Mya buckled Lily into her car seat on the sleek modern jet before fastening her own. She was on her way to New York with her daughter and the man who, in spite of her busy schedule, intruded into her thoughts during the day and at night.
She’d found Giles to be gentle, generous, patient and even-tempered—the complete opposite of the man with whom she had been involved. And if she had had any reservations as to whether he would be a good father, those doubts were quickly dashed when he had become a hands-on father in every sense of the word. Mya wasn’t certain whether he was overcompensating because she suspected it hadn’t been that way with him and his father.
“Tell me about your family,” she said to Giles when he’d turned the white leather seat to face her. Mya wanted to know what to expect before she met the Wainwrights.
He met her eyes. “There’s not much to tell. I have an older married brother with two kids and a younger sister. My father heads the legal department for the Wainwright Developers Group, known to insiders as the WDG. Dad, whom everyone calls Pat, is Patrick II and my brother is Patrick III. Patrick works with Dad in the legal department.”
“What about your mother and sister?”
“My mother is Amanda. Even though she’s lived in New York for forty years, she still talks like a Bostonian. She majored in art history in college and was hired by the Metropolitan Museum as a cataloguer. She put her career on hold after she married and started a family.”
“Did she ever go back to the museum?”
“No, but she’s still involved in the art world. She works every other weekend at a Second Avenue gallery. My sister Skye just got engaged to her longtime boyfriend a couple of months ago. My mother’s freaking out because this summer, Skye gave up her position as a high school guidance counselor to move to Seattle to live with her fiancé.”
“A lot of engaged couples live together to save money.”
“Skye doesn’t have to save money. She has a trust fund.”
Mya didn’t have to have the IQ of a rocket scientist to know the Wainwrights weren’t pleased with Skye’s choice in a fiancé. “What does he do?”
Giles frowned. “What doesn’t he do? He’s had a food truck business that failed. He was in partnership with some of his friends who had a moving business that also went under. Skye claims he’s willing to try anything to find his niche. I try not to get involved in her life, but I did tell her his singular calling is getting his hands on her money. Sometimes my sister may let her heart overrule her head, but not her money.”
“What did she do?”
“The last time I spoke to her, she said the love of her life was no longer as affectionate as he used to be because she told him she had put herself on a strict budget because she wasn’t working.”
“It sounds as if lover boy wants her to bankroll his next entrepreneurial venture.”
“Bingo! Give that lady a cigar,” Giles teased. “It’s not nice, but we’re all taking bets that she’ll be back before the end of the year.”
The pilot’s voice came through the cabin instructing the crew to prepare the cabin for takeoff. Mya stared out the oval window as the jet taxied down a private runway before it picked up enough speed for a smooth liftoff. All of the furnishings in the aircraft reflected opulence: butter-soft white leather seating for eighteen, teak tables and moldings, flat screen televisions and a fully functional galley kitchen and bathroom.
She glanced over at Lily who’d fallen asleep almost immediately. It was early afternoon and her nap time. The aircraft climbed, Mya’s ears popping with the pressure, and then leveled off to cruising speed.
The five-hundred-mile flight from Charleston to New York on a commercial carrier would take at least four hours, including a connecting flight, and more than eight hours by car, but their flight on the private jet was estimated to take only ninety minutes. They’d decided to forego lunch because Amanda had planned for an early dinner.
Mya’s gaze shifted back to Giles, who smiled when their eyes met. His hair was longer than when she first saw him in the lawyer’s office. The ends were curling slightly, reminding her of Lily’s shiny black waves. Her gaze lingered on his strong mouth. “You promised to tell me why you joined the Marine Corps.”
His smile vanished, replaced by an expression of stone. “I did it to spite my mother.” Mya wasn’t certain if he could hear her audible exhalation. “I’d dated a couple of girls while in college, but none of the relationships were what I’d think of as serious. Meanwhile unbeknownst to me, my mother was colluding with the mother of a young woman who went to high school with me to set us up. A week after graduation, Mom invited the family and some of her friends with kids who’d gone to my high school over for an informal get-together. I’d remembered Miranda as a nice, quiet girl but she wasn’t someone I’d date. Everyone was posing with me for the photographer Mom had hired for the event. Two months later, I get a call from one of my cousins that he saw my photograph alongside Miranda’s in the engagement section of the New York Times.”
“Were you two dating?”
“I told you I had no interest in her. When I confronted my mother, she said she’d hoped that Miranda and I would fall in love and eventually marry and she may have also communicated that to Miranda’s mother, who’d taken it to the next level. When I demanded they print a retraction, Mom pleaded with me to go along with it for a few months, and then pretend to break it off. What she didn’t want to do was embarrass Miranda’s family.
“Meanwhile people were calling and congratulating me on my engagement. I tolerated it for a week before walking into a recruitment office and telling the recruiter if he was looking for a few good men, then I was his man. I moved out and checked into a hotel until it was time for me to go to Parris Island, South Carolina for basic training. I’d attained the rank of captain by the time I was deployed to Afghanistan. Meanwhile I hadn’t spoken to or communicated with my mother in more than six years. Not knowing whether I’d come back, I called to tell her I was being deployed and I don’t remember what she said because she was crying so hard that I lost it. I told her I loved her and then hung up. That’s the memory of my mother that continued to haunt me until I returned from my first tour.”
