She started to smile, but her mouth trembled with emotion. “Can I—” She cut herself off with a wince and a moan, touching her throat. Talking really hurt, but she glanced toward the door. She wanted to see them. Bring them to me.
“You had a tube in your throat. That’s why it hurts.” He leaned to press the call button. “The nurse was just in here, said your vitals are good, but the doctor will want to come now you’re awake. I’ll get the girls.”
First he lowered to set his mouth on her forehead, holding the kiss for a long moment, slowly drawing back with such a look in his eyes it made her throat ache in a different way.
“Do not ever do that to me again. Not ever,” he said gravely.
“Deliver twins?” she joked in a dry whisper.
“Not funny.” His eyes winced shut, lashes appearing matted with wetness when he opened them. They were practically nose to nose. The emotion in his eyes made her catch her breath. He stroked the backs of his fingers against her cheek and started to say something.
The nurse bustled in, forcing him to straighten in a jerk and cast a scowl at the poor woman.
Minutes later, Cinnia met her daughters, tearing up all over again as Henri and a nurse set their tiny swaddled forms into her shaking arms.
“You’re sure they’re okay?” She wanted to squish them tight, but held them like fragile eggshells. She couldn’t take her eyes off their identical little faces with their rosebud mouths and button noses, one sleeping soundly, the other blinking blue eyes at her.
“Colette needed a little oxygen at first and they’re both still working on regulating their body temperatures, but they’re taking a bottle and squawking when they want more.” Henri’s hand looked ridiculously huge, overwhelming the tiny form as he splayed his fingers ever so gently on the infant in her right arm.
“Colette?” That was not a name she had had on her mental list, but it suited the inquisitive gaze that met hers.
“And Rosalina,” he said with a rueful smile, moving to use one fingertip to adjust the edge of the blanket away from Rosalina’s cheek. “We are under no obligation to keep those names, but my sisters refused to call them Twin One and Twin Two. Given the custody battle going on in the nursery between them and the grandmothers, we’ll be lucky to have our own names on the birth certificates.”
“They’re perfect. Hola, Rosalina. Bonjour, Colette,” she whispered, pressing a kiss to each girl’s warm, soft forehead. “Wait. Grandmothers? Mum is here?”
“Oui. And she’s as anxious to see you as you were to see your daughters. Let’s let the doctor do his thing so we can reassure her you’re recovering.”
Cinnia allowed the babies to be whisked back to the nursery and thirty minutes of playing snakes and ladders with her dignity followed. She suffered exams and questions and prodding. On the plus side, she was allowed a drink of water, a facecloth, a hairbrush and, best of all, a toothbrush.
She learned they were well into the afternoon of the day after she had taken her near-fatal taste of strawberry-tainted muesli.
“I’m going to devote my life to eradicating that particular fruit from the planet,” Henri muttered as the doctor finished up his own riot act about the dangers of anaphylactic shock while pregnant.
“I’m sorry,” Cinnia said, wincing at the trouble she’d caused.
The doctor pronounced her well enough to be wheeled down the hall to try nursing the twins and the nurse left to fetch a chair.
As they were left alone, Henri hitched his hip on the bed beside her. At least she was sitting up now, beginning to feel human again.
“I am sorry,” she said with genuine remorse, unnerved by the way he looked at her with such deep emotion in his eyes. It made her feel compressed. Breathless. “I saw the pink yogurt and thought the plain would be fine. I didn’t even look properly at the muesli.”
“I am sorry, chérie,” Henri took her hand and handled it very gently, turning it over as though examining it. “I keep expecting to see bruises. Your bones could have broken, I was holding on to you so tightly. I was so afraid it wouldn’t be tight enough.”
“Mum is going to ground me for sure,” she said, trying to make light because his shaken tone made her insides tremble. “Has anyone told my sisters? They won’t let me hear the end of it.”
“Ramon is at the airport, collecting them.”
“Oh, no, seriously? I’m so sorry.”
“I’m not trying to make you feel guilty. I’m telling you we were worried. We all love you very much. We didn’t want to lose you.”