Her father looked so perplexed by the compliment that Gillian regretted not having told him more often. She always assumed he knew how she felt.
“Don’t you think it’s time you allowed somebody else to take on the burdens of running this place?” she asked gently. “Have you given any thought at all to asking for a little help?”
“Once in a while,” he admitted through a tired smile. “It’s been a good life. I’ve been lucky to thoroughly enjoy what I do. If there’s anything I regret, it’s only that I don’t have any grandchildren to pass my legacy on to.”
Gillian knew that he didn’t mean to be cruel, but those words cut like barbed wire. Didn’t he know that there was nothing she would have liked more than to give him a grandchild? Bowing her head, she turned away to hide her pained expression.
“Night, night,” she said, employing the same phrase he’d used to tuck her in at night until she’d become too old for such nonsense. The same sweet words she’d whispered to Bonnie every night for the short, precious time she’d been on the planet.
Fighting off a pervasive sense of melancholy, Gillian ambled back to the main part of the house where Bryce was engaged in a battle with a string of Christmas lights that appeared to be tangled beyond help. She’d almost forgotten that Christmas would be here in two days whether she was ready for it or not. It didn’t appear as though they were going to get out of here tomorrow as originally planned. The last place she ever expected to be spending the holidays was in her girlhood home with her ex-husband, but all of a sudden that didn’t sound nearly as awful as spending it all alone. Doubting there would ever be a better time to let go of any lingering animosity between them, she offered her services to the cause.
“What can I do to help?”
“You could pour me a stiff drink before I strangle myself with these lights,” Bryce told her.
Gillian obliged by unearthing a bottle of fine Riesling from a full wine rack in the pantry. She poured a generous portion into two goblets and proposed a toast.
“To Christmas.”
They clinked glasses and shared the taste of a vintage year. Soon Gillian was digging a tree stand out of one of the boxes Bryce brought down from the attic earlier. Positioning it in the traditional place of honor in front of the big picture window, she helped him settle the tree inside and line it up. For her efforts she suffered the indignity of pine needles stuck in her hair. Bryce helped comb them out with his fingers.
When she felt his touch, Gillian had to remind herself to breathe. Embarrassed to be so utterly flummoxed by such a simple courtesy, she quickly gave her attention to a cluster of lights heaped in the middle of the floor. With an efficiency that made his business so successful, Bryce started unraveling one end and directed her to start the other. Some of the knots were more intricate than others, but it didn’t take long for their patience to pay off. With all the arguing they’d being doing, Gillian had forgotten how well they worked together.
If only it were as simple to untangle our lives as a string of lights, she thought with a sigh.
After wrapping the tree with twinkling bulbs, they proceeded to unpack several dusty boxes of ornaments. Each evoked a special memory: some were given to Gillian as gifts, some she’d made as a child for her parents and some commemorated special events in her life. Those made of handblown glass were bona fide antiques and would fetch an impressive price at an antique shop. Those more sentimental in nature were priceless.
“Oh, no!” Gillian exclaimed, holding up a crystal snowflake that had broken in the box. A present from her mother shortly before her death, it was very dear to her.
“How could someone be so careless?” she wondered aloud.
Bryce’s eyes clouded over as he seemed to consider the question on many levels. Coming to stand beside her, he explained, “Sometimes we simply forget to take care of the things most precious to us.”
Gillian’s defenses crumbled beneath that subtle apology. There were things she had failed to take proper care of, as well—like her husband’s need to provide for his family and the baby she’d put down for a nap, never imagining the unthinkable could happen.
The damaged ornament slipped from her hand and shattered as it hit the floor.
“And sometimes,” Bryce said, tipping her chin up so she was forced to look at him, “things happen that are out of our control, leaving us no choice but to accept them and move on.”
The multicolored lights on the Christmas tree blurred in the reflection of Gillian’s unshed tears.
“What if I can’t?” she asked in a choked whisper.
Gathering her in his arms, he cradled her against him as the emotion finally burst through the dam that had held everything back for so long.
“Go ahead and get it all out, sweetheart,” Bryce urged softly.
“What’s wrong with me?” she asked in between sobs. “Why can’t I let go of the pain like you?”
“Maybe you’re just still mad at God.”
“Why shouldn’t I be?” she demanded to know. “What kind of monster would take an innocent baby from her mother?”
“And her father…”
Gillian nodded. Having felt her baby’s heart beat beneath her own for nine months, she tended to forget that tragedy touched both of them.
Bryce paused before attempting to answer the impossible question she’d put to him.
“I don’t think God’s a monster. He also gave us one another. I’m sorry that wasn’t enough to get us through that terrible loss.”
Gillian drew back angrily. “I don’t need to hear any religious platitudes from the same man who placed the needs of his business over those of his wife and daughter.”
“I did the best I could at the time,” Bryce said, holding her against his heart. “You have to believe that.”
Deep down, Gillian knew Bryce hurt as much as she did and regretted her outburst. “I know,” she conceded in a broken whisper. “We both did, but it wasn’t good enough to save our baby.”
