With These Four Rings - Book Five: Wedding Bonus (Billionaire Brides of Granite Falls 5) (6 page)

“Is something wrong at home, Kaya? Is one of the kids hurt?” Panic dulled his eyes and voice.

“No. No. It’s nothing like that, but you might want to sit down for what I’m about to tell you.” Since they were alone on the floor, Kaya led him over to the corner of the sofa she’d occupied earlier. It was probably psychologically better for him if she kept this conversation away from his office where he’d have to concentrate on business shortly.

He glanced down at the magazine she’d dropped on the sofa. “Oh, it’s out. Captivating picture.” He picked up the magazine and his face broke into a handsome grin. “Is this it? Did I say something in here that upset you?”

She pulled him down beside her on the sofa and clasped his face in her hands. He felt smooth and strong under her palms. “I love every word, every letter, and every comma. What an amazing surprise. I called the girls and none of them knew about it either. You guys can really keep secrets.” She gave him a quick peck on the lips.

“I meant every single word. I’m nothing without you.” He twirled a lock of her curly hair around his finger, and leaned his forehead against hers. “You make me happy, Kaya,” he said, his hot breath fanning her face.

“I know, and I’m sorry, Bryce.”

He drew back and frowned at her. “Sorry about what?”

Kaya dropped her hands and her gaze to her lap. “That what I’m about to tell you might put a crinkle in your happiness.”

She felt the muscles in his thigh tensing as his hands came down over hers. “Just tell me,” he said in a quiet voice.

The proverbial quiet before the storm
, she thought, raising her gaze to find him staring at her, his mouth drawn into a firm line. Kaya licked her lips and swallowed. “You know I was meeting the girls and our wedding planner this morning.”

“Mm hmm.”

“Well. I don’t know if you heard that Fae had an accident last week.”

“I hadn’t heard. What happened to her?”

“She fell down the stairs and broke both arms and a leg, I think.”

“Aw! Is she going to be okay?”

“Yes, but she can’t do our wedding. She can’t finish.”

He shrugged. “Well, just hire someone else.”

“They did. We did hire someone else,” she added after a pause since she’d already bought into the idea of Weddings by Desire.

“Then what’s the problem?”

“It’s Desire. Desire Summers.”

His black eyes blazed and dazzled with fury. Just the thought of the anguish she’d caused him ripped at Kaya’s heart. The only other time she’d ever seen Bryce this furious was when he’d found out that Michael and Lauren had left their children to her instead of him.

His best friends had betrayed him then
.

His wife was betraying him now
.

CHAPTER FOUR

Bryce shot off the sofa with lightning speed, his hands fisted at his sides as he glared at her. “No way in hell is that going to happen, Kaya.”

There was a sourness in the pit of Kaya’s stomach. “Bryce, I—”

He threw his hands up, cutting her off. “I can’t believe you agreed to this, that you’d consider having Desire Summers plan our wedding after what her sister did to Pilar. To me.” He pressed his hands against the sides of his head, groaned aloud, and began pacing agitatedly back and forth.

His pain twisted inside Kaya’s gut as he relived the nightmare of watching his wife being murdered in front of him. In the space of a few seconds, he’d been transformed from a happy husband, indulging in pleasantries with his present wife, to one plagued by the tragedy of the one from his past. And she was to blame.

“Michelle and Tashi and Shaina had already hired her,” Kaya said. She knew it was low to pin the blame on her friends, but in all actuality, it was the truth. “I didn’t know anything about it until a short while ago, Bryce, and when they told me, I—”

“And when they told you, you should have said,
No
!” He came to a sudden halt in front of her. “You should have said,
No
!
No
!
No
!” He repeatedly slammed his right fist into his left palm as he spoke.

Kaya closed her eyes and cringed every time he said the word
No
—the word he used to scream out in his sleep. It seemed like eons ago that she’d last awakened him from his nightmare.

“You are my wife, Kaya. You are supposed to advocate
for
me, not collaborate with your friends
against
me. How can you ask me to allow Desire Summers to plan our wedding?”

