Twin Heirs to His Throne(11)

Drawing back, Selene’s dark blue eyes were almost grim. “If you change your mind and you need help getting rid of him, I’ll do anything.”

“Ditto,” the other two chorused.

Choking on a cry, Kassandra surged to envelop them in a group hug, thanking the fates for them.

Pulling back, she gave her friends a wobbly smile. “Next time I know who to run to when I need impenetrable barriers against unstoppable missiles. What was I thinking asking for your men’s help when I have you?”

Selene’s features relaxed into a mischievous smile. “As long as you’ve learned your mistake. Right, ladies?”

Caliope and Naomi expressed their enthusiastic agreement, and the meeting that had started out tense ended on a merry note.

As merry as a breather in the ongoing drama that had become her life could be.



After her friends left her office, Kassandra struggled to get any work done. But as all the lightheartedness and optimism their love and support had brought her started to dissipate, she was dragged back into the bottomless well of worries and what-ifs.

Though she’d planned to stay at work hours longer, and she’d only done a fraction of what she’d set out to do, she gave up. At least at home she wouldn’t have to make decisions that had millions of dollars and hundreds of jobs riding on them. Decisions she was starting to doubt she’d be able to make again.

Half an hour later, as she entered her home, a shroud of premonition descended around her heart. Though there was no car parked outside, and there were no sounds coming from inside, all her senses rioted with certainty.

Leonid was in there. She could scent him in the air, sense his presence in her every cell.

Trying to curb her stampeding reactions, she leaned on the wall, only to feel it tilt beneath her. Struggling with the wave of dizziness, she shrugged out of her suddenly suffocating coat, was trying to hang it when Kyria Despina came rushing toward her, her expression the very definition of awe.

“Kassandra, dearest, I’m so glad you’re home early!” The woman’s voice buzzed with excitement as she took Kassandra’s coat and hung it in the foyer’s closet. “Prince Voronov has been here for two hours.”

So he was here. Seemed her extrasensory abilities where he was concerned remained infallible.

Dark brown eyes gleaming with curiosity and pleasure, Despina linked their arms as she hurried Kassandra to the living room. “He came thinking you’d be back home at your usual time. The girls were beside themselves with delight to see him.”

Feeling her legs about to buckle as the quietly prattling Despina led her to him, her mind was a battlefield of suspense, aversion and resignation. Confusion soon took precedence over the absolute silence emanating from the living room.

Then they reached it and it all made sense.

At the end of the room, Leonid was propped up against the playhouse. The girls were asleep on top of him. The cats were also snoozing, one on his legs, the other against his thigh.

“He played with them nonstop, games I’m sure he invented just for them,” Despina whispered. “The darlings laughed and bounced around like I’ve never seen them. Then about fifteen minutes before you arrived, they climbed on his lap and turned off. The dear man made them comfortable, even crooned what must be a Russian nursery rhyme.”

They’d slept on top of him. They hadn’t fallen asleep in her arms since they were six months old.

“He hasn’t moved or made a sound since, even when I assured him nothing would wake them up again. You should go save him before he cramps something.” Despina patted her on the back. “Now, since you’re home and he’s here to help you put the girls to bed, I may yet catch a bit of the ladies’ poker night I had to miss to stay late tonight.”

As if from the depths of a dream, Kassandra thought she nodded her agreement. Then everything fell off her radar but the sight Leonid and the girls made, a majestic lion with his cubs curled in slumber over him, totally content and secure in their father’s presence and protection.

His eyes remained closed, but she knew he wasn’t asleep. She could sense it. He was savoring the texture of the new experience, soaking in the girls’ feel and closeness and trust. She also knew he was aware of her standing there. Like her, he’d always had an uncanny ability to sense her presence. She’d once thought he’d been so attuned to her, he felt her before he had reason to think she was near. That had been before she’d realized she’d never been special or even worthwhile to him.

