B00CQUPUKW EBOK (7 page)

“It’s not fair.”  Jason’s body rocked with sobs.  “It’s not fair.  I want my mom and my dad back, Uncle Bryce.  Please, bring them back home.”

“I wish I could, Jase.  I really wish I could.”

“I hate God.  I hate Him for taking them away from us.”

Bryce pulled the boy’s hands from around his neck and stared into his face.  “Jason, I never want to hear you say that again.  Promise me you won’t.”

Jason swiped the back of his hand across his nose.  “You told Daddy you hate God for taking Aunt Pilar from you.  I want to be like you, Uncle Bryce.  I want to hate Him, too.”

“No, you don’t.  You don’t want to be like me.  You cannot hate God.  You hear me.  You cannot hate Him.”

Jason ran out of the room, sobbing.  

Kaya stared at Bryce.  His face was contorted, and his hands were pressed against his temples as if he were trying to muffle noises in his head.

A cold knot formed in her stomach.  Pilar was Bryce’s horrific experience.

Who was she
?  His sister?  Lover?  
Wife
?  Whoever she was, her death had caused Bryce to hate God.  He must have loved her deeply.

That’s why Michael and Lauren had left the children to her.  As much as they loved Bryce, and as much as he loved them, they couldn’t leave their children to a man who hated a God they evidently believed in.  Not that she was any better when it came to religious matters.  She didn’t even attend church.  She probably knew less about God than Bryce did, but she didn’t hate Him.  She wasn’t that stupid to alienate the Almighty Power and bring His wrath down upon her.

With a shake of her head, Kaya pulled her wits together.  Whatever had happened in Bryce’s past was his business.  It was none of her concern.  Her concern was that little boy who’d just declared that he wanted to be like his Uncle Bryce, the man he adored, the man who may very well replace his father in his young malleable life.

The man who hated God
.

“Go on, say it.”  Bryce was on his feet, glaring down at her.

“Say what?”

“That I’m an ungrateful rebel for hating God.  I mean look at me.  I’ve been blessed with more wealth than any one man should have a right to, and I still can’t enjoy it.  Tell me I’m a horrible person.  It’s what you’re thinking, isn’t it?” 

“No,” she answered, meeting his stormy gaze.  “If you’re a rebel, you probably have a cause.  As to you being ungrateful, I don’t know you well enough to make that assumption.  You’re obviously hurt, angry—stuck in neutral, maybe.  But I do know that you’re not a horrible person, Bryce Fontaine.  These children love you.  If you were as bad as you think you are, they wouldn’t give you the time of day.  Children are like that.  They instinctively shun the bad and embrace the good.”

“What are you, some kind of shrink?”

No, but I’ve spend enough time with one to know what she would have said
.  “I’m just very worried about Jason,” Kaya said in an attempt to steer the topic of conversation away from Bryce.  She hadn’t come to Granite Falls to fix his problems.  She had her own.

“I’m worried about Jason.  I knew he’d be upset when he heard the truth.  I didn’t expect this outrage.”

“He’s in shock.  He doesn’t really mean what he said.”  Bryce wiped his hand over his short crop of black hair.  “I should call Samantha.”

“Yeah, that’s a good idea.  She said to call her after you talked to him.”

Anastasia began to whimper again.  Kaya rubbed her tummy the way she’d seen Bryce do.  It didn’t help.  Her whimpers grew louder.

“What’s wrong with her now?” he asked, looking at the infant with a bit of impatience.

“I think she’s hungry.”

“Then feed her.”

“That’s the problem.  She misses being nursed.  She doesn’t take the bottle well.  Or maybe it’s the formula she doesn’t like.  I— I called her pediatrician—”

He glanced at the half empty feeding bottle siting on the dresser.  He picked it up and pinched the nipple between his thumb and forefinger.

Kaya inhaled sharply, and to conceal her response to his actions, she gathered Anastasia and hoisted her over her shoulder.

“Did you try a different kind of nipple?” he asked.

“Huh?”

“Of course, what would you know about babies and bottles and nipples?  Rearranging furniture is your specialty.”  He set the bottle back on the dresser.

“There are different kinds of nipples?  A nipple is a nipple, isn’t it?”

