out.
So they’d muddled through his first shaving—he did the parts he could see and she did the parts he couldn’t. She’d enjoyed it much more than hiding his dirty magazines from their mother. At the age of twelve, seeing what was in them scared her half to death. She’d decided she didn’t want to grow up. She was so scared of getting big boobs.
She went as far as locking herself in her room when she got her period.
Reno had picked the lock and opened the door. They’d sat in silence—she trying futilely to shrink away in the corner and him sitting at the foot just staring at her like he was trying to read her. Which of course, he could always do. Then after a long while, he’d told her he was leaving for a moment and he’d be right back.
He’d came back ten minutes later with a brown paper bag and offered it to her. Riana took it, thinking it was candy, only to find tampons in it. She thought she was going to die from the embarrassment. She was sure she would when he began a lecture on the girl’s anatomy and menstrual cycle like he was talking about the weather.
She never thought she could love her brother more than at that moment.
Their mother was a little disappointed she’d lost that mother daughter experience but she was glad Reno was there. That was the day she stopped feeling guilty over not having their father around.
So, from that day forward she shaved her brother, hid his dirty magazines, and played defense against his ex-girlfriends, and he became the male figure a shy, quiet, and lonely little girl desperately needed in her life.
She felt the emotion choke her when she thought of how he’d also been there for her as she mourned Allan, putting his own personal problems aside just for her.
If Riana could get her hands on Reno’s wife Jolie, she would choke her!
As she’d shaved Allan—she had to sit on the vanity with him standing between her legs—she told him all about this including the cheating, runaway sister-in-law. On Jolie’s part, he said the best revenge was finding Reno another woman wh
o would make him happy. He went as far as suggesting Loraine—a suggestion that made Riana laugh but thinking about it, it didn’t sound so bad.
And on the rest, he said he was grateful she had Reno in her life, and more grateful that he was there to take care of Riana and Aurora when Allan couldn’t. That’s when he told her about the fear he carried of loving a woman more than his children.
He told her about his father, letting the cancer kill him so that he could join his wife, leaving his two children alone. They were grown and capable of fending for themselves but Allan had felt betrayed until the day he lost Riana. She understood that, but she also understood Allan’s father.
She had thought about killing herself to join Allan a few times, but Aurora moving inside her had always kept her from carrying through. She knew Allan would want his child born no matter what, and his confession proved her right.
After what seemed like hours of having a heart-to-heart in the company of shaving cream, a razor, and toiletries, hosted in a bathroom that was only seen in hotels like The Ritz, he pulled her forward, shredded her panties as he pushed his boxers down, and made love to her with such vigor it had her bending backward with her hands pressed against the mirror at her head. She steamed it up with her heavy breathing, moans, and cries of ecstasy as she watched him devour her body with his hands, mouth and cock.
The memory made her shiver.
It wasn’t a surprise, really, that they had ended up in that situation. They had always had an insatiable appetite for one another.
“Riana, would you stop thinking about my bathroom and open the door? I’d like to meet my daughter without a hard-on!”
She chuckled, “Oh. Sorry.” She inserted the key and turned the lock. She heard him suck in a breath when it clicked open. She turned the knob and asked before she pushed the door open. “Ready?”
He let out a long breath and shook his body to relieve the tension. That action was also returning the color in his cheeks. “What’s wrong with me? I’m going to meet my daughter not Sinclair Enterprise’s board of directors.”
She knew she shouldn’t tease him but…“No, honey. You do that a week from now.”
His eyes narrowed when he turned to face her. “Funny, Riana. Real funny.”
She laughed, pushing the door open and pulling him in. She had just closed the door when she heard small running feet and a high-pitched voice scream, “Daddy!”
She felt like she was going to cry but she wasn’t sure from what though—her daughter running to Allan screaming ‘daddy’ or her hand being crushed in Allan’s tightening grip.
* * * *
The word fear wasn’t enough to describe the flood of terror that filled him when he saw her.
He looked into the big brown eyes that stared up at him and listened to her shrilly giggles that filled him, pushing the fear out as she jumped up and down.
“She’s beautiful,” he whispered as he watched her chant ‘daddy’ in a singsong voice as she danced around, her unruly, curly, black bob of hair moving with her.
She seemed fascinated by how her hair moved around her head, covering her face when she paused, her head turned to the side. It reminded him of how Riana used to dance around, her hair flying all over her face until it completely blinded her. She would trip over her feet and Allan always had to stay alert to catch her before her ass touched the ground.
She looked so much like Riana—happy and carefree.
He was amazed by the instant love he felt for his daughter. Since the moment he’d known about her he’d loved her, but it stunned him how hard the emotion hit him when he saw her and heard her voice.
It was like getting hit by a freight train and he wasn’t sure he’d ever feel steady again.
His heart was beating so fast he wasn’t sure it was normal. Maybe he was having a heart attack.
I have a daughter, and I love her so much it takes my breath away!
He felt a hand on his cheek and he turned to look down at Riana.
“She doesn’t know the difference between happy and sad tears. Seeing them will make her cry, too.”
