A Mother's Love (3 page)

A wave of terror and excitement struck the back of Kyra's throat. “I
am
her mother, aren't I?” Airlessly she looked back at the sleeping girl.

And true to Dylan's mother's predictions, the baby suddenly mewled and opened her eyes.

“Didn't I tell you?” Emma Jones rushed forward, not gently nudging Kyra aside. “You've gone and woken her.”

“Mother.” Dylan's voice was calm and low. “Let's leave them to meet in private.”

“Does she even know how to pick up a baby?”

“I don't,” Kyra admitted, and she wanted to apologize for everything she didn't know, even the simplest, most basic things, like this—how to pick up Africa's daughter, how to calm her, how to change her diaper.

“It's not so hard,” Dylan said. “I'll show you.”

He bent over the cradle and gathered the small bundle of girl into his hands. His thumbs were long and tan against the baby's porcelain-white skin. “You brace her beneath her head, you see?” He moved close to Kyra, who raised a hand to brace that small head and accept the rest of her, too, which was much more solid and
squirmy
than Kyra was prepared for. It took a second to find the right hold, and the baby startled, arms flying out in terror, and burst into a loud, heartbroken yowl.

Kyra froze, holding the baby up a little. “What do I do?”

“She just got a little scared, nothing to worry about,” Dylan said over the crying. “Pull her close to you, against your chest. It will make her feel safe to be cradled against you.”

The crying turned to a particularly piercing scream, and the baby's face turned red, feet pumping, arms flailing, and Kyra could barely breathe for her terror. She did her best to bring the baby close against her, feeling her small bottom snuggle in against her elbow, the little feet pumping against her lower ribs. “Shh, little one,” she said quietly. “It's okay. You're safe.”

Still the baby howled.

“Bounce a little,” Dylan suggested.

Kyra moved her arms awkwardly, feeling utterly inept and lost as the baby's arms flew around, the tiny fist railing against the unfairness. “It's okay, honey. It's okay.” The baby turned her head suddenly and began to root at Kyra's
breast, mouth opening and closing in a manner that was unmistakable. Kyra blushed.

“She's hungry. I'll get her a bottle.” Dylan touched Kyra's arm as he went by, squeezing it just above the elbow. “You're doing fine, Kyra.”

Behind her, Kyra felt the bristling judgment of Dylan's mother, headed toward her like iron filings to a magnet, dark and pointed but ultimately harmless. Drawing in a breath to steady herself, she jostled the baby and murmured soft things, and the baby cried on and on, turning to root at the breast, then roar out complaint.

She was heavy and strong, Kyra thought in some wonder. A fighter, filled with passion, like her mother. In her face Kyra could see Africa—in her rosebud of a mouth, the lower lip so full and pouty; in the extraordinary length of her eyelashes, spiked together with tears. The black curls must come from her father.

“Here, lovely, come sit down,” Dylan said, carrying a bottle. “The more comfortable you are, the more she will be.”

Kyra sat in the rocking chair and took the bottle. “I have what you want now,” she said. Instinctively holding the baby close to her breast in the position she would take if she were nursing, she offered the bottle. The baby latched on eagerly, sucking greedily. After a moment, a low noise of satisfaction came out of her, an animal noise of pleasure. Kyra chuckled. “That's it, sweetie,” she said.

The baby opened her eyes. It was hard to tell the color, but they were light and direct, and she arrowed right in on Kyra's face. Something hot and rich pierced her chest, and Kyra said, “Hello, my sweet.”

The baby paused for one second, mouth opening slightly
around the nipple as she stared upward as if surprised to see this face in front of her. For a long moment she peered at Kyra nearsightedly. “I'm happy to meet you,” Kyra murmured, touching the girl's cheek. “What's your name, sweetheart?”

The baby went back to gobbling her bottle, grunting like a piglet.

“She must recognize your voice,” Dylan said.