“No, Kaya.  A
nipple
is never just a
nipple
.  
Nipples
come in different colors, shapes, sizes, and textures.” 

The slow, seductive sound of his voice, especially when he said “nipple” coupled with the sensual flame in his dark eyes, caused Kaya’s own nipples to tingle and harden beneath her lacy bra.  When his eyes shifted from her face to her heaving chest, then back to her face, she knew that
he
knew that
she
knew they’d moved beyond discussing the nipple on a baby bottle.  Heat and moisture gathered at the junction of her thighs.  Her throat became dry, and she had no power to stop the soft moan that escaped her.

Kaya was so happy she was wearing one of Lauren’s bulky sweaters.  

“Babies get attached to the feel and texture of their mothers.”

God, he wasn’t done
.  If he said that word one more time…

“What you have to do is find a
nipple
that matches the shape—”

“Okay!  I got it.”  
Just shut up, already
.

A satisfied smile curved his lips.

She wanted to smack him.  Again.  Twice in one day.

Maybe seduction was his way of convincing women to yield to his desires.  If he thought he could just sing her a lullaby and she’d lie down beneath him, he’d better think again.  She had to remember that they were still at odds when it came to the future of the children.  “How do you know so much about babies?  You don’t even have kids of your own.  Or do you?” 

“Kaya, as far as I’m concerned, these kids are just as good as mine.” 

Just the answer she was expecting
.

He pulled his cell from a case at his waist and strode out the door on his Viking legs, leaving her just as he’d found her—in the middle of the nursery, holding a fussy baby in her arms.

* * *

“They’ve been up there forever,” Kaya said as she walked into the kitchen from the playroom where she’d just put on a movie for Alyssa, Snoopy, and her dolls.   

“It hasn’t been that long,” Bryce replied from the chair where he’d just sat down to feed Anastasia.

“It feels like it.”  Kaya stared at the mess of bottles and nipples of varying sizes, textures, and colors scattered on the counter top.  There were nipples made from latex and some from silicone; there were angled, orthodontic, and vented-shaped nipples; there were small, medium and large nipples with varying ranges of flow speeds.  And then there was a huge variety of bottle textures and shapes to chose from.

There was definitely an acute science to this bottle and nipple amalgamation, Kaya thought as she watched Anastasia suckling greedily from the “nipple she had chosen” according to Bryce—a latex, orthodontic, medium-flow nipple.  They’d tried several until she latched on to that one, which Kaya supposed most closely resembled her mother’s.

Kaya finally took Bryce seriously when he said that he was close to the children and knew how to take care of all their needs.  He’d called someone who owned a baby store in downtown Granite Falls, and instructed her to deliver one of every baby bottle and nipple she carried.  The man didn’t even have to go out.  He called, and the town came running.  That was how powerful he was around here.  Did she really want to go up against such force?

No
, but she would do it for her new family—especially Jason, who she still had to win over.  The timing of her return to Palm Beach hinged heavily on his psychological and emotional demeanor, and from what she’d witnessed in the nursery, plus the amount of time he was now spending with Samantha, Kaya knew it would be a while.  The thought of spending too much time in Granite Falls filled her with anxiety.  The longer she stayed, the stronger the bond between Bryce and his godchildren would become.  They might realize that they didn’t need her at all.  But she needed them.

“Do you think Jason will be okay?” she asked Bryce grudgingly.

He raised his head.  Sorrow and antipathy mingled in his glance.  “I don’t know, Kaya.  Would you be okay if you’d just lost both your parents?”

“I guess not.”  She was never okay after the day she last saw her father.

 “I trust Samantha.  She knows how to help people through tragedies such as this,” he remarked in a more amicable tone.

So how come she hasn’t helped you through yours
?  She pulled out the chair at the far end of the table and sat down. 

“Jason is a very quiet and sensitive boy.  Not the average nine-year-old who’s ashamed to kiss his mother in front of his friends.  He and Lauren were very close.  They shared a very special kind of love.  Maybe it’s because he was her first child and only son.  I don’t know.  Some people accused Lauren of babying him.  Losing her wouldn’t be easy for him.”

“Nor for you.”  He was grieving for his friends while trying to stay strong for the children, and still obviously dealing with a loss of his own.  It couldn’t be easy for him.  The torment in his eyes when Jason had mentioned Pilar in the nursery was embedded into Kaya’s mind forever, and in spite of her protest, her heart took on the weight of his pain.  “I’m sorry about the way I acted in Steven’s office, Bryce.”

