by Lulu Pratt
I may look like Ava, but I feel like a completely new person. My life is nothing like the girl who met Logan, and today will only solidify my transformation. With trembling hands, I trace the details of the diamonds bought for me in Australia dangling from my ears before deciding I’m ready.
“Oh, baby!” My dad says when he sees me. His eyes are already red and puffy from what has surely been an emotional day for him and my mother.
“Just remember this is your day. You’ll remember this for the rest of your life, Ava.” My mom pinches her lips tightly to stop from crying before gently kissing my cheek and hurrying off to find her seat.
The large white double doors open to reveal a room full of people, all dressed to perfection with love in their eyes as they look back to the doorway, where I stand with my arm intertwined with my father’s.
“Let’s go, baby girl,” he whispers before taking the first step.
My eyes are trained on the end of the aisle where Logan stands in a black tuxedo, somehow even more handsome than the day I met him. His eyes are glassed over with emotion, and the closer I get, the more he fidgets from side to side with anticipation.
“Who gives this bride to this groom in marriage?” the minister asks, standing a step above Logan.
“I do,” my father answers proudly, releasing my arm and kissing my cheek before joining my mother in the front row.
The smile on Logan’s face as he takes the half step to me sets off a flutter in my belly. I take his hand and step to him, now standing directly across from the man of my dreams.
“You may all be seated,” the minister announces to the audience.
“I love you so much,” Logan quickly leans in to whisper as the room full of our closest friends and family settle into their seats.
“I love you too,” I mouth as the room grows silent.
I can see the internal battle in Logan’s eyes as he stands so close to me without being able to take me in his arms. His desire has always amplified my confidence, and today it is only magnified.
“You’re so beautiful,” Logan says with a shake of his head slowly, studying my face as his hand brushes my hair aside.
Before I can stop him, he cradles my neck, pressing his lips to mine. My body melts to his touch as the crowd laughs in amusement.
“We’re not exactly there yet, Logan,” the minister jokingly admonishes the man I love.
“I’m sorry, I couldn’t help myself.” Logan shrugs with his million-dollar smile to the minister and to our family and friends before returning his gaze to me.
I don’t hear a word spoken by the minister as he speaks about love and devotion. All I need to know about both subjects is intertwined in the beautiful blue eyes that stare back at me. Without a word, Logan is declaring his love, and with a smile plastered across my face, I reciprocate every ounce of devotion. Forever.
***
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Never
I signed on to give this baby a second chance for a mother. I never counted on falling for my ex.
I broke up with my high school sweetheart when I went away to college.
I never expected him to knock up my sister.
It was easy to tell myself it wasn’t my fault. That they didn’t exist.
Until the day my sister died, with a clause in her will begging me to be a mother to their baby.
How could I deny the child?
Except that means seeing and being with Ethan every day.
I watch in wonder as he deals with his little girl, he’s the most loving, caring father.
Soon, my body fills with desire whenever he walks into the room.
I try to ignore his crazy sexy body and even sexier smile, but every day it gets harder.
Now he says he wants me. He’s always wanted me.
And he wants us to be a family.
***A steamy STANDALONE contemporary romance with a smoking hot hero. No cliffhanger, no cheating and a guaranteed happily-ever-after.***
Chapter One
LARA
“Of course she had to go and die,” I mutter to myself, knowing it’s one of the worst things I can possibly say about my sister, and knowing it’s absolutely unfair. Pulling into a parking spot in the lot outside of the estate lawyer’s office, I take a deep breath.
If she had the choice, Alexis would be alive. Easter was destroyed by her death. The family was technically together, but the fact that she wasn’t there, that she was dead, had hung over everyone in the room, the house, over dinner, the whole deal.
I take another deep breath and flip down the mirror to check my makeup. It’s hard to believe it, but a week ago I was finishing my work and planning my packing to go home to see my father, my sister, her husband, and their child, and a few other family members for Easter.
And then I’d gotten the call.
Looking at my reflection, my eyes still look a bit bloodshot, and my mascara has smeared a bit at the corners of my eyes. I make a quick movement to clean it up a bit, and think about the whole big, stupid mess.
I can still remember the way Dad’s voice sounded on the phone. “I know you were planning on coming in a couple of days, Lara, but I would appreciate it if you could get here maybe tomorrow.”
I’d gotten the time off work for the whole week, and helped Dad as much as I could. We’d had the funeral for Alexis on Wednesday, and then there was the long wait between then and Easter Sunday, with Dad and me dealing with visitors to the house, telephone calls and accepting pre-Easter feasts worth of food that he didn’t even have room for. It’s difficult to say whether people would have insisted so hard on bringing so much food if Mom was still around, but I have to think that at least a few of the people who came to see us might not have come twice if Mom was still around.
I touch up my powder a bit and dab at the color on my lips, something that wouldn’t look like I’m joyful at my older sister’s passing but also something that doesn’t make me look like a corpse myself, and then I make myself get out of the damn car finally. Sitting there won’t make Alexis’ death un-happen, and it won’t take away the obligation to listen to the reading of her will. It won’t mean that I don’t have to sit in some stuffy estate lawyer’s office with the man I used to love, and my father, who has never reconciled himself to everything that happened a few years before and how it tore apart our family.
