Mr. Elliott Finds A Family

“Bethany Ann Bellamy?”

Her head snapped up in surprise at the formal use of her name, her eyes narrowing with dread as he came closer out of the fog. She was startled by his bearing and presence. She shouldn’t have been. Carrie always favored the austere type.

“Yes?” Beth Ann deliberately made her voice clipped, masking her recognition.

“Do you know me?” he asked.

With long easy strides, the man walked toward her, looking her over from head to toe. She returned his assessment with cool detachment. He was dressed impeccably. Buff-colored casual linen slacks, well-fit to his long legs, a button-down light green cotton shirt and fine brown leather jacket accentuated his lean, powerful frame. She looked down at his feet, not surprised by the expensive shoes. They matched the look of the vintage Jaguar. She could smell a rich, spicy cologne and swallowed hard as she met his compelling gray eyes, eyes the color of fog and just as chilly. She glanced at his left hand. He still wore his wedding band.

The best defense was a good offense.

“No,” she lied, badly at that, her voice trembling. “I have no idea who you are.”

Christian immediately stopped in his tracks when the woman glanced at him nervously, tightened her hold on the child and then looked furtively at the truck, ready to disappear into the fog. He studied the angles of her pixie face, her narrow chin, the damp brown, almost red, curls made unruly by the wet of the fog, searching for a resemblance to Caroline.

He found none.

While Caroline had been tall, nearly five-ten, with model-like proportions, the top of this woman’s curls would probably just brush the bottom of his chin. Maybe, if he stared at her hard enough, he could see some likeness around the nose and forehead. Her eyes were unfathomably dark, so dark that he couldn’t tell where her pupils ended and her irises began. So unlike Caroline’s sky-blue eyes. Maybe they shared the same nose. But, then again, maybe that was just the fog, his nerves or wishful thinking.

“Who are you?” Beth Ann repeated, her tone tough and uncompromising, even a shade rude for a woman so petite.

Christian cleared his throat. “Christian. Christian Elliott. Caroline’s husband.”

Beth Ann stared at Carrie’s husband, scanning his face. Her pulse thudded at the base of her throat. Even though she’d had a week to prepare for this meeting, she felt as if she were being choked and the shock made the back of her eyes water. For the briefest of seconds, she believed if she looked around this tall, remote man, she would see Carrie hiding in the car, laughing and saying her death was all just a big joke and Beth Ann shouldn’t take her so seriously and these past two years had only been a terrible dream. Her heart thumped against her chest in anticipation, as she shifted around, trying to peer through the fog at his car. But the Jag was empty.

She glanced up at the man, her bottom teeth plucking at her top lip, biting down hard to keep the tears back.

“You’re early,” she said, wincing at the roughness of her tone. Beth Ann put Bernie down, keeping a firm grip on a wiggling wrist as the toddler immediately tried to break free. Then Bernie looked up, way up, into the face of the handsome stranger and with a fit of shyness, turned away to clasp her arms tightly, very tightly, around Beth Ann’s knee almost buckling her leg as she buried her face in Beth Ann’s thigh. Beth Ann straightened herself and loosened Bernie’s squeeze as she smoothed back the little girl’s brown curls.

Christian stared at both of them, then surprisingly retreated two steps to put a more comfortable distance between them. He stared hard at Bernie, who ventured a peek and then dug her chubby cheeks deeper between Beth Ann’s legs.

“I didn’t know how long it would take to get here,” he said by way of explanation, then added, awkwardly, “Your directions were good. But the fog and all.”

Beth Ann blinked.

“Oh,” she said abruptly. “Well, come on. I have coffee ready.” She picked up Bernie again, who remained uncharacteristically silent, as if she sensed Beth Ann’s rising panic. Beth Ann turned to get into the truck.

A firm voice added behind her, “Carrie’s husband is always welcome at our house.”

Iris, the real Iris, had returned, her gray head poking out of the truck window, the confusion gone from her face, the authority back in her voice. She gave Beth Ann a matriarchal look of reproach. Beth Ann breathed a sigh of relief with Iris’s return to reality. Perhaps it wasn’t going to be that bad a visit.

