Triplets Under The Tree
Kat Cantrell
This Christmas, he’ll meet his three babies for the first time…and desire their mother in a whole new way!After a plane crash robs him of his memory, billionaire fighter Antonio Cavallari comes home for the holidays to find triplets—and their “mother”—waiting. Antonio doesn’t remember surrogate Caitlyn Hopewell, but he has triplets depending upon him. Who else can he turn to except the woman raising his children…and making him burn with desire?Caitlyn has longed for Antonio secretly for years. Now she’s living in his home, loving his babies…living the life with him she’s always wanted. But then Antonio’s memory returns. And the secrets he’s forgotten will change everything…
“We have challenges in front of us. I’d like to focus on them without … complications.”
That part wasn’t the whole truth, but it was certainly true enough.
It didn’t matter. No more kissing. That was the rule and she was sticking to it.
“Caitlyn. You focus on your challenges your way, and I’ll focus on my challenges my way.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?” she whispered, afraid she wasn’t going to like the answer.
Antonio looked at her. “It means I’m going to kiss you again. You’d best think of another argument if you don’t want me to.”
* * *
Triplets Under the Tree is part of Mills & Boon Desire’s number 1 bestselling series, Billionaires and Babies: Powerful men … wrapped around their babies’ little fingers.
Triplets Under
the Tree
Kat Cantrell
www.millsandboon.co.uk (http://www.millsandboon.co.uk)
KAT CANTRELL read her first Mills & Boon novel in third grade and has been scribbling in notebooks since she learned to spell. What else would she write but romance? She majored in literature, officially with the intent to teach, but somehow ended up buried in middle management in corporate America, until she became a stay-at-home mum and full-time writer.
Kat, her husband and their two boys live in north Texas. When she’s not writing about characters on the journey to happily-ever-after, she can be found at a soccer game, watching the TV show Friends or listening to ‘80s music.
Kat was the 2011 Mills & Boon So You Think You Can Write contest winner and a 2012 RWA Golden Heart Award finalist for best unpublished series contemporary manuscript.
To Diane Spigonardo.
Thanks for the inspiration.
Contents
Cover (#u086d46ad-8d99-59a3-8f78-b3099e7cb15e)
Introduction (#u95a5c905-5c9e-5353-8bb8-b4487251a434)
Title Page (#u07bee88d-fbf5-54c6-a405-34bd77878183)
About the Author (#ua78a1d64-e800-5fcf-a7a7-614ae9d147fd)
Dedication (#uc1ecffab-a722-5863-9c92-a18207690c10)
Prologue (#uec58ee99-bc6a-5fe2-8ac7-7f311c275843)
One (#u617ea33b-b1db-52b8-b6c4-a3c07b036908)
Two (#u779d3db2-fabf-5337-8505-d4626bf404f5)
Three (#u078f305f-e03b-5e08-8eb6-da0ec059bd8d)
Four (#u4741c3ec-2679-53a2-85bf-6c6b5486d80f)
Five (#litres_trial_promo)
Six (#litres_trial_promo)
Seven (#litres_trial_promo)
Eight (#litres_trial_promo)
Nine (#litres_trial_promo)
Ten (#litres_trial_promo)
Eleven (#litres_trial_promo)
Twelve (#litres_trial_promo)
Epilogue (#litres_trial_promo)
Extract (#litres_trial_promo)
Copyright (#litres_trial_promo)
Prologue (#ulink_0ab43e0a-fc86-5d14-8a44-c67865597615)
Near Punggur Besar, Batam Island, Indonesia
Automatically, Falco swung his arm in an arc to block the punch. He hadn’t seen it coming. But a sense he couldn’t explain told him to expect his opponent’s attack.
Counterpunch. His opponent’s head snapped backward. No mercy. Flesh smacked flesh again and again, rhythmically.
The moves came to him fluidly, without thought. He’d been learning from Wilipo for only a few months, but Falco’s muscles already sang with expertise, adopting the techniques easily.
His opponent, Ravi, attacked yet again. Falco ducked and spun to avoid the hit. His right leg ached with the effort, but he ignored it. It always ached where the bone had broken.
From his spot on the sidelines of the dirt-floored ring, Wilipo grunted. The sound meant more footwork, less jabbing.
Wilipo spoke no English and Falco had learned but a handful of words in Bahasa since becoming a student of the sole martial arts master in southern Batam Island. Their communication during training sessions consisted of nods and gestures. A blessing, considering Falco had little to say.
The stench of old fish rent the air, more pungent today with the heat. Gazes locked, Falco and Ravi circled each other. The younger man from a neighboring village had become Falco’s sparring partner a week ago after he’d run out of opponents in his own village. The locals whispered about him and he didn’t need to speak Bahasa to understand they feared him.
He wanted to tell them not to be afraid. But he knew he was more than a strange Westerner in an Asian village full of simple people. More than a man with dangerous fists.
Nearly four seasons ago, a fisherman had found Falco floating in the water, unconscious, with horrific injuries. At least that was what he’d pieced together from the doctor’s halting, limited English.
He should have died before he’d washed ashore in Indonesia and he certainly should have died at some point during the six-month coma his body had required to heal.
But he’d lived.
And when he finally awoke, it was to a nightmare of physical rehabilitation and confusion. His memories were fleeting. Insubstantial. Incomplete. He was the man with no past, no home, no idea who he was other than angry and lost.
The only clue to his identity lay inked across his left pectoral muscle—a fierce, bold falcon tattoo with a scarlet banner clutched in his talons, emblazoned with the word Falco. That was what his saviors called him since he didn’t remember his name, though it chafed to be addressed as such.
Why? It must be a part of his identity. But when he pushed his memory, it only resulted in his fists primed to punch something and a blinding headache. Every waking moment—and even some of those dedicated to sleep—he heard an urgent soul-deep cry to discover why he’d been snatched from the teeth of a cruel death. Surely he’d lived for a reason. Surely he’d remember something critical to set him on the path toward who he was. Every day thus far had ended in disappointment.
Only fighting allowed him moments of peace and clarity as he disciplined his mind to focus on something other than the struggle to remember.
Ravi and Wilipo spoke in rapid Bahasa, leaving the Westerner out of it, as always.
Wilipo grunted again.
That meant it was time to stop sparring. Nodding, Falco halted, breathing heavily. Ravi’s reflexes were not as instantaneous and his fist clipped Falco.
Pain exploded in his head. “Che diavolo!”
The curse had spit from his mouth the moment Ravi struck, though Falco had no conscious knowledge of Italian. Or how he knew it was Italian. The intrigue saved Ravi from being pulverized.
Ravi bowed apologetically, dropping his hands to his sides. Rubbing his temples, Falco scowled over the late shot as a flash of memory spilled into his head.
White stucco. Glass. A house perched on a cliff, overlooking the ocean. Malibu. A warm breeze. A woman with red hair.
His house. He had a home, full of his things, his memories, his life.
The address scrolled through his mind as if it had always been there, along with images of street signs and impressions of direction, and he knew he could find it.
Home. He had to get there. Somehow.
One (#ulink_602917e6-2f8d-5740-ae83-f72e8e83bb28)
Los Angeles, California
At precisely 4:47 a.m., Caitlyn bolted awake, as she did every morning. The babies had started sleeping through the night, thank the good Lord, but despite that, their feeding time had ingrained itself into her body in some kind of whacked-out mommy alarm clock.
No one had warned her of that. Just as no one had warned her that triplets weren’t three times the effort and nail-biting worry of one baby, but more like a zillion times.
But they also came with a zillion times the awe and adoration.
Caitlyn picked up the video monitor from her nightstand and watched her darlings sleep in their individual cribs. Antonio Junior sighed and flopped a fist back and forth as if he knew his mother was watching, but Leon and Annabelle slept like rocks. It was a genetic trait they shared with Vanessa, their biological mother, along with her red hair. Antonio had hair the color of a starless night, like his father.
And if he grew up to be half as hypnotically gorgeous as his father, she’d be beating the women off her son with a Louisville Slugger.
