[Ladera by the Sea 01] - A Wedding for Christmas

by Marie Ferrarella

  “If anything, we have been far too complacent about this situation far too long. Richard,” Arthur stressed, adding his voice to Marion’s argument, “is our main concern and we are not about to give him up.”

  “And neither am I,” Cris informed her former in-laws firmly. Nothing they said would change her mind. In her heart, she knew she was right—knew Mike would have agreed with her.

  Richard had had enough. As a rule, he tried hard to keep out of his daughters’ lives, but this was asking too much of him. He loved Ricky and would do everything in his power to make the boy happy—and that meant keeping him in a loving home.

  “Under the circumstances,” he said to the couple, “I trust you’ll understand if I ask you to leave my inn.”

  “Oh, completely,” Marion agreed. “And we leave with pleasure. But this matter is far from over and you will be hearing from our lawyer,” she told Cris before she walked regally out the front door with her husband following a step behind.

  “Well, there’s one woman who won’t have to worry about being picked for Mother of the Year,” Alex muttered, but loud enough for everyone to hear.

  Cris laughed, yet she felt very shaky. Mike’s parents could buy a judge if they had to. This was far worse than she had anticipated.

  “Was she always like that?” Andy asked her.

  “Mike didn’t talk about his childhood much,” Cris said, answering her, “but the little he did say gave me the impression she was never really a mother to him in the real sense of the word. She was more like the empress who ruled over the kingdom. The only time she showed any interest in him was when he did something she felt would embarrass her. She was furious when she found out he’d enlisted ‘like a common blue-collar underachiever,’” Cris said, quoting what Mike had told her. The memory made her even angrier.

  “I sure hope he did things that embarrassed her a lot,” Alex said with feeling.

  “Everything’s going to be all right,” Wyatt promised as he took out his cell phone.

  Alex moved closer to him, glancing at the phone to see the number Wyatt was keying in. “Who are you calling?”

  Wyatt finished tapping numbers on the keypad. “This lawyer I know in L.A. He’s got an excellent track record and he’s as sharp as they come.”

  “Does he mind being paid on the installment plan?” Cris asked.

  She had some money set aside, initially started for Ricky’s college fund. However, there wasn’t all that much accumulated and she knew it wouldn’t be enough to cover the expense of a high-powered lawyer—which, she had a feeling, she would need if she had a prayer of winning against the MacDonalds.

  “He owes me a favor,” Wyatt told her. “Don’t worry about it. You’ll need the best if those two are really going to go through with their threat about taking you to court.”

  Cris was in shock. None of this was making any sense to her. She shouldn’t have to fight for Ricky. She had always put his needs ahead of her own. Why was this happening?

  “But I’m his mother,” she cried. “And they’re two cold-blooded, self-absorbed people who don’t know the first thing about making a child feel secure and happy.” She looked at Wyatt. “Could they win just because they’re rich?” she demanded.

  “I’d like to say no, but anything is possible,” Wyatt told her honestly. “Your being a single mother doesn’t exactly strengthen your position. They’ll point out that you’re too busy working to watch after Ricky—”

  “But there’s always someone here for him when I am busy,” she protested.

  “They’ll be dismissive and say that indicates an unstable atmosphere—he never knows who he’ll be with,” Wyatt told her, playing devil’s advocate.

  “Family. He’s always with family,” Cris emphasized, her voice cracking.

  She was getting too emotional, she told herself. That led to making mistakes.

  Breathe in, breathe out. Center, she silently ordered, her eyes shut tight.

  What Wyatt said next made them fly open.

  “They’ll do everything they can to dig up some dirt on you—”

  “I have no dirt,” Cris protested indignantly. “I’m as boringly spotless as they come.” To illustrate her point, she said, “Mike was the only man I’ve ever been with and that was after we got married. Like I said, in the MacDonalds’ world, I’m certifiably boring.”

  “How about after Mike died?” Wyatt asked. “Was there anyone then?”