“Maybe.” Africa had visited Kyra many times during her pregnancy, exploring the possibility of living in the UK or the United States. She hadn't been sure where they would go after Thomas finished his tour of duty as a soldier.

Suddenly Kyra knew what they should call the baby. “Her name is Amanda Thomasina,” she said. “Amanda for her mother. Thomasina for her father.”

K
YRA AWAKENED INTO
the faintest dawn peeking around the windows. For a long, disoriented moment she had absolutely no idea where she was—lying under a thick feather duvet beneath the sloping walls of an upper-story bedroom. Two dormer windows leaked the gray light around their curtains. Some kind of bird she didn't recognize twittered outside, and there was a faint, almost imperceptible sound in the distance.

The sea!

She jumped out of bed and flung open the curtains—and there it was, the ocean. Choppy and foamy as it roared into the beach, making its way around craggy rocks. A low sky held the sound close to the earth.

Kyra glanced at the clock—it was not yet five-thirty, and there was already so much light! The surprisingly young woman who ran the hotel had said that there would be breakfast starting at seven, and Dylan would come for her at eight-thirty. Plenty of time.

She rushed through her ablutions, brushing teeth, splashing water on her face and tossing on her yoga clothes and the lone sweater she'd brought with her. The yoga mat had had to be folded to fit into a carry-on, and she tugged it out and rolled it properly, tucking it under her arm. There were
bottles of water by the door, and she nabbed one to carry with her as she quietly let herself out of the room, then quietly made her way down the winding stairs and out the door to the day.

The beach was just behind the house, reached by a well-worn path through low-growing succulents Kyra didn't recognize. Long ago, her family had gone to the ocean for their one and only vacation, and she'd fallen in love with it. With the sand and the smell of brine and the whispering dampness of the air over her skin. The last day, as they'd driven away, Kyra had promised herself she would find a way back to it one day.

It was a promise she'd not done very well in keeping. But now she was here, slipping and sliding in the sand, her yoga mat under her arm. She was alone except for a seagull wheeling around on wind currents.

When she reached the edge of the water, Kyra felt a fierce joy unfold in her chest, and she paused to let it fill her up, leak into her limbs and rise to her brain, illuminating her whole body. How could she have taken such a long time to honor her promise to her little-girl self?

Never mind. She was here now.

Here. Now.

 

“S
HE DOESN'T KNOW A
blithering thing about babies,” Dylan's mother said, wrapped efficiently in a workaday apron that protected her enormous bosom. “How in the world does she imagine to raise her?”

Dylan held the baby—Amanda, he reminded himself—and gave her a bottle. She paused a moment and farted smartly into his palm. He chuckled. “She'll learn, Mother. Give her a little time.”

“I don't know how she can take this wee thing all the way to America.”

“They have babies in America. And it's not like they're going on a steamship over the frigid Atlantic.”

“Some women are just not meant to be mothers, you know.” She scoured a pan, elbows pumping. “The woman is near to forty and never had any children of her own—you'd think if it mattered to her, she would have done by now.”

“You don't know her story,” Dylan said patiently. “Maybe she's a widow or she can't have children of her own.”

Emma turned, fixing her bespectacled gaze on him. “Oh, you're defending her awfully fast. You sweet on her?”

“Don't be ridiculous.”

She tsked and pulled the stopper from the drain, wiping counters with vigor, as if to scrub away the possibility of any life but her own vision of what it should be. “No good will come of it,” she said darkly. “Strangers bring nothing but trouble, as you well know.”

The dart landed true, squarely in his throat. Seven years ago he'd fallen in love with a stranger, a tall redheaded engineer who'd come to town to work on a new wharf. Maeve had blown into his world like an exotic wind, full of energy and light and music and vividness, and he'd fallen in helpless delight. She'd fallen, too, and they'd been engaged to be married.

