on to suckle strongly.
Hannah looked at the perfect tiny features, the fine textured skin, and felt her heart swell with maternal pride. She really was the sweetest little thing. A precious gift.
What a difference a year made, she decided dreamily. Together she and Miguel had travelled to Rome, toured Italy and spent time in Andalusia. Cindy now ran the Toorak boutique with Elaine’s help.
Life, she decided, was very sweet.
‘How is she?’
Hannah had been so rapt in her own thoughts she hadn’t noticed Miguel had quietly entered the room. She lifted her head and gave him the sort of smile that took hold of his heart and made it beat a whole lot faster.
Did she know how much he loved her? Couldn’t fail to, he mused silently as he crossed to her side and stood watching while she disengaged their daughter and handed her to him to burp.
Minutes later he laid Alexina down carefully in her cot, drew the covers, then enfolded Hannah close to his side as they stood watching their daughter sleep.
‘She’s beautiful,’ Miguel said softly. ‘Just like her mother.’ He turned as Hannah leant her head against his chest, and brushed his lips to her forehead. ‘Time for us, querida.’
‘Mmm,’ she responded witchingly. ‘Sounds interesting.’ She lifted her head to look at him. ‘What do you have in mind?’
He adjusted the baby monitor, then led her into their bedroom. ‘Pleasuring you.’
‘Isn’t that a bit one-sided?’
He slowly undid the buttons on her top, and freed the rest of her clothes. His mouth slanted down to capture hers, and she kissed him back, swept away by the tide of passion as he gently pressed her down onto the bed.
‘Later,’ Miguel murmured. ‘You get to have your turn.’
She did, although not for long. A thin reedy cry came through the baby monitor, and she stilled, waiting for another to follow it. When it did, she pressed a light kiss to her husband’s thigh, then slid from the bed.
‘Our daughter has no sense of timing,’ Miguel groaned huskily as Hannah pulled on a robe.
‘I’ll be back,’ she promised, and she was, several minutes later after soothing Alexina to sleep.
‘Wind,’ she enlightened succinctly as she slipped into bed and reached for him. ‘Now, where were we?’
‘I would say,’ Miguel evinced huskily, ‘just about there.’ His breath caught, then hissed between his teeth as she caressed an acutely sensitive part of his male appendage.
It didn’t take long for him to break, and Hannah exulted in the way he took control, entering her in one long thrust that soon settled into a rhythm as old as time.
A shimmering sensual feast shared by two people who loved to the depths of their souls. Without reason, other than they were twin halves of a whole. Beyond mortal life, for all eternity.
Helen Bianchin
KATRINA felt her breath hitch a little as her voice rose in disbelief. ‘You’re not serious?’
It was a joke. A tasteless, sick joke. Except lawyers didn’t sink to this level of facetiousness during a professional consultation. ‘Dear God,’ she said irreverently. ‘You are serious.’
The man seated behind the imposing mahogany desk shifted his shoulders, and eased into a well-rehearsed platitude. ‘Your late father expressed concern at the difficulties you might incur.’
Difficulties didn’t even begin to describe the shenanigans her extended dysfunctional family were heaping on her head.
Not that this was anything new. She had been the favoured one for as long as she could remember. Daddy’s golden girl. His only child. A constant, immovable thorn in the side of his second and third wives and their child apiece from previous marriages.
No one could say her life hadn’t been interesting, Katrina reflected. Three paternal divorces, two scheming ex-wives, and two equally devious stepsiblings.
During her formative years she’d been able to escape to boarding school. Except for holidays at home, most of which had been hell on wheels as she’d fought a battle in an ongoing war where reality had been a seething sea of emotional and mental one-upmanship beneath the façade of pleasant inter-family relationships.
The time between each of her father’s divorces had proved to be the lull before the next storm, and instead of bowing her down it had merely strengthened her desire to be a worthy successor to his extensive business interests.
Much to the delight of the man who’d sired her.
Now, that same man was intent on reaching out a hand from the grave to resurrect a part of her life she fought on a daily basis to forget.
Katrina cast the lawyer a penetrating look. ‘He can’t do this,’ she refuted firmly as she attempted to hide the faint tide of panic that was slowly invading her body.
‘Your father had your best interests at heart.’
‘Making the terms of his will conditional on me effecting a reconciliation with my ex-husband?’ she queried scathingly. It was ridiculous!
‘I understand a divorce has not been formalised.’
Her level of desperation moved up a notch. She hadn’t got around to it and, as no papers had been served on her, neither had Nicos.
‘I have no intention of allowing Nicos Kasoulis back into my life.’
Greek-born, Nicos had emigrated to Australia at a young age with his parents. As a young adult he’d gained various degrees, then had entered the hi-tech industry, inheriting his father’s extensive business interests when both parents died in an aircraft crash. Katrina had met him at a party, their instant attraction mutual, and they’d married three months later.
‘Kevin appointed Nicos Kasoulis an executor,’ the lawyer relayed. ‘Shortly before his death, your father also appointed him to the board of directors of Macbride.’
Why hadn’t she been apprised of that? Dammit, she held a responsible position in the Macbride conglomerate. Choosing not to take her into his confidence was paternal manipulation at its worst.
Her chin lifted fractionally. ‘I shall contest the will.’ Dammit, he couldn’t do this to her!
‘The conditions are iron-clad,’ the lawyer reiterated gently. ‘Each of your father’s ex-wives will receive a specified lump sum plus an annuity until such time as they remarry, sufficient to support a reasonable lifestyle in the principal residence they gained at the
