An Heir to Bind Them (6 page)

The bait and switch worked and after waiting for swimsuits and special diapers, they all climbed into the pool. Again Jaya was a natural, showing him how to hold Androu and coach him to kick while Evie proved to be part mermaid, pushing herself free of Jaya’s grip and swimming to the edge where she came up to grin proudly.

It was a surprisingly conflict-free hour as he shifted his focus onto the moment and the safety of the children. Okay, he was also pretty damned aware of Jaya’s nipples poking against the wet cups of her modest one-piece black swimsuit, but thankfully the cool water kept his libido from responding too wildly. She was
way
off-limits, even further than when she’d worked for him, so he suppressed his interest as best he could.

They were back to their Bali roles, polite and capable of basic camaraderie as they discussed neutral topics like the children, the weather, and Marseilles.

Until she said, “Theo,” with surprising gravity behind him.

“Yes?” he prompted, keeping his back to her as he boosted Evie toward the edge.

Ah, hell, he had his back to her.
Inner tension came on so fast he felt like he solidified and fractured in the same breath.

The scars should have become less of an issue for him in the last year. His whole family had started coming to terms with their childhood, but he’d spent so many years clenching his teeth against it all that he couldn’t bring himself to open up to any of his siblings about what was plain as the stripes on his back. There didn’t seem any point and they were still so awkward with each other. He wanted to be friends with his older brother, but making that happen was easier if they both pretended the ugliness in their early lives hadn’t happened. Maybe it was counterproductive, but all of them had been raised to be polite and ignore. They very easily fell back on that coping strategy.

Jaya was private and quiet, but she was soft. Anything that moved her started at heart level. If she asked him about this, it would be because she was concerned.

Knowing that made the cracks in him extend to even deeper places, touching into areas that were raw and sensitive. Thank God he had a baby to keep an eye on and didn’t have to turn and face her pointed silence. He waited with ears that felt stretched and hollow, not ready for this conversation, not imagining he could ever be ready, but he didn’t know how to avoid it.

After a long interminable moment, she asked, “What happened to your back?”

Ensuring Evie was out of the water and sitting safely on the edge, he kept a hand on her tiny frame and glanced at Jaya, dreading her pity.

Her anxious frown was so kind it made him want to shudder, like he’d had too big a taste of sugar. He swallowed back a thickness in his throat and was left with the bitter residue of a bleak time when he’d been insignificant and helpless.

“Exactly what you imagine happened,” he answered in as controlled a tone as he could manage. Maybe he should have seen a counselor by now, but why? The emotional scars were as permanent as the physical ones. All he could do was accept them and try not to feel ashamed. He was smart enough to know it wasn’t his fault, even if he’d grown up believing he must have done something to deserve all that abuse.

“Who—? When...?
Why?
” she choked.

“My father.” A shadow of chagrin touched him. Shame that he had been so reviled by his own flesh and blood. Surely that meant there was something wrong with him.

Swallowing, he tried to find his equilibrium. He stepped back and nodded at Evie, inviting her to jump and swim toward him. Once he’d caught her up safe against his chest, he forced himself to look into Jaya’s appalled face again.

“He was drunk.” He tried to say it matter-of-factly, but a taut line inside him vibrated, making him unsteady. “I didn’t keep my brother in his room as I’d been told.”

“That’s...” She shook her head and he could imagine someone as tenderhearted toward children as she was couldn’t comprehend such cruelty. “How old were you?”

He reached for his well-practiced technique of shutting down, wanting to shrug off the details, but he couldn’t seem to make it happen. No one had ever invited him to talk about this.

His body shivered as though the water he stood in was full of ice. “Eight. That’s why I don’t drink. That’s why...”

He didn’t want to apologize for Bali. They’d been using each other, she’d said so, but she had wound up expecting more after all. He’d let her down. He hated failure, but he didn’t have anything else to offer. Maybe if she understood that, she wouldn’t hate him so much.