Kaya’s stomach knotted with guilt at his accusations, and the emotional and psychological upheaval she was causing him. She opened her eyes, and avoiding his gaze, she glanced at the variety of bamboo, palm, and ficus trees decorating the waiting area, their leaves and branches reaching toward the rays of sun streaming through the glass wall. They were flourishing, abundantly and uninhibitedly, in weedless soil inside the terracotta pots.

You’ve got to pull the choking weeds from around the roots of your fig tree
.

Swallowing the sob that rose to her throat, Kaya met Bryce’s furious gaze that was laced with his disappointment in her.
God, give me strength,
she prayed as she pushed to her feet, forcing him to take a backward step. Feeling like a grasshopper in his towering presence, she was overwhelmed with the urge to just hug him and tell him that he was right and she was wrong.

Bryce must confront his demons before he can achieve ultimate happiness within himself, and with you
. Well, Kaya thought, his demons were awakened, so he might as well tackle them, slay them once and for all so they never have the chance to torment him, ever again.

She cleared her throat. “It’s not just your wedding, Bryce,” she said, deciding to take a roundabout approach. “It’s mine too, and our family’s. Our children and your parents are looking forward to this event. It also involves the LaCrosses, the Andrettis, and the Andreases—”

“Well, if they’re all set on having Desire Summers plan this wedding, they can count the Fontaines out.”

“You would disappoint your friends? Your brothers?”

His eyes flashed imperiously. “If they agree to this travesty of my memories and my pain, they don’t deserve to be my brothers, much less my friends. True friends don’t hurt each other.”

Sometimes they do, and wives, too, if they think it would make you whole
. Kaya swallowed, and like a surgeon digging deep into raw flesh for a bullet, she forged on. “I just finished reading an article where you said you would do anything to make me happy. You just told me you meant every single word. Were you lying in the article, or just now, or both times?”

“Oh, come on, Kaya. I can’t believe you’re twisting my words and using them against me. That’s way below the belt.”

“I’m not twisting anything. You said you’d do anything for me. I’m asking you to do this for me. It will make me happy.”
And you too, once all this is over
.

“Anything but this.” He began pacing again, his back straight, his shoulders stiff and raised, and his hands clenching and unclenching at his sides.

Kaya stomped her foot on the floor. “Bryce! Stop pacing!”

He halted in his tracks, and she could see the muscles in his shoulders and back contracting with tension.

“Look at me, Bryce,” she said with gentleness.

After a few moments, he turned and glared at her from across the room like a perturbed little boy who was fighting for what he believed in despite the odds against him. “I can’t do this, Kaya. I won’t.”

With love in her heart, Kaya admired the towering, powerful physique of her husband. He was known in the corporate world as a fearsome lion who went after and took what he wanted. She’d been introduced to that formidable side of him when she first met him, but she’d also come to know and love the gentler side of him—the side where a little boy filled with inhibitions, fear, and pain lived. That was the side that she needed to appeal to now.

She pursed her lips and beckoned him with her finger. “Come here, Bryce.”

He remained rooted to the floor as if he had no intention of obeying her command. But Kaya held his gaze and kept beckoning until his shoulders hunched in submission, and perhaps defeat. They’d been together long enough for him to know that a happy Kaya meant a happy Bryce, and vice versa. He wasn’t unhappy at the moment, just angry.

A while back when they’d been bickering over something so insignificant that she couldn’t even remember the source, Bryce had told her that he could work when he was angry but not when he was unhappy. He had a meeting coming up in less than an hour, and then he was leaving on a two-day conference. He needed to be happy.

When he sauntered over to her, she pushed him back down on the sofa and dropped down beside him. She took his large hands in hers—the hands that loved her and caressed her in the thick of darkness, and soothed each of their five children in the light of day. She began to massage his inner wrists, his palms, the backs of his hands, and gently pulled at the stiffness in his long beautiful fingers. This was his calming mechanism, and Kaya continued working at him until his muscles were relaxed and he slumped back against the sofa with a deep sigh and a satisfied moan.

