Billion Dollar Bride

As Mary Jane left to place their order, Will pulled the napkin dispenser toward him and gave Anna two napkins, taking two for himself.

“I don’t need strong bones,” he argued good-naturedly while replacing the dispenser. “I’m going to run a big company, not play professional basketball.”

“All smart companies today have in-house gyms to help reduce employee stress. Thank you.” Mary Jane delivered their drinks and was gone again. “Your employees will expect to see you there.”

He grinned. “I’ll just show up in the sauna like Uncle R.J.” Will looked in the direction of the kitchen, then leaned conspiratorially toward Anna and asked quietly, “Where do you think Sara came from, Mom? I mean, it’s weird that she’s been here seven whole months and she still doesn’t remember anything.”

Anna took a sip of her coffee, then shook her head as she replaced the cup. “I don’t have an answer to that, Will. No one can say when she’ll get her memory back. All we know is that she sustained a head injury that probably caused the memory loss. Even the specialist the hospital brought in from Dallas said she could get her memory back tomorrow, or it could take months. I guess those things are unpredictable.”

Sara had wandered into town, dazed and unable to remember her name. She’d been taken to a women’s shelter, and Daisy, the director, had brought her to Maitland Maternity Clinic, the hospital run by Anna’s family, because it was closer than the hospital across town.

When Sara had finally been declared healthy except for the memory loss, Daisy had pleaded with Shelby to give her a job. Sara had proven to be a good waitress—and a good cook.

She had golden blond hair and blue eyes with a questioning look in them that Anna noticed every time she saw her. It was almost as though she expected a clue to present itself at any moment, a revelation that would answer her questions.

“Imagine not knowing who you are,” Will speculated, sitting back in the booth. “Not knowing your mom or your dad or your friends. I wonder how she remembered she could cook.”

“Shelby said the cook had a family emergency a few weeks ago and couldn’t come in to work. Sara started cooking. It was probably instinctive.”

“She just knew she could do it?”

Anna nodded. “That even happens to people who know who they are, but don’t know what they’re capable of,” she said, unable to resist making a life lesson out of their serious conversation. “When put to the test, they do things they didn’t know they could do.”

“Sort of like discovering they have super powers.”

Anna was about to nod, but her maternal radar spotted the danger in doing so without qualification. “Internal super powers,” she specified. “I wouldn’t try to fly or see through lead or anything.”

Will rolled his eyes at her. “I know what you mean, Mom. I wasn’t planning to leap tall buildings.”

“Good.” She never knew for certain with him. He was extremely intelligent, unusually gifted, but still a ten-year-old boy. His sense of daring and adventure occasionally overruled his common sense. “I’d just prefer not to have a repeat of the gunpowder incident.”

He frowned, distracted by the memory of the experiment that had given her a few of the worst moments of her life. “I still don’t understand why that didn’t work,” he said absently. “According to the book, sulfur and potassium nitrate should have been a perfect launching fuel.”

Fortunately, he’d tried to launch a teddy bear and not himself, but in the process he’d blown out the bathroom window and the glass on the medicine cabinet, and ignited the shower curtain. The teddy bear had gone to his reward.

If R.J. hadn’t been there, Anna wasn’t sure what she’d have done when she heard the explosion and opened the bathroom door to find her son covered in soot and glass and lying motionless on the floor.

Will had come to immediately, and R.J. had gotten the glass off him and out of his hair with a Dustbuster. Then he’d taken him to the emergency room, where they’d found nothing wrong with him except singed eyebrows and hair and rampant inquisitiveness.

R.J. had talked her out of locking Will in his room until college and made an effort to spend more time with him. Even now that R.J. was married, he made Will a part of his life.

Will shrugged off the incident. “I guess it showed that science isn’t my thing.” He sat back as Mary Jane delivered his soup and Anna’s coffee. “Money is.”

As Mary Jane left again, he asked seriously, “Do you think I get that from my father? Even though I never see him?”

Anna shook her head, eager to rid him of that notion. “You get it from the Maitlands,” she said, pushing the pepper toward him. “Almost all of us are into some kind of business. Besides the clinic itself, there’s Lana’s baby shop, Shelby’s restaurant—” she spread her hands to indicate Austin Eats “—and Aunt Beth’s day-care center in the hospital.”

“And you.”

“Right.”

“But Shelby and Lana are Lords,” he corrected, “not Maitlands.”

Anna nodded, pointing to his napkin to remind him to put it on his lap. He did, then pulled his soup closer and picked up his spoon.

“But we Maitlands sort of think of them as cousins,” she explained, “because Grandma found Garrett and the triplets on the doorstep of Maitland Maternity not long after she opened it. She found a loving home for them close by and we had parties and picnics together. Our interests rubbed off on each other.”

“I just wonder why he doesn’t like me,” Will said candidly.

They were back to his father again. Anna preferred not to think about her ex-husband, but she knew that understanding his rejection was important to Will’s peace of mind.

“He doesn’t dislike you,” she assured him quickly. “He doesn’t even know you well enough to make any judgment about you. He just thinks of himself first. Life always seems easier if you never have to consider anybody but yourself.”

“It must get lonely,” Will observed.

She was pleased he understood that. “I’m sure it does. Guess what client I took on today.”

He spooned soup into his mouth with enthusiasm, pausing to add more pepper and take a guess. “Um…that lady that’s the mother of that baby Grandma has? The one that’s your new cousin Connor’s girlfriend?”

“Janelle?” Anna shook her head. “Nope. I took Janelle and Connor on last month. This is a client I officially got today.”

Will shrugged, more interested in eating his soup than trying to guess.

“Caroline Lamont,” she said.

“Who’s that?” he asked between spoonfuls.

“A nice lady who has a lot of money. But guess who she’s marrying.”

“Who?”

“Austin Cahill.”

She watched with delight as Will dropped the spoon into his empty bowl and stared at her in wide-eyed disbelief.

“Mom,” he said gravely, “you’re kidding, right?”

She shook her head. “I’m not. They want a medieval English wedding, and I have to find costumes and armor and horses.”

His mouth fell open.

“You can help me with that part if you like,” she said.

He still didn’t believe her. “No way!” he challenged.

“Way,” she assured him.

Hero worship blazed in his eyes as he finally realized she spoke the truth. “But…he lives in Dallas!”