SUSAN MEIER - Oh, Babies!

Remembering her own shock at being told in Arnie Garrett’s letter that Angela had had triplets with someone from a different generation, Kristen couldn’t even speculate on the Brewster brothers’ reaction. How would the grown children of an elderly man take the news that they had infant siblings? Surely they didn’t rejoice. Second families were always a little hard to take and with the addition of more people into this particular bloodline, the Brewsters would also have to share their inheritance. Nine chances out of ten, they’d been angry with their father—probably furious—when these children were born. And now they were forced to raise the same kids whose very existence had cut their net worths in half.

“Do you resent these kids?” she blurted into the quiet room, too appalled that the Brewsters might mistreat the babies to think clearly, but simultaneously regretting being nosy. Recognizing she had to somehow cover that slip, she added, “Your father must have married a woman a lot younger than he was to have babies. So, you couldn’t have been happy.”

Still not opening his eyes, Grant said, “Mrs. Romani filled your head with the village gossip, I see.”

“She didn’t say anything,” Kristen said, then paused, realizing it was true. The only thing that had really concerned Mrs. Romani was that Kristen understood Grant Brewster wasn’t an easy man to get along with. From his blunt assumption, she was beginning to see why. “I’m just curious.”

“All right,” he said. Sighing heavily, he opened his eyes and faced her, never once jostling or disturbing the baby he was feeding. “You’re going to hear it eventually anyway, so I’ll tell you that I wasn’t pleased when my father remarried two months after my mother died. I threw a fit, left town, dragged my brothers with me and didn’t return until my father died.”

Kristen heard the remorse that resonated through the last part, the part about his father, and she felt guilty for asking. Obviously Norm had married Angela to help the Morris family regain control of their ranch. If he hadn’t explained that to his sons, though, it sounded as if that was because they hadn’t given him a chance.

Unfortunately she also couldn’t explain to Grant Brewster that his father had married her sister because the Morrises were about to lose their family home. When her father and uncle were killed together in an airplane accident, the property reverted to a childless aunt, who didn’t know how to bequeath it. So, in her will she’d stipulated that the first Morris to have a child inherited the ranch, provided he or she agreed to live there with that child. But when Aunt Paige died, Morrises came out of the woodwork, each claiming he was the rightful heir, forcing Angela, Kristen and a handful of California relatives to prove they were the only people with a direct line to the property.

But one of them still had to have a child to claim it. If Norm Brewster married her sister and immediately made her pregnant, Kristen could only assume he’d done it as a kindness.

She couldn’t reveal all this to Grant Brewster because if she went into that kind of detail with him, no matter how speculatively, she would give herself away. But she would explain. Soon. And when she did, Grant Brewster could forgive himself.

“I’m sorry I asked,” Kristen said, intending to change the subject. “It’s really none of my business.”

“No, it’s fine,” Grant insisted coolly. “This is a conversation we needed to get out of the way. It is unusual for grown men to have baby siblings. If you were curious, I can understand why.”

The quiet tone of his voice filled her with compassion. She could tell that beneath his very calm, composed demeanor was a suffering man. Sensitive to his need for comforting in a way she’d never been with anyone before, she nestled Annie closer as she said, “If it’s any consolation, I know a thing or two about loss.”

She hesitated, torn, but decided she owed Grant something since she reopened wounds better left closed. If nothing else she could let him know he wasn’t alone in the world. “My husband died a little over a year ago, my sister a few months later.”

He glanced at her. “I’m sorry. My parents died two years apart, so I had some time to adjust. Your situation must have been terrible.”

“It was,” Kristen said, suddenly realizing how desperate she was to talk with someone who would understand the way she knew this man would understand. But talking about Angela with a Brewster would be courting trouble and discussing losing her husband was still too painful, too personal to discuss.

“But everybody has his or her cross to bear.”

Grant nodded. “Funny how we thought these kids were going to be something like a cross to bear and they ended up being the best thing that ever happened to us.”

Smiling softly as she looked at the big, dark man cuddling the tiny child, Kristen nodded. “I can see that.”

“So that must be why you came looking for Mrs. Romani?” Grant asked, still gazing at his suckling baby.

Kristen’s brow puckered. “Excuse me?”

“Losing your sister and your husband must have been what prompted you to come looking for Mrs. Romani.”

Catching on to what he was saying, Kristen let the sentence swirl around in her head long enough for her to realize half of it was true—or the essence of it was true—and it didn’t complicate things to admit it. “Yes. It was my sister’s death that brought me here,” she said carefully.

“So you’re not close to Mrs. Romani?” Grant asked.

She shook her head. “No, we’re not close at all.”

He caught her gaze. “She didn’t raise you or anything like that?”

This time Kristen giggled. “No, Mr. Worrywart, she did not raise me.”

If anyone else had laughed at him and called him Mr. Worrywart, Grant would have definitely taken offense. Since it was Kristen, and since they were cuddling babies and sharing their very private, painful backgrounds with each other, Grant not only didn’t take offense, but he actually chuckled.

“I’m sorry, but my dislike for Mrs. Romani is such common knowledge around here that I sometimes forget most normal people don’t behave like this.”

“Why don’t you like her?”

Grant considered that. “It isn’t so much that I don’t like her. It’s more that she has an annoying habit of trying to control everything or run everybody’s life, or something.”

“She said approximately the same thing about you.”

He peered at her. “Really?”

“Yeah, she said you like to be the boss, you try to run everybody’s life and you always have to have your own way. So, she confronts you to more or less keep everything balanced.”

“Really?” he asked curiously.

“She doesn’t dislike you. I think she sees her belligerence as more self-defense than anything else. She doesn’t want to get swept up in the tidal wave. She sees you as being very…powerful, and not afraid to use that power.”

Carefully maneuvering the baby he held, Grant freed his right hand so he could rub it across the back of his neck. He didn’t know why it felt so good or so right to talk with this woman—actually, to confide in her as he’d never confided to anyone in his life—but it did. And he was too tired to fight it.

“I’m responsible for the lives of three babies, two brothers and now the wives of two brothers. We own the mill that employs fifty percent of the people in this county, and I’m putting in a shopping mall that will employ another thirty percent when it’s up and running. If all goes well, my construction company will pick up everybody who is left and even some people from surrounding counties. I don’t have time to stop and consider everybody’s feelings and everybody’s opinion.”