by Susan Floyd
“I saw him under the chair and thought that Bernie would probably be looking for him sooner or later,” he explained awkwardly as she regarded him through now-serious eyes. He handed her the bear.
Beth Ann pulled it close to her in a hug, her dark eyes still searching his face. “Thank you. Bernie will definitely be screaming for Fluff when she goes to bed. Which—” she glanced at the clock “—should be any time now. Do you want some coffee to go with the banana bread?”
Christian didn’t feel like he should ingest any more caffeine, especially the kind she served, but he heard his voice say politely, “Yes, please.”
She nodded and then indicated that he should follow her.
In the kitchen, he found Glenn wrestling with Bernie’s hair.
“There’s got to be a better way,” Glenn complained.
“You want coffee, Glenn?” Beth Ann asked.
“Nope. Too late.” He gave Christian a wink. “Are you going to have some?”
“Sure.” Her tone was offhand. “Where’s Grans?”
“In bed,” Glenn replied and Christian watched as he awkwardly tried to tame Bernie’s curls into a pigtail. Bernie stood between his knees, waiting patiently, as if she were used to the drill. When he finished, Bernie’s fat hand came up and patted the puff.
“Done?” Bernie asked, her tiny voice raised in an exaggerated question.
“No. One more to do,” Glenn said.
“Cookie?”
“No more cookies tonight,” Beth Ann answered for him.
Bernie frowned and Christian braced himself for a squall. But surprisingly Bernie didn’t blink.
“It’s because she had a long nap,” Beth Ann whispered, as she set before him a generous slice of banana bread. “If she’d had a lot of excitement and no nap, you’d see the demon baby’s head-spin right now.” She addressed Glenn, concern clouding her voice. “You said Grans was in bed? This early?”
Glenn nodded. “She looked at her pictures until dinner, ate and then said she was tired, so I helped her get ready for bed. I just checked on her and she’s out like a light.”
“I’m going to peek in on her,” Beth Ann tut-tutted. “I hope she’s not coming down with something. That last bug really wiped her out. She couldn’t get out of bed for a week.”
Christian watched her leave the room and was surprised at her constant movement. She had that in common with Caroline. One of the things that had attracted him to Caroline was her energy.
“Pop-pop done?” Bernie inquired again. She tugged her head away from him.
“Almost.” Glenn looked at Christian quizzically. “You don’t happen to know how to do this? I can’t get this one for some reason.”
Surprised, Christian shook his head and answered carefully, not understanding why his hands were itching to try. “Never done that in my life.”
Glenn laughed. “Two grown men felled by one pigtail.”
“I’ll take a whack at it,” Christian suddenly volunteered. After a look at Bernie, he added, “That is if she’ll let me.”
“Bernie, do you want to get this done?” Glenn asked.
Bernie nodded vigorously.
“Then will you let Uncle Christian do this for you?”
Bernie’s suspicious blue eyes turned on him and he held his breath. He smiled at her and tried not to look intimidating. After a moment, she nodded less vigorously. Still it gave Christian the feeling he had just gotten permission from the Queen of England to kiss her hand.
Christian took the small, well-used brush and small rubber band. He saw the problem immediately. The tiny rubber band was too small for an adult male to even open. It barely stretched around the tip of his forefinger, but would have to be wrapped twice around Bernie’s baby fine hair. He studied the problem and then laid a gentle hand on her hair. He couldn’t remember any silk gossamer feeling as soft.
BETH ANN pushed open the door to Iris’s room, relieved when Iris stirred. Beth Ann crept closer, pulling the covers up over the frail woman. She felt her forehead. Seemed fine. She brushed back the older woman’s silver hair and then gently kissed her cheek. “Sleep well.” She pushed away any feeling of dread. Of course, Grans had to die sometime. After all she was almost ninety, but Beth Ann couldn’t think of life without her. Most of the time, Iris was good company, giving her conversation she couldn’t get from Bernie, keeping her laughing with familiar stories and jokes. With Grans gone, she and Bernie would be alone.