I just have to get through this and hope that Alexis forgot to even think of me, the same way she hadn’t thought about me at all when she and Ethan hooked up.
I straighten my skirt and smooth my blouse as I walk to the entrance to the office, trying to remind myself that it’s stupid to dread seeing Ethan again. It makes a little more sense to dread being around Riley, my niece, who is just eighteen months old, but I’m mostly looking forward to being around the little girl who reminds me so much of my sister when she was younger, before things went so sour between us.
The receptionist is at her desk, and she looks up when I come in. “You father and Mr. Parks have already arrived. I’ll just walk you through to Mr. Gottlieb’s office,” she says, taking me in for a moment. I nod and let her escort me through the reception area and down a little hallway.
I’ve known I have to attend this appointment for days, and I’ve been dreading it, not because I’m worried that my sister might have made some gesture to try to win me over from beyond the grave, but because I’m afraid that she decided to do something petty in her will, like specifically say that I’m not entitled to any keepsake from her estate or some final rebuke just because I’d spurned her. The fact that I’d shut her out of my life for damned good reasons would, of course, never have entered her mind.
My dad looks like he mostly has it together when Mr. Gottlieb’s recepti
onist lets me into the little office, decorated all in beige and green and blue. It’s supposed to be soothing, but somehow, it’s just all the more irritating because I know I’m supposed to feel soothed. Dad’s dressed in a suit, one of three that he owns, and I’m glad I dressed up a little bit, in spite of the fact that this isn’t really a formal meeting of any kind.
Ethan on the other hand is in a dress shirt and tie, along with some khakis. I guess he feels like being a single dad now makes the dress code more relaxed for him. Riley, my niece, the only thing that brought me back into the family, is in a cute little dress in a blue shade that brings out the brightness of her eyes. Her dark hair is down to her shoulders. Ethan hasn’t bothered to do anything cute with it the way that Alexis would have. My eighteen-month-old niece has already taken off her black shoes and is standing at her father’s knees in a pair of lace-topped white socks, asking him when they’ll go find Mommy.
“Ah, Ms. Hampstead,” Mr. Gottlieb says, calling my attention away from my sister’s daughter, my beloved niece. “Now that you’re here, I believe we can start.”
“Yes, please do,” I say, looking around quickly for a seat. “I’m sorry if I’ve delayed you.”
“Not at all,” Gottlieb says, taking something out of his desk. It looks like a binder, and I wonder just how long my sister’s last will and testament even is, and what her estate could even amount to. She was older than me, and as far as I knew, she and Ethan hadn’t exactly struck it rich in the couple of years since their marriage. The only seat open to me is right between my father and my ex-boyfriend, and I sit down in it, resigning myself to the fact that it’s going to be awkward and uncomfortable and unpleasant for the next hour.
Once we’re all settled in, Mr. Gottlieb starts to read through the will with plenty of hemming and hawing about legal matters, and for the most part I tune out, getting Riley to come over to me. It isn’t hard, but it’s much harder to get her to stop babbling about her mommy, and sit in my lap and play with the big pendant on my necklace.
Apparently, Alexis and Ethan invested in life insurance, which will cover enough for the funeral, as well as some security for Riley’s upbringing for a few years, and they had opened a college investment account for their daughter. I’d never really thought of my sister as being the kind of person to think ahead like that, but apparently she was.
“Now,” Mr. Gottlieb said, coming to the end of the document. “This part I believe will be a bit complicated. Mrs. Parks states in the end of her will, regarding the disposition of her daughter, Riley Hampstead Parks, that she wishes for custody to be shared between Mr. Parks and Ms. Hampstead.”
“What?” I stare at the estate lawyer as if he’s grown a second pair of hands. My father also makes a noise as it seems this is news to him too.
“I’ll quote the directive itself,” he says. “‘Because I can see how much my sister, Lara Jane Hampstead, loves my daughter, Riley, and because I know that Riley will need a mother in the event of my passing, and I can’t think of anyone who would do the job better, I wish for my sister, Lara Jane Hampstead, to be a mother to my daughter, sharing custody of Riley with my husband, Ethan James Parks.”
I’d been worried that Alexis was going to spite me somehow in her will. Certainly, we’d had enough arguments since she’d taken up with my ex-boyfriend where she’d gone low with her blows, but here she’d actually decided that I should be the one to help raise her daughter in her absence.
“That can’t be…” Dad sounds torn between anger and confusion and when I look over at him, I see he’s been crying a little bit while we’ve been listening. I wish I’d heard whatever it was she’d bequeathed or said to him in her will, but it could have been anything.