“Yes,” she agreed quietly, finally remembering her manners as she shifted Bernie higher up her hip and opened the driver’s side door. She glanced at him, noting how out of place he looked standing in the middle of the road, the fog just beginning to clear around him. He belonged behind a teak desk in a penthouse office in San Diego, not on a dirt road in Mercy Springs with newly plowed fields surrounding him. “Carrie’s husband is always welcome at our home. Follow me. It’s just down the road.”

With Bernie strapped into her car seat, Beth Ann noticed her hand shook so badly she could barely put the key into the ignition. She felt a reassuring pat on her shoulder.

“All is well,” Iris said, her voice soothing and clear. “This is just what is supposed to be happening.”

Beth Ann gave her a watery glance and a half smile, wondering how many times Iris had said that to her, until it had almost become Beth Ann’s personal mantra. All is well. All is well. Beth Ann took a deep breath and tried to remember what peace felt like. All was well. But it wasn’t well. If it were, Bernie’s adoption would be signed and sealed and Christian Elliott wouldn’t be sitting twenty feet behind them in a car that cost twice her annual salary.

“He can’t have Bernie,” Beth Ann said tightly, as she started the engine.

“He doesn’t want Bernie. He wants Carrie,” Iris responded, her voice clear and unperturbed. And then she said, the focus in her eyes drifting away again, “I want to wear my diamond tiara today. I want you to put my hair up.”

Beth Ann glanced in the rearview mirror as she guided the truck onto the road. Christian Elliott was looking down, his thumb and forefingers pressed between the bridge of his nose and his eyes. Then he looked up and blinked rapidly before following her.

When Beth Ann turned into the driveway, Christian pulled in neatly beside her. Unhooking Bernie from the car seat first, she took the toddler and scrambled to get Iris who had opened the truck door. By the time she got around to the other side, another surprise. Christian, with a small formal bow, cordially offered his arm to assist Iris down, his large hand wrapped securely around Iris’s frail one, giving her complete support, catering to her as if she were a queen disembarking from a horse-drawn carriage rather than a faded pickup truck. He murmured something in her ear that made her laugh, her embarrassment miraculously forgotten.

They all trooped silently into the house, then across the living room and through a swinging door that led into the kitchen. Beth Ann immediately put Bernie down and said to Christian, taking advantage of another adult, “Do you mind watching her for a minute, while I go help Iris?” It was easier to watch Bernie when she was confined to a limited space.

Christian shook his dark head, his gray eyes unreadable. “Not at all.”

Bernie was furiously digging in a pile of toys. “Stay with this nice man, Bernie,” Beth Ann instructed the back of the toddler’s head. “Fluff is under the chair. Remember, where you threw him? Why don’t you read a book to him?”

She looked up and politely addressed Christian as she opened the creaky baby gate that blocked the kitchen’s open entry to the hall, using her head to indicate the room directly across that hall. “We’ll be right there, never out of hearing. Call if you need anything. I’ll be back in a minute.” She carefully secured the gate behind her and followed Iris into the bedroom.

Christian shoved his hands in his pockets and rocked back on his heels, looking around and seeing much wear on the old bungalow, more evident by the clutter that had the stamp of decades of habitation on it. A far cry from Bella Grande, his family’s estate, which he had left just the day before. Even when he was young, the only decoration in the mansion besides the art on the walls was the great vase of flowers his mother arranged every morning in the cathedral entryway.

No clutter anywhere. Not even snapshots of the family unless one counted the looming oil portraits of his grandfather and father, so creepy that Christian had avoided walking down those particular halls until he’d learned not to look at them. He shook his head. Why was it that his mother had never allowed the natural paper trail of life in the house? The memorabilia young children might collect, like the first edition Superman comic book that had cost him three weeks of kitchen duty in military school. Christian’s throat closed at the arbitrary memory, indignation rising like bile. It should have been safe next to his father’s evening paper. She never discarded his father’s paper.

Now as he looked around the dilapidated kitchen covered with happy scrawls, predrawings if one could call them that, on the refrigerator, bundles of herbs dangling upside down over the kitchen sink, an edge of bitterness caught in the back of his throat. The warm aura of the disarray was powerful. He clearly remembered Caroline telling his mother, right after she met him that she had no living family, then backtracking hastily when her sister had showed up at his office unannounced.

