Men of Power. Кэрол Мортимер

was still mourning the brother she’d loved. She couldn’t believe Pietra, her charming sister-in-law, was gone. The loss was agonizing enough without trying to process the horror of the crash that had snatched two precious lives from existence.

      “I wish I could tell you something definitive, but we’re waiting for Pietra’s uncle to phone back. Until he does, nothing can be settled,” she whispered in an unsteady voice. “When I think of Nicky …”

      “The little guy won’t remember any of this. Luckily he’s got your mom.”

      She bit her bottom lip so hard she tasted blood. “As I told you yesterday after hearing the news, Nicky has me, Brent. My mother has already been a mother.”

      He made a strange sound in his throat. “Except that you work in San Francisco. How are you going to do that and take care of a baby, too?”

      The answer seemed obvious to Julie. Yet by his posing that question, her hope that he wanted a future with her under any and all circumstances died on the spot.

      “I … I’m planning to move here to Sonoma.” Since learning of the fatal accident from her father, the idea had been growing in her mind. She intended to phone her boss and resign before the day was out.

      “And give up the great job I helped you get in order to tend a child that’s not even yours?”

      Oh, Brent.

      She shook her head. Why did it have to take a tragedy like this for her to see just how self-absorbed he was? They would never have made it. He wasn’t ready for marriage, let alone interested in helping her raise Shawn’s boy.

      “What’s the matter now?”

      Now?

      She guessed a lot was the matter. In retrospect it had been for a long time. But she’d let certain issues slide in the hope that things would get better.

      “Why aren’t you talking to me? Julie?”

      He really didn’t understand.

      “My nephew just lost his parents. It’s all I can think about right now.”

      “Why do you have to be the one to sacrifice everything?”

      “Because I want to!”

      Her emotional cry must have gotten through to him because there was a long silence.

      Clearly he couldn’t meet her expectations. Brent didn’t have the maturity or the desire. How could she have thought he was the right man for her? Where was her judgment?

      “So what are you saying?” he finally said.

      She took a deep breath. “I guess I’m saying goodbye. I had some wonderful times with you, but it’s over, Brent. It has to be. I think we’ve both known it for a while.” She hung up.

      Her mind on Nicky, Julie left the master bedroom and rushed into the nursery where she’d slept on the twin bed last night. He hadn’t moved since she’d given him his last bottle. After he’d put up such a struggle, it was no wonder.

      He didn’t know her!

      Four weekend visits in five months weren’t enough for him to reach for her. She wasn’t his mommy.

      Last evening and during the night he’d fought the formula Pietra kept on hand for a supplement to her breast-feeding. Julie had rummaged in the cupboards to look for it. But he wasn’t having any of it. He wanted his mother and had been inconsolable.

      Today he’d finally stopped rooting long enough to take the bottle and drain it, almost as if he realized his life had changed and he was resigned to his fate.

      It killed Julie inside.

      She looked down at him, studying his fine blond hair and facial features. Shawn’s contribution. Pietra had bequeathed him her olive complexion and dark eyes.

      But his sturdy, long-limbed body didn’t appear to belong to either of them. Nicky had weighed in at nine pounds three ounces, too big a baby for his small-framed mother. Julie had a feeling he was going to be a lot taller than her five-ten brother.

      “Where did that mouth come from?” she whispered, tracing the outline with her finger. Just once on her last visit she’d coaxed a fleeting smile from him. It was wider than his parents’. He would break hearts one day.

      He had already broken hers, but he didn’t know that yet. Who could guess how long he would try to push her away while he waited for his parents to reappear?

      How much did a five-month-old understand about the fact that they were gone and would never come home again? A sob escaped her throat. Probably a lot more than mere mortals could comprehend.

      She had no doubt that Nicky was missing the sweet smell of his mother’s skin—the way she held and loved him—the touching way she called him Niccolo.

      Pietra had supplied his first nourishment upon entering the world, tendered by words rushing from her soul as she whispered her joy to him. Hers was the familiar voice he’d listened to while he’d been in her womb waiting to be born.

      Fresh tears welled behind Julie’s swollen eyelids.

      Who would be able to comfort him when he didn’t hear his father’s laughter, or feel him blow on his tummy after a diaper change? Whose strong arms would never again carry him with fatherly pride, arms that had held him minutes after he was born, letting him know he was adored.

      In a matter of seconds the security of that loving haven had been wiped out forever by a drunk driver. In its place … chaos.

      One more kiss to the baby’s forehead followed by salty tears and Julie slipped out of the nursery to go downstairs. But strident voices coming from the living room caused her to pause on the landing.

      “Lem has an important court case coming up and needs to get back to Honolulu soon, so a big funeral is out. We’ll have a graveside service for them here. Father Meersman has agreed to officiate. It’s all I can handle.”

      “We have to wait for Pietra’s uncle to call us back, Margaret. Despite the problems, he did raise her and her brother after their parents were killed. He has equal input in any decisions.”

      “As far as I’m concerned, after ignoring her because she married my son, he has no rights.”

      “Shawn was my son, too,” he reminded her in a quiet voice. “He would expect us to do the decent thing for Pietra. For our daughter-in-law’s sake I’ll have to insist we wait for him, Margaret.”

      “Don’t use that patriarchal tone with me, Frank.”

      “I’ll do whatever’s necessary in order to make certain the right thing is done here. No doubt her uncle has been thrust into considerable pain from the shock. That’s why the doctor’s with him. In case this news has softened him, their deaths might have achieved something that couldn’t be accomplished in life.”

      “Spoken by the paragon of virtue.”

      Julie winced to hear her mother’s bitterness come out. Her parents had been divorced ten years. Both had eventually remarried and moved from Sonoma. Yet by the way they were reacting, it could have been yesterday.

      Her mother had always been difficult. There was probably a medical name for it. Julie noticed their respective spouses had absented themselves from Shawn’s house. With good reason.

      “Margaret—we’ll have to put our personal differences aside and consider what’s best for Nicky.”

      “Funny how you didn’t worry about Julie and Shawn when you walked out. But for that, Shawn might sti—”

      “Don’t go there, Mom. Dad’s right,” Julie cried, entering the room, hating the resurrected pain that never really went away. As usual when her parents were together on the rare occasion, her mother managed to turn the conversation ugly.

      Their