  Cris shook her head. “Not really. I went out on a couple of dates with this one guy who turned out not to be worth my time.”

  Wyatt paused for a second, as if searching for a delicate way to ask the next question. “Anything happen with him?”

  Cris knew what he was after. “Yes,” she answered honestly. “His ego was broken.”

  “Can he be bought?” Shane asked, speaking up suddenly.

  She’d gotten so wrapped up in the possibility of having to fight for Ricky she’d completely forgotten that Shane was in the room. She wasn’t sure what he was asking.

  “What?”

  “This guy you went out with,” Shane said. “Can he be bought?”

  “I still don’t understand,” Cris told him, feeling a little thickheaded.

  Of course she didn’t understand, Shane mused. Because she was too nice, because she would have never thought of doing something like that herself. He would have bet his soul that no matter what, Cris would never lie for money.

  “Can your former in-laws buy this guy off, give him money to say that you slept with him—as well as with his friends. Lies like that,” Shane elaborated. He watched the light all but go out of her eyes. He hadn’t wanted to say those things, but she had to understand the type of people she would find herself up against.

  “No,” Cris cried with feeling, and then she reexamined her response. Carefully. The truth of it was she couldn’t be adamant about her response. She didn’t know the man nearly well enough to bet the outcome in a custody battle on his integrity. She shook her head. “I honestly don’t know,” she admitted. And then, though it hurt and frightened her to the point of near panic, she said, “Maybe.”

  “Have you been in contact with him since you dated?” Shane asked.

  Cris shook her head. “Absolutely not. To be honest, after that experience left a bad taste in my mouth, I didn’t really want to have anything to do with him at all. For all I know, he’s left the area. I heard via the grapevine that he got laid off from his job, so maybe he relocated elsewhere.”

  She was grasping at straws and she knew it. But she had never felt this frightened, not even when she had found out that Mike had been killed, with her about to give birth to his child.

  “You know,” Wyatt said thoughtfully, “with your spotless record, things would be completely in your corner if you were just married.”

  Well, that wasn’t going to happen, Cris thought, so there was no purpose in talking about it. “Or if I was a mermaid and I could grab Ricky and swim away from here with Ricky riding on my back.”

  “I think getting a husband might be easier than growing a fish tail,” Shane theorized.

  Humor. Right now she didn’t need humor, she thought. What she needed was a solution—or, barring that, some sort of an escape plan.

  “And exactly how would I go about getting this husband? Advertise for one in the newspaper, or just get on social media and say ‘I’d like one husband, please. Doing chores not required, no expertise necessary. Must be able to stand and look manly when so-called wife deals with fire-breathing former in-laws.’”

  She slanted a look at Shane. “Sounds like a piece of cake to me. How about you? Does it sound like a piece of cake to you? Or do you know something I don’t about locating a man willing to stand in?”

  “Not sure I understand what you mean b
y stand in,” Shane said, “but I’d be willing.”

  “Willing?” she echoed, confused as to his meaning. “Willing to what?”

  “Willing to marry you so you could retain custody of Ricky.”

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  RICHARD WAS THE first to find his voice. Rather than dismiss the offer out of hand, as Cris thought he would, her father asked Shane, “Young man, are you serious?”

  Turning toward Shane, she half expected him to laugh and say he’d just made a very poor joke.

  But he didn’t.

  Instead, in a calm, collected voice, Shane said to her father, “I’ve never been more serious in my life, sir.”

  It was Alex who showed the first emotion. “This isn’t some game show, or a half-baked reality program, Shane,” her sister informed him, barely suppressed anger flashing in her eyes, not at him but at the people who had just left. “Those horrible people who just walked out of here are dead serious. They want custody of Ricky. If you go through with this charade, you’ll have to go through it all the way,” she warned Shane, “and they have the money to hire not just the best lawyers, but the best private investigators, as well.”

