Home to Laura

by Mary Sullivan

  He and her mother were involved. By the looks of the two of them, they’d driven straight over from being involved.

  Oh, myyyy. She thought hard, but couldn’t remember a time when she’d ever suspected her mother of being with a man.

  The pair looked defiant, maybe with good reason. Laura didn’t know what the age difference was, but knew it was broad and it astounded her.

  She grinned.

  “Good for you, Mom.”

  Olivia let out a breath she’d been holding and rushed to her daughter, wrapping her in a hug.

  “Is this what’s been bothering you for the past months?” Laura asked.

  “The stubborn woman wouldn’t give in.” Aiden’s dormant Scottish accent took center stage, a testament to his emotional involvement with Mom? Laura hoped so. She wanted more for Mom than just sexual love. “She’s obsessed with age and with what people will think.”

  “And you aren’t?” Laura asked.

  “Not in the least.” He kissed the back of Olivia’s neck.

  Mom looked as though she’d died and gone to heaven. “Let me see my grandchild,” she demanded and Laura became weepy. Oh. Mom was going to be involved after all. She’d been telling the truth at Ty and Tammy’s wedding. Laura had been afraid to believe, but here Mom was making it true.

  Pearl might not have much of an extended family, but she would know her only living grandmother.

  Aiden was obviously helping Mom come to terms with her age. Thank God.

  Olivia’s eyes misted when she held Pearl and Laura knew there would be a loving relationship between the two.

  She mouthed “thank you” to Aiden. His grin took her breath away.

  Dear Lord, her mother had chosen an inordinately handsome lover.

  * * *

  NICK DIDN’T RETURN that day or the next.

  It wasn’t until she brought Pearl home that she found out he’d left town.

  She wasn’t surprised, but oh, she was hurt.

  He’d gotten a good night’s sleep, as she’d directed, and had seen that he didn’t care enough, that he wasn’t committed enough, that he didn’t love enough to stay with her and with his baby.

  It shouldn’t hurt as much as it did. She’d seen it coming, but she was only human and her heart more susceptible to hope than she’d thought.

  She’d figured out that men couldn’t be trusted to keep a commitment or to stick around when the going got tough. She’d betrayed the only man she’d known who could be trusted. Gabe.

  She’d made her bed and now she would have to sleep in it.

  She laid Pearl gently into her crib and touched her tiny perfect cheek. She had no regrets where her baby was concerned.

  “It’s you and me against the world, sweetheart, exactly as I’d thought.”

  She lay down on her own bed and turned on the baby monitor on the bedside table, determined to sleep while Pearl slept.

  The next phase of her life would test her strength and endurance.

  She refused, absolutely refused, to think about Nick.

  When sleep overtook her, it came swiftly and deeply, without dreams.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

  NICK’S PLANE LANDED in Paris after midnight, but he didn’t know which day it was. He’d lost track of time.

  He should have taken a hotel room for the night, but instead, rented a car and drove to the villa Harry Fuller owned outside of Alençon, arriving in the middle of the night.

  He pounded on the door.

  Harry answered, disheveled, pulling the belt of his robe tight.

  “Qu’est-ce que c’est?” he asked before realizing it was Nick. “Oh, it’s you. What do you want?”

  “Emily.”

  “Not sure she’ll see you. You couldn’t have come in the morning?”

  “I want to see her now.”

  “You might as well come in. I’ll go wake her.”

  Nick waited in an expansive, beautifully appointed sunken living room.

  It wasn’t his daughter who finally entered, but Marsha.

  “Nick? What are you doing here?” She looked at a tiny gold watch on her left wrist. “At 2:30 in the morning?”

  “I want to see Emily. I want her back.”

  She nodded, but made no move to fetch his daughter. “Sit down.”

  Gracefully, she sat across from him on a settee that had probably been made two hundred years ago. What did he know? Marsha had furnished their home.

  “Did you know,” she said, “that she used to idolize you? From the moment she first started to notice the world around her, she honed in on you and couldn’t get enough of you. Unfortunately, you were never around.”

  “I know, Marsha. You have no idea how much I regret that now.”

  “When I married Harry, I left Emily with you because that’s where she wanted to be.” She leaned back in her chair. “Mort said you were trying to make time for her.”

  “Yes, and it was working, but then...life got complicated.”

  “You got some woman pregnant.”

  “Not just some woman. The one I betrayed my brother with. I love her. It’s taken me this long to figure it out.”

  “I’m happy for you.” She looked reserved.

  “You can go ahead and gloat. She turned me down when I asked her to marry me.”

  She smiled. “These days, things don’t seem to be coming to you as easily as they used to.”

  “Marsha, you have no idea.” He cracked his knuckles. “I have another daughter. Pearl. Do you know what I realized when I held her for the first time?”

  “What?”

  “How much I love Emily. How much love there is in my heart. How much I have to give to this new baby, but even more so to Emily.”

  “Dad?”

  He turned at his daughter’s voice.

  “Emily?” Before he barely registered how sleepy and grumpy she looked, he strode across the room and hauled her into his arms. “I missed you,” he breathed. “I missed you so goddamn much.”

