CHAPTER FIVE

SOMEHOWTHEYSETTLED into an easy routine over the next few weeks, though it should have been impossible on paper.

Not somehow, Laila acknowledged. It was thanks to Sebastian.

There wasn't a single thing that the boys or she needed that wasn't already arranged or sorted for them, before Laila herself could think of it. He'd arranged for Annika and Alexandros to leave the villa for a whole two weeks, so that the four of them could bond as a unit, even as he admitted that Alexandros had been quite put out about moving his very pregnant wife into his penthouse in Athens, even temporarily. Laila had thought it was also because Sebastian wanted to avoid Ani, but she kept that to herself.

She would have liked to have Ani around, to avoid too much one-on-one time with Sebastian. After her near breakdown and his tenderness that first night, Laila felt as if there was no equation or model for her feelings to follow. Unless it was chaos theory, since they went up and down and around, tying her in helpless knots. Apparently, a little kindness from Sebastian could make her as fragile as Nikos's sandcastle.

He had also forbidden their grandmother Thea from visiting just yet, Alexandros had quipped, expressly for Laila's sake. Being the traditional matriarch, Thea would apparently bear down on Laila to make her great-grandsons legitimate heirs of the Skalas family ASAP.

Laila had enough to handle with her world turning upside down, thanks to Sebastian's determination to mold himself into the father of the century and the most reliable, easygoing, close-to-wonderful co-parent.

He'd gone overboard with an army of extra staff he had interviewed himself and hired to keep an eye on the boys around the villa, and an insane number of toys and swings and slides and scooters and bicycles and inflatable castles that had begun to arrive in quick succession at the villa over the first week.

On the sixth afternoon of their arrival, Laila ran out, her heart in her throat, as Nikos shouted loudly for her from the front lawn. She skidded to a stop on top of the steps to find Sebastian on his knees, surrounded by two puppies and their sons, though Zayn was a few steps behind his twin.

Mouth hanging open, Laila reached them. "Sebastian, what did you do?" she asked, inanely.

Zayn answered for his father, more excited than she'd seen him in a long while, amber eyes dancing with pleasure. "Puppies, Mama." He held up two of his little chubby fingers aloft as if to make sure she understood the significance of the number. "Two puppies, one for Nikos. One for me," he said, thumping his chest, then turning away to run toward the tiny little bundles.

There was no way for Sebastian to answer her, though he grinned at her from the ground. Hair flopping onto his forehead, gray eyes shining with attention, he was overwhelmingly gorgeous, far too real in a way Laila had never imagined he could be. For one bitter second, she wanted to say he was manipulating the boys but she instantly knew that was unfair.

She followed the caravan—Paloma and the two helpers gleefully joining in—as Sebastian showed both the boys how to pet the tiny puppies and told them in soft, easy words how important it was to treat them kindly and to give them lots of love.

Nikos and Zayn—eyes bright and wide—followed his hands and his words and his actions, as if he was a larger-than-life hero. And maybe to her sons, he was a hero.

Maybe, sooner or later, they would have needed this, too, in their life. Laila had enough experience to know that one parent's undivided, unconditional affection could never make up for negligence from the other.

It was a long while—after he directed them to pour water in the puppies' bowls, and put a leash on them and set them all free—before Sebastian walked toward her.

Hair wind-ruffled, dark denim showing off his lean physique, he looked like he had walked out of a photo shoot. Wishing she'd put on a different top and combed her wayward hair, Laila rubbed at the banana stain on her shirt.

If he noticed her frantically grooming herself like a pet being presented to its master, thankfully he ignored it. She felt an instant thrum under her skin when he finally reached her, a thin sheen of sweat coating his face and neck.

"You didn't come to pet the puppies. The boys called you enough times."

Of all the things for him to notice and comment on... Laila was continually shocked by how perceptive he was for a shallow playboy who cared nothing about others. Or at least that was the impression he wanted to make. "I'm... I'm not used to dogs. In fact, I'm scared of them," she admitted, her cheeks going pink.

If she thought he'd laugh at her, he proved her wrong again. "You didn't have one growing up? Never played with a neighbor's dog?"

"No. I had enough people to look after without adding a dog to the mix," she said, before she could arrest the thin thread of resentment. "Baba was an academic who buried his head in research and history and my mother and sister... They would have hated the idea of a dog. Unless it was one of those posh crossbreeds that fits in a designer purse."

When he stared at her in surprise, she colored. "What about you? Did you have one?"

"No. I begged and begged but was not allowed. It was a sort of punishment."

"For what?"

"Let's just say I was a lot to handle as a kid. Giving me a dog would have been too much. And in hindsight, I'm glad I was deprived of it."

Laila stilled at the strange tenor to his words, the tight set of his jaw. But she didn't want to probe. "You're a lot to handle even now," she said, hoping to pull him out of that dark mood.

Meeting her eyes, he grinned. For the space of a second, his gaze dipped to her mouth and then back up. "I'm easy to handle if one was inclined to learn," he said, his tone returning to teasing.