No matter how hard she tried, Caitlyn couldn’t go back to sleep. Exhaustion was a condition she’d learned to live with and, maddeningly, it had nothing to do with how much sleep she got. Having fatherless eight-month-old triplets wreaked havoc on her sanity, and in the hours before dawn, all the questions and doubts and fears crowded into her mind.
Should she be doing more to meet an eligible man? Like what? Hang out in bars wearing a vomit-stained shirt, where she could chat up a few victims. “Hey, baby, have you ever fantasized about going all night long with triplets? Because I’ve got a proposition for you!”
No, the eligible men of Los Angeles were pretty safe from Caitlyn Hopewell, that was for sure. Even without the ready-made family, her relationship rules scared away most men: you didn’t sleep with a man unless you were in love and there was a ring on your finger. Period. It was an absolute that had carried her through college and into adulthood, especially as she’d witnessed what passed for her sister Vanessa’s criteria for getting naked with someone—he’d bought her jewelry or could get her further in her career. Caitlyn didn’t want that for herself. And that pretty much guaranteed she’d stay single.
But how could she ever be enough for three children when, no matter how much she loved them, she wasn’t supposed to be their mother? When she’d agreed to be Vanessa’s surrogate, Caitlyn had planned on a nine-month commitment, not a lifetime. But fate had had different plans.
Caitlyn rolled from the king-size bed she still hadn’t grown used to despite sleeping in it for over a year. Might as well get started on the day at—she squinted at her phone—6:05 a.m. Threading her dark mess of curls through a ponytail holder, she threw on some yoga pants and a top, determined to get in at least twenty minutes of Pilates before Leon awoke.
She spread out her mat on the hardwood floor close to the glass wall overlooking the Malibu coastline, her favorite spot for tranquility. There was a full gym on the first floor of Antonio and Vanessa’s mansion, but she couldn’t bear to use it. Not yet. It had too much of Antonio stamped all over it, what with the mixed martial arts memorabilia hanging from the walls and the regulation ring in the center.
One day she’d clean it out, but as much as she hated the reminders of Antonio, she couldn’t lose the priceless link to him. She hadn’t removed any of Vanessa’s things from the house, either, but had put a good bit away, where she couldn’t see it every day.
Fifteen minutes later, her firstborn yowled through the monitor and Caitlyn dashed to the nursery across the hall from her bedroom before he woke up his brother and sister.
“There’s my precious,” she crooned and scooped up the gorgeous little bundle from his crib.
Like clockwork, he was always the first of the three to demand breakfast, and Caitlyn tried to spend alone time with each of her kids while feeding them. Brigitte, the babies’ au pair, thought she was certifiable for breast-feeding triplets, but Caitlyn didn’t mind. She loved bonding with the babies, and nobody ever saw her naked anyway; it was worth the potential hit to her figure to give the babies a leg up in the nutrition department.
The morning passed in a blur of babies and baths, and just as Caitlyn was about to return a phone call to her lawyer that she’d missed somewhere along the way, someone pounded on the front door.
Delivery guy, she hoped. She’d had to order a new car seat and it could not get here fast enough. Annabelle had christened hers in such a way that no bleach in existence could make it usable again and, honestly, Caitlyn had given up trying. There had to be some benefits to having custodial control of her children’s billion-dollar inheritance.
“Brigitte? Can you get that?” Caitlyn called, but the girl didn’t respond. Probably dealing with one of the kids, which was what she got paid well to do.
With a shrug, Caitlyn pocketed her phone and padded to the door, swinging it wide in full anticipation of a brown uniform–clad man.
It wasn’t UPS. The unshaven man on her doorstep loomed over her, his dark gaze searching and familiar. There was something about the way he tilted his head—
“Antonio!” The strangled word barely made it past her throat as it seized up.
No! It couldn’t be. Antonio had died in the same plane crash as Vanessa, over a year ago. Her brain fuzzed with disappointment, even as her heart latched on to the idea of her children’s father standing before her in the flesh. Lack of sleep was catching up with her.
“Antonio,” the man repeated and his eyes widened. “Do I know you?”
His raspy voice washed over her, turning inside her chest warmly, and tears pricked her eyelids. He even sounded like Antonio. She’d always loved his voice. “No, I don’t think so. For a moment, I thought you were—”
A ghost. She choked it back.
His blank stare shouldn’t have tripped her senses, but all at once, even with a full beard and weighing twenty pounds less, he looked so much like Antonio she couldn’t stop greedily drinking him in.
“This is my house,” he insisted firmly with a hint of wonderment as he glanced around the foyer beyond the open door. “I recognize it. But the Christmas tree is in the wrong place.”
Automatically, she glanced behind her to note the location of the twelve-foot-high blue spruce she’d painstakingly arranged in the living room near the floor-to-ceiling glass wall facing the ocean.
“No, it’s not,” Caitlyn retorted.
Vanessa had always put the tree in the foyer so people could see it when they came in, but Caitlyn liked it by the sea. Then, every time you looked at the tree, you saw the water, too. Seemed logical to her, and this was her house now.
“I don’t remember you.” He cocked his head as if puzzled. “Did I sell you this house?”
She shook her head. “I...uh, live here with the owners.”
The Malibu mansion was actually part of the babies’ estate. She hadn’t wanted to move them from their parents’ house and, according to the terms of Vanessa’s and Antonio’s wills, Caitlyn got to make all the decisions for the children.
“I remember a red-haired woman. Beautiful.” His expression turned hard and slightly desperate. “Who is she?”
“Vanessa,” Caitlyn responded without thinking. She shouldn’t be so free with information. “Who are you?” she demanded.
“I don’t know,” he said between clenched teeth. “I remember flashes, incomplete pictures, and none of it makes sense. Tell me who I am.”
Oh, my God. “You don’t know who you are?” People didn’t really get amnesia the way they did in movies. Did they?
Hand to her mouth, she evaluated this dirty, disheveled man wearing simple cotton pants rolled at the ankles and a torn cotton shirt. It couldn’t be true. Antonio was dead.
If Antonio wasn’t dead, where had he been since the plane crash? If he’d really lost his memory, it could explain why he’d been missing all this time.
But not why he’d suddenly shown up over a year later. Maybe he was one of those con men who preyed on grieving family members, and loss of memory was a convenient out to avoid incriminatory questions that would prove his identity, yet he couldn’t answer.
But he’d known the Christmas tree was in the wrong place. What if he was telling the truth?
Her heart latched on to the idea and wouldn’t let go.
Because— Oh, goodness. She’d always been half in love with her sister’s husband and it all came rushing back. The guilt. The despondency at being passed over for the lush, gorgeous older Hopewell sister, the one who always got everything her heart desired. The covert sidelong glances at Antonio’s profile during family dinners. Fantasies about what it would be like if he’d married her instead of Vanessa. The secret thrill at carrying Antonio’s babies because Vanessa couldn’t, and harboring secret dreams of Antonio falling at her feet, begging Caitlyn to be the mother of his children instead.
Okay, and she’d had a few secret dreams that involved some...carnal scenarios, like how Antonio’s skin would feel against hers. What it would be like to kiss him. And love him in every sense of the word.
For the past six years, Caitlyn had lived with an almost biblical sense of shame, in a “thou shalt not covet thy sister’s husband” kind of way. But she couldn’t help it—Antonio had a wickedly sexy warrior’s body and an enigmatic, watchful gaze that sliced through her when he turned it in her direction. Oh, she had it bad, and she’d never fully reconciled because it was intertwined with guilt—maybe she’d wished her sister ill and that was why the plane had crashed.
The guilt crushed down on her anew.
Tersely, he shook his head and that was when she noticed the scar bisecting his temple, which forked up into his dark, shaggy hair. On second thought, this man looked nothing like Antonio. With hard lines around his mouth, he was sharper, more angular, with shadows in his dark eyes that spoke of nightmares better left unexplained.
“I can’t remem—you called me Antonio.” Something vulnerable welled up in his gaze and then he winced. “Antonio Cavallari. Tell me. Is that my name?”
She hadn’t mentioned Antonio’s last name.