She left him at the altar, the most humiliating moments of his life, standing at the old village church with his family and friends waiting for a bride who never arrived. She sent a letter from London a few days later, tear-stained and full of abject apology, but the fact remained—she'd bolted away from pastoral life in Wales for the passion and brilliance of the city.

“Not all women are Maeve.” He managed to say the words calmly.

“And what about Africa? Another stranger, and terrible endings all around.”

Dylan rolled his eyes. “And how many locals have died on that curve, do you suppose? It's seven or more since I've been counting—must be dozens over the decades.”

“Still.” She dried cups and slammed them into the cupboards. “This girl is trouble. Never married, no children, all about her work, I imagine. That's the problem with American women—and Londoners!—all about their careers, no time for children and husbands anymore.”

The baby let the bottle go, and milk dribbled from the sides of her mouth. Dylan put the bottle aside and rolled the baby to his shoulder, where he patted her bottom gently. “You've made your feelings clear,” he said, “but you need to give Kyra a chance. Give her instruction instead of criticizing everything, hmm?”

“Oh, you're making a hash of that. Give her over to me.” Brusquely Dylan's mother gathered the baby and perched her on the prodigious bosom. “There, love. I've got you now.”

The baby cooed.

“I'm bringing Kyra back here after the solicitor's meeting,” he said, putting the thin blanket over his mother's shoulder. “Try to be kind, will you?”

“Are you playing the Crown and Rose tonight?”

“It's Thursday. Don't we always play Thursday?”

“That woman's not ready to keep the baby. I'll see to it for tonight.”

He measured her for a moment. “She'll be taking her home, you know. Don't let your heart get broken.”

She waved her plump hand. “Go on with you. We're fine, aren't we, love?”

On the way to the B and B to fetch Kyra, Dylan could not help but pass the old stone church where he'd not set foot since Maeve stood him up. The day was as fresh now as the day after it happened—standing there in his blue suit, his hair newly cut for the photographs, choking on the sad eyes of his friends and family. So many eyes—a teacher from primary school; his Aunt Gladys, who had driven from Swansea; Thomas standing there at his side, a best man who wasn't needed.

Never again,
he'd vowed, and he meant it. His mother had no need to worry—he'd hardly be falling in love with another stranger.

 

T
HERE WERE PAPERS TO
sign and processes that had to be explained at the lawyer's office. Because the will was so clear and there were no other claims to the baby's guardianship, the process of adoption was relatively smooth. A few things had to be signed, and they were going to have to wait a few days for the official permission to leave the country, but it was much less difficult than she had feared.

Kyra was glad of Dylan's company. She had a firm handle on the legalities of the adoption and her own lawyer in Colorado to help facilitate the process—but the solicitor's accent was so thick she sometimes thought it sounded like something other than English. Dylan translated, that wry smile on his lips, a glitter in his eye.

Outside, she put on sunglasses to protect herself from that dazzling gaze. “What next?”

He glanced at his watch. The sleeves of his pale, striped button-up shirt were rolled to just below the elbow, showing
lean cords in his forearms. “The baby will be sleeping a while yet. Would you like to see the town?”

Kyra smiled before she could stop herself. “The
whole
thing?”

“Well,” he said, playing along, “it'll be a challenge to take it all in, but we'll give it a try, shall we?”

There was a hodgepodge of shops arranged either side of a narrow street. “This is the high street,” Dylan said. “Our chemist, the grocer, toy shop, the cards-and-gifts-and-trinkets shop, bakery.” He pointed, tucked his hands behind him. “Church. Pub.”

Kyra breathed it in—the stucco-and-timber sides of the pub, the tilting headstones in the churchyard, the spreading boughs of a huge tree with a trunk as wide as a car. “I'd like to see the tree. Can we cross?”

He smiled. “The tree? Not the ancient pub where smugglers gathered? Not the church that was built in the Middle Ages?”

“The tree must be at least that old,” she said, looking over her shoulder before stepping into the lane.

