grateful for his insistence that he collect her, Alexius and Andreas from the hospital. In fact, she wondered how on earth she could have managed without him. She literally couldn’t have carried the two babies along with all her hospital stuff and managed even something as simple as opening the front door with a key which had always gone stiffly into the lock, but which had never seemed to matter until now.
As it was, on several occasions she’d had to bite back tears of frustration—telling herself that her emotions were only see-sawing all over the place because of her fluctuating hormone levels and the fact that she had recently given birth.
Xandros had organised a car, which she had accepted, and he had also offered to bring along a maternity nurse, which she had refused. That had vexed him, as had so much else—but nothing had irked him quite so much as looking round at her tiny home now that it had acquired two extra small human beings, along with all their assorted paraphernalia. There were giant, ugly plastic bags of nappies—and bottles of baby bath and packets of baby wipes. Why did everything have to be made out of plastic? he had wondered sourly more than once.
‘Look at it!’ he raged. ‘You cannot possibly stay here!’
‘I don’t have any alternative,’ said Rebecca. ‘Lots of babies are brought home to places like this.’
‘Not usually two babies at the same time! How the hell are you going to manage?’ he demanded.
‘I’ll manage,’ she said tiredly.
‘You had enough difficulty getting back from hospital,’ he pointed out. ‘And you might just about cope with the babies since that is what nature has equipped you to do, as you keep telling me—but what about you? There is very little food in the fridge—and no fresh fruit or vegetables at all! It is outrageous!’
‘We can’t all have fleets of servants at our beck and call,’ she said flippantly, in an effort to hide the hurt. ‘Perhaps you’d like to do a quick supermarket shop for me?’
‘Oh, I can do better than that,’ he said grimly, sliding the phone from his pocket.
Within the hour, one of London’s most chi-chi stores had delivered the kind of food which Rebecca could never have afforded, not even at Christmas, and for the first time in years, Xandros found himself unpacking it himself—and using every one of his spatial skills to try to fit most of it into her shoebox of a fridge.
He heated them both some soup and gave Rebecca some fruit juice while he drank a glass of wine and then watched as she fed the babies again. He cleared their supper away while she changed them—because his macho Greekness rebelled at that. As it was, it had been many years since he had washed dishes—and in a funny kind of way, he enjoyed it.
But when he walked back into the sitting room, he could see the exhaustion which had made her face paper-pale and the shadows underneath her eyes nearly as violet dark as her eyes—and never had he felt so … ineffective.
‘You’re tired,’ he observed.
‘Yes, I am. Thank you for all your help, Xandros—and I’ll see you soon.’
He heard the dismissal in her voice and his mouth twisted into an odd kind of smile. ‘Oh, but it isn’t over yet, agape,’ he said grimly. ‘Because I am not going anywhere.’
‘Wh-what are you talking about?’
‘I shall sleep on the sofa tonight.’
She stared at him in alarm. ‘But you can’t!’
‘Can’t? Did you really imagine for one second that I would leave you here alone on your first night back at home—with two tiny babies? What if something happens to you? What if you should suddenly get sick?’
His protectiveness made her want to weep with a terrible kind of yearning—as she couldn’t help but imagine how it would feel if his words were inspired by love, rather than paternal duty. But that was selfish, wasn’t it? Her own fiery dreams of love with Xandros lay in ashes—but she must rise above all that and do the best for Alexius and Andreas. They both owed them that.
‘I’ll find you a duvet,’ she said awkwardly.
‘Thank you.’
Xandros could never remember spending such an uncomfortable night—not even when he used to sleep on the beach under the stars, on those balmy nights back in Greece, when the air had been so thick and so warm that it had been impossible to stay inside.
But back then he had been a teenager, his still-growing body adaptable to just about anything. In the intervening years he had become a man used to only the very finest things.
So should he be grateful for this opportunity to remind him of what life could be like for others less fortunate?
By morning, there was no question of gratitude. He had barely slept a wink—woken up by a dust-cart outside the window, which had seemed determined to give him the entire repertoire of its noisy engine, and then by the sound of rain beginning to thunder down.
For a while, he lay staring at his surroundings in a kind of dazed disbelief until he could hear the sound of Rebecca moving around and so he washed and dressed, and made coffee for them both. But the delicious smell of it did little to soothe his frayed nerves—serving only to remind him how this situation could not be allowed to continue.
He heard her footsteps and turned round as she came into the sitting room. She had tied her hair into two thick plaits, which hung down by the sides of her unmade-up face, and she was wearing a simple pair of linen trousers and a pale T-shirt. He thought how ridiculously young she looked, and oddly wholesome, too—and while wholesome was not a word he usually liked or associated with his women, perhaps it was the best to be hoped for under these particular circumstances.
‘How did you sleep?’ she asked, thinking how he seemed to dominate the room with his presence and how unsettling it had been to imagine him sleeping on the other side of the paper-thin walls.
‘How do you think I slept?’ he grated.
‘I did try to warn you—’
‘You are missing the point, Rebecca.’
He was not going to intimidate her in her own home. ‘And what point is that, Xandros?’
‘I told you yesterday—you can’t possibly live like this!’
‘Like what?’
He wanted to tell her not to play dumb with him—but instead he made a sweeping movement with his hand intended to draw attention to the minute size of the accommodation as his mouth flattened into a disapproving line.
As an architect, he had been schooled in aesthetics—but for Xandros the love of beauty had always been instinctive, rather than taught. He knew that taste was a purely subjective matter—but his early life in Greece had made him appreciate space and simplicity. Whereas this…
The clutter of her home was unbelievable—and the early-morning light picked it out with cruel clarity. It wasn’t just the baby stuff—it was all the candles and knick-knacks she had everywhere. Not only was every surface covered with something which to his eyes seemed completely unnecessary—but now there was a double buggy to contend