He could have learned the name of her children’s father from anywhere. Los Angeles County tax records. From the millions of internet stories about the death of the former UFC champion and subsequent founder of the billion-dollar enterprise called Falco Fight Club after his career ended. Vanessa had had her own share of fame as an actress, playing the home-wrecking vixen everyone loved to hate on a popular nighttime drama. Her red hair had been part of her trademark look, and when she’d died, the internet had exploded with the news. Her sister’s picture popped up now and again even a year later, so knowing about the color of Vanessa’s hair wasn’t terribly conclusive, either.
He could have pumped the next-door neighbor for information, for that matter.
Caitlyn refused to put her children in danger under any circumstances.
Sweeping him with a glance, she took as much of his measure as she could. But there was no calculation. No suggestion of shrewdness. Just confusion and a hint of the man who’d married her sister six years ago.
“Yes. Antonio Cavallari.” Her eyelids fluttered closed for a beat. What if she was wrong? What if she just wanted him to be Antonio for all the wrong reasons and became the victim of an elaborate fraud? Or worse—the victim of assault?
All at once, he sagged against the door frame, babbling in a foreign language. Stricken, she stared at him. She’d never heard Antonio speak anything other than English.
Her stomach clenched. Blood tests. Dental records. Doctors’ exams. There had to be a thousand ways to prove someone’s identity. But what was she supposed to do? Tell him to come back with proof?
Then his face went white and he pitched to his knees with a feeble curse, landing heavily on the woven welcome mat.
It was a fitting condemnation. Welcoming, she was not.
Throat tight with concern, she blurted out, “Are you okay? What’s wrong?”
“Tired. Hungry,” he stated simply, eyes closed and head lolling to one side. “I walked from the docks.”
“The docks?” Her eyes went wide. “The ones near Long Beach? That’s, like, fifty miles!”
“No identification,” he said hoarsely. “No money.”
The man couldn’t even stand and, good grief, Caitlyn had certainly spent enough time in the company of actors to spot one—his weakened state was real.
“Come inside,” she told him before she thought better of it. “Rest. And drink some water. Then we can sort this out.”
It wasn’t as if she was alone. Brigitte and Rosa, the housekeeper, were both upstairs. He might be Antonio, but that didn’t make him automatically harmless, and who knew what his mental state was? But if he couldn’t stand, he couldn’t threaten anyone, let alone three women armed with cell phones and easy access to Francesco’s top-dollar chef’s knives.
He didn’t even seem to register that she’d spoken, let alone acknowledge what he’d surely been after the whole time—an invitation inside. For a man who could be trying to scam her, he certainly wasn’t chomping at the bit to gain entrance to her home.
Hesitating, she wondered if she should help him to his feet, but the thought of touching him had her hyperventilating. Either he was a strange man, or he was a most familiar one, and neither one gave her an ounce of comfort. Heat feathered across her cheeks as her chaste sensibilities warred with the practicality of helping someone in need.
He swayed and nearly toppled over, forcing her decision.
No way around it. She knelt and grabbed his arm, then slung it across her shoulders. The weight was strange and, oddly, a little exhilarating. The touch of a man was alien, though, no doubt—she hadn’t gone on a date in over two years. Her mind went blank as he slumped against her.
Looping her own arm around his waist, she pushed up with her legs, grateful for the core strength she’d developed through rigorous Pilates, both before and after the babies were born.
Gracious. He smelled like three-day-old fish and other pungencies she hesitated to identify—and she’d have sworn babies produced the worst stench in the world.
The man hobbled along with her across the threshold, thankfully revived enough to do so under his own power. When she paused in front of the pristine eggshell-colored suede sofa in the formal living area, he immediately dropped vertically onto the cushions without hesitation. Groaning, he covered his eyes with his arm.
“Water,” he murmured and lay still as death.
And now for the second dilemma. Leave him unattended while she fetched a glassful from the wet bar across the foyer in Antonio’s study? It wasn’t that far, and she was being silly worrying about a near comatose man posing some sort of threat. She dashed across the marble at breakneck pace, filled the glass at the small stainless-steel sink and dashed back without spilling it, thankfully.
“Here it is,” she said to alert him she’d returned.
The arm over his eyes moved up, sweeping the long, shaggy mane away from his forehead. Blearily he peered at her through bloodshot eyes, and without the hair obscuring his face, he looked totally different. Exactly like Antonio, the man she’d secretly studied, pined over, fantasized about for years. She gasped.
“I won’t hurt you,” he muttered as he sat up, pain etching deeper lines into his face. “Just want water.”
She handed it to him, unable to tear her gaze from his face, even as chunks of matted hair fell back over his forehead. Regardless of her immense guilt over his presumed identity, she couldn’t go on arguing with herself over it. There was one way to settle this matter right now.
“Do you think you’re Antonio?” she asked as he drank deeply from the glass.
“I...” He glanced up at her, his gaze full of emotions she couldn’t name, but those dark, mysterious eyes held her captive. “I don’t remember. That’s why I’m here. I want to know.”
“There’s one way.” Before she lost her courage, she pointed to her chest over her heart as her pulse raced at the promise. “Antonio has a rather elaborate tattoo. Right here. Do you?”
It wouldn’t be impossible to replicate. But difficult, as the tattoo had been commissioned by a famous artist who had a unique tribal style.
Without breaking eye contact, he set his water glass on the side table and unbuttoned his shirt to midchest. Unbuttoned his shirt, as if they were intimate and she had every right to see him unclothed.
“It says Falco. What does it mean?” he asked.
The truth washed through her even before he drew his shirt aside to reveal the red-and-black falcon screaming across his pectoral muscle. Her gaze locked on to the ink, registering the chiseled flesh beneath it, and it kicked at her way down low with a long, hot pull, exactly the way she’d always reacted to Antonio.
She blinked and refocused on his face. The sight of his cut, athletic torso—sun browned and more enthralling than she’d ever have expected—wouldn’t fade from her mind.
That tattoo had always been an electrifying aspect of his dangerous appeal. And, oh, my—it still was.
“It means that’s proof enough for me to know you’re Antonio.” She shut her eyes, unable to process the relief flooding through his gaze. Unable to process the sharp thrill in her midsection that was wholly erotic...and felt an awful lot like trouble. Stunning, resplendent, forbidden Antonio Cavallari was alive. “And we have a lot of hurdles in front of us.”
Everything in her world had just slid off a cliff.
The long, legal nightmare of the past year as she’d fought for her right to the babies had been for nothing. Nearly two years ago, she’d signed a surrogacy agreement, but then a year ago Vanessa and Antonio had crashed into the South China Sea. After months of court appearances, a judge had finally overturned the rights she’d signed away and given her full custody of her children.
Oh, dear Lord. This was Antonio’s home. It was his money. Her children were his. And he had every right to take them away from her.
Two (#ulink_3a3f4817-11f0-5fd3-ab89-7e0c30d946ab)
Antonio—he rolled the name around on his tongue, and it didn’t feel wrong like Falco had. Before Indonesia, he’d been called both Antonio and Falco by blurry-faced people, some with cameras, some with serious expressions as they spoke to him about important matters. A crowd had chanted Falco like a tribal drum, bouncing off the ceiling of a huge, cavernous arena.
The headache nearly flattened him again, as it always did when he tried too hard to force open his mind.
Instead, he contemplated the blushing, dark-haired and very attractive woman who seemed vaguely familiar but not enough to place her. She didn’t belong in his house. She shouldn’t be living here, but he had no clue where that sense came from. “What is your name?”
“Caitlyn. Hopewell,” she added in what appeared to be an afterthought. “Vanessa is—was—my sister.” She eyed him. “You remember Vanessa but not me?”
“The redhead?” At Caitlyn’s nod, he frowned.
No, he didn’t remember Vanessa, not the way he remembered his house. A woman with flame-colored hair haunted his dreams. Bits and pieces floated through his mind. The images were laced with flashes of her flesh as if he’d often seen her naked, but her face wouldn’t quite clarify, as though he’d created an impressionist painting of this woman whose name he couldn’t recall.
Frustration rose again. Because how was it fair that he knew exactly what an impressionist painting was but not who he was?
After Ravi had knocked loose the memories of his house, Antonio had left Indonesia the next morning, hopping fishing boats and stowing away amidst heavy cargo containers for days and days, all to reach Los Angeles in hopes of regaining more precious links with his past.