Squinting into the sunlight reflected off the water, he spoke in a graveled voice. “That night in Bali...Adara had called me earlier that day to tell me she’d contacted Nic. We hadn’t seen him in years, not since we were kids. Before he left home, our lives were pretty normal and decent. After Nic was gone, both our parents drank. Our father became violent. I blamed Nic because I never paused to think about how we were all kids when it happened. He hadn’t had a choice, either. I hadn’t considered that he might have suffered in his own way. When Adara told me he had...”

He shook his head, remembering how everything had skewed in his mind, falling in a jumble he couldn’t make sense of. Then Jaya had arrived, sweet Jaya, soothing and earnest and warm, wanting to say goodbye. He hadn’t been able to bear the idea of her leaving. All he’d wanted was to keep her close.

“It was a lot to process,” he said, hoping his strong dose of self-deprecation hid the impact her sharing herself had had on him.

“I understand.”

“Do you?” he asked gruffly.

He wasn’t a talkative man. He didn’t have drinking buddies or squash partners. Men didn’t typically share their personal garbage anyway. Not with each other, but he’d entrusted Jaya with his emotional safety that night. Maybe he hadn’t shared his inner dialogue, but when she’d lain against him, naked and soft, her breath caressing his neck and her hair tickling his arm, he’d wanted to.

He wanted that emotional safety net again. Craved it like air.

Bending her dark head over Androu, she said, “I’m lying. I don’t understand how anyone can be cruel to someone smaller than they are. It upsets me.”

She looked up and the unprecedented connection he’d felt with her in Bali manifested like a beam between them, pulling them toward each other. The urge to move close and cover her mouth with his own was almost irresistible. He could practically taste her papaya flavor, could almost feel the cool mango smoothness of her lips against his.

A buzzer broke the spell.

Jaya’s expression fell to one that was appalled and startled before she buckled her shoulders in a cringe. She wasn’t given to swearing as far as he knew, but she muttered something in Punjabi that might have been a curse.

“Who is it?” he asked, worried they’d suffered a leak to the press.

“Quentin. I asked him to bring...” Her look of remorseful appeal made all the sharp edges in him abrade against each other.

“Your things?” he guessed. “Understandable.”

A ripping sensation went through him nonetheless, tearing away the paper walls he used to disguise the fact his childhood still affected him. He thought,
Lucky, lucky man,
and hated his rival for being smart enough to win her heart and keep it. The bastard had better be good to her.

He waved her to climb the stairs before him then had to avert his gaze from her ass and the backs of her long slender thighs. “Is he staying?”
There’ll be a murder-suicide in tomorrow’s papers.

“I thought we’d have more time to talk before he arrived,” she said, handing him a towel before wrapping Androu like a Mexican burrito.

“What else is there to say?”

Her flashing glance was loaded as a hot pistol, but she only carried Androu inside. He followed on heavy feet, reluctant to meet her...what was the beau’s label? She wasn’t wearing a ring so they weren’t married or engaged. Maybe they were only dating.

“We’ll swim more later,” he promised Evie as she protested leaving the pool to come inside. He paused to reach up and lock the door behind him as he entered, then forced himself into the foyer where more bags had landed among the flotsam there.

A stocky blond man chopped his German tirade short as he spied Theo over Jaya’s shoulder. His blue eyes were sharp, his manner too damned proprietary.

Every male instinct came alive in Theo, despite having no claim on Jaya. He looked right into the man’s eyes with challenge, mentally aware it was wrong, but he couldn’t help himself. If the guy wanted her, he could damn well fight for her.

“So. You finally turn up,” the German gruffed.

“Quentin, please.” Jaya murmured as she turned to look at Theo. Her imploring eyes filled with compunction while she kept a hand in the middle of her paramour’s chest. No, not on his chest. As she shifted, Theo saw the baby trustingly clutched in the man’s curved arm.

