Annie Jones - Somebody's Baby

Somebody’s Baby
Annie Jones

Published by Steeple Hill Books™
For Elijah Dobben and Riley Davis, the two newest

babies in the Jones family tree. You already have

the blessing of wonderful parents who love you so

dearly, but a legacy of faith that will serve you all

your days.
And remember when they speak of your “Great”

Aunt Annie, that’s not just a label, it’s a promise!

Really. I already have toys in my closet for when

you come to visit.
Contents
Prologue
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Prologue
“What is your secret, Miss Josie?”
“Secret?” Josie Redmond wiped her hands on the long white bib-apron covering her
pink T-shirt and black jeans. She swallowed hard to push down a bitter lump of
anxiety. Her gaze darted from the face of the man sitting at the counter to the
huge glass window with the swirling red lettering spelling out the name of her
business—Josie’s Home Cookin’ Kitchen.
Did her customers know she hadn’t taken in enough money this month to pay her
business loan to the Mt. Knott First National Bank? That the bleak downturn in
business for the Carolina Crumble Pattie Factory had taken its toll on not only
her customer base but also threatened to rob her of a very essential ingredient
to her success? Or had someone gotten wind of the fact that her twin sister had
been trying to contact her?
Just thinking of what her sister wanted left Josie feeling jumpy as a cat,
fearing for everything she held dear.
Her eyes went to the far wall of her diner, the one she had painted with special
black paint, virtually turning the whole side of the room into a giant
chalkboard. She had meant it to keep young people from carving their initials on
the tables and to allow children something to busy themselves with while their
parents lingered over the last bites of dessert. But somewhere along the line,
it had turned into a town message board. A place where people left notes to
friends, reminders of upcoming events and, in a segment sectioned off by vines
drawn in pink and green chalk, a prayer request list.
“Please remember Millie Tillson’s oldest girl—baby due any day.”
“Traveling mercies for Agnes and Virgil.”
“For our children and teachers as the new school year begins.”
Some farmer in the midst of a dry summer spell had simply scrawled in an
earnest, oversize script: “RAIN.”
And of course: “Pray for the Burdetts. Our jobs. The whole of Mt. Knott.”
All summer Josie had been praying about all the things that got posted on her
wall, as well as for the welfare of all the people she cared about in her
adopted hometown of Mt. Knott, South Carolina. But her deepest concerns remained
between her and the Lord, not something she wanted thrown out to feed the
small-town rumor mill.
“Secret?” She laughed and tossed her head, knowing it would make her
strawberry-blond ponytail bounce and give her an even younger appearance than
her twenty-four years. “What secret?”
The older of the two long-past-middle-age regulars sitting on the stools at the
lunch counter lifted his fork with the last bite of cherry pie for his answer.
“Go-oo-od stuff.”
The other man leaned in on his elbows, his deep-set eyes twinkling. “When you
going to marry me, Sweetie Pie?”
All the men over a certain age in town called Josie Sweetie Pie. They said it
was because she was sweeter than a baby’s kiss and cuter than a bug’s ear and
whatever other cornpone phrase they could toss out to make her laugh. But
really, they called her that because Josie Redmond, who otherwise thought
herself a most unremarkable young woman, made the best pies in seven counties.
Everybody said so. In fact, more than one person just passing through town had
told her that if she could ever figure out a way to market the unique pastry to
the masses, she’d make a mint. Right now, Josie couldn’t even afford to buy a
mint, she thought, letting her eyes trail to the empty candy dish by the cash
register.
“You? You’re not her type, Warren.” The more rough-around-the-edges of the two
men looked into his coffee mug and grinned. “It’s me she’s going to marry.”
“And spend the rest of my life trying to stay ahead of your appetite for pie,
Jed? No, thanks.” Josie teased the white-haired man in striped overalls and a
short-sleeved plaid shirt. “I am on to you two. Always proposing and slopping
sugar all over me like that when I know all you really want is to sweet-talk
your way to a second slice on the house.”
The older men laughed.
“Best pie I ever tasted,” Warren pushed his plate forward, the fork rattling
over the streaks of cherry pie filling adding to the simple pattern. “But don’t
go and tell my wife.”
“About you proposing?” Josie took the plate away.
“Naw, she knows all about that. Don’t tell her what I said about your pie. She
thinks I only come here to eat it because her new job keeps her too busy to
bake.”
At the mention of someone having a new job heads turned and the room got real
still.
“Part-time at the bowling alley over in Loganville. And no, they ain’t looking
to hire anyone else.” Jed raised his head and hollered to everyone all at once.
He lowered his head a bit and gave it a slow shake. “Rents shoes to snotty
teenagers who don’t know they’re smarting off to a woman who probably did
quality assurance on every Crumble they stuffed into their rude little mouths
growing up.”
Warren huffed.
Crumble. What an apt word for both the dessert cake and for the condition that
the poor management at the factory—which everyone also called “the Crumble”—had
left the town in. All those hopes, all those plans, all those lives, crumbled
like the crisp brown-sugar topping of the “coffee cake with the coffee right in
it.”
