The Texas Billionaire’s Bride

by Crystal Green

  There were plenty of things Melanie wouldn’t be telling Livie: that her father had refused to be here with them on this important day; that she suspected he would never move forward, never mend himself so he could…

  Melanie swallowed and clutched Livie’s hand.

  She’d been having wasted dreams that maybe he would mend enough that they could have a future together, no matter what she’d determined on the night they had been intimate. But it was only wishful thinking, because even then, that wouldn’t get rid of her own reasons for staying away from him.

  Yet, if she wanted to stay away, why had she let out a piece of her past the other day, when she mentioned how everyone needed family? She’d never meant for him to know how she felt about the people she’d left behind in Oklahoma, but when she had that slip of the tongue, she’d hoped that she’d given Zane enough room to share his burdens with her, too.

  Apparently, he hadn’t wanted to, so here she was, with his daughter, taking up where he’d left off.

  Livie was watching Melanie with those big eyes, just as if she knew something was different about today, and Melanie squeezed her hand as they came to the foot of the bridge. Around them, only a few other people meandered through the park, and the birds only gave little chirps, as if they were just as subdued as Melanie was feeling. Even the stream seemed to lack some burble.

  “You like this bridge?” Melanie asked, her throat acting as if it was closing in on itself.

  Livie nodded. “It looks like Snow White.”

  Yes, Melanie could see some Seven Dwarves in the structure, just as she could see Danielle in Livie.

  She brought the little girl onto the planking, then to the center, where they sat just above the water.

  “I heard,” she said, “that this was one of your mom’s favorite places.”

  Livie’s eyes lit up. “My mom?”

  “Yes.”

  The little girl smiled so wide that Melanie’s gaze blurred, hot and watery. Years from now, she would finally understand why Melanie had brought her to the park today, and hopefully it would, among other things, show Livie how much her nanny had loved her.

  The child placed her hand on the carved rail above them, where a wooden flower bloomed. “I was a baby, but I think I remember her.”

  A tear wiggled down Melanie’s cheek, but she subtly dried it with a finger. “Really?”

  “She sang me songs. Monty told me, and he sang one when he had to drive me to the doctor for…”

  “A checkup?” Melanie touched Livie’s back. So small, so frail right now. So in need of someone. “Which song?”

  Livie looked into the water, as if trying to recall. Then she began to hum a sad tune. A lullaby that stopped after a few notes.

  “That’s all I know,” the child said, softer now.

  Another tear ran down Melanie’s face as she hugged Livie to her. She wished Zane was here to tell his daughter which song it had been, maybe even to hum the rest of it for her.

  “She smelled like oranges, too,” the child said, leaning against Melanie now. “Monty said that, but I don’t really remember.”

  “Oranges…” Melanie could barely get the words out, so she cleared her throat, waited a moment, then tried again, even though she succeeded in only whispering. “That was no doubt her perfume. Orange blossom.”

  Livie turned her face up to Melanie, still smiling, and she knew that she’d done good in bringing her here.

  Done real good, even for a woman who’d grown up on the wrong side of the tracks.

  Then Livie’s gaze settled on something behind Melanie.

  Her blood expanded in her veins when a voice followed.

  “Orange blossom,” Zane Foley said, his tone that of a man who was living a certain hell by just being here. “I remember that perfume, Livie.”

  His daughter sprang up to greet her dad as Melanie turned around, tears destroying her vision until she wiped them away, allowing her to see him desperately embracing Livie, his eyes closed tightly. He was holding Danielle’s urn in one hand, his little girl in the other.

  He came, Melanie thought.

  And when he and Livie paused to look at each other, Melanie could see how red his eyes were, how quietly devastated he’d been all these years, while trying to keep it from everyone else.

  She stood, thinking she should leave him and Livie alone.

  But then he spoke.

  “Melanie?” he asked, his voice ragged, and she could see that he was asking her to join them.

  Without hesitation, she went to them, the tears coming freely as they both drew her into their circle.

  Melanie held on to them. Lord help her, she hadn’t just fallen for Livie.

  She’d fallen for all of them.

  Chapter Nine

  The morning had ended up being a catharsis for Zane.

  Ever since Melanie had asked to take Livie to the bridge, he’d wrestled with his conscience—and his emotions. By the time Saturday had arrived, he’d been mentally beating himself up with such frequency that he was exhausted.

  While he sat in his study, listening to the stirrings of Melanie and Livie departing for Crane Park, the house had seemed to suck in on him, making it hard to breathe.

  It only got worse after they were gone, with the clock in the foyer ticking away, providing the only sound.

  Buried alive, he kept thinking, and each thunk of the clock’s hand was like another shovel full of dirt against him.

  This would be the rest of his life. In so many ways, he was just as absent as Danielle was.

  But as the chime marked the hour, he realized that he’d felt a hell of a lot more present since Melanie and Livie had come around.

  So why was he now accepting this never-ending descent into nothing?

  Why was he forcing himself to live like this?

  Before he could change his mind, he’d taken Danielle’s ashes out of that chest, unburying the urn for all intents and purposes, then went to the park, at first hanging back from Melanie and Livie, then approaching them step by slow step.

