A Forever Kind of Family (18 page)

“I was lucky to steal some cake to bring home in a crowd that size,” he agreed, peeling the plastic wrap off the plate and nudging it across the table toward her.

“No, thanks.”

He retrieved a fork from the drawer. “You didn’t have any at the party.”

“I’m not really a fan of cake.”

He stared at her as if he couldn’t believe what she’d said. “It’s cake—it’s soft, it’s sweet, it’s delicious. What’s not to like?”

The thousand calories per bite, but of course, she wasn’t going to admit that to him.

“Try it.” He waved the fork near her mouth. “And don’t you dare say you don’t like chocolate, because I’ve seen the stash of Godiva chocolate bars in the back of the freezer.”

“Why would you open a container marked ‘quinoa’?”

“Because I didn’t know what quinoa was and I was hungry.”

“Did you eat my chocolate?”

“Your stash is safe,” he assured her. “So long as you tell me why you don’t want a piece of Jacob’s birthday cake.”

“I filled up on other stuff.”

“You had a hamburger without a bun and about two tablespoons of broccoli salad.”

“Why are you so preoccupied with what I eat?”

“Because you are.”

She shrugged. “Lifelong habits are hard to break.”

“You’re not old enough to have lifelong habits,” he chided.

“I was a catalog model for designer children’s clothing before I was two years old.”

“No kidding?”

“No kidding,” she confirmed.

His lips curved. “So I’m dating a model?”

She rolled her eyes. “Hardly.”

“Ex-model, then.”

“Ex-ex-ex,” she said. “And you could probably add a few more exes considering that my career in front of the camera ended when I was nine.”

“What happened?”

“I took a tumble while skiing and tore the ACL in my right knee, after which I had surgery and then spent six weeks not able to do much of anything. I gained eight pounds and the company hired another girl for their catalog. My mother was furious and that was the end of my illustrious career in front of the camera.”

“Good for your mother,” he said, “pulling you out of the business.”

She managed a wry smile. “My mother was my agent. She didn’t pull me out—she put me on a diet. No fat, no sugar, no starch.”

“You’re kidding.”

She shook her head.

“That explains a lot about your eating habits,” he noted.

“I like salad,” she said, just a little defensively.

Ryan made a face. “Nobody likes salad that much.”

“When I finally lost the extra weight, I promised myself I wouldn’t put it back on.”

And she obviously hadn’t, because she was all angles now. He shook his head. “I’m sorry—I’m still trying to get over the fact that your mother put you, at nine years of age, on a diet because you’d gained eight pounds.”

“She lives and works in a world where people are judged as much by how they look as what they do.”

“Is that why you left New York City?”

“I think that’s probably why I chose to work behind the camera,” she admitted. “Because even after four years of therapy, I still wondered if I wasn’t pretty enough, skinny enough or talented enough to do anything else. And because I’m in control there. Because I’ve proven that I’m smart enough, organized enough and committed enough to make
Coffee Time
the number one–rated show on WNCC.”

“You should be proud of everything you’ve accomplished,” he told her sincerely. “And some people should not have kids.”

She looked away. “I know.”

He tipped her chin up, forcing her to meet his gaze. “I was referring to your mother, not you.”

“But she’s the only example I ever had—can you see now why I’m so worried about screwing up with Oliver? I don’t want to be the reason he’s in therapy in high school.”

“You’ve got my family now,” he reminded her.

“Your family is great,” she admitted.

“And they love you.”

Her gaze skittered away again. “That’s not a word that you should just throw around like that.”

“Like what?”

“Like it’s...easy.”

“Loving someone is easy,” he told her.

And it always had been in his family. Not that everything was always hearts and flowers, but he’d never had any doubt that his parents loved each other and their kids. Even when he’d fought with his brothers, as was inevitable with sibling relationships, he wouldn’t hesitate to call on either of them—or any of his cousins—if he needed anything, and he felt confident that they would do the same.

Harper hadn’t grown up with that same kind of unconditional support, and he hated to think that those who should have bolstered her self-confidence and self-worth had managed to do just the opposite.

