“That’s pretty exciting news,” she said carefully. “The place has been closed for a couple of years now, hasn’t it?”
“Since Andy’s death,” Michael confirmed. “Anyway, Amelia is getting older and needs extra income to preserve her lifestyle, so she’s decided to sell out. In a flash of brilliance she realized that Kyle is just the man to resuscitate the place.”
“That’s pretty flexible of her,” Grace noted dubiously.
Kyle was faintly amused. “It does seem like a miracle. And Mike’s very kindly stepped in as a silent partner to help me make the down payment,” he added gratefully. “A second miracle.”
“Michael silent in any capacity is the miracle!”
Suddenly the ping-ping-ping of the back doorbell broke through their laughter.
Michael answered the summons, cracking open the door. “Hey, do I know you?”
“Yeah,” a small voice peeped.
“You want to come in?”
“Yeah.”
Michael ushered in a small girl with a cream-colored kitten in her arms.
Grace clasped her hands joyfully. “I thought this was your game.”
“Just what you ordered, sis. Pure-bred Himalayan long hair. Delivered by the cutest girl in town.”
Grace focused on the child. She was a cute one, dressed in a pink short set, with shiny black hair cut below her chin and fringed across her forehead, striking blue eyes, dimpled cheeks. Grace impulsively held her arms out wide. “May I hold the kitten?”
“Tomorrow, honey,” she crooned in a patronizing mimic. “Maybe tomorrow.”
Grace mouth twitched. The child’s imitation of some adult was quite good. “Did Michael buy the kitten from you, sweetie?”
“No.”
“Is this another trick, Michael?”
As Grace glared at her brother, the child scooted by, darting in between Kyle’s legs. “My kitty, Daddy. Tell that girl.”
Grace’s mouth dropped open. “This is your daughter, Kyle?”
“That’s right.” With open joy he scooped the girl up in the curve of his muscled arm, lines of concern and tenderness grooving his matured face. She cuddled against his chest, nuzzling the kitten’s flat face into his throat.
Feelings swelled in Grace, some of which she couldn’t immediately identify. But clearly she was upstaged in her own home, on her day, by impossible competition.
“This is Grace, Button,” Kyle was saying gently. “I told you all about her, remember?”
The child burrowed her face into Kyle’s red T-shirt. “No.”
“Mike is her brother. You two just went next door to get the kitty from his house.”
Button shook her head, keeping her face hidden.
Kyle addressed Grace over his daughter’s head. “Sorry, Button has been going through some adjustments. No is a favorite response.”
Button raised her face then, lower lip protruded. “Don’t talk ’bout me!”
“We won’t.” Kyle set Button on her pink canvas shoes. “But you must give the kitten to Grace.”
“No, Daddy, no.” Her black-soled shoes danced on Grace’s flooring, leaving some smudges.
“Betsy…” he said more firmly.
“Please?” Grace squatted to the child’s level. She finally handed Grace the kitten with an Arctic stare.
“Thank you very much, Betsy, er, Button.”
“Button’s just a nickname,” Kyle explained. “You know, cute as…”
“I see.” Grace met Button’s gaze again. “I never had a nickname like you.”
She placed a hand on her small hip. “I never had a kitty.”
“It’s my birthday today and all I wanted was a kitten.”
Button was unimpressed as she continued to stroke the kitten’s long pale hair.
“How old are you?”
Button worked with her small wiggly hands, eventually holding up three fingers straight, working to bend a fourth at the knuckle.
“Ah, three.”
“And half.”
“A nice big girl.”
Button thawed a little and began to wander around the kitchen, her eyes dropping covetously to a new litter box and white cushioned basket tucked away near the dishwasher. “Your mommy home?”
Grace straightened up. “My mommy doesn’t live here.”
“Why?”
“Because she has a nice big house of her own.”
“My mommy’s in heaven,” Button confided in a reverent whisper.
Grace was stopped cold. Kyle said Libby was gone, but she hadn’t considered…death. Just selfish things like desertion or abandonment. Things for which Grace could criticize her.
“It was a car accident,” Kyle explained in a low tone.
Grace gasped softly. “Oh, no, just like her parents years ago.”
“Not exactly. They mercifully died instantly. Libby lingered in a coma for several weeks. There was never much hope. Too much internal damage.”
Generally quick with words, Grace was at a loss. To think she woke up far too jaded to expect any birthday surprise.
Chapter Two
“Here’s one to ya, birthday girl.”
Michael sidled up close to Grace with a pair of fluted glasses brimming with champagne. He handed one off to her with a flourish and a wink.
“Thanks.”
They sipped the quality vintage and scanned the formally dressed guests mingling in their parents’ opulent living room that evening.
“I see you slipped a few of your artsy uptown buddies onto the guest list,” he teased.
There were a few of Grace’s most current friends scattered round. But the majority of the guests were the more established ones: a Minneapolis bank vice president, a prominent St. Paul surgeon, corporate executives from both sides of the Mississippi River, all contemporaries of the elder Norths, included at all North functions. Not wishing to upset her conservative parents, she’d chosen only those likely to blend in, at least to some degree, with the elegant ambiance of the buffet dinner.
Grace and Michael long ago accepted that their parents, Victor and Ingrid, were serious social climbers who would eagerly use any family occasions to enhance social connections. They’d shared their most personal milestones with acquaintances they might not see again for months.
“So, you like my gifts, Gracie?” Michael asked.
“I adore the kitten.”
“As for the magic chef?”
“I wasn’t going to bring it up now,” Grace murmured firmly behind her practiced party smile. “But springing a widowed Kyle on me that way was a dumb stunt.”
Michael rolled back on his heels. “I thought it would be fun for the both of you, honestly.”
Grace didn’t allow his genuine surprise to salve her annoyance. “Not only did you set up that—that situation