The Inconvenient Bride Series 1-3

by Sharon Ihle

  Shylo averted her gaze, unable to look into her mother's Irish eyes any longer, but watched instead as she slapped the expensive gloves against her open palm. Shylo wished she had the guts to toss the woman out the door, to reject her as she herself had been rejected, but she'd never been the sort to cut off her nose to spite her face. After all, wasn't this the entire reason she'd come to California in the first place? To find her mother and learn everything she could about her? Of course it was, so why did Colleen's offer suddenly seem anticlimactic, insignificant somehow?

  Cassie, edgy and nervous, got up from the bed and stared openly at the mother she'd never known. "I don't know what's got Shylo's tongue, but I'd sure like it if you stayed. I've never really met you before."

  "No," said Colleen, again perusing Cassie's hair, "I guess we haven't exactly met, have we."

  Shylo hadn't really considered Cassie's curiosity before. For her sister, if not herself, she marched over to the Queen Anne chair, dragged it up by the bed, and gestured toward it. "Why not stay a while, Mrs. Pappas? We'd love to hear what you have to say."

  "Thank you."

  Once Colleen was seated and the girls had plopped down on the bed in front of her, she drew the pearl- tipped pin from her toque hat, removed the confection of rose velvet and moss green plumes, and set the bonnet in her lap. Then she looked at Shylo and said, "Why don't you girls call me... Colleen. I don't see why we can't be at least that friendly with one another."

  "All right, Colleen," said Shylo. "We might as well get right to it. I think the main thing the both of us want to know is why you never came back the way you said you would."

  Colleen's expression, while carefully guarded, showed just a bit of surprise over Shylo's bluntness, but her voice remained steady as she answered, "I did come back for you, but by then it was too late. I found out that your father had... died, and when I asked around about you two, no one seemed to know where you were."

  "Did you bother to check the orphanage?"

  For the first time Colleen seemed to be at least slightly shocked. With a sharp intake of breath, she clutched the precious stones at her throat and said, "Goodness, no. It never occurred to me that—my goodness..."

  Fighting against the tears that threatened to choke her, Shylo raised her chin. "We didn't go willingly, mind you. The first time the Children's Aid Society came after us, we took off. Me and Cassie ran the streets with a bunch of other orphaned or abandoned kids for about a year after Pa died, but they finally caught us."

  By now Colleen was aghast. "But you and Cassie couldn't have been more than, what? Four and—"

  "Eight and three when Pa died."

  Glancing from daughter to daughter, her eyes huge, Colleen began to tug on the fingers of her empty gloves. "How on earth did you survive? Where did you live, and on what?"

  Since she counted memories of that one year as some of her favorites, Shylo was able to shrug them off. "We lived in abandoned buildings and cardboard boxes, mostly. What the other kids didn't give us, we earned as shoe-shiners or beggars, whatever worked best."

  "Lord!" Colleen's eyes fluttered to a close for a moment before popping open again. "I never dreamed..."

  "I assure you," said Shylo, "most of what happened to us after Pa died was no dream. More of a nightmare, actually, once those do-gooding people got hold of us and put us in a foundling hospital." She closed her eyes and took a breath, amazed that she could still smell the tar soap the hospital always used on her. "Anyway, we didn't stay there long."

  "Then you were... adopted?"

  "Not then," said Cassie, recounting the only part of the story she could remember. "Lots of people wanted to adopt me 'cause I had blond hair, but Shylo always pitched such a fit about splitting us up, the nurses decided it'd be easier to send us away with a whole lot of other orphans."

  "Send you away?" Colleen's complexion was pale, and she continued to fiddle with her gloves. "I'm afraid I don't understand."

  Shylo was more than happy to elaborate. "They put us on an orphan train. Ever hear of them?" Colleen shook her head. "Cassie was too young to remember much about the trip, but I never forgot a mile of it. They put us on a train with about a hundred other orphans and some church workers who spent all their time telling us how we ought to speak, eat, and behave once we got to Kansas."