  “Nick, language. Please,” Marsha admonished.

  “I can’t help myself, Marsha. I missed my baby.”

  “Dad, I can’t breathe.”

  He eased his grip. “I don’t want to let you go. Come home with me. I never want to be apart from you again. Never.”

  “Really?” She sounded so hopeful, but her hope had been dashed so many times by him in the past. She became suspicious.

  “Did Laura have her baby?”

  “Yes. A little girl. Her first name is Pearl and her last is Jordan. She’s your baby sister.”

  “Are you sure you still want me?”

  “I want you more than ever. Do you know what I’ve learned?”

  She shook her head.

  “How much love I have inside of me. How much I love you and want you in my life. I want to share everything with you, including your baby sister.”

  When she would have objected, he said, “I have boundless, infinite love to give. The more I love the more I want to love. I’m learning so much, Emily, and so much of it is from you. You started me on this journey way back in the spring. If not for you, I would still be sitting behind my desk doing nothing but earning more and more money, and letting you slip through my fingers.”

  He rested his forehead on hers. “You saved my life. I want you back in it. I’m going to quit my job.”

  He heard Marsha gasp behind him. He’d had a lot of time to think on his flights and the thought that popped into his head over and over was It’s time.

  Instead of the panic, the hollowness leaving his job in Seattle should have brought on, he felt only peace and rightness. What would he replace it with? He didn’t know, nor did he care at this moment.

  “I want you to come home with me,” he told his daughter. “I want us to buy a house in Accord and live there. Or we can build one that you like. We can design one together.”

  His happiness, his optimism, knew no bounds. “I want you to meet Pearl, because she has sh
own me that I love you to pieces.”

  “Daddy?”

  “Yes?”

  “I love you so much. I want to go home with you.”

  He’d never been so happy. Or so tired.

  “Do you want home to be in Accord?”

  “Oh, yeah! It’s awesome.”

  “Marsha?” he asked, still holding on to his daughter with every ounce of his strength.

  “Yes?” He heard a smile in her voice.

  “Do you have an extra bed? I haven’t slept in two days. Or it might be three.”

  Nick slept for ten hours. He and Emily left the following day.

  Two days after he returned to Seattle, after he’d slept twelve hours straight, he walked into his office. His heart rate tripped along too fast.

  He knew he was doing the right thing, had achieved an epiphany on the flight over the Atlantic with Emily asleep in his arms.

  It had taken losing his daughter for him to finally get his head screwed on right.

  The room was neat, tidy, nothing out of place, the way he liked to work. He had no idea what had happened to the work he’d left on the top floor of the B and B in Accord.

  He studied the sterile symbols of the success he’d once thought vital to his life, his soul.

  He stepped to the window with the stunning view and touched his hand to the glass, just as he’d done that day last spring when Mort had told him that he was losing his daughter.

  He remembered thinking that this life was real, that he existed here while he knew no Nick Jordan other than the businessman.

  Convinced that he was making the right choice, he walked to Mort’s office. He nodded to Mort’s secretary and said, “Good morning, Sarah,” surprised that he remembered the woman’s name.

  “He’s expecting you.” Sarah smiled the vapid, generic smile of the professional. No laughing here. No husky voices. No real caring.

  Mort appeared to be sober. He leaned back in his desk chair and studied Nick.

  “You got her back.”

  “Yes. Emily’s home again.”

  “Good.”

  Nick had thought of no way to soften the blow. “I’m here to tender my resignation.”

  He knew Mort’s explosive temper, understood that Mort had put time and effort and years into grooming Nick to be his successor. Nick was throwing it all back in his face.

  Mort didn’t look surprised and that shocked Nick. The decision had been a tough one, but something had to give in his life.

  “Why?” Mort asked.

  “I’ve taken stock. The area of my life in which I’m least happy is work.”

  Mort continued to watch him but said nothing.

  “I’m most happy with Emily and Laura and Pearl. I’m most happy in Accord.”

  “We can’t have everything we want in life. What makes you think you can?”

  Nick shrugged. “I can only give it my best shot. I became a success here in this world through grit and determination. If I apply that to my private life, just think how far I could go with a family. I could make Emily happy. I could make Laura and my newborn infant happy. I could be happy.”

  Mort nodded and stood. He held out his hand to Nick to shake.

  Nick stared, too shocked to take it at first. “You’re not angry?”

  “You’ve come to your senses. I’ve made a hash out of my life, but you’re young enough to save yours.”

  Nick took Mort’s hand and shook it, hard. He had a lot of respect for the man. What impressed him even more was the affection. The love. Mort had been a mentor, but he’d also been the father Nick had lost at too early an age.

  “I’ve decided to run the Accord Resort,” he said quietly. “It makes perfect sense. I’m not sure why it took me so long to see it.”

  Mort smiled. “I figured that might be the direction your life was taking. You’ve come to terms with your past. You do what you have to do. Expect company, though. I’m coming to live there, too.”

  Before he left, Nick looked back at Mort over his shoulder. “Accord would be a great place to retire.”

  “Yep. It’s time to sell the company.”

  With that he was gone, leaving the building empty-handed.