Don’t drop Evie,
Theo reminded himself, but the sight of that mite with black hair, dusky skin and curious brown eyes was a kick in the gut. He was Jaya’s. There was no mistaking the maternal protectiveness in her hand on the baby boy’s tiny blue T-shirt.

Time stood still as he processed all of them standing there with babies in their arms, Quentin with his rumpled suit and grim expression, he and Jaya practically naked with towels around their waists. Yes, this was good and humiliating to meet the father of her child with his pants proverbially around his ankles and his ineptness with children on full display.

“Quentin is my cousin’s husband. I told you about Saranya when I was leaving Bali. Do you remember?” Jaya asked.

“Of course.” Not the father then. His mind cycloned as he attempted to process this new information. If Quentin wasn’t the father, who was? To hide his inner chaos, he fell back on the scrupulous manners drilled into him as a child. “How is she?”

“Dead,” Quentin said flatly.

Nice. Theo surprised himself by thinking he might understand Quentin’s bitterness a little, given how agonized he was at the mere thought of Jaya not being available to him. He couldn’t imagine how he’d react if she were beyond his reach in a grave.

“I’m sorry,” he offered, aware how useless the words were, but it’s what you said.

“You should be,” the German growled.

I didn’t kill her
, Theo bit back, able to curb the desire to be cruel because Quentin wasn’t involved with Jaya, but if he wasn’t the man in her life, who was?

His gaze returned to the bright brown eyes that were almost familiar, yet not like Jaya’s nearly black irises. A hit of déjà vu accosted him because he could have sworn he’d looked into those eyes earlier today...

The air dried up around him. His heart began to pound with thick hammer blows inside his chest. The kicked feeling in his gut tightened around a serrated blade that turned low and without mercy. If he had bones, they’d vaporized.

Don’t. Drop. Evie.
He rather desperately tried to recollect if Demitri had been to Bali or had business in Marseille last year.

“Will you please let me handle this?” Jaya’s voice seemed to come from far away. She tried to take the baby from Quentin, but she already held Androu.

For the life of him, Theo couldn’t approach and take his nephew, even though he knew he should.

“Let you play house?” the German grumbled. “For how long? There’s a reason you and Saranya were always railroaded by the men in your family. You
let
them.”

“So if I tell you to butt out and leave, you will?”

Quentin gave her a stern look, but followed it with a resigned sigh that ended in a kiss on her cheek. He transferred the baby into her arms and straightened to throw another bitter glare at Theo.

The animosity in that look told Theo who the father was. Not Demitri. Hell, he didn’t know if he should be relieved or not. How he stayed on his feet, he’d never know.

“Call me if you need me,” Quentin said to Jaya and walked out.

Jaya took a shaken breath as the door closed, then turned to face him. The two boys she held weren’t far apart in age and despite the slightly darker skin tone on the smaller one, and the black hair where Androu’s was brown, their eyes and mouth were mirror images.

The sensation of dissolving from the inside out continued to assault Theo. He couldn’t form a proper thought. He tried, but this was more than he could grasp. More than he wanted to believe.

“This is Zephyr,” Jaya said, voice strained, but firm and a trifle defiant. “My...
our
...son.”

CHAPTER SIX

T
HEO
STARED
AT
her like she was a stranger. His wide tanned chest didn’t seem to rise and fall at all where he clutched Evie in a towel against it. His lips were white and severe, his stillness frightening.

Accusation sharpened his level glare.

“I tried to tell you,” she began, then thought,
No.
No remorse. He hadn’t returned her calls. That’s why this was a shock to him. If she hadn’t found the right time to bring it up in the past hour, well, he’d had plenty of opportunities in the past year.

Nevertheless, a vision of the striped scars on his back flashed into her mind’s eye. Her indignation deflated and their situation became a tangle again. How had they even got here, staring like a pair of cowboys waiting for the other to draw?