  "Kansas?" Again she looked from daughter to daughter. "You girls moved to Kansas?"

  Shylo gave her mother a grim smile. "Not exactly willingly, and once we got there we didn't stay willingly, either, but we had no choice." She didn't know how she could explain this final humiliation to her mother, or even if she could put it into words, but she had to try. Maybe, she thought, if Colleen knew this part of her children's lives, it might even melt some of the ice in those cold, cold eyes. "The orphan train made a lot of stops once we hit Kansas. At each town me, Cassie, and the other kids were herded onto the platforms so the fine folks who lived there could look us over. You know, choose the kid they wanted like we were cattle or sacks of seed?"

  "I remember that part," said Cassie. "I do, 'cause folks liked my blond hair all over again."

  Shylo glanced at Cassie and said, "They may have liked your blond hair better than my dirty brown mop, but you were too little and scrawny for anyone to choose."

  "Too little and scrawny for what?" Colleen wanted to know.

  Shylo gave a short, bitter laugh. "For why they came to look us orphans over. Most of those folks weren't looking for a family, but for cheap labor. They'd walk right up to us and pinch our arms to see if we had enough muscle to plow a field, open our mouths to make sure our teeth weren't all rotted out, and yes"—she glanced at Cassie again and smiled—"some even seemed to favor the kids with blue eyes and blond hair."

  "I told you I remembered," said Cassie with a smug grin.

  After chuckling a little at this, Shylo went on. "She's right. Some folks did favor Cassie, but whenever it looked like one of them might be planning to choose her, I just hugged her tight and wouldn't let go unless they took me, too."

  "Shylo always looked after me. She was the best mama I ever had." Realizing she'd made a blunder in front of her real mother, Cassie covered her mouth. "Oops, I meant to say—"

  "That's all right, Cassie," said Colleen. "Shylo has shouldered an awful lot of responsibility for both of you. I'm—I'm really proud of her for keeping you two together. I'm proud of you both."

  "If you're so damn proud of us," Shylo blurted out, still burning inside with bottled-up anger, "why'd you run off and leave us that way in the first place?"

  "Because I had to," Colleen snapped, flashing the first display of emotion since she'd walked into the room—anger. Although both girls cringed a little to have this alien mother shouting at them, the outburst did manage to thaw those Irish eyes a little.

  Collecting herself a bit, Colleen went on. "I was married to your father when I was just fourteen years old—fourteen—and had barely turned fifteen when you were born, Shylo. I wasn't ready for any of it, not marriage or children."

  "Then why did you marry him?" Shylo asked indignantly. "Obviously, it wasn't for love."

  "No, it wasn't—I never loved William McBride. I married him to, to escape." Bright spots of color appeared along Colleen's high cheekbones. "To keep from being old and used up before I was twenty-five the way my mother was. To escape... everything."

  Not at all happy with the explanation or the way the conversation was going, Shylo jumped off the bed and flounced over to the window. She'd be damned if her mother was going to claim even one drop of the anger she'd stored up all these years.

  Seething inside, she said, "How nice for you that you were able to escape your life whenever the mood struck. I'm afraid that orphans like me and Cassie never got the chance."

  Colleen stood up, marched over to where her daughter stood, and leveled her with a hot gaze. "I won't bother you with the details. Just believe me when I say that being orphaned isn't the worst thing that can happen to a young
girl. Sometimes trying to survive among your own family members is much harder. Much, much harder."

  Shylo swallowed hard but didn't ask or say a thing. She suddenly did not want all the details of her mother's previous life.

  Colleen went on. "William McBride used to deliver fish to the market where I worked as a child. The first time I smiled at him after I began to blossom as a woman, he fell all over himself, so I decided right then and there to set my sights on him. He was a longshoreman making a decent wage, and since he lived alone, I figured he had enough money to take care of me. I married him the same day he proposed to me."

  Shylo thought back to her childhood home, to the tiny one-room apartment in which the McBride family had struggled to pay the bills each month. "If I remember correctly, we pretty much lived hand to mouth. That was your idea of a decent wage?"