This delicate, ethereally beautiful woman—Caitlyn—held a few of these keys, and he needed her to provide them. “Who is Vanessa to me?”
“Your wife,” she announced softly. “You didn’t know that?”
He shook his head. Married. He was married to Vanessa? It was an entire piece of his life, his persona, he’d had no idea existed. Had he been in love with her? Had his wife looked for him at all, distraught over his fate, or just written him off when he went missing?
Would he even recognize Vanessa if she stood before him?
Glancing around the living room for which he’d instantly and distinctly recalled purchasing the furnishings—without the help of anyone, let alone the red-haired woman teasing the edges of his memory—he asked, “Where is she?”
“She died.” Grief welled up across her classical features. The sisters must have been close, which was probably why Caitlyn seemed familiar. “You were both involved in the same plane crash shortly after leaving Thailand.”
“Plane crash?” The wispy images of the red-haired woman vanished as he zeroed in on Caitlyn. “Is that what happened?”
Thailand. He’d visited Thailand—but never made it home. Until now.
Eyes bright with unshed tears, she nodded, dark ponytail flipping over her shoulder. “Over a year ago.”
All at once, he wanted to mourn for this wife he couldn’t remember. Because it would mean he could still experience emotions that stayed maddeningly out of reach, emotions with clinical definitions—love, peace, happiness, fulfillment, the list went on and on—but which had no real context. He wanted to feel something other than discouraged and adrift.
His head ached, but he pressed on, determined to unearth more clues to how he’d started out on a plane from Thailand and ended up in a fishing village in Indonesia. Alone. “But I was on the plane. And I’m not dead. Maybe Vanessa is still alive, too.”
Her name produced a small ping in his heart, but he couldn’t be certain if the feeling lingered from before the crash or if he’d manufactured it out of his intense need to remember.
Hand to her mouth, Caitlyn bowed her head. “No. They recovered her...body,” she murmured, her voice thick. “They found the majority of the fuselage in the water. Most of the forty-seven people on board were still in their seats.”
Vivid, gory images spilled into his mind as he imagined the horrors his wife—and the rest of the passengers—must have gone through before succumbing to the death he’d escaped.
“Except me.”
For the first time, his reality felt a bit like a miracle instead of a punishment. How had he escaped? Had he unbuckled himself in time to avoid drowning or had he been thrown free of the wreckage?
“Except you,” she agreed, though apparently it had taken the revelation of his strange falcon tattoo to convince her. “And two other passengers, who were sitting across the aisle from you in first class. You were all in the first row, including Vanessa. They searched for survivors for a week, but there was no trace.”
“They were looking in the wrong place,” he growled. “I washed up on the beach in Indonesia. On the south side of Batam Island.”
“I don’t know my geography, but the plane crashed into the ocean near the coast of Malaysia. That’s where they focused the search.”
No wonder no one had found him. They’d been hundreds of miles off.
“After a month,” she continued, “they declared all three of you dead.”
But he wasn’t dead.
The other two passengers might have survived, as well. Look for them. They might be suffering from memory loss or ghastly injuries. They might be frightened and alone, having clawed their way out of a watery crypt, only to face a fully awake nightmare. As he had.
He had to find them. But he had no money, no resources—not at this moment anyway. He must have money, or at least he must have had some once. The sum he’d paid for this house popped into his head out of nowhere: fifteen point eight million dollars. That had been eight years ago.
Groaning, he rubbed his temples as the headache grew uncontrollable.
“Are you okay?” Caitlyn asked.
Ensuring the comfort of others seemed to come naturally to this woman he’d found living in his house. His sister-in-law. Had she always been so nurturing?
“Fine,” he said between clenched teeth. “Is this still my house?”
He could sell it and use the proceeds to live on while he combed the South China Sea.
Caitlyn chose that moment to sit next to him on the couch, overwhelming him with the light scent of coconut, which, strangely, made him want to bury his nose in her hair.
“Technically, no. When you were declared dead, it passed to your heirs.”
“You mean Vanessa’s?” Seemed as if his wife’s sister had made out pretty well after the plane crash. “Are you the only heir? Because I’m not dead and I want my money back.”
It was the only way he could launch a search for the other two missing passengers.
“Oh.” She stared at him, her sea-glass-blue eyes wide with guilt and a myriad of other emotions he suddenly wished to understand.
Because looking into her eyes made him feel something. Something good and beautiful and he didn’t want to stop drowning in her gaze.
“You don’t remember, do you?” she asked. “Oh, my gosh. I’ve been rambling and you don’t even know about the babies.”
Blood rushed from his head so fast, his ears popped.
“Babies?” he croaked. Surely she didn’t mean babies, plural, as in more than one? As in his babies?
“Triplets.” She shot him a misty smile that heightened her ethereal beauty. Which he wished he could appreciate, but there was no way, not with the bomb she’d just dropped. “And by some miracle, they still have a father. You. Would you like to meet them?”
“I...” A father. He had children? Three of them, apparently. “They’re really mine?” Stupid question, but this was beyond—he shook his head. “How old are they? Do they remember me?”
“Oh, no, they weren’t born yet when you went to Thailand.”
He frowned. “But you said Vanessa died in the plane crash. Is she not their mother?”
Had he cheated on his wife with another woman? Catholic-school lessons from his youth blasted through his mind instantly. Infidelity was wrong.
“She’s not,” Caitlyn refuted definitively. “I am.”
Guilt and shame cramped his gut as he eyed Caitlyn. He’d cheated on his wife with his sister-in-law? The thought was reprehensible.
But it explained the instant visceral reaction he had to her.
Her delicate, refined beauty didn’t match the obvious lushness of the redhead he’d married. Maybe that was the point. He really preferred a dark-haired, more classically attractive woman like Caitlyn if he’d fathered children with her.
“Were we having an affair?” he asked bluntly. And would he have a serious fight to regain control of his money now that his mistress had her hooks into it?
Pink spread across her cheeks in a gorgeous blush, and a foreign heaviness filled his chest, spreading to heat his lower half. Though he couldn’t recall having made love to her before, he had no trouble recognizing the raw, carnal attraction to Caitlyn. Obviously, she was precisely the woman he preferred, judging by his body’s unfiltered reaction.
“Of course not!” She wouldn’t meet his gaze, and her blush deepened. “You were married to my sister and I would never—well, I mean, I did meet you first and, okay, maybe I thought about...but then I introduced you to Vanessa. That was that. You were hers. Not that I blame you—”
“Caitlyn.”
Her name alone caused that strange fullness in his chest. He’d like to say it again. Whisper it to her as he learned what she tasted like.
She glanced up, finally silenced, and he would very much like to understand why her self-conscious babbling had caused the corners of his mouth to turn up. It was evident from the way she nervously twisted her fingers together that she had no concept of how to lie. They’d never been involved. He’d stake his life on it.
He cleared his raspy throat. “How did the children come to be, then?”
“Oh. I was your surrogate. Yours and Vanessa’s. The children are a hundred percent your DNA, grown in my womb.” She wrinkled her nose. “That sounds so scientific. Vanessa couldn’t conceive, so I volunteered to carry the baby. Granted, I didn’t know three eggs were going to take.”
She laughed and he somehow found the energy to be charmed by her light spirit. “So Vanessa and I, we were happy?”
If only he could remember her. Remember if they’d laughed together as he vaguely sensed that lovers should. Had they dreamed together of the babies on the way, planning for their family? Had she cried out in her last moments, grief stricken that she’d never hold her children?
“Madly in love.” Caitlyn sighed happily. “It was a grand story. Falco and the Vixen. The media adored you guys. I’ll go ask Brigitte, the au pair, to bring down the babies.”
Reality overwhelmed him.
“Wait.” Panicked all of a sudden, he clamped down on her arm before she could rise. “I can’t... They don’t know me.”
He was a father. But so far from a father, he couldn’t fathom the idea of three helpless infants under his care. What if he broke one? What if he scared them? How did you handle a baby? How did you handle three?
