A Mother's Love (2 page)

A
S THE PLANE CIRCLED
Cardiff, on the southern coast of Wales, Kyra peered out the airplane window. They had flown above the clouds from London and now came out of them again, shaking suddenly free of the muffling cotton to see a world as mystical-looking as a fairy tale. So green—especially in contrast to the high-altitude grasslands of Denver that she'd left behind. Mossy green hills rolled across the landscape, dotted with lone cottages and a ruin here, a flock of animals there. The drizzling gray weather gave it a moody aspect that lifted Kyra's spirits. People never believed her when she said a person could get sick of sunshine, but it was true.

There had been a layover at Heathrow Airport, where Kyra had washed her face and combed her hair, but she still felt the grime of travel clinging to her skin as she walked down the concourse. She hadn't thought to ask what Dylan Jones looked like or even how old he was, and she found herself holding up her chin self-consciously, trying not to look too hard at the waiting faces.

Trying to scope things out with her peripheral vision, she spied a pale man in a soldier's uniform—Africa's husband had been a soldier—but he looked right through her. A man with the good looks of a film star waited at the edge of the crowd, twisting a cap in his hands. His gaze moved right
over her, too, and Kyra felt a rippling of nervousness. Hitching her bag on her shoulder, she tried to appear as if she knew what she was doing. Around her, lovers flew into each other's arms. Families swirled into welcoming knots. It occurred to her that she'd never had anyone meet her at an airport except Africa.

Don't go there,
she said firmly to herself. There would be time to grieve later. Right now it was a cool head and a sensible attitude that were required.

But wouldn't it be nice,
a voice whispered as she watched the embraces all around her,
to have someone who would always be there?

A little girl screeched, “Daddy!” Kyra glanced around to see who the child was so overjoyed to see.

And then she saw a man of about her own age, with wavy black hair that was just a hint too long. He wore an ancient leather bomber jacket with what she thought might be real World War II patches on the shoulders. His jaw was slightly unshaved, his eyes so blue she could see the color from ten feet away. The little girl ran right by him to another man with a shorn head, but Kyra's gaze was snared on the man in the bomber jacket.

She knew him from somewhere. With a frown, she struggled to pull the memory into focus, but nothing gelled. He was the kind of man you couldn't help looking at a second time, as much for the air of the rare and slightly aloof as for the fit of his very well-worn jeans.

He caught sight of her, and a quizzical expression touched his mouth. One eyebrow lifted, and before Kyra could return anything at all, he started toward her.

Great,
Kyra thought.
Just great.
This would be the man with the enchanting voice, wouldn't it? Of course. Just her
type—and just the type she knew she had to leave alone. Only twice in her life had Kyra fallen in love. Both times with men who radiated this very same lost-soul charm. Both times her heart had been shattered.

Not this time. Pulling her shoulder blades down her back to straighten her spine, she took a long, slow breath and let it go, adroitly assembling her defenses.

“Ms. Tierney?” he said in that slightly raspy, utterly devastating accent.

A scent of sea and rain came from him, and it made her feel slightly disoriented. “I take it you're Mr. Jones.”

He smiled, held out a hand. “Dylan.”

It would have been rude not to shake his hand, so Kyra extended her own and crisply pressed her cold hand into his very hot, solid palm, then let go as fast as decently possible. “Please call me Kyra.”

He stood there for a moment, a frown between his brows. “Have we met?”

“We must have. You look familiar to me, too.”

“I can't think where it would have been,” he said, then shook his head. “Never mind. It'll come to us. Do you have bags?”

She shook her head, which again made her feel vaguely dizzy. She pressed her fingers to her temples. “Just this,” she said, pointing to the rolling carry-on she'd brought with her.

“I hope you brought some warmer things.” He eyed the long-sleeved T-shirt she wore, the sleeves printed with Sanskrit characters.

“Not a lot warmer. It's summer. I didn't think—”

“Never mind. You're as jet-lagged as I've ever seen anyone. Let's get you something to eat and a warm bed, shall we? Everything else will wait until morning.”

