So has motherhood brought out her inner Bree? "No!" Cross (with Eden) says with a laugh. "My life is more organized for sure. But it's not like I'm cooking! I'm breastfeeding – I feel like that's the best cooking I could do." Photo by: REGINE MAHAUX / EXCLUSIVE BY GETTY |
After landing her breakout role in the '90s prime-time soap
Melrose Place, Cross appeared in a series of TV guest-star roles while also earning a master's degree in psychology. Then came her Emmy-nominated
Housewives turn but still she searched for success in her personal life – until her 2004 fairy-tale encounter with financial adviser Mahoney, 49. After spotting Mahoney outside an L.A. flower store, Cross left her number with a shopkeeper. Mahoney called Cross for a date the following week, and the two were married last June at a church ceremony in San Gabriel, Calif.
Since then, Cross acknowledges pressing the fast-forward button on her life. "Well, I'm no spring chicken," she says. "I met Tom and I was like, 'I don't know whether we can do this [have babies] or not,' " she recalls. "And he was like, 'If we can't, we'll adopt.' I thought, 'This is the man for me!' So before we got married we started trying [to conceive]." She is equally frank about the couple's need for fertility treatment. "We did in vitro a week after we got married," she says. "We were supposed to go to Greece and Paris and have this fancy honeymoon, and I said, 'Let's stay put and see if we can't give this baby a chance.' "
It worked – times two. When they first learned they were expecting twins, "I was hugely terrified," she says. "And I was more scared to have girls – probably from just having been one. Now I'm just delighted. There's nothing closer than the female bond."
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