"Two tiny puppies, though, Sebastian?" she said, as much to cover the heat racing her cheeks as much to speak up. He flirted so easily with her and it wasn't like it was an act, either. She knew that much. "That's a bit much for two-year-olds, don't you think?"

"A boy should always have a dog."

She heard both his resolve and something more—like a loss—in those words. It shook her a bit, the intensity he hid beneath his easy charm. "Who's going to look after them? They're babies."

"All of us."

"You're spoiling them," she said, unable to help sounding critical.

"I have more than two years to make up for." He turned to her, turning that thousand-watt attention squarely on her. Her skin prickled. "What's really bothering you, Dr. Jaafri?"

Their gazes held in a silent battle before she relented with a sigh. "Puppies feel permanent. It will be hard enough to make the boys understand when...if things don't work out."

His anger was betrayed by the tight fit of his mouth but nothing more. "I don't think you've still grasped my commitment to this and maybe that's on me. To answer your question, if you move out of here, which will be because you didn't give this a fair chance, the puppies and the extra helpers and probably even I will just follow. That's how this works, ne?"

With a sigh, she nodded.

But whatever he thought of her doubts, he didn't let it linger. Shooting to his feet, he gave her his hand. Surprised, Laila took it anyway. His big hand enfolded hers in an easy grip as he tugged her. "It's time you learn to play with puppies, Dr. Jaafri. Come."

"What? No. I mean... That's not necessary, Sebastian. The boys have you and everyone else to help them."

"Not to help. But for fun. For yourself."

Shocked, Laila offered no more protest and soon, her sons were shouting that she had joined and two adorable puppies were licking her chin and Sebastian laughed and held her when she burrowed into him when the more aggressive one tried to climb her legs.

Hard and hot and smelling of clean sweat and a subtle cologne, he was more than a safe haven. Under the guise of hiding from the teeny puppy, Laila clung to him for a few more seconds, and when she looked up into his gray gaze, she knew that he knew.

But he didn't mock her. With a warm flame in his gray eyes, he tightened his arms and Laila wondered at how easily he made her feel wanted.

With each passing day, Laila felt more and more out of control of her own life, even though she was doing so much more than the bare minimum. Which was strange because she was less worried about the boys' long-term security now, and had three whole hours every afternoon to focus on the paper she was writing for an extremely competitive academic journal. Paloma had two new helpers, other than Sebastian being on hand, if the boys didn't settle down for their two naps, and, she knew 100 percent that she'd made the right decision.

The boys were thriving under Sebastian's patient presence. Though Zayn wouldn't come out and show it just yet.

Her sensitive son watched his papa and his twin play and run and chase dogs with his big, thick-lashed amber eyes wide and curious and longing, quite how Laila watched Sebastian, she imagined. Desperate to be part of them, but not yet ready to join in, or not knowing how.

While she was beginning to believe that Sebastian had the boys' best interests at heart, Laila thought that exact reason boded something else for her.

"I've always wanted a family, too,"he'd said and meant it.

Which, quite logically, led her to believe that he would do anything to persuade her to make them into a traditional family unit through marriage.

In his mind, she might as well be no more than a tool he would use to get close to his sons, to ensure their well-being and happiness, as easily as he might employ a dog or a toy. She could be any woman in the world—her defining role to him was that she was his sons' mother.

Which should be reason enough for her to resist the lure he cast. If not for her actively pursuing him, he would never have come into her orbit, never danced with her or taken her to bed. Never made an offer of marriage, if not for their sons.

Sebastian Skalas was like the sun, just as Mama once had been. He sparkled and glittered and drew others into his orbit automatically, for fun, for entertainment, wherever his fancy stuck. And then he moved on, leaving people like her sons discarded like broken toys. Just like Mama had done to Baba.

Just like he would do to Laila, given she was the exact opposite of the woman a man like him noticed.

And yet, for some inexplicable, possibly foolish and definitely naive reason that went against every bit of rationale she tried to dredge up, Laila wanted him to want her. She wanted to be seduced. She wanted more of his soft confessions and wicked smiles, and she wanted those strong arms that had wrapped around her with such gentleness to move all over her with desire and urgency and none of that smooth control.

She wanted more than his pretend hugs and polite bridge-building and fake friendship. She wanted to peel beneath the various masks he put on. Until she knew what he'd wanted from Guido so badly that he'd have ruined the older man. Until she knew why he hid his art from the world. Until she knew him like no one else did.

It was impossible to put this into a rational construct except that she'd clearly been a lot lonelier than usual since her pregnancy, and she wanted sex and companionship, and she wanted both of these specifically from Sebastian.

Whether it was because he was the father of her sons or because he'd been her only lover, or because something about him inexplicably drew her to him, she had no idea.

With a frustrated groan, she pushed away from the massive desk in the airy sunroom that had been created as her workspace. Three solid hours of free time and she was spending it daydreaming ridiculous scenarios about a man who only wanted her in his life for their sons. Leaving her to wonder what it was about Sebastian Skalas that always made her act out of character.