by Eve Black
Smiling offhandedly at the shirt, he returned to the living area where Diana was on her mobile, ordering their lunch. She turned to him, her eyes bulging from their sockets, her mouth dropping open.
He couldn’t hide the snort of laughter at the look on her face. In the mood to tease, he raised his arms and did a slow, purposeful spin, hoping she’d be so distracted by the fineness of his ass that she’d want to forego lunch and let him devour her instead.
“That’s it,” she blurted into the phone, her cheeks aflame. She gave the person on the other line the address for his building then she ended the call before turning and planting her hands on her hips. “I’m assuming there is some joke there I am missing.” At least she didn’t sound angry, more like obstinately curious.
“My mum has a bloody terrible sense of humor,” he replied, smoothing invisible wrinkles from the shirt.
“Your mother bought you that shirt?” she asked, her brows high in incredulity.
“Yes. She squealed herself right out of her wicker lawn chair when I told her that I wasn’t just having one child, but two.” He could hear the pride in his voice, and he didn’t bother hiding it.
Diana’s expression warmed. “Mine did almost the same thing, falling out of her recliner rather than her lawn chair. She cried, then I cried, then my sister came in the room and looked at both of us like we were lunatics. Then I told her, and she started to cry. We went through three pints of chocolate ice cream that night.”
David chuckled, loving how open she was being with him. Certainly, over the last month, when he’d go to visit with her in the evenings, they discussed things like their days, their families, and their childhoods. Diana knew more about him that even Rick did. But, during those conversations, there was always something missing. Now he knew what it was.
A lightness of heart. All those nights, he’d carried the weight of his wariness and fear on his shoulders, bringing it with him into his time with Diana. Now, though…he only felt the depth of his care for her and their children.
Chapter 26
Years from now, looking back, he still wouldn’t be able to explain why, in that moment, he reached out for her, cupped her face in his hands, and stared down at her, his heart in his expression.
She gasped, her eyes wide but suffused with heat. He flicked his gaze down to her mouth, now softly parted in an O. He needed to kiss her.
“Diana,” he murmured, swallowing the urge to just take what he wanted. “I need to kiss you. May I kiss you?”
She blinked, her gaze growing hazy. “What?”
“I need to kiss you, Diana. Please…” He could hear the pleading in his own voice, and it was just a fraction of the urgency banging against his ribs.
For a strangling moment, he thought she would deny him—which she had every right to do—but when she nodded slightly, her own gaze dropping to his mouth, he knew he’d been gifted something he would never forget.
Dropping one hand to the small of her back, he pulled her into him until the roundness of her pregnancy belly pressed into his waist. Just knowing his children were nestled there did strange things to his body.
Slowly, agonizingly, he bent his head, their breaths co-mingling. Then…he took her mouth with his. Gently tasting, inviting her to taste him in return. She moaned, opening her mouth to offer access to the heat of her. Thanking God in heaven, he slid his tongue inside, brushing it over hers. He moaned, his blood catching fire. This woman…she was it. She was everything.
Dropping his other hand, he pulled her closer to him, as close as they could possibly get, but even then, it wasn’t close enough. Never close enough. He deepened the kiss and she leaned her head back, opening herself for his ravenousness.
Just when he thought he’d been handed heaven, she stiffened, pressing her hands to his chest. She broke the kiss, both of them panting. He leaned in, laying his forehead against hers and closing his eyes.
That kiss…
“David. We need to talk. We can’t just…” she broke off, her chest rising and falling as she battled for breath. “We can’t just make out and ignore all that has happened.”
Shit. She was right, of course, but being anywhere near her made him crazy, willing to toss aside commonsense just to be with her. Be inside her.
Dropping his hands, he took a step back, everything within him screaming that he was too far away from her now. He couldn’t feel her body heat, nor the hard softness of her belly.
He swallowed, opening his eyes to peer down at her with a guilty smile on his face. “You are right. I would say I am sorry, but that would be a lie. I cannot be sorry for wanting to kiss you, Diana.”
She lifted a hand, skimming her fingers over her own, kiss-swollen lips. God, he wanted to crow into the sky for being the one who’d made her lips like that.
“I wanted to kiss you, too, David, but…we really shouldn’t. There is just too much…bad air between us.”
“So let’s clear it. We’ll talk, eat once the food arrives, and then I will show you what I invited you here to see.”
She pursed her lips before nodded. “Okay.”
Letting out a relieved sigh, he led her to the dining room table and pulled out a chair for her. She took it, thanking him, and he pushed it in for her—as a true gentleman would. And he could be a gentleman, dammit! He would be for Diana, and he would be for his daughters, if his babies were daughters. He wanted to be an example of how a man should act toward women.
You’ve done a piss poor job of it so far, mate.
And, God, had he.
Make up for it. There’s still time.
Just as he opened his mouth to ask Diana about her day, the phone rang. He answered it and told the doorman to send the delivery man up. Striding to the door, he cracked it open and turned back to find Diana at his table, her expression one of uncertainty and apprehension, but there was also a…hopefulness glinting in her eyes.