  “Private investigators?” Stevi echoed, walking back in with Ricky. She looked from one member of her family to another for answers. “Who’s getting private investigators?”

  “The MacDonalds, most likely,” Cris spoke up, weary and exasperated at the same time. She’d known she would pay a price for being so content, so happy. Once again she banked a wild desire to grab Ricky and start running as fast and for as long as she could.

  “Why would they want private investigators?” Stevi wanted to know, not quite following the logic of what was happening.

  “To examine everything about my life. And yours,” Cris said, suddenly turning to face Shane. If, by some wild chance, she became desperate enough to accept his offer, that would be what he would be up against. “Under a microscope, shred by tiny shred. If you borrowed someone’s crayon in the first grade and forgot to give it back, they’ll find out and twist it so that you come out looking like a criminal.” She shook her head. It wasn’t going to work. He needed to keep away from her before the MacDonalds ruined his life the way they’d almost ruined Mike’s. “You don’t want to get mixed up in something like this, Shane,” she told him.

  Rather than take the opening she’d just handed him, he laughed.

  “See, you’re sounding like a wife already, telling me what I want and what I don’t want.” The small smile on his lips receded. “No offense, Cris, but only I know what I want to do and what I don’t want to do.” And he wouldn’t have offered, he thought, if he hadn’t wanted to go through with it.

  Ricky wriggled in between the adults. “Mama, look what my other grandpa just gave me.” He proudly held up a bill for her to see. A crisp Benjamin Franklin. The attempt to buy her son’s affections had started already, she thought. “He said I could keep it. Can I, Mama?”

  Cris pressed her lips together and forced herself to think before she spoke. She looked accusingly at Stevi, who shrugged helplessly. “I tried to stop him—Mike’s dad insisted Ricky keep it. I didn’t see the harm—I’m sorry.”

  “Not your fault.” Cris closed her eyes for a moment to keep back angry tears. “It shouldn’t surprise me that Arthur’s trying to buy Ricky outright.”

  Ricky, meanwhile, had made his way over to Richard. Planting himself in front of his one true “grandpa,” Ricky offered the hundred-dollar bill to him. “Here, Grandpa. I want to help. This is so you can pay for Aunt Alex’s wedding.”

  Looking on, Shane was moved. “Nobody’s buying this kid, Cris,” he told Cris. “You raised that boy right.”

  “I’ll mortgage the inn, Cris,” Richard told his daughter with feeling. “Nobody’s taking Ricky away from here.”

  This was the first the little boy had really heard why his grandparents had come to the inn. “Somebody wants to take me away?” Ricky cried, fear and confusion registering on his small face.

  “Your other grandparents,” Wyatt told him gently as he studied Ricky’s expression. “Do you like those people who were just here, Ricky?” he asked casually, still studying the boy’s face.

  The slim shoulders rose and fell. “They’re okay, I guess. They don’t talk much,” he confided in a lower voice.

  “How would you feel about living with them for a while?” Wyatt wanted to know. The next moment, Alex elbowed him in the ribs. Hard.

  He ignored her and waited to see Ricky’s reaction to gauge what they were up against.

  The question had been lightly tendered, but it wasn’t received that way. Ricky’s eyes instantly widened and mounting fear was evident in them. Exactly what Cris had always tried so hard to keep out of Ricky’s life.

  Ricky looked at his mother, the person who always had an answer to any question he came up with. And now she was going to give him to those other grandparents?

  “Don’t you love me anymore?”

  “Oh, Lord, Ricky,” she cried, dropping to her knees and hugging the boy. “I love you more than life itself.”

  “Every last dime, Cris,” Richard echoed, speaking up again as he fought back tears at his grandson’s question. The MacDonalds had no right to pull apart his family like this just because they were rich. “Whatever it takes to keep Ricky right where he is, I’ll do it,” he promised.

  “I can get a part-time job at the art gallery,” Stevi volunteered. “Maybe even talk them into hiring me full-time. I’ll turn all the checks over to you so we can get some big-time lawyer to teach those people a lesson,” she concluded with relish.

