by Nicole Casey
She blew my mind with her tenacity and tirelessness. I don’t know how I would have done it without her but then again, I suspected that my recent success had much to do with her.
Kennedy had a natural eye for good locations and a nose for deals. She must have been in economics in her last life because she was a whiz.
The office phone rang and I snatched it up without looking at the display.
“Julian Bryant.”
There was a long pause and I glanced at Kennedy who eyed me with mild interest before turning her head back to the twins who were contented by their snacks for the time.
“Hello?” I said again and I heard a long sigh. Goosebumps erupted on my skin. It had almost been four years since I’d spoken to her or heard her voice but Eloise was like an annoying song in your head you can’t easily be rid of.
“Why are you calling here, Eloise?”
I saw a flash of dark when Kennedy whipped her head around to look at me again, her amber eyes widening with interest.
“How did you know it was me?” came the plaintive response in the little girl voice. I cringed inwardly. She sounded exactly the same as I remembered her—petulant.
“Eloise, I’m very busy. What is it?”
She exhaled again and I was tempted to hang up the phone but I waited for some reason. It would take a lot for Eloise to swallow her pride and call me after all this time. There had to be something big on her mind.
“Mom’s getting remarried.”
The news hit me harder than I expected but I didn’t know why. Honestly, I was surprised she hadn’t done it years earlier, immediately following my dad’s death.
“How wonderful for her,” I said sarcastically. “Why are you telling me?”
“She wants you to be there to give her away.”
I had to laugh aloud.
“Is that right?”
“She’s marrying a pastor, Jule. He’s…he’s very big into family and mom, well, she wants to make amends.”
I didn’t know what to do with that information except snort again.
“Eloise, I don’t know what game you’re playing but like I said, I don’t have time for this.” At the raised pitch of my voice, the children looked up at me curiously.
“She’s not the only one who wants to make amends, Julian,” Eloise continued. “I have a penance to pay too.”
I didn’t know how to respond to that. Instinctively, I wanted to say no, to tell her that I knew how she had plotted to steal the company also but I held my tongue for some reason.”
“Julian?”
“I’m here.”
“She wants to meet her grandkids. And she wants to give them something.”
I bristled and willed myself to stay calm. My children were not her grandchildren. My children should never have to meet such evil women.
“What could she possibly give my children that I don’t already?” I couldn’t resist asking, my voice ice-laden.
“Your childhood home.”
The silence was heavy and I was finding it difficult to breathe. It was the one thing Maddy had always known I wanted and she was dangling it in front of me…or was she? Could she have changed? Found God or whatever it was?
I didn’t want to reject the idea, not because I trusted her words but because I might be able to reclaim the memory of my father in that house.
“I’ll have to talk it over with Kennedy.”
There was a long pause on Eloise’s end.
“How is she?”
I scoffed.
“Are you going to pretend to care about Kennedy now?”
“I don’t expect you to believe this, Julian, given our history but I am sorry about how things went down between us. I’ve changed a lot since Dave came into our lives. He has shown me the error in my ways and…well, anyway, I am sorry. To you and Kennedy.”
“Well maybe if you ever get the chance, you can tell her that to her face.”
“I will.” It was the most earnest I’d ever heard Eloise and against my better judgment, I wondered if she had really changed. I couldn’t let my guard down but there was a tinge of hope in my gut.
“I have to go. Can I call you on the same number?”
“Yes but Julian…don’t take too long. The wedding is in two weeks and I’d like to give her an answer, something to look forward to.”
I ended the call without responding and met Kennedy’s eyes.
“Oh, I can’t wait to hear this,” my wife muttered. “What’s the problem?”
“Madeline is getting remarried—to a pastor.”
The look of shock and contrition on her face matched my sentiments exactly.
“She wants to meet the twins and have me walk her down the aisle.”
“I see.”
I stared at her, watching the wheels of her intelligent mind turning before posing my question.
“How do you feel about that?” I pressed when she didn’t offer much more than that on her thoughts.
A strange expression crossed her eyes, one I couldn’t read.
“I never had a family,” she reminded me. “But I think if I had, I’d have wanted to meet them, no matter how wretched they were. I don’t think it’s fair to the twins to refuse this request. They should have a chance to meet her. And Eloise.”
I could see it was difficult for her to add my step-sister’s name.
“If they have changed, it will mean a bigger family for our babies. If they haven’t nothing will be different but we owe it them to try, don’t we, Jule?”
I rose from behind my desk and sauntered toward hers. The afternoon light had entirely faded away and only two table lamps illuminated the office we shared. I perched my rear on the edge of her desk and cupped my hands over her cheeks.
“I was right about you from the first second,” I told her. “You have a specialness which is intangible.”
“I think you give me too much credit. I may change my mind the minute Eloise gives me a dirty look.”
“And that will be your prerogative,” I promised her. “You say the word and we’ll be out of there.”
She grinned.
“I think I can bear it for an afternoon.”