Mya hadn’t realized she’d bitten her lip until she felt a throbbing pain. “Did you see her when you got back?”
Giles smiled. “Yes. We had a tearful reunion. She claims I’d left a boy and returned a man. I’d put on a lot of muscle and was in peak physical condition. I signed on for a second deployment and after losing several members of my team, I decided to resign my commission. Transitioning to life as a civilian was very difficult for me.”
“PTSD?”
He nodded. “It took six months and a kick in the behind from a cousin for me to seek counseling. Once I felt I was in control of my life, I purchased a condo and went to work for WDG.”
Reaching over, Mya grasped his hand. “You’re one of the lucky ones, Giles. There are a number of veterans from Wickham Falls who’ve been diagnosed with combat-related post-traumatic stress disorder. More than half the boys who graduated high school with me enlisted in the military because they couldn’t find employment now that most of the mines have closed. There was a time when boys graduated or left school to work the mines like their fathers, grandfathers and even great-grandfathers.”
Giles threaded his fingers through Mya’s. “Do they come back?”
“A few do. Sawyer Middleton and I were in the same graduating class. He enlisted in the army, became a software engineer, made tons of money and then came back last year to head the high school’s technology department. He’s now married to one of the teachers at the middle school. And there’s my neighbor, the deputy sheriff, who also served as a military police officer before coming back to go into law enforcement.”
“Now those are what I call success stories.” Giles gave her a long, penetrating stare
. “You came from Wickham Falls and you did all right.”
“That’s because my parents were business owners who employed at least two dozen men and women. When it came time for me to go off to college, all my father had to do was write a check. And once I graduated, I didn’t have any student debt staring me in the face. I wasn’t as lucky as I was blessed that I was adopted into a family that didn’t have to count pennies to make ends meet.
“Many of the folks that live in the Falls are the invisible ones that live at or below the poverty line. Twice a year, the church holds a fund-raiser to help families in need. Someone may request a used car so they can get to work, or a single mother with children will ask for monies to fix a leaky roof or repair her hot-water heater. Last Christmas, an anonymous donor gave the church enough toys, clothes and shoes to fill a tractor trailer.”
“That’s nice.”
Her eyebrows lifted a fraction. “That’s more than nice, Giles. I’m going to become a donor this year because I intend to purchase at least two hundred children’s books for grades one through six.”
Giles sat forward. “I’ll match your donation.”
Her jaw dropped. “Really?”
“Really,” he teased. “Let me know what else you want to donate and I’ll cover it.”
“You don’t have to do that.”
“Yes, I do if I’m going to live here.”
Mya sat back, pulling her hands from his loose grip. “So you’ve resigned yourself to living in the Falls.”
“Do I have a choice if I want to be with my daughter? And becoming an absentee father is not an option.”
“No, you don’t have a choice,” she countered. “It’s what Sammie wanted.”
Mya watched a hardness settle into Giles’s features as he slumped in his chair and glared at her under lowered brows. Mya had stopped questioning her sister’s motives where it concerned Lily, but it was apparent Giles hadn’t.
She wanted to tell him to suck it up and accept what he couldn’t control, otherwise the resentment would fester like an infection. If he could forgive his mother for trying to set him up with a woman he didn’t want to marry, then it was time he forgave Sammie and concentrated on making certain his daughter knew she was loved.
Chapter Seven
Giles switched Lily from one arm to the other as he rang the bell to the town house that once was his childhood home. A buzzing sound answered his ring and he shouldered the door open, holding it for Mya to enter the vestibule. The instant he saw the antique table and two straight-backed pull-up chairs, he was reminded that Mya would be the first woman he would bring home to meet his parents. There were a few women that had been his plus-one for various fund-raisers where social decorum dictated he make introductions but nothing beyond that.
“You can leave the bags by the table,” he directed the driver who had unloaded their luggage from the trunk of the limo. Reaching into his shirt pocket, he slipped the man a bill.
“Thank you, Mr. Wainwright.”
The door closed behind the driver at the same time the one at the opposite end of the hallway opened. Amanda placed both hands over her mouth, walking toward them as if in a trance.
The tears filling her eyes overflowed and ran down the backs of her hands. “Oh my heavens,” she whispered through her fingers. She extended her arms. “May I hold her?”
Giles placed Lily in her grandmother’s outstretched arms. “She’s heavier than she looks.”
Amanda’s expression spoke volumes. It was obvious she’d instantly fallen in love with her granddaughter. “She’s so precious!” She took a step and kissed Giles’s cheek. “Thank you for bringing her.” She beckoned to Mya. “Come here, darling, and give me a kiss.”
Mya approached Giles’s mother and pressed her cheek to the older woman’s. “Thank you for opening your home to us.”
A tender smile parted Amanda’s lips. “You are family. So my home is always open to you. Please come in and relax before we sit down to eat. You picked the perfect time to visit New York because we’re having an Indian summer and it’s warm enough for us to eat in the backyard. Speaking of food,” she continued without pausing to take a breath, “Giles told me that you make your own baby food, so I got the blender you need.”