Josie stared at the empty plates in her hands. “You know, y’all, I think I might
have short-changed you a bit on the size of your pie slices this morning, let me
get you a second sliver on the house.”
She would never make her bank payment doing business like this, but Josie
couldn’t help it. The whole town had felt the sting since the Burdett family had
had to make cuts at the factory. Nineteen jobs gone already and another half
dozen on the line. It might not seem like a lot but in a town of less than two
thousand, counting kids and retirees, it made a palpable impact.
What a great time to try to open a business, Josie thought as she picked up the
clear plastic lid on the pie stand. But then, timing had never been her strong
suit.
Josephine Sunshine Redmond had been born almost a half hour after her identical
twin sister, Ophelia Rainbow. That led their free spirit of a mother to
announce, often and all their lives, that this meant Ophelia embraced life,
chased it, was unstoppable in going after what she wanted while Josie was a
plodding, methodical, reluctant old soul.
All their lives her sister had rushed headlong into one, uh, adventure after
another while Josie tried to find comfort and like-minded people wherever the
family’s lifestyle landed them. Whenever they had arrived in a new place,
chasing anything from freedom of expression—meaning a place where their mother
could sell her art at local shops and craft fairs—to seeking out new
experiences, which could mean anything, Josie had looked around for a nice,
friendly church.
That was one new experience her mother just couldn’t understand. So when Josie
announced she had given her life to Christ at seventeen, the family had left her
behind with her grandmother right here in Mt. Knott to finish her senior year of
high school and find her own way in life. Josie had done just that. She had gone
to work for the Burdetts and used their college-payback program to get an
associate’s degree in business administration. Then, at the beginning of this
summer, when she knew her job was about to be phased out, she’d used the general
goodwill toward her in the community to open the diner. It was early August now.
They’d been open a full three months. Josie still had the community’s goodwill
but not their financial support. No one had any money to spare!
Her sister had had her own set of new experiences, mostly involving men and
substance abuse. She came to visit Josie from time to time, and Josie tried to
influence her for the good, but it never lasted. A day or two of saying she was
going to change was always followed by nights of partying and the inevitable
taking off for parts unknown. The visits had stopped entirely a year ago when
Ophelia had dropped a bombshell—well, a baby boy, actually—on her sister’s
doorstep. She asked Josie to care for the child for a few weeks while she got
herself together, then disappeared.
Now Ophelia was trying to get in touch. After a year of loving the little boy
she had named Nathan, a Biblical name that meant gift, Josie was now afraid that
her rotten timing had reared its head again and she was about to lose her son
forever.
Beep. Beep.
The familiar bleating of their local mailman’s scooter horn jerked Josie out of
her worried state.
She looked up and blinked, then looked at the two pieces of pie in her hands.
She must have sliced them and plopped them on plates without even thinking about
what she was doing.
“Here you go, boys.” She plunked the free food down on the counter and rushed
toward the door and out onto the sidewalk in front of the diner.
“Got a letter for you, Miss Josie.” Bob “Bingo” Barnes waved a large white
envelope. “Looks important.”
“From a lawyer?” Josie asked. Her fingers trembled as she reached for the
suspect packet.
Bingo, a big man with bad knees who always delivered the mail on a small red
scooter with an orange flag sticking out of the back, blinked at her. “I don’t
think it’s from a lawyer.”
But now that Josie had suggested it, the man clearly wanted to hang around and
make sure.
Josie fingered the name on the return label, then glanced over her shoulder
trying to calculate which would draw more attention. Should she stand here on
the street in full view of everyone, take the bad news and have the whole town
know her business in a matter of minutes? Or rush inside past all her regulars
and hide in the kitchen and raise all kinds of concerns and speculations that
would follow her for days, maybe years to come?
“Better to just get it over with,” she muttered.
“Ma’am?” Bingo leaned forward, his eyes peering at her and his frown
overemphasizing the fullness of his jowls.
R-r-r-rip. Josie worked her finger under the flap. She held her breath and
slowly slid the papers out.
“Everything all right, Miss Josie?”
She was a struggling single mom, abandoned by her own family. Her business was
teetering on the brink. Her town’s economic base was literally crumbling beneath
it. And yet…
She stared in disbelief at the papers in her hands. The paperwork signed by
Ophelia relinquished parental rights and included a birth certificate naming his
biological father so Josie could find the man and secure his approval for her to
go forward with Nathan’s legal adoption.
To the rest of the world Josie Redmond was just a plain little pie maker in a
pickle, but when she saw the contents of that envelope she knew she was blessed
beyond all belief. And all she could say was, “You know, Bingo, God is so good.
And thanks for asking, because, yes, everything is going to be just fine now.”
Chapter One
Two Weeks Later
The South Carolina sky was black. His boots, jeans, T-shirt, all black. They
matched Adam Burdett’s silent, gleaming Harley—and his mood.
