Page 12 of Modern Romance January 2025 1-4

‘You think I don’t know that?’ Nic slung back at his older brother in a temper. ‘Lexy has my kids and I doubt that she’ll even let me see them!’

‘Is it these kids or her you’re really into?’ Jace enquired lazily, watching his brother pace back and forth like a tiger in a too small cage.

‘I can’t be into children I’ve never even met,’ Nic intoned grittily. ‘But Iwasinto her... Well, I was until she slammed that door in my face.’

‘Nothing like an angry woman to knock you back to earth,’ Jace opined unhelpfully, making Nic wonder why he had approached his elder brother for advice. ‘But if you want to ace this, you’re going to have to borrow a trait or two from our dear old, unlamented dad, Argus.’

Nic shot back a question for clarity in guttural Greek.

‘You’ve got no rights as an unmarried father under British law. If she says it’s detrimental to their interests to be in contact with you, her vote as their mother counts more than yours. What the hell did you do to her to make her that hostile?’

‘I haven’tdoneanything!’ Nic proclaimed with pride.

‘Doesn’t sound like it,’ Jace remarked gently. ‘But if you want access to those babies, you’re bound to bring in the big guns. It’s your duty as their father. You need to marry her and then you’ll have rights.’

Marriage!The concept was like a punch in the gut to Nic.

‘Our father didn’t think that way,’ Nic breathed stiffly, striving not to feel uncomfortable about the reality that his path into the Diamandis family had not been as smooth or, indeed, as pristine as Jace’s. He was the son of the mistress, raised in status only after his father was widowed and had rejected his firstborn son. He had always felt a little like a consolation prize, only brought into his father’s public life to ease the stinging humiliation of an unfaithful first wife. And he knew that his mother, Bianca, had always felt the same...like an afterthought, a pretender to the Diamandis throne.

‘No, but, sad to say, threats and intimidation work and you may need them to access those children.’

‘I’m not that kind of man.’

‘Just saying. Clean and upfront may not work but itisyour job to bring those babies into our family, however low you may have to sink to achieve that,’ Jace completed without apology. ‘I’ll put my legal team on it for you.’

‘I have a lawyer of my own,’ Nic protested.

‘You need the big guns now,’ his brother asserted. ‘And family is family, Nic.’

‘You certainly don’t view Angeliki in that light,’ Nic commented.

Jace grimaced. ‘Our half-sister has an unpleasant reputation and she’s not the nicest woman around. I’m in no hurry to claim her and that’s why. How you can count her as a close friend escapes me. I know you grew up together but—’

‘Nobody’s twisting your arm to acknowledge her,’ Nic broke in with the loyalty that was innate in him. ‘But she’s honestly not as mean as you seem to think or I wouldn’t spend any time with her.’

Jace laughed. ‘Because she plays nice with you. I suspect she still has plans to get you to the altar and you’re the guy thatstillwon’t tell her what she needs to know to back off!’

Exasperated by his brother’s sense of humour, Nic went to see his lawyer, Aubrey, only to discover that the Diamandis legal team had already been in touch with advice, none of which Nic wished to follow. Yes, he could play hardball with the best of them but not with the mother of his children, he reasoned grimly.

Coming to see you around eleven.

That was what the text announced at eight a.m.

Lexy worked through a mess of emotional reactions. No, she didn’t owe Nic Diamandis the time of day but, at the same time, he was the father of her kids and simply ignoring him as he had long ignored her wasn’t a good idea. Sooner or later, the triplets would inevitably decide thattheywanted to know him. What was so very attractive about a billionaire? Well, inevitable was the exact right word, she had decided. He would be in a position to offer adventurous days out that were only a dream on her horizon. She couldn’t shut him out of their lives, even if she wanted to in retribution. Hedeservedto be shut out of their lives but possibly his children would have a very different take on that outlook.

So, because he was like an inescapable blight on all their lives, she would acceptonevisit. She would let him satisfy his curiosity. And hopefully that would be the end of the whole drama. What single, very good-looking billionaire wanted to settle down to having triplet babies on the regular? She was safe. The first messy nappy would see him off, or a spit up or a meltdown. She had seen him on the Internet, with gorgeous, unattainable women clinging to his flawlessly groomed arm like magnets, the most recent a supermodel with the brain of a very tiny bird—proved by the telling interview she had given—but the body and face of a woman so perfect she looked unattainable to ordinary females. Lexy had only qualified for attention because she had been the only option available on a snowy night in the depths of Yorkshire. A man of Nic’s ilk didn’t do babies in the raw and there was nothing rawer than babies, wild and untrammelled and totally unpredictable as they could be.

Nic arrived, well primed for the challenge of babies, for young children had never been on his radar. His brother, however, was an experienced hand, able to fully convey the potential horrors that had enabled Nic to look now at any baby in much the way he might have regarded an unexploded bomb.

Lexy opened the door, confident in the conviction that she was decently dressed this time around.

Nic took one glance at the narrow skirt and shirt and suppressed a sigh. On his last very brief visit, he had never seen anything sexier than the yoga pants and the spectacles on Lexy with her hair all tousled and impossibly sexy, just the way it had looked when she’d got out of his bed following a night he had never forgotten. And then she’d spun round, her exquisite face out of view, to give him a glimpse of how she looked from behind and that fast the yoga pants had vanished from his memory as he’d measured instead the perfection of her slender hips and surprisingly plump derrière in the fine fabric. He had breathed in deep and slow, striving to stave off the swell in his groin, genuinely embarrassed by his own reaction because,Theemou, he wasn’t a teenager any more when such responses were inevitable.

Lexy was priding herself on her essential decency. She could have let the babies get overtired and treated him to their worst but instead she had let them have that early morning nap as usual and get up again, once more restored to good humour. The trio of babies on the rug all looked up as she reappeared and they, every one of them, smiled. She supposed it was just as well that her kids had no idea whatsoever that their foolish mother had just been slaughtered in the mental stakes by their father. Truth was, Nic was still impossibly pretty. She had rationalised him in photos online, reduced his appeal, fought off the effect of his sexy sizzle.

Only all of that didn’t work in the flesh. Here he was in person, as flamboyantly gorgeous as a tropical sunset and raining all over her parade of indifference. Black designer jeans outlining every powerful line of his narrow waist, lean hips and long, strong legs, a simple tee shirt framing what had to be the muscular chest definition of a pin-up. He was a study in raw masculinity and sensuality.

She wished that Mel were there to bring her down to earth again with a necessary bump and remind her that Nic Diamandis might look like a dream in face and body, but in character he was the very definition of a rat or some far less presentable word. He wasn’t the man she had believed he was the night they had first met. She had been naïve, and he had been deceptive in everything he said and did with her.

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