Gillian fully expected Bryce to blame her as much as she blamed herself. However she tried spinning the events of the past, she was the one responsible for Bonnie’s death. All the times she’d laid blame at Bryce’s feet for not being there when she most needed him, she had really been railing at herself.
She never should have taken a nap while the baby was sleeping.
She shouldn’t have panicked and wasted precious time before dialing 911.
She should have taken a course in infant CPR before ever taking Bonnie home from the hospital.
She should have found some way to keep her baby alive until help arrived.
Bryce’s angry voice sliced through her guilt. “Stop looking for blame, Gill. It wasn’t anybody’s fault. Nobody holds you accountable—least of all me.”
As he wiped the tears from her face, a sad smile played with the corners of Gillian’s lips.
“How did I ever let you go?” she wanted to know.
“I didn’t go willingly,” he reminded her, then sighed and added philosophically, “but what’s done is done. Beyond finally finding closure, there isn’t much point in belaboring what’s happened in the past.”
When he bent down to deposit a platonic kiss on the tip of her nose, Gillian was seized by a fierceness of emotion. She lifted her head so that his lips met hers and poured her heart into a kiss that didn’t just stop the world from spinning on its axis. It completely reversed its rotation.
He tasted of fine wine and pure redemption. Gillian dragged her fingers through the soft hair at his nape. She didn’t know exactly what she was starting, and she didn’t care. Incapable of rational thought, she had no grand scheme attached to her actions. The only thing she knew for sure was that she didn’t want to face another night alone.
Nine
Gillian was no fool. She didn’t expect whatever was going to happen next to alter anything between them permanently. She wasn’t out to steal her man back from Vi, nor did she intend to demand any
more from Bryce than he could offer. She just desperately needed him for the night.
One harmless body-and-soul-melting night.
Filling her lungs with his all too-familiar masculine scent, she felt a slow, steady tug in her belly. It reminded her how much she missed the feel of a man’s skin hot against hers. Being with Bryce resurrected in Gillian the sensual being she’d thought long dead. She wanted to run her hands through the variegated strands of gold that were interspersed in his dark hair and lose herself in a bout of mindless sex.
Slipping trembling fingers beneath the weave of his shirt, she was relieved to find that her touch still could make him shiver. She was thrilled to feel his heart beating out a wild cadence against the palm of her hand.
Gillian doubted that Bryce had remained celibate since their divorce.
As she had. Although she’d dated since their divorce, Gillian hadn’t met anyone for whom she’d been able to feel the same intense emotions Bryce evoked in her. Physically she wanted to be with a man, if anything to help her put Bryce behind her, but she hadn’t been able to get her heart to listen to her head.
Shoving aside that thought, she told herself not to overthink her actions for once in her life. After all, this wasn’t rocket science. She wanted this man. And needed him like never before.
She dismissed that “be careful playing with fire” look glittering in Bryce’s eyes with a “Don’t worry. I’m a big girl” look of her own. Anticipation thrummed through her entire being as she tilted her face toward his and claimed his lips an instant later with a possessiveness that belied her promise to give him up willingly later.
Gillian took her time exploring his sensual mouth, which insisted the present was the only thing worth living for. Giving herself completely over to that belief, she pressed herself against the long, hard length of his body and welcomed the responding pressure of his erection. Her pulse vibrated in her ears. Her head began to swirl. And sparks exploded behind her eyes.
It was impossible to get enough of each other.
They clung to each other beneath the twinkling Christmas lights and the watchful eyes of the angel topping the tree. Dropping her head into the safe hollow of Bryce’s shoulder, Gillian felt truly at home for the first time in years.
Unfortunately that sense of security lasted only a moment before he took her firmly by both shoulders, pushed her away and put an end to any fleeting fantasy about picking up where they left off.
“I didn’t cheat on you when we were married, and I’m not going to cheat on Vi when we’re about to become husband and wife,” he said, wiping the kiss from his lips with the back of his hand.
Blood roared in Gillian’s ears and the heat of shame settled on her cheeks. She imagined Bryce was taking a good measure of enjoyment from seeing her so vulnerable and needy.
So hurt.
So utterly pathetic in light of his high-minded refusal to her no-strings-attached offer of sex.
Thoroughly humiliated, Gillian scrambled to find any words that might help put her degradation behind her. Covering her mouth with her hand, she took a step backward. Looking him in the eye was one of the hardest things she’d ever had to do.
“I’m sorry,” she said. “About everything. For dragging you back into my family’s problems, for embarrassing both of us just now, for being such a bad mother. But most of all for hurting you. I hope you can believe that.”
Feeling his resolve chipping away, Bryce told himself that he couldn’t afford to be entranced by those hypnotic eyes again, even if they were misting over with tears. Finding it impossible not to be moved by her beauty, he was amazed he’d ever found the strength to push her away at all. She was still as lovely as the day he’d taken her to his bed as an innocent bride. Only now her face was marked by a woman’s rite of passage: the splendor of finding love, the transformation of a daughter into a wife and the unspeakable agony of losing an infant. It was a face no man could ever forget.
