represent a challenge to any red-blooded female.
Even Eva?
The last thing she wanted was to find the man who had fathered the twins in the least attractive!
Eva sat forward to place the bottle of water on the coffee table in front of her. ‘I think you can put him down too now...’ she drawled ruefully as she realised that Sam—the traitor!—had also fallen asleep on one of D’Angelo’s broad and muscled shoulders. All those hours of pacing and walking, a twin on each of her shoulders, and D’Angelo just had to hold them to have the twins instantly fall asleep!
Because they instinctively recognised who he was? Maybe. As Eva had learnt these past few months, babies were far more intuitive than she had ever realised; the twins had both certainly quickly picked up on Eva’s own nervousness in caring for them twenty-four seven, making a battle of their first few weeks together.
Michael turned to look at Eva Foster after he had secured the sleeping Sam in the pushchair beside his sister, relieved to see that, although the shadows beneath her eyes remained, those porcelain cheeks had at least regained a little of their colour, that pallor having been emphasised by straight and glossy ebony hair to just below her shoulders.
He was more than a little troubled himself to learn of the death of this woman’s sister, the mother of the sleeping babies. ‘How old was she...?’
Eva Foster looked at him blankly. ‘Who?’
‘Your sister Rachel.’
Derisive brows rose over those violet-coloured eyes. ‘The two of you were too busy to discuss ages?’
Michael drew in a sharp breath at the obvious derision in her tone. ‘I repeat that, to my knowledge, I didn’t so much as even meet your sister in order to be able to discuss our respective ages, let alone father her twins!’
‘And I repeat, I don’t believe you,’ Eva Foster stated coldly.
‘I can see that.’ Michael nodded grimly.
She drew in a shaky breath. ‘Rachel was just twenty-two when she died, three years younger than me,’ she stated huskily.
‘In childbirth?’
‘No.’ She grimaced. ‘They discovered, during a routine scan partway through the pregnancy, that Rachel had a tumour.’
‘God!’
Eva Foster nodded abruptly. ‘Rachel refused to have the pregnancy terminated, or to have treatment for the tumour, because of the danger of harming the babies. She...died when they were three months old.’ And the pain of that loss, of the consequences of her sister’s decision, was now etched into that creamy brow and in the lines of strain beside those violet eyes and sensuously sculptured mouth...
‘What about your parents...?’ he prompted huskily.
‘They both died in a car crash eighteen months ago.’
Michael folded his lean length down into the armchair opposite the sofa, uncomfortable towering over Eva Foster in the circumstances, at the same time as he recognised she wouldn’t appreciate him sitting down beside her on the sofa. There was currently a defensive aura about Eva Foster, an invisible barrier that was preventing her from breaking down completely.
Not surprising, when first her parents had died and she had now lost her younger sister so tragically. Michael was the eldest of the three D’Angelo brothers, and he couldn’t imagine—didn’t want to imagine—the devastation he would feel if he should ever lose his parents so suddenly, or Gabriel or Rafe before they had all grown old and grey together.
Which still didn’t change the fact that he had absolutely no knowledge of Rachel Foster, or her babies. ‘Where did Rachel and the babies’ father meet?’ he prompted gruffly.
Eva Foster shot him an impatient glance. ‘Right here in the gallery.’
Michael did some mental arithmetic. ‘I wasn’t in Paris, or the gallery here, fifteen months ago.’
‘What...?’ Eva looked at him blankly.
He grimaced. ‘I wasn’t in Paris fifteen months ago, Eva,’ he repeated gently. ‘Until recently, my brothers and I have moved around the three galleries on a rotation basis,’ he added as she still stared at him dazedly. ‘I was at the New York gallery fifteen months ago, organising a gala exhibition of Mayan art.’
She gave a slow shake of her head. ‘I don’t— My sister said—’
‘Yes?’
Eva could barely breathe, a sinking, nauseous sensation in the pit of her stomach as she prompted warily, ‘Exactly who are you...?’
He gave a tight smile. ‘Isn’t it a little late to be asking me that when you’ve already accused me of having been “involved” with your sister and fathering your niece and nephew?’
Eva’s mouth had gone so dry she didn’t even have enough saliva left to moisten the stiffness of her equally dry lips. ‘I assumed— Who are you?’ she demanded to know shakily, her hands tightly clenched together as they rested on her thighs.
‘Michael D’Angelo.’
Michael D’Angelo? Michael not—
Eva thought she might actually be physically sick at the realisation that all this time she had been accusing the wrong D’Angelo brother of fathering the twins!
CHAPTER TWO
OH, GOOD GRIEF, why hadn’t Eva thought to ask this man for his full name? To find out which of the D’Angelo brothers she was actually talking to before—before—well, at least before she had launched into her accusations?
Unfortunately, Eva knew exactly why she hadn’t done any of those things...
Because this man—Michael D’Angelo—brought out a response in her, a physical awareness, she had considered as being entirely inappropriate in regard to the man she had believed to have been involved with Rachel.
Not that it was any less inappropriate now; he was still the brother of the man who had fathered the twins!
He was just so much larger than life, exuded a confidence, an aura of power, that caused Eva to be aware of everything about him: the way his hair was inclined to curl slightly at his ears and nape, the intensity of those black-on-black eyes, the harsh and yet somehow mesmerising sensual lines of his finely sculptured face, and as for the way his shoulders and chest filled out his perfectly tailored jacket, and the slim cut of his trousers emphasised the lean length of his long legs—
‘Drink some more water.’ Michael was suddenly down on his haunches beside Eva holding out the water bottle towards her.
Eva took the bottle with shaking fingers, drinking thirstily as she realised she was starting to hyperventilate just thinking about the way this man looked. At the same time she inwardly cringed as she recalled all of their conversation, the things she had said, the accusations she had made—and all to the wrong man!
His identity as Michael D’Angelo certainly explained why Eva hadn’t been able to imagine her fun-loving sister Rachel ever being attracted to such a coldly aloof man who was also so much older than her, let alone involved in the passionate affair with him that had resulted in the birth of the twins!
None of which helped the awkwardness of the situation Eva now found herself in. ‘It seems I owe you an apology,’ she murmured stiffly. ‘I— Obviously I made a mistake. I— It— I don’t know what else to say...’ She groaned self-consciously, unable to look Michael D’Angelo in the eye now.
Unable to look into that coolly arrogant face at all. A face, a man, she shouldn’t find in the least attractive.
Except Eva knew that she did...
She couldn’t stop herself from giving him a brief sideways glance, once again struck by the chiselled