A Forever Kind of Family

Celeste Trivitt, his maternal grandmother, lived in France with her investment banker husband. She’d been devastated to hear of the accident that took her daughter’s life and immediately flew in for the funeral. Although she was happy to fuss over her grandson for a few days, she’d made it clear that her life was in Europe now. Oliver was lucky, she’d said to them more than once. He might have lost both of his parents, but he had Harper and Ryan to take care of him.

Quentin Trivitt, Oliver’s maternal grandfather and Celeste’s ex-husband, also came for the funeral—with his thirty-four-year-old wife, who was seven months pregnant with their first child. They’d said all the right things, expressing empathy for the “poor little boy” and his situation but at the same time making it clear that their focus was on their own yet-to-be-born child. They had no interest in raising a grandson, too.

On the other side, Oliver’s paternal grandparents were both living in an assisted-care facility in Greensboro. One of the attendants from the home had brought them to Charisma for the funeral and taken them right back again. Darren also had a sister, but neither Ryan nor Harper had ever met her and no one had known how to reach her to tell her about the passing of her brother and sister-in-law. Harper remembered Melissa telling her that Darren’s sister had been estranged from her family for a long time.

Harper pushed away from the table and carried her plate, with half of her meal still on it, to the counter. “Do you ever wonder...?”

Ryan began clearing the rest of the dishes. “What?”

She hesitated to say the words out loud, as if doing so might be disloyal to her friend, but she finally said, “If maybe Melissa and Darren should have chosen someone else to take care of Oliver?”

“Every day,” he told her.

“Really?”

He nodded. “But I figure they must have had their reasons for choosing us.”

“Maybe,” she allowed. “I’m just not sure I’m the right person to do this.”

“I have more than a few doubts about my suitability, too,” he said, surprising her with the acknowledgment. “But I’m not going to walk away without giving it my best shot.”

She squirted dish soap in the sink and turned on the faucet. “You think I want to walk away?”

“I don’t know—do you?”

She considered the question as she watched the sudsy water rise in the bowl. “Yes,” she finally admitted. “There is part of me that wants to do exactly that.”

“And another part?” he prompted.

Harper plunged her hands into the water and began to wash the pots. “We had a long talk when Melissa asked if I would be the baby’s guardian,” she said, not directly answering his question. “While she was pregnant, when he was still ‘the baby’ and not yet Oliver. I thought it was strange that she would be thinking about such things before her child was even born, but Melissa always did like to be prepared, to run her life according to a specific plan.”

“It’s a good thing she did,” Ryan said. “Because Darren wouldn’t know a plan if it bit him in the butt.”

She smiled at that. “True. Anyway, I asked her—why me? Aside from the fact that I was her best friend, what made her think I could ever be the right choice to help raise her child?”

Harper remembered every word of their conversation, could still hear the echo of her friend’s voice in the back of her mind so clearly that it made her chest ache and her throat burn.

“What did she say?” Ryan prompted gently.

“That she chose me because she knew if anything ever happened to her so that she couldn’t raise her child, I would love him as much as she did,” she confided. “And that’s the part that won’t let me walk away—the echo of Melissa’s voice in my mind, asking me to love her little boy for her. Because I already do.”

He touched a hand to her shoulder. “Then I’d say it’s obvious that she made the right choice.”

Harper still wasn’t convinced, but she knew that she wasn’t going to let down her friend. Not if she could help it.

* * *

Ryan considered it progress that he and Harper had actually managed to have a fifteen-minute conversation without sniping at one another. It was a minor step, and he knew they were going to have to do a lot better than that if they were going to figure out a way to make this guardianship situation work for Oliver, but at least it was a step in the right direction.

Considering that he’d known her for so many years, he really didn’t know her at all. And maybe that was his fault. He’d never made much of an effort, because it had seemed like too much of an effort.

The first time he’d met her, he’d been willing to consider all kinds of possibilities. Darren had assured him that it wasn’t a setup; it was just his girlfriend wanting his best friend to meet her best friend. And since Ryan liked Melissa well enough, he’d figured he’d like her friend, too.

And he had. Harper was attractive—even more so than he’d hoped. About five-five, he’d guessed, with brown hair and dark chocolate-colored eyes. She was a little on the skinny side, but her perfectly shaped lips enticed him to hang on to her every word.

They’d talked about college: she was studying journalism at NYU and hoped to work in television; he was in his final year of business at Columbia. She’d asked about his future plans, he’d said that he didn’t have any specific plans, and she’d shut down.

It wasn’t exactly the truth—he’d always known that he would go to work at Garrett Furniture, but he’d learned to be cautious about revealing his connection to the company. Too many women wanted to be with him because he was a Garrett and heir to at least part of the furniture empire of the same name.

Harper had decided then and there that he lacked ambition. Later, when she found out that he was one of the Garretts, the information had done nothing to bolster her opinion of him. In fact, she’d insisted that it only proved he was too lazy to make his own way outside the family business. He didn’t care what she thought—he liked what he did and enjoyed being part of the continued success of the company his grandfather had built.

Yet despite the obvious personality conflicts between Harper and himself, there was an undeniable sizzle in the air whenever they were together. It had been there from the start and was still there. Even when one or the other—or both—had been dating someone else, the air fairly vibrated with electricity between them. It was a phenomenon that he found as baffling as it was intriguing.