Maybe she wasn’t actually perfect. In fact, he’d be the first to admit that she was a little uptight and a lot demanding. She was also beautiful and warm and giving. She always committed 100 percent to whatever task was assigned to her—not just at work but in life.

She’d been devastated by the loss of her best friend and then expected to take on the responsibility of raising her child. It would have been simple enough for her to say that she didn’t want to do it. Instead she’d accepted the challenge.

And he knew it had been a challenge. He wouldn’t have thought it was possible for anyone to have less experience with babies than he had, but it had been apparent to both of them that Harper won that contest hands down. She hadn’t had the first clue what to do with Oliver, but she’d learned. Even when she’d been beyond exhausted, he’d see her reading over books on child care or researching toddler menus on the internet.

She wasn’t perfect, but sometime over the past two months he’d decided that she was perfect for
him
.

He knew it was going to take some time before she was ready to hear it, before she let herself trust his feelings—and her own. So for now he put the empty cake plate aside and took her upstairs to show her—loving her slowly, tenderly and thoroughly.

* * *

Ryan glanced up at the knock—and bark—at the door to see his brother standing there with Coco on her pink leash, her tail wagging ecstatically.

“Look at you,” he said to the puppy. “I swear you’ve grown three inches in the past three days.” Then, to his brother, “Why didn’t I get the memo about bring-your-dog-to-work day?”

Braden didn’t respond to his attempted humor. “It turns out that Dana’s allergic to dogs.”

He lifted a brow. “And you didn’t know that?”

His brother looked away, making Ryan suspect that his sister-in-law’s excuse for not wanting to keep the puppy was just that—an excuse.

“How bad are her allergies?” he asked. “Because I know Jordyn has to take an antihistamine every day to live with that ugly cat of hers.”

“I don’t know how bad,” Braden admitted. “But aside from the allergies, she accused me of patronizing her—expecting a dog to take the place of the child she hasn’t been able to have.”

“Is that why you got the puppy?”

“Not to take the place of a child,” Braden denied, squatting down to scratch Coco’s head. “But maybe I wanted to see if she could focus on anything other than her obsession to have a baby.”

“She still won’t consider adoption?”

His brother shook his head. “She’s so screwed up from her father’s abandonment of his family that she’s determined to figure out a way for us to have a baby that is truly ours so that she can have a real family again.”

Ryan could hear the frustration in his brother’s voice, and although he wanted to help, he didn’t know that anyone could. The baby issue was something Braden and Dana had to figure out for themselves. “What do
you
want?”

“I want to hear her laugh again, to remember the woman I fell in love with. The past three years have been an endless cycle of anger and tears, and I honestly don’t know how much longer I can do it.” He stroked the puppy’s fur in a gesture that Ryan suspected was as much apology as affection. “And it doesn’t help that there are babies crawling all over the place at every family gathering.”

Over the past year, Ryan had noticed that Dana was uncharacteristically subdued whenever they were all together, and then she’d simply stopped showing up for family events. In fact, when Lauryn had given birth to Kylie in early March, Braden had visited them at the hospital but his wife had been conspicuously absent. “Does she know that Rachel’s pregnant?”

Braden’s brows lifted. “
I
didn’t know that Rachel was pregnant.”

Ryan winced. “It’s recent news—I’m sure Andrew just hasn’t had a chance to tell everyone yet.”

“Or he doesn’t know how to tell me, because he knows we’ve been struggling to start a family for so long.”

Unable to refute his brother’s logic, Ryan opted to redirect the conversation. “What are you going to do with Coco now?”

“I guess I have to take her back to the SPCA,” Braden said.

“Take her back—as if she was an ill-fitting sweater?”

“I know it’s not an ideal solution, but I’m sure she won’t be there more than a day or two before another family takes her home.”

“And you don’t think four different homes in the space of a week will traumatize her at all?”

Braden winced. “I wanted to keep her. I thought for sure Dana would warm up to her in time. But this morning, she said that her allergies were really bothering her and I had to choose between her and the puppy.”

“There you go—you do have options.”

“You do know that’s my wife you’re talking about?”

