“I’ve been looking all over for you,” Bryce said. “I was starting to think you ran out on me. Hey, are you okay? You don’t look so good. Melanie?” The sudden change in his tone brought her back to reality.
Not knowing what to do, or say, Melanie opted for the truth. At the bar over lattes, she told him about her desire to adopt a child. She explained that her reason for not telling him was that their relationship was too new, too fresh. Tears pooled in her eyes when she said, “I think I should just go home.”
“Why would you even think such a thing? So, you want children, you’re willing to adopt, become a single parent. What’s not to like about that? Hell, I admire you even more than I did already.” He blotted her tears with the tip of his finger.
“Really?” she asked, surprised at how easily he accepted her choice. He really was the most perfect man alive. Almost. They still hadn’t slept together, but that didn’t matter. When the time was right, she knew it would be worth waiting for.
“Yes, really. Now dry those tears, because we’ve got tickets to see Cher. You still up for that?” he asked, a wicked grin revealing his sexy white teeth.
When did I start thinking of teeth as sexy?
“Of course I am, but, Bryce, there’s more.”
“I’m listening.”
Five hours later, they were on a flight to Denver. Only this time, as man and wife.
And what happens in Vegas stays in Vegas. They still hadn’t slept together.
Chapter 15
Melanie looked at the fake, cheap, metallic gold ring on her finger. Then she looked at the fake cheap metallic gold ring on Bryce’s finger. Then she looked at the marriage certificate printed on cheap, plain white paper. Then she looked at Bryce, who was still in a state of semishock.
They were married. Husband and wife. Till death do them part. The old ball and chain. She had married Bryce Landry. She was Melanie Landry now. She had to admit, she liked the sound of her new name.
Unlike the flight to Vegas, they were unable to purchase first-class tickets on such short notice, so the only seats available to them were those in coach at the very back of the plane. By the restrooms. The stench was atrocious.
Melanie had barely uttered a word since she’d confessed to Bryce that, even though she had been told by the horrible woman at the adoption agency that she wouldn’t be able to adopt a child unless she was married, she’d gone ahead and had her application processed anyway. She said that she knew it was selfish and foolish of her.
She was flabbergasted when he told her there was no time like the present, that he would’ve married her anyway. He said it was his destiny.
“I told Ashley when I got married she could be my maid of honor.”
Bryce took her hand in his. “Let’s worry about one problem at a time. We can always have another wedding. Now, tell me again what this woman Carla said.”
Melanie’s eyes flushed with unshed tears. “It’s like something right out of a fiction novel. Apparently there was an eight-car pileup on I-70, nothing new there. A couple in their early thirties died at the crash scene. Carla said there were no relatives, no foster parents available. So I guess the next step was World Adoption Agency.
“According to Carla, Olga Krause has been stealing the state practically blind. She believes Olga is hoarding away money for when she retires. There are eleven other children in need of a home. Those poor little kids; I should’ve known something was wrong. And to think that old bat was in charge of all those innocents! She reminded me of Scrooge—I remember thinking that at the time. She just had a mean look about her. I hate to judge, but I hope that woman is prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law. Let her live the remainder of her life behind bars. Carla said the children were malnourished and frightened. Oh, Bryce, what in the world have I gotten myself into? And you, too.”
Bryce squeezed her hand because, for once, he really didn’t know what to say. The only thought that kept beating against his skull was the fact that he’d married Melanie. They’d been dating for less than one week, and he’d married her. What he couldn’t get past was the fact that he’d never felt such pure and complete happiness. Yes, it had been a crazy thing to do when Melanie told him she wouldn’t be able to adopt a child unless she was married. Like the gentleman he was, he’d quickly made arrangements for a Vegas-style wedding, and now they were on their way home to Denver. Melanie had called her parents, telling them she was returning sooner than planned and that she would pick up Odie and Clovis as soon as she could. She had neglected to mention she was coming home a married woman.
