Page 29 of Modern Romance July 2025 #4-8

EPILOGUE

‘H ERE , YOU HOLD A TTICUS ,’ she said, passing the swaddled infant with the mop of dark hair to his father. The baby looked at his father with big, interested eyes. ‘I just need to, yep, done,’ she said as she wiped around Lucas’s mouth. He didn’t open his eyes.

They were very different, in personality at least. Atticus was louder, demanding attention. Lucas, five minutes older, was more placid, but when he did lose his temper he really did lose it!

Most people could still not tell them apart. Lizzie had always been able to see the subtle little differences, the angle of Lucas’s eyes and the deeper dimple in Atticus’s right cheek. At six months, they were even more obvious than they had been at birth.

‘Have we got time to…?’

‘Plenty,’ her handsome husband assured her calmly. ‘It’s not like they can start the christening without us, or the boys at least.’ His glance slid down to her shoes, lingering a little on the way on her stupendously excellent legs. ‘You going to be OK in those shoes?’

‘Fine,’ she promised him patiently. She had grown accustomed to his overdeveloped protective instincts during the pregnancy. He was better since the birth but still inclined to see dangers that weren’t there lurking around every corner.

They took their time walking up the incline to the place where Spyros had been buried the previous week.

Once he’d known the twins were on the way, he had seemed to gain a new lease of life, and the extra months the treatment had given him had meant that he had lived to see and get to know his great-grandsons.

It had been sad when he had passed away in his sleep but, as he had said when he’d got to hold the babies for the first time, it was all about continuity and, as far as he was concerned, he was holding immortality.

Lizzie handed Lucas to his father as she laid the wildflowers on the grave, which was marked with the simple cross Spyros had requested.

She straightened up and moved in close to Adonis’s side, aware of the protective warmth of his presence that made her feel shielded from any harm.

‘Thank you, Spyros,’ she said quietly.

In response to the unspoken question in her husband’s eyes, she said, ‘If he hadn’t meddled and manipulated we might never have met.’ The thought of that filled her with horror.

‘Oh, we would have,’ Adonis responded with total conviction.

‘We were meant to be together. I truly believe that.’ He bent his head and brushed her lips with his, then kissed both babies in his arms. ‘They look like little angels, but you do realise that as soon as we walk into the church they are going to scream the place down?’

‘Oh, I’d say that is a sure thing.’ She laid a hand on his arm. ‘You are not upset that your parents didn’t turn up?’

‘Not especially. Actually, not at all. I have everything I need right here.’