by Noelle Adams
Anger.
Kaya jumped and hugged her arms about her middle tightly, her eyes flashing back and forth from Bryce to Steven, then back to Bryce.
“Michael and I were closer than most brothers, for God’s sake. I loved Lauren like a sister. I adore those kids. How could they ever doubt that?”
“Bryce, believe me, when they asked me to write the will, I raised those same points on your behalf. But they were quite certain about what they wanted.”
“When did they make this ridiculous decision?”
“About a year ago.”
Kaya sat up straight. A year ago was when Lauren tracked her down and began sending her pictures of the children. She’d invited her to come up and meet the family. But old fears had kept her away.
Bryce turned his mercurial eyes on her. His big hands were clenched into fists. His broad shoulders heaved from his deep, harsh breathing.
The mixture of hurt and betrayal in his eyes resonated in her own tormented heart. He’d just lost his dearest friends, and now he was about to lose his godchildren whom he obviously adored.
“They didn’t even know her.” He flung his hands in the air. “They might as well have pulled a stranger off the streets and asked her to raise their kids. That’s what you are. A stranger. To all of us!” He took a threatening step toward her.
Kaya felt his despair in the pit of her stomach, but she steeled herself against the looming threat and pushed to her feet. “Bryce, I know how hurt and betrayed you must feel right now. But I’m the only living relative the children have.”
“I’m the closest thing to family they have, Kaya. The fact that people share the same blood doesn’t make them family. You don’t know those kids, and they certainly do not know you.”
“They’ll come to know me. They’ll even love me in time,” she said, forcing stability into her voice.
“They love me now,” he grounded through clenched teeth. “I’ve been in their lives from the moment each one of them was born. Where were you?”
In high school. But she was sure that’s not what he meant.
“I’m not the kind of godfather who ignores them all year then drop by with expensive gifts on Christmas and birthdays. Which is a lot more than I can say for you, their only living relative, who never even took the time to visit her sister.”
That hurt far more than Kaya ever thought it would. But she gathered courage from the knowledge that even though she and Lauren were estranged, her sister still named her legal guardian of her children.
Lauren had her reasons. Kaya didn’t know what they were. What she did know was that she would not fail her sister. She had failed her in life by not reaching out to her, meeting her halfway; she would not fail her in death by walking away from her children. She would fulfill her request, no matter the cost.
Kaya glanced at Steven, hoping he would intervene on her behalf. He shrugged and spread his hands, obviously reluctant to take sides in a dispute between an old friend and a new client.
“I hope you haven’t told the kids about your absurd plans.” Bryce’s acerbic tone drew her back to his scowling face.
“Of course not. They have enough to deal with already. I’ll tell them when the time is right.”
“It’ll never be right, Miss Brehna.”
So they were back to last names.
He looked her over judiciously. “You’re a career woman whose main priority in life, I’m certain, is to climb the corporate ladder of success. It’s not easy for a single woman to raise a child alone.”
“And how would you know?” Kaya retorted, hands on hips.
“I employ a few of them, Miss Brehna. I overhear their complaints. Can you honestly tell me you’re ready to sacrifice all you’ve worked for to raise three children you don’t even know?”
Kaya knew it wouldn’t be easy, and that it may even jeopardize her job at Pearson’s Interior Decorating. Wayne had already pointed out the demands her new position as head designer would have on her time, not to mention her obligation to the clients she’d left hanging when she got the call from Steven.
And then there was Jack, her fiancé, whom she still hadn’t told she’d inherited three little orphans. Jack was adamant about not having children after they were married. She never thought she wanted children, either, until she met these three who had Eli Brehna’s blood flowing through their veins. Was she picking up a heavier load than she could hoist over her shoulders, much less carry?
“You have no idea what you’re getting yourself into, do you?” Bryce was like a hound dog, sniffing out her fears. “You’re already neck-deep in financial problems or you wouldn’t have been thinking about selling my estate. You probably can’t even afford the funeral.”