Not that he’d had any intention of ever acting upon it. Especially considering that Harper had always given a clear and unequivocal hands-off vibe...right up until the night that she’d begged him to put his hands on her.

And that was definitely not something that he should be thinking about now.

Going forward, he had to keep his focus on Oliver and not let himself be distracted by the memory of Harper’s warm, naked body wrapped around his.

“You are doing a great job with Oliver,” he said now, as he helped load the dishwasher. “But between your work schedule and the demands of a grieving infant, it’s obvious that you’re exhausted.”

“I’m so flattered that you noticed.”

His brow lifted in response to her sarcasm. “I’m dragging, too, and I’m only working part-time right now.”

“Part-time isn’t an option for me.”

“Then maybe you should think about taking some time off.”

“I did think about it,” she said bluntly. “I can’t.”

He pressed on anyway. “You went back to work only days after the funeral—when did you think about it?”

“In the time between learning about the accident and returning to work,” she told him. “I would have taken more time if I could, but there’s too much going on with the show right now. In fact, we’ve got Lucy Gibbs on the schedule for tomorrow morning, so I have to go in half an hour earlier because she likes to review all of the questions with me beforehand.”

“She can’t do that with someone else?”

“The last time she was on the show and I wasn’t there, she bullied and harassed one of our production assistants to the point that he almost quit.”

“She sounds charming,” he said drily.

She shrugged. “It doesn’t matter that she’s a prima donna when her name is money at the box office.”

“If you’re going in early, will you be able to leave early?”

“I’m going to try,” she said. “But there were a couple of day-care centers that I wanted to check out on my way back.”

He frowned. “You want to put Oliver in day care?”

“I don’t see that we have any choice.” She neatly folded the dishcloth and draped it over the towel bar inside the cupboard.

“Don’t you think we should talk about this—to see if we can’t figure something else out? For God’s sake, Harper, the kid just lost both of his parents and you want to abdicate responsibility for his care to strangers?”

“It’s not what I want. It’s what the reality of the situation demands.” She braced her hands on the edge of the counter behind her and faced him. “I don’t have the luxury of working for a company owned by my family,” she told him. “If I don’t go to work, I don’t get paid.”

“If the issue is money, I’ll pay—”

“No.” She cut him off sharply. “It’s not only about money.”

“I know how important your career is to you,” he said.

But Harper didn’t think he did. Because her career was more than important—it was what defined her.

She’d started as an assistant to the property manager at WNCC-TV fresh out of college and worked her way through the ranks to become an associate producer of the award-winning morning program Coffee Time with Caroline. In the process, she’d sacrificed weekends and vacations, missed get-togethers with friends, turned down more offers for dates than she’d accepted—and then skipped out early on at least half of those that she’d accepted.

Ryan, on the other hand, had been born a Garrett. He’d never had to make any sacrifices to secure his job at Garrett Furniture. Maybe he hadn’t started out as national sales manager of the company, but there hadn’t been a lot of obstacles in his path to the big office.

He didn’t have to worry that taking a few weeks off might jeopardize his position, but Harper knew that a leave of absence—even in the short term—could completely derail her career.

“I just don’t think we should rush into anything,” he continued, his tone conciliatory.

But she’d learned the hard way that if she didn’t take action, things didn’t get done. “How much longer should we wait? Another couple of weeks? A month?”

“More than three weeks,” he retorted.

She forced herself to take a deep breath before their discussion escalated into a full-blown argument. “I did some research and made some phone calls. I’m not suggesting we drop him off somewhere first thing tomorrow morning.”

He nodded slowly as he wiped Oliver’s hands and face. “What day cares are you considering?”

That he asked suggested that he might come around on the issue, and because she needed his cooperation to make it work, she answered in an equally careful tone. “First Steps and Wee Watch are the only ones that are on the short list so far. Little Hands looked good, too, but its location isn’t convenient for either of us.”

“Andrew’s daughter, Maura, went to Wee Watch.”

“So that would be your choice?”

“My choice would be to figure out a way to coordinate our schedules so that Oliver doesn’t have to go to day care.”

She folded her arms over her chest. “Well, I work every day from six a.m. until noon, sometimes with production meetings afterward. Can you work your schedule around that?”

“Do you understand the word compromise?”

“Yes, I do. But I’m not willing to compromise my job.”

“I’m not asking you to. I’m only asking you to pause to take a breath, to give all of us—and especially Oliver—some time to come to terms with everything that’s happened.”

“That sounds great in theory, but the last three weeks have been complete chaos and I need to get things settled and get my life back on track.”

“Do you really think anyone at work needs you more than this little boy—” he picked Oliver up out of his high chair “—does right now?”

“No—but at least at the studio, I know what I’m doing.”

It wasn’t something she’d planned to admit, especially not to Ryan. But the truth was, even after only three weeks, it was apparent that he was much more comfortable with Oliver and much better at anticipating the little boy’s needs than she was, making her feel not just inept but dependent on him.

And that was why she needed to focus on her work: because it was the only place right now that she felt competent and in control. When she was with Oliver and Ryan, she felt overwhelmed and helpless and all kinds of other emotions she wasn’t ready to acknowledge, much less put a label on.

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