“Five minutes,” she said calmly. “Say hello. See them and count their fingers and toes. Then I’ll have Brigitte take them away. They’ll get used to you, I promise.”
But would he get used to them? “Five minutes. And then I’d like to clean up. Eat.”
Breathe. Get his bearings. Figure out how to be Antonio Cavallari again before he had to figure out how to be Antonio Cavallari plus three.
“Of course. I’m sorry, I should have thought of that.” Dismay curved her mouth downward.
“There is no protocol when the dead come back to life,” he countered drily and smiled. Apparently he’d found a sense of humor along with his home.
His head spun as Caitlyn disappeared upstairs to retrieve the babies and Brigitte, whoever that was. A few minutes later, she returned, followed by a young blonde girl pushing a three-seated carriage. Everything faded away as he saw his children.
Three little heads rested against the cushions, with three sets of eyes and three mouths. Wonder and awe crushed his heart as he drank in the sight of these creatures he’d had a hand in creating.
“They’re really mine?” he whispered.
“Really, really,” Caitlyn confirmed at normal volume, her tone slightly amused.
She picked up the one from the first seat and held him in the crook of her arm, angling the baby to face him. The blue outfit meant this was his son, didn’t it?
“This is Leon.” Her mouth quirked. “He’s named after my father. I guess it’s too late to ask if that’s okay, but I thought it was a nice tribute to Vanessa’s role in his heritage.”
“It’s fine.”
Antonio was still whispering, but his voice caught in his throat and he couldn’t have uttered another sound as his son mewled like a hungry cat, his gaze sharp and bright as he cocked his head as if contemplating the secrets of the universe.
His son. Leon.
Such a simple concept, procreating. People did it every day in all corners of the world. Wilipo had fourteen children and as far as Antonio could tell, never thought it particularly miraculous.
But it was.
This little person with the short baby-fine red hair was his child.
“You can say hello,” Caitlyn reminded him.
“Hello.” His son didn’t acknowledge that Antonio had spoken, preferring to bury his head in Caitlyn’s shoulder. Had he said the wrong thing? Maybe his voice was too scratchy.
“He’ll warm up, I promise.” She slid Leon back into the baby seat and picked up the next one.
The pink outfit filled his vision and stung his eyes. He had a daughter. The heart he could have sworn was already full of his son grew so big, he was shocked it hadn’t burst from his rib cage.
“This is Annabelle. I always wanted to have a daughter named Annabelle,” Caitlyn informed him casually, as if they were discussing the weather instead of this little bundle of perfection.
“She has red hair, too,” he murmured. “Like her brother.”
Her beautiful face turned up at the sound of his voice and he got lost in her blue eyes.
He had a very bad feeling that the word no had just vanished from his vocabulary, and he looked forward to spoiling his daughter to the point of ridiculousness.
“Yes, she and Leon take after Vanessa. Which means Annabelle will be a knockout by the time she’s fourteen. Be warned,” she said wryly with a half laugh.
“I know martial arts,” he muttered. “Any smarmy Romeo with illicit intentions will find himself minus a spleen if he touches my daughter.”
Caitlyn smirked. “I don’t think a male on the planet would come within fifty yards of Annabelle if they knew you were her father. I was warning you about her.”
With that cryptic comment, she spirited away his daughter far too quickly and replaced her with the third baby, clad in blue.
“This is Antonio Junior,” Caitlyn said quietly and moved closer to present his other son. “He looks just like you, don’t you think?”
Dark hair capped a serious face with dark eyes. Antonio studied this third child and his gut lurched with an unnatural sense of recognition, as if the missing pieces of his soul had been snapped into place to form this tiny person.
“Yes,” he whispered.
And suddenly, his new lease on life had a purpose.
When he’d set off from Indonesia to find his past, he’d never dreamed he’d instead find his future. A tragic plane crash had nearly robbed these three innocent lives of both their parents, but against all odds, Antonio had survived.
Now he knew why. So he could be a father.
* * *
As promised, Caitlyn rounded up the babies and sent them upstairs with Brigitte so Antonio could decompress. Brigitte, bless her, didn’t ask any more questions about Antonio’s presence, but Caitlyn could tell her hurried explanation that he’d been ill and unable to travel home hadn’t satisfied the au pair. Neither would it be enough for the hordes of media and legal hounds who would be snapping at their heels soon enough.
The amazing return of Antonio Cavallari would make worldwide headlines, of that she was sure. But first, he needed to rest and then see a discreet doctor. The world didn’t have to know right away. The household staff had signed nondisclosure agreements, and in Hollywood, that was taken so seriously, none of them would ever work again if they broke it. So Caitlyn felt fairly confident the few people who knew about the situation would keep quiet.
She showed him to the master suite, glad now that she’d never cleaned it out, though she’d have to get Rosa to pack up Vanessa’s things. It was too morbid to expect him to use his former bedroom with his late wife’s clothes still in the dresser.
“I’ll send Rosa, the housekeeper, up with something to eat,” she promised and left him to clean up.
She wandered to the sunroom and pretended to read a book about parenting multiples on her e-reader, but she couldn’t clear the jagged emotion from her throat. Antonio’s face when he’d met his children for the first time... It had been amazing to see that much love crowd into his expression instantly. She wished he could have been there in the delivery room, to hold her hand and smile at her like that. Tell her everything would be okay and he’d still think she was beautiful even with a C-section scar.
Except if he had been there, he’d have held Vanessa’s hand, not hers, and the reality squelched Caitlyn’s little daydream.
The babies were his. It wouldn’t take long for a judge to overturn her custody rights, not when she’d signed a surrogacy agreement that stated she’d have no claim over the babies once they were born.
But the babies were hers, too. The hospital had listed her name on their birth certificates as their mother—who else would they have named? She’d been their sole parent for nearly eight months and before that, carried them in her womb for months, knowing they weren’t going home with Vanessa and Antonio as planned, but with her.
It was a mess, and more than anything, she wanted to do what was best for the babies. Not for the first time, she wished her mother was still alive; Caitlyn could use some advice.
An hour later, Antonio reappeared.
He filled the doorway of the sunroom and the late-afternoon rays highlighted his form with an otherworldly glow that revealed the true nature of his return to this realm—as that of an angel.
She gasped, hand flying to her mouth.
Then he moved into the room and became flesh and blood once again. But no less beautiful.
He’d trimmed his full beard, revealing his deep cheekbones and allowing his arresting eyes to become the focal point of his face. He’d swept back his still long midnight-colored hair and dressed in his old clothes, which didn’t fit nearly as well as they once had, but a man as devastatingly handsome as Antonio could make a bedsheet draped over his body work.
Heat swept along her cheeks as she imagined exactly that, and it did not resemble the toga she’d meant to envision. Antonio, spread out on the bed, sheet barely covering his sinewy, drool-worthy fighter’s physique, gaze dark and full of desire...for her... She shook her head. That was the last thing she should be thinking about for a hundred reasons, but Antonio Junior, Leon and Annabelle were the top three and she needed to get a few things straight with their father. No naked masculine chests required for that conversation.
“You look...different,” she squawked.
Nice. Tip him off that you’re thinking naughty thoughts.
“You kept my clothes?” He pointed to the jeans slung low on his lean hips. “And my shaving equipment?”
All of which he apparently remembered just fine as he’d slipped back into his precrash look easily. Antonio had always been gorgeous as sin, built like a lost Michelangelo sculpture with a side of raw, masculine power. And she was still salivating over him. A year in Indonesia hadn’t changed that, apparently.
She shrugged and tried to make herself stop staring at him, which didn’t exactly work. “I kept meaning to go through that room, but I thought maybe there would be something the babies would want. So I left it.”
“I’m glad you did. Thank you.” His small smile tripped a long liquid pull inside and she tamped it down. Or she almost did. It was too delicious to fully let it go.
Serious. Talk. Now, she told herself sternly.
“I had a gym,” he said before she could work up the courage to bring up item one on her long list of issues. “Did you leave it alone, too?”
“It’s untouched.”
“I need to see it. Will you come with me?”
Surprised, she nodded. “Of course.”
Was it wrong to be thrilled he’d asked her to be with him as he delved into his past?
