Lydia sighed. ‘Look, Avery…I’m just saying, isn’t it a little quick? And love, really?’
‘It’s none of your business, Lydia, not anymore.’
Lydia changed tack.
‘My work is important, Avery. I’m doing this so that Hattie will grow up independent and strong and have the opportunities she deserves. She won’t have to rely on a man.’
Avery gave a short bark of laughter.
‘I wouldn’t say you rely on me, Lydia, and how does you being a Hollywood actress teach Hattie anything but superficiality and entitlement?’
‘I rely on you to allow me the freedom to do what I do, Avery.’ My mother’s voice had taken on a new, softer tone. ‘Without you looking after Hattie…’
‘Okay then. You need to see that when you’re away from her, Hattie needs someone to teach her about things I can’t. What if you’re away when she starts her periods? When she gets her first boyfriend? There are some things a girl can’t talk about with her dad. Miro is there for those things, Lydia.’
When they had walked away and Hattie was alone, she lay back and stared up at the ceiling. Miro and her Dad. ‘Yes, Mom, love. Really.’ And she smiled.
* * *
Miro’s presence in their home was non-negotiable. That’s what Avery said and, after asking him what non-negotiable meant, Hattie agreed with him. Lydia wasn’t pleased with the arrangement but had little room to argue when her work called her away so often.
Still, things were tense, especially after Hattie went through the surgery to remove the tumor. Avery had insisted that Lydia stay in a motel until Hattie was released, but Miro was uncomfortable with the thought that she would be seen as a usurper.
When Hattie awoke, the doctor gave them the good news; they had removed the tumor with clean margins. A course of chemo would follow but Hattie should make a full recovery. Avery assumed Lydia would go back to Los Angeles, but she insisted on staying with them.
Lydia was an intelligent woman. Her mission now was to win her way back into her family’s good graces. She became girlish, playful, and flirty to remind Avery of the fun they had when they were first together. She befriended Miro, asking her questions about her parents, watching her while she cooked, praising her recipes, her clothes, and her hair. Miro took it all in with an amused air. She wasn’t fooled for a moment, but she wouldn’t say a bad word against Lydia in front of Avery or Hattie. For his part, Avery seem unimpressed with his ex-wife’s machinations.
Hattie was the only one who resisted. She resented her mother for coming back, for ruining what had been so perfect a life of love and laughter with her father and Miro. Lydia didn’t talk to Hattie about her work or include her in family discussions, like her father did. When she cooked. Hattie was banished from the kitchen; when the endless press people came to interview her about her ‘family struggle’, Hattie was never allowed to disturb her.
* * *
As for Avery and Miro…their relationship was on hold for the moment. They had come to the decision, not because of Lydia’s presence, but to wholly concentrate on getting Hattie well and healthy. But working together so closely only made them fall deeper and deeper in love deeper and deeper until one night, Avery had enough.
When Miro came to tell him that Hattie was sleeping, he pulled her into his arms. ‘I can’t wait any longer, Miro, I’m so in love with you. Please, let’s make this official you and I – share my life, share my bed…we are a family.’
She moved into his room after that, and talked to Hattie about the two of them. Hattie – who already knew – was so excited that Miro felt a pang of sadness. She missed her own parents, her sister. Even Anna, who she had been so close to and now lived a country away.
Lydia continued her charm offensive, so much so, that Miro felt slightly suffocated by her. She didn’t say this to anyone, of course, not wanting to make trouble but Lydia’s constant presence began to wear on her.
* * *
It was almost Christmas before the call came from the police in Seattle. The two attackers had been caught – sadly, only after they had murdered another woman – and now the police were asking Miro to come help identify them.
They left Lydia with Hattie, and traveled up to Seattle together. Miro was so grateful to Avery for his support, but when she had to walk into the identification room, her legs wobbled and she threw an uncertain glance at Avery. He took her hand.
‘It’s okay, sweetie.’