He narrowed his eyes at the simple frame house before him. Though he had grown
up around Mt. Knott, this part of the small town was unfamiliar to him. His
family had tended to keep to their fancy homes outside of town and didn’t
interact much with others.
“Bad for business,” his father had said. Better to draw a distinct line between
employees or potential employees—which is how they saw everyone in town—and
friends. Never ask a personal question. Never commit anything more than a name
and face to memory. Never offer more than the job description spelled out on
paper.
“You do those things,” the old man had warned his sons while they stood in the
office of his snack food factory, “and it makes it a lot harder to have to fire
a person later. And you will have to fire one of them, maybe a lot of them at
some point.”
According to the letters to the editor in the Mt. Knott Mountain Laurel and
Morning News that Adam had read when he hit town a few hours ago, the old man
had known what he was talking about. A lot of people in town were out of work.
Even more were out of patience with the lack of a solution to their plight. A
few were pretty close to being thrown out of their homes.
He gritted his teeth and forced the mixed-up emotions in his gut to quiet. On
one hand the failure of his father’s factory was just what Adam had wanted. On
the other…
He gazed at the humble home again and exhaled, long and low. On the other hand,
maybe there was something to be said for making connections, for caring about
what happened to people once they walked out the factory door. He never had, and
look where his callous attitude toward others had led him.
The empty matchbook in his hand rasped against his thumb as he flicked it open
to check the address scrawled there. This was it. In this house, illuminated
only by the pulsating light of a small-screen TV, Adam would find his son.
His son. The words tripped over his ragged nerves like a fingernail strummed
over taut barbwire. Adam Burdett had a son.
He hadn’t even known it until yesterday morning when a slick-haired private
investigator had weaseled his way into Adam’s office with the news and an
unthinkable demand—that Adam sign away all rights to his child, sight unseen.
There was about as much chance of that happening as there was of that P.I. ever
suggesting such a notion again in this lifetime.
Adam hadn’t belted the guy. But then again, he hadn’t needed to.
Adam might look like nothing more than a good ol’boy, redneck rodeo rider with
beef for brains, but looks, like too many other things in life, could be
deceiving. Raised in a family of wealth and influence by a mother who treasured
the value of an education, none of the Burdett boys were dummies. They could put
thoughts and words together as well as they could fists and flesh.
And Adam had proven as much and then some to that paper-waving P.I. Give up his
son for adoption and never look back? Adam huffed out a hard breath. Uh-uh. He’d
never do to any child what had been done to him.
He folded his arms over his chest, fit one well-worn cowboy boot over the other
at the ankle and leaned back against his parked Harley. Everything Adam had
become in this life—and everything he had failed to become—he owed first to his
adoptive mother, who had never treated him like anything but her own child and
next to his own father. Whoever that was.
He knew who it wasn’t. It wasn’t his adoptive father, Conner Burdett, the father
of Adam’s three brothers. Adopted brothers. It shouldn’t have been important to
add the “adopted” part. Adam had never felt it mattered to his mother, but to
the others?
The long-legged and fair-haired Burdett boys claimed Adam as their own even
though Adam’s broad, muscular build, dark eyes and angular features told
differently. The family never spoke of it outright, but Adam sensed the subtle
differences. He knew the gnawing ache of never feeling sure that he truly
belonged.
To the outside world, at least, Adam was just one of the wolf pack of Burdett
boys. A picture flashed in his mind of the four of them standing on the porch of
the huge Burdett home in T-shirts they’d had made with their family nicknames
emblazoned on them. Those names not only told of each boy as an individual, but
said a lot about the real nature of their relationship in the family.
The oldest son, Burke, was born to the title “Top Dawg” and he lived up to the
designation. “Lucky Dawg,” Adam’s next younger brother, Jason, got his name
after a near miss that could have cost him his life, or at least a limb, at the
factory. The youngest of the Burdett boys, Cody, earned the name “Hound Dawg”
for his notorious talent for trailing girls. It had hung with the kid even now
that he had become the only Burdett son to marry. It even clung to him when he
became a minister.
All three grown men now shared Conner’s lean build and eyes, which some called
blue green, others green blue. They had straight noses and golden tan
complexions.
Adam glanced at his reflection in the Harley’s side mirror. Dark-brown, hooded
eyes stared back from a face the color of baked red Georgia clay. He swiped a
knuckle at the small bump on the bridge of his nose and sneered.
If his looks didn’t give anyone doubts as to where Adam honestly fit into the
Burdett family they would have only to hear his nickname to figure it all out.
His mother said they’d tagged him with it young because they could never keep
him in one place, that he shared her wanderlust. Her story rang true enough, he
supposed, but that didn’t ease the twinge of pain he felt every time the man
they all knew was not his father called him by his nickname—“Stray Dawg.”
All the old feelings twisted in Adam’s gut. He refused to let a child of his
become another stray, raised by someone who could never fully call the boy his
own. No way. Not possible. And he’d do anything within his power to keep it from
happening—even go crawling back to the scene of his greatest bravado and worst
behavior. Back to Mt. Knott, if not back to his family.
Not that they’d have him back.
