Total pages in book: 77
Estimated words: 74196 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 371(@200wpm)___ 297(@250wpm)___ 247(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 74196 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 371(@200wpm)___ 297(@250wpm)___ 247(@300wpm)
Giancarlo swung to look over his shoulder towards me and the disaster I’d made of his luxury back seat. He obviously hadn’t realized things had progressed so far. His eyes went wide as saucers and he looked accusingly at Leander, who just shoved the phone in his face. “Tell the ambulance where we are.”
Giancarlo snatched the phone and started spitting out Italian into the receiver, his hand going to his forehead like he was overwhelmed.
He should try being stuck on an Italian country road with two babies threatening to pop out. Speaking of, oh shit, here came another contraction.
I wrapped my hand round and round in the unwound seatbelt for something—anything—to brace me as the pain started to sear across my huge belly. Leander must have undone my seatbelt when we’d stopped.
“One of them is crowning!” Milo shouted from down between my legs while the Italian from the front seat got even louder and more heated. “I don’t think these babies are going to wait.”
I wailed in both pain and panic. They had to wait!
I tried to close my thighs as if that would hold them in, but the escalating pain made it impossible to do anything but scream and hold on for dear life to the seatbelt on one side and—
Leander’s strong hand finally grasped my other hand.
He’d stopped freaking out, apparently. Well, as I went limp from the contraction and looked at him, his eyes did look a little wild—okay, a lot wild.
But he was steady as he gripped my hand.
“You can do this. We can do this.” He looked at me, then down at Milo. “Pour some alcohol on your hands.”
I started shaking my head. “No, no, no,” I muttered, fat tears exploding out of my eyes. This was not happening here.
But Milo just urged my legs back wide while Leander opened up a vodka bottle from the bar and poured it profusely over Milo’s hands.
And then Milo took position back between my legs. Milo had an even cooler head than Leander as he assessed whatever the hell was going on down there. “I can see the crown of one head, honey,” he said, putting a hand on my knee. “I think you’re all the way dilated.”
“How?” I cried. “That’s impossible!”
“It’s possible,” Milo said. “Because I’m seeing it.”
I barely had time to catch another breath before the pain started again.
“It’s okay,” Milo shouted. “Bear down this time. Push!”
And I did. Dear God, but I did.
I started to push.
Chapter 16
LEANDER
I held my tiny infant daughter in my arms while Milo held my son.
Hope was asleep in the hospital bed a few feet away. It wasn’t the luxury hospital suite in Florence I’d arranged for us.
No, we were in a modest little hospital that was the nearest we could get to after my son and daughter were born in the back of a van on the side of a road. The ambulance arrived ten minutes after Milo delivered my daughter. They helped with the afterbirth and then all of us rode here. Hope fell almost immediately asleep after the nurses helped her try to feed the cleaned up babies.
And now here we were.
Tears burst out of my eyes both at the thought of the birth and at the sight of the perfect little bundle in my arms.
Janus was on his way here right now. We’d called him, of course, and he was coming, even though he’d have to turn right back around and drive two hours back again for filming after a short visit. Huge production budgets waited for no man. Or baby.
Especially when he was supposedly Leander and no one knew these babies might as well be his son and daughter as mine.
As the tears crested and fell down my cheeks, I’d never been so happy not to be the movie star.
The tiny baby in my arms stirred and her little hand opened. And closed around my thick finger.
Fuck, that did funny things to my chest. How could her tiny finger bones even be that small? It was miracle. Everything about these two babies felt like a miracle.
This was nothing I ever thought I’d wanted.
Kids had always been a no-go for me. Full stop.
After my own childhood and teenage years… God. There was no way I wanted to watch any kid of mine go through that.
Maybe they aren’t yours. Maybe they’re Janus’s…
I didn’t know if I hoped for it or not. Though, considering we were identical, I wasn’t sure it actually mattered much at this point.
Because as I looked down at the little girl in my arms, her perfect little tiny plum cheeks, tiny rosebud mouth, angel eyelids so impossibly thin…
She was mine and would be mine forever. Same for the little boy Milo held as he sat in the chair in the corner. He was beaming down at the baby.