She saw them immediately. ‘Number three and number five.’
‘You’re sure.’
‘Positive.’
As they walked out of the room, Miro felt something inside her break. Her final wall. She bent at the waist, trying to drag oxygen into her lungs. Flashbacks of the attack invaded her mind and she collapsed, sobbing, as Avery wrapped his arms around her, pressing his lips to her temple.
‘It’s okay, darling, it’s all over now.’
* * *
He took her to a restaurant on the waterfront, and they had chowder and sat talking. It was strange to be away from Hattie for so long, and Miro said so. Avery grinned.
‘You know she loves you as much as I do – perhaps not in the same way,’ he said with a wicked grin and she laughed.
‘Avery…my life changed when I met you, in every way.’
‘In ‘Avery’ way,’ he quipped and she groaned.
‘You did not just make that joke.’
‘I did.’
‘It’s over between us.’
They both snorted with laughter, causing an older couple to glare at them. Avery took her hand. ‘Shall we go for a walk?’
* * *
They strolled along the waterfront piers, under the globe lamps, looking out at the lights of the houses and boats across the Bay. Avery wrapped his arms around her. ‘I love this city but I don’t regret moving away for a minute.’
‘Me either. I love our little place.’
Avery kissed her. ‘You know, my friends already extended his travels…I might make an offer on the lighthouse.’
Miro grinned at him. ‘I’ll get in on that action. I have the inheritance from my parents.’ When he looked doubtful, she made a face. ‘Twenty-first century, boy, suck it up. Equals.’
He laughed. ‘Then it’s a deal. Our place. Hattie will be over the moon.’
‘I love her so much.’
Avery kissed her tenderly then, his eyes soft with love. ‘You, me and Hattie. That’s the family I want now.’
As she gazed up at him, Miro knew that from now on, she would always know where she belonged…
* * *
The End
Bonus - BILLIONAIRE GAMES EPILOGUE
With a full five years under all the couples’ belts, things were beginning to unravel. Ethan and Kel were living in separate areas of the world, he’d returned to Scotland for what was supposed to be a brief visit but had changed his mind. Ethan wanted to make his little family’s home there, a thing Kel was strongly against. She stayed in their New York estate with their two children, dead set on not giving into to the man she considered stubborn.
Phoenix and Cait were arguing over having another baby. Cait was happy with just having one and Phoenix wanted at least three. The five-year period between children wasn’t a thing he wanted, but they seemed to be at an impasse, one that was making their lives eerily quiet as the days ticked by.
Griff and Jess weren’t doing much better. Their problems were just the opposite of Cait and Phoenix’s. Jess had given Griff a daughter then two years later, two sets of twins, back to back. They had five small children, and they’re personal time was nonexistent. They were drifting apart with the sea of kids between them.
Kel’s cell rang, and she ran to pick it up. She was expecting a call from Cait, she was supposed to be coming for a visit and bringing Rosaline with her for a week or so. The plans were up in the air, but Kel wanted her to come, desperately. She was feeling a bit lonely and was afraid she’d give into what Ethan w
anted, which was for her and the children to live in Scotland with him.
A sigh came out of her as she saw her husband’s name on the screen. She was tired of arguing with the obstinate man. “Ethan please don’t start in again.”
“Kel, I’m not about to start in again. I’m on my way home,” he told her.
She smiled, thinking he was over his ridiculous obsession with uprooting their family for his own reasons. “Good. I’ll be glad to have you back home. I’ve missed you.”
“We have much to discuss when I get there. See you in a few hours, love.” He ended the call before she could ask just what he wanted to talk to her about. If he was coming home, then wasn’t the idea of moving, behind him?
She put the cell down and went to check on the children who were eating lunch in the kitchen with their cook. As she rounded the corner, she found EJ, Ethan Junior, their first born, running away with a chocolate chip cookie in one hand and a mischievous expression covering his adorable face. Auburn curls, just like his father’s, bounced around his small round head as he ran smack into his mother. “Mom!”
