by Lulu Pratt
I sigh and wrap my arm around his as we make our way to the table, the nanny we’ve hired following close behind with the stroller carrying Jacob. “I can’t argue with you there, but Dad is ten times worse than me.”
We stop at a narrow end table as I grab a menu for Asher. “Everything is so good, but I’m especially proud of the recipe I created for the main course.”
“You should be,” he boasts. “You should definitely be proud of everything you’ve accomplished over this last year. You set a goal, and then you knocked it out of the water. I love watching you do what you enjoy the most.”
“I couldn’t have done it without you,” I say, turning to face him.
It’s true, Asher has been a major part of my support team over the last year. He offered to take care of everything so I could focus solely on school, and that act of kindness has been a major help. While I couldn’t accept the offer outright, insisting on continuing my care for Jacob, I certainly couldn’t have made my dream come true without my full-time nanny, who puts me to shame with her extensive experience. She’s allowed me to focus on my schooling while enjoying my evenings with both of my men.
“Nonsense,” says Asher. “I’ve spent enough time with you to know how strong, smart and resilient you are. Since I’ve met you, I’ve watched you excel at everything you put your mind to. Your cooking skills were already there long before we met, so you most certainly could have done it without me.”
I smile and kiss him again. “You’re not giving yourself enough credit,” I say. “All of those late-nights with Jacob mean the world to me. Plus, I basically made you my live-in guinea pig, forcing you to try all my new recipes.”
Asher rolls his eyes and hands me a glass of Champagne off the tray of the passing waiter. “Yes, Jade, raising our son and tasting your delicious creations was so hard on me,” he responds with a heavy dose of sarcasm.
We laugh and I take a sip of the Champagne. It’s delicious, and I make a mental note to ask Ray where he got it from.
He definitely rolled out the red carpet for our graduation. Everything is so beautiful and all-round picture perfect.
“I know I keep saying it, but I can’t get over how proud I am of you,” says Asher.
“Aww, thanks babe. I forgot to tell you that Bradley picked me to be his mentee. Monday is my first day officially working as a chef.”
“See,” says Asher. “That’s exactly what I mean. Every time I blink, you do something amazing. Who would have ever thought our dinner date would lead here?”
I set my Champagne flute on the table and wrap my arms around Asher’s waist. “I never would have thought that night would ultimately lead me here, but I’m glad it did. So, either way it goes, I owe you big time, Mr. Jordan.”
Asher kisses my forehead and steps back from my embrace. “There’s that ‘Mr. Jordan’ thing again,” he says.
I giggle and fold my arms across my chest. “You know why I say it. I can’t help myself.”
“I know you can’t, but let’s try something a little different. Do you know what sounds better than hearing Mr. Jordan?”
“No, what?”
I suddenly wonder if he is playing with his paperclip. Why would he be nervous?
“Mrs. Jordan,” he says. Asher takes another step back, reaches into his pocket to retrieve a tiny blue box, and drops down on one knee.
For a second my heart stops, and time completely slows down. Everything around me is happening in slow motion and my eyes fill with tears. I’m not sure if I’m dreaming or if everybody else sees what I’m witnessing, so I turn around to check. My father has his arm wrapped around my mom as she cradles Jacob in her arms, while Rachel gives me a thumbs up as she points her camera in my face.
The room has gone silent and suddenly all eyes are on me. Asher coughs a couple of times as I whip my head around to face him.
“This journey with you has been an exciting one since the first day we met. We’ve shared so many wonderful moments together, and I want to keep sharing moments with you by my side as my wife. You’ve been everything I could hope for — a generous and loving partner, a wonderful mother to our son, and an ambitious and beautiful woman on your own. I don’t deserve you, Jade, I never have. But I’ve always loved and adored you and I never want that to change. Jade Sinclair, will you marry me?”
He pops open the box to reveal a diamond so large I’ll need to do finger exercises just to wear it.
