“UNCLE BRYAN called me today,” Nicki said over dinner almost a week later. She and Jennifer were still living in the penthouse, much to Lucy’s disgust, but Jennifer had seen a couple of homes she liked and was thinking about making an offer on one.
“He did?” she asked now, more disappointed than she should have been. Did that mean, then, that she wouldn’t be talking to him that night as she had every night since Nicki had come to live with her? She waited all day for those nightly calls.
“Uh-huh.” Jennifer’s throat caught at the sight of her daughter’s happy smile. Nicki missed her uncle more than she was letting on.
“So what did he have to say?”
“He went to the ocean over the weekend to fly his new model plane. He says he might keep it, too, if he doesn’t sell his house.”
He’s thinking about selling his house? “Sounds like he had a good time.”
Nicki shrugged. “I guess.”
“You know, honey, if you need to move back with him, or even just go visit him, it’s fine with me.”
The frightened-doe look was back in Nicki’s eyes. “You don’t want me here?”
“Yes! Of course I want you. You can live with me until you’re old and gray if you’d like. But it’s more important that you be happy, Nick, and Bryan is all the family you have left. It’s natural you’d need to see him. I just don’t want you to feel like you’d be disloyal to me or hurt my feelings by going back.”
Nicki shrugged. “It doesn’t matter. Like we said my first night here, he can’t help how he is. He can’t help it if I get in his way over there. But it was still fun to talk to him.”
Jennifer let the subject drop, but she was troubled by the unhappy look in Nicki’s eyes. Whether Bryan’s blood flowed in Nicki’s veins or not, he was her family and she needed him.
“Can I ask you something?” Nicki asked later that evening as she sat with Jennifer in the living room. Lucy was curled up on the floor by Nicki’s feet.
Jennifer looked up from the work she’d had Dennis drop by for her that afternoon. “Of course, honey. What’s up?”
“Remember that talk we had that night at dinner at my…at Uncle Bryan’s house? The one about it not mattering about my mom being twelve and all when she…you know.”
“Uh-huh,” Jennifer said, suddenly nervous.
Nicki dog-eared the pages of her magazine. “Well, I was wondering…how old were you?”
“I was twelve, too, so you probably are right to think you might be getting close. Why don’t we stop off at the drugstore tomorrow on our way to Phipp’s Plaza and get you stocked up on stuff so you’re ready when the time comes?” It wasn’t nearly as hard as she’d thought it would be. It actually felt right to be talking to her daughter about such things.
Apparently Nicki felt so, too. “Okay.” She grinned. “But I really don’t know what I’ll need for sure.”
“I think between the two of us, we can figure it out…”
“YOU KNOW, NICK, it’s okay if you leave some of your stuff lying around if you want to,” Jennifer said the next evening. She’d been signing some letters while Nicki watched her favorite sitcom on TV. But her attention had wandered again and again to her daughter, to the wonder of actually having her there in the same room with her.
Nicki laid her head back against the couch, her legs curled up beneath her. “Uncle Bryan said the same thing when I came to live with him, but I just like to put things away. I don’t really even think about it. Uncle Bryan says it’s my dad’s fault. The first game he taught me was one where we raced to pick up my toys.”
Jennifer smiled at the contented look on her daughter’s face. “Who won?” she asked.
“Him mostly, but that was okay ‘cause that meant he picked up the most toys.”
“Aha, so you were a conniver even as a little tike, huh?”
Nicki laughed. “Not really. It was just fun watching him crawl real fast all over the floor. He’d do tricks and hide toys and stuff and then I’d find them in my toy box. He was really good at magic stuff.”
They spent the rest of the evening as they’d spent most of the previous ones, talking. Jennifer wanted to hear every last detail of Nicki’s first twelve years. She was getting to know the entire Chambers family through Nicki, and the more she heard, the more she grew to love them. They’d given Nicki a wonderful childhood, raised her in a safe, secure, but most important, loving environment. They’d shaped her into a beautiful young woman, inside where it counted. The only thing to which Jennifer could lay claim was the outside.