“I wasn’t that kosher, either.  I said some pretty unpleasant things to you.”

“I should have been a little more sympathetic to your grief and more understanding about your close relationship with your godchildren.”  She picked up a bottle ring and twirled it around on her finger.  “It’s just that, I fell in love with these kids the moment I saw them.  They’re family—”

“If you feel that strongly about family, why didn’t you ever come up to visit Lauren?” 

Kaya dropped the bottle ring on the table and watched it spin to a stop.  
Because I was jealous of her.  She had the father who’d abandoned me.

She raised her head to find Bryce studying her.  “I guess I was too busy building my career.  You know, climbing my way to the top of that corporate ladder of success.” 

“Touché, Miss Brehna.” 

Despite their estrangement, there were details of her sister’s life Kaya wished she knew.  Simple things like...  “How did Michael and Lauren meet?” she asked, verbalizing her question. 

Bryce seemed to enjoy a slow smile before answering.

“They met when Lauren came to Granite Falls to compete in a skiing tournament.  She beat Michael’s prized student and took home the gold.  Michael was so impressed he offered her a job as an instructor at his school.  She returned to Granite Falls after she lost her mother to breast cancer.  A mother who until today, I assumed you both shared.” 

Kaya was too embarrassed to admit that she didn’t even know when or how Lauren’s mother had died.  She’d only met her sister once, and it wasn’t under pleasant circumstances.  Then shortly after their father died, Lauren and her mother moved to a town in the Pocono Mountains of Pennsylvania. 

“It was love at first sight,” Bryce continued, obviously happy to relate the heartwarming tale.  “I was very skeptical of Lauren at first.  She was barely an adult, but she soon proved that age was just a number, and that love knew no boundaries.”

“Michael was a lot older than her,” Kaya said of the salt and pepper-haired, distinguished-looking, silver-grey-eyed man she’d seen in the family pictures.

“Quite a bit.”  Bryce brushed the pad of his thumb back and forth across Anastasia’s cheek.  “Michael was a kid at heart, though.  Perhaps that’s why he gravitated toward the younger generation.”

“How long had you known him?”

“Hmm.  About twenty years.  I signed up for ski lessons at his school.  He was the best instructor in both alpine and Nordic skiing around here.  Michael took one look at me and said, ‘Son you have a better shot at making a profitable career in football or basketball.  Why waste your time and talent on skis?’” 

“I’m sure it’s not just because of your quarterback size, but more precisely because you’re black?”

“Yep.  Michael was prejudiced and he didn’t even know it.”

“Well, he must have changed.  He married Lauren, and she was black.”

“That was the best decision he ever made in his miserable life.  They were perfect for each other.”

Kaya smiled.  “I believe that.”

He gave her a quizzical look.  “You’re bi-racial.”

“Yes.  My mother is Caucasian.  Are you originally from Granite Falls?” she asked to keep the conversation away from Nadine.  
That
topic was off limits.

“I’m from Queens, New York, actually.”

“A city boy, huh?  What brought you to Granite Falls?”

“Boarding school.  I fell in love with the natural landscape—the mountains, lakes, rivers, and the people.”  He looked out the wall of glass, to the four-season porch and the line of evergreen trees bordering the lake.  He smiled like a man who knew he was home and was happy about it.  “I had no desire to return to an overcrowded city after this.”

“But Granite Falls is a buzzing city, too,” Kaya remarked.  “I was totally surprised when I drove through downtown the first time and saw skyscrapers towering against the snow-covered mountains, and the beautifully restored mill buildings that housed department stores and elite boutiques.  Who would think there was a little mecca like this buried in the foothills of the White Mountain National Range?  Nobody.”

“Shh.  We try to keep it quiet.”

Kaya giggled like a schoolgirl.  He did have a sense of humor.  “Do you have any other family?”

A frown settled between his brows.  “Just my parents.  They live in New York.  But they like to spend the winters in warmer climates.  They’re in Cambodia right now.  Last time I heard, they were teaching Cambodian children English at a monastery.  I’ve been trying to get them to move here, but they keep putting it off.”