She quietly walked out and into the kitchen, surprised to find Bernie sitting on Christian’s lap as he secured the second pigtail.
“Group effort?” Beth Ann asked overly brightly, a small pain in her chest as she saw his gentleness. Why had Caroline told her Christian didn’t want children? She shook her head because she knew the answer. Caroline didn’t want children. She didn’t want Bernie and she didn’t want Christian to know about Bernie.
He seemed perfectly content to keep Bernie on his lap, his face softening as Bernie at the end of her day, leaned back against his broad, flat chest. Reaching across her, he gave her Fluff, and she pressed her face into the bear. Beth Ann knew how to read the signs. “She need a new diaper?” Beth Ann asked Glenn.
Glenn shook his head. “She shouldn’t. We went in Mrs. Potty after her bath. I haven’t given her anything to drink.”
Christian checked in the back. He’d seen that enough on television. “Nope. Dry as bone.”
“Then I think it’s time for someone to go to bed.”
Bernie yawned as if on cue.
Beth Ann bent to retrieve her, and was surprised when Christian said quietly, his deep voice resonating with tenderness, “I’ve got her. Just lead the way.” He rose carefully, awkwardly propping up a quickly fading Bernie.
Beth Ann walked down the hall to Bernie’s room. She bit her lip. It probably wasn’t the kind of nursery Christian was used to, but Glenn had painted a lovely mural of parading baby elephants, giraffes and blue and pink bears, and she had refinished the recycled crib. She saw him glance at the daybed on the side. She flushed. That’s where Caroline had slept for the five months she’d stayed and that’s where she, herself, slept, when Fred or Glenn or both came to visit.
Christian carefully lowered Bernie into the crib and Beth Ann got a new appreciation of his physical strength. He obviously kept fit. His biceps tensed with Bernie’s weight, but he handled her as if she weighed no more than a feather. Beth Ann carried her every day. Bernie was a good deal heavier than a feather. Bernie looked up at him with a flutter of her dark lashes and then they closed. She was fast asleep clutching Fluff.
“No book?” Christian asked.
“Usually,” Beth Ann said with surprise. She came close to him, feeling the body heat emanate from him as she leaned across to pull the covers over Bernie. He smelled good. Some spicy fragrance. “But I guess she’s really tired. Sometimes she does this. Other times, it’s easier to wrestle dragons than put her to bed.”
“She’s beautiful.” Christian’s voice had an odd undertone to it.
Beth Ann looked at him. He was handsome, almost as if some prince had stepped into her ordinary life, but as he gazed at Bernie, his eyes studying every detail of her now cherub-like face, she saw a depth of emotion that she’d never expected to see. She stepped away from him, her heart beating rapidly. Something very much like physical attraction seeped through her. Beth Ann squashed it. It couldn’t be. She and Caroline never liked the same kind of men.
“Yes. She is,” Beth Ann agreed, not able to control the huskiness in her voice. “How about some of that banana bread? The coffee should be done about now.”
Glenn was washing dishes when they entered the kitchen. “We trashed the kitchen,” he said apologetically.
“Thanks for all you’ve done today, sweetie,” Beth Ann came up behind him and circled her arms around his waist to give him a squeeze. “I’ll take care of the rest,” Beth Ann said. “Come sit with us.”
Glenn finished rinsing a bowl
. He wiped his hands on the dishtowel and looked between her and Christian.
“No. I already brushed my teeth. I don’t want to do it again. I’m beat. Did you know that two baby hours are like fifteen adult?” He glanced at his watch and said, “I’ve put in a seventy-five-hour day and I’m ready for bed. Christian, it was nice meeting you.”
“You, too.” Christian watched him disappear through the swinging door into the living room and wondered whether Glenn was going to sleep on the couch or if he was heading toward the bedroom in the front.
Beth Ann placed a cup of steaming coffee before him.
“You sure you don’t want cream or sugar?”
Christian nodded and took a sip. It still tasted awful. He took a bite of banana bread. It tasted like ambrosia.