The funeral. Kaya hadn’t even thought of that after Steven dropped the bombshell on her earlier. When she’d thought there was money to pay for the funeral, she’d picked out two elaborate coffins, and hadn’t bothered to give a second thought to the expense of keeping them in the funeral home. Well, she’d have to go a cheaper route now, and get Michael and Lauren buried as quickly as possible. Tomorrow.
“This is what we’re going to do, Miss Brehna.” Bryce glared down at her as if she were one of his insubordinate employees. “I’ll pay for Michael and Lauren’s funeral, then I’ll even pay for a first class ticket back to Florida for you. Better still, I’ll have my pilot fly you back in my jet. I’ll reimburse all expenses you’ve incurred so far. Just sign the kids over to me and you can leave Granite Falls as free and unencumbered as you came.” He pulled a checkbook from his back pocket, and opened it. “Name your price, Miss Brehna.”
Kaya seethed at his arrogance, his assumption that he could buy her. In all of her twenty-three years on this planet, she never had this strong a desire to slap someone across the face. Too bad it was beyond her immediate reach.
“Money isn’t everything, Mr. Fontaine. It can buy a lot of luxuries, I’d grant, but it cannot buy love. I love my nephew and nieces. In time, they’ll grow to love me. Love is a price you certainly cannot afford.”
His eyes narrowed to dark slits as he tossed the checkbook on the desk. “You obviously have no idea who you’re dealing with, Miss Brehna. I promise, I will—”
“Time out,” Steven finally interjected, coming to stand between them. “I realize emotions are running high right now. But you both need to stop before you say something you’ll regret. Let’s get Michael and Lauren buried, then you two can work out the details over the children.”
“Actually, there’s nothing to work out,” Kaya stated in the calmest voice she could muster under the circumstances. “Steven, I would like you to prepare the necessary papers to finalize my custody of the children so I can get out of this town as soon as possible.”
She threw her head further back to encounter Bryce’s angry glare. Even though he’d managed to push her within a hair’s breadth of striking him, she knew what drove him. He was fighting for three little kids who weren’t even related to him when her own parents had walked away without a backward glance. For that, she admired him, and for the children’s sake she would try to get along with him.
In spite of that, she had to let him know that she didn’t scare easily. Her years in foster homes where she had to fight for what was hers, then fight some more to hold on to it, had instilled a warrior’s spirit in her. She wasn’t backing down. Not for him. Not for anyone.
“Mr. Fontaine, I’m sorry we had to meet under such tragic circumstances. I can see that you care about your godchildren and want what’s best for them. But, I’m their family, and good or bad, rich or poor, family is the most important thing to a child. I wouldn’t get in the way of your relationship with them. You can visit them whenever you want. But get this, I’m not signing them over to you, or anyone else. Ever.”
Bryce could barely contain his fury as he watched her sashay across the floor, pull a leather jacket from the coat rack, and snatch up a handbag from a corner table.
The second Steven cl
osed the door behind her, Bryce exploded. “The nerve of that woman! Who does she think she is?”
“Their aunt and legal guardian.” Steven ran his fingers through his hair, a helpless, skeptical twist to his lips.
“You are my friend. You should have told me what Michael and Lauren had done.”
“Bryce, you know I couldn’t do that. They were my friends too, but they were also my clients. I owed them certain fiduciary rights. Loyalty and confidentiality—”
“You dare talk to me about loyalty, Steven? Where was their loyalty to me and to their defenseless children?” Bryce shook his fists in the air and began to pace the floor. “She’s taking them to Florida. Michael and Lauren would not want their children living anywhere but in Granite Falls. This is their home.”
“I pointed that out to Kaya. I don’t know if it did any good.” Steven sighed. “If I’d seen this coming, I would have instructed them to include some kind of condition on her guardianship. It’s beyond my power. Kaya has custody, clear and free.”
Bryce came to a halt in front of Steven. “It may be beyond your power, but it isn’t beyond mine. I’m not going to stand by and let that woman take those kids from their home, from people they’ve known all their lives. People they know and trust. People who love them.”