“Whoa!” Dylan grabbed her elbow. “Remember, love, the traffic comes a different way here.”

A car crawled by from the left, the direction Kyra had not looked. Behind the wheel was a very old man. “Lucky for me he's nine hundred years old.”

They crossed the street. The tree grew in a clearing between the church and a house, graceful limbs creating shelter and shade in a hundred-foot radius. She stepped beneath the canopy, feeling the hush of the sacred. For a moment she paused, breathing in the offered oxygen exhaled by the ancient beauty, and closed her eyes, feeling the sweet murmurs, the whisper of time and ancient witness on her skin.

Hello,
she said without saying it aloud and smiled as she felt a rippling welcome. She moved to the trunk of the tree and put her hands against it. A sense of wonder moved in her. “What kind of tree is this? I've never seen such a tree in my life!”

“Haven't you, now? It's an oak. Some say they're sacred.”

“Yes.” She nodded. “How old is it, do you think? Old as the church?”

He glanced over his shoulder, a shadow on his craggy features. “Not that old, I don't think. I don't know.”

Kyra looked up, through a roof of green leaves and branches weaving through each other. “Look at that!” she said. “If I could have a roof like this, I would never want a house.” Kyra glanced over her shoulder to where he stood on the edges of the clearing beneath the tree. “Come in!” she urged and held out her hand.

He hesitated for the briefest second. An air of sorrow, sharp and hungry, rose from him, and she thought for a moment that he wouldn't be able to move at all, that there was some magic wall keeping him out. He looked at her intently, and Kyra took off her sunglasses. “Come on,” she said and wiggled her fingers.

As if shaking off a spell, he suddenly grinned, a rueful and rakish expression, then came over. “What are you feeling? The heartbeat of the tree or something?”

Kyra laughed. “Not at all. I just wanted to touch it. Imagine how many days have passed over this tree. How many things have happened in the world while it stood here.”

He put his hand on the tree, and Kyra watched as he bent his head, as if listening to some internal prompt. A lock of black hair, loosened and wavy, fell against his sharply
angled face. Amid all those craggy angles, his mouth was as lush as a peach, sinful in the hard male face.

As if he felt her gaze, Dylan turned his head slightly and met her eyes. The color stunned her all over again—it seemed impossible that eyes should be that color, that saturated blue she had no name for. It made her think of the mountains on a winter day. Lively. Alive. Glittering.

The moment stretched, and again Kyra had the sense of familiarity, as if she would remember at any moment when they had met before. It was impossible to look away from his liquid gaze, and as their eyes held, a wash of yearning moved down her spine, lighting up each bone, traveling around her ribs, through her pelvis and thighbones and feet. She had time to notice a thousand details of him. The slight crookedness of his nose, the fan of lines around his eyes, the heavy brows.

As if he, too, were caught, his gaze washed over her entire face, from her hairline, where untamed curls sprang out, to her mouth and chin, to her neck. A sense of capture moved down her body, and she wanted, deeply and with urgency, to taste those lush lips, to see if his tongue tasted of peaches.

Abruptly he straightened, brushing his hands together. “I didn't get any magic messages,” he said, looking at his palms. That bad-boy lock of hair fell on his forehead.

Kyra straightened, embarrassed, but still caught in the odd spell she'd found beneath the tree. Her hands tingled from pressing them against the bark, and she shook them, imagining that droplets of light flew off her fingers. “Maybe,” she said lightly, “you just don't know how to speak tree.”

For a moment she thought he didn't get the joke, then he
threw back his head and laughed. God, what a sound! Kyra felt it in her throat, and she pressed her fingertips to the hollow there.

“Come, dear,” he said. “Let's go see the baby. My mother will be waiting lunch for us.”

“Amanda,” Kyra said.

“What?”

“Her name is Amanda.”

He inclined his head. “Yes. My apologies. Let's go see your daughter, Amanda.”