  Colleen's mouth twisted into a wry grin. "What I didn't know about your father before we married was that he liked to hang around with his Irish cronies. He generally gambled and drank up half his pay before he ever got home. I had to take in wash just to meet the rent."

  Shylo didn't remember the part about taking in wash, but she did know her father had had a true Irishman's love for his whiskey. In fact, now that she thought back on it, after her mother left him she couldn't remember a day when William McBride hadn't had a whiskey bottle in his hand. Still, it didn't excuse what Colleen had done. Shylo hardened both her jaw and her heart.

  Colleen touched her elbow. "I was young, remember, and couldn't control anything William did. After a while, I figured if I was going to be a slave for some man, at least I'd do it with one who could afford to keep me from taking in wash for the rest of my days."

  "So you abandoned your children to avoid the wash? Is that what you're saying?"

  "You're simply not going to make any of this easy on me, are you?"

  "No, ma'am, I'm not."

  Shylo and her mother locked gazes for several moments, each one gauging how far the other could be pushed, and then Colleen forged ahead. "All right, if you want it, here it is in a nutshell. I never wanted children at all."

  Shylo stumbled back a step as if she'd been struck, though no one had touched her.

  Colleen went on, pouring the truth over her like scalding water. "I did everything I could think of to avoid motherhood, up to and including locking my husband out during so-called fertile times. As you're both well aware, it didn't work too well."

  Blistered inside and out by her mother's declarations, Shylo wondered for a brief moment if she'd ever hated anyone as much as she hated her mother at that moment. God, but it hurt to hear the truth, to know she'd been unwanted from the moment of conception.

  Tears stung her eyes, but she forced them back, ground her teeth together, and swallowed her rage. She would not give her mother this last piece of herself. She would not.

  When she could speak again, Shylo stared hard at Colleen and muttered, "Sorry to have troubled you so much by being born. Now why don't you get the hell out of here? I can't stand looking at you another minute."

  Colleen flinched and drew back her hand, and for a minute Shylo thought she might have been planning to slap her unwanted daughter across the mouth. She didn't, but when her mother spoke again, her voice had a definite tone of authority about it, a distinct, and somehow dangerous, warning.

  "I told you all this in the hopes that you might understand a little of what happened to me." Daring Shylo to rebuff her again, she went on. "After Cassie was born, I just about went crazy thinking about what might be ahead for me in the future, baby after baby, just like my mother all over again. Then I met Charles, and he swept me off my feet with presents and promises. That's when I decided to take up with him."

  "So it wasn't the wash, but presents that took you from us?" Shylo couldn't keep the sarcasm out of her tone.

  "You aren't listening. The hope for a better life—for us all—took me from you. Charles arranged a divorce for me from your father, and after we married, well, thank God he was unable to... well, we never had any children, and that was just fine with me."

  Shylo couldn't help but laugh and offer yet another impudent remark. "I believe I have the right to speak for those children when I say that it was just fine with them, too."

  Colleen didn't offer a rebuke this time. In fact, she softened her tone, as if just this side of apologizing. "I guess you girls think I did you wrong the day I left your father to marry Charles Broussard, but I really thought I was doing best for us all. I did figure on coming back for you after I got settled in my new life."

  Shylo threw her hands in the air. "How do you expect us to believe that when there were three years between the time you left and the time Pa died? Three years. Things must really have been 'unsettled' in that Frenchman's mansion."

  For the first time since walking into the room, Colleen's cool exterior evaporated. She looked away from Shylo, glanced at Cassie, who was sitting on the edge of the bed, listening with rapt attention, and then stared down at the carpet. "I suppose this will be hard for you girls to understand," she said, her voice breaking, "but although I knew Charles had money enough to take good care of me, I was in no way prepared for such wealth, or the many adjustments I would have to make."

  "Oh, God." Shylo couldn't bear to hear any more. She stalked over to the bed and stood near Cassie. "Are we supposed to feel sorry for you? Is that what you want?" she asked with barely concealed contempt.