Swallowing the lump that seemed to have taken permanent residence in her throat, she approached the pile. He let her come within less than a foot of them before he opened his eyes, connecting with hers, and almost compromised her precarious balance. Then he lowered his gaze to the girls in his arms again.

Forcing air into her shut-down lungs, she attempted nonchalance. “You can flip the girls in the air and they still wouldn’t wake. Not now anyway. They only wake up around an hour after I put them in bed.”

“Did they wake up last night after I left?”

“No.”

She’d told herself they hadn’t because he’d kept them way beyond their bedtime. But apart from logic, another theory explained the unusual occurrence. She believed that they always woke up out of some sense of uncertainty. But after he’d appeared, and they’d sensed his intention of being here to stay, that anxiety that woke them up was gone.

She exhaled. “My point is, you can move if you want.”

“I don’t want. There’s no place I’d rather be.”

What felt like acid welled behind her eyes. “Well, though you do look as if you make them very comfortable, I don’t think they should start considering you a substitute for their bed.”

His lips twisted as he kept gazing at the shiny heads nestled into his chest. “Though I would fully welcome that, I can appreciate the repercussions of such a development.”

Sighing as he secured them both, he sat up. She again almost winced at the difficulty he had in adjusting his position, of rising to his feet. It had nothing to do with the girls being in his arms, since their weight had to be negligible to him. That knot behind her sternum, the same one that had formed when she’d realized the extent of his injuries and their consequences, tightened to an ache again.

Taking her eyes off him, so she wouldn’t focus on his stiff gait and the fact that he was looking everywhere but at her, she led the way to the nursery, her mind racing.

Though the competition circuits were certainly out, had it been possible for him to practice his sports on any level? Being extremely fit but bulkier than before, it was clear he maintained his fitness with exercise that didn’t rely on the speed and agility of his former specialties. So how much did he resent being forced to relinquish what he’d considered the epitome of his personal achievement? How much did he miss what had once been the main pillar of his existence?

Giving herself the mental equivalent of a smack upside the head as they put the girls in the cribs, she reminded herself how pointless and pathetic it was to wonder. Whatever his trials to adjust his path, and whatever he’d suffered or now felt about it all was none of her concern. He’d made that clear in the past. He was making it clearer now. This was all about Eva and Zoya. Beyond what she represented to them, she, and anything she thought and felt, mattered nothing to him.

As they exited the room, he finally looked at her. “I hope it’s not your habit to sleep as soon as they do. I have a few things I need to discuss with you.”

She stifled the urge to hiss that she’d lost the habit of sleeping altogether since him, that she had to exhaust herself on a daily basis only so she could turn off and hope for the oppressive silence and darkness of dreamlessness.

Managing to reach her living room without blasting his thick hide off, she sat down carefully instead of flinging herself on the couch. She also refrained from hurling a remote at him as he remained towering over her.

“How would you like to go about declaring me the girls’ father?”

Blinking, her mind emptied. Had she heard him right? He wasn’t dictating a course of action, but asking her preference?

Suddenly her blood tumbled in a boil. “How about you spare me the pretense that you care about what I want?”

“I do care. As Eva’s and Zoya’s mother you are—”

“Entitled to dictate my own terms. Yeah, I heard it the first time. And I already told you, my only term is to have the life I built for myself and the girls. But since this isn’t going to happen, just do what you wish, and don’t bother pretending that my preferences matter.”

Those winged eyebrows she’d once luxuriated in tracing with fingertips and lips knotted as he seemed to examine every fiber in her lush carpet. The way he kept avoiding making eye contact with her at crucial moments was driving her up the wall.

He finally exhaled, his gaze once again on her and maddening her with its opacity. “That first night I came, I had to drive it home that I wasn’t taking go away for an answer. But ever since I met the twins, and we interacted as their parents, many things have changed. I do want this arrangement to work for you, not only for them.”

She never thought he’d say those words—and he actually seemed to mean them. It made everything even worse. Anger was her only defense against him, her last shield. If he made her let that go, what would become of her?