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“Can I pick?”
Melissa brushed a curl off the little girl’s forehead. “I’m not ready to name them yet.”
What else was one supposed to say under the circumstances? Edmond wondered.“When are you due?” he asked.
“December,” she said. “If I can hold out that long.”
That exhausted his very short repertoire of small talk on the subject. Besides, in Edmond’s opinion, this was far from a light topic, since multiple pregnancies carried extra risks. “I hope this won’t endanger your health.”
“She’s being closely monitored.” The bearded man extended his hand. “I’m the groom’s uncle, Rod Vintner.”
“We’ve met before.” He shook hands with the man, who then solemnly did the same with Dawn. She giggled. “At the hospital.”
“Ah, that’s right.” The man nodded.
“Rod’s an anesthesiologist,” Melissa said to Dawn. “He puts patients to sleep while they’re in surgery.”
“And I’ll soon be sleeping myself, here at Casa Wiggins,” Rod announced. “I’m trading residences with the bride. She’s moving into the apartment Jack and I shared, and I’m taking her old room.”
“Ah.”
Don’t get ideas now that you’re living with my wife. Where had that notion come from? Edmond had no claim on Melissa. Besides, a positive aspect occurred to him. “I’m glad she’ll have an M.D. on hand.”
“I don’t deliver babies.” Rod waggled his eyebrows. “Come to think of it, I don’t make house calls, either.”
“But you’ll live here,” Dawn pointed out.
“You’re right,” Melissa said. “He can serve as the house physician.”
“Living together means we’ll all be one big happy family, and doctors don’t provide medical care to family members,” the man deadpanned.
“You wouldn’t help her?” Dawn demanded.
“Of course he would,” Melissa assured the child. “Rod’s joking.”
“It’s lucky his patients are asleep,” Dawn replied tartly. “’Cause his jokes aren’t funny.”
Edmond laughed at the unexpected jab. The man in the top hat clutched his side. “Ow! A direct hit.”
“I’m impressed,” Melissa said. “You have a wicked wit, Dawn.”
She took her aunt’s hand. “Will you sit with us?”
“Of course.”
“On that note, I have best man duties to attend to.” Rod patted his pocket, which presumably held the ring, and went to join an older man in a suit waiting beneath the arch.
“That must be the minister,” Edmond observed.
“He’s from Karen’s church.” Melissa glanced toward the kitchen door. “I’m supposed to be helping her with the food.”
“Isn’t the ceremony about to start?” The invitation said 2 p.m., and it was almost that now. The seats had been filling as they spoke. “If we wait any longer, we’ll be sitting on the window ledge.”
“You’re right.” Melissa led the way down the narrow aisle to three empty seats. The folding chairs, fitted with white covers, weren’t exactly comfortable, but Edmond found room to stretch his legs beneath the seat in front of him.
Being near Melissa was a treat. Just the musical sound of her voice calmed him. During their marriage, her nearness had filled the dark spaces in Edmond’s soul. With her, he hadn’t had to throw up protective walls. She’d understood him intuitively, which was why he’d expected her to understand that his vasectomy was a declaration of how strongly he felt about preserving their union.
She had a gift for nurturing, and he’d needed that. He still did. But she’d chosen motherhood over him.
Dawn, too, seemed to retain a bond with her. In the seat between them, the little girl hung on to her aunt as if she might disappear at any moment. In Dawn’s world, people vanished too often. The therapist Edmond had hired for her said she suffered from separation anxiety.
“You look like a princess,” Dawn told Melissa.
“So do you.” She fingered the little girl’s curls. “Who fixed your hair?”
“Grandma Isabel.” Nodding at Melissa’s bulge, she asked, “Who’s the daddy?”
That brought a flush to his ex-wife’s cheeks. “It’s a long story.”
“Can you make it shorter?”
“Sorry. Not now,” Melissa said gently. “Another time.”
Reluctantly, the little girl subsided. “Okay.”
Edmond hoped his niece wouldn’t demand that he explain. While he believed she was acquainted with the facts of procreation, artificial insemination seemed too intimate a subject for an uncle to describe.
“How’s your mommy?” Melissa asked.
Oh, damn. Edmond wished he’d had a chance to bring up his sister’s situation sooner. But before he could find the right words, Dawn blurted, “We visited Mommy in jail this morning. She’s scared.”
