twenty-four hours there’d been news of him. She’d avoided getting swept up in the tide of the world’s curiosity about his reappearance, at least outwardly. Until now.
Now her retinas burned with the image of him striding out of his imposing Fifth Avenue headquarters. In spite of herself, she’d strained to see how much of the Leonid she’d known had survived his abrupt retirement from his life’s passion.
The man she’d known had been crackling with vitality, a smile of whimsy and assurance always hovering on his lips and sparkling in the depths of his eyes. He’d perpetually looked aware of everything and everyone surrounding him, always connected and tapping in to the fabric of energy that made the world. She’d always felt as if he was always ready to break out in a run and overtake everyone as easily as he breathed. Which he’d literally done for eight years straight.
The man who’d filled the screen had appeared to be totally detached, as if he no longer was part of the world anymore. Or as if it was beneath his notice.
And there’d been another change. The stalking swagger was gone. In its place was a deliberate, almost menacing prowl. Whether this and the other changes she’d observed were sequels of the physical or psychological impact of his accident, one thing was clear, even in those fleeting moments.
This wasn’t the man she’d known.
Or rather, the man she’d thought she’d known.
She’d long faced the fact that she’d known nothing of him. Not before she’d been with him, or while they’d been together, or after he’d shoved her away and vanished.
For most of that time, Kassandra had withdrawn from the world, too. After the shock of his rejection, she’d drowned in despondence as its implications and those of her pregnancy had sunk in. She’d been pathetic enough to be literally sick with worry about him, to pine for him until she’d wasted away. Until she’d almost miscarried.
That scare had finally jolted her to the one reality she’d been certain of. That she’d wanted that baby with everything in her and would never risk losing it. That day at the doctor’s, she’d found out she wasn’t carrying one baby, but two.
After the scare and the discovery, she’d forced everything into perspective, then had even progressed to consider what had happened a blessing. Before Leonid, she’d never thought she’d get married. She’d never considered marriage an option between them, not even when she’d wanted to demand a change in their arrangement. But she’d always wanted to be a mother. Especially after her best friends, Selene, Caliope and Naomi, had had their children. She’d known she wanted what they had, that she’d be good at it, that it would complete her life.
As he’d said, one good thing had come out of that mess. She would be a mother without the complication of having a man around.
Not that it had been smooth sailing. Being pregnant and alone after the unbearable emotional injury of his rejection had been the hardest thing she’d ever gone through. Her family hadn’t made it any easier. Their first reactions had ranged from mortification to outrage. Her mother had lamented that she’d deprived her of the traditional Greek wedding she’d planned for her from childhood, while her father had swung between wrathfully demanding the name of the bastard who’d impregnated and abandoned her to forbidding her to have a baby out of wedlock. Her siblings and other relatives had had a combination of both reactions to varying degrees, even those who’d tried to be progressive and supportive.
The only ones who’d been fully behind her from day one had been her trio of close friends. Not only had they always been there for her and vice versa, no questions asked, they’d once been in her situation. Even if their stories had progressed toward ecstatic endings.
But when her family realized the price for any negative stance would be never seeing her again, they’d relented. Their disappointment and misgivings had gradually melted, especially her parents’, giving way to full involvement in her pregnancy and the preparation for her delivery. After the twins had arrived, they’d become everyone’s favorites and considered to be the best thing that had ever happened to Kassandra. Everything had worked out for the best.
She’d reclaimed herself and her stability, had become even more successful career-wise, but most important she’d become a mother to two perfect daughters. Eva and Zoya. She’d given them both names meaning life, as they’d given her new life.
Then Zorya had suddenly filled the news with a declaration of its intention to reinstate the monarchy. With every rapid development, foreboding had filled her. Even when she’d had no reason to think it would make Leonid resurface.
It seemed her instincts had been correct, for here he was, back on the scene with a vengeance. In one day, he’d taken the world by storm, a mystic figure rising from the ashes of oblivion like a phoenix.
Leonid’s disappearance had been the one thing left unresolved inside her. Everything she’d ever felt for or because of him had long dissipated. But wondering where he’d gone and what he’d been up to had lingered. Now explanations would be unearthed and any remaining mystique surrounding him would be gone, so she could once again resume her comforting routines, untouched by his disruption.
Leonid was a page that hadn’t only been turned, but burned.
“Mama.”
The tension clamping her every muscle suddenly drained at the chirping call of her eldest-by-minutes daughter, Eva. The girls had started calling her Mama two months ago. She hadn’t thought it would be that big of a deal. But every time they said it, which was often now that they knew it activated her like nothing else, another surge of sheer love and indulgence flooded her. Her lips spread with delight as she strode through her spacious, cheerfully decorated Bel Air house to their room.
It had been like this for months. Eva and Zoya always woke up an hour after she put them to bed. It was as if they loathed wasting precious playtime sleeping, or thought they shouldn’t leave her alone. But since she’d gone back to work after their first birthday almost six months ago, and they spent mornings with Kyria Despina, her late uncle’s wife and now her nanny, she welcomed the extra time with them.
As she approached the nursery, she could hear the girls’ efforts to climb out of their cribs through the ajar door. They were able to do it after a few trials now, but would soon be experts at it. She debated whether to go in or to let them complete their task and toddle their way to her in their playroom, as she’d been doing lately. It was why she’d been leaving the door ajar. She had childproofed every inch of her home six thousand ways from Sunday after all.
Moments passed and neither toddler showed up at the end of the corridor. Heart booming with the always-hovering anxiety she’d learned was a permanent side effect of motherhood, she streaked inside and found both girls standing in their crib, literally asleep on their feet.
The tenacious tots were obeying their regular programming even though their strenuously fun weekend at Disneyland had left them wiped out.
Scooping them up, she held one in each arm in the way she’d perfected, cooing to them, letting them know as they nestled into her and made those sweet sleep sounds that she’d come, as she always would, that they hadn’t missed that extra time with her they’d wanted.
Once she laid them down again, each turned to her favorite position and resumed a deep, contented sleep.
Sighing at that tremor of acute love and gratitude coursing through her, she walked out, closing the door completely now that she knew they were down for the night.