“This is excellent,” he said as he took another swallow of coffee, then a corner of the bread, which cut the bitter aftertaste immediately.
Beth Ann settled across from him, looking very different than she had that morning. Had it just been that morning?
She cleared her throat. “I’m not exactly sure how to tell you this.”
“Why don’t you start anywhere?”
“Can I ask you a couple questions about Carrie first?” she asked.
Christian blinked. “Depends.”
“Were you two close?”
He felt her eyes boring in to him.
“We were married,” he replied.
“But were you close?”
Christian shifted uncomfortably. “I’m not sure what this has to do with you accepting DirectTech for Bernie.”
“This morning you asked me why Carrie left her company to her sister’s child.”
“Yes. I remember.” Christian felt a wave of suspicion run through him.
“How well did you know your wife?” Beth Ann asked. She looked as if the conversation was causing her much emotional turmoil.
Christian was tempted to lie, but then realized the sharp eyes studying him would probably see right through him. It was an interesting experience. Usually people were so afraid of him and the power he wielded they never looked at him that way. Even Caroline had never looked at him so intently. “By the end, I hardly saw her,” Christian admitted.
“Whose fault was that?”
Christian didn’t like the tone of her voice. After a moment, he said imperiously, acutely aware of how defensive he sounded, “It wasn’t anyone’s fault. We just had different interests.”
“Different interests?”
“Caroline preferred to travel. I didn’t like it as much.”
“Ahh.” Beth Ann nodded and was silent.
Christian wasn’t quite sure what “ahh” meant.
A beat later, Beth Ann said frankly, “Carrie always wanted to be someplace she wasn’t. If we were here, she wanted to be somewhere else. One year Grans took us to Disneyland. Grans was pretty poor then, so we couldn’t stay in one of the nicer hotels. Of course, Caroline wanted to be in a better hotel. Once we got to the park, she wanted to be on every ride but the one she was standing in line for. She was so busy looking ahead, she never got a chance to enjoy where she was.”
Christian had noticed that himself, when he was on those first cruises with Caroline. Once aboard a cruise, she was always flipping through brochures for others, speculating with her friends about better, bigger, more exclusive cruises. Rather than enjoy the view or the scenery or the food, she compared it to what she could do in the next three months, almost as if she couldn’t wait for the one she was on to finish fast enough. As her cruises got longer, so did the stops in between, as she visited the latest spas. When she died, she had just come back from a monster cruise, customized specifically for her and a few of her friends.
Interestingly, Christian only now realized that his wife had spent their entire marriage and a considerable amount of money chasing after distant rainbows. Maybe it wasn’t boredom that kept him from going on the cruises with her, but his impatience with her planning and her cluster of friends who relished the planning more than the actual trip itself. Everything had to be rated, the food, the room, the bedspreads, the carpet, the soap, the service and then reconfigured into the next ultimate trip.
He grunted, pushing away those thoughts and turned his attention back to Beth Ann. “I think you should tell me what it is you wanted to tell me.”
Beth Ann took a deep breath. This was it. She’d worry about custody, about all the details that would have to be fought over, ironed out, and set in stone later. Now, she was going to make right what Carrie should have over two years ago.
“Carrie left DirectTech to Bernie because Bernie is her daughter,” Beth Ann said baldly. There was no other way of telling him. She stared down at her coffee mug, bracing herself for his reaction.
But none came.
She expected a hot denial or a spark of anger or contemptuous disbelief, but she saw nothing in the handsome lines of his face and that scared her. Earlier she had thought she’d seen him opening up, that she could see fleeting emotions pass over his face when he gazed at Bernie, but she couldn’t now. His silver eyes and well-molded mouth gave away nothing. He appeared two-dimensionally handsome, like the flat page of a GQ magazine cover, not at all like the man who had so tenderly carried Bernie to bed.
“Is that so?” he said finally, his voice carefully modulated.
Beth Ann nodded.
“She calls you Mommy.” Christian sounded very much like a man shrouded in authority, clearly used to people bending to him. He set the half-eaten bread down on the table and pushed his coffee cup toward her.