Well, if that was wrong, it was probably just as wrong to still have a thing for him all these years later. If only she hadn’t given up so easily when she’d first met him—it was still one of her biggest regrets.
But then, her relationship rules didn’t afford much hope unless a man was interested enough to hang around for the long haul. She’d thought maybe Antonio might have been, once upon a time. The way he’d flirted with her when they’d met, as though he thought she was beautiful, had floored her...and then Vanessa had entered stage left, which had dried up his interest in the chaste sister.
She followed him as he strolled directly to the gym, mystified how he remembered the way, and halted next to him as he quietly took in the posters advertising his many fights, his championship belts and publicity shots of himself clad in shorts and striking a fierce pose.
There was something wicked about staring at a photo of Antonio half clothed while standing next to the fully dressed version, knowing that falcon tattoo sat under his shirt, waiting to be discovered by a woman’s fingers. Her fingers. What would it feel like?
Sometimes she dreamed about that.
“Do you remember any of this?” she asked as the silence stretched. She couldn’t keep thinking about Antonio’s naked chest. Which became more difficult the longer they stood there, his heat nearly palpable. He even smelled like sin.
“Bits and pieces,” he finally said. “I didn’t know I had martial arts training. I thought I was remembering a movie, because I wasn’t always in the ring. Sometimes I was outside the ring, watching.”
“Oh, like watching other fighters? Maybe you’re remembering Falco,” she offered. “The fight club.”
He shook his head as if to clear it. “I feel as if I should know what that is.”
He didn’t remember Falco, either? Antonio had lived and breathed that place, much to Vanessa’s dismay on many occasions. Her sister had hoped to see her husband more often once his time in the ring was up, but the opposite had proved true.
Caitlyn led him to a picture on the wall, the one of him standing with two fighters about to enter the ring. “Falco is your MMA promotional venue. You founded it once your career ended. That’s where you made all your money.”
“When did I stop fighting?”
“It wasn’t long after you and Vanessa got married. You don’t remember that, either?” When he shook his head, she told him what little she knew about his last fight. “Brian Kerr nearly killed you. Illegal punch to the back of your head and you hit the floor at a bad angle. Knocked you out. You were in the hospital unconscious for two days. That’s probably why your amnesia is so pronounced. Your brain has sustained quite a bit of trauma.”
Really, he should have already been checked out by a competent doctor, but he’d refused when she’d mentioned it earlier. It wasn’t as if she could make him. Caitlyn had no experience with amnesia or a powerful man who wouldn’t admit to weakness.
Deep down, she had an undeniable desire to gain some experience, especially since it came wrapped in an Antonio package.
He stared at the picture for a moment. “Falco is the name of my company,” he announced cautiously as if testing it out. “It’s not my name.”
Her heart ached over his obvious confusion. She wanted to help him, to erase that small bit of helplessness she would never have associated with confident, solid Antonio Cavallari if she hadn’t seen it firsthand.
“Falco was your nickname when you were fighting. You transferred it to your promotional company because I guess it had some sentimental value.” Not that he’d ever discussed it with her. It was an assumption everyone had made, regardless.
“What happened to my company while I was missing?”
Missing—was that how he’d thought of himself? She tried to put herself in his place, waking up with few memories, in a strange place, with strange people who spoke a different language, all while recuperating from a plane crash and near drowning. The picture was not pretty, which tugged at her heart anew.
“I, um, have control over it.” And it had languished like the bedroom and his gym.
What did she know about running an MMA promotional company? But she couldn’t have sold it or tried to step into his shoes. In many ways, his place in the world had been on accidental hold, as if a higher power had stilled her hand from dismantling Antonio’s life. It had been here, waiting for him to slip back into it.
His expression hardened and the glimpse of vulnerability vanished. “I want control of my estate. And my company. Do whatever you have to do to make that happen.”
The rasp in his voice, which hadn’t been there before he got on that plane, laced his statement with a menacing undertone. He seemed more like a stranger in that moment than he had when he’d first appeared on her doorstep, unkempt and unrecognizable.
It was a brutal reminder that he wasn’t the same man. He wasn’t a safe fantasy come to life. And she wasn’t her sister, a woman who could easily handle a man like Antonio—worse, she wasn’t the woman he’d picked.
“It’s a lot to process, I realize,” she said slowly as her pulse skittered out of control. This harder, hooded Antonio was impossible to read, and she had no idea how to handle this unprecedented situation. “But you just got back to the States. You don’t even remember Falco, let alone how to run it. Why don’t you take a few days, get your bearings? I’ll help you.”
The offer was genuine. But it also kept her in his proximity so she could figure out his plans. If she got a hint that he was thinking about fighting her for custody of the triplets, she’d be ready. She was their mother, and this man—who was still very much a ghost of his former self—was not taking away her children.
Three (#ulink_87d83fca-3f6f-58e3-b310-3c7941096745)
Antonio shifted his iron-hard gaze from the pictures on the wall to evaluate Caitlyn coolly, which did not help her pulse. Nothing in her limited experience had prepared her to face down a man like Antonio, but she had to make him agree to a few ground rules.
“You cannot fathom what I’ve been through over the past year,” he stated firmly. “I want nothing more than to pick up the pieces of my life and begin the next chapter with these new cards I’ve been dealt. I need my identity back.”
Which was a perfectly reasonable request, but executing it more closely resembled unsnarling a knotted skein of yarn than simply handing over a few account numbers. This was one time when she couldn’t afford to back down.
Caitlyn nodded and took a deep breath. “I understand, and I’m not suggesting otherwise. The problem is that a lot of legalities are involved and I have to look out for the interests of the children.”
His gaze softened, warming her, and she didn’t know what to do with that, either.
“I’m thinking of the children, as well.”
“Good. Then, it would be best to take things slowly. You’ve been gone for a long time and the babies have a routine. It would be catastrophic to disrupt them.”
He pursed his lips. “If you’re concerned that I might dismiss the nanny, I can assure you I have no intention of doing so. I couldn’t care for one child by myself, let alone three.”
Her stomach jolted and she swallowed, gearing up to lay it on the line. “You won’t be by yourself. I’ll still be here.”
If only her voice hadn’t squeaked, that might have come across more definitively. Besides, she was still breast-feeding and didn’t plan to stop until the triplets were a year old. She was irreplaceable, as far as she was concerned.
“You’re free to get back to your life,” he said with a puzzled frown. “There’s no reason for you to continue in your role as caretaker now that I’ve returned.”
“Whoa.” She threw up a palm as the back of her neck heated in a sweaty combination of anger and fear. “Where did you get the idea that I’m just a caretaker? The babies are mine. I’m their mother.”
Nothing she’d said thus far had sunk in, obviously.
Antonio crossed his arms and contemplated her. “You said you were the surrogate. A huge sacrifice, to be sure, but the children would have been mine and Vanessa’s. You’ve been forced to care for them much longer than anyone has a right to ask. I’m relieving you of the responsibility.”
Her worst nightmare roared to life, pulsing and seething as it went for her jugular.
“No!” A tear rolled down her face before she could stop it as she tried to summon up a reasonable argument against the truth in his words. “That’s not what happened. I care for them because I love them. They became mine in every sense when I thought you and Vanessa were both gone. I need them. And they need me. Don’t take away my babies.”
A sob choked off whatever else she’d been about to say. The one and only time she’d ever tried to fight for something, and instead of using logic and reason, she’d turned into an emotional mess.
Concern weighted Antonio’s expression as he reached out to grasp her hand in a totally surprising move. His fingers found hers and squeezed tightly, shooting an unexpected thrill through her that she couldn’t contain. Coupled with the emotional distress, it was almost overwhelming.
“Don’t cry.” The lines around his eyes deepened as he heaved a ragged sigh. “I don’t know how to do this.”
“But you don’t have to know,” she countered, clinging to his hand like a lifeline. “That’s what I’m trying to tell you. Don’t change anything. It’s Christmastime and we’re family, if nothing else. I’ll stay here and continue to care for the babies, then we can spend this time figuring it out together. After the first of the year, maybe the path will seem clearer.”
Please, God.