Bryce had a feeling this Christmas was going to be unlike any other. Past and present.
“We’ll work things out. I have lots of friends in Boulder.” What he didn’t say was that he wasn’t sure if any of them would be willing to take in thirteen children.
Less than twenty-four hours after leaving Denver International Airport, they’d returned to Placerville. Seated in the rear seats of the private jet Melanie had engaged, they were the last ones to exit the plane. Neither spoke while they waited for the other passengers to retrieve their book bags, diaper bags, and the like from the storage compartment.
Bryce would’ve been happier seeing Cher, but Melanie and the thirteen kids were much more important. Being in academia, he was around young adults most of the time. Of course, he was beyond thrilled to be Ella’s uncle, but would he pass muster as a parent if it came to that? He could only hope. Now more than ever, he wanted to be the stand-up kind of man his father would’ve been proud of.
After they had gotten to Denver, Carla had explained that there was no prohibition on single-parent adoptions in Colorado—that Olga must have deliberately misled Melanie on that score, because anytime a child left the orphanage, the funds available for Olga to embezzle decreased. But neither Melanie nor Bryce had the least regret about the solution Bryce had come up with for Melanie’s adoption woes. Married they were and married they would remain. Till death do them part.
With a renewed sense of purpose, Bryce vowed those thirteen children were going to have the best Christmas ever.
He would make sure each and every child found a home, and, maybe, if he was lucky, each and every one of them would have a home before Christmas.
Epilogue
One week later ...
Melanie quietly closed the door to the spare bedroom, careful not to shut it all the way, just in case Sam or Lily needed her during the night. This was their second night together, her first night as a legally certified foster parent. Carla had expedited her application given the circumstances. Normally, she would be required to take parenting classes and undergo an extensive background check, but her circumstances were anything but normal.
Bryce and her parents were waiting for her in the living room. She’d invited them over to thank them for their help locating temporary homes for the other eleven kids. It hadn’t been easy, but they’d managed.
World Adoption Agency had been permanently closed. Olga Krause had dozens of charges filed against her. She’d been jailed, then released on her own recognizance. It would take years before her case was heard in court. Melanie rather hoped that the old woman would die first, saving the taxpayers money. Melanie knew that was callous, but she didn’t care. The children in her care had suffered greatly on her watch, and who knew what kind of psychological problems they would endure in the future? Her mother always told her that children were most resilient. She hoped this was true.
And now it was time for her and Bryce to tell her family they were married. They’d decided to wait until all the hoopla died down, since the story of the orphanage had made headlines.
She took a seat next to her husband, still amazed at the changes in her life in such a short span of time. Bryce kept reminding her, saying over and over that you only live once. She agreed with him.
“Melanie, you’ve been dancing around all night. I know you’re happy you have Sam and Lily—your father and I adore them already�
�but something is bothering you. Am I right?” her mother asked with the sweetest smile. She was the best mother in the world. Melanie loved her so much at that moment, she had to close her eyes for a few seconds to compose herself. She was truly the luckiest woman alive.
“You’re not sick, are you, kiddo?” her dad asked. “If you are, we’ll get you the best doctors in the world.”
“Dad, you’re such a riot. No, I am not sick. At least, I don’t think I am.” She turned to Bryce. “Do I look sick to you?”
“You look beautiful, Melanie,” Bryce said, his voice laced with love. And longing.
“Mom, Dad.” She paused. “There is no other way to say it, so I’m just going to say it: Bryce and I got married in Vegas.”
There.
She looked at her parents, waiting for their reaction. When they said nothing, she repeated herself.
“Bryce and I are married, and we’re going to adopt Sam and Lily.”
Her parents looked at one another, then at Bryce, and back at her. They high-fived each other. Then came the congratulations.
“Wonderful news! I knew something was up.” Her parents hugged her; her dad shook Bryce’s hand so long that she was sure it would fall off. That old guy thing. Mother and daughter hugged each other, tears puddling in their eyes.