“You were a wonderful mother. This has nothing to do with that,” he said gruffly, unable to stand the thought of her going through life thinking she wasn’t.
Gillian gave her head a self-deprecating shake as she continued to back away.
“I certainly didn’t feel like it at the time. I was so tired and cranky and out of sorts most days trying to juggle your demanding schedule with Bonnie’s needs. Needs that always seemed to take priority over yours. And my own for that matter. Looking back, I’m sure I was impossible to live with. No wonder you don’t want anything to do with me.”
“A little hormonal maybe,” he grudgingly agreed. “But not impossible.”
At the time Bryce had deeply resented Gillian’s lack of interest in his career, as well as her being too exhausted most nights to do little more in bed than promptly fall asleep. Looking back it was far easier to put into perspective what she must have been going through as a young mother.
“I’m sorry I wasn’t more sensitive to your needs,” Bryce said, remembering days when he was actually relieved to go to the office and leave her with the colicky baby. “Even though we were both overwhelmed and doing the best we could at the time, you’ll never know how bad I felt about being out of town when…”
He was unable to finish the sentence. Images of his baby girl in her crib and his wife frantically doing everything in her power to breathe the soul back into her lifeless body left him feeling powerless. Guilt-ridden.
“I should have been there.”
In light of his rejection to her advances, he was astonished when she offered him the last thing he ever expected from her. Absolution.
“It wouldn’t have made any difference. It was wrong of me to blame you—it was just so much easier than blaming myself. That day, when I closed my eyes for such a short time after putting Bonnie down for a nap, it never occurred to me that that would be the last time….”
The crack in her voice matched the one that broke Bryce’s heart in two. He put a finger to her lips to stop her from continuing.
“Enough,” he said. “We can’t go on beating ourselves up over this. Probably the only thing we should have done differently was have this conversation sooner.”
They’d both been so wrapped up in their grief at the time that neither could break through the other’s barriers. It wasn’t long before they’d stopped talking about everything altogether.
“I know you’re afraid to have more children, but there’s no reason that you shouldn’t,” he said. “There’s no evidence that SIDS is genetic. The doctors told you that you could have as many healthy, happy, beautiful children as you want to. And you should.”
Gillian shook her head sadly. “I haven’t had the same luck moving on with my life as you have.”
“You will,” Bryce told her with the same optimism that marked his business acumen.
She wished she could believe him. As good as it felt to clear the air between them and as much as she appreciated his kind words, she just couldn’t see herself ever getting married again. The few dates she’d gone on after the divorce were mostly miserable setups by well-meaning friends attempting to play matchmaker. The strained conversations generated by such dates only served to convince Gillian that she wasn’t ready to move on yet.
It was strange to think that she and Bryce might still be together had they only been able to talk like this before for surely it had been the lack of communication between them as much as Bonnie’s death that had led to the demise of their marriage. In retrospect Gillian was sorry she hadn’t taken more interest in his business when he’d been working so hard to make it a success. She wished she’d made more time for the two of them as a couple instead of focusing all her energies on the baby and being more a mother than a wife.
As much as she hated to put an end to this meaningful albeit painful exchange, Bryce had made himself perfectly clear about “saving” himself for Vi, leaving Gillian no other choice but to respect him for that. The last thing she wanted to do was ruin their temporary truce by accide
ntally saying the wrong thing.
Like how sorry she was for ever letting him go.
“I suppose we should call it a day,” she said, moving toward the stairs.
“I’ll come with you,” Bryce called after her.
Still stinging from his earlier rebuke, Gillian refrained from mentioning how disappointed she was that they were sleeping in separate beds. With every step they took up those stairs, the poison of old bitterness drained from her body. It occurred to her that while she had no control over the past, how she lived the present was truly up to her. She could live each day as bitterly as Stella who had never gotten over the humiliation of her ex-husband’s indiscretions. Or as lonely as Rose who was still pining for some mythical knight to come charging into her life astride a white horse. Or as a woman able to forgive herself and others for their mistakes.
She and Bryce paused at the landing to survey the scene below. A fire crackled in a hearth decorated with stockings, ornaments glittered amid shimmering Christmas lights and the smell of pine hung heavy in the air. A peaceful feeling settled over Gillian. Standing on tiptoe, she ventured to place a chaste peck on Bryce’s cheek. Marked by the stubble of a day’s growth, it felt rough against her lips.
“I hope Vi knows how incredibly lucky she is,” she said before turning and closing her bedroom door firmly behind her.
Ten
There was no pounding at the front door the next morning to alert anyone that the house was under assault. No sirens or alarms went off. The intruders simply opened the front door and walked in as if they owned the place.
“Surprise!” they hollered.
It wasn’t long before the sound of tramping feet signaled that the invasion had come upstairs. The force with which the bedroom doors were flung open would lead one to think the Secret Service had arrived with a warrant for a deadly criminal. Gillian came to with a jerk. Standing in the doorway of her bedroom was her oldest sister Stella looking as if she had just swallowed a case of TNT.
The Millionaire's Miracle Page 7