“For them to share custody…”
“It’s just a custodial arrangement. There are no real conditions,” Mr. Gottlieb says. “She wants for Ms. Hampstead to take an active role in helping to raise her daughter, and noted that this should stand even if Mr. Parks is ever re-married. The two of them are to work out the details amongst themselves, with court a final recourse if they cannot agree on equitable division of custody and/or visitation. You are, of course, under no obligation to do this. The will is not binding on you.”
All I can do is stare at the old, worn-down looking estate lawyer.
Chapter Two
ETHAN
I watch Lara react to the news, and I can’t help but feel I probably should have said something to her before the reading of the will. But I’ve been in shock ever since the accident and to be honest all I can think about is Riley. I can’t believe, I still can’t make myself believe, that my wife is actually dead. That my daughter, our daughter, is going to grow up without even knowing Alexis. She’s already too young to have any real, strong memories of her mother. She can’t even understand the fact that her mother is dead.
“That’s… I don’t even know how that’s going to work. But I want Riley to grow up with a mother,” Lara says, shaking her head. Alexis and I talked about the provision in her will when we’d made the wills less than three months before. We had decided to tell Lara about it during Easter, if things seemed to still be so good with Lara and Riley, however, we never got the chance and here we are.
“Ms. Parks left it at the discretion of the two of you,” our, my wife’s and my, estate lawyer says.
“I am willing to give this request a try for Riley’s sake,” Lara says.
When Alexis and I had talked about what she wanted, Alexis had assumed that it would bring Lara and me back together, at least a little bit, and that it would be best for Riley. She hadn’t wanted to put any conditions on it. As I sit there in the lawyer’s office, I can imagine her, clear as day, saying to me, “Just think, Ethan, this could be what brings the family back together.”
“It just doesn’t make any sense,” Nathan, my father-in-law, says. “How are they supposed to divide custody of her between them?”
“I believe Mrs. Parks wanted this provision not only to ensure that Riley would have a nurturing mother figure in her life, but also…” Gottlieb clears his throat, “to somewhat ‘mend the breach’ so to speak, between various members of the family.”
“Lara, are you actually okay with this?” Nathan has made it clear to me more than once in the week since we lost Alexis that he’s not okay with me. He wasn’t okay with me in the first place, certainly not once Lara abandoned the family because Alexis and I got together, and now, with his wife gone and his daughter so recently passed, I have to give him some credit for how well he’s holding together, even if that means he’s directing all his anger at me.
“I think now is not the best time to discuss this,” Lara says, looking at Riley. “I think we should have a conversation about it before I go back home.” She’s keeping her voice as light as possible, but I can see the stress in her face, in her eyes.
Riley fusses, and I reach for her. My daughter is the only person I can focus on at the moment. Although I knew of Alexis’ provision in her will, I never thought that it would come to pass and that I would have to face raising Riley without her.
“If there are no further questions?” Gottlieb has probably seen a dozen families just as dysfunctional as ours, but I have to think it doesn’t get any easier, especially so soon after the funeral.
We had to rush things because the accident happened so close to Easter. I’m still aching over half my body from the crash, and I’ve been checking Riley hourly to make sure she didn’t get injured in some way that didn’t come up immediately. It’ll be weeks before I can get over the fact that of the three of us, I was only a little injured, some whiplash, a few cuts and bruises, nothing that had needed more than a few stitches, and Riley was absolutely fine, but Alexis only managed to live six hours before her body finally just gave out.
I close my eyes and press my forehead to my little daughter’s neck. It’s impossible to think of a world where my wife is just… gone. It’s impossible to think of a life without her
. We didn’t have the easiest of marriages, but Riley made it all worthwhile and Alexis was a good mom and a good friend.
“You both have some time still before you have to go back to your parents?”
I nod in response to Nathan’s question.
My parents want to see Riley again before we head back to the next town over, where the house is. It’s not too bad of a drive, but it’s enough of one that we won’t be seeing my parents, or Alexis’ dad, more often than maybe once a week. And who knows when Lara, who lives about an hour and a half away by car, will be able to take care of Riley? How am I going to work with no one at home to watch my little girl? I shake off the questions humming in my head.
“I told the office I would be back in on Wednesday,” Lara says. “They understand.”
“I’m going back into town Thursday night,” I tell them. “I need to be there on Friday, but I don’t have care set up for Riley…” I shrug. It’s not worth getting into the argument with Nathan yet again about caring for Riley with Alexis no longer there to do it. We’ll figure it out, one way or another.
“I’d love it if the two of you would stay in the house for the rest of the time you’re in town,” Nathan says. “Family should be close together at a time like this.”
I want to point out to him that I’m staying with family, my family, but I know what he means. He’s obviously hurting like I am, and sometime I might be able to have a beer with him and ask him how you manage to get through losing your wife. But not yet. It’s not exactly the way I wanted to bond with my father-in-law.
“I can check out of the hotel,” Lara says. She’d booked the hotel for Easter weekend when we were all planning to be together for it. Even though Riley had brought her back into the family, she hadn’t been comfortable staying in her parents’ house with me and Alexis being there so much. Even if she loved my little girl, she still couldn’t deal with me or her sister.