I hope I put that there.
The delivery man arrived with their lunch and David handed him a hundred, thanking him and waving off the man’s effusive appreciation. Closing the door, David hauled the large paper bag to the dining room and placed it atop the table. Without prompting, Diana tore into the bag, lifting out her soup, baguettes, mac and cheese—which definitely looked better than whatever the hell he’d tried to make—and her iced tea.
Her first bite into her mac and cheese, she moaned, making David’s cock twitch.
Ignoring the blood flow into his shaft, he bit into his turkey avocado BLT, which was delicious. He almost moaned himself.
They ate in companionable silence until his sandwich was consumed and Diana had finished off the mac and cheese and one of the baguettes.
He leaned back in his chair, crossing his legs at the ankles, stretching out and purposefully invading her space. Closer. He needed to be closer.
God, I’ve become an absolute nutter for this woman. All his life, he’d never felt so impulsively driven to be near another human being, and it didn’t help that he’d spent his formative years traveling from place to place, never laying down roots, never being in one place long enough to create lasting relationships. Rick was the first person he’d ever let in to his private world. Rinna was the second…and she’d twisted him up so badly, he’d almost lost the third. Diana.
“So, you didn’t work today?” Diana asked after taking a long sip of her iced tea.
He shook his head, preparing himself for all he needed to say now that they were at the conversation portion of their afternoon.
“Though I usually put in several hours on the weekends, no. Something more important came up,” he remarked, peering into her eyes.
She must have caught his meaning because she blushed, rushing to take another sip of tea.
“Surely, you know you are the most important person in my life, Diana,” he drawled, sitting up and reaching across the table, extending his fingers in a silent plea for her hand. She hesitated, biting down on her plump bottom lip. He w
anted to do that for her, then soothe the bite with his tongue.
Finally, she placed her hand in his and he silently roared his satisfaction. There was still so far to go, but this was a step in the right direction.
“David, when I texted you back, I intended to meet with you to get some things out in the open.” She paused, sucking in a breath before shuddering. “At the party, I overheard some women in the bathroom talking about you. About me and you together.”
Goddammit! Nothing good ever started with ‘I overhead some women in the bathroom.’
Instead of rushing to defend himself against whatever shit she’d heard, David bit back the urge and instead said, “What did you hear?”
She caught his gaze, holding it, and he couldn’t be prouder of his brave girl. She wasn’t backing down.
“Well, besides them calling me a porpoise and them gossiping about you and Rinna, they said that you’d spoken with a woman named Disher. She asked you who I was and you told her I was merely a charity case.”
Taken aback by that, he flinched, nearly dropping her head.
“That’s bullshit! I would never say that about you. And who in the fuck called you a porpoise! I will have her raked across the coals for speaking such outright shit about you,” he thundered, barely keeping himself from jumping from his chair to pace like a taunted lion.
She shrugged, her expression trying and failing to look nonchalant, as if the whole thing hadn’t hurt her, badly. “Some women named Barb and Sarah.”
Barb and Sarah? There were so many Barbs—Barbies—and Sarahs in the charity circle that he couldn’t pin down one.
“The one named Barb said she’d slept with you in Milan. She’s a model, I think,” Diana continued, and David immediately caught the tiniest drop of jealousy in her tone. She was trying to hide it, but he heard it. He covered his smile with a grunt.
“I don’t remember her,” he answered honestly. He hadn’t been to Milan in years, and back then, he’d been at the top of his game, wooing and then fucking his share of models during fashion week.
Diana snorted. “I don’t doubt that,” she drawled, attempting to pull her hand from his. He held fast.
“What do you want me to say, Diana? I wasn’t a saint, I enjoyed the pleasure of women. Many women. I cannot say that I regret a moment of it.”
“Except for me,” she concluded, erroneously.
“Fuck that, Diana. I do not regret a moment with you, especially that first night, when we conceived our babies.” He stood up, moved to her, and then kneeled beside her. She looked down at him, her face pale with surprise. “Every moment since, I have wanted nothing more than to experience that first night again, when we explored one another’s bodies, where we found incredible pleasure in each other’s arms. Never in my life, Diana, have I felt as incredible than when I was with you.”
She gasped, shaking her head. “You don’t mean that.”
He dropped her hand to reach up and cup her face, forcing her to meet his gaze.
“I mean every word, darling. After that night, I spent the next two weeks hating myself because I never got your name. I was sick wondering how I could find you again because I discovered that being with you was something I wanted to do again.”
“You don’t do repeats,” she murmured, her voice a whisper.
He cracked a lopsided smile. “Darling, we’ve already repeated that night, haven’t we?”
She nodded.
“And, if I have my way, we will spend the rest of our lives repeating it, every night—at least twice.”
She gaped at him, her eyes larger than he’d ever seen them. As if pushing through the haze, she cringed, attempting to pull out of his hold. Again, he held fast. He refused to let her go.
“Let me go, David. You’re just teasing me, talking about forever when we can’t even hold a conversation without you mentioning money or how I am like Rinna,” she snapped, pain in her tone.