Allan nodded, and batted his tears away like Riana.
His daughter stopped dancing and moved closer to him. Her head leaned right back as she looked up at him, her head turned to the side, silently inspecting him. He noticed she barely reached his knee. He also noticed that the fear was rushing back.
She threw her hands up. “Up! Up!”
Wide eyed, Allan turned to Riana. “What should I do?”
Riana chuckled. “Pick her up before she screams the roof down?”
“Up!”
The demanding shriek made him jump.
He bent down, placed his hands under her arms, and straightened, holding her out.
“Am I doing this right?”
Riana laughed. “Hold her closer.”
He pulled Aurora to his chest and sat her on his forearm. His daughter just stared at him and he felt like she could see right through him! It was the most uncomfortable and scary feeling ever!
Then Aurora placed her hands on his cheeks and pushed them in until his lips were puckered. She leaned in, pressed her lips against his, pulled away, shrieked out a laugh and jumped out of his arms and into Riana’s.
For a moment he thought he was going to drop her and his heart stopped but Riana was waiting with her arms out, like she knew she was going to do that.
Aurora let out the sweetest laugh he’d ever heard and hid her face in Riana’s neck, in a split moment of shyness before she pulled her away and announced loudly, “Mommy, kissy daddy!”
“Yeah, I saw that,” Riana responded kissing her small pink cheek. “How are you? Mommy missed you.”
Aurora kissed her back. “Mish you too!”
“She can talk!” Allan exclaimed, shocked, and then he immediately felt silly. She was two months away from turning two. And she just yelled ‘up’ at him. Damn, all those years in the middle of the ocean with no company must have made his mind mush. It had done a number on his social skills—he no longer had any.
Riana laughed. “Yes, she can.”
“And she loves the guys.”
Allan turned to Loraine’s voice. It had been so long since he’d seen her. Besides her shorter, shoulder length hair, she hadn’t changed one bit. His smiled grew when he saw his sister follow behind Loraine. She looked happy, relaxed. Two things he’d denied her.
Riana sighed. “I know. Did she kiss the door man again?”
Melody laughed. “And the pizza deliveryman. Bro, I think you need to invest in a shot gun as soon as possible.” She waved at him. “Sorry, I couldn’t wait to meet my niece.”
He heard Aurora whine and turned to see her leaning toward him, her face creased in distress as she repeated something incoherent to him.
Loraine groaned. “Please take her before she starts screaming. I swear that kid is spoiled rotten!”
Allan took her and she went quiet, staring at him like she could see through him again. He was never going to get used it.
Then she smiled and giggled, “Daddy, pway wit me!”
“Pray?”
“Play,” Riana corrected. “She wants you to play with her.”
Allan felt a little unsettled. “She doesn’t even know me.”
The moment those words came out, he knew he was wrong. He turned to look at Riana who was watching them with so much love and happiness in her eyes. This wonderful woman had made sure his daughter knew him. He wasn’t starting fresh with Aurora, she made him feel like he had been around from the moment she was born and he’d just come back from a long trip.
He was her daddy because her mommy told her so, and that’s all she needed to know to love him.
Loraine snorted, pulling his attention. “Doesn’t stop her from kissing every guy she sees.”
Yeah, five minutes of being a father and already he was thinking about ringing some necks. This interest of hers had to stop.
“Honey, we need to
have a conversation about boys.”
With a raised brow she said, “Uh?”
The ladies in the room laughed and Allan was beginning to feel more relaxed.
Riana tucked herself under his arm and wrapped her arms around his waist. He wrapped his free arm around her shoulders and this sudden anxiety filled him. While Riana answered Aurora’s enthused gibber, all he could think about was that he was holding his family in his arms and he could never ever allow himself to be a coward again. They needed a man who was strong, ready to defend them when threatened, to make the hard decisions they couldn’t. To provide for them and carry the burden so they wouldn’t worry, to support them and cheer on when they needed that boost of confidence, and to give them the love that only he could give to make them strong enough to face and conquer the world.
He turned to Aurora when she patted his cheek to gain his attention and began to speak again. Some words he understood, others he had no clue, but she spoke like what she was saying was very important and he gave her all his attention, nodding and answering what he understood and what he couldn’t, he waited for Riana to translate.
Most of it was about candy, ‘cwazy wowi’—the endearment suited—and her aunt ‘yody’ translation, Melody.
Yup, he might just be able to be a father. He had a great example to emulate, his own dad.
He was learning to love and appreciate his father with each passing minute he held his daughter and Riana in his arms.
This was his family, and he couldn’t wait to start their lives together.
Aurora squirmed in his arms, chanting ‘down’. He lowered her to the floor and she ran—a penguin run he found so cute it made him laugh—past Loraine and Melody and into what he assumed was one of the bedrooms.
“Where is she going?”
Riana shrugged, pulling him toward the couch. “Who knows. She’ll be back. She is too completely fascinated with you to stay away for too long.”
Her Venice Affair (The Albury Affairs) Page 22