“HEY, THERE, you want some company?”
Bryan squinted up through his sunglasses at the scantily clad, dark-skinned Bahamian beauty who was dripping water all over his beach towel.
Hell, yes, he wanted company. Badly. “Not today, but thanks for the offer.”
His gaze followed her all the way down the beach. Had he lost his mind? The woman was gorgeous, her walk so sensual, her bottom so tempting, he should be drooling into his umbrellaed drink.
But she wasn’t Jennifer.
He finished his drink in one gulp, jumped up with his towel in hand and headed back to the hotel lobby. Maybe he’d take a course in skin diving. It was something he’d always wanted to do, and he had all the time in the world at his disposal.
Back at the hotel he was halfway to the concierge desk to sign up for skin diving when he turned around and headed for the elevators. Once in his room, he packed his duffel and called down for a ride to the airport. There were lots of skin diving classes offered in Atlanta. He’d check into it as soon as he got home.
He called Nicki from the airport before he left the Bahamas. The conversation was the same as it had been every other day over the past week. She sounded happy to hear from him, but when he asked her how she was doing, when he tried to get her to talk to him, her voice cooled, like be was some friend of the family, rather than family itself.
He’d blown it, plain and simple. Like an idiot, he’d tried to play God. And he’d lied to Nicki. By omission, he’d lied to her mother, too. He’d betrayed their trust. Oh, he’d told himself he’d been doing it for Nicki, that he’d had no other choice, but as he flew above the clouds, more alone than he’d ever been in life, he wasn’t sure Nicki had been the only one he’d been thinking about. As much as he loved her, having the sole responsibility for a fragile twelve-year-old was an incredible burden, especially for a confirmed bachelor like himself. So had he, as Jennifer had accused, been biding his time, wooing her, simply as a means to an end? Had his desperate need to show her that she could love a child, love Nicki, been not solely for Nicki’s sake as he’d thought, but for himself, as well?
He wished to God he knew.
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
SCHOOLS. SHE’D SAID she was going to look into schools before she bought a house. But she couldn’t register Nicki for school. Only he could do that. He’d already done that. Because Nicki was his. His.
The front two legs of Bryan’s chair slammed back down to the floor. Damn it. What in the hell was he doing sitting here in his office missing her?
He cleared off his desk. “Jacci!”
“Yeah?” His secretary’s head popped inside the door.
“Clear my calendar for the afternoon. I’m leaving for the day.” Checking his back pocket for his wallet, he put his sunglasses on and grabbed his keys out of his in tray.
“You finally going after her?”
Bryan looked back at his secretary. “Yeah, you wanna make something of it?”
“Nope. But you might want to comb your hair—it’s a mess,” she called after him.
Bryan grabbed a comb from the dash of his Jeep, pulled it through his hair and found a rubber band to secure it into a ponytail. For the first time in two weeks he had a reason to look responsible.
He called Jennifer’s apartment from his cellular phone as he pulled out onto Peachtree. Nicki was home alone, but Jennifer was on her way home for lunch. That was fine
with him. He wanted to see her, too. He rang off without telling Nicki he was coming.
The doorman recognized Bryan and let him upstairs when Bryan explained why he was there, wishing him luck as the elevator closed behind him. Bryan didn’t stop to think about needing a little luck. He was on a mission.
Jennifer pulled the door open when he knocked. “Bryan!”
He walked past her and into the apartment, with Lucy jumping at his heels. “Where’s Nicki?”
“She’s-”
“I’m right here,” Nicki said, coming into the living room. She approached him slowly, watching him strangely. But he wasn’t going to be deterred. Not anymore. He strode across the room and grabbed her up into a hug that lifted her right off the floor.
“I’ve missed you, sprite,” he whispered as he kissed her on the neck.
Nicki looked at him, nose to nose. “You have?”