“Yes,” I say, my voice laced with emotion.
Asher smiles and slips the ring on my finger, and I all but tackle him to the ground, smothering him with kisses. I’m overwhelmed by the wave of emotions taking over my body, and it takes me a few seconds to remember we are in a room full of people. We get to our feet and smile at our onlookers before I reach for Jacob.
“Well, that’s definitely one way to end a graduation and it’s the first proposal to take place in our formal dining area. This moment couldn’t have happened to a better woman. Jade, you’re phenomenal and I wish you and Asher the very best. Let’s raise our glasses in honor of the happy couple. Congratulations, you two!” Ray raises his glass excitedly.
I wipe the tears from my eyes, careful not to get any mascara on my crisp white jacket. “You have made me the happiest woman in the world,” I softly whisper to Asher.
He gently grabs my chin as we share a passionate, yet sensual kiss. “The pleasure is all mine. I’m the one getting the better bargain in this deal. Like Ray said, you are absolutely phenomenal, and I can’t wait to make you my wife. That is, if you can get used to being called Mrs. Jordan.”
I marvel at my ring and then look up into my new fiancé’s eyes. “I most certainly can.”
Never
I signed on to give this baby a second chance for a mother. I never counted on falling for my ex.
I broke up with my high school sweetheart when I went away to college.
I never expected him to knock up my sister.
It was easy to tell myself it wasn’t my fault. That they didn’t exist.
Until the day my sister died, with a clause in her will begging me to be a mother to their baby.
How could I deny the child?
Except that means seeing and being with Ethan every day.
I watch in wonder as he deals with his little girl, he’s the most loving, caring father.
Soon, my body fills with desire whenever he walks into the room.
I try to ignore his crazy sexy body and even sexier smile, but every day it gets harder.
Now he says he wants me. He’s always wanted me.
And he wants us to be a family.
***A steamy STANDALONE contemporary romance with a smoking hot hero. No cliffhanger, no cheating and a guaranteed happily-ever-after.***
Chapter One
LARA
“Of course she had to go and die,” I mutter to myself, knowing it’s one of the worst things I can possibly say about my sister, and knowing it’s absolutely unfair. Pulling into a parking spot in the lot outside of the estate lawyer’s office, I take a deep breath.
If she had the choice, Alexis would be alive. Easter was destroyed by her death. The family was technically together, but the fact that she wasn’t there, that she was dead, had hung over everyone in the room, the house, over dinner, the whole deal.
I take another deep breath and flip down the mirror to check my makeup. It’s hard to believe it, but a week ago I was finishing my work and planning my packing to go home to see my father, my sister, her husband, and their child, and a few other family members for Easter.
And then I’d gotten the call.
Looking at my reflection, my eyes still look a bit bloodshot, and my mascara has smeared a bit at the corners of my eyes. I make a quick movement to clean it up a bit, and think about the whole big, stupid mess.
I can still remember the way Dad’s voice sounded on the phone. “I know you were planning on coming in a couple of days, Lara, but I would appreciate it if you
could get here maybe tomorrow.”
I’d gotten the time off work for the whole week, and helped Dad as much as I could. We’d had the funeral for Alexis on Wednesday, and then there was the long wait between then and Easter Sunday, with Dad and me dealing with visitors to the house, telephone calls and accepting pre-Easter feasts worth of food that he didn’t even have room for. It’s difficult to say whether people would have insisted so hard on bringing so much food if Mom was still around, but I have to think that at least a few of the people who came to see us might not have come twice if Mom was still around.
I touch up my powder a bit and dab at the color on my lips, something that wouldn’t look like I’m joyful at my older sister’s passing but also something that doesn’t make me look like a corpse myself, and then I make myself get out of the damn car finally. Sitting there won’t make Alexis’ death un-happen, and it won’t take away the obligation to listen to the reading of her will. It won’t mean that I don’t have to sit in some stuffy estate lawyer’s office with the man I used to love, and my father, who has never reconciled himself to everything that happened a few years before and how it tore apart our family.