The timing of Beth Ann’s unexpected visit those many years ago couldn’t have been worse. He’d been in the middle of closing a two hundred and fifty million dollar acquisition that wasn’t being acquired as neatly as he had expected, his staff of lawyers and accountants scrambling to tie up the loose ends of a poorly constructed contractual agreement, which he was loathe to blame on his longtime school friend and executive vice president, Maximilian Riley. When the deal had been finalized a day later, he specifically asked Caroline about taking Beth Ann to see the sights, because he remembered her mentioning that she would be in town until the end of the week, but Caroline had coolly replied that he was mistaken, her half sister, emphasis on the half, was only in town for the day.

Now, Christian Elliott studied an old photograph propped up on a shelf that held an assortment of well-used cookbooks stuffed full of pieces of aged paper and felt a small ember of anger in the pit of his stomach add to the bitterness in his throat. He focused on the photograph, squelching, as he’d been taught so effectively, the residual resentment toward his mother and his wife, willing himself to see Caroline in the past. He barely recognized her, her long dark hair in crooked braids, her dress too small, her bony wrists sticking out from the cuffs, her front teeth much too big for her mouth. Caroline must have undergone intensive orthodontia.

In this picture, Beth Ann was substantially taller, her clothes too loose, her arm draped protectively around Caroline’s thin shoulders, her curls bushy with frizz. Caroline hadn’t grown up under even modest circumstances, he noted dryly, wondering how Caroline had managed to transform herself, allowing others to believe she had come from an affluent family, carrying with her the taste and confidence of the very rich. Yet another lie. Christian nodded, the bitter taste still in his mouth. Apparently, his money had supplied her with all the props she’d needed to carry off that confidence.

“Go ’way!” A loud voice startled Christian out of the past. He looked down at the little girl, no taller than the top of his kneecap, who stood poised in the middle of the room, her finger in her mouth, staring up at him with great dislike. She glanced around and when she saw that Beth Ann was not in the kitchen anymore, shrieked, “No!” and ran to the baby gate. “Mommy!”

“It’s okay, sweetie,” Beth Ann crooned from across the hall. “Mommy’s helping Nana. I’ll be right back.”

“Noooooo! Want come.” The wail was mournful, heartbreaking. Bernie started to climb the baby gate, which moaned and creaked under her weight. Christian moved to pull her off the old gate, convinced it would collapse with Bernie on it.

“Stay right there,” Beth Ann told her sharply, then said, “Why don’t you ask, uh, Uncle Christian to read you and Fluff a book.”

Christian smiled uneasily. He had never been around very many children, especially of this stature. What could Fluff be? He looked around the room and deduced the well-used bear—though more matte than fluff—forlornly stuck on its side under a weathered kitchen chair must be Fluff. With a quick swipe Christian retrieved the bear and said in the most reassuring voice he could muster, “That’s okay, uh, Bernadette. Your mom’ll be back soon. She’s just helping your grandmother. I’ll read you and, er, Fluff a book. Which book would you like me to read?”

He held Fluff out as a peace offering.

Bernie wasn’t impressed and clung to the gate, mutiny in her eyes. She ignored Fluff and resumed her climb.

“No,” Christian said in a firm gentle voice that came out of nowhere. He tried to be reasonable. “Your mom is busy now. Let me read you a book.”

Bernie turned a suspicious blue eyeball toward him. A two-second pause had Christian thinking he’d successfully negotiated a signature worthy agreement, until Bernie’s face screwed up, her button nose almost disappearing as her plump cheeks turned redder and redder with her indignation. Her cherry lips opened and the loudest screech that Christian had ever heard in his life came out of her tiny lungs. “Go away! No want book! Want— Arrgghh!”

As Christian shook his head to clear his ears, Bernie stopped scaling the baby gate and plopped on the floor, the stress of not getting what she wanted far too great for her two-year-old tolerance. “Arrgghh!”

“Bernie! Stop that!” Beth Ann barked from across the hall. The sound of her mother’s voice was enough to bring Bernie out of her tantrum and she looked at him with a resentful gaze. Then her bottom lip quivered and her baby blues pooled with tears the size of Arizona raindrops in the summer.

“I’m right here,” Beth Ann called, her voice so soothing Christian felt his own tension slip away from his spine. “I’ll be right with you, Bernie-Bern-Bern. Nana’s almost done.”