“Thank you, Mrs. Wainwright.”
Amanda wagged a finger. “None of that Mrs. Wainwright around here. Please call me Mom or Amanda.” She wrinkled her delicate nose. “Personally I prefer Mom.”
Mya nodded. “Then Mom it is.”
Giles rested a hand at Mya’s waist. “Go on in, sweets. I’ll bring the bags.”
He picked up Lily’s diaper bag, grasped the handles to Mya’s rolling Pullman and followed his mother and Mya down the carpeted hallway to his parents’ street-level apartment.
His father purchased the three-story town house when he was still a bachelor. He renovated the entire structure, adding an elevator, and eventually rented the second-and third-story apartments. There had been a time when the entire building was filled with Wainwrights, when the younger Patrick occupied the third floor and Giles the second. They’d joked about moving out without ever leaving home.
He had just walked into the entryway when his father appeared. “Hi, Dad. I didn’t expect to see you here.”
“When Amanda told me about the baby, I decided anything I didn’t finish at the office could wait until another day.”
Giles left the Pullman next to a table with an assortment of African-and Asian-inspired paperweights. Pat talking about leaving work on his desk was a practice he should’ve adopted when his children were younger. Giles had lost count of the number of times his mother waited for her husband to come home and share dinner with the family, until she finally gave up and fed her children before it was time for them to retire for bed.
“So it takes another grandbaby to pull you away from your office.”
Pat smiled, the gesture softening his features. Giles had to admit work was probably what had kept his father motivated. At sixty-six, his blond hair had silvered and there were few more lines around his large, intense blue eyes, while spending hours sitting at a desk hadn’t taken its toll on his tall, slim physique.
Pat’s pale eyebrows lifted. “Something like that. I’d like to talk to you before I officially meet your baby’s mother.”
Giles went completely still. There was something in the older man’s voice he interpreted as censure. “What do you want to talk about?”
“Are you going to marry her?”
“Why would you ask me that?”
“Because Wainwright men don’t get women pregnant and not marry them.”
Giles struggled to control his temper. At thirty-six, he did not need his father to remind him of how he should live his life. “Have you forgotten that Jordan’s father didn’t marry his birth mother?” Edward Wainwright, Patrick’s cousin, was engaged when he had an affair, an affair that resulted in a child he and his wife secretly adopted and raised as their own.
“I’m not talking about Edward,” Pat countered.
“Well, he’s the only Wainwright that I can recall who didn’t marry his baby mama.”
“I’m talking about you, Giles. Your mother tells me you have a child and when I asked if you had or were going to marry the baby’s mother, she said no.”
“That’s because I can’t marry her.”
“And why the hell not?”
“Because she died, Dad! Mya is not Lily’s biological mother. She’s her aunt and adoptive mother.” Realization suddenly dawned when Giles saw his father’s stunned expression. “You thought I’d slept with Mya and got her pregnant?”
“I guess your mother didn’t tell me the whole story.”
Giles forced a smile. “I guess she didn’t.” He paused. “Now, are you ready for me to introduce you to my daughter’s mother?”
&
nbsp; Pat dropped an arm over his son’s shoulders. “Lead on.”
Giles and his father hadn’t always seen eye to eye on a number of things, but rather than go toe to toe with him as his older brother had, Giles would walk away until cooler tempers prevailed. And what he failed to understand was why Patrick would choose to work under their father when the two argued constantly.
They found Mya in the den with Amanda bouncing Lily on her knee. He registered Pat’s intake of breath when Mya rose to stand. The action was as graceful and regal as the queen she professed to be.
When Giles had arrived at her house earlier that morning for the ride to the airport, he had been temporarily stunned by her transformation. Missing was the bare face, jeans and T-shirt and socks; they were replaced with a light cover of makeup highlighting her luminous eyes and lush mouth, and a black wool gabardine pantsuit, black-pinstriped silk blouse and matching kitten heels. She had brushed her hair until there was no hint of a curl and pinned it into a chignon on the nape of her neck.
Seeing her like that had jolted him into an awareness that she had been a career woman before giving it up to become a full-time, stay-at-home mother.
Lily was laughing and squealing at the same time. Mya had changed her and given her a bottle during the ride from the airport to Manhattan, and after spending time with his daughter, Giles was now attuned to her moods. She fretted when he didn’t feed her fast enough, cried and squirmed when she needed to be changed and loved crawling around on the floor with him. She was much calmer with Mya when she sang or read to her, and whenever they were together in the rocker, it took only minutes for her to fall asleep.
* * *
Mya smiled at the tall, slender blond man striding toward her, arms extended. She noticed the only things the older man and Giles shared were height and eye color. A warm glow flowed through her when he hugged her and then kissed her cheek.
“Welcome to the family.”
She smiled up at Giles’s father. “Thank you, Mr. Wainwright. I’m Mya.”
He kissed her other cheek. “Around here, I’m Grandpa.” He eased back, his eyes moving slowly over her face. “My granddaughter has a beautiful mother.”
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