  After they’d welcomed him, he felt free for the first time in years, as if he’d escaped the fate he’d sentenced himself to. And as the trio of them had embraced upon that bridge, the truth became so very clear.

  He didn’t want Livie and Melanie to go anywhere.

  Zane wasn’t sure what he should do about that, or even if he could manage to never let them down again, but he wanted to keep them near.

  Afterward, they’d spent another hour at the park, spreading Danielle’s ashes at both entrances to the bridge. It had seemed so symbolic. A bridge, spanning from one side to another. A crossing.

  Then, while Melanie left them alone so he could walk with Livie, he’d told his daughter about Danielle’s good days, although he took care to hint that her mother hadn’t been perfect. But she’d loved her daughter in her own way, even if she had died long before her time.

  He would tell Livie more as the years went by, he thought, but for now, she seemed content to have her father finally talking.

  When they arrived back at the townhouse, Melanie left father and daughter alone again, and they went through boxed pictures of Danielle that Zane had pushed to the back of the garage. He chalked up their nanny’s absence to her ongoing respect of what he and Livie needed to clear with each other; but once, when Melanie had looked in on them to ask if they were hungry, he saw a cloudiness in her gaze, and that had tweaked something within Zane.

  After she’d left the room, he thought about just how to thank her for all her guidance and softhearted patience. For everything she’d done for him and his family.

  So he’d gone about it in the only way he could manage.

  Which brought him to the present, and his newest gift, which was steered into the driveway by Monty. Zane thought that Melanie couldn’t possibly refuse this gesture. Surely she would see, this time, that he wasn’t thanking her with a bracelet for needing him or trying to win her over with a n
ight in a posh department store.

  Monty opened the door of the new silver Mercedes S Class and stretched out his long legs.

  “Drives like butter!” he said, as happy as any man behind the wheel of a dream machine.

  Early this morning, after telling Zane that he wanted to give this baby a spin before it fell out of his hands, Monty had been picked up by a sales representative. And, now, as Livie darted out of the front door and into the driveway, Zane fully recognized the lure of this shiny present.

  It was the very best he could offer.

  “Mr. Monty!” the little girl said, running to the driver, who ruffled her hair in greeting. “I like your car. Can I drive it?”

  “Sure, but I should let you know this belongs to Ms. Grandy, not me.”

  “Oh, she’s lucky.”

  Monty grinned at Zane, entirely skipping over the need to explain the subtleties of Melanie’s new car. Hell, Zane hadn’t bothered to tell the driver anything except that Melanie was receiving a bonus for a job well done, and it was a believable story, since Zane often doled out high-priced rewards to other employees.

  “Hop right in,” Monty said to Livie, as he held open the driver’s door for her.

  She climbed inside, and Zane knew his daughter wouldn’t be burning rubber out of the driveway; Monty occasionally allowed her to play in the cars while he watched to see that she didn’t cause any mischief.

  As a shiver waved over his skin, Zane turned to find Melanie coming out of the townhouse, too. Even while she remained at the top of the driveway, the impact of her presence scrambled him to the point of jagged confusion.

  Gratefulness. Tenderness.

  Guilt?

  He wasn’t sure exactly what he felt, but whatever the emotion, he seemed to exude it, because he could’ve sworn that she had momentarily held her breath at the sight of him, just as affected as he was by merely being in the same area.

  He swept his hand toward the car. “Your coach awaits.”

  “My coach?”

  With a doubtful expression, she folded her hands in front of her in that anxious gesture, and he had the feeling that she was beginning to understand what he was up to.

  If only he knew, too.

  “It’s yours,” he said.

  From the side of the car, where Monty was watching over Livie, the driver added, “A bonus! We all get ’em, Ms. Grandy, so don’t look like the rug’s going to be pulled out from under you.”

  As Melanie took that in, Zane could see her shoulders slump a bit. Why? Did she want to be more than only an employee?

  Yet, he already knew that she was much more than someone he gave a paycheck to, or even someone who’d eased his pain yesterday, as well as on that one, earthmoving night they’d been together.

  She was so much more.

  He just didn’t know what, exactly.

  Zane stepped toward the car. “What do you say we take this on the road?”

  “Mr. Foley…” she said, using his formal name around the others.

  He stopped her before she could tell him that she wouldn’t accept this, just as she had done with the bracelet.

  “‘No’ isn’t an option,” he said.

  Monty was already ushering Livie out of the front seat.

  “I love your car,” the girl said to her nanny as the driver shepherded Livie toward the house.

  Melanie only smiled as Monty indicated he would look after the child while Melanie enjoyed a test drive. Then he got Livie through the front door.

  Zane started to go around to the passenger’s side. “Let’s go.”

  “Where? Back to the dealership?”

  “Come on, Melanie.” Zane opened the door and leaned on the top of it. “Indulge me?”

  She sighed and he took that as a good sign, getting in and closing his door.

  When she slid in, too, she didn’t start the engine. “You know what I’m going to say, right? Thank you but—”

  “It’s the same thing you said about the bracelet. And, as I recall, you never did give that back to me, so I assume it’s accepted.”