“Yeah, sorry,” Ryan said, although he wasn’t sure if he was apologizing for the insensitive remark or his brother’s marital status.

“I don’t want to take her back to the shelter,” Braden said.

He nodded, because he knew it was true. If his brother had wanted to take Coco back, he wouldn’t have detoured to his office.

Ryan crouched down in front of his desk and the puppy immediately scrambled toward him, planting her front paws on his knees so that she could reach up to lick his face.

“I don’t think she’d be traumatized if she went back to your house,” Braden remarked.

“As Harper pointed out, a baby is enough responsibility without adding a baby dog to the mix.” And there was no doubting the validity of her argument.

On the other hand, he couldn’t help remembering how she’d laughed watching Oliver and Coco play together; how she’d liked to watch TV in the evenings with the puppy cuddled in her lap; and how sad she’d looked when they’d dropped Coco off at Braden’s house three days earlier.

Coco leaned in closer, nuzzling her face against his throat, and he sighed. “I’ll take her home tonight—but I’m not making any promises.”

* * *

When Ryan got home, Oliver was playing on the kitchen floor, banging on a pot with a wooden spoon while Harper sautéed green beans.

She glanced over her shoulder when she heard the door open. “Dinner’s almost...” The words trailed off when she saw the puppy in his arms.

Oliver spotted his furry bundle at the same time, dropping his spoon and scrambling to his feet. “Coco! Woof!”

The puppy obliged by woofing in response.

Ryan set her down on the floor. Harper shook her head and sighed.

“The anniversary surprise didn’t go over as well as Braden anticipated,” he told her.

“And now we have a puppy,” she guessed.

“You could say no.”

She looked at the boy and dog, then back at Ryan. “As if.”

“I wouldn’t have chosen to get him a dog at this stage, either,” Ryan admitted. “But I think Coco’s good for him. For all of us.”

“Sure. Chasing a puppy all over the house will be a welcome distraction from worrying about the custody hearing hanging over our heads.”

“I knew you’d see the bright side.”

She dumped the green beans into a bowl and shoved it in his direction.

Chapter Thirteen

“T
hat was a waste of time,” Ryan commented as he sat down beside Harper in Shelly Watts’s office Tuesday afternoon.

He hadn’t known what to expect, but he’d hoped that the Renforths would agree that Oliver was being well taken care of in accordance with his parents’ wishes and be persuaded to withdraw their claim for custody. That hadn’t happened.

“Mediation is a useful tool for settling disputes, but both parties have to be willing to compromise for it to be successful,” the attorney said.

“I thought our proposal for visitation was reasonable,” Harper said.

“It was more than reasonable,” the attorney agreed. “But Aubrey and Jeremy are insisting that they don’t want visitation—they want custody.”

And although a guardian
ad litem
had been appointed by the court as an independent advocate for Oliver’s best interests, certain statements made by the attorney during her visit led Ryan to believe she had a bias toward children being placed with biological family members whenever possible. In addition, she’d made no effort to hide her disapproval of the fact that the little boy’s parents had chosen guardians who were unmarried.

“So what happens now?” he asked Shelly.

“Now we wait for a trial date,” she told them.

“How long will that take?”

“It depends on how much time the clerk thinks will be required and how many other cases are on the docket.”

“Weeks? Months?”

“Yes,” Shelly said unhelpfully. “It could be as soon as a couple of weeks or as long as several months.”

“What are we supposed to do in the meantime?” Ryan asked.

“Exactly what you have been doing.”

“Do you think...? Is there any chance...?” Harper’s question trailed off, and Ryan knew she was reluctant to even articulate the fear that they might lose Oliver.

“I wish I could give you a guarantee, but I can’t,” Shelly said. “While it seems unlikely that any judge would award custody to a couple who has had no contact with the child until a few weeks ago, it’s not outside the realm of possibility, especially considering that Aubrey shares a biological connection with Oliver.”

“But it isn’t what Melissa and Darren wanted,” Harper said, sounding close to tears.

“And we’ll make sure the judge is aware of their wishes,” Shelly promised.