“Bryce, I don’t want you going off—”
He cut Steven off with a flip of his wrist. “I don’t care what I have to do, or whose neck I have to step on to keep those kids in Granite Falls. I will not lose them, Steven. I will not lose them!”
Two
Kaya pulled her rental into the four-car garage at L’etoile du Nord. She slammed her palms against the steering wheel, releasing the anger and frustration that had been stewing inside her since she left Steven’s office.
She never thought it possible that anyone could awaken that raging little girl she’d buried years ago, but Bryce Fontaine had done it. Kudos to him.
She’d been looking forward to his return, mainly for Jason’s sake. Now she wished she’d never laid eyes on the man. He was the most arrogant, overbearing, egotistic male she’d ever met.
Dangerous, too, since he had enough money and power to break her. He could keep her tied up in a custody battle for the next hundred years if he wanted. And from the imminent rage in his black eyes and thunderous voice, Kaya had no doubt that was exactly what he intended to do. He would fight to keep the kids in his life because he loved them.
He shared a mutual love and trust with his godchildren—the kind of love and trust that would take her months, if not years to build. Especially when it came to Jason who’d made it clear that he did not like her.
The courts would look favorably on their emotional ties to Bryce, and take into consideration that Bryce was older, shared a history with each of them, and was far more financially capable of taking care of all of them. She was twenty-three years old, a stranger to them, had no experience with children, had no clue how to be a parent, and would probably be broke in three months.
Yes, it was true that she had a piece of paper that gave her legal rights to them, but Kaya had spent enough time in Florida’s child welfare system to know that a notarized piece of paper wasn’t enough. She’d witnessed a lot of cases where the courts ruled against legal rights because they didn’t think it was in the best interest of the child—her own case was one of those where best interest won out over legal and maternal rights. Kaya knew now exactly how all those parents who’d fought for their children and lost them felt. She knew how Nadine felt when she lost custody of her. The only difference was that Nadine hadn’t really fought for her; she’d used her parental rights for her own selfish reasons that had nothing to do with love. The courts had been on little Kaya’s side, and had made the right decision in her favor. Would they do the same for Jason, Alyssa, and Anastasia?
If she were honest with herself, Kaya knew she couldn’t expect the courts to side with her in this case. She couldn’t think of one person who would be on her side. Not one.
Kaya sighed as she exited the car and walked toward the mudroom. The shock of learning about Michael and Lauren’s sudden deaths, inheriting the children, then finding out they didn’t have a penny to their names—all in two days—was hard enough to fathom. She never thought she’d have to fight for them, too.
The thought of losing her nephew and nieces to Bryce Fontaine left a hollow feeling in the pit of Kaya’s stomach, and as she sat on the bench in the mudroom to shed her boots, she squeezed her eyelids together to stop the stinging tears from falling. If she lost them, she had no one to blame but herself. A stupid, childish grudge against her sister could cost her the three most precious things that have ever entered her life. She had to find a way to keep them.
Kaya opened her eyes and stared at the white ceiling. “God, help me. Make a way for me to keep the children, please.”
As an adult, Kaya didn’t practice any religion, but as a child, she’d lived in a few foster homes where the norm was to attend church on Sundays. She’d sat in the congregation with her foster families and listened, unimpressed, as people shared miracles that God had done in their lives. Before she’d become a ward of the state of Florida, Kaya had spent years praying for her father to come back and take her out of the hellhole he’d left her in. Since God never answered that prayer, she’d stop believing in miracles.
From what she’d learned about Michael and Lauren, it seemed as if they’d been regular church attendees, so perhaps God would grant this wish—not for her, but for Michael and Lauren and their children’s sakes.
Feeling a little more balanced in spirit, Kaya got up and opened the door that led into the house. But as she entered the palatial foyer and took in the grandeur of the marble Grecian columns separating several richly furnished areas of the first floor, and the myriad of Palladian windows that afforded breathtaking views of Crystal Lake and the rolling mountains behind it, Bryce’s claim rang loud and clear in her ears.