Nearby, several heads turned. “Barbara’s in jail?” Melissa regarded Edmond with concern.
“I’ll fill you in later.” Surely she would have read the articles in the newspaper about the robbery. However, the reports had misstated Barb’s last name as Greeley, although she and Simon had never married.
Melissa’s nod conveyed her understanding, and she directed her next question to Dawn. “Who are you staying with?”
“Grandma and Grandpa.”
“My father and stepmother, not Simon’s,” Edmond clarified. Simon’s parents—an ex-convict father whose whereabouts were unknown and an alcoholic mother with half a dozen children by assorted men—had no contact with Dawn.
“I’m glad you brought her with you.” Melissa reached across her niece to touch Edmond’s hand. “And that you’re here.”
So was he. All the same, he couldn’t resist teasing. “Glad I ignored your request?”
“Oh, Eddie, is it written somewhere that we’re forbidden to get everything we want?” Her wistfulness curled inside him.
The discovery that she, too, had regrets, or at least doubts, warmed him. “I’m beginning to think so,” he admitted.
He might have added more, but just then a handsome man in a dark suit joined Rod and the minister at the arch. Dawn stared, entranced. “Is that the groom? He could be a movie star.”
“That’s Jack,” Melissa confirmed. “He’s an obstetrician. The nurses at the hospital went into mourning when he got engaged to Anya.”
Jack beamed with happiness. He and Anya hadn’t had an easy relationship, Edmond knew, but overcoming obstacles had apparently bonded them all the more strongly.
Too bad it hadn’t worked that way with us.
A muscular fellow knelt by the boom box to change the recording. Tattoos peeked from beneath his shirt collar. “Who’s that?” Edmond asked.
“One of our housemates, Lucky Mendez, R.N.”
Dawn studied the man dubiously. “He’s a nurse?”
“Men can be nurses, too. He assists Dr. Cole Rattigan, the head of the men’s fertility program,” Melissa said, adding, “Also, he just earned a master’s degree in nursing administration.”
“What’s he plan to do with that?” Edmond asked.
“Hopefully stay in Safe Harbor, if the men’s fertility program expands, although that’s up in the air.” Melissa cast the fellow a sympathetic glance. “Otherwise he might have to find a position elsewhere.”
“My daddy had tattoos,” Dawn put in.
Melissa frowned. “Had, past tense?”
“He died about six months ago.” Edmond didn’t care to say anything more around his niece.
Dismay clouded Melissa’s expression. “I’ve missed a lot.”
“I’ve missed you,” Dawn said, and smiled when her aunt kissed the top of her head.
The music changed to a march. Conversations among the guests died out.
From the front hall, the younger flower girl entered. Clutching a bouquet, she strode up the aisle a little too fast for the music.
“Slow down, for Pete’s sake,” growled a bulldog of a man sitting on the aisle.
The girl—Amber, Edmond recalled—flinched and slowed. Her sister, following, scowled at the man from outside his range of vision.
Edmond raised an eyebrow questioningly at Melissa. Leaning close, she murmured, “That’s the girls’ stepfather. Vince Adams.”
“The billionaire.” A private equity investor, Vincent Adams was famous throughout Southern California for his business success and for his ruthlessness. He was also, Edmond had learned from the hospital administrator, considering donating millions of dollars to expand the men’s fertility program.
As the girls took places by the arch, a pretty young woman in a dress matching theirs marched up the aisle. “That’s Anya’s sister Sarah,” Melissa murmured. “Anya has a big family. They couldn’t all come, but they’re planning a reception in Colorado after the baby’s born.”
“How big a family?” Dawn whispered.
“She’s one of seven kids.”
“Wow.”
The music shifted to “Here Comes the Bride.” Anya entered from the hall on the arm of a distinguished older man, no doubt her father. Edmond wasn’t up on the latest fashions in wedding gowns, but this one was suitably white with a lot of lace. It skimmed Anya’s expanded midsection, a reminder that she was only a few months from delivering her own baby.
“Is everybody pregnant?” Dawn asked, a little too loudly. Nearby, several people chuckled. “I’m sorry.”
Noting her tense expression, Edmond leaned close. “It’s a fair question,” he whispered.
“Yes, this house is baby central,” Melissa said softly.
Dawn relaxed. The poor kid sometimes acted as if she carried the weight of the world, Edmond thought.
It was her parents’ job to protect her childhood. Too bad they’d failed. Who would protect her now?