“I couldn’t have handpicked a better man for you, Melanie dear. Now, why didn’t I see this coming?” her mother whispered loud enough for the others to hear.
Bryce laughed. “We didn’t see it coming, either, but it’s the best decision I’ve ever made.”
Melanie kissed her husband on the cheek.
“So you’re both okay with this? You’re not going to have me committed?”
They all burst out laughing.
Bryce nuzzled her neck, whispering in her ear, “If I don’t have you tonight, they’ll commit me.”
“Patience, Bryce. Patience,” she whispered back. Then Melanie giggled like a kid at Christmas. Right now at that precise moment, her world was absolutely perfect.
Merry Christmas, world!
Runaway Christmas
ELIZABETH BASS
Chapter 1
Christmas was only a few days away, but you never would have known it from sitting in the living room at Sassy Spinster Farm. A tree? No. A carol or two on the radio? Heaven forbid. The scent of gingerbread? Not at Aunt Laura’s, not this year.
Erica had really been hoping for a tree at the farm. It would have been cool to see all her mom’s old ornaments again, and remember happier times.
Two miles away, at her father’s house, her stepmother, Leanne, had started decking the halls the second the Thanksgiving dishes were cleared. Every corner of every room was crammed with Christmas junk, and The Nutcracker had been on a constant loop for three weeks now. There was Christmas galore in the place Erica didn’t want to be, and a big Christmas black hole in the place she usually loved.
The trouble was babies. The world was a wonderland for a baby. For a thirteen-year-old, not so much. Adults turned the world upside down for babies, even when babies threatened to turn the adults inside out.
Her aunt sagged in the recliner chair where she now lived twenty-four-seven, her eyelids droopy. When Erica suggested they make a batch of Christmas cookies, Laura’s skin turned a weird color. In Crayola terms, she’d be Screamin Green. “Just the thought of a cookie makes me ill.”
“How can a cookie make you sick?” Erica asked. “Cookies make people feel better.”
“Because everything makes me sick,” Laura said, readjusting the washrag on her forehead. “The succubus doesn’t want me to eat anything but mint-chocolate-chip ice cream. And bacon.”
The succubus was Laura’s baby-to-be, which wasn’t going to be born until May but was already dictating everyone’s life, the same way that one-year-old Angelica did at Erica’s dad’s house. Usually Erica came to the farm to escape the tyranny of Leanne and baby Angelica—or Angel Baby as she was often nauseatingly called—but now all the good times at the farm had been hijacked by the unseen being Laura alternately called the succubus, the critter, or Hortense the Creeping Terror.
“If I can pass just one nugget of wisdom on to you, youngster,” Laura said, “let it be this—don’t ever get pregnant.”
Erica, who was sitting cross-legged on the floor, pursed her lips. As if anyone had to tell her that. “Once the kid’s born, it’ll be all you think about. Like Leanne and Angelica.”
Laura scowled. “Leanne’s just putting on an act to trick you into making the same mistake she made. Don’t be fooled. Don’t have kids. Don’t even think about boys. Go find a cave and live by yourself. Keep a cat for company. Or a chicken.”
Laura’s husband, Webb, who was sitting across the room quietly reading a mystery, looked up from his book, smiling. “She’ll make a great mom, won’t she?”
Laura roused herself enough to shoot a threatening look his way. “You don’t get to say a word on this subject. You’re not the one incubating the critter.”
“Really?” He laughed. “Your bitching and moaning makes it all so real for me, I sometimes forget.”
“Secondhand suffering doesn’t count for squat.”
Erica sighed. It used to be fun to come to the farm and listen to Webb and Laura’s scrappy way of communicating, which provided a refreshing contrast to the bored silence sporadically broken by real scrapping between Leanne and Erica’s dad. At the moment, though, she just wished everyone in her family talked like normal people. “I’m supposed to bring something to the youth group’s Christmas party at church later this afternoon,” she said. “Something like cookies.”
