A D'Angelo Like No Other

by Carole Mortimer

  The latter Michael believed the three brothers should perhaps take some of the blame for; none of them had ever been at any of the Archangel galleries long enough to have realised Pierre’s duplicity. Something Michael intended dealing with when he spoke to his two brothers next, although the fact that they were now all based at a single gallery, Gabriel in London with Bryn, Rafe in New York with Nina, and Michael in Paris, would go a long way to ensure that nothing like this ever happened again.

  At the moment it was Eva and the twins who were of prime importance to him. ‘What are the options?’

  She swallowed again. ‘She divorces him, taking his other two children with her. She stays with him, and the two of them continue on as before. Or—or she stays with him and—and agrees to accept the twins into their own family—’

  ‘Over my dead body!’ Michael exploded as he crossed the room to lightly grasp the tops of Eva’s arms. ‘That isn’t going to happen, Eva,’ he bit out determinedly. ‘I simply won’t let it.’

  She gave a shake of her head. ‘Isn’t it exactly what you warned me might happen if Rafe was their father?’

  ‘That was before I knew you.’ He scowled. ‘Before I realised how devoted you are to Sam and Sophie, the sacrifices you’ve made to keep them.’ His expression softened as he looked down at the two sleeping babies. ‘You love them as if they were your own.’

  ‘Yes. Well.’ Eva cleared her throat as her voice broke emotionally. ‘The thing is, they aren’t mine.’ She sighed. ‘And Pierre and his wife have a ready-made family to offer them—’

  ‘A family that consists of a womanising father and a long-suffering wife!’

  She gave a stiff shrug of her shoulders. ‘And a judge would probably still consider that a better option for the twins’ future than a woman on her own.’

  ‘It isn’t going to happen, Eva,’ Michael bit out grimly.

  She looked up at him ruefully. ‘I realise you’re a powerful man, Michael, but I don’t see how even you can stop it if that’s what Pierre and his wife decide to do.’

  ‘I’ll find a way. No one is taking the twins from you,’ Michael assured grimly. ‘You love them. They’re your children now. They belong with you.’

  She smiled sadly. ‘It’s kind of you to say so after what you initially thought of me—’

  ‘I was wrong, damn it!’

  ‘But it doesn’t change the fact that Pierre is their biological father,’ Eva continued firmly.

  ‘That has yet to be proven. Maybe—’

  ‘Careful, Michael,’ she warned tautly. ‘My sister may have been many things—too trusting obviously being one of them, considering the way she fell for Pierre’s practised lies—but taking two lovers at the same time was not something she would ever have done. Pierre is the twins’ father.’

  And Michael couldn’t accept that Sam and Sophie might be taken away from Eva. Having come to know the three of them, having witnessed Eva’s love and devotion to her dead sister’s twin babies, and their contentment with her, it was cruel in the extreme to think of them ever being taken away from her.

  His mouth tightened. ‘How did you leave things with Pierre?’

  Eva sighed heavily as she gave a shake of her head. ‘I told him that I have every intention of leaving Paris today, and gave him my address in England where he can contact me once he knows what his intentions are.’ Tears once again blurred her vision. ‘I need to go home to England, Michael. I feel— I feel, probably mistakenly, that there’s a sense of safety there for the twins and me.’ She was also, Eva knew, hoping that once she was back in her flat in London with the twins she might be able to think of this time spent in Paris as having merely been a bad dream.

  A bad dream she had brought completely on herself, Eva accepted, by seeking out the twins’ father in the first place...

  But she hadn’t expected to discover that Rafe D’Angelo wasn’t the twins’ father, after all.

  Any more than she had expected to meet Michael D’Angelo and fall in love with him...

  Or to be made to realise quite so painfully, after they had made love last night, that it was a love he would never return.

  She blinked back the tears and straightened determinedly as the doorbell to the apartment rang. ‘That will be my taxi.’