“That’s his third cookie, Kel!” the cook shouted as she came up behind him. And he hasn’t taken even a nibble of his ham sandwich. Just went straight to the cookies!”
Kel looked around the irate cook and saw their three-year-old daughter, Bell happily eating her sandwich and drinking her glass of milk. “Well, at least one of them is being good,” she remarked. “Now, EJ, you might want to get to eating the food that was made for you and leave the third cookie for another time. Daddy’s coming home, and he’ll hate to hear the news that you’ve been bad.”
“Dad’s coming home?” he shouted and handed the cookie to his mother. “Yes! I’ll go eat it, Mom.” He spun around and went back to the table, gobbling up his lunch without so much as a disgruntled groan.
Kel knew the children had missed their father. He’d been gone two whole weeks. Longer than they’d ever been apart. Ethan was blaming her for that.
He was supposed to go and make a little visit to his ailing aunt, a person Kel nor the children had even met. They’d spent so little time in Scotland that it didn’t make sense to her why Ethan suddenly wanted to relocate there.
Ethan’s request hit Kel out of the blue, and she wasn’t about to pack up and take her kids across the globe on a whim. EJ was going to be starting school in the fall, she’d signed him up for a prestigious kindergarten when he was still a baby. She wasn’t about to let that go.
She heard her cell ringing in the den again and rushed to get it, now hoping it wasn’t her sister looking for a get-away. But she found it was Cait and answered, “Hey, little sis, guess what, my hubby’s coming home.”
“Damn!” came Cait’s quick reply. “Phoenix is driving me nuts. All he can do is talk about having a baby. I’m sick of it!”
“So, that’s why you wanted to come see me? To get away from him. I didn’t realize that was why. I thought you missed me and your niece and nephew.”
“I do,” Cait said. “That was what I told Phoenix. He wanted to come too, and I told him Ethan was in Scotland and you and I would be taking the kids to the zoo and lame things like that. He was still pretty disappointed that I wasn’t letting him come with us.”
“Cait, why would you do that to him?” Kel asked. “You’re not being fair to him about this baby business. He has the right to want what he wants too.”
“Not you too!” Cait moaned. “Mom told me the same damn thing. Look, I want one kid, and that’s all!”
“Well, you aren’t an only you, you’re part of an ‘us’, the ‘us’ being you and your husband. What he wants matters too. And the last time I saw Rosaline she was a bit on the spoiled side. I think you two do need more kids. You tend to dote on her far too much. It’s unhealthy. And everyone loves a baby. Give in to him on this. I think you’ll find yourself very happy you did.”
“And what about you, Kel?” Cait asked. “Why aren’t you giving into what Ethan wants? Moving your kids all the way to Scotland.”
Kel frowned at how her sister knew that. She’d only told their mother about it. “Mother!”
“Yes, Mom is a talker, Kel. You should know that. And she thinks if your husband wants his family to live in Scotland then you should do what he wants.”
“I know, she told me that. And she told you to have a baby with your husband if that’s what he wants. She’s a real pushover nowadays. Dad says jump, she asks, how high. I don’t know when she got so soft, but she’s not in her right mind to give marital advice at the moment.”
“You might be right, but then again, have you ever seen our parents more in love?” Cait asked.
Kel had never seen their parents act the way they’d been acting in the last five years. They were nearly inseparable. Both had made miraculous changes in their bodies and their attitudes. But she still wasn’t sure about giving in so quickly to one’s husband.
“Anyway, I need to go and make sure I’m all spiffed up for Ethan’s return. Fighting about where we live or not, I’ve missed the brute and want to pretty myself up for him.”
“I guess I’m on my own with Phoenix,” Cait moaned. “Bye.”
“Bye, good luck,” Kel said then ended the call, thinking about what her sister and mother had said about doing what Ethan wanted her to do.