Adam had roared out of Mt. Knott a week after his mother’s funeral, with an
inheritance in hand, all ties to the family business severed and a hangover that
had all but erased the events of his last nights in town.
He hadn’t heard from or seen his family now in a year and a half but they had
surely heard of him. His new position with a competitor had all but run the
Burdett boys out of business. Now in order to do the right thing by his baby,
he’d had to come home to a place where he knew he would not be welcome. But he
would do it. He’d do anything for this baby he had not yet seen.
He scuffed his boot heel on the pocked driveway as he straightened away from his
treasured Harley. He’d waited long enough. It was time to go and claim his heir.

Josie hadn’t even bothered to lock up the diner. She had just tossed the keys to
the young man who did the dishes and asked him to see to it. The message from
the young girl who watched Nathan on Thursday evenings, when Josie stayed open
until nine, had been muddled by panic. But two words stood out that had caused
Josie to tear off her apron and all but run the two blocks from her business to
her small rental house.
“Baby’s father.”
A shudder worked its way through her body. The man who had the power to grant
her the one thing she wanted most in life—the chance to adopt the baby boy she’d
loved as her own since his birth—was in her home.
She drew in the smell of coffee and day-old pie clinging to her pale-blue
T-shirt and the fluffy white scrunchie holding back her curly hair. She’d had to
wait a week to get up the nerve and the funds to hire a private detective to
contact the man on the birth certificate. Not that she couldn’t have tracked him
down herself but, well, just looking at the name made her anxious. Adam Burdett!
She hadn’t known him but she certainly knew of him. And in a funny way, what she
knew had filled her with what now seemed false confidence.
After all, he was the one who had turned his back on his own family and a whole
town. How serious could he be about wanting to play a part in his son’s life
when he had done that? He was Mr. One-Night Stand. According to her sister, he
hadn’t even called the next day to say…whatever it is a guy says after an
encounter like that.
Josie wouldn’t know that kind of thing. She and her sister might be identical
twins, but their lifestyles were as different as their personalities. Yin and
yang. Their mother, a “free thinker” who couldn’t keep a job, didn’t want a
marriage and seemed always in pursuit of the latest trend in spiritual
enlightenment, called them that. Light and dark. Day and night.
Josephine and Ophelia.
Josie snorted out a laugh. Even their names said it all. Josephine sounded
sturdy, practical. She worked hard and wanted nothing more than to serve the
Lord, make a permanent place to call home, to create a family with a man she
could trust and depend upon. And to be the kind of woman he could depend upon in
return.
“He’s in your bedroom,” the sitter whispered the last word as Josie hit the
front door of her house.
Josie gave the girl a reassuring nod and headed down the hallway. If she could
afford a house with more than one bedroom, he’d be in the nursery, but since the
crib was in her room, she had expected to find him there. She pulled in one long
breath, peered into the dim room, illuminated by only a soft glowing light on
her dresser. She stole a quick peek at her sleeping baby, then pushed open her
door with one hand, ready to do battle. “I don’t know what you think you’re
doing. But if you value your life, you’ll get your hands out of my drawers.”
He looked as if he was about to swear, but he didn’t, though Josie suspected it
was more from shock than good manners or morality. He shut the small drawer he’d
been peeking into. He peered at her, instead, then his whole face changed. His
eyes narrowed. He smirked a bit. “I didn’t expect to run into you here.”
The deep gravel-throated whisper made her shiver. She froze in the shaft of
light pouring in from the hallway. Her stomach clenched.
“I’d say you’re looking good, but then, you know that, don’t you? You always
look good.” He did not move into the light, remaining just a silhouette against
the mirror above her chest of drawers. “Even after all this time and
after…everything you’ve been through. You look as good as the last time I saw
you, Ophelia.”
Josie blinked in the darkness, hoping her eyes would adjust to sharpen his
image. At the same time, she wanted to clear up a few things for him, as well.
“Listen, pal, you’ve made a mistake. I’m not—”
He stepped from the shadows into the muted light.
Josie’s mouth hung open, her every sense in that one instant focused on the man
who held her future in his big, calloused hands.
He wasn’t huge, though he seemed larger than life in presence. His shoulders
angled up from a trim waist and western-cut jeans that bunched in furrows over
his traditional-style cowboy boots. What she saw of his face, his strong jaw,
determined mouth and slightly crooked nose made a compelling, if not classically
handsome, image.
He moved in on her, like something powerful and wild sizing up his prey. His
eyes glittered.
She pressed her lips together, too angry at his supposition and his presumptive
presence to trust herself to speak.
He began to slowly circle her so close that his soft shirtsleeve rasped against
her bare elbow.
The man was playing games with her—or more to the point, with Ophelia.
Ophelia liked games. They were her stock and trade. The man was no fool to go on
the offensive to try to beat Ophelia at her own impressive bag of tricks. A
sucker for excitement and danger, this predatory act might have been just the
thing to get Josie’s twin to go all liquid and make her easier to negotiate
with.
But she wasn’t Ophelia. She was smart, practical Josie. The dull one. The mom
with a child to protect. This man’s act was totally lost on her.
