A D'Angelo Like No Other

‘I am not—’ Michael broke off to draw in a deep, controlling breath, his cheek still stinging from that slap. ‘Sophie is not my daughter.’

‘I assure you she is,’ she snapped.

‘Do you think we could both just take a couple of deep breaths, maybe step back a little, and try to calm this situation down? It’s distressing the babies,’ Michael added firmly as Eva Foster opened her mouth with the obvious intention of continuing to argue with him.

It was unusual for anyone to argue with him, period, Michael being accustomed to issuing orders and having them obeyed rather than have people dispute them. Nor did he appreciate the added complication of this woman—a feisty young woman he acknowledged as being irritatingly beautiful—continuing to accuse him of fathering her sister’s babies.

It was an accusation Michael didn’t appreciate. He’d learnt his lesson many years ago when it came to the machinations of women. And he had Emma Lowther to thank that, for teaching him to never, ever trust a woman, when it came to contraception or anything else.

How many years ago was it since Emma had tried to blackmail him into marriage by claiming she was pregnant? Fourteen. And Michael still remembered every moment of it as if it were yesterday.

Not that he had ever thought of shirking his responsibility. Oh, no, Michael had been stupid enough to think he was actually in love with Emma, had even been pleased about the baby, and the two of them had been making wedding plans for weeks when he introduced Emma to an acquaintance at a party, and she had decided within days of that introduction that Daniel, his family richer even than Michael’s, would be a far better choice as a husband. Which was when she had told Michael there was no baby, that she had been mistaken. Three months later she had tried to use the same trick on Daniel.

The scene that had followed, once Emma had learnt that Michael had warned Daniel of her machinations, that there was no baby this time either, had not been pleasant!

Emma’s pregnancy had been a sham, a trick to make Michael marry her, and it had been enough of a warning for him never again to trust any woman to take care of contraception...

Which was why he could now confidently deny Eva Foster’s claim in regard to her sister’s babies.

‘Twins,’ she now corrected softly. ‘The babies are twins.’

They certainly looked of a similar age and colouring: both had silky heads of ebony dark hair and the same amazing violet-coloured eyes as their aunt. Their features weren’t completely formed as yet, but there were certainly enough similarities for Michael to accept Eva Foster’s claim that they were twins.

But whether they were twins or otherwise, they were not—most definitely not!—Michael’s children.

‘How old are they?’ he bit out tightly.

‘Trying to jog your memory?’ she scorned.

‘How old?’ Michael repeated through those gritted teeth.

She shrugged. ‘Six months.’

And if Rachel Foster had gone full term with her babies that would mean nine months to be added onto the six months, making it fifteen months ago he was supposed to have—

Damn it, why was Michael even bothering to do the maths? No matter what this woman might claim to the contrary, he had not impregnated any woman fifteen months ago or at any other time!

‘And you believe they’re mine because...?’ He kept his voice soft and even as Sophie’s lids began to flicker and her head dropped down sleepily onto his shoulder, the infant obviously tired out by her previous screeching.

That pointed chin rose another challenging notch. ‘Because Rachel told me they were.’

Michael nodded. ‘In that case, would you care to explain why your sister hasn’t come here and confronted me with this information herself?’

‘Because— Careful!’ Eva warned as she realised Sophie had fallen into the completely boneless sleep only babies seemed able to do, and was almost slipping off one of those broad shoulders as a result.

‘How did you do that?’ she breathed ruefully as she looked at the sleeping Sophie.

Usually the twins only fell asleep after she had walked them in their pushchair or bounced them up and down for hours; Eva couldn’t remember the last time she’d had even one uninterrupted night’s sleep. And those lazy Sunday mornings of dozing in bed until lunchtime, which she had once taken so much for granted, now seemed like a self-indulgent dream, a mirage, and one Eva was sure she was destined never to know again.

‘Do what?’ D’Angelo rasped softly.

‘Never mind,’ Eva muttered irritably. ‘Just put Sophie in the left side of the pushchair. She doesn’t like sitting on the right side,’ she supplied wearily as he paused to raise dark, questioning brows.

‘She’s asleep, so what does it matter?’

‘She knows when she wakes up,’ Eva dismissed impatiently.

‘Right,’ Michael drawled dryly, willing to take this woman’s word for it that a six-month-old baby was aware of which side of a pushchair she was sitting in.

He looked down at the baby after he had somehow managed to ease her down into the pushchair without waking her. Sophie was like a dark-haired angel, ebony lashes fanning across her flushed cheeks, her mouth a little pouting rosebud.

He straightened abruptly as he realised what he was doing. ‘What about that one?’ He indicated the baby in Eva Foster’s arms.