Relief coursed through her as he slowly nodded. “I want to be as fair as possible to everyone. If you don’t have a life to get back to, then it makes sense for you to stay here. At least until January.”
“This is my life.”
Or at least it was now, since she’d given up her job as an accountant. She had no desire to be anything other than the mother she’d become over the past year. And now she had until the first of January to find a way to stay in that role. If Antonio decided his children would be better off in another arrangement, she had little to say about it.
What would she do without the family she’d formed?
“Caitlyn, I appreciate what you’ve done.” His dark eyes sought hers and held, his gratitude genuine. “You stepped into my place to care for my children. Thank you.”
That he recognized her efforts meant the world to her. He was a good man, deep inside where brain trauma couldn’t touch. As she’d always known.
She nodded, still too emotional to respond, but the sentiment gave her hope. He wasn’t heartless, just trying to do the right thing.
Somehow, Antonio had to recognize that she was the right thing for the children and then the two of them could figure out how to be co-parents. After learning how to handle triplets, that should be a walk in the park.
* * *
The next two days passed in a blur. When Caitlyn had mentioned legalities, Antonio had half thought it was an excuse to avoid giving up control of his money. But she’d vastly understated the actuality. An avalanche of paperwork awaited him once the man who’d been his lawyer for a decade became convinced Antonio had really returned from the dead.
Funny how he’d instantly recognized Kyle Lowery the moment his lawyer’s admin had ushered Antonio and Caitlyn into the man’s office. His memory problems were inconsistent and frustrating, to say the least.
Antonio’s headache persisted and grew worse the more documents Kyle’s paralegal placed in front of him. The harsh lights glinting from the gold balls on the Christmas tree in the corner didn’t help. Antonio wished he could enjoy the spirit of the season.
But Christmas and family and all of the joy others seemed to associate with this time of year meant little to him. Caitlyn had told him that his parents had died some time back, which probably explained why he remembered them with a sense of distance, as if the scenes had happened long ago.
After many more stops and an interminable number of hours, he had: a temporary driver’s license, a temporary bank card, a promise of credit cards to come, a bank teller who’d fallen all over herself to give him access to his safe-deposit box...and a dark-haired enigma of a woman who’d stuck to his side like glue, determined to help him navigate the exhausting quagmire reentering his life had become.
Why was she still here?
Why did her presence make him so happy? She somehow made everything better just by being near him. And sometimes, she looked at him a certain way that burrowed under his skin with tingly warmth. Both had become necessary. Unexpectedly so.
He studied her covertly at lunch on the third day after he’d pounded on the door of his Malibu house, delirious and determined to find answers to the question marks in his mind.
What he’d found still hadn’t fully registered. Caitlyn was an amazing woman and his kids were surprising, funny little people. Together, they were a potent package. But how did that make sense? She wasn’t their biological mother.
While Antonio absently chewed on a thick sandwich designed to put back some of his lost weight, Caitlyn laughed at Leon as he shoved his food off his tray to the floor below.
She’d insisted on the triplets sitting at the table when the adults had meals, even though the babies ate little more than puree of something and bits of Cheerios. Antonio wouldn’t have thought of having infants join them, but with the additions, eating became something more than a routine. It was a chance to spend time with his children without expectation since Brigitte and Caitlyn handled everything.
Secretly, he was grateful Caitlyn hadn’t skipped through the door the moment he’d given her the out. In the hazy reaches of his mind, he had the distinct impression most women would have run very fast in the other direction from triplets. He couldn’t understand Caitlyn’s motivation for staying unless she thought she’d get a chunk of his estate as a thank-you. Which he’d probably give her. She deserved something for her sacrifices.
“Your turn.”
Antonio did a double take at the spoon in Caitlyn’s outstretched hand and blinked. “My turn to what?”
“Feed your daughter. She won’t bite you.” Caitlyn raised her brows and nodded at the spoon. “Of the three, Annabelle is the most laid-back about eating, so start with her.”
Since he couldn’t see a graceful way to refuse, he accepted the spoon and scooted closer to the baby’s high chair, eyeing the bowl of...whatever it was. Orange applesauce?
Scowling, he scooped some up and then squinted at the baby watching him with bright eyes. How was he supposed to feed her with her fingers stuck in her mouth?
“Come on, open,” he commanded.
Annabelle fluttered her lashes and made an uncomplimentary noise, fingers firmly wedged where the spoon was supposed to go.
He tried again. “Please?”
Caitlyn giggled and he glanced at her askance, which only made her laugh harder. He rolled his shoulders, determined to pass this one small test, but getting his daughter to eat might top the list of the most difficult things he had to do today.
Antonio had learned to walk again on the poorly healed broken leg that the Indonesian doctor had promised would have to be amputated. He’d defied the odds and scarcely even had a limp now. If he could do that, one very small person could not break him.
He tapped the back of Annabelle’s hand with the edge of the spoon, hoping that would act as an open sesame, but she picked that moment to yank her fingers free. She backhanded the spoon, flinging it free of Antonio’s grip. It hit the wall with a thunk, leaving a splash of orange in a trail to the floor.
Frustration welled. He balled his fists automatically and then immediately shoved them into his lap as horror filtered through him. His first instinct was to fight, but he had to control that impulse, or else what kind of father was he going to be?
Breathing rhythmically, he willed back the frustration until his fists loosened. Better.
His first foray into caring for his kid and she elected to show him her best defensive moves. Annabelle blinked innocently as Antonio’s scowl deepened. “Yeah, you work on that technique, and when you’ve got your spinning backhand down, we’ll talk.”
Spinning backhand. The phrase had leaped into his mind with no forethought. Instantly other techniques scrolled through his head. Muay Thai. That had been his specialty. His “training” with Wilipo had come so easily because Antonio should have been teaching the class as the master, not attending as the student.
Faster now, ingrained drills, disciplines and defense strategies exploded in his mind. Why now instead of in his gym, surrounded by the relics of his former status as a mixed martial arts champion?
The headache slammed him harder than ever before and the groan escaped before he could catch it.
“It’s okay,” Caitlyn said and jumped up to retrieve the spoon. “You don’t have to feed her. I just thought you might like it.”
“No problem,” he said around the splitting pain in his temples. “Excuse me.”
He mounted the stairs to his bedroom and shut himself away in the darkened room, but refused to lie on the bed like an invalid.
Instead, he sank into a chair and put his head in his hands. This couldn’t go on, the rush of memories and the headaches and the inability to do simple tasks like stick a spoon in a baby’s mouth without becoming irrational.
But how did he change it?
Coming to LA was supposed to solve everything, give him back his memories and his life. It had only highlighted how very far he had yet to go in his journey back to the land of the living.
An hour later, the pain was manageable enough to try being civilized again. Antonio tracked down Caitlyn in the sunroom, which seemed to be her favored spot when she wasn’t hanging out with the babies. Her dark curls partially obscured the e-reader in her hands and she seemed absorbed in the words on the screen.
“I’ll visit a doctor,” he told her shortly and spun to leave before she asked any questions. She’d been after him to see one, but he’d thus far refused, having had enough of the medical profession during his months and months of rehabilitation in Indonesia.
No doctor could restore his memories, nor could one erase the scars he bore from the plane crash.
But if a Western doctor had a way to make his headaches go away, that would be stellar. He had to become a father, one way or another, and living in a crippling state of pain wasn’t going to cut it.
“I’ll drive you.” She followed him into the hall. “Just because you have a driver’s license doesn’t mean you’re ready to get behind the wheel. We’ll take my—”
“Caitlyn.” He whirled to face her, but she kept going, smacking into his chest.
His arms came up as they both nearly lost their balance and somehow she ended up pinned to the wall, their bodies tangled and flush. His lower half sprang to attention and heat shot through his gut.
Caitlyn’s wide-eyed gaze captured his and he couldn’t have broken the connection if his life depended on it. Her chest heaved against his as if she was unable to catch her breath, and that excited him, too.
“Caitlyn,” he murmured again, but that seemed to be the extent of his ability to speak as her lips parted, drawing his attention to her mouth. She caught her plump bottom lip between her teeth and—
“Um, you can let go now,” she said and cleared her throat. “I’m okay.”
