Page 26 of Twins to Tame Him

“No, Grandmama,” Laila said, testing the words on her lips. The older woman’s gray eyes—so much like her grandsons’—gleamed with pleasure before she buried it.

“I have seen instances where it works—like Ani and Alexandros. And I have seen where it has burned down families. Sebastian and I have enough hang-ups without adding unnecessary, arbitrary structure to the mix. If I were you, I would back off. Because believe me when I say we’re doing our best to make sure the boys have you all in their life.”

Thea cackled and banged her palm on the table. “Fine, Dr. Jaafri,” she said, respect glinting in her gaze. “You have my vote. If anyone can straighten out my useless grandson, it is you. Fate works in strange ways, ne?” she added as an afterthought.

Sebastian laughed, which set off Nikos chortling, which made him spew most of the orange he’d half chewed onto his uncle’s shirt in a capture-worthy projectile.

Alexandros froze. Then slowly, he rubbed the toddler’s face, then wiped some of Nikos’s chewed-up orange from his shirt with a napkin. But the set of his face was so serious, his mouth so flat, that Nikos sobered up, watched around with those big eyes and, in two seconds flat, started wailing using all the lung power he had.

Laila sighed, knowing he was overstimulated. Her happy, easygoing baby never cried like that.

As Zayn watched his twin go off into a tantrum, his lower lip trembled dangerously but somehow, he held the incoming storm at bay, her brave, sensitive boy. Turning away from his uncle, Zayn handed another piece of orange to Nikos, who took it amid his cries and promptly started chewing on it, his chin now dripping with drool, snot and orange juice.

“Cristos, Alexandros!” Sebastian said, shooting to his feet with a violence she rarely saw in him. “It’s just a piece of orange. You need not look like he did that to you on purpose, as if to insult you. He’s just a little boy.”

Alexandros Skalas, the mighty banker that all of Europe feared, looked like his brother had stricken him out of nowhere. “Of course I know that,” he said, his tone whispery soft, even as he radiated tension. “I don’t care if he...vomits on me, Sebastian. I’m not used to kids and I didn’t even look at him straight because I was unsure of what to say or do and—”

“Yes, well. You better start learning how to handle them soon without that horrified, frozen expression or I’m going to have to raise your daughter, too,” Sebastian threw back at him, only half-jokingly.

While Laila didn’t much like Alexandros—so much for thinking they were similar—she felt a rush of sympathy for him. His expression made it clear that Sebastian’s taunt hit where it hurt the most, and worse, it had basis in truth. Those gray eyes, so much like his twin’s, watched Sebastian with such open envy that Laila had to look away. Thank God Annika hadn’t been there to see it.

Laila turned to Sebastian, surprised at his cruelty toward his brother. But her chastisement never formed on her lips.

With such tender care and patience that it caught even his grandmother’s attention, Sebastian was busy wiping Nikos’s mouth and hands with a wet napkin, all the while talking gibberish to him, trying to make him smile, and then picked him up out of his chair. He bent down to pick up Zayn, too, as if he’d done it for years, but pulled back at the last minute, face set into a fake smile he usually put on to show that Zayn’s resistance didn’t get to him.

The moment struck her again with the question that came to her in those rare, quiet moments where her thoughts wandered here and there. How endless was his capacity to feel that Zayn’s reluctance to warm up to him still bothered him? Would he love a woman like that, too, or was it only limited to two innocent children, who were his blood and flesh?

Tucking Nikos against his side, he looked at Laila. “Nap and pool later? I’ll get this one settled down,” he said, switching Nikos from side to side as if he were a basketball.

Her firstborn giggled uncontrollably, causing a string of drool to drip over onto his papa’s designer shirt.

Laila nodded, still in awe of Sebastian’s near-miraculous capacity to love and care for his two sons.

He gave a nod to Zayn, always making sure to include him, then raised Nikos high above his head and swooshed him this way and that as he left the terrace. Her heart jumped into her throat and a protest rose to her lips, but Laila cut it off as she slowly picked up Zayn.

Her sons needed the safety of their papa’s strong arms as much as they needed to learn to fly high and take risks, knowing in their hearts that he would never let either of them fall.

It came to her then—how this whole instinct thing worked. Because her trust in Sebastian’s ability to be what Nikos and Zayn needed was absolute. If only she could feel the same sense of trust that he wanted her in his life...and as more than a part that would complete the vague picture he had for a perfect family. That day at that boutique, his admission that he hadn’t wanted another woman in three years, that she’d become an obsession rang true, too. But obsessions were not...whatever it was that she wanted to be to him. It sounded too much like one of Mama’s fancies, unreliable and bound to be replaced soon by a new one.

Neither could she forget that his “obsession” with her might have risen from the fact that she had pulled one on him. Once he had her assent to this marriage, once she unraveled for him in all the ways she couldn’t resist, would he toss her aside? Would he push her to the margins of his life like he seemed to do with most everything and everyone? And if he did, was she okay with that?

For the first time in her life, Laila felt like her logic and rationale were of no use, and her heart definitely wouldn’t follow her head.

The long summer day was finally coming to a spectacular end with the setting sun streaking the horizon with splashes of fiery orange when Laila decided to seek out Sebastian a few evenings later.

He had disappeared again, for a few days after Thea’s arrival, although this time, he’d informed her that he’d be working and unavailable unless it was an emergency.

Laila had missed him—with even Zayn asking after his papa—and worried about him. Which, in itself was alarming because she was used to being alone, used to not needing to check in with anyone for days at a time. Even when Baba had been alive, he’d either be working or immersing himself in his books, putting together painstaking research on his favorite subject of Arab art of the nineteenth century.

Her intense dislike for playing the big boys’ games at work meant she made few friends there. Outside of work, her life had been consumed by her sons. And yet already, she was too used to ending the day chatting with Sebastian. Already, she felt very little resistance about saying whatever came to her lips.

She had missed not only his steady presence with them, but also the wicked invitation in his eyes when he looked at her. When he rubbed the pad of his thumb against her lower lip. When she knew he wanted her but, for some reason, was playing a waiting game.

If he was struggling with another migraine coming on, she wished he would confide in her. But for all his seemingly open nature, there was a wall she sensed in him and a host of subjects that were forbidden to her.

When Paloma had informed her that he’d returned to the villa after the boys had been settled into bed this evening, she threw on a white cotton dress with halter neck straps, another perfectly fitting dress that had been delivered as part of her new wardrobe, and pulled her unruly hair back with a clip, chiding herself all the while for dressing for him.

But she refused to be brought down by the negative voice in her head—that she was only beginning to realize now sounded too much like Mama, as if she’d internalized all the things she was always saying to Laila in the form of “self-improvement advice.”

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