But her mind was too strong to bend so quickly.
* * *
Cait looked over her shoulder, once she’d ended the call. She found her five-year-old daughter, Rosaline standing in the far corner of the room. She’d obviously been eavesdropping on her. “Rosaline, what are you doing?”
“Daddy wants you to have another baby, Momma?”
They’d kept the last three month’s major topic of discussion hidden from their daughter. Phoenix had wanted to ask Rosaline if she wanted a baby brother or sister but Cait refused to pull her into it. She foresaw both of them teaming up on her, making her do something she wasn’t up for.
The truth was motherhood hadn’t come naturally to her the way it had for her sisters. Jess and Griff had five kids, and they seemed deliriously happy. Jess and Kel seemed born to be mothers. They never gripped about the sleepless nights that came with having babies. The puke that they smelled like for the first year of their babies’ lives. The fat their bodies had accumulated with the pregnancies.
Cait’s weight didn’t all go away, the way her sisters’ had. She kept a spare tire around her middle. It was stubborn, and she wasn’t about to add even more weight with another kid.
But the way her daughter was looking at her with big brown eyes was making her hate herself. “Daddy does want me to have another baby. But I don’t want to, Rosaline. You’re momma’s only baby. I like it that way.”
The little girl walked slowly toward her. “Momma, why don’t you want to have me a baby sister?”
“For one thing, you have no idea if it will be a baby sister or a baby brother,” Cait said then picked up her daughter and carried her to sit on the sofa. She looked out at the waves that were crashing on the beach of their mansion in Malibu.
Cait was a consultant for many of the farmers in California. Thanks to her, many new kinds of food were being raised and sold in the California market. She once was a busy woman. Phoenix never had been busy. His money just poured up from the ground, he did nothing to make that happen. It was he who took the most care of their daughter when she was a baby. Cait had gotten busy so quickly with the company she worked for that she had little time to do the day to day things with Rosaline.
Only a year after Rosaline was born, Cait was offered the consultant position in California and Phoenix acted as if it was a no-brainer. Of course, they’d move to where Cait could do her work. And the care of Rosaline fell even more on his broad shoulders. A thing he never complained about even once.
Rosaline took her mother’s hand and gazed up at her. “Momma, are you afraid to have a baby?”
Cait could only nod. The truth was that she was a
fraid. She didn’t have to work nearly as hard as she had in the beginning. She mostly used the internet to talk to clients. Only on occasion did she need to actually go to a site. If she had another baby, she’d be the one expected to care for it, and the truth was, she didn’t know how to do that.
* * *
Jess wrestled with Peter and Patrick, their one and a half-year-old twin sons. “Please stop wiggling, Pete. Momma needs to get this diaper on you before you leak all over the house.”
The toddler got out of her grasp and ran, laughing like a hyena until his oldest sister, Darla caught him. “Got ‘em, Mommy!”
Jess wiped the sweat off her forehead with the back of her hand. “Thanks.” She was sitting on the floor of the boy’s bedroom, trying desperately to get them dressed for the day. They were supposed to attend a family reunion picnic that afternoon. Griff was away for the morning with his parents, helping them to get the park ready for the huge amount of people who would be going to the reunion. That had left Jess alone to get five children dressed for the event and then herself as well.
The three-year-old twins, Joyce and Loyce, came tearing into the room. Both already had red stains on their matching pink shirts. “What happened?” Jess asked as she pulled Pete back down and quickly put the diaper on him. Darla helped her wrangle the kid, and she was able to get his short set on him too.
Darla began to tell her mother what her younger sisters had done. “I found them with suckers from Valentine’s Day. I told them they were really old and they started spitting them out. That’s how they got all sticky and dirty.”
“Well, now they have to be changed too,” Jess whined. “Why did Griff have to leave me to do all of this on my own today?”
“Cause, Daddy has to help…” Darla set out to remind her.
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