Triplets Under The Tree. Kat Cantrell
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Cavallari plus three.
“Of course. I’m sorry, I should have thought of that.” Dismay curved her mouth downward.
“There is no protocol when the dead come back to life,” he countered drily and smiled. Apparently he’d found a sense of humor along with his home.
His head spun as Caitlyn disappeared upstairs to retrieve the babies and Brigitte, whoever that was. A few minutes later, she returned, followed by a young blonde girl pushing a three-seated carriage. Everything faded away as he saw his children.
Three little heads rested against the cushions, with three sets of eyes and three mouths. Wonder and awe crushed his heart as he drank in the sight of these creatures he’d had a hand in creating.
“They’re really mine?” he whispered.
“Really, really,” Caitlyn confirmed at normal volume, her tone slightly amused.
She picked up the one from the first seat and held him in the crook of her arm, angling the baby to face him. The blue outfit meant this was his son, didn’t it?
“This is Leon.” Her mouth quirked. “He’s named after my father. I guess it’s too late to ask if that’s okay, but I thought it was a nice tribute to Vanessa’s role in his heritage.”
“It’s fine.”
Antonio was still whispering, but his voice caught in his throat and he couldn’t have uttered another sound as his son mewled like a hungry cat, his gaze sharp and bright as he cocked his head as if contemplating the secrets of the universe.
His son. Leon.
Such a simple concept, procreating. People did it every day in all corners of the world. Wilipo had fourteen children and as far as Antonio could tell, never thought it particularly miraculous.
But it was.
This little person with the short baby-fine red hair was his child.
“You can say hello,” Caitlyn reminded him.
“Hello.” His son didn’t acknowledge that Antonio had spoken, preferring to bury his head in Caitlyn’s shoulder. Had he said the wrong thing? Maybe his voice was too scratchy.
“He’ll warm up, I promise.” She slid Leon back into the baby seat and picked up the next one.
The pink outfit filled his vision and stung his eyes. He had a daughter. The heart he could have sworn was already full of his son grew so big, he was shocked it hadn’t burst from his rib cage.
“This is Annabelle. I always wanted to have a daughter named Annabelle,” Caitlyn informed him casually, as if they were discussing the weather instead of this little bundle of perfection.
“She has red hair, too,” he murmured. “Like her brother.”
Her beautiful face turned up at the sound of his voice and he got lost in her blue eyes.
He had a very bad feeling that the word no had just vanished from his vocabulary, and he looked forward to spoiling his daughter to the point of ridiculousness.
“Yes, she and Leon take after Vanessa. Which means Annabelle will be a knockout by the time she’s fourteen. Be warned,” she said wryly with a half laugh.
“I know martial arts,” he muttered. “Any smarmy Romeo with illicit intentions will find himself minus a spleen if he touches my daughter.”
Caitlyn smirked. “I don’t think a male on the planet would come within fifty yards of Annabelle if they knew you were her father. I was warning you about her.”
With that cryptic comment, she spirited away his daughter far too quickly and replaced her with the third baby, clad in blue.
“This is Antonio Junior,” Caitlyn said quietly and moved closer to present his other son. “He looks just like you, don’t you think?”
Dark hair capped a serious face with dark eyes. Antonio studied this third child and his gut lurched with an unnatural sense of recognition, as if the missing pieces of his soul had been snapped into place to form this tiny person.
“Yes,” he whispered.
And suddenly, his new lease on life had a purpose.
When he’d set off from Indonesia to find his past, he’d never dreamed he’d instead find his future. A tragic plane crash had nearly robbed these three innocent lives of both their parents, but against all odds, Antonio had survived.
Now he knew why. So he could be a father.
* * *
As promised, Caitlyn rounded up the babies and sent them upstairs with Brigitte so Antonio could decompress. Brigitte, bless her, didn’t ask any more questions about Antonio’s presence, but Caitlyn could tell her hurried explanation that he’d been ill and unable to travel home hadn’t satisfied the au pair. Neither would it be enough for the hordes of media and legal hounds who would be snapping at their heels soon enough.
The amazing return of Antonio Cavallari would make worldwide headlines, of that she was sure. But first, he needed to rest and then see a discreet doctor. The world didn’t have to know right away. The household staff had signed nondisclosure agreements, and in Hollywood, that was taken so seriously, none of them would ever work again if they broke it. So Caitlyn felt fairly confident the few people who knew about the situation would keep quiet.
She showed him to the master suite, glad now that she’d never cleaned it out, though she’d have to get Rosa to pack up Vanessa’s things. It was too morbid to expect him to use his former bedroom with his late wife’s clothes still in the dresser.
“I’ll send Rosa, the housekeeper, up with something to eat,” she promised and left him to clean up.
She wandered to the sunroom and pretended to read a book about parenting multiples on her e-reader, but she couldn’t clear the jagged emotion from her throat. Antonio’s face when he’d met his children for the first time... It had been amazing to see that much love crowd into his expression instantly. She wished he could have been there in the delivery room, to hold her hand and smile at her like that. Tell her everything would be okay and he’d still think she was beautiful even with a C-section scar.
Except if he had been there, he’d have held Vanessa’s hand, not hers, and the reality squelched Caitlyn’s little daydream.
The babies were his. It wouldn’t take long for a judge to overturn her custody rights, not when she’d signed a surrogacy agreement that stated she’d have no claim over the babies once they were born.
But the babies were hers, too. The hospital had listed her name on their birth certificates as their mother—who else would they have named? She’d been their sole parent for nearly eight months and before that, carried them in her womb for months, knowing they weren’t going home with Vanessa and Antonio as planned, but with her.
It was a mess, and more than anything, she wanted to do what was best for the babies. Not for the first time, she wished her mother was still alive; Caitlyn could use some advice.
An hour later, Antonio reappeared.
He filled the doorway of the sunroom and the late-afternoon rays highlighted his form with an otherworldly glow that revealed the true nature of his return to this realm—as that of an angel.
She gasped, hand flying to her mouth.
Then he moved into the room and became flesh and blood once again. But no less beautiful.
He’d trimmed his full beard, revealing his deep cheekbones and allowing his arresting eyes to become the focal point of his face. He’d swept back his still long midnight-colored hair and dressed in his old clothes, which didn’t fit nearly as well as they once had, but a man as devastatingly handsome as Antonio could make a bedsheet draped over his body work.
Heat swept along her cheeks as she imagined exactly that, and it did