“Mommmmy!” The wail was heartbreaking, full of genuine emotion and distress. The tears spilled over and Bernie peered at Christian. At that moment she looked so much like Caroline that Christian’s heart stopped. He bent down, staring intently into her eyes, then picked her up to hold her at arm’s length so he could study her features more closely. Bernie was so startled by his movements she stared back at him, almost in awe. It took only a second for her to decide she was having none of this either. She started to thrash, madder now she was off the ground. He studied her face, the resemblance now gone, and wondered if he’d only imagined it.

“Thank you,” Beth Ann said quickly coming back, hopping over the baby gate, holding her arms out, almost snatching Bernie from him. “I’ll take her now.”

“Mommy!” Bernie uttered with relief and gave Christian a baleful glance as she clung to Beth Ann’s neck.

Christian was shaken. Why would he see Caroline in this child? Why?

CHAPTER TWO

BETH ANN CLASPED the small body next to hers, trying to calm the beating of her own heart. She knew the panic was caused by the image of Christian holding the squalling Bernie. In two months, Bernie’s adoption would be final, but he didn’t know that and he wasn’t going to know that. She willed her heart to stop pounding. She was getting upset about nothing. There was nothing in his behavior that indicated he even knew Bernie was Caroline’s. Beth Ann hugged Bernie tighter until the toddler protested with a wiggle and another indignant yelp. Beth Ann relaxed her hold and then said in an overly bright tone, “Can I get you anything to drink? Coffee? Tea?”

Christian continued to stare at Bernie. And then he shook his head, “No, no thank you.” After a pause, he asked, “How’s, uh, Iris?”

“Grans is fine. I’ve given her a sedative, which puts her right to sleep. She’s had a busy day. Been up since four.” Beth Ann glanced at the clock, surprised it was only nine. “This is about the time she takes a nap.”

“Iris is your, er?”

“Have a seat,” she offered while Bernie clung to her neck. Beth Ann winced and shifted Bernie’s grip to her shirt. With one hand, she poured herself a cup of coffee, carrying it well away from Bernie.

She watched as Christian looked around and then sat, but only after meticulously picking an Oatie-O off the seat.

Beth Ann smiled nervously, putting her hand out to take the piece of cereal from him, and apologized. “Sorry. Professional hazard. They’re probably stuck to the bottom of your shoe as well.”

To his credit, he didn’t look, but merely grazed the hollow of her palm with his fingertips as he deposited the Oatie-O in her hand, which she tossed away before settling herself across the kitchen table from him. She pushed the coffee out of Bernie’s reach, then leaned over to grab Fluff and put him in her daughter’s hands.

“You sure I can’t get you any?”

Christian shook his head.

Self-consciously, she scooped four heaping teaspoons of sugar into her mug along with a generous splash of milk, left over from Bernie’s cereal. She caught him staring and grimaced. “I use it for the drug it is. I like the smell but hate the taste.” After a minute, she added, “Iris is Carrie’s grandmother.”

His elegantly arched eyebrow raised. “Caroline’s grandmother? Not yours?”

Beth Ann shook her head and looked outside with a small laugh. Iris was Carrie’s grandmother, Bernie was Carrie’s daughter and here she was sitting in her kitchen talking to Carrie’s husband, suddenly feeling responsible for all three of them.

“No, not mine,” she said softly. “We were half sisters. We had the same mother, different fathers. Iris is Carrie’s father’s mother.” Smiling, she asked, “So, what can we do for you?” Beth Ann tried to make her voice neutral, but it came out more chirpy than she intended. “It must be important if you couldn’t talk about it over the phone.” She tightened her hold on Bernie.

“Do you know what DirectTech is?” he finally asked, his tone slightly patronizing.

“It’s a software company,” Beth Ann replied. Her head was beginning to pound. She took a sip of coffee, and Bernie wriggled to get down. Beth Ann let her slip to the floor, where she immediately clambered to get up again.

“A software company we acquired eight years ago—”

“We?”

“My family’s business.”

Beth Ann looked at him warily and asked, “What exactly is your family’s business?”

“We acquire things.”

“Venture capitalists?”

He shrugged. “If you want to call it that. We invest in companies—or buy them—build them up, then sell them when the timing’s right.”

“Do you keep anything?”

“Some things. We have a couple of resort hotels that we’ve held for two generations.”