He released her, stepping back to allow her the space she’d asked for, though it was far from what he wanted to do. “I’m curious about something.”
Nervously, she rearranged her glossy hair, refusing to meet his eyes. “Sure.”
“You said that you introduced me to Vanessa. How did you and I meet?” Because if he’d ever held Caitlyn in his arms before, he was an idiot if he’d willingly let her go.
“I was Rick’s accountant.” At his raised brows, she smiled. “Your former manager. He’d gone through several CPAs until he found me, and when I came by his house to do his quarterly taxes, you were there. You were wearing a pink shirt for a breast cancer fund-raiser you’d attended. We got to talking and somehow thirty minutes passed in a blur.”
Nothing wrong with her memory, clearly, and it was more than a little flattering that she recalled his clothing from that day.
“And there was something about me that you didn’t like?” Obviously, or she wouldn’t have matched him up with her sister. Maybe she’d only thought of him as a friend.
“Oh, no! You were great. Gorgeous and gentlemanly.” The blush that never seemed far from the surface of her skin bloomed again, heightening the blue in her eyes. “I mean, I might have been a little starstruck, which is silly, considering how many celebrities I’ve done taxes for.”
That pleased him even more than her pink-shirt comment, and he wanted to learn more about this selfless woman who’d apparently been a part of his life for a long time. “You’re an accountant, then?”
“Not anymore. I gave up all my clients when...Vanessa died.” She laughed self-consciously. “It’s hard to retrain my brain to no longer say ‘when Antonio and Vanessa died’.”
The mention of his wife sent an unexpected spike of sadness through his gut. “I don’t remember being married to her. Did you think we’d be a good couple? Is that why you introduced us?”
All at once, a troubling sense of disloyalty effectively killed the discovery mode he’d fallen into with Caitlyn. He had no context for his relationship with Vanessa, but she’d been his wife and this woman was his sister-in-law. He shouldn’t be thinking about Caitlyn as anything other than a temporary mother to his children. She’d probably be horrified at the direction of his thoughts.
“Oh. No, I mentioned that she was my sister and you asked to meet her. I don’t think you even noticed me after that. Vanessa is—was—much more memorable than me.”
“I beg to differ,” he countered wryly, which pulled a smile out of her. “When I close my eyes, yours is the only face I can picture.”
Apparently he couldn’t help himself. Did he automatically flirt with beautiful women or just this one?
More blushing. But he wasn’t going to apologize for the messed-up state of his mind or the distinct pleasure he’d discovered at baiting this delicate-skinned woman. He’d needed something that made him feel good. Was that so wrong?
“Well, she was beautiful and famous. I didn’t blame you for wanting an introduction. Most people did.”
“Famous?” Somehow that didn’t seem like valid criteria for wishing to meet a woman.
Caitlyn explained that Vanessa starred on Beacon Street, a TV show beloved by millions of fans, and then with a misty sigh, Caitlyn waxed poetic about their fairy-tale wedding. “Vanessa wanted a baby more than anything. She said it was the only thing missing from your perfect marriage.”
He’d heard everything she’d said, but in a removed way, as if it had happened to someone else. And perhaps in many respects, it had. He didn’t remember being in love with Vanessa, but he’d obviously put great stock in her as a partner, lover and future mother of his children.
Part of his journey apparently lay in reconciling his relationship with the woman he’d married—so he could know if it was something he might want to do again, with another woman, at some point in the future. He needed to grieve his lost love as best he could and move on.
Perhaps Caitlyn had a role in this part of his recovery, as well. “I’d like to know more about Vanessa. Will you tell me? Or is it too hard?”
She nodded with a small smile. “It’s hard. But it’s good for me, too, to remember her. I miss her every day.”
Launching into an impassioned tribute to her sister, Caitlyn talked with her hands, her animated face clearly displaying her love for Vanessa. But Antonio couldn’t stop thinking about that moment against the wall, when he’d almost reached out to see what Caitlyn’s glossy hair felt like. What might have happened between them all those years ago if he hadn’t asked Caitlyn to introduce him to Vanessa?
It was madness to wonder. He would do well to focus on the present, where, thanks to Caitlyn, he’d forgotten about his headache. She’d begged him to allow her to stay under his roof and, frankly, it was easy to say yes because he needed her help. Incredible fortune had smiled on him since the plane crash, and he couldn’t help feeling that Caitlyn was a large part of it.
Four (#ulink_ef9e2f12-9460-546e-82be-c5f3166014ad)
Instead of taking Antonio to the doctor, Caitlyn arranged for the doctor to come to the house the following afternoon. Antonio needed his space for as long as possible, at least until he got comfortable being in civilization again—or at least that was Caitlyn’s opinion, and no one had to know that it fit her selfish desire to have him all to herself.
As a plus, Caitlyn wouldn’t have to worry about wrestling Antonio into the car in case he changed his mind about seeing a doctor after all. Not that she could have. Nor did she do herself any favors imagining the tussle, which would likely end with Antonio’s hard body pinning her against another wall.
Recalling yesterday’s charged encounter had kept her quite warm last night and quite unable to sleep due to a restless ache she had no idea how to ease. Well, okay, she had some idea, but her sensibilities didn’t extend to middle-of-the-night visits to the sexy man down the hall. One did not simply walk into Antonio’s bedroom with the intent of hopping into bed with him, or at least she didn’t. Risqué nighttime shenanigans were Vanessa’s style, and her sister had had her heart broken time and time again as a result. Sex and love were so closely entwined that Caitlyn was willing to wait for the commitment she’d always wanted.
Nor did she imagine that Antonio was lying awake fantasizing about visiting Caitlyn anytime soon, either. They were two people thrown together by extraordinary circumstances and they both had enormous, daunting realities to deal with that didn’t easily translate into any kind of relationship other than...what? Friends? Co-parents? Trying to figure it out was exhausting enough; adding romance to the mix was out of the question.
Especially since Antonio could—and likely would—have his pick of women soon enough. A virgin mother of triplets, former accountant sister-in-law didn’t have the same appeal as a lush, redheaded actress-wife combo, that was for sure.
The doctor buzzed the gate entrance at precisely three o’clock. Antonio ushered the stately salt-and-pepper-haired physician into the foyer and thanked him for coming as the two men shook hands.
All morning, Antonio had been short-tempered and scowling, even after Caitlyn told him the doctor was coming to him. Caitlyn hovered just beyond the foyer, unsure if she was supposed to make herself scarce or insist on being present for the conversation in case the doctor had follow-up instructions for Antonio’s care.
Vanessa would have been stuck to Antonio’s side. As a wife should. Caitlyn was only the person who had made the appointment. And she’d done that just to make sure it happened.
“Caitlyn,” Antonio called, his tone slightly amused, which was a plus, considering his black mood. “Come meet Dr. Barnett.”
That she could do. She stood by Antonio, but not too close, and exchanged pleasantries with the doctor.
“I saw you fight Alondro in Vegas,” the doctor remarked with an appreciative nod at Antonio. “Ringside. Good match.”
Antonio accepted the praise with an inclined head, but his hands immediately clenched and his mouth tightened; clearly, the doctor’s comments made him uncomfortable. Because he didn’t remember? Or had he lost all context of what it meant to be famous? Either way, she didn’t like anyone making Antonio uncomfortable, let alone someone who was supposed to be here to help.
“Can I show you to a private room where you can get started?” Caitlyn asked in a no-nonsense way.
“Of course.” Dr. Barnett’s face smoothed out and he followed Caitlyn and Antonio to the master bedroom, where Antonio had indicated he felt the most at home in the house.
Score one for Caitlyn. Or was it two since a medical professional was on the premises?
She started to duck out, but Antonio stopped her with a warm hand on her arm. “I’d like you to stay,” he murmured. “So it will feel less formal.”
“Oh.” A bit flummoxed, she stared up into his dark eyes. “It won’t be weird if the doctor wants you to...um...get undressed?”
On cue, her cheeks heated. She’d blushed more around this man in the past few days than she had in her whole life.
His lips quirked and she congratulated herself on removing that dark scowl he’d worn all day. Too bad his new expression had come about because he likely found her naïveté amusing.
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