“I hope you’re ready for another one,” Anais murmured, wrapping her arms around Dario and tilting her head back to gaze up at him.
“I’ve never been more ready,” he promised her gruffly. “Trust me.”
And this time, when she gave birth to his son six months later, he was right there beside her. And the very first thing little Didier ever saw.
It got louder and it got messier, and the truth was, Dario loved it. He’d had no idea that he could love so much and so many. His brother was back in his life where he belonged, and better this time, since Dario appreciated what they shared—their twin bond—in a way he never had before. He’d had no idea how much he’d craved the kind of family bonds and deep intimacy he’d thought he’d wanted nothing to do with.
“I have something to tell you,” Anais said a couple of years later.
They’d come to Maui for Damian’s school vacation, and were sitting out on the lanai of the house where they’d met for the first time six years into their marriage, the house Dario had bought from the Fuginawa estate after the old man had passed on. The rolling hills of the Kaupo countryside gleamed beneath the stars and, far below, he still thought he could hear the sea.
“Because all good conversations start exactly like that,” Dario murmured, pushing his laptop aside and closing it. Focusing on Anais. He didn’t like the way she stood there, almost mimicking the same positions they’d taken all those years ago, so he hauled her into his lap and got his mouth on her neck.
The same fire roared between them. It always had. It always would.
A wave of goose bumps washed over her, and she shivered in his arms, and only the presence of his children in this house somewhere kept him from pulling up that loose dress she wore and making them both a whole lot happier, right here.
“Remember how I told you I didn’t feel well?” she asked, angling her head to one side to give him better access.
“I do.” He pushed the silk of her hair aside and trailed heat along the line of her neck. “Remember how I told you my theory and you assured me you couldn’t possibly be pregnant?”
She didn’t reply and that old fear gripped him—that he’d ruin this again, that he’d ruined her irreparably. That she still didn’t trust him to be there for her and never would.
“I can’t think of anything better than another baby with you,” he told her gruffly. He’d never meant anything more. “Another member of this family. Our family. It would be a gift.”
And Anais laughed. She tipped back her head to look him in the eye and he knew then. She wasn’t afraid of telling him this news, she wasn’t worried about their future—she was teasing him. She trusted him.
She trusted him.
He couldn’t think of a better gift than that.
“Twins,” she said, her dark eyes laughing at him. “And get ready, Dare. They’re girls.”
He couldn’t think of a better gift except that, he amended as he covered Anais’s mouth with his, love and laughter and that same old hunger underneath, making it all sing.
Except that.
* * * * *