  She kept looking at him as if she were about to hand him a much more detailed answer that he probably wouldn’t want to hear.

  A refusal, he realized, and it chipped away at him, revealing a raw side that he thought he’d gotten control of after getting home from Danielle’s bridge yesterday. It was a part of him that would come out next anniversary, then the next, and that was all he could allow.

  Then again, Melanie hadn’t run away at any point. Hadn’t she seen the worst of him already?

  What was he afraid of, then?

  “Do you know just how much you’ve meant to me and Livie?” he asked quietly, taking a chance, breaking his own rules and hoping she wouldn’t get out of this car and leave him.

  She touched the steering wheel, longing written all over her face. Yet somehow, he got the feeling that she wasn’t craving a car.

  “I know how much you two appreciate me,” she said. “So you don’t have to give me things to prove it.”

  “I only want to—”

  She faced him. “Did you love her so much that you can’t bring yourself to dig all the way out of it, Zane?”

  Melanie was referring to Danielle, and for a decimated heartbeat, he didn’t know how to answer.

  “I’m sorry,” she said, raising her hands from the wheel. “I can’t believe I just asked. I shouldn’t have.”

  He gently grabbed her wrist before she could go anywhere, and she stayed, watching him with those eyes—that clear gaze hazed with gathering clouds.

  “I did love her,” he found himself saying, even though there was still a part of him that warned against it. “I loved her so much that, when she died, it killed most of me, too.”

  Zane let go of her wrist. He was numb again, hardly believing the words that had come out of his mouth.

  Just shut up, he told himself. Stop now.

  But he didn’t, because he was sick of holding it in, and yesterday, when some of it had been released, he’d actually felt like a new man.

  Thing was, he didn’t know who that man was or where he was going—or even how to get there.

  The image of that bridge entered his mind, but it faded all too quickly.

  “I’m not even sure,” he heard himself saying, “that I’ll ever really be there for anyone else. But you’ve come the closest to showing me the way, Melanie. You…” He almost didn’t say it, but it came out nonetheless. “You were the first woman I’ve been with since Danielle.”

  God, he sounded like a monk—but hadn’t he shut himself away just as thoroughly?

  Gaze softening, Melanie opened her mouth to respond, but he got there first.

  “I know, I know—withdrawn in the extreme. But I wouldn’t have been good for anyone. You could probably testify to that. And I only wanted to give you back a little of what you gave to me, whether it was with a car or a bracelet….”

  “I understand.”

  She came into vivid focus now—Melanie, a constant that was so much warmer than the work that had sustained him before.

  But she was also more volatile. Work would always be there for him, no matter how he treated it; yet, she would take so much more care, and there was no guarantee that she would stay.

  She laid her hand on his arm, and those shivers of desire returned to thrust at him deep inside.

  “I just wish I could take all that pain from you, Zane,” she said.

  When he looked into her eyes, he saw that she truly would if she could.

  He shook his head. “You don’t want to know everything.”

  “Why? Because I might break under all of it?”

  Melanie rubbed her thumb back and forth over his arm, not in a seductive way, but in a manner that reminded him of a soft breeze blowing over cushioning grass.

  She continued. “I did some research into bipolar disorder, just to try and understand that, too. I didn’t get past a lot of the technical information
, though.”

  Right. The definitions of BP—abnormal alterations in moods, energy and the ability to function—were easy to learn.

  The rest wasn’t easy.

  But she’d tried, Zane thought, and the proof of it touched him.

  “All along,” he said, “Danielle would have episodes, both manic and depressive. She had blamed me and her family before for her troubles. She even had to be hospitalized a couple of times before the pregnancy. But after Livie was born, she just…” He blew out a breath. “She started saying that she was a burden—that she’d brought me too much trouble, even though I did everything I could to show her that I loved her and Livie. That’s when she went on stronger mood stabilizers, and they seemed to work.”

  “Until she went off of those?” Melanie added.

  Zane nodded, not wanting to talk about the suicide itself. Not yet. Maybe not ever, because it cut too close, even after a six-year anniversary.

  “And Livie?” Melanie asked, sounding anxious. “I heard that children of parents with the illness are more likely to have the disorder.”

  “She’s visited doctors, and they believe she’s normal.”

  Yet his daughter had been through so much that Zane wasn’t sure what normal really was.

  He added, “But she’ll keep seeing them. I want to be sure.”

  “Right.” Melanie slid her hand down his arm. “You did everything you could do, and you’re doing the same thing now, Zane. So stop hounding yourself.”

  Melanie was holding his arm, as if trying to transfer strength, and oddly enough, he actually felt it.

  Or did he just want it so badly that he was imagining it?

  “You don’t have to tell me that you’re afraid Livie’s going to be like Danielle,” she said. “You’ve set yourself back from her, just in case it ever does happen again. But, good heavens, Zane, there’s no guarantee there’ll be a next time. You can’t live in anticipation of it.”

  “I wish I could believe that.”

  As if making him want to believe, Melanie brought her fingers to his temple, where she brushed the hair away from his face.

  He allowed the wash of comfort to ease through him. She was the only one who could make him think that there were wonderful possibilities ahead, and he wished he could accept everything she had to offer.