by Ana E Ross
Bryce sighed deeply and tightened his arms about Kaya, grateful that their time of separation had come to an amazing end. He’d so wanted to spare her from the speculations surrounding their marriage he knew were fueled by his continued residency at Hotel Andreas. He’d wanted to move into L’etoile du Nord after they were married, but he couldn’t when his nightmares had been resurrected and were still so fresh. He wasn’t ready to discuss Pilar with his new wife. He couldn’t bear Kaya’s pity or her sympathy.
But as fate would have it, she offered him neither of those emotions. Instead, she gave him love in the purest, most innocent and passionate form.
She must have been curious about his nightmares and his screams ringing through the night, yet she’d asked no questions. He was certain she knew he’d been dreaming about Pilar, the wife he still loved, yet she hadn’t turned away from him. She’d loved him instead.
I love you, Bryce.
Bryce closed his eyes and opened his heart as the whisper of those four little words caressed his tormented soul.
Kaya loved him.
Her declaration had reverberated through him again and again long after she was asleep.
Her love had kept his nightmares away at least for the rest of the night. He’d never been able to fall back to sleep after being jarred awake. But he had last night. Kaya had calmed him.
Bryce’s mind reeled from the pleasure of his serendipitous discovery. Of all the things he could have imagined Kaya to be, a virgin was not one of them. He’d tried to go slowly then, but once he’d been sheathed inside her tight heat and felt her velvet muscles contracting around him, he’d lost all control.
Bryce gritted his teeth. That jerk of her ex-boyfriend had lied to him. If he ever laid eyes on that worm again, Bryce swore he’d choke the life out of him. He was so happy Kaya had had enough sense not to let that weasel touch her. She would never know what he’d witnessed in her apartment the night he’d flown down to Florida to confront Jack. The thought of it still made his blood curdle.
Even before he’d returned home or knew that there was a second will that gave him custody of the children, Bryce had decided to marry Kaya in order to keep her in Granite Falls, far away from Jack. He was determined to bring her under the protection of his house and his name. After what happened to Pilar, no one would dare question his motives when it came to protecting his wife.
Bryce held his breath as Kaya turned completely around in his arms.
He gazed down at her delicate face bathed in the early morning sunlight streaming through the glass wall. She was so beautiful, and she was his. He kissed her forehead and stoked his hand down her back.
“Hmm,” she murmured, and snuggled closer to him.
He bent his head and kissed her lips.
Her eyelids fluttered open, and her chocolate eyes peeked up at him.
“Hey, you,” he said, smiling at her.
“Hey.” She seemed confused for a moment then color rose to her cheeks when his erection brushed the insides of her thighs. Her lashes crash-landed and her chin dropped to her chest.
“Oh, no,” Bryce said, hooking a finger under her chin and raising her face. “You don’t get to play coy, Mrs. Fontaine. Not after the night we just shared. You practically seduced me.”
“I seduced you?” She was immediately on the defense. “The way I remember is you had a nightmare. I came to wake you up. You knocked me over. Held me prisoner in your arms. Made me take my panties and your boxers off, and had your way with me. I didn’t seduce you, Mr. Fontaine. You seduced me.”
“Oh yeah, you’re right. I did do that, didn’t I? I’m sorry. Wouldn’t happen again.”
“I’m sure you are. And it better happen again.” She socked him playfully.
“Ouch,” he uttered on a laugh. He captured her hand and flattened her palm against his chest. Compared to him, she was so small. His protective instincts mounted inside him. He caught her other hand and laced his fingers with hers, their wedding bands fusing together like their bodies had fused last night. He wondered if she remembered saying she loved him, or if she knew he’d heard her.
Bryce had declared his love for only one woman in his lifetime, and he’d been unequivocally certain when he’d spoken the words. He cared about Kaya; he enjoyed being around her, and now with her, but he didn’t know if he loved her. He’d closed his heart to love and bared it to lust for so long that he’d forgotten what love felt like.
“I was dreaming about Pilar when you woke me last night,” he said, feeling it was time his current wife knew about his late wife. Maybe opening up to Kaya would help clear the cobwebs from his mind. “I was dreaming about the night she died.”
“I know.” She squeezed his hand. “Do you have the nightmares often?”
Bryce gave the room a swift sweep of his eyes. It was the one floor of the house he never had the heart to finish after Pilar died. This is the place where they would have fallen asleep each night and awakened each morning locked in each other’s arms, just the way he was locked with Kaya right now.
He took a moment to let that awareness sink into his brain. It wasn’t as troubling as he’d expected, but surprisingly comforting instead.
“You don’t have to talk about it,” Kaya said.
“I want to,” he responded, realizing she’d taken his silence as hesitation to talk about Pilar. “One of the reasons I don’t live in this house is because it reminds me of Pilar.”
“You used to live here together?”
“No.” He took a sharp intake of air into his lungs. “We spent countless hours, days, weeks, planning this house, our dream home where we would raise our children. Pilar died shortly after we broke ground. It was just too painful being here on the site so I just walked away with no intention of ever finishing it. But then I realized that it wasn’t just the site of our home that brought about the raw aching pain in my gut, the crushing heaviness in my chest. I hurt when I did the things we did together, visited places we’d gone as a couple.”
