Page 17 of Twins to Tame Him

With a sigh, she nodded.

But whatever he thought of her doubts, he didn’t let it linger. Shooting to his feet, he gave her his hand. Surprised, Laila took it anyway. His big hand enfolded hers in an easy grip as he tugged her. “It’s time you learn to play with puppies, Dr. Jaafri. Come.”

“What? No. I mean... That’s not necessary, Sebastian. The boys have you and everyone else to help them.”

“Not to help. But for fun. For yourself.”

Shocked, Laila offered no more protest and soon, her sons were shouting that she had joined and two adorable puppies were licking her chin and Sebastian laughed and held her when she burrowed into him when the more aggressive one tried to climb her legs.

Hard and hot and smelling of clean sweat and a subtle cologne, he was more than a safe haven. Under the guise of hiding from the teeny puppy, Laila clung to him for a few more seconds, and when she looked up into his gray gaze, she knew that he knew.

But he didn’t mock her. With a warm flame in his gray eyes, he tightened his arms and Laila wondered at how easily he made her feel wanted.

With each passing day, Laila felt more and more out of control of her own life, even though she was doing so much more than the bare minimum. Which was strange because she was less worried about the boys’ long-term security now, and had three whole hours every afternoon to focus on the paper she was writing for an extremely competitive academic journal. Paloma had two new helpers, other than Sebastian being on hand, if the boys didn’t settle down for their two naps, and, she knew 100 percent that she’d made the right decision.

The boys were thriving under Sebastian’s patient presence. Though Zayn wouldn’t come out and show it just yet.

Her sensitive son watched his papa and his twin play and run and chase dogs with his big, thick-lashed amber eyes wide and curious and longing, quite how Laila watched Sebastian, she imagined. Desperate to be part of them, but not yet ready to join in, or not knowing how.

While she was beginning to believe that Sebastian had the boys’ best interests at heart, Laila thought that exact reason boded something else for her.

“I’ve always wanted a family, too,” he’d said and meant it.

Which, quite logically, led her to believe that he would do anything to persuade her to make them into a traditional family unit through marriage.

In his mind, she might as well be no more than a tool he would use to get close to his sons, to ensure their well-being and happiness, as easily as he might employ a dog or a toy. She could be any woman in the world—her defining role to him was that she was his sons’ mother.

Which should be reason enough for her to resist the lure he cast. If not for her actively pursuing him, he would never have come into her orbit, never danced with her or taken her to bed. Never made an offer of marriage, if not for their sons.

Sebastian Skalas was like the sun, just as Mama once had been. He sparkled and glittered and drew others into his orbit automatically, for fun, for entertainment, wherever his fancy stuck. And then he moved on, leaving people like her sons discarded like broken toys. Just like Mama had done to Baba.

Just like he would do to Laila, given she was the exact opposite of the woman a man like him noticed.

And yet, for some inexplicable, possibly foolish and definitely naive reason that went against every bit of rationale she tried to dredge up, Laila wanted him to want her. She wanted to be seduced. She wanted more of his soft confessions and wicked smiles, and she wanted those strong arms that had wrapped around her with such gentleness to move all over her with desire and urgency and none of that smooth control.

She wanted more than his pretend hugs and polite bridge-building and fake friendship. She wanted to peel beneath the various masks he put on. Until she knew what he’d wanted from Guido so badly that he’d have ruined the older man. Until she knew why he hid his art from the world. Until she knew him like no one else did.

It was impossible to put this into a rational construct except that she’d clearly been a lot lonelier than usual since her pregnancy, and she wanted sex and companionship, and she wanted both of these specifically from Sebastian.

Whether it was because he was the father of her sons or because he’d been her only lover, or because something about him inexplicably drew her to him, she had no idea.

With a frustrated groan, she pushed away from the massive desk in the airy sunroom that had been created as her workspace. Three solid hours of free time and she was spending it daydreaming ridiculous scenarios about a man who only wanted her in his life for their sons. Leaving her to wonder what it was about Sebastian Skalas that always made her act out of character.

CHAPTER SIX

IN HINDSIGHT, Laila thought she should have expected that Sebastian would default to form in that spectacularly dramatic fashion of his—getting caught smooching some tall, anemically thin, cheekbones-for-life model/designer/party girl.

Three weeks was a long time for him to act the domesticated homebody, given he’d spent most of his life in the most profligate of ways.

That some tabloid toe rag had caught him smooching said Slavic model wouldn’t have been on Laila’s radar, if Annika in her desperation to stop Laila from seeing it had inadvertently made Laila curious enough to seek it out.

In a smart black jacket with the white shirt underneath open to his abdomen, he had been caught in profile, with the model’s mouth attached to his, her body wrapped around him like a squid’s tentacles from the boys’ favorite cartoon show. This was on the first night he’d been away from the villa since their arrival.

He hadn’t yet returned from his jaunt and Laila wondered if he had to like...build a buffer of partying and sleeping around and causing general mayhem to sustain being the responsible, caring parent the rest of the time. Like her own mother, who’d needed parties and theater and flirting endlessly with “exciting men” because she claimed her life with Baba was boring and dull and predictable. As if it was his primary responsibility in life to provide entertainment for her. Failing that, she’d expected him to support her extravagant lifestyle.

This wasn’t the same, Laila tried to tell herself. He hadn’t made any promises of fidelity to her. He’d offered a cookie-cutter marriage deal that she hadn’t accepted. He was free of obligation to her. They had nothing in common except the boys. He wasn’t a man she could trust a hundred percent. Her excuses for him went on and on but didn’t stick, didn’t make the slice of hurt lessen.

Seeing him with his...flavor of the month felt like someone had picked her up and thrown her across a hard floor. Like her very breath had been beaten out of her. Like the numerous times when her half sister, Nadia, had teased her that she didn’t belong with her and their mother because she was so...weird with her “not-so-slender build and over-smart brains” and a freak with her head buried in numbers and models.

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