  There wasn’t a thing he wanted or needed from here.

  * * *

  HE FLEW WITH Emily to Accord, not at all sure how things would go, but determined.

  Her relationship with Laura had been combative.

  He called the hospital. Laura was already at home with Pearl.

  Before trying to work out some kind of reconciliation between his daughter and the woman he loved, he thought he should see Laura alone.

  After settling himself and Emily in the B and B, he drove her to Gabe’s for a day of dogsledding. She’d wanted to try it ever since coming to town last spring and meeting the dogs for the first time.

  Then Nick headed back into Accord, to Laura’s.

  He pressed his face to the glass of the bakery. The place was busy. To his surprise, he spotted Laura behind the counter. Working already?

  He stepped inside.

  The café was full, almost every table taken, but the lineup was short. Tilly, another woman, a young man and Laura worked behind the counter.

  Laura laughed at something someone said and the huskiness, the earthiness of it, thrilled his nerve endings.

  She looked tired but happy. She glowed every bit as much now as she had during pregnancy. Her breasts were heavier, full of milk. She looked womanly and wonderful.

  Then she saw him.

  After the initial unguarded look of shock, her expression closed.

  He stepped up to the counter.

  “We need to talk.”

  She nodded, stepped into the back and then returned with Pearl on her shoulder.

  He followed her out of the shop and upstairs and into her apartment. She put Pearl down in her crib then walked to the living room and turned and watched him quietly.

  “I meant what I said in the hospital.” He stepped closer to her. “I love you and want to marry you.”

  “You have an odd way of showing it. Where did you go?”

  “I flew to France. I picked up Emily and brought her home. I quit my job. I put my house up for sale.”

  By the time he’d finished with his list, her eyebrows had shot up.

  “I’m committed. Emily and I are moving to Accord. I don’t know where we’ll live. With you, if you’ll have me. If not, somewhere else, but close enough that I will be involved in Pearl’s life. Daily.”

  He stepped even closer. “I’m never leaving again. I’m here for the duration. I love you, Laura, with all of my heart.”

  She grasped the back of his head and pulled him to her for a searing kiss. When she finally released him, they were breathing hard.

  “Don’t change your mind on me, Jordan,” she said. “I’ll hold you to every single word. To every commitment. I love for life, Nick. I don’t do divorce.”

  “I’m here for good, love.”

  They sat on the sofa, together, and talked and touched and murmured words of love until Pearl woke up.

  Laura brought her to the living room and sat beside Nick.

  “Can I hold her?”

  “After I feed her.” Laura unbuttoned her blouse and unhooked her maternity bra then lifted out one breast, unashamed. Pearl latched on and started suckling and Nick didn’t think he’d ever seen anything more beautiful in his life.

  Laura’s breast was large, full with the life-giving force that would help Pearl grow and become strong.

  Why had Nick never seen it as the beautiful miracle that it was? Why had it always made him squeamish?

  Laura let him hold Pearl and taught him how to burp her.

  Then she put the baby to her other breast.

  Nick watched, couldn’t get enough of it. He touched one finger reverently to the velvet skin above where his baby nursed.

  He ran his fingers through Laura’s hair, pushed it back away from her face a
nd kissed her.

  When he thought he couldn’t leave Emily with Gabe any longer, when he was bursting with so much excitement he couldn’t wait another second, he left to get her.

  Gabe’s house was coming along. Work was stalled for the winter, but he’d managed to complete enough of the rooms for them to live indoors with the baby instead of in the prospector’s tent.

  Nick walked around the house and back to the clearing where the dogs lived.

  Emily was helping Gabe to feed the dogs. When she saw him, her face lit up, as though the sun had come out on this dreary day.

  She flew into his arms.

  “How was the dogsledding?” he asked.

  “Awesome. Amazing. The most incredible thing ever. Dad, you have to try it.”

  Gabe approached. “Anytime, Nick. Come out and I’ll show you how it’s done.”

  “I will, Gabe.” Something fundamental had changed between them. With Nick’s happiness had come peace. He’d let go of childish resentments. These days, he had room only for the good in life.

  “Heard Laura had her baby.”

  Nick nodded. “Pearl. She’s beautiful.”

  While Caleb, and even Rebecca the last time he’d seen her, looked like average babies, Pearl was stunningly beautiful.

  Gabe laughed and Nick stared at him. “What?”

  “You’re in love with her already, aren’t you?”

  “Madly.”

  Emily stiffened at his side. He looked down at her. “You will be, too. Come on. Let’s get you over there to meet her.”

  When he returned to Accord, she walked into Laura’s apartment beside him, her face flushed from her dogsled ride in the winter wind.

  “Laura?”

  “In here.”

  She was just putting Pearl into her crib.

  “She’s asleep.” Nick’s disappointment must have shown on his face, because she laughed. “Don’t worry. She’ll be awake again soon. Trust me.”

  “You look tired,” he said. “Do you need to sleep?”

  “I could use some, but I’d rather get to know Emily better.” He understood the reservation in her voice.

  They followed her to the living room. She poured three iced teas and handed them around. Then they all sat down.

  “How do you feel about the baby, Emily?”