“Like church?”
“Especially church. Music was Pilar’s passion. She played the piano, the harp, and the violin, and she composed songs. We used to sing together, you know.”
Her eyes caressed him, undressed his soul. “Libby told me. We sing her songs in worship service. Such beautiful lyrics and music. Did she write the lullaby you sang to Anastasia that day we met?”
He nodded. “It was the last song she wrote.” He’d found the sheet of music on the dining table. Pilar must have been working on it when Victoria arrived at their mountain villa.
“What happened, Bryce?” Kaya’s voice was a choked whisper, barely audible above the hammering of his heart in his ears.
“Pilar thought I’d been unfaithful to her.”
“You, unfaithful? Why would she think something so absurd?”
Bryce frowned as he studied Kaya’s face.
Well, were you? was the question everyone had asked, including his parents and his minister. He even had to defend himself to Pilar as she lay dying in his arms.
The trust he read in Kaya’s eyes told him that she didn’t doubt him for one fleeting moment. No one had ever had such unquestionable faith in him. Except his grandmother. She wouldn’t have doubted him, either.
Bryce took another deep breath. “There was this woman, Victoria. She was my personal assistant. She was a hard worker, extremely intelligent. Never too tired or too busy to do anything I asked. We spent a lot of late nights working, sometimes over dinner. We were getting along well—professionally, I thought.”
“But she wanted more,” an insightful Kaya murmured.
“I didn’t know that until I brought Pilar to Granite Falls.”
“She wasn’t from here?”
“No. I met her in a hotel elevator in Chicago while I was there on a business trip.” He smiled with the memory. “She was crying because she’d just been turned down for an audition she’d had all her hopes set on.” He held Kaya’s gaze. “Wel
l, you know the rest.”
“It was love at first sight.” She dropped her gaze so he couldn’t read the expression in her eyes.
Bryce had felt an intense connection with Kaya when he’d met her in Steven’s office two months ago. It was possible for one to fall madly and deeply in love more than once in a lifetime. But there were too many other issues going on at the time for him to analyze those feelings. There was still a lot to be sorted out between them. He was old enough and wise enough to know that sex wasn’t some magical pill that fixed troubled relationships. He and Kaya were troubled. Their marriage was not built on trust and love.
“Anyway, Victoria’s attitude to me changed after Pilar and I were married,” he continued. “She was very professional when we were in public, but cold and calculating when we were alone. She called my home at odd hours of the night to ask silly questions. I had our number changed. But when she left a naked photo of herself on my desk, I fired her.”
“And that made her mad.”
Bryce nodded, wishing for the millionth time that he’d seen how deranged that woman was. “She threatened to sue me for sexual harassment if I didn’t pay her a substantial amount of money. I told her to go right ahead. You see, my logic was that paying her off would make me appear guilty of her accusations. I wasn’t about to let her defame my name, malign my reputation. What I didn’t know at the time was that she’d befriended Pilar behind my back. They’d been having lunch together, gone shopping together, and whatever else women do together. Pilar was lonely; she had no friends here, so it was easy for Victoria to ingratiate herself into her life, become her best friend, her confidant.”
Bryce thought he’d been enough for Pilar, but he’d been so wrong. Women need women, just as men need men as friends. Victoria was the catalyst for the creation of the Billionaires’ Brides Club. He and his friends realized the importance for their future wives to be as close as they were. He was glad Kaya was getting along with Michelle and Libby, two women he knew would never hurt her.
“Go on,” Kaya whispered, bringing him back to the present.
He breathed deeply. “A few days after I fired Victoria, Pilar called me at the office and asked me to hurry home because she had wonderful news for me.” The blood began to pound in his veins. His hands tightened around Kaya’s. “When I walked into our home, Victoria was holding a gun to my wife’s head.”
“Oh, Bryce.” Kaya pulled her hands from his grasp and wrapped her arms about him, holding him close to her heart.
“I tried to reason with her at first, then I began taunting her to make her angry at me. It worked. She let Pilar go and aimed the gun at me. I implored Pilar with my eyes to get out of there. I would have taken a thousand bullets for her.” Tears streamed down his face, and melted into Kaya’s hair.
“As Pilar inched toward the door, Victoria started talking about she and I making love together. I heard Pilar gasp just before she knocked over a table laden with crystal ornaments. The shattering glass startled Victoria. She fired toward the noise. I watched in horror as Pilar fell to the floor, her blood pouring from her body in a thick, crimson stream. That’s when I begin to scream in my sleep, like I did that night.”
“Oh, Bryce.” Kaya’s voice broke as she began to shiver in his arms.
Bryce wrapped his hands around her, his sobs echoing hers. His friends and family had cried over Pilar’s death; they’d cried for his loss, but no one had cried for his pain, for the years of torment he’d endured, until this very moment.
Kaya was the soothing salve in the aching wound of his heart.
Last night he’d been reminded of what it felt like to make love to a woman he cared deeply about. This morning he was reminded of what it felt like to have a woman care about him. Amazing, what the comforting touch of a woman could do for a man.