Kyra wanted to weep with gratitude but managed to just nod. “Is it far?”

“A bit of a drive. A couple of hours. Will you eat something first?”

Again she nodded, suddenly overwhelmed. “Yes, please.”

 

D
YLAN CLEARED THE
city before he stopped for tea at a roadside café. The rain, which had been drizzling all the livelong day, now began to pour in earnest, and even the fastest setting on the wipers couldn't clear the windscreen. The shop was housed in a white cottage with a window box full of sodden petunias and a puddle of water on the pavement before the door. “Mind your step,” he said, holding the umbrella over Kyra's dark head.

She wasn't at all what he'd expected, nothing at all like the airy, blond Africa, who'd been wispy and strange. Kyra was tall and, yes, thin, but with the athletic solidness of a horsewoman. The hair was a wonder, curly and long and dark, barely tamed in a ponytail. She shivered a little as they headed into the shop, crossing her arms over her chest.

“Let's get you some tea, shall we?”

He ordered a pot of tea with milk from the gray-haired woman who ran the place. She brought the tea and cups along with two menus. “Not fit for man or beast out there,” she said. “We've a nice lamb stew today.”

Dylan winked at her. “Thanks, love.”

Kyra smiled at her. “Thank you.” She bent her head over the menu, blinking.

Pretty,
he thought. The long eyelashes and freshly scrubbed face, the smooth skin. He knew she and Africa had gone to school together, which would make her his own age—late thirties—but she looked about twenty-five. A
long-forgotten stir moved at the base of his ribs. He scowled, forcing himself to look at the menu.

It was small but hearty, filled with soups and stews and quiches. “I'd recommend the ham.”

“I'm sure it's delicious, but I'm not really a meat eater.” She raised one shoulder apologetically. “I think I'm going to give the quiche a try—we don't often see them with peas.”

“Don't eat meat at all? No fish, either?”

“No. I mean, I'm not going to be rude about it, so don't worry about that.”

“I wasn't worried.” He realized that he was waiting for her to meet his eyes, and she still had not. She put down the menu and busied herself admiring the lace of the curtain at her elbow. “It's just hard to fathom, that's all. Don't you miss it?”

“Not really. It's been a long time.”

The woman came back and took their order, laughing in her bosomy way. When she bustled away, Dylan pointed to the steeping pot. “Shall I pour for us?”

“Um, sure.”

“Tea will be just the thing on such a grim day. Nothing tea can't cure, you know.”

She still didn't look directly at him, but the edges of a smile caught her lips. “So I've heard.”

“Have you traveled to Britain before?” Tea the color of the earth came from the spout of the utilitarian steel pot.

“No. I haven't been many places at all, honestly. Africa was the one who traipsed all over.”

He'd get back to that, but she looked about to keel over. “Sugar? Or have you given that up, too?”

“Not at all.” At last she looked at him. Her eyes were quite
large, a ferny pale green, and there was the faintest glint of amusement in them. “Is sugar traditional in tea?”

Dylan didn't kid himself. He knew women liked him, his slight air of danger, and he let them fuss and try to bring him in, heal him and feed him like some lost dog. But it was rare that he glimpsed such straightforward, levelheaded earnestness, and he felt a tiny hook catch his chest. “Sugar and milk,” he said, stirring it in. “Not cream, which is too thick for tea.” He passed it to her. “Try that.”

She bent and inhaled the steam, then took a gingerly sip. “Oh, that's wonderful.”

“Aye.” He sipped his own, sugarless but milky. “So you left the traveling to Africa, did you?”

“Not on purpose, exactly. Someone had to run things, and I seem to be good at that. How about you—how do you know everyone?”

“Thomas was my best friend since we were boys.” A thick sense of loss filled his throat, and he blinked hard, looking out the window to the sheeting rain. She said nothing, and after a moment he cleared his throat. “Sorry. It's been hard.”

She nodded, carefully skirting the loss once again. “Are you a soldier, too?”

“No. Engineer. I've worked on bridges and roads mainly, but since I've been back in Wales it's been office buildings and the like.” Not that he loved it these days.