His boots scuffed lightly at the floor.
She tossed her head back, lifted her chin in her best attempt at regal
composure. If he wanted to deal with her, it would be as two mature adults, no
games, no stooping to base animal attraction to put her at a disadvantage.
“Listen, cowboy, I know what you’re up to.”
His shoulder brushed against the curls trailing down her neck from the knot of
hair atop her head.
A wolf, that’s what he reminded her of, she decided. “I am not the same woman
you shared a bed with a couple years ago.”
“Yes, I can see that now.”
About time. He’d spent at least one night in tangled passion with her sister,
after all. Obviously, that was enough to help him see how very different they
were, how very un-Ophelia-like and unappealing to a man like him Josie was.
“Yes, you’ve made a mistake, all right,” she said. “A big one. I am not—”
“I got it. Not the same woman. You think I don’t see that?” He slid his gaze
over her, quick and businesslike, as if he were sizing up the marbling on a slab
of pot roast before he tossed it in his shopping cart.
Marbling. As in fat. She shook her head at where her mind had immediately gone.
Of the many ways she had been made to feel inferior to her sister, being a full
size larger than Ophelia, was one Josie couldn’t shake. And all local jokes
about never trusting a skinny cook didn’t really ease her discomfort over it,
either. Now she couldn’t help feeling self-conscious under this man’s scrutiny.
She found herself folding her arms over a stubborn pout of a tummy no amount of
killer crunches had ever diminished.
He put his hand lightly on her back.
Josie gasped. She raised her hand to push him away and found muscles tight as
steel beneath her fingertips.
His touch, warm and gentle, almost a reverent caress, belied the strength within
the man. She lifted her gaze to his.
“How could I have not seen it? It was clear the moment I laid eyes on you,” he
murmured. “You aren’t the same woman.”
“No, I’m not.” It sounded almost like an apology, she realized too late. This
time she did push his arm away from her.
He let it fall easily to his own side as if she had had no effect on him
whatsoever. “And you sure don’t look as good as the last time I saw you.”
Accustomed as she was to unfavorable comparisons to her sister in the
attractiveness department, this man’s assessment stung like a backhanded slap to
her self-esteem.
She hung her head. “I’m not surprised you’d think—”
He dipped his head and his eyes searched her face. “You look better.”
“Better?” she squeaked, cleared her throat, then matched his smoky whisper in
depth and volume. “Better?”
“Mmm-hmm.” He nodded. “Motherhood becomes you.”
She smiled. Maybe this guy wasn’t a total jerk after all. He knew who she was
and had picked up on the one thing in which she had outshone her vivacious twin.
Motherhood did become Josie.
She managed a modest smile. “Thank you for noticing. I know we have a lot to
deal with, but it’s good to know you can see how important being a mom is to
me.”
“Oh, yeah, I can just guess how ‘important’ motherhood is to a girl like you—” a
sudden change came over his features; a hardness rang in his tone as he wrung
out the rest “—Ophelia.”
Yeeoow. Now she knew how those football coaches felt when the player dumped a
tub of ice on them to celebrate a victory! She peeked to make sure that the baby
was still sleeping, then turned with a flourish to face this
cowboy-biker-Burdett creep. “How can you not know who I am?”
“I could ask the same of you. Do you know who I am?”
“Of course I know who you are,” she whispered back, closing in on him to keep
her voice from disturbing her child. “You are the man who, if he doesn’t get out
of my bedroom this instant, will be explaining himself to the whole Mt. Knott
Police Department, every last one of them a close personal friend of mine.”
His mouth lifted in a one-sided sneer. “I’ll just bet.”
She spun quietly around to snatch the only picture she had of herself and her
twin from on top of her dresser. “I know them all from going to school here.
From working year after year alongside their moms and sisters and wives and
friends at your family’s factory. I know them from serving them meals at my own
diner.”
Confusion registered in his ominous expression. His gaze flicked downward to the
framed photo, then up to her face as if asking if she expected him to understand
what she wanted to show him.
She tugged it up higher for his inspection. “That’s Ophelia.” She jabbed her
finger at the girl in the forefront of the photo with her hands up and her hair
in her counterpart’s face. “That’s me. Josie.”
“Josie?” He shook his head. “Who is Josie?”
“Josie is me, pal. The woman who is kicking you out of here before we wake my
baby.” She shoved at his shoulder to prompt him to get moving.
“For the baby’s sake, I’ll go, but just so we can sort this whole mess through
somewhere else.”
“Agreed.” She ushered him into the hallway, pulling the bedroom door firmly shut
after them.
“And for the record, ma’am,” he said, stopping short in front of her so that she
could neither move past him or retreat.
“What?” she asked, trying to sound as brave as she had felt while defending her
son.
“For the record…” He leaned down close until his face loomed before hers, his
eyes demanding her total focus. “That little boy asleep in that crib in there—”
She held her breath.
“—is my baby.”