‘His name’s Sam,’ she supplied somewhat tartly. ‘And he’s just fine where he is.’ She looked down indulgently at the baby now snuggled into her throat. ‘Sam is more placid than Sophie,’ she explained waspishly as she obviously saw Michael’s mocking expression. ‘What did you say?’ she prompted softly as he muttered under his breath.

‘I said that’s probably because he’s a man,’ Michael repeated unabashedly.

Eva Foster gave a scathing snort. ‘It’s been my experience that men tend to be lazy, not placid!’

‘I beg your pardon?’ Michael’s brow lowered.

‘I’m sure you heard me the first time,’ she came back with feigned sweetness.

He had, and he hadn’t liked it either; he and his two brothers had worked damned hard the past ten years to develop the one gallery they had then owned into three, spread across London, New York and Paris, and to build them up to become some of the most prestigious private galleries and auction houses in the world. And the three brothers were now reaping some of the benefits of that hard work, all of them extremely wealthy and able to live a lifestyle befitting that wealth, then it certainly wasn’t because it had just been handed to them on a silver platter.

The scornful expression on Eva Foster’s delicately lovely face showed she obviously thought otherwise!

As she was also under some strange delusion that Michael was the father of her niece and nephew...

It was time—past time!—that he took control of this situation. ‘In your opinion.’ He nodded tersely as he moved to sit behind his black marble desk. ‘You were about to tell me why you’re here instead of your sister...?’

Eva was well aware of the fact that D’Angelo had deliberately chosen to resume his seat behind his desk, as a way of putting some distance between the two of them at the same time as it put their conversation onto a businesslike footing. Although how anyone could think, or talk, of babies in a ‘businesslike’ way was beyond her!

D’Angelo wasn’t at all what she had been expecting of the man who had first charmed and then impregnated her younger sister. Rachel had been fun-loving, and, yes, slightly irresponsible, having decided to travel around the world for a year once she had finished university, only to come back to London ten months later, alone and pregnant. With this man’s baby—which had turned out to be babies, plural.

The man seated behind the desk wasn’t what Eva had imagined when her sister had talked so enthusiastically of her lover’s charm and good looks, and the fun they’d had together in Paris. Oh, this man was certainly handsome enough, dark and brooding—dangerously so, she would hazard a guess, and causing Eva to give an inner wince as she looked at the mark her hand had left on one of those perfectly chiselled cheeks. No doubt that dangerous aura this man exuded was counteracted by the tight control he also showed, otherwise she might have found herself with a similar imprint on her own cheek!

His was such an austere handsomeness: icy black eyes, harshly etched features, his manner rigidly controlled, and there was a cool aloofness to him that it was difficult for Eva to imagine ever melting, even—especially!—when he made love with a woman.

She certainly couldn’t imagine him and the slightly irresponsible Rachel as ever having gone out together, let alone—

Maybe it would be better, for all concerned, if Eva’s thoughts didn’t dwell on the physical side of Rachel’s relationship with this man. A physical relationship he continued to deny!

Her mouth thinned as she answered him. ‘I’m here instead of Rachel because my sister is dead.’

He gave a visible start. ‘What...?’

If Eva had thought to make him feel guilty, to get some reaction other than shock with the starkness of her statement, then she was disappointed; he looked suitably shocked, but in a distant way, rather than as a man hearing of the death of an ex-lover.

Eva drew in a sharp, shaky breath as she attempted to keep her own emotions under control. It was some weeks since she had needed to explain to anyone that her sister had died, and to do so now, to the man who had once been Rachel’s lover—even if he denied all knowledge of it—was particularly hard.

Just as Eva still found it impossible to believe, to accept, that her sister Rachel, only twenty-two, and supposedly with all of her life still ahead of her, had died, quite peaceably in the end, just three short months ago.

And Eva had been trying to cope ever since with her own grief as well as the care of the twins. It was a battle she had finally had to accept she was losing, physically as well as financially. First Rachel had been so ill, and then she had died, and it had been—and still was—almost impossible for Eva to work when she had cared for Rachel and then had the full-time day-to-day care—and the sleepless nights—of the twins to cope with. Her savings had now dwindled almost to nothing, certainly quicker than she was able to replenish them with the few photographic assignments she had been free to accept these past six months. Assignments when she had been able to take the twins with her, which was becoming increasingly difficult the bigger and more vocal they got.

Which was why Eva had decided, rather than giving D’Angelo the opportunity to fob her off in a telephone call, to instead use the last of her savings to fly herself and the twins over to Paris yesterday, so that she might confront the babies’ father face to face with his responsibilities.

Much as Eva might hate having to do it, after much soul-searching, she knew she no longer had any choice but to try and seek D’Angelo’s help from a financial point of view, at least, for the good of the twins.

Michael stood up abruptly as he saw how pale Eva Foster’s face had become, adding to that air of fragility. Her sister’s death, caring for the twins, went some way to explaining those dark shadows beneath those beautiful violet-coloured eyes.