  Michael scowled darkly. ‘I’ll drive you to the airport—’

  ‘I would rather you didn’t,’ Eva cut in stiltedly. ‘Far better we say our goodbyes here, Michael.’ She couldn’t quite meet the darkness of his gaze—couldn’t look at Michael at all without breaking down completely—so instead gazed sightlessly over his left shoulder. ‘You’ve been very kind—’

  ‘I’m not kind—’

  ‘Yes, you are,’ Eva contradicted ruefully. ‘Beneath that armour of cold aloofness you’re one of the kindest people I’ve ever known. The twins adore you,’ she added, as if that settled the matter. ‘I really do have to go now,’ she insisted as the doorbell rang for a second time.

  Michael felt totally helpless to stop her as he looked at the determination in Eva’s expression. ‘What about the E J Foster exhibition—?’ He broke off with a wince as Eva gave a rueful laugh. ‘I can’t believe I just said that!’

  ‘You’re a businessman first and foremost.’ She shrugged as she walked over to take charge of the pushchair. ‘If you’re still serious about that—’

  ‘I am.’

  She nodded. ‘Then I’ll be in touch.’

  ‘When?’ Michael prompted as he carried the two suitcases over to the door for her, knowing his question about the exhibition had nothing to do with business and everything to do with his seeing Eva again.

  ‘I really don’t know.’ She sighed. ‘Everything is so up in the air at the moment—I’ll call you,’ she said again as she opened the door to greet the taxi driver.

  ‘I’ll bring the cases down—’

  ‘I really would rather you didn’t, Michael.’ Eva turned to look at him, tears shimmering in those violet-coloured eyes as she reached up on tiptoe and kissed him lightly on the cheek. ‘I hate protracted goodbyes, don’t you?’ she murmured before she followed the taxi driver down the hallway to the lift without so much as a glance back at Michael.

  Michael had never really thought about it before now, but he did know, as Eva and the twins got into the lift, that he hated this goodbye, at least. That he didn’t want to say goodbye to Eva at all!

  Or the twins...

  He had grown fond of the little rascals over the past few days of helping care for them, knew his apartment was going to have the oppressive silence of a morgue once they, and Eva, had gone.

  Most especially Eva...

  With this need for a hurried departure to the airport, Michael hadn’t so much as had chance to talk to Eva about the misunderstandings of last night, and he certainly couldn’t talk about it now she had left!

  Besides which, Michael fully intended to sort out this situation with Pierre before talking to Eva again...

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  ‘MICHAEL...?’ EVA’S EYES opened wide as she didn’t even attempt to hide her surprise, after opening the door to her flat to find him standing outside in the hallway of the slightly shabby Victorian building she had lived in for the past three years.

  It had been four days since she had left Paris—and Michael—and flown back to England with the twins. Four very long and oppressive days, when she had missed Michael as much, if not more, than she had dreaded hearing from Pierre Dupont again, in regard to the twins’ future.

  So far there had been complete silence from Pierre, lulling Eva into—what she was sure was a false hope!—thinking that maybe he had decided not to do anything about them, that things could just continue the way they had been, and the twins would stay with her. Ridiculous, perhaps, but even so it was all that had kept Eva
from going quietly insane.

  Seeing Michael again—literally visually eating up his casual appearance in a pale blue shirt unfastened at the throat and worn beneath a black soft suede jacket, and faded denims—was more wonderful than she could ever have imagined. And she had imagined seeing Michael again a lot!

  Had missed being with him beyond that imagining.

  Loved him beyond imagining too...

  ‘Are you going to invite me inside...?’ he prompted gruffly.

  ‘Of course.’ Eva stepped back in order to open the door wider so that he could step into the hallway before she closed the door behind him, instantly aware of how tall and wide-shouldered—and immediate—he appeared in the narrow confines of the hallway. ‘Come through to the sitting room,’ she invited as she stepped past him to lead the way.

  ‘Have I arrived at nap time...?’ Michael prompted ruefully as he looked around the deserted and silent sitting room. A room that so obviously reflected the warmth of Eva’s personality, the colours an amalgam of warm russets to cream, with multicoloured cushions on the sofa and chairs, several of her own framed photographs adorning the walls.