Chapter Two
“Go on home. I’ll be all right.” This woman, this spitting image of Ophelia
Redmond only…softer, gave the babysitter a comforting pat as she nudged the
wide-eyed gal out the front door.
Adam stuffed two fingers of each hand into his back jeans pockets and shifted
his weight to one leg. Softer or not, that tangle of red-blond curls with the
honest eyes and mama-tiger-protecting-her-cub ferocity stood between him and his
son. He didn’t like that. Did not like that one bit.
And Adam was determined he would not like her, either. He’d come for his son and
that left no room for anything but cold indifference toward the woman who wanted
him to relinquish his parental rights.
Josie shut the door and turned to him, a smug expression on her pretty face.
“I’d ask you if you wanted some coffee, but seeing as you’re not staying long
enough to—”
“I take it black,” he told her. “The coffee, that is. In a mug, not some wimpy
little teacup.”
Her eyes cut straight through him like two burning coals. They shone with
emotion and life that he’d never seen in her twin’s gaze. Not that it mattered,
of course. As far as he was concerned, Josie Redmond was the enemy.
“And piping hot,” he added, enjoying tweaking her anger a bit more than he
really should have allowed himself.
She took in one long, deep breath, held it, then let it out, slow—real slow.
“Anything else?”
“With sugar.”
“Do tell.”
“Yep.”
“Well, I like mine decaf. Instant decaf.” She jerked her head toward the open
door to his left. “You’ll find everything you need on the counter.”
“Me?” He jammed his thumb into his breastbone.
“You want coffee, you make coffee.” She put her hand to the wall and kicked her
thick white shoes off. “I’m officially off duty, Mr. Burdett.”
“Adam,” he drawled, hoping it hid his grudging admiration for her unflappable
response and her no-nonsense approach.
She reached up and snagged the white hair-holding thingy loose. Spiral curls
clung to it as she dragged it downward. She shook her head, her hair tumbling
down to brush her straight shoulders. She put her hand behind her neck. “What
did you say?”
“Huh?”
“Maybe I should make the coffee after all.” She narrowed one eye on him.
“Wouldn’t want to tax you too much, you know, by expecting you to talk and
handle a kitchen appliance at the same time. Could get tricky.”
Adam huffed a hard laugh, more amused than he wanted to admit. “Bet you get a
lot of tips with that winning attitude of yours.”
“I do all right.” She turned and padded into the kitchen.
“I’ll just bet you do,” he muttered.
“What’d you say?”
“Adam.” He strolled into the glaring light of the kitchen and leaned against the
cabinet where she was pulling out two coffee mugs. “I asked you to call me Adam.
Mr. Burdett is my father.”
“I know.” She clunked one cup down on the counter.
“Yeah. Of course. Everyone around here knows the Burdetts.” He watched her for
some sign that she shared his opinion of his family. Why he wanted to find that
commonality with her, he didn’t know. It just seemed, standing here in this
small space with her, that it sure would be nice to have a girl like her on his
side. “You know which one I am, right?”
She placed the second cup down as though it were as delicate as an eggshell,
then stretched her hand out for a jar of instant coffee. She wrenched the lid
off the jar, then yanked open a stubborn drawer, making the silverware clatter
as she pawed around inside it.
He tried to will her to answer. He wanted to hear firsthand from someone who
didn’t share his last name, just what people in Mt. Knott thought of him and
what he had done to his family’s business. He wanted to hear it from her.
“I know which one you are.” Her fingers curled around a spoon, and the room grew
very quiet. Finally she said so softly that a draft from the nearby window might
have blown the words away, “You’re the man whose name is on my baby’s birth
certificate.”
She did not look up. She went right on making the coffee. But it didn’t escape
Adam’s attention that as she scooped the dark-brown powder into each cup, her
hand trembled. With one sentence she shifted from a smart, sassy woman in
control to one scared little lady.
That’s just what he had wanted when he had first shown up tonight.
Then why didn’t he feel better about it?
“What am I doing?” The spoon clinked against the inner lip of the cup. She shut
her eyes and shook her head. “I should have heated the water first.”
“Never mind.” He straightened away from the cabinet.
“No. I’ll fix this.” She lifted both cups. They rattled against each other,
tipping one and sending instant coffee spilling over the counter. “Now look what
I’ve done, I—”
“Look, forget it.” He stepped forward, feeling every inch the heel for having
reduced her to this. “I don’t need any coffee.”
“No, I said I’d make it and there’s one thing you ought to know about me, Mr.
Burdett. If I say I’m going to do something, I do it.” She set both cups down,
then began to scoop up the dark dust in her palm. It sifted through her fingers
like sand. “I can fix this. I can—”
“Josie.” He took her by the wrist and turned her to face him. That’s when he saw
the tears rimming her eyes. They seemed held in place only by the sheer force of
her will not to cry. He cupped her fisted hand in his palm. “I didn’t come here
for coffee.”
“I know,” she rasped. “You came here to take my son.”
A few minutes ago he’d not only have agreed with her, he’d have thrown in a
crude adjective to seal the deal. Now? All he could do was clear his throat and
say, softly, “Then maybe we should just talk—”
She jerked her head up. “I’m not anything like my sister, you know.”