Her arms ached worse than her head, but not as bad as her heart.

“They’re heavy,” she said. “Can we move into the lounge?”

“Of course.” He stepped forward and lifted Androu from her, averting his gaze from Zephyr’s shy smile.

Zephyr was an engaging little chap, happy as anything, and Theo’s turning away from him struck at the very core of her, setting her blood to boil.

Hugging her baby’s tiny frame into her wet swimsuit, she told herself to turn around and walk out, leave Theo to his “real” family.

Zephyr’s connection to the other children stopped her. Without her own cousin’s love and support, her life would be very different right now. Those sorts of ties were sacred to her and Zephyr wasn’t likely to enjoy many of them with her side of the family. Her parents and siblings were even less inclined to speak to her now that she had a bastard soiling the family name.

Was Theo really as narrow-minded as they were, capable of rejecting a boy who hadn’t done anything except have the gall to come to life inside her?

“Did you seriously just wet through this towel onto my arm?” Theo asked Androu in an aggrieved tone. “This kid hates me.”

“He’s a baby. They don’t know how to be malicious.”
So don’t blame Zephyr if you’re angry at me,
she added in a silent bite.

A tense twenty minutes passed as she took Evie and Zephyr into her bedroom to dress the girl and herself, leaving Theo charged with Androu. When she emerged, Theo wore a more truculent expression than any toddler. He held a naked Androu and a disposable diaper that looked worse for wear.

“This is why I’m not cut out to be a father,” he charged. “I can’t even manage the basics.”

“Well, you are a father, so I guess you’ll have to learn, won’t you?” she shot back, heart wobbling in her chest at her own audacity. But this was one thing she wouldn’t let the implacable Theo Makricosta block out. It was too important, and not just to Zephyr.

“I wasn’t supposed to be. You
promised.
You said it would be a disaster—”

“Zephyr is not a disaster. Do
not—
” She cut herself off from raising her voice, looking away for a second to gather herself, afraid she’d frighten the children if she gave in to the press of emotions strangling her. Tears were right behind the anger so she swallowed hard, trying to keep it all from releasing.

“We’re all frazzled and hungry,” she managed in a croaking voice. “I called room service while we were changing. I’ll dress Androu and once we feed the little ones and they’re settled, I’ll explain. All right?”

He glared, but didn’t argue. An hour later, as she scrubbed faces and hands, he washed his own hands and grumbled, “I’m wearing more than they ate.”

“It’s better than wearing
what
they ate,” she countered, not sure how they’d managed to be such a well-coordinated team when they were barely speaking. He’d let her lead, which surprised her, copying her actions with great care and concentration, as if there was a perfect system for feeding a baby.

It was such a contradictory vision of him and did funny things to her heart. He was so gloriously inept, but so determined to master these little child-care tasks. Like he’d suffer terribly if he failed to do it right.

Get smacked, maybe. With a belt.

Oh, Theo
. Her throat filled with words she couldn’t voice.

“That’s gross,” he replied after taking a moment to get her meaning about what the kids ate.

“It’s reality,” she murmured, lifting Zephyr from his chair and adding, “Do you want to watch them in the other room or finish cleaning up in here?”

As the older pair toddled off in two directions, he gave her a boggled look. “Maybe we should call an agency.”

She tensed. So much for their tentative accord. “You don’t want me and Zephyr here after all then.” It was all she could do to pretend his rejection of their son didn’t shatter her.

“No, I mean we need more help. This is a lot of work! Has either of us sat down since we walked in here four hours ago?” He skimmed a hand over his dry but uncombed hair and stabbed a look at Zephyr. “But now we’ve got this development to manage, too. Discretion is more important than ever, so I guess that leaves us stuck doing it ourselves.”

“Development?” she repeated, hysterical laughter competing with outrage.
Stuck?