“I hope Victoria rots in prison for what she did,” Kaya said when their sobs stopped.
“She’s in hell where she belongs!”
Kaya drew back and stared up at him, her liquid eyes opened in awe. “Did you kill her?”
“No, she saved me the trouble. When she realized what she’d done, she put the gun to her head and pulled the trigger.”
“You wouldn’t have killed her, though.”
“Oh yes, I would have, Kaya. That woman killed my wife and my unborn child.”
“Pilar was pregnant?”
He swallowed on a shockwave. “She was five weeks along. Erik confirmed it. She was going to tell me over a candlelight dinner that night.”
“She must have been so happy.”
“She was. We both wanted children so badly. It was one of the reasons we got married so quickly. We planned to have at least five. With her dying breath, she tried to tell me about the baby. We didn’t even have a minute to share the blessed news of creating a child out of our love. Victoria robbed us of even that precious moment.”
“No wonder you’re so attached to these kids, especially Alyssa. You try to hide it, but I know she’s your favorite. I see the way you look at her with love and longing in your eyes.”
He brushed his fingers through her hair and traced his knuckles along her forehead and cheek. “My child would have been Alyssa’s age if he or she had lived. It was only after Alyssa was born that I started building L’etoile du Nord. I had to make at least one of our dreams come true.”
“Why did you name it Star of the North?”
“My grandmother used to call me her little Northern Star. She used to take me to church every Sunday. She had a lot of faith in me.” He chortled. “She packed me off up here to boarding school when I started hanging out with the wrong crowd in Queens. If it weren’t for her, I wouldn’t be where I am today.” He paused. “She always used to tell me to surround myself with successful people, to listen to them, learn from them. When she died, she left me a small fortune. She was a millionaire, and nobody knew—not even my dad, her son.”
“Whoa. Where’d she get that kind of money?”
“As a young girl, she worked as a waitress and bartender in an upscale Manhattan restaurant. Apparently she used to listen when her wealthy customers discussed their portfolios. She invested her tips in gold, oil, technology, or whatever was on the stock menu. She continued to invest her entire life and never touched the money again. My grandfather didn’t even know she had those stocks. My dad was so mad. He’d worked hard as an insurance salesman, my mother as a hairdresser, but the thing that really ticked him off was that Grannie made him get a second job to pay for my tuition at Granite Falls School, especially because it wasn’t his idea to send me here.”
“She sounds like quite a character. It’s nice you two were so close,” Kaya murmured on a smile.
“We were very close. She lived with us and took care of me while my parents worked, so I was closer to her than I was to them. She died shortly after I graduated from Harvard. She went to sleep one night and just never woke up. It was as if she thought her job of nurturing me into manhood was done. I still miss her. Some star,” he said on a sigh. “I don’t even go to church anymore. If she could see me now—”
“She would say what a wonderful man you’ve become, personally and professionally. She would be proud of you, Bryce. Like I am.” She stroked her hands up and down his arms and around his back.
Kaya’s vote of confidence sent a warm flush through Bryce. She was so openly sweet and trusting as he used to be before Victoria scarred him. Now he trusted no one. He didn’t even trust himself. “My experience with Victoria taught me to be cautious. That’s why I had to deal with Jack before he became another nightmare,” he said, deciding she should know about him, just in case he ever tried to contact her.
Ignorance really wasn’t bliss.
She stared at him in gaping confusion. “What do you mean you dealt with Jack?”
“I flew down to Florida the night of the funeral and paid him off to sever all ties with you. I ordered him to buy a one-way ticket to any place out of the country. I wasn’t a
bout to take any chances.”
“Did you beat him up, Bryce?” she asked. “Is that why you had those bruises on your knuckles the next day?”
“Yes.”
“Why?”
“He deserved the beating I gave him after the way he treated you. He was lucky to escape with his life. I told him if he ever set foot in New Hampshire, I’d break every bone in his gangly body.”
“You didn’t have to beat him up, though.”
Yes I did. Jack had said some horrible things about Kaya. Lies he’d believed until last night. What was he to do? He knew Kaya had spent time in juvenile detention, and because the records were sealed, he couldn’t confirm nor repudiate Jack’s lies.
She’s a whore, man. She sold it on the streets. She was locked up for prostitution.
Jack’s lies weren’t the worst of it. When Bryce had knocked on the door of Kaya’s apartment, he was greeted by a half-naked Jack, and a woman wearing a robe he was sure belonged to Kaya. The jerk was screwing another woman in Kaya’s apartment, in her bed, while she was out of town. That bit of information he would never tell Kaya. It would devastate her.
If the limo driver hadn’t pulled him off of Jack, Bryce knew he would have killed him.
“Why’d you beat him up, Bryce?”
“He said some things about you.”
“What kind of things?”
“He said you’d been a teenage prostitute.”
She went stiff and sudden anger lit her eyes. “What the…Why would he say something like that?”
Bryce cleared his throat. “Why do you think, Kaya? He was angry, jealous. He couldn’t have you so he tried to make me not want you.”
“Oh, my God,” she blurted. “You married me in spite of his lies that you didn’t know were lies until last night.”
“Yes.”