He smiled then. “I can see that.”
“You can?”
When she looked confused, Adam noticed, a small crease appeared between her
eyebrows.
“How can you possibly see I’m not like Ophelia? We only just met.”
“I can see it—” he rubbed one knuckle along her cheek as gently as he could
manage “—because you’re the one who’s here with my son, not her.”
“That’s because…” Her voice failed. She blinked. A single tear dampened her
cheek. She pushed out a shuddering breath. “I love him. He’s mine.”
It killed him to hear that, and at the same time it made him proud and elated to
know his boy had been loved and wanted by somebody. Adam studied her with a
series of brushing glances.
Not just somebody, he realized when his gaze searched hers. The baby’s aunt. His
birth mother’s identical twin. Someone with a blood bond and a heart with the
capacity to put her needs aside to care for a helpless infant.
And grit. Josie had to have grit, he decided on the spot. How else could a woman
choose to bear the burden of single motherhood? How else could she stay in Mt.
Knott and watch the jobs and opportunities ebb away, partly because of his own
actions, and even begin her own business because she knew she had to provide the
sole support for a child?
“You can say that? After Ophelia just dumped him on you?”
“I never said she—”
“But that’s what she did, right?”
The woman lowered her gaze to the floor. “It doesn’t change how I feel about
him.”
Adam swallowed, and it felt like forcing a boulder through a straw. Everything
he’d determined about this lady flew right out the window when he considered all
he’d learned in just a few moments with her. He liked her plenty, in all manner
of ways, most he didn’t even understand yet—and he reckoned she was plenty good
for his boy, as well.
“Please, Mr. Burdett,” she whispered, her chin angled up and her eyes bright
with unshed tears. “Please tell me you haven’t come to take away my baby.”
“Actually, ma’am, I…” Adam sighed.
Who was he kidding? He couldn’t take his son away from the only mother the baby
had ever known. He wouldn’t.
“I haven’t come to take him away, Josie.”
She shut her eyes and mouthed the words thank you.
Adam didn’t know if she spoke to him or to heaven—maybe both. He took one step
back. So he’d wimped out of doing what he’d come here to do. That didn’t mean
he’d called a complete surrender…and he respected this woman enough to make sure
she understood that without question.
“But I think you should understand, ma’am.” He stuck his thumb through his belt
loop and anchored his boots wide on the gleaming vinyl floor. “I won’t simply
sign some papers and walk away, either. He’s my boy and I’ll do whatever it
takes to make sure I stay involved in his life. Whatever it takes.”

Joy and apprehension battled within Josie, and in the end joy won. He said he
wasn’t going to take her baby. Knowing that, she figured she could handle
anything else thrown at her by this biker/cowboy with a voice that poured over
her nerves like honey over sandpaper.
“Then let’s talk, Mr. Burdett.” She extended her hand toward the small kitchen
table, her hope renewed that this could still work out in her favor. “If you
still want some coffee, I can—”
The sputtered coughing cry of the baby halted her offer and Adam Burdett’s
movement toward the table at the same time.
He gave her a quick, panicked look. “That him?”
“Unless my cat’s become a ventriloquist, I’d say yes.” She laughed but couldn’t
make it sound real, not knowing that if the baby awakened she’d have to let
this…this…father person see him. The very notion made her heart race.
She cocked her head to listen, praying that the baby was merely restless and
would quiet and go back to sleep on his own.
“You got a cat?” Burdett leaned into the doorway to stare down the hall in the
direction of the bedroom.
“What?” She blinked, moving to the door to lean out just a bit farther than he
did.
“A cat.” He slouched forward, his face a mask of concentration all focused on
any sound that might arise from the child. “I heard it said that it’s not good
to have a cat around a baby.”
“That’s an old wives’ tale.” Josie rolled her eyes.
No other sound came from the baby’s room. She relaxed enough to appreciate the
level of confusion and worry on Burdett’s face over the routine sounds the baby
had just made and some silly superstition.
The baby was quiet. Maybe the fact that she’d dodged the
letting-him-see-his-son-for-the-first-time bullet made her warm a little to the
man. Or maybe it was the tenderness in those eyes that allowed her to loosen up
a bit and say, “You don’t know much about babies, do you, Mr. B—I mean, Adam?”
“This is my first,” he said softly.
“Mine, too,” she said, even softer.
She bet no other new parents had ever shared such an awkward or awkwardly sweet
moment. Josie found within herself the power to actually smile. Maybe after a
few meetings, a few long talks about parenting philosophy, visitation
expectations, some practical lessons in the care and feeding of a one-year-old,
she’d be ready to allow this man to see their son. Then later, maybe, after he’d
proved himself capable, he could hold the baby and—
Just then the baby broke out in a howling lament.
Josie froze.
“I don’t know much about babies, ma’am.” Burdett glanced at her and then down
the hallway, his whole body tense. “But I do know that means someone needs to go
check on him.”