  "I can certainly understand how terrible this must sound to you, but it really was very difficult for me to fit in with Charles's high-society friends." She stiffened when Shylo's bitterly muttered oath reached her ears, but she went on. "It wasn't as easy as you might think. I knew nothing of life beyond Canal Street. I had to learn how to select the proper clothes, how to staff and run our homes—"

  "Did you say homes?" Cassie asked from across the room. "Like in more than one place to hang your hat?"

  "Yes." Resting her gaze on her younger daughter, Colleen elaborated. "We have a city house in Paris, a country house in a little town near the Swiss Alps called Basel, and, of course, the mansion in New York, along with—"

  "You're rich." Above all else, Shylo definitely was not interested in her mother's vast holdings. "I think we get your point."

  "Do you?" Colleen directed the question to Shylo and then made sure she understood. "I simply told you about that so you'd know a little about the kind of life I lived with Charles. Now I'm going to ask you both to understand, if you can, what my life was like all those years. With or without money, whether with William or Charles, I was never happy for one moment."

  This, Shylo could not believe—would not. "Even Cassie, who believes in fairy tales, won't swallow that one. Try another lie."

  "But it's the truth," Colleen said. "I was never happy until I met Niko. He's the reason I acted as if I didn't know you at the dock. He, well, I never told him that I had children, and when you surprised me like that, I really didn't know how he'd react if I said I was your mother."

  "Oh, I see. Another husband to get settled with before you can 'claim' your daughters, right?"

  "It's not like that with Niko." She raised her chin, but it trembled. "I love him, and I don't want to lose him or the happiness I've finally found. I was hoping you girls would understand that much, if nothing else."

  But Shylo wasn't interested in her mother's love life. She glanced at Cassie, who looked a little confused, and then asked her mother, "Does your precious Niko know about us now?"

  "Well." Colleen glanced down at her gloves and held her gaze there. "No, not yet he doesn't. I thought I'd worry about explaining all that to him after I'd talked to you girls. First I thought I'd make sure that you two wanted to claim me as your mother."

  Shylo and Cassie looked at each other but said nothing.

  Colleen tried another angle. "Shylo... I understand that you're married to Niko's nephew. Have you told him that I'm your mother?"

  She hadn't been expecting
either the question or the sharp pain that came with her answer. "There's no need to discuss this with Dimitri," she said, her heart heavy. "He and I aren't really married, and we never will be. He was just an escort me and Cassie used to get us to California."

  Shocking both her sister and her mother, Cassie leapt off the bed. "That ain't true. Dimitri is her husband, and he's got lots and lots of money. Shylo's done real good for herself, she has."

  Absolutely stunned, Shylo stared at her with disbelief. Cassie, the constant complainer, was backing up lies she'd never wanted to tell in the first place? Cassie, who preferred to remain motherless, was trying to impress Colleen on Shylo's behalf? All this from the pink-haired girl who wanted nothing more out of life than to live out her own private fairy tale with the man she perceived to be Prince Charming. When had she become so bold, so selfless—so grown-up?

  After giving Cassie a warm smile, her eyes shining with tears, Shylo turned back to her mother and said, "Cassie means well, but nothing she said is the truth, and I'm about worn out with lies. We've got nothing but the clothes on our backs. We spent every last dime we had." She paused, remembering the train fare they had yet to pay back. "We even spent some borrowed money to get from Kansas to New York to California. We're flat-out broke, but still together—and that's the way we're going to stay."

  Colleen looked doubtful. "I don't see how you can be too broke if you've done all that traveling."

  Shylo stared hard at her mother, thinking of telling her exactly why they'd been traveling and why they were broke, but something in her wouldn't let her. But Cassie marched right up to their mother and filled in the blanks, again shocking Shylo right down to her toes.

  "We was looking for you, Ma—ah, Colleen. Shylo knew you still lived in New York 'cause she saw your picture in the paper, but when we got there, you were gone, so we had to come here."