My eyes must have darkened as something occurred to me because Kennedy immediately commented.
“What?” my wife demanded. “What are you thinking?”
“Eloise said Madeline wants to bequeath the house to the twins.”
“The house you grew up in?”
I nodded.
“Maddy got it when my dad died. Honestly, I was always a little jealous of that. I love that house.”
“Well that would be something.”
I nodded, chewing on the insides of my cheeks. The mansion in Miami Beach would be an incredible place for the twins to grow up. I had many fond memories of my childhood there after all.
“Things come full circle, huh?” Kennedy asked softly, reading my mind again.
“Round and round we go,” I agreed, chuckling. I leaned forward to touch her lips to mine.
“We want kisses too!” a chorus of shrieks insisted and seconds later, we were attacked by two sets of arms and legs.
Laughing, the four of us collapsed to the floor and my heart swelled.
This was what a family was supposed to feel like.
- THE END -
Can’t Get Over You
Baby Fever Book 3
Prologue
MAL
Seventeen Years Ago
Ella was gushing about something in her room as I walked by and I couldn’t help but stop in the hallway and listen.
I was a boy after all, and if I could get dirt on my only sibling, I would take it any way I could.
“He’s always looking at me, Bree. I think he’s going to ask me out soon!” my sixteen-year-old sibling cooed into the cordless phone. “He’s so good looking!”
I rolled my grey eyes upward in disgust. At thirteen, I’d just begun to notice girls but my sister had been dat
ing for over a year. I knew whomever she was talking about this time was just another in a long line of idiots who would be dropped like a hot potato when she got bored. Ella was nothing if not predictable.
“I know,” Ella continued, sighing dreamily to whomever was indulging her stupidity. “I think he’s the one.”
I couldn’t resist striding into her room, puckering my face into a kissing expression.
“Ella’s in love!” I crooned, dancing around as she looked at me, aghast that I had overheard her dumb conversation. “Ella and dumb ass, sitting in a tree—”
“MALCOM!” she screamed. “GET OUT!”
I ignored her, of course and continued to dance around in the irritating way only a young teenager could. I didn’t see the paperback book before it hit me squarely in the head. She had great aim, I’ll give her that.
“GET OUT! MOM! MOM!”
I grunted and spun to leave before my mother could come to investigate the ruckus but I was too late. She must have already been upstairs folding laundry or something because my foot wasn’t even in the hallway before my mom loomed before me, her hazel eyes flashing.
“Mal, what are you doing?” she growled, folding her arms over her chest firmly. It wasn’t hard to see where I’d gotten my height—she was Amazonian, truly and she seemed even bigger with the annoyance etched over her face. Mom never needed to raise her voice—just looking at her when she was bothered was enough to turn my bowels to water.
“Nothing!” I lied quickly. “I was just saying hi!”
Ella’s bedroom door slammed behind me with finality, reverberating the hallway so hard the family pictures on the walls shook. I was left to deal with my mother’s wrath.
“Why must you always torture your sister?” Mom sighed.
I shrugged and grinned at her, hoping to disarm her with my boyish charms.
“She makes it easy.”
I leaned in conspiratorially, hoping to bring Mom into my fold before she unleashed a punishment on me.
“She’s got new prey in her view.”
Mom’s delicate eyebrows arched and her eyes narrowed.
“What does that mean, Malcolm?”
“She’s talking to Bree about a boy at school.”
I exhaled with relief as I saw Mom’s eyes flash, knowing that she had shifted her focus toward my sister and temporarily forgotten me.
“That girl…” she muttered, shaking her head. She reached for the doorknob and opened Ella’s bedroom door.
“MOM!” Ella howled and I stood back, smirking with content. “GET OUT!”
“Don’t you dare talk to me like that, Ella Miranda Laurier! Get off the phone this instant!”
I loved that feeling of self-satisfied smugness which enveloped me, knowing that I was singlehandedly responsible and I watched the scene unfold with an indescribable deliciousness.
“I’ll call you back, Bree,” Ella muttered into the phone and hanging up before turning to glare at my mother indignantly. “What?”
“Who is this boy?” Mom demanded. “Didn’t you just break up with Ryan Milner?”
Ella’s look was meant to cut me but it only added to my internal glee. What was it about siblings at that age which made us hellbent on making one another miserable?
“GET OUT, MALCOLM!” she howled at me but I remained in place. Ella turned to Mom.
“I’m not saying a word until he goes!” she snapped and Mom turned to me.
“Go to your room, Mal.”
“Aw, come on!” I protested. “You wouldn’t even know about this if it wasn’t for me.”
Unlike Ella’s, Mom’s look did chill me to the core and I hung my head and shuffled away. I knew the death stare when I saw it.
“Close the door!” Ella yelled after me as I begrudgingly turned away but I didn’t. I barely moved two feet, ducking around the corner to listen to their conversation.
“Who is this boy, Ella?” My mom demanded without preamble. “You need to slow down and let yourself be a kid.”