I just have to get through this and hope that Alexis forgot to even think of me, the same way she hadn’t thought about me at all when she and Ethan hooked up.
I straighten my skirt and smooth my blouse as I walk to the entrance to the office, trying to remind myself that it’s stupid to dread seeing Ethan again. It makes a little more sense to dread being around Riley, my niece, who is just eighteen months old, but I’m mostly looking forward to being around the little girl who reminds me so much of my sister when she was younger, before things went so sour between us.
The receptionist is at her desk, and she looks up when I come in. “You father and Mr. Parks have already arrived. I’ll just walk you through to Mr. Gottlieb’s office,” she says, taking me in for a moment. I nod and let her escort me through the reception area and down a little hallway.
I’ve known I have to attend this appointment for days, and I’ve been dreading it, not because I’m worried that my sister might have made some gesture to try to win me over from beyond the grave, but because I’m afraid that she decided to do something petty in her will, like specifically say that I’m not entitled to any keepsake from her estate or some final rebuke just because I’d spurned her. The fact that I’d shut her out of my life for damned good reasons would, of course, never have entered her mind.
My dad looks like he mostly has it together when Mr. Gottlieb’s receptionist lets me into the little office, decorated all in beige and green and blue. It’s supposed to be soothing, but somehow, it’s just all the more irritating because I know I’m supposed to feel soothed. Dad’s dressed in a suit, one of three that he owns, and I’m glad I dressed up a little bit, in spite of the fact that this isn’t really a formal meeting of any kind.
Ethan on the other hand is in a dress shirt and tie, along with some khakis. I guess he feels like being a single dad now makes the dress code more relaxed for him. Riley, my niece, the only thing that brought me back into the family, is in a cute little dress in a blue shade that brings out the brightness of her eyes. Her dark hair is down to her shoulders. Ethan hasn’t bothered to do anything cute with it the way that Alexis would have. My eighteen-month-old niece has already taken off her black shoes and is standing at her father’s knees in a pair of lace-topped white socks, asking him when they’ll go find Mommy.
“Ah, Ms. Hampstead,” Mr. Gottlieb says, calling my attention away from my sister’s daughter, my beloved niece. “Now that you’re here, I believe we can start.”
“Yes, please do,” I say, looking around quickly for a seat. “I’m sorry if I’ve delayed you.”
“Not at all,” Gottlieb says, taking something out of his desk. It looks like a binder, and I wonder just how long my sister’s last will and testament even is, and what her estate could even amount to. She was older than me, and as far as I knew, she and Ethan hadn’t exactly struck it rich in the couple of years since their marriage. The only seat open to me is right between my father and my ex-boyfriend, and I sit down in it, resigning myself to the fact that it’s going to be awkward and uncomfortable and unpleasant for the next hour.
Once we’re all settled in, Mr. Gottlieb starts to read through the will with plenty of hemming and hawing about legal matters, and for the most part I tune out, getting Riley to come over to me. It isn’t hard, but it’s much harder to get her to stop babbling about her mommy, and sit in my lap and play with the big pendant on my necklace.
Apparently, Alexis and Ethan invested in life insurance, which will cover enough for the funeral, as well as some security for Riley’s upbringing for a few years, and they had opened a college investment account for their daughter. I’d never really thought of my sister as being the kind of person to think ahead like that, but apparently she was.
“Now,” Mr. Gottlieb said, coming to the end of the document. “This part I believe will be a bit complicated. Mrs. Parks states in the end of her will, regarding the disposition of her daughter, Riley Hampstead Parks, that she wishes for custody to be shared between Mr. Parks and Ms. Hampstead.”
“What?” I stare at the estate lawyer as if he’s grown a second pair of hands. My father also makes a noise as it seems this is news to him too.