“Who else besides your cousin’s husband knows I’m— That you and I—”

“Made a baby?” she provided tartly. She tried to remember that he wasn’t the most verbal person alive and this was all quite a shock for him, but honestly, why was it so hard for him to acknowledge his son? “Are you ashamed of Zephyr?” she guessed in a tone that thinned to outrage as the possibility sank in. It was the worst thing he could throw at her, striking directly into her Achilles heel. Into her soul.

“I’m shocked! You had to know I would be.” He’d changed into a basic white T-shirt that strained across his chest as he gestured toward the view of the sea. “I can’t have my family finding out through some cheap sensationalism on the internet. We’ve suffered enough secrets and lies as it is.” He pinched the bridge of his nose.

Unwillingly, she felt sorry for him, which was crazy. He didn’t deserve it, but, “I did try to call you when I first realized I was pregnant,” she reminded.

He sighed, brows coming together in a pensive frown. “I debated calling you back, I did, but Adara turned up pregnant and given her previous miscarriages Demitri and I had to take over her workload. Then our mother died. By the time the dust settled, there didn’t seem any point in contacting you.”

They’d both been going through a lot. She supposed she couldn’t fault him too much for not returning her calls under those circumstances.

“But I trusted you to take that pill, Jaya. What happened?”

The blame in his tone stabbed her, even though she’d tried to prepare herself for it every time she’d mentally walked through this conversation. Yes, she’d failed to protect both of them from the consequences of their night together and she was willing to own that, but his anger and disappointment filled her with umbrage. She didn’t want to feel defensive and solely responsible. He knew what could happen from unprotected sex. It didn’t matter that she had a better understanding of what had driven him that night. He had still chosen to sleep with her to satisfy his own selfish needs.

Just as, when it came down to it, she’d kept their baby for her own selfish reasons.

“The pill was expired,” she explained with as much dignity as she could scrape together. “I thought I’d be able to get a fresh one once I landed in France, but with the time change and Saranya being so ill, it was days before I came up for air. By then I’d missed the window. Then I thought I’d wait to see if I had anything to worry about.”

She flinched from the intensity of his judgmental stare, sinking bleakly back into that time of despair, feeling again the torn sensation of having said goodbye to her life in Bali, and Theo, then facing an even more brutal goodbye with her cousin.

Lifting her chin, she finished without apology, “When it turned out I was pregnant, I couldn’t take steps to end it. I just couldn’t, not with Saranya dying in front of me. I needed something to look forward to. The promise of life and love.”

Scanning the lounge to ensure the older kids were staying out of trouble, she tried to hide that she’d also needed her connection to Theo to continue. Her conscience had tortured her over not keeping her word, but she wasn’t sorry. Not one bit.

“I tried to tell you because you deserved to know.” She cleared her throat. “I didn’t, and don’t, expect anything from you. Not money. Not marriage. He was my decision. He’s my responsibility.”

There. That’s all she’d ever wanted to say, even though she had ached every day to share her pregnancy and baby with Theo. Zephyr was such a little miracle. She wanted Theo to love him as much as she did.

“Oh, sweetie, don’t eat that—” she blurted, realizing Androu had picked lint out of the carpet.

Rushing forward was a much-needed break from the weight of Theo’s gaze. She couldn’t face him after what she’d just said and didn’t want to see his relief at being absolved of any duty or involvement with his son.

* * *

Theo tried to find comfort in her letting him off the hook. God knew he didn’t want to explore the miasma of primordial goo that bubbled inside him as he considered what it meant to be a father.

Inexplicably he was hurt, however. Stinging with rejection at her wanting nothing to do with him.

Fortunately, he was too busy to dwell on whether he should feel sorry for himself or not. Once the kitchenette was tidied, there were beds to set up and pajamas to be ordered, then everyone had to be threaded into them—which was like pushing a rope up a staircase.

“I’m thinking we need bedtime stories and some stuffies. Do they have special blankets or sleeping toys? This could be a rough night,” Jaya warned as she placed a call to a nearby shop before it closed.