* * *
TO MELISSA, JOY illuminated the familiar room. How Anya glowed as her father handed her to the groom. Judging by Jack’s grin, it took all his self-control not to hoist Anya in his arms and whisk her off to their secret honeymoon destination, which Melissa had discovered was Santa Catalina Island. Rod had mentioned it to Karen, who’d passed it on to Melissa. Secrets didn’t stay secret long in Casa Wiggins.
Located a little over twenty miles off the California coast, the island was noted for its old-fashioned charm and for ocean-related activities in its clear waters, including snorkeling and viewing undersea life from glass-bottom boats. Jack had arranged for them to stay at a romantic Victorian bed-and-breakfast with a view of the small-boat harbor in the town of Avalon.
How wonderful that the baby, whom they planned to name after both their grandmothers, would be born to such a loving pair. She was a lucky little girl.
A fluttery sensation alerted Melissa that her as-yet-nameless babies were stirring. Whenever she tried to focus on names for them, her mind went blank. Well, what was the rush?
Beneath the arch, Jack kept peeking at his bride, tuning out the minister. Anya gave him a poke, which restored him to the proper demeanor.
How comfortable they were with each other, Melissa reflected. Edmond’s and her ceremony had been more formal, although every bit as enchanting. Her father, a psychologist, and her mother, a high-school math teacher, had treated her to the wedding of her dreams. A hotel ballroom in Santa Monica, the coastal city where they’d lived, had provided a fairy-tale setting for soul mates embarking on a life together. Or so she’d believed.
She’d met Edmond in a coffee shop at UCLA, where she’d been earning her master’s degree in molecular biology and Edmond had been a law student. She’d admired his boldness in taking a seat at the table with her and her friends. He’d been a complete stranger but he’d teasingly claimed they kept running into each other. After she played along, they’d stayed to talk hours after her friends left. From then on, they’d gravitated to each other, a pair of intense high-achievers who shared many of the same political and social views. Their wedding day had been the happiest day of her life.
During her painful recovery from the divorce, friends had repeatedly advised her to throw her wedding album away, but Melissa couldn’t imagine sacrificing those memories. There was an especially lovely photo of her with the maid of honor, Edmond’s sister, Barbara, who’d bloomed with sixteen-year-old innocence.
Only a few months later, Barbara had run off to live with an ex-con. Despite Edmond’s protests, his normally stern father had refused to call the police. Edmond himself had tried hard to reach out to his sister, calling and dropping by her place, but Barbara had refused to talk and Simon had threatened him.
Why hadn’t her parents struggled harder to keep her? They could have brought charges against the man. As for Edmond, he’d taken his sister’s rejection hard, as if he’d failed her. Melissa suspected the situation had reinforced his conviction that he wasn’t cut out for parenthood. She’d soothed him as best she could, hoping that he’d heal. She’d learned the hard way that he hadn’t.
Now, Dawn’s mother was in jail. What crime had Barbara committed? How long would she be separated from her daughter?
While the minister expanded on the transformative power of marriage, Dawn wiggled in her seat. Edmond murmured to her—Melissa caught the words soon and food.
“Okay, Uncle Eddie.” Trustingly, Dawn rested her cheek on his arm.
A glaze of tears in his eyes might not seem remarkable, considering how many people cried at weddings. But to Melissa, they showed how much Edmond’s usually guarded heart was aching for this little girl. Was he finally discovering a paternal instinct?
These past three years, she’d pictured him enjoying his freedom, traveling abroad the way they used to. She’d fought painful images of him finding a woman who shared his tastes and his pleasures.
Instead, here he was, still single. Evidently he’d been tied up with family issues. He’d shouldered an unusual amount of responsibilities since his teen years, with his father frequently off driving long-distance truck routes and his reticent mother intimidated by her strong-willed daughter. Edmond’s efforts to help raise his sister had smashed head-on into her adolescent rebellion. No wonder he’d craved peace and quiet as an adult.
As Anya and Jack exchanged rings and said their vows, tears blurred Melissa’s own gaze. She and Edmond couldn’t go back to their wedding day eight years ago and make things come out differently. Yet today he was showing a different side of himself....
What an idiot she was! When she entered into this pregnancy, she’d been well aware that she couldn’t expect any man to love and care for her and her babies. Her longing for them had overwhelmed all other considerations.