“Oh.” Beth Ann glanced down, suddenly noticing how grubby and rough her hands looked. Just yesterday she had tried a new painting technique she’d read about in Watercolor magazine and hadn’t been able to get the stains out from under her fingernails. She pushed her hands under the table and surveyed the kitchen, noticing its shabby appearance, and was thankful she had taken yesterday afternoon to clean the house from top to bottom. At least Bernie’s fingerprints weren’t prominently displayed on the door of the faded avocado-green refrigerator. She then looked up at Christian completely at a loss for something else to say.

The silence stretched between them. Christian stared at the two people across the table from him. Beth Ann stirred her coffee, tasted it and added another two scoops of sugar. She gave him a half smile before her gaze danced away. She kissed the top of Bernie’s unruly curls and then took another sip. He felt slightly uncomfortable, as if he were the cause of her silence. What was he supposed to do but tell her the truth? Why suddenly, sitting in this kitchen, did he feel a deep sense of embarrassment about what his family owned? His eyes followed her gaze, as she now stared at an old china cabinet stuffed full of paper, cards and envelopes. Lots and lots of mail. Much of it unopened, he realized.

He cleared his throat. “I was asking whether or not you were familiar with DirectTech.”

“Oh, yes.” She turned attentively toward him.

“It’s worth quite a bit these days.”

“And tomorrow it could be worth nothing,” Beth Ann replied.

Christian smiled and said politely, “That’s possible, but not likely. We don’t generally acquire duds.”

“So what does this have to do with me?”

He paused, wondering if she ever read her mail. He glanced back over to the cabinet. Apparently not. Then he said, “I’d like that coffee now.”

Beth Ann put Bernie down and headed to the coffeepot. Bernie followed, frowning at him as she went. He gave her a tentative smile. She scowled.

Beth Ann handed him a mug of coffee and then pushed the sugar in his direction. She gestured to the old refrigerator. “There’s milk in the fridge.”

Christian nodded his thanks and said, “I take it black.”

“After you drink that, you might want to reconsider,” she advised and sat down. She looked impatiently at the clock.

“Expecting someone?” he inquired.

“What?” Beth Ann asked, her cheeks flushing.

“You keep looking at the clock.”

Beth Ann turned away guiltily. She was wishing with all the power in her that Glenn would sprout wings and appear on her doorstep. Then she shook herself. Why couldn’t she face Carrie’s husband by herself? Why did she need reinforcements? He seemed to be a perfectly reasonable man. She should just let him say his piece. After all, he had to be in Napa for an important meeting. She perked up at the idea. Wouldn’t Glenn be impressed if she handled this on her own?

“I do have a friend coming,” Beth Ann admitted cautiously. “But you were telling me about DirectTech.”

“It’s hers.”

The words were spoken so softly Beth Ann didn’t think she heard him correctly. Beth Ann noticed him staring intently at Bernie who scowled back at him. As Bernie tried to climb onto her lap, her sharp elbows dug into Beth Ann’s thigh. “Ow. Uh, excuse me?” Beth Ann asked as she helped Bernie up.

“It’s hers.” He jerked his head toward Bernie.

“Bern’s?” She sucked in a deep breath. “What do you mean DirectTech is Bernie’s? You must mean you’ve brought Bernie the software. Well, thank you very much.” She flashed what she hoped was a friendly smile. “We certainly appreciate it and we’ll save it for when she’s keyboard literate.”

“Not the software,” he said, his voice abrupt. He took a sip of coffee and grimaced. “The company. It’s hers.”

“No.”

“Well, yes. Don’t you read your mail?”

“Yes, I read my mail.”

“Didn’t you get something from my attorney for Bernadette?”

Beth Ann searched her memory, and then remembered the fat envelope. “Bernie got something from a lawyer,” Beth Ann corrected him, her face growing hot from his scrutiny. “But I thought it was a hoax. Bernie’s much too young to receive mail. I tossed it.” She was lying. It was actually in a safe pile along with Bernie’s legal papers. She’d planned to have the lawyer handling Bernie’s adoption look over the document the next time she saw her.

“Do you always toss documents worth several million dollars?”

“Routinely,” Beth Ann said blithely, wondering if there was a way to buy more time. She didn’t need his involvement right now. She changed the subject and asked, “So why are you here? I’m sure it isn’t just to remind me to read my mail.”

“Call it idle curiosity,” he replied, his voice almost amused.

“About?”