He crossed economically to the drinks cabinet in the seating area of his office to look at the array of bottles, deciding against offering her alcohol and instead choosing to bring her a bottle of water from the small fridge. He very much doubted Eva Foster would have accepted drinking a more reviving whisky, when she had two young babies in her care.

‘Here, let me take Sam, while you sit down over here,’ he rasped abruptly as he saw Eva Foster was swaying slightly on her canvas-shod feet. Not waiting for her reply, he took the baby from her unresisting arms before placing his free hand lightly beneath her elbow to guide her over to the seating area and eased her down onto the black leather sofa.

‘Sorry about that,’ Eva murmured shakily after taking a much-needed sip of the ice-cold water. It was very warm outside, and it had been a long walk to the Archangel gallery from the cheap hotel she had booked into with the twins yesterday. ‘I think I’m doing okay and then suddenly the grief just hits me again when I’m least expecting it.’

Although she should have realised that this meeting with Rachel’s lover was going to be far from easy. Just as coming to Paris at all, seeking out D’Angelo, hadn’t been an easy decision for her to make in the first place. In Eva’s eyes, it almost smacked of defeat.

But she’d had no other choice, she assured herself determinedly; this was for the twins’ benefit, not hers. As it was, she would far rather spit in this man’s eye than so much as have to speak to him, let alone ask him for help!

‘I’m sorry for your loss,’ D’Angelo murmured gruffly.

Was he? Considering he had denied all knowledge of Rachel just minutes ago, Eva found that a little hard to believe!

She still couldn’t quite come to terms with Rachel ever having been involved with this austerely cold man at all; Rachel had been outgoing and warm in nature, and this man was anything but. But maybe it had been a case of opposites attracting? D’Angelo was certainly attractive enough, and he possessed an inborn confidence, an arrogance, that Rachel might have found attractive, even challenging. This man’s controlled aloofness would 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 perfection of Michael D’Angelo’s features: those black obsidian eyes that revealed so little of the man’s thoughts or feelings, those sculptured cheekbones, his mouth—dear Lord, this man’s mouth was pure perfection, the top lip fuller than the bottom.

Possibly as an indication he had a deeply sensual nature?

If it was, then Eva was sure it was a sensuality this coldly aloof man always kept firmly under his own iron control!

This man...

Michael D’Angelo.

A man Eva knew she had to guard herself against being any more attracted to.

He straightened abruptly. ‘As I said earlier, maybe we should both take a few deep breaths, a step back, and calm this situation down?’

Eva still felt as if she was on the edge of hyperventilating again rather than calming down!

Having made the hard decision to come to Paris in the first place, she had planned out in her mind exactly how her meeting with D’Angelo was going to proceed once she arrived here.

She would find a way to confront D’Angelo.

Which she had done.

He would deny any and all involvement with Rachel.

Which he had done.

Eva would then scorn that denial, with the twins as proof of that ‘involvement’.

Which she had done.

D’Angelo’s accusation that she and Rachel were trying to pull some sort of scam on him, by claiming the babies were his, had been unexpected...

As much as Eva’s response, slapping his face, had been; she had never thought of herself as being a person capable of violence until today!

And the conversation had seemed to go downhill from there...

She drew in several deep and steadying breaths before speaking again, determined not to lose complete control of this situation.

‘That’s all well and good, Mr D’Angelo, but I think you’re still missing the point here.’

Michael D’Angelo quirked one dark and arrogant brow. ‘Which is?’

Eva straightened her shoulders determinedly as she met his gaze unblinkingly. ‘That you may be correct in claiming not to be the twins’ father—’

‘I assure you, I am not their father,’ he bit out hardly.

‘—but that doesn’t change the fact that one of your brothers most certainly is,’ Eva continued firmly, her gaze meeting his challengingly now.

At the same time, she inwardly questioned just how Michael D’Angelo could speak so certainly of never having fathered a baby by Rachel. Eva certainly didn’t believe it was from physically abstaining. Beneath this man’s aloofness she sensed that sensuality, deep and dark, an indication that, once aroused, he would be the type of lover who would demand and possess a woman completely.

He was also, Eva acknowledged with a frown, a man who would need to be in control at all times, and as such he would no doubt ensure that he would never forget to take the necessary precautions to ensure that no unwanted pregnancy ensued from any of his relationships with women.

Something Eva should probably have realised before she accused him of being the twins’ father!

Michael’s breath left him in a hiss as he took in the full ramifications of Eva Foster’s revelations. Almost wishing now—almost!—that he had been the one responsible for fathering Rachel Foster’s twin babies. Because for either of his younger brothers to be the father—his now both very much married younger brothers—would be a disaster of unthinkable proportions.