He recoiled, knowing he deserved every ounce of her derision.
“And I am a fucking asshole for it, darling. All this time, I have been allowing my hurt and betrayal from Rinna to choke off my emotions, making me walk through life preparing to do battle for my soul. When I met you, I was immediately attracted to your light—it was your laugh that hit me first. Bright, unencumbered, real. I was drawn to you even before I saw you in that bar. Even before I walked across the floor of Bella Notte, I knew I wanted you, that I needed to have you, just so I could breathe again.”
Diana swayed in her chair, clutching at David’s shoulders as if he were her lifeline.
“During those two weeks in Asia, I couldn’t look at another woman without picturing you, without wanting you to be there in their place. You haunted me, and I didn’t even know your name. Discovering who you were and that you were Rick’s paralegal was both a blessing and a curse. I wanted to know you, to taste you again, but I knew that Rick would be a pain in the ass about my seeking you out. You see, he knows my sordid past, and he would want to protect you from me.”
A slight smile raises her lips. “Fat lot of good that would have done… I wanted you, too.” She sighed, pressing her cheek into David’s palm. The warmth of her seeped into his bones.
His hands trembling, he continued, “I kept telling myself that you were probably just like Rinna, and I can only blame that part of me that knew you were too good for me, too bright for my darkness. That I might as well turn you away before you rejected me. I couldn’t take your rejection, so I decided to go about it on my terms, treating you like you meant nothing to me even though you mean everything.”
“David,” she murmured, moisture gathering at the corners of her eyes.
“When you told me that I was going to be a father…it was the most amazing and the most devastating moment in my life—even worse than with Rinna. Because I knew that if I could be blessed enough to father children, I would want them to be with you, but then that false realization came, blowing me to shrapnel. I was sterile, I couldn’t have children.”
“What finally convinced you?” she asked, her attention riveted to him.
“I went to see my urologist. He told me that each body is different, that even after an accident as bad as mine, my body could heal. I took a test and it proved that I was producing sperm, that I could, indeed, father children. I knew then, without a doubt, that you were carrying my child. It didn’t become absolutely real in my mind until I heard those heartbeats…saw those two beans on the screen.”
She laughed, a tinkling sound that made his heart leap. “That’s when it happened for me, too.”
The time has come, David. Show her.
Closing his eyes for a moment to steel himself, he opened them again to see her staring at him, her expression open. That tiny bit of hope having grown.
“Come on, I want to show you something,” he said, rising to his feet. He helped her to stand and then clasped her hand in his, intertwining their fingers.
His heart in his throat, David led her down the corridor, stopping in front of a closed door. The door was thick, white, and simply decorated with a hand-carved sign that read: BRENNER BABIES.
He searched her expression, desperate to know what she was thinking. She stared at the sign.
“Is this the nursery?” she finally asked, her voice raspy.
“Yes.” He swallowed, more nervous now than when he bought his first company. “Do you want to see it?”
She didn’t hesitate before nodding. “Hell, yes, I do!”
He chuckled, the moment lifting some of tension. Reaching out, he took hold of the knob and slowly turned it. The latch clicked and the door swung open silently, revealing David’s heart to her gaze.
Chapter 27
Diana didn’t know whether to scream in excitement or fall to her knees in shock.
Her hand pressed to her chest, she crossed into the room, her eyes everywhere at once.
It was a large room, larger than the whole of her mother’s living room, dining room
, and kitchen, and one whole wall was windows. The view looked out over the tops of other buildings, a skyline view from there to eternity.
Holding her breath, she continued. The other walls were painted a soft green, with soft yellow bows stenciled throughout. The color scheme was neutral, allowing for either boys or girls—and she loved it. Diana crossed to the nearest crib. It was large, made of white, distressed-looking wood, and boasting more stuffed animals than a carnival. She smiled down at them.
“David…you know the babies can’t sleep with dolls,” she said, grasping at the first thing to say in order to fill the silence.
He scowled. “But what if they get scared or just want to cuddle with something?” he asked, concern making his voice pitch higher.
Lord, but the man was adorable when he was worried.
“Generally, you put twins in the same crib until they are older. That way they can cuddle with each other, comforting one another.”
He rubbed his jaw, seeming to think about it, before sighing heavily. “I suppose that, if they cried, one or both of us could come and cuddle them.”
She nearly gasped. Was he really thinking of them in those terms; her being there at night, with him, when the babies needed them?
Them. A family.
It hurt too much to think about.
Moving away from the crib, Diana walked to one of the dressers. It matched the cribs. She’d been the one to pick all the furniture, having no idea how it would look wherever it ended up, but now she knew. It all looked so perfect.
“What do you think?” David asked, his voice burrowing into her chest, the vulnerability in his tone her undoing.
Tears stung her eyes.
“I think it’s beautiful. The perfect place for the babies.” But what about me?
David came up behind her, wrapping his arms around her, gently placing his palms against her belly. She held her breath. It felt so good to be in his arms, in his embrace like that.