“Unlike the day it’s been?” he drawled, waving agreement to whatever she wanted to charge to the room.

He wasn’t trying to fuel a fight. It struck him how painfully familiar this tension was, like a typical Makricosta gathering. They had a full-grown elephant between them in the shape of a dark-haired baby boy, but they remained civil, only speaking about the logistics of what needed to be done as they ran their mini-hotel. It should have been a relief, but he found the circumventing and pretending frustrating.

Was this his punishment for the mistake of not wearing a condom? Because he was feeling castigated, chastised and rebuked. Slapped around, knocked down and kicked to the curb.

Why?
he found himself wanting to demand.
Why don’t you want anything from me? Because you’re afraid I’ll screw up?

He’d never been able to challenge his father, not without suffering worse for it, and he wasn’t sure how to act around Jaya when he felt this abused. His primary instinct when his emotions were churned up was to isolate himself, but no luck on that score. It was all hands on deck and he was about as frayed and tired as the toddlers, barely keeping it together as he counted down the minutes to their bedtime.

If only Jaya would offer the same quiet reassurance she kept giving to the homesick tykes. He watched her adeptly keep them from shedding more than a few sniffles, relieved to know he’d made the right choice in tracking her down, but he was damned jealous of each cuddle and kiss she offered.

His gaze fell on Zephyr and he experienced the crack between the eyes that was his own egocentric vulnerability eighteen months ago. If only he could go back to the ignorance that had been bliss yesterday.

Not all the way back to Bali, though. He didn’t regret making love to her.

Disturbed, he shifted his gaze to Jaya, worried she could read his betraying thoughts.

He wanted to resent her for letting him down, but after what she’d told him about her cousin, he couldn’t find it in him to hate her for failing to take the pill. Maybe the promise of love and life hadn’t been uppermost in his mind when his mother had been dying, but he had an inkling how helpless and hopeless she must have felt.

He couldn’t judge her for using procreation as a coping strategy, either, could he? Not when he’d employed it with her—in a rather shortsighted manner—when he’d been under the duress of Adara’s confession about Nic.

And where was the point in being angry about what she should have done? It couldn’t be undone. The child was here.

Still, he couldn’t face this, couldn’t face fatherhood. What kind of an example had been set for him? Look at his back.

Not that the children had any idea how useless he was. Once they’d scattered their new toys across the blanket Jaya had spread on the floor of the lounge, Evie brought him a book.

“Jaya’s the reader. I’m the sentry,” he said, motioning to his sprawled body acting as a fence between the corner of a chair and the length of the sofa to keep them corralled.

“Peas,” she implored with a heart-stealing smile, reeling him in an inch. Until today he hadn’t spent much time with her, but she was the most gentle, tender thing he’d ever seen, enchanted with Baby Zepper, chattering like old friends to Androu, missing her parents and thus taking to Jaya with impulsive hugs and embraces.

“Sure, I’ll read,” Jaya said breezily. “If Uncle takes the next dirty bottom.”

“Never mind. I got this.” Theo sat up so his back was against the edge of the sofa.

Evie wormed herself into his side, making him lift his elbow in surprise. The weight of her head felt surprisingly endearing as she let it droop against his rib cage.

He imagined she was just getting sleepy, but it still felt like a very trusting gesture, one that gave him a funny sensation of fullness around his heart.

As he started to read, Androu toddled over with a car clutched in his fist, drool glossing his chin. As he plopped down on Theo’s other side, a drip fell to slide down Theo’s wrist.

“Seriously, dude, I’m going to talk to your parents about your manners.”

“He can’t help teething,” Jaya scolded, coming across with a tissue to dry the boy’s face.

As she bent, Theo raised his hand so she could wipe the spit off his arm. Zephyr, balanced on her hip, read some kind of invitation from their body language and tilted out of her grip, reaching out with his short arms for Theo.