How could she doubt it? “I have.” He remembered his mission. “I’ve come to take you home.” He set her down, raising his hand to forestall her reply. “Don’t bother arguing with me. You’re legally still mine, and I’m taking you back where you belong. You’re a Chambers whether you want to believe it or not. We raised you, we taught you everything you know, we loved you. I love you. Now go get your things. You’re coming home.” He paused. “Okay?”
Bryan had no idea how much her acquiescence meant to him until she nodded and scampered off. He told himself he’d have taken her even if she’d argued, but it sure eased some of the loneliness of the past two weeks to have her agree to come back to him almost as easily as he’d agreed to let her go in the first place.
He bent down to calm Lucy. “How about you, girl? You ready to come home?” He was surprised how good those words sounded to him. His family was coming home. All of it, he hoped.
He felt Jennifer’s gaze on him and he turned, knowing he had yet to fight the toughest part of this battle. Her eyes were dry, but filled with anguish.
“I’m not taking her away from you, Jen. I want you to come with us.” She looked so good to him, like a glass of cool water in the middle of the desert.
“I can’t.”
He should have expected the words, but he hadn’t. He’d hoped she’d been as miserable as he had, hoped she’d be as eager as he was for them to be a couple again.
“I want to marry you. I want us to be a family. All three of us.”
He couldn’t believe it when she shook her head, her eyes flooded with tears. He could have sworn when she’d opened the door to him that her eyes had flashed with relief—and longing.
He strode over to her and pulled her into his arms. It was what he should have done to begin with. What he’d been wanting to do since she’d walked out of his house two weeks before.
She leaned into him, shuddering as she laid her bead against his shoulder. Her arms wrapped around his neck, squeezing him against her. Finally. His world was righting itself after spinning out of control for two long weeks.
But then she pushed him away. “I can’t go with you, not until I know why you were interested in me in the first place, not until you can tell me that your feelings for me don’t have anything to do with my being Nicki’s mother.”
“You’re asking the impossible, Jen. You are Nicki’s mother. Giving her up, loving her all these years, has made you the woman you are today.”
“I asked you this two weeks ago, Bryan,” she said, “and I’m going to ask you again. If you didn’t have Nicki, would you still be asking me to marry you?”
Bryan’s answer was still the same. He honestly didn’t know. Now he looked in her eyes, her loyal, trusting, anguished eyes, and said nothing.
She turned away from him. “There’s your answer.” Her shoulders shook. He knew she was crying.
He reached out and turned her to face him. He had to make her understand. “I’d still care this much, honey. Having Nicki doesn’t change the way I feel. It just changes what I do with it. Before Nicki I simply would never have thought to ask you to marry me, at least not right away. But I would’ve been everything to you a husband should be. I would’ve been faithful to you.”
“But for how long?” she whispered. “Don’t you see, Bryan? Marrying you would be like playing the lottery. I may win it all, but chances are, after all the hoopla dies down, after Nicki grows up and doesn’t need us anymore, after you don’t need me anymore, I’ll be left empty-handed. You aren’t the marrying kind, and I can’t get married knowing in the back of my mind that the day may come when you won’t be walking in the door at night. Or that someday the phone may ring and it’ll be you telling me you’re in Fiji or climbing a mountain somewhere. Or just plain on the other side of town, needing your freedom.”
She couldn’t do this. He’d had it all in the palm of his hand. “Life doesn’t have the kind of guarantees you’re looking for,” he said, swallowing the emotion threatening to choke him.
“I’m not looking for guarantees, Bryan. I only want a fighting chance. I’ve made enough foolish choices in my life. I can’t make another one.”
So taking a chance on him was a foolish choice. There didn’t seem to be much more to be said. He nodded, shoving his hands into the pockets of his shorts before they could betray him and take her with him against her will.
“You’re welcome to Nicki any time you want her,” he said.
“Thank you.” Her eyes filled with tears. “You’ll call me, won’t you, if she needs anything? If you, uh, need a woman’s advice?”
