A Forever Kind of Family

None of whom had shown up for the funeral, despite the fact that Melissa had been her roommate in college and her best friend since.

Gayle Everton-Ross had expressed sympathy when her daughter called to tell her about the tragic heli-skiing accident that killed Melissa and Darren, but she hadn’t been able to talk long, because she was on her way to a meeting. Peter Ross had been busy on the set of the popular soap opera The Light of Dawn, and Spencer, an underwear model and wannabe actor, had been playing a bit part in an Off-Off-Broadway production.

“Are you close?” Ryan asked.

She shook her head. “Melissa was more my family than anyone I’m actually related to.”

“I have brothers and cousins,” he said again, “but Darren was my family, too.”

“I know.”

They finished their meals in silence. Even Oliver was quiet while he ate, more interested in his food than any attempt at communication. As Harper picked at her salad, she found her thoughts wandering. She’d met Ryan, through Melissa and Darren, more than six years earlier, but she wouldn’t have said that she knew him well. And while they were friendly enough, they weren’t friends—they were too different for that.

They’d occasionally hung out together, usually in a group, but they didn’t have much in common and never really hit it off. Even when Melissa and Darren got engaged and asked Harper and Ryan to be their maid of honor and best man respectively, they didn’t work particularly well together. She’d claimed he was too laid-back and he’d accused her of being too uptight, but they’d managed to put their personal differences aside for the benefit of their friends.

Then came the wedding night—when Harper ended up in Ryan’s bed. The next morning, they both agreed it was a mistake, and neither of them ever told anyone else what had happened.

When Oliver was born, the proud parents again turned to their best friends, asking them to be godparents and co-guardians of their baby. They’d both agreed, neither of them willing to let a little bit of personal history get in the way of their friends’ wishes. Of course, neither of them had anticipated that the guardianship would ever mean anything more than their names on a piece of paper.

Now, only a few months later, they had to figure out a way to work together for the sake of the little boy. Because the reality was that there wasn’t anyone else who could take care of Oliver.

She was certain of that because she’d spent a fair amount of time over the past few weeks trying to figure out if there were any other options—and desperately hoping, for Oliver’s sake, that there were.

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.”