Roxanne collected her thoughts the moment she sensed the jealousy in Lucian’s voice. Certain that the man was not upset about her keeping the truth from him since he pampered her too much to find fault in her, she turned the tables and argued instead, “Come on. Do you think we would have stayed hidden if we didn’t need to? I figured you would recognize them since they look so much like you. That’s why we never came back.”
Caught off guard by her questioning, Lucian was suddenly stumped for words. Now that Roxanne had pointed it out, he realized Archie and Benny did take after him in terms of looks. “Well, I was so caught up with getting you back I didn’t notice that.”
The thought of his oversight suddenly made Lucian feel guilty. “I thought someone else was their father. At that point, I even told myself that I would teach that irresponsible man a lesson if he were to go looking for you guys, but it turns out I am the guy.”
The hatred Lucian felt toward Archie and Benny’s unknown father had turned into self- recrimination ever since he learned the truth about the children.
“I’m sorry you had to go through all that. None of this will happen again. I promise I will make it up to you all.”
“It sure was tough back then. I wouldn’t have tried so hard to hide their existence if I had known you couldn’t tell who they were,” Roxanne complained, trying to pull his leg. “It’s all my fault. I should’ve found out who they were earlier and spared you all the years of hiding.”
When he thought about how the children and Roxanne could have lived differently if he had found them earlier, the ambiance in the room became tense as the guilt in Lucian’s heart grew.
Noticing that he had fallen for her act, she quickly said, “It’s okay. I should’ve known that a busy man like you wouldn’t have time to pay attention to people’s looks. In fact, I doubt you even know what you look like now.”
The expression on Lucian’s face showed her words had struck him as accurate, for indeed, he had never paid any attention to his own appearance. Caught by surprise by his reaction, Roxanne burst out in laughter, saying, “Estella actually looks a lot like you too.”
Her comments put a deeper frown on his forehead. “Well,” Roxanne added, shaking her head, “Estella might have my eyes, but the rest of her features take after yours. Also, you were still with Aubree then, and your mom kept saying Estella’s mom was somebody else, so I didn’t think much about it.”
Not to mention I was under the impression that my daughter had died, so I never once thought Estella could be her.
Because her daughter’s apparent death was a heavy topic, Roxanne did not say it out loud, but what she expressed was already enough to add more weight to Lucian’s guilty conscience.
“It’s all my fault. I should’ve told you I found out about it.” Lucian knew there was nothing else he could do but apologize, yet Roxanne smiled forgivingly at him.
“It’s okay. What matters now is that we still found each other when we didn’t know anything about the children. They are happy where they are now. That’s the most important thing.”
Having reconciled with one another now that they had opened up honestly about their feelings, Lucian and Roxanne looked into each other’s eyes lovingly and chatted till midnight. At that point, Lucian finally coaxed her to bed, after which he left to send off the visitors.