“Of course. We can work out some kind of visitation, too, where you’ll have her on a regular basis. If you want to, that is.”
“I’ll take her any time. If you feel crowded and need to take off for a day or two, you call me. I’ll keep her for you.”
“If I take off I’ll take her with me, but I mean it about the visits, Jen. You’re a part of her life now.”
He couldn’t believe how civilized they sounded, like some couple after an amicable divorce.
Nicki came back into the living room, carrying the suitcases she’d taken with her. “I left some things here for when I come visit,” she said, looking at Bryan. She wouldn’t look at Jennifer.
“We were just talking about that. We’re going to set up a regular schedule for you to spend time with Jennifer, every other weekend or something, and other times in between, too, if you want.”
Nicki nodded, still not looking at her mother.
Jennifer walked over to the girl, pulling her into her arms. “It’s okay, Nicki, honey. You belong with your uncle. I’ve known that all along. I’m just glad I had this time with you, and we’ll have lots more time together in the future, too, I promise.”
“But I said I wanted to live with you. You were going to buy a house and everything.” Nicki’s voice was loaded with guilt.
“I know, sweetie, but I also know how much you missed your uncle. And he’s right. You are a Chambers, through and through, and that’s the way it should be.”
Nicki pulled away to study her mother’s face. “You’re not mad at me?”
Jennifer shook her head, smiling through her tears. “Not even the tiniest bit, sweetie. Now, take Lucy back to her yard where she belongs, okay?”
Nicki nodded, smiling through her tears. “Can I call you?” she asked.
“You better.”
“Every day?”
“Twice a day if you’d like.”
Nicki stared at Jennifer for a long moment, as if weighing her thoughts. “I love you,” she finally said, so softly Bryan could hardly hear her.
“I love you, too, Nicki. With all my heart.”
And with one last hug between mother and daughter, Nicki was Bryan’s again. But he left a vital part of himself behind when he walked away.
Jennifer stood in the doorway, holding back her sobs until she saw the elevator doors close behind them. If only he’d said, even once, that he loved her…
DENNIS CALLED BRYAN at home two days later. “There’s been an ac
cident. Jennifer was broadsided-”
“When? Where? How is she?” Bryan asked, his skin cold with dread. She wasn’t going to leave him. Not like this.
“They took her to Oldike Memorial, but nobody’ll tell me how she’s doing. The cop that called just said her car was totaled. I’m on my way to get Tanya and head over to Oldike now.”
Her car was totaled. “I’ll meet you there,” Bryan said, hanging up the phone and grabbing his keys.
“Nicki?” he called, his stomach a sick knot of fear. He had to tell her. As much as he wanted to leave her in blissful ignorance, he couldn’t do that to her ever again.
“Yeah?” She was wearing her daisy outfit, and her smile as she came into the room was like a ray of sunshine, warming him.
He took her into his arms, needing to shelter her even as he needed her comfort. “Jennifer’s been in a car accident, honey. We don’t know how badly she’s hurt yet, maybe not badly at all, but I have to go to the hospital where they’ve taken her. Do you want to come?” he asked.
Nicki’s body went limp against him as she absorbed the words. He waited for the sobs he knew were to follow. Damn the Fates that hurt this child so unfairly. She was everything that was good and right. Why in the hell did she have to keep getting stomped on?
Hold on, Jen. I’m coming.
Thirty seconds passed before he realized Nicki wasn’t crying. “Nicki?” he asked. Had she passed out? “Nick, you okay?”
She pulled out of his arms and straightened her shoulders. “I guess.” She was crying, just not hysterically.
“Do you want me to call Mrs. Baker to come over and stay with you while I go?”
Nicki shook her head and wiped her eyes with the back of her hand. “No. I want to come. And we better hurry so she knows we’re there,” she said, charging ahead like the Nicki of old.
Bryan wasn’t going to question the miracle that had just happened, wasn’t going to wonder how or when Nicki’s inner strength had returned to her. He was only going to hope there were two miracles in store for him that day.
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