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She need not have worried. Right on her due date her water broke, and after a thankfully short labour, Sebastian came into the world, the spitting image of his father. Nicolas had been over the moon and everyone who came to visit oohed and aahed over the babe’s angelic appearance.
Serina had anticipated that Nicolas would be besotted with his son. And he was. She hadn’t been quite so sure about Felicity’s reaction. After all, Felicity had been top dog in the family for thirteen years.
But Felicity quickly became just as besotted with Sebastian as his father. She spent every spare second with her baby brother, playing with him and playing to him. On the grand piano Nicolas had bought her. She told Serina in secret one day that she knew Nicolas was disappointed that she didn’t want to become a concert pianist, so she was determined to program Sebastian into fulfilling his father’s wishes.
‘You’re not eating your dinner, Serina,’ Nicolas said with a frown in his voice. ‘I hope you’re not on some silly diet.’
‘Good heavens, no.’ And she picked up her knife and fork. ‘I’ll be having seconds later. I love turkey.’
She’d taken several mouthfuls when Felicity suddenly stood up from where she was sitting at the other end of the table.
‘I have a toast I want to make, too,’ she said, and lifted her glass of Coke. ‘To Nicolas. The best stepfather in the whole world.’
Serina’s heart squeezed tight.
‘To Nicolas,’ everyone said, then drank.
‘One more thing,’ Felicity added. ‘I’ve talked this over with Nanna and Pop and they think it’s a good idea. The thing is…I don’t want to have a different surname than my brother. So I’m going to be known as Felicity Harmon Dupre from now on. If that’s all right with you, Nicolas.’
Serina saw the muscles working overtime in Nicolas’s throat.
‘Absolutely all right,’ he finally managed to say.
‘And you, Mum? You don’t mind?’
‘Not at all, darling. I think it’s an excellent idea.’
‘What a lucky girl you are, Felicity,’ Serina’s mother said as Felicity sat down. ‘To have been blessed with two wonderful fathers.’
‘Felicity is a lucky girl,’ Nicolas told Serina as they lay in each other’s arms that night, their son asleep in the cot next to their bed. ‘But no one is more blessed than me. I have everything any man could ever want.’
Serina glanced up from where she was snuggled against his bare chest. ‘You don’t miss show business?’
‘Not at the moment. But if I ever do, I can always buy a place in Sydney and get back into it. This is all I want to do right now. Spend every day with you and my children.’
‘You’ll eventually get bored.’
‘Maybe. Meanwhile, what say we make another baby?’
Serina’s breath caught. ‘So soon?’
‘The sooner the better. I didn’t realise how much I would enjoy having a baby. The last three months have been the best three months of my life.’
‘You might change your mind once Sebastian learns to walk. And talk. Haven’t you heard of the terrible twos?’
‘All the more reason to start a baby straight away, before I get disillusioned.’
‘But if I have another baby I might have to give up work.’
‘What a good idea! Then you can stay home all day every day with yours truly.’
‘You are a wickedly selfish man.’
‘It is a failing of mine. But you love me, just the same.’
‘I don’t know why.’
He showed her why.
Then he showed her again, just to be sure.