“Why don’t you take a plate of bacon to the party?” Laura asked. “It’s more nutritrious.”
“And what’s more festive for kids than a platter of Christmas bacon?” Webb asked.
“It’s got protein,” she shot back.
Erica couldn’t help rolling her eyes. “Well, if we don’t make cookies, what are we going to do?”
“I don’t know about you,” Laura told her, “but I’m going to sit here and make up new critter names. What do y’all think of ‘Vomitia’?”
In contrast to Laura’s words, a whole room had already been transformed with primary colors and stuffed with toys and furniture, awaiting the baby’s arrival. The critter was probably going to be the most spoiled baby that ever crawled the earth.
“Wouldn’t it be fun to put up a Christmas tree?” Erica asked.
“The stench of cedar right now would send me straight to the hospital,” Laura said.
Of course. Erica glowered at the carpet. “I wish Heidi had decided to come and visit.”
Laura shot to an upright position. “That would be all I need right now.”
“I like her,” Erica said.
Heidi had been her mom and Laura’s stepsister when they were teenagers, and now Erica thought of her almost as another aunt. She hadn’t visited the farm since the summer Erica’s mother had died, but she wrote Erica all the time, and had sent her a really cool outfit on her birthday, and had invited Erica to come visit her in New York someday. New York City!
Well, Brooklyn.
Erica had hoped that Heidi would visit the farm for the holidays. But Heidi had said she was too busy with work this year. She’d just opened some kind of café.
A café was better than a baby.
“Why don’t you go ride Milkshake?” her aunt suggested, evidently eager to change the subject from Heidi, who she’d only ever learned to tolerate.
“It’s cold and drizzly.”
“Wimp,” Laura muttered, closing her eyes.
Webb guffawed. “You’re one to talk. One little baby’s sent you into a monthlong swoon.”
“Every time you make a crack, that’s one more onerous chore in your future,” Laura warned as she rearranged the rag over her eyes. “I’ve already got you slated for eighteen months of diaper duty and Disney on Ice.”
It was going to be another awful
Christmas, Erica realized with despair. Maybe not as bad as last year—nothing could be that bad again. Last year was the first Christmas after her mother had died, and though everyone had tried to be nice to her, nothing could make up for the fact that the person she’d most wanted to celebrate with wasn’t there. And, of course, her half sister, Angelica, had been born two weeks early, on Christmas Eve, which Leanne and Erica’s dad had insisted was a Christmas miracle.
But this year was shaping up to be a strong runner-up for worst Christmas ever. Laura was completely consumed with her morning sickness, and Webb was all about catering to Laura. At home, with Leanne and Erica’s dad, the house was gearing up for Angelica’s first birthday and baby’s second Christmas. Erica’s thirteenth Christmas didn’t seem to be on anyone’s radar. No one was thinking of her. It was as if she’d disappeared from her own life.
In the old days, her mother had always been there to make her feel special. But now she felt so lost—an unformed blob of a person—and there was no one she could turn to. None of her friends at school understood. She’d never felt so alone.
She unfolded her legs and stood up. “I should go home.”
“You just got here.” Laura sat up a little. “Wait—you want to watch a movie or something? Maybe we can stream Mommie Dearest off Netflix. I could bone up on my parenting skills.”
“No thanks.” Watching movies was something they used to do with her mom. It wasn’t quite the same with only Laura and Webb. Nothing was the same. The big house, which once had been so full of life, felt empty. In her mom’s day, there had been paying guests living in the rooms, and music playing in the kitchen from sunup to bedtime. Now sometimes it was hard to believe that her mother had ever been here at all. Then Erica would catch a glimpse of something to remind her—her mom’s boom box in the kitchen, an afghan, the muffin pan that had made a thousand trips to the oven.
Making Spirits Bright Page 8
