Triplets Under The Tree. Kat Cantrell
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raspy voice washed over her, turning inside her chest warmly, and tears pricked her eyelids. He even sounded like Antonio. She’d always loved his voice. “No, I don’t think so. For a moment, I thought you were—”
A ghost. She choked it back.
His blank stare shouldn’t have tripped her senses, but all at once, even with a full beard and weighing twenty pounds less, he looked so much like Antonio she couldn’t stop greedily drinking him in.
“This is my house,” he insisted firmly with a hint of wonderment as he glanced around the foyer beyond the open door. “I recognize it. But the Christmas tree is in the wrong place.”
Automatically, she glanced behind her to note the location of the twelve-foot-high blue spruce she’d painstakingly arranged in the living room near the floor-to-ceiling glass wall facing the ocean.
“No, it’s not,” Caitlyn retorted.
Vanessa had always put the tree in the foyer so people could see it when they came in, but Caitlyn liked it by the sea. Then, every time you looked at the tree, you saw the water, too. Seemed logical to her, and this was her house now.
“I don’t remember you.” He cocked his head as if puzzled. “Did I sell you this house?”
She shook her head. “I...uh, live here with the owners.”
The Malibu mansion was actually part of the babies’ estate. She hadn’t wanted to move them from their parents’ house and, according to the terms of Vanessa’s and Antonio’s wills, Caitlyn got to make all the decisions for the children.
“I remember a red-haired woman. Beautiful.” His expression turned hard and slightly desperate. “Who is she?”
“Vanessa,” Caitlyn responded without thinking. She shouldn’t be so free with information. “Who are you?” she demanded.
“I don’t know,” he said between clenched teeth. “I remember flashes, incomplete pictures, and none of it makes sense. Tell me who I am.”
Oh, my God. “You don’t know who you are?” People didn’t really get amnesia the way they did in movies. Did they?
Hand to her mouth, she evaluated this dirty, disheveled man wearing simple cotton pants rolled at the ankles and a torn cotton shirt. It couldn’t be true. Antonio was dead.
If Antonio wasn’t dead, where had he been since the plane crash? If he’d really lost his memory, it could explain why he’d been missing all this time.
But not why he’d suddenly shown up over a year later. Maybe he was one of those con men who preyed on grieving family members, and loss of memory was a convenient out to avoid incriminatory questions that would prove his identity, yet he couldn’t answer.
But he’d known the Christmas tree was in the wrong place. What if he was telling the truth?
Her heart latched on to the idea and wouldn’t let go.
Because— Oh, goodness. She’d always been half in love with her sister’s husband and it all came rushing back. The guilt. The despondency at being passed over for the lush, gorgeous older Hopewell sister, the one who always got everything her heart desired. The covert sidelong glances at Antonio’s profile during family dinners. Fantasies about what it would be like if he’d married her instead of Vanessa. The secret thrill at carrying Antonio’s babies because Vanessa couldn’t, and harboring secret dreams of Antonio falling at her feet, begging Caitlyn to be the mother of his children instead.
Okay, and she’d had a few secret dreams that involved some...carnal scenarios, like how Antonio’s skin would feel against hers. What it would be like to kiss him. And love him in every sense of the word.
For the past six years, Caitlyn had lived with an almost biblical sense of shame, in a “thou shalt not covet thy sister’s husband” kind of way. But she couldn’t help it—Antonio had a wickedly sexy warrior’s body and an enigmatic, watchful gaze that sliced through her when he turned it in her direction. Oh, she had it bad, and she’d never fully reconciled because it was intertwined with guilt—maybe she’d wished her sister ill and that was why the plane had crashed.
The guilt crushed down on her anew.
Tersely, he shook his head and that was when she noticed the scar bisecting his temple, which forked up into his dark, shaggy hair. On second thought, this man looked nothing like Antonio. With hard lines around his mouth, he was sharper, more angular, with shadows in his dark eyes that spoke of nightmares better left unexplained.
“I can’t remem—you called me Antonio.” Something vulnerable welled up in his gaze and then he winced. “Antonio Cavallari. Tell me. Is that my name?”
She hadn’t mentioned Antonio’s last name.
He could have learned the name of her children’s father from anywhere. Los Angeles County tax records. From the millions of internet stories about the death of the former UFC champion and subsequent founder of the billion-dollar enterprise called Falco Fight Club after his career ended. Vanessa had had her own share of fame as an actress, playing the home-wrecking vixen everyone loved to hate on a popular nighttime drama. Her red hair had been part of her trademark look, and when she’d died, the internet had exploded with the news. Her sister’s picture popped up now and again even a year later, so knowing about the color of Vanessa’s hair wasn’t terribly conclusive, either.
He could have pumped the next-door neighbor for information, for that matter.
Caitlyn refused to put her children in danger under any circumstances.
Sweeping him with a glance, she took as much of his measure as she could. But there was no calculation. No suggestion of shrewdness. Just confusion and a hint of the man who’d married her sister six years ago.
“Yes. Antonio Cavallari.” Her eyelids fluttered closed for a beat. What if she was wrong? What if she just wanted him to be Antonio for all the wrong reasons and became the victim of an elaborate fraud? Or worse—the victim of assault?
All at once, he sagged against the door frame, babbling in a foreign language. Stricken, she stared at him. She’d never heard Antonio speak anything other than English.
Her stomach clenched. Blood tests. Dental records. Doctors’ exams. There had to be a thousand ways to prove someone’s identity. But what was she supposed to do? Tell him to come back with proof?
Then his face went white and he pitched to his knees with a feeble curse, landing heavily on the woven welcome mat.
It was a fitting condemnation. Welcoming, she was not.
Throat tight with concern, she blurted out, “Are you okay? What’s wrong?”
“Tired. Hungry,” he stated simply, eyes closed and head lolling to one side. “I walked from the docks.”
“The docks?” Her eyes went wide. “The ones near Long Beach? That’s, like, fifty miles!”
“No identification,” he said hoarsely. “No money.”
The man couldn’t even stand and, good grief, Caitlyn had certainly spent enough time in the company of actors to spot one—his weakened state was real.
“Come inside,” she told him before she thought better of it. “Rest. And drink some water. Then we can sort this out.”
It wasn’t as if she was alone. Brigitte and Rosa, the housekeeper, were both upstairs. He might be Antonio, but that didn’t make him automatically harmless, and who knew what his mental state was? But if he couldn’t stand, he couldn’t threaten anyone, let alone three women armed with cell phones and easy access to Francesco’s top-dollar chef’s knives.
He didn’t even seem to register that she’d spoken, let alone acknowledge what he’d surely been after the whole time—an invitation inside. For a man who could be trying to scam her, he certainly wasn’t chomping