  ‘How did you guess?’ She chuckled softly as she indicated he should sit down in one of those armchairs.

  Michael remained standing as he turned from looking at those photographs in order to study Eva more closely, noting the deepened shadows beneath her eyes, and the fact that her face seemed thinner than ever, no doubt a sign that worry over the twins’ future had caused her to lose weight since he had last seen her. Unless... ‘Are the twins both well?’ he prompted concernedly.

  ‘Very much so.’ Eva lightly dispelled that worry.

  ‘Good.’ He nodded his satisfaction. ‘And you?’

  She grimaced. ‘I’m as well as can be expected when I still haven’t heard anything from Pierre.’

  Michael straightened. ‘That’s one of the reasons I’m here.’

  She tensed warily. ‘It is?’

  He nodded grimly. ‘Pierre has decided to give up any and all rights to the twins and allow you to formally adopt them, if that’s agreeable to you?’

  Relief washed over Eva, hot tears welling in her eyes and spilling unchecked down her cheeks, her knees feeling suddenly weak and causing her to stagger blindly over to drop down heavily into one of the armchairs before she buried her face in her hands and began to sob in earnest.

  ‘Eva...?’

  ‘I’m okay.’ She waved away Michael’s concern even as she tried to mop up the worst of the tears. ‘I just— You didn’t coerce him or force him in any way, did you?’ she prompted suspiciously as she realised that maybe this solution to the problem that had kept her awake for so many nights was perhaps just too good to be true.

  Michael gave a humourless smile. ‘I would have done everything in my power to do exactly that if Pierre hadn’t come to me yesterday and told me that he and his wife have spoken at length on the subject, for the last three days apparently, and that the two of them have decided to give their obviously rocky marriage another go. But not with the twins as a constant reminder of Pierre’s infidelity. Something I could have—should have—telephoned and told you yesterday,’ he added, ‘rather than wait until today so that I could come here and tell you in person.’

  Eva was just too relieved at the news to care when she was told. ‘He won’t change his mind...?’ she prompted uncertainly.

  ‘He assures me that he won’t,’ Michael said hardly. ‘And, as I no longer require his services at any of the Archangel galleries, I’ve arranged a...change of employment for him, as another incentive for him to keep to that decision.’

  ‘What sort of change of employment?’ Eva prompted uncertainly.

  Michael shrugged. ‘Believe it or not the world of art galleries and auction houses is a relatively small one, and Pierre is intelligent enough to know that if I chose to do so then I could ensure that he never works in another gallery again. Anywhere,’ he added grimly.

  ‘And that isn’t coercion?’

  ‘Not in the least, when I didn’t make the arrangements until after he had told me his decision regarding Sam and Sophie,’ Michael dismissed. ‘Which was when I told him that my own decision is that he will never work in an Archangel gallery ever again.’ He grimaced with distaste. ‘He saw the...practicality of my suggestion, once I’d told him that I would arrange for him to work in another gallery elsewhere. Apparently he’s always wanted to work and live in Rome, and feels that it would be better for his marriage if he and his wife were to start somewhere completely afresh. Whether that’s true or not remains to be seen, but in the meantime I have no intention of allowing him the time to change his mind where the twins are concerned.’

  ‘How do you intend stopping him?’ Eva looked up at him slightly dazed, thrilled at the idea of the twins being completely hers, and so grateful to Michael for what he had done for her. For them, she reminded herself, because Michael had done this for the twins as much as for her.

  ‘Immediately after Pierre told me of his decision I contacted the lawyers who act for our galleries in Paris and London, instructing them to liaise on the application for the formal adoption of the twins,’ Michael revealed huskily. ‘Those papers are now waiting at the lawyers’ office in London to be signed and formally submitted.’

  Eva could barely breathe, had no idea what to think, knowing that, despite all her false accusations of paternity the previous week, Michael had still done this for her and the twins.