The food arrived, hearty and solid. “Eat up, Kyra. You'll need it.”

“You say that as if there's something dire ahead.”

He gave her a slight smile. “Well, you've yet to meet my mother.”

Kyra widened her eyes. “What does that mean? Will she hate me?”

“She loves the baby and she's fierce, that's all.”

Kyra absorbed that, tucking into her quiche. “All I can do is my best.”

“True enough.”

 

T
HEIR DRIVE TOOK THEM
along the sea, gray and roiling in the dark day, and Kyra found it easy to just watch the turmoil and let it carry her away from herself. Next to her, Dylan didn't seem inclined to chatter or fill every small silence with a commentary. “Do you want the radio?” he asked at one point.

“It's up to you.”

“Then, if the quiet doesn't bother you, I'll leave it off.”

She nodded. The road was thin and curving, and she thought of Thomas and Africa. Skittered away.

When they hit the edges of a village, Dylan said, “There's not much here, but I've booked you into a bed-and-breakfast. The beach is close and you can walk to it. I'll have to come get you to see the baby, who is with my mother. Do you want to sleep first?”

“No, I want to see the baby first, please.”

The baby
they called her, so anonymously. She had no name, and for some reason that broke Kyra's heart. “Is she all right?”

“Right as rain. Me mum's spoiling her.” He pulled off onto a dirt track that led through fields to a cottage sitting forlornly on a bluff over the sea. It was sturdy and square, with shutters that could be pulled over the windows and roses growing up the wall facing away from the sea.

“How pretty,” she said.

The door was opened by a woman as sturdy and sensible-looking as the cottage. Her dark gray hair was pulled back
from her face, and spectacles dominated a round face that had not a single wrinkle despite what must be seventy years. She took Kyra's measure.

Dylan said, “Mum, this is Kyra. Kyra, Emma Jones.”

“How do you do?”

“Come in, then, won't you?”

Under that gaze, Kyra felt foolish and inept. As if to deliver what the woman expected, she tripped over a rug on her way in and banged into a table, sending things rocking, though nothing actually fell. “Sorry,” she murmured.

“I guess you want to see the baby.”

“Yes, please.”

“This way.”

The infant lay in an old handcrafted cradle made of wood, with high wooden sides and a heart cutout at either end. Kyra felt an odd plucking sweetness move through her at the sight of it, sitting against the cottage wall covered with faded wallpaper from another era.

“It's all right,” Dylan said, and his lean hand pressed briefly into her shoulder blade, as if to give her courage.

Courage. She had never had a child of her own, had never been much around babies or little siblings. She had never babysat for pocket money. Hidden below the high edge of the cradle was a being Kyra understood would transform her life entirely, and her heart thudded against her breastbone as if she were about to leap from a cliff or stick her hand into a nest of snakes.

It was only a baby. Kyra took the last step and peeked into the interior. At first, all she could make out was a froth of blankets, layers and layers of thin blankets knitted in ice-cream-sundae colors—strawberry-pink and berry-blue and pale vanilla-yellow. It was warm in the room. The baby had
to be sweltering, and impulsively she reached to peel a layer or two back. Dylan's mother made a sound, quickly swallowed. Kyra didn't look around, but she suspected it was because Dylan had held up a hand or otherwise stilled her.

Beneath the blankets was a tiny body, a tiny hand with tiny fingers lying in a loose fist beside her flushed little face. A wave of something moved in Kyra's heart, a sweep of emotions, the loss of Africa and the sorrow that the mother would never see the daughter, the daughter would never know the vivid presence of the mother who had given her life and, looping through that, a sense of wonder woven around the rest like a cord of light.

“She's beautiful!” Kyra whispered, reaching one finger out to brush the baby's red cheek. “And she has so much hair!” She touched the black curls, found them as airy as dandelion fluff.

“You're going to wake her if you keep that up,” Dylan's mother said.

Kyra drew her hand back quickly. “Sorry. It's not usual to have so much hair, is it?”

“It's all right, lass,” Dylan said, coming up next to her. “She'll need to meet her mother, now, won't she?”