  “I already told you that you don’t have to worry about the cost of the lawyer,” Wyatt reminded them. “That’ll all be attended to.”

  She didn’t want to owe anyone anything, even family. And she definitely didn’t want Wyatt put in an awkward position because of her.

  “What if he doesn’t feel he ‘owes’ you,” Cris wanted to know. “Then what?”

  Wyatt shrugged. He was the screenwriter of a number of successful movies. When Hollywood smiled upon someone, the rewards were more than substantial.

  “Then I’ll owe him,” he told Cris. “Either way, you don’t have to worry.”

  “I’ve got some money saved up,” Alex told Cris, interrupting Wyatt. She took hold of Cris’s hands. They were ice-cold, she noted. “It’s all yours—you know that, right?”

  Cris was getting really choked up. Everyone was standing with her in this awful, awful time. She didn’t want them getting pulled into the matter. Mike had told her his mother’s wrath could be horrible when fully aroused.

  Cris didn’t want the MacDonalds to have an excuse to come after her family— “My offer is still on the table,” Shane told her quietly, breaking into her thoughts. A small smile curved the corners of his mouth as he added, “With no strings attached.”

  Cris looked at him, not certain what to make of the offer, knowing only that she felt entirely and emotionally overwhelmed.

  “Didn’t they call that a marriage of convenience in your day, Dad?” Alex asked, turning toward her father.

  “I don’t know. In ‘my day’ they’d just barely invented marriage,” Richard cracked, attempting to get a smile out of Cris. She tried, but she just couldn’t manage the effort. Richard put his arm around her shoulders and gave her a warm hug. “It’s going to be all right, Cris, I promise.”

  No, it wasn’t, she thought. Maybe it would never be all right again.

  Cris covered her mouth to keep back a sob, then suddenly ran from the main room and out the front door. She kept on running, down the front steps and then around the side of the inn.

  She stopped there. Leaning against the building, she struggled to get herself under control and keep the hot tears from spilling out.<
br />
  She wasn’t all that successful.

  “Pretending to be married to me is that off-putting?” the deep male voice behind queried.

  It was all Cris could do not to jump five inches off the ground, until she realized who it was.

  She hadn’t heard Shane come up behind her. Hadn’t heard anything but the pounding of her heart as she tried desperately to deal with the situation and somehow put it into perspective.

  “Of course not,” she answered Shane. “But I can’t have you do that. I can’t be responsible for everyone sacrificing so much for me,” she cried. The guilt was enormous.

  “Did it ever occur to you,” he asked, beginning slowly, “that they’re doing it for themselves as much as for you?” He saw bewilderment in her eyes. “The way they all see it, they’re doing whatever is in their power not to have their family torn apart by that woman and her husband. Doesn’t take a brain surgeon to see what everyone thinks of your former in-laws. Those very same people are crazy about Ricky—as well as you.”

  She inclined her head, not finding anything to disagree with him about. “That explains why they’re doing it.” Her eyes met his. “But not why you are.”

  “Maybe it does,” he told her quietly. He could see that she still didn’t understand. “Maybe I want to help any way I can, too. And maybe, just maybe, I want to have the chance to say, even if it’s only temporary and only make-believe, that I’m married to one of the kindest, most beautiful women I’ve ever met.”

  There went the corners of her eyes, she thought in exasperation. Leaking.

  The next moment, in complete silence, Shane dug into his pocket and found his handkerchief. He presented it to her without a word. She accepted it in kind and wiped her eyes.

  “Thanks,” she finally whispered hoarsely.

  Cris pressed her lips together, really overwhelmed. And sorely tempted to take Shane up on his offer. It would make things so much easier, and right now she could certainly do with a wagonload of “easier.”

  She pulled in a deep breath as she looked around, trying to gather her thoughts. Wishing she had some sort of a sign telling her what to do, what would be the right thing to do.