“There, isn’t that better?”

He caught and held her gaze. “Kaya—”

Kaya placed a finger on his lips. “Bryce, just hear me out, please.”

He vacillated a moment, then said, “Okay.”

“Thanks.” Kaya brought his hands to her chest and held them there. “I met you five years after Pilar’s death, and at the time, you were still trapped in your valley of sorrow. You were so buried in your grief, you couldn’t be the kind of husband I needed during the first weeks of our marriage. But you finally shared your pain with me. I cried with you. I helped you through it. My love helped you heal. I brought you back to a place where you could be happy again, Bryce.” Her voice broke with emotions and tears stung her eyes. “The last thing I want to do is reopen your wounds and make you bleed again, baby.”

“Then why, Kaya? Why are you asking this impossible and cruel request of me?” His voice was a hoarse whisper.

“Because you’re not fully over your pain, your anger, or your hurt. This wedding is supposed to be an opportunity for us to renew our vows, our love, and commitment for and to each other. It’s supposed to make us whole, stronger, individually and collectively as a couple and as a family. But you’re not whole. The sight of a Summers, the mere mention of the name kicks you off balance.”

He shrugged indifferently. “I can’t control that. I can’t control how I feel about them.”

She squeezed his fingers that had begun to stiffen again. “Yes, you can. If you try.”

“Why should I? It won’t change anything.” He gazed at the scene outside the building.

“You remember when I was carrying Eli and Elyse and I told you that I wanted to find my mother?”

“I thought you were nuts, hormonal.”

“Maybe I was. But I just felt like I needed to know why she couldn’t love me. I was scared that I would be like her, that abandonment and neglect were hereditary traits, and that one day I would just up and walk out on my children.”

He gave her a gentle smile. “You’re nothing like your mother, Kaya.”

“I didn’t know that for sure until I met with her face to face and found out about her childhood, how she was molested and neglected. She never had anything beautiful in her life. She felt unworthy of kindness and love, so when my father came along and gave her everything she’d been lacking in her life, she clung to him. Then when she found out that she wasn’t the only woman in his life, she took out her anger, and hurt, and disappointment on me. She used me, something he loved, to get back at him. She took me away from him and punished me to hurt him. I was furious at him for leaving me with her when he knew she was abusing me.”

Kaya hadn’t even realized that she’d been crying until she felt a tear on her hand and Bryce’s arms about her. But this wasn’t about her. She swiped at her tears and pushed out of his arms. “Up until I sat down with my mother, I was filled with uncertainty and unworthiness about myself as a woman and a mother, and hate and resentment toward Nadine for making me feel that way. Just the thought of her and of what she’d done to me used to cause my blood pressure to skyrocket.”

“I know, Kaya. I was there. You were hospitalized for hypertension when you were pregnant. I was so scared for you and for our babies. That was the longest week of my life.” His voice trembled with love and concern.

Kaya had never felt more needed and important than when Bryce had taken a leave from Fontaine Enterprises and taken up around-the-clock residence in her private room at Granite Falls General Hospital. He’d proven to her that she was the most important thing in his life. “You also thought I was nuts when on leaving the hospital, I insisted that you take me to Atlanta to see my mother.”

His face contorted with apparent unpleasant memories.

“But I was fine after that trip, Bryce. Even though Nadine admitted that she never loved me, and still doesn’t, I was fine because I’d faced her. I was able to let go of all that negative energy when I realized that she had no power over me. You see, Nadine was the catalyst for my demons of fear, resentment, and hate. My childhood memories of abandonment and abuse were my ghost, and each time I thought of Nadine, I was haunted by those ghosts. After I faced her, I slayed those demons, and saw her for what she really was: a sad pathetic woman incapable of recognizing, embracing, and enjoying the most beautiful things that ever came into her life—me, you, our amazing kids.”