Beth Ann refused to feel like an employee.
“I’ve raised her.” Ignoring his cup, Beth Ann got up and dumped the rest of her coffee down the sink. Her stomach churned. Telling him had been a dreadful mistake.
“Since when?”
“Since she was ten days old.”
“When did Caroline allegedly have this child?” His voice was crisp. He could have been talking about the weather or a bank robbery or whether a fish was fresh at the market for all the emotion he showed.
“June 27. Bernie’ll be two at the end of June.”
“Uh-huh.” Christian gave her a pleasant smile that she didn’t trust for one minute. “So you don’t think I would know if my wife were pregnant?”
“That’s why I asked if you were close.” Beth Ann took a deep breath and said, “Look. Don’t stare at me as if I were somehow concocting a huge scam—”
“So DirectTech wasn’t enough, is that it?”
Beth Ann felt as if he’d slapped her. She stared at him in shock.
“How much do you want?”
“What?” Beth Ann found her voice.
“How much do you want?”
“Nothing. I don’t want any—” She stared in horror as he whipped his checkbook from his jacket pocket.
Christian felt the cool Italian leather of his checkbook cover and was reassured. He couldn’t comprehend what she was saying to him, yet his parents’ words flashed through his mind. He was different. They were different. They had to hold themselves to different standards. Money could pretty much buy anything. It could buy him out of even having to think of the fact that this woman with the open gamine face had just told him Bernie was Caroline’s daughter.
Impossible.
If he paid her enough, he wouldn’t have to think about the fact that she hadn’t told him Bernie was his daughter as well. He searched for his Mont Blanc pen and felt the familiar weight. The specialized highly polished resin gleamed in the stark light of the kitchen.
“How much do you want?” He gave her his most imperious gaze, which made even Max back away.
Beth Ann didn’t budge an inch. She just looked at him as if he had lost his mind. If what she said were indeed true, then he had lost his mind, because how could Caroline have been pregnant—given birth!—and he not even know it?
“Please leave,” were her only words.
“If you don’t giv
e me an amount, I’ll just— Ah, what the hell,” he scribbled an arbitrary number on the check followed by several zeros. His pen ripped through the fine paper because of the force with which he wrote. He tore the check out and put his pen and checkbook away. “Is this enough?” he asked crudely, pushing it toward her.
Beth Ann didn’t even glance at the check. “If you don’t leave, I’m going to get Glenn.”
Christian rose to his full height, another intimidation tactic. But she wasn’t intimidated. She just walked away, taking his coffee cup and his plate of half-eaten banana bread to the sink.
Beth Ann was shaking. This was a terrible, terrible mistake. Did he think he’d just bought Bernie? That money could compensate for everything that had happened? Beth Ann realized she was shaking not from fear but from anger. She had raised Carrie’s child for two years and all he could do was pull out a checkbook. His money couldn’t replace a career that had taken a nosedive because she’d spent five sleepless nights by Bernie’s hospital bed, holding her little hand, begging her to breathe. His money couldn’t make Bernie feel more wanted when she was old enough to ask about her real mother and father.
“Arggghhh!” Beth Ann whirled.
She snatched the check up from the table where he’d left it, crumpled it into a ball and smashed it with as much force as she could into his chest. His rock solid chest. He didn’t even flinch, but her shoulder felt the jolt as he grabbed her wrist and pushed it back toward her. She could feel his restraint but felt no fear.
They both watched the check fall to the floor.
“Let go,” she said.
He let go.
As she rubbed her shoulder, Beth Ann searched to find any emotion in his face, even smoldering anger, but his pale eyes were blank.
“You’re more foolish than I thought,” he said quietly and nudged the paper ball with the toe of his Italian leather shoe.
Suddenly, her anger was gone and she felt sorry for this man who wouldn’t, couldn’t allow himself to feel anything.
“I’m not the fool.” Beth Ann smiled sadly. “I’m not the one who thinks he has to pay for the sins of his wife.”
That did it.