“I’m not a kid!” Ella protested. “I’m sixteen!”
I heard Mom grunt and I snickered to myself. I wondered if she was going to forbid Ella to see this new guy.
“Mom,” Ella said, lowering her voice. There was a plaintive note in her tone.
“Mom, Grayson’s different. He’s so handsome. Every girl wants to date him and he’s been looking at me over everyone else!”
“Ella,” Mom said sternly. “If every girl wants to date him, it’s probably because he dates every girl! You need to focus on your school work right now and—”
“That’s not true! He’s new in town. He hasn’t dated anyone!”
I had a weird tickle in the back of my mind. Was my sister chasing after the guy who had just moved in across the street? I’d only gotten a glimpse of him a few times but something about that whole family bothered me. Maybe it was the way the girl, presumably Grayson’s sister, stared at the window of her bedroom and watched the world go by. I never saw much of her outside of school but from what I saw of her, she always had her nose stuck in a book. She reeked of boring with her bespectacled brown eyes and little nose. I couldn’t even tell you her name. They’d only been in Sterling for two weeks, arriving in the middle of the semester and disrupting everyone like they were somehow better. The new girl hadn’t tried to get to know anyone but who would want to know a geek like her anyway, even if she was kinda cute when you squinted at her sideways. Not that I did, of course. What did I care about her?
“Ella be that as it may, you’re becoming boy crazed. It’s not healthy and you’re going to end up hurt if you keep this up!” Mom insisted. I could hear the worry in her voice and I wondered why she cared so much about what Ella did. What was the worst that could happen?
“God! It’s like you were never a teenaged girl!” Ella grunted in frustration. “Don’t you care about true love?”
I barely managed to stifle the guffaw but I clamped a hand over my mouth. I definitely wanted to hear the end of this.
“Ella,” Mom tried again. “I won’t stand in your way if you want to date a boy. Your father and I have always maintained that you won’t learn if you don’t make your own mistakes but I’m telling you right now, this Grayson boy doesn’t sound like a good fit.”
“You don’t know anything about him!” Ella exploded, her tone reaching that annoying whine which made me cringe. “He’s perfect!”
I rolled my eyes again and turned away from the bedroom, shaking my head in disgust. Ella said that about every moron she dated. I didn’t put much stock into this new one.
I guess I’ll meet him soon enough, I thought with some glee. I couldn’t wait to put the screws to this new one. I hoped Ella would invite him over for dinner soon as she tended to do. She never learned from her mistakes, no matter what Mom and Dad hoped for her.
I trudged back to my room and closed the door quietly, plopping onto my bed to look at the poster of Green Day on the ceiling. As long as I lived, I would never understand Ella or any other girl for that matter.
I made a pact to myself from that moment that I wouldn’t ever act as stupid as my sister in the matters of the opposite sex. My eyes shifted toward another poster which was hid from general view and I smiled to myself. Britney Spears stared at me with those alluring brown eyes and I felt a familiar lurch in the pit of my stomach.
Except for you, Britney, I giggled silently. I’d do anything for you.
1
Blake
Twelve Years Ago
There was something to be said about winter in Colorado. Nothing good in my opinion but the locals seemed to like it just fine. If I was forced to think about it, I’d realize there was an ethereal beauty about the snow-capped landscape, even if the temperature was not fit for human habitability.
I’d lived in Sterling for too long, I felt that I was looking forward to nothing more than getting the hell out of Colorado to start college in the fall but as I walked through town, my hands fre
ezing inside my mittens, I wondered if I would survive another icy winter there before heading back to my home state of California. It was a conversation I’d had with myself every winter for five years and yet somehow I always managed to survive despite my convictions that spring would come and my parents would find my perfectly preserved body in a block of ice somewhere outside the high school.
It never ceased to amaze me that my parents had up and moved us to a place like Sterling when they had both been born and raised in the San Bernardino Valley too. If I remembered correctly, they cited something about work, a story that neither Gray or I had much believed but at the time. After all, they were both freelancers. They could work from anywhere. It seemed unlikely that they had to pick the middle of nowhere to “work.”
But we stayed, even though both Grayson and I had kicked and screamed, citing every argument we could about Colorado. We were part of Sterling’s fabric now, much as I hated to admit it.
I pushed my way inside Lulu Belle’s and slipped off the wool mittens, stuffing them into my pockets as I approached the counter. A lot of good the coverings did—I could feel the cold of my skin clear through my coat.
“Hi, honey. What’ll be today?” It was the older barista, the one with the nice eyes and gentle smile. The one whose name I could never remember. I hated that because I knew it was something simple too.
“A white hot chocolate please,” I replied, digging into my purse for a five-dollar bill. “Extra whipped cream.”
“Coming right up.”
She rang in my order and I left her to keep the change as I stepped aside to let the next person in line approach. I froze when I saw who it was and quickly turned my head so he wouldn’t see me but it was an exercise in futility. Of course he’d seen me.