Mine. L’etoile du Nord belongs to me.
This was Bryce Fontaine’s house. And she’d bet anything that in that big head of his, he thought that he owned everything in it, including her sister’s children. Yet, she thought, biting into her lower lip, nowhere in this house, not even in the third-floor unfinished master suite, was there a sign that Bryce Fontaine lived here.
Why didn’t he live here? Why were her sister and her family living in his house? And why didn’t anybody bother to tell her what was going on?
Lauren never explained anything about her private life in their occasional snail-mail correspondences. She’d merely sent pictures of the family with short notes to explain them, but at the end of each letter, she expressed her wish that the two of them would have a chance to meet again, get to know each other, and talk about their father. It was the last part that always got to Kaya. Back then, she had no desire to talk to Lauren about the father who’d chosen Lauren and her mother over her. Today, she’d give anything to sit down with her sister and learn about the man she’d once loved with all her little heart and soul.
“Auntie Kaya, you’re home. You’re home.”
Kaya looked up at the sound of the cheerful voice and the pitter-pattering of feet on the landing linking the two sprawling staircases to the second floor. She smiled as Alyssa, with Snoopy clutched under one arm, raced down a flight of steps as quickly as her little legs would carry her.
All of Kaya’s doubts vanished at the glee on the little girl’s face. She couldn’t remember anyone ever being this excited to see her, but she could remember being just as excited to see her father when she was a little girl. She dropped her purse on a nearby table and opened her arms as Alyssa ran to her.
“Hey, baby.” She hugged the dark-brown, curly-headed child and kissed her relentlessly. How could she have forgotten she had Alyssa on her side? This darling little child had accepted her without question. She was Kaya’s glimmer of hope, her assurance that all would work out for the best.
Alyssa was still to
o young to understand the sudden void in her life, and last night at bedtime when she’d asked where her mommy and daddy were, Kaya had simply told her that they had gone to heaven.
“Did they go for a vacation? Can I go to heaven to see them, Auntie Kaya?” she’d asked.
“One day, honey. One day,” Kaya had replied on a sob.
“You didn’t kiss Snoopy,” Alyssa said, holding up her favorite stuffed animal that was once white and fluffy, but was now a tattered dull grey from four years of heavy loving.
Kaya gave Snoopy a tight-lipped peck on his scruffy black nose. She refused to think of the plethora of germs crawling all over that dog. Snoopy went everywhere with Alyssa, even to the bathroom.
“Did you bring me a present, Auntie Kaya?” Alyssa fiddled with the locket around Kaya’s neck.
“Not this time, sweetie.” Kaya gazed into her sparkling eyes—Eli Brehna’s eyes, eyes that she’d also inherited, eyes that Nadine cursed each time she looked at her daughter.
“Why didn’t you bring me a present, Auntie Kaya?”
“Because when Little Brownie Locks was climbing up the snowy mountain,” she began while tickling Alyssa’s tummy, “she met a big bad bear who scared her so much…” Kaya growled for emphasis. “Little Brownie Locks was so frightened, she forgot all the important things she had to do, and she ran all the way home, screaming, ‘Mommy, Mommy, the big bad bear is after me. Mommy, Mommy, help me.’”
As Alyssa screamed in delight, the parallelism of that tale to her encounter with Bryce made Kaya’s heart race. She’d been so preoccupied with his threats, she’d forgotten to stop at the quilt shop in town to pick up a new dress for one of Alyssa’s many dolls. She’d learned last night that Alyssa was a doll collector, and never said no to a new one, not even duplicates.
“Tickle me some more, Auntie Kaya,” Alyssa yelled, wriggling around in her arms.
Kaya obliged and pressed her close as she giggled uncontrollably. Kaya breathed in the sounds of joy. Anything was better than the ominous cloud hanging over the house, waiting to burst and drench their hearts with sorrow. She took a few wavering steps and plopped down on the sofa closest to the deep-ledged fireplace that separated the living and dining areas.