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I shoved him and he hopped off of me, looking around awkwardly and adjusting his obviously huge erection in his pants. Makayla had kindly kept herself gone. She was no fool.
Janus helped me to my feet and then together we tumbled into the bedroom where I’d been sleeping.
I didn’t care that the door slammed behind us. All the better to warn Makayla to stay out.
Chapter 4
HOPE
It was the middle of the night and I leaned into Janus’s body. He was warm. And so real beside me. The babies between us in my belly.
I imagined a life of this. Sleeping with him on one side. His brothers curled around me on the other. But the thought of them and the lies and collusion among them not to tell me things…
Tears slipped out of my eyes and sideways down my cheek onto the pillow.
I loved Janus. I loved his body. I loved the way he could make me feel sometimes. Like I was everything in the world to him. Everything he’d been waiting for all his life and the very air he was desperate to breathe to go on living.
So then why was there this deep ache in my heart that made me know, in my gut, that I couldn’t go back with him?
You don’t trust him yet.
I wasn’t sure if it was a voice of wisdom or fear inside me. I was still so twisted around and turned upside down. This had all happened so fast.
And the babies…
What if I made the wrong choice now? And the wrong man, like my mother had? Could I really just go run and jump back into their arms when I was still so unsure?
What happened if the babies were born and then I was stuck, no job, no way out, helpless little humans and me caught in the trap of these powerful celebrities without anyone on our side—
Panicked, I scooted out of bed. Janus kept sleeping. Always the heavy sleeper, even on a night like tonight when my scared little rabbit’s heart was beating so fast I was so afraid it might be affecting my blood pressure.
I pressed my hand to my heart and hurried out of the bedroom and into the living room. The panic felt blind. I couldn’t seem to catch my breath.
I grabbed for the doorknob and only as I yanked the door open—thankfully the hotel was expensive enough that the hinges were well oiled and it didn’t make a sound—I looked back at Janus, still sound asleep.
He was gorgeous. With his chiseled, masculine jaw and huge muscles he looked like an angel from the Bible—the kind that could smite you with a single blow.
He could destroy me. So easily.
I wanted him to be the man I thought he was.
I needed him to be.
For the sake of these babies.
And because I needed it so badly…
I clutched my chest, nails digging in.
It was too easy to delude myself I was seeing what wasn’t there. The twins moved in my stomach. Slippery little fishes in my belly, tumbling and stretching, some leg or arm or head pressing down against my bladder.
I loved them already more fiercely than I’d known I was capable of.
It wasn’t fair to be torn apart like this. To be given everything I’d ever dreamed of—love, a family, and then to learn it might only be a mirage in the desert. The water just dust on a shriveling tongue.
If I ran back to the bed, shook his shoulders, and pleaded with him to tell me the truth, could I trust what would come out of his mimic’s mouth? He was such a good actor. It was unfair to him to hold it against him, perhaps…
So which did I choose—what was unfair to him, or unfair to me? I stood on the threshold of the doorway. Rabbit heart beating so fast I felt almost dizzy with fear and indecision, I didn’t— I couldn’t—
Until another strong kick from the babies sent me fleeing the room.
Chapter 5
LEANDER
It had been a month since I’d seen Hope.
Four torturous weeks without her face in my life.
Janus swore he’d done everything right when he’d gone to see her.
The thought pissed me off as I gritted my teeth against the ache in my leg, hoofing my way across the plaza on my crutches. My leg was healing and I was determined to get my mobility back. I’d been going to the physical therapist every other day. Other patients had to be coaxed into movement but my PT, Edoardo, was always telling me to slow down and not push so hard.
I told him I had places to go and people to see.
Because I needed to see Hope myself, face to face.
Simply put, I didn’t believe Janus’s account. If he’d done everything right like he said, she wouldn’t have fled his bed in the middle of the night.