“I’ll quote the directive itself,” he says. “‘Because I can see how much my sister, Lara Jane Hampstead, loves my daughter, Riley, and because I know that Riley will need a mother in the event of my passing, and I can’t think of anyone who would do the job better, I wish for my sister, Lara Jane Hampstead, to be a mother to my daughter, sharing custody of Riley with my husband, Ethan James Parks.”
I’d been worried that Alexis was going to spite me somehow in her will. Certainly, we’d had enough arguments since she’d taken up with my ex-boyfriend where she’d gone low with her blows, but here she’d actually decided that I should be the one to help raise her daughter in her absence.
“That can’t be…” Dad sounds torn between anger and confusion and when I look over at him, I see he’s been crying a little bit while we’ve been listening. I wish I’d heard whatever it was she’d bequeathed or said to him in her will, but it could have been anything.
“For them to share custody…”
“It’s just a custodial arrangement. There are no real conditions,” Mr. Gottlieb says. “She wants for Ms. Hampstead to take an active role in helping to raise her daughter, and noted that this should stand even if Mr. Parks is ever re-married. The two of them are to work out the details amongst themselves, with court a final recourse if they cannot agree on equitable division of custody and/or visitation. You are, of course, under no obligation to do this. The will is not binding on you.”
All I can do is stare at the old, worn-down looking estate lawyer.
Chapter Two
ETHAN
I watch Lara react to the news, and I can’t help but feel I probably should have said something to her before the reading of the will. But I’ve been in shock ever since the accident and to be honest all I can think about is Riley. I can’t believe, I still can’t make myself believe, that my wife is actually dead. That my daughter, our daughter, is going to grow up without even knowing Alexis. She’s already too young to have any real, strong memories of her mother. She can’t even understand the fact that her mother is dead.
“That’s… I don’t even know how that’s going to work. But I want Riley to grow up with a mother,” Lara says, shaking her head. Alexis and I talked about the provision in her will when we’d made the wills less than three months before. We had decided to tell Lara about it during Easter, if things seemed to still be so good with Lara and Riley, however, we never got the chance and here we are.
“Ms. Parks left it at the discretion of the two of you,” our, my wife’s and my, estate lawyer says.
“I am willing to give this request a try for Riley’s sake,” Lara says.
&
nbsp; When Alexis and I had talked about what she wanted, Alexis had assumed that it would bring Lara and me back together, at least a little bit, and that it would be best for Riley. She hadn’t wanted to put any conditions on it. As I sit there in the lawyer’s office, I can imagine her, clear as day, saying to me, “Just think, Ethan, this could be what brings the family back together.”
“It just doesn’t make any sense,” Nathan, my father-in-law, says. “How are they supposed to divide custody of her between them?”
“I believe Mrs. Parks wanted this provision not only to ensure that Riley would have a nurturing mother figure in her life, but also…” Gottlieb clears his throat, “to somewhat ‘mend the breach’ so to speak, between various members of the family.”
“Lara, are you actually okay with this?” Nathan has made it clear to me more than once in the week since we lost Alexis that he’s not okay with me. He wasn’t okay with me in the first place, certainly not once Lara abandoned the family because Alexis and I got together, and now, with his wife gone and his daughter so recently passed, I have to give him some credit for how well he’s holding together, even if that means he’s directing all his anger at me.
“I think now is not the best time to discuss this,” Lara says, looking at Riley. “I think we should have a conversation about it before I go back home.” She’s keeping her voice as light as possible, but I can see the stress in her face, in her eyes.
Riley fusses, and I reach for her. My daughter is the only person I can focus on at the moment. Although I knew of Alexis’ provision in her will, I never thought that it would come to pass and that I would have to face raising Riley without her.
“If there are no further questions?” Gottlieb has probably seen a dozen families just as dysfunctional as ours, but I have to think it doesn’t get any easier, especially so soon after the funeral.