Kostas's Convenient Bride

“But you changed your name?” There was a story there.

“It was necessary for me to become more anonymous.”

Something really bad had happened and Kayla couldn’t help feeling her sister might have had the more difficult life, despite having a family. She hoped someday Randi would feel good about confiding in her, but right now, she was just so happy she had a sister.

“So, you’re saying you were happy despite our mom?” Kayla asked with a smile of her own.

“Yeah. I just wish you’d been part of my growing up.” There was no doubting the sincerity of the other woman.

“How old are you?”

“Twenty-four.”

So, four years younger than Kayla. “You were born the year after she abandoned me.”

“She moved back to live with our grandparents. She met my dad at their church. She was pretending to be the perfect daughter.”

“And an illegitimate daughter wouldn’t have fit into that image.” That knowledge should have hurt, but it wasn’t far off from things she’d already thought.

“Grandma and Grandpa wouldn’t have cared about that. They would have loved you, would like a chance to love you now, but Mom, she thought she’d do better coming home to them without a child.”

“But...”

“Look, sometimes the apple falls so far from the tree, it lands in a different state. That was our mom and our grandparents.”

Kayla believed Randi, her usual distrust of new people conspicuously absent. Still, it was overwhelming. “I don’t know what to say.”

“Say you’ll give me a chance to know you. Look, I know I’m going about some of this wrong.” Randi gave Kayla a self-deprecating smile. “I feel like all my training flew out the window when you walked in here, but you’re my sister and we deserve to have that bond.”

“Your training?” Kayla asked, feeling lost. Again.

“I have a degree in social work. It’s what I do, work with abandoned and abused kids, trying to help them have better lives.”

“Wow.” Kayla and this woman really were sisters. “You turned your bad into good.”

“I tried. I’m sorry if my honesty made me sound bitter and broken. I’m not really, I just don’t want you taken in by our mom.”

“You’re trying to protect me?”

“That’s my job. We’re sisters.”

“You think that now you know about me our mom will find me?” How?

“If she does, and she finds out how well you’ve done for yourself, I guarantee she’ll show up on your doorstop with a sob story and her hand out.”

“I’ve had her investigated,” Andreas inserted. “Your sister is quite right. We don’t want that woman in our lives.”

Kayla nodded, believing him. Maybe someone else would crave meeting their mother, regardless of who she was and what she was like, but that wasn’t Kayla. She’d never looked for her mom because the idea of a woman capable of abandoning Kayla the way she had never seemed like someone she wanted to meet.

“You just confirmed what I always suspected,” Kayla assured both Randi and Andreas.

“So, how did you find Randi?” Kayla asked Andreas. “Why did you go looking?”

“I hired an investigator. Your sister’s ancestry hobby gave us the break we needed. Matching DNA.” He smiled at Randi. “As to the why? Family is important to you, Kayla. If I could provide your own for you, nothing would stop me from doing so.”

“And if you’d only found Marla?” Randi asked.

“You would never know I had even looked,” Andreas said to Kayla.

Kayla had no trouble believing that claim, nor did she think he was wrong.

“How long are you here for?” Kayla asked Randi.

“I fly home on the red-eye. Getting time off from work last minute wasn’t easy and I couldn’t take extra days.”

That was when Kayla learned Miranda and the rest of her family were from California. Kayla took the remainder of the afternoon off to spend with her sister, both frightened and relieved when Andreas insisted on her taking time alone with Randi, to get to know her. They spent hours together, chatting while they walked the Rose Gardens, played at OMSI and had dinner at a yummy Italian restaurant downtown.

She dropped Randi off at the airport, and was still sniffling and trying to stifle her tears when she walked into Andreas’s condo hours later.

He was working on his laptop, but stood up the moment she walked in. “How did it go?”

“We’re so alike, we even have the same favorite Italian dish.”

“She seemed like a very nice person from the investigator’s report.” He tugged her toward the sofa, where he sat them both down and put his arm around her. “And finding out about your mom? How are you doing with that?”

“I prefer to think of her as the egg donor.”

His lips tilted in a half smile. “All right, the egg donor, then.”

“It’s kind of the fulfillment of all my nightmares in that regard. I thought, hey, maybe she just didn’t love me, but to find out she could try to kill her own child, that she’s manipulative and cruel.” Kayla offered honesty she never would have before, even with Andreas. “It makes me nauseated to know I’m related to her. Like what if that kind of badness lives inside me?”

“No, you are kind and good, the best woman I know.”

“Really? But—”

He wouldn’t let her finish. “Don’t you dare disparage yourself. You are not only the product of that woman’s genes. Somewhere out there is a sperm donor, as well.”

Kayla laughed a little at Andreas using a twist on her term for her missing father.

“You heard your sister. Your grandparents are good, kind people. Their daughter is nothing like them and you are nothing like her.” Andreas’s voice rang with sincerity and almost a desperate need for her to believe him.

“You’re sure?”

“I’m positive.”

She cuddled in closer to the man she loved. “Thank you. For everything.”

“You are welcome.”

“I don’t know how to show just how much it means to me that you found my sister.” And that he’d helped her deal with the reality of who her egg donor was.

His attitude helped her to see that she could move on from the past that she would not allow to define her. Andreas believed in her; he always had. And that mattered so much.

Andreas grin was sensual and mischievous. “I can think of a way.”

Kayla laughed through her emotional tears, but she was only too happy to show him her gratitude with her body. The pleasure was so completely mutual. And she loved the power she felt when she had his sex in her mouth. He refused to climax that way, though, wanting to be inside her and bring her to her own orgasm before he was willing to come himself.

She was lying in the circle of his arms, satiated, her heart so full, there were only three words she could speak right then. No matter what he said he felt, or did not feel, he deserved to know what she did.

She curled into his side and whispered against his skin, “I love you, Andreas. Completely and forever. I have since the beginning.”

His arms tightened around her, his body rolling toward hers. “Thank you.”

She peeked up at him. He looked happy. There was no other description for the expression on his face, the glow in his green eyes.

“I will treasure your feelings for the gift they are.” He leaned down and kissed her to seal his words, the action tender and perfect.

She didn’t ask if he reciprocated. Clearly, he still wasn’t ready to admit to feelings he considered a weakness, but he respected hers. And that was all she needed.

For now.

* * *

Randi flew in the week before the wedding, insisting that was what sisters did. Kayla had never had real family, so she couldn’t say, but she liked having someone there to help her talk Andreas off the ledge when the caterers wanted to make a last-minute change to the menu.

/> “That dress is even more beautiful in person than it was on the video call.” Randi smiled in sisterly approval at Kayla.

Kayla gave herself a critical appraisal in the full-size three-paneled mirror provided in the bridal preparation suite at their venue. The winter-white satin-and-chiffon strapless dress had been created by a local who had been a finalist on that reality show about upcoming clothing designers. The skirt fell in layers of chiffon, a cascade of Kayla’s signature peach peeking out from the frothy folds.

She’d found a pair of two-inch heels with delicate cross straps that could be died to match the peach exactly. Her hair and makeup had been done by professionals, Andreas had insisted.