  Tears once again blurred her vision, but they were happy tears this time. The twins were going to be truly hers, so that no one, and nothing, could ever take them away from her again.

  ‘And you said you aren’t kind!’ she reminded teasingly through the falling of those happy tears.

  ‘I’m truly not,’ he denied ruefully.

  ‘You truly are!’

  He looked at her intently. ‘And if I were to tell you that my reasons for doing any and all of those things, even being here today, are completely selfish ones...?’

  Eva gave a puzzled shake of her head. ‘What could you possibly hope to gain by helping me to adopt the twins?’

  The moment of truth, Michael realised. The reason he was here today. The reason he hadn’t been able to stay away a moment longer...

  His Parisian apartment had been every bit as much like a morgue as Michael had expected it would be after Eva’s departure: silent, cold, and empty. So empty.

  He had filled his days with work at the gallery, of course, but each evening he had returned to his apartment, knowing that Eva wouldn’t be there, that the twins wouldn’t be there. And he had hated it. Every damned moment of it.

  He had felt as if he were truly damned and bereft without Eva’s sunny personality and warmth to come home to, without the twins’ antics to laugh about with her.

  And he couldn’t stand the distance yawning between them another moment longer, so moved down on his haunches beside Eva’s chair before taking one of her hands in his. ‘Eva—’ He broke off, his voice very hoarse as his fingers lightly caressed hers. ‘There’s one detail on the adoption application that hasn’t been filled in yet.’

  ‘Oh?’ Her expression became wary again.

  ‘Nothing for you to worry about,’ he assured firmly. ‘I just—I wanted—Eva, you misunderstood me the other evening!’

  And warier still... ‘About what?’ she prompted distantly.

  Michael released her hand to stand up restlessly. ‘I didn’t—I wasn’t—’ Damn it, this indecisiveness wasn’t like him! ‘The reason for my concern, about our not having used contraception that night, was for your benefit, not mine,’ he bit out forcefully. ‘You already have the twins, and they’re so young still, and I thought an unexpected pregnancy of your own would be a very bad idea right now.’

  Her cheeks were flushed
a fiery red, her gaze no longer meeting his. ‘You’re right, a very bad idea. For you as well as me. Which is why—why I quickly assured you that you had no need to worry about it—’

  ‘I told you, I’m not worried on my own account, Eva,’ he insisted fiercely. ‘We could have another set of twins immediately for all I care. Three sets! We would cope. I just—’ He thrust his hands into the pockets of his denims. ‘I didn’t—I don’t want it to happen like that for you. For us,’ he added huskily.

  Questioningly, it seemed to Eva, almost afraid to hope, and yet knowing that hope was growing, building inside her, nonetheless.

  She swallowed before speaking. ‘I don’t understand...’

  Michael drew in a harsh breath. ‘There’s something I need to tell you, and ask you in a moment, but first I want to explain about something that happened to me fourteen years ago—’

  ‘You don’t owe me any explanations—’

  ‘I was twenty-one at the time,’ he continued determinedly. ‘One of the three eligible D’Angelo brothers, slightly wild, slightly naïve, and no doubt more than slightly full of myself— Oh, yes, Eva,’ he drawled as she gave a disbelieving snort, ‘I think I was probably all of those things then.’ He grimaced. ‘Anyway, I became involved with someone while at university. Her name was Emma. We had a good time together, and I thought I was in love. And when she came to me one day and told me that she was pregnant, I— No, this isn’t a pretty story, Eva,’ he acknowledged grimly as she gasped.

  Not pretty, no, but Eva was starting to suspect it might be the reason for Michael’s distrust of women, and surely responsible for his instant and assured denial of her initial claim as to his being the twins’ father, when she had mistakenly thought he was Rafe D’Angelo. It had already happened to Michael once, and it wasn’t something he would ever risk happening again.

  Except he had...

  With her.

  Oh, she might not be pregnant, her pill having ensured that she wasn’t, but Michael hadn’t known that at the time...