She took off before he finished the sentence. Josie heard his big old boots
clomping along the hallway right behind her stocking feet and it irritated her.
“So then, you’re saying it’s okay—your cat and the baby?”
“What cat?” She spun around, placing one hand and one shoulder to the bedroom
door. He practically loomed over her as she glowered up at his concern-filled
face and snapped, “I don’t have a cat.”
“You don’t?”
“No.”
The baby wailed again.
“But I do have a child who needs my attention. Now if you’ll just go wait in the
kitchen and excuse me, I’ll take care of my baby.” She started to slip inside
the room without opening the door to any unnecessary invitation.
His arm shot past her head, his palm flattened to the door just inches from her
eye level. “Whoa, there, sweetheart.”
She twisted her head to peer over her shoulder.
“I promised I wouldn’t take the baby from you.” His dark eyes went almost
completely black. She saw the heat in his cheeks and felt it on his breath as he
lowered his voice to a raw-edged whisper. “But I double-dog promise you
something else, as well, I won’t take this from you, either.”
“What?” A corkscrew curl snagged on her eyelash and bobbed up and down as she
batted her eyes in feigned innocence.
“I won’t take this game of trying to shut me out of my baby’s life. I want to
make that very clear.”
It was. And despite the anxiety it unleashed in her, Josie realized, she
respected and admired his attitude. For a year now she had painted the baby’s
father as some sleazy party animal who hadn’t even cared enough to find out what
had become of Ophelia. It gave her some curious comfort now to know that wasn’t
the case. Her son had a decent man as a father.
A decent, gorgeous, Harley-riding, Mt. Knott-deserting rich man who could change
from rapt preoccupation over his child and some imaginary cat to issuing
hard-nosed mandates about the boy in a matter of seconds, she reminded herself.
“Do you understand that, Josie?”
She understood that and so much more. Like her problems with the diner and the
simple existence she had known before she took in Nathan, from this point
forward the life she had planned was going to take a different turn, and, like
it or not, it was going to have to include Adam Burdett.
Chapter Three
They both shuffled quietly inside the room, using only the stream of light from
the hallway to guide them.
“Hush, now, Nathan, shhh. Quiet down. It’s all right.” Josie, standing in
profile to Adam, cooed some kind of magical, maternal comfort to the lumpy blue
blanket she pulled from the crib.
“Nathan?” He turned the name over and over in his mind. He liked it. “Is what
you named him?”
“Yes. It means…” She snagged her breath and held it a moment. “It’s Biblical. It
means gift.”
“I like it.” He found himself nodding slowly to show his approval.
“I’m glad,” she whispered, but nothing in her body language underscored her
claim. She cuddled the baby close and spread the blanket out over the two of
them so that Adam could not even see a tiny finger or a lock of fine baby hair.
He longed to lay eyes on his boy for the first time, show himself and say,
“Hello, Nathan. I’m your father. I’m here now. I won’t allow you to grow up
feeling as if the people who should have done anything within their power to
keep you, gave you away and didn’t care.”
Adam knew most adopted children did not feel this way. But he had. He had been
made to feel that way. And now that he had returned to Mt. Knott, he would not
only shield his child from those emotions, Adam would make his remaining family
pay for having treated him so callously. He had the means and the motivation.
The news of his unexpected fatherhood had hastened his plan but had not quashed
it. If anything, it gave him new passion for the battle that lay ahead. He would
do this not just for the child he had been, but for the child lying in this
small, dark room before him.
Adam strained to get a good look at the kid without getting too close. Deep in
his gut, he truly wished to step forward and scoop his son up in his arms. But
somehow his body would not cooperate. He hung back, his back stiff, his legs
like lead, folding then unfolding his arms across his chest, then letting them
dangle limp at his sides.
“Is he…” He craned his neck to peer around a tossed-back flap of the blanket
that draped from Josie’s shoulder to her midthigh. “Is he okay?”
“Well, he’s not wet or…otherwise.” She rocked her body back and forth, and the
crying died to gurgles and gasps.
“Maybe he’s hungry.” Just saying it made Adam feel all fatherly. Maybe this
wasn’t such a hard thing after all, to take care of a baby.
“I doubt that.” She patted the bundle gently, still rocking.
“He would have had a bottle before bed.”
“But babies eat at all hours.” He spoke like a veritable authority on the
subject even though, deep down, he felt like a complete dolt. Him! Adam Burdett,
one of five highly valued and overpaid vice presidents of acquisitions and
mergers for Wholesome Hearth Country Fresh Bakery, a division of Cynergetic
GlobalCom Limited. How could one small, totally dependent creature reduce him to
such uncertainty and ineptitude? “Don’t they need to, um, refuel, during the
night?”
“Refuel?” For the first time she laughed faintly.
But still, something in the sound of it made Adam long to hear it again.
“Yeah, you know. Like a minijet with diapers?” He pressed his lips together and
made the sound of a sputtering engine. “Or a rechargeable battery.”
“If they ever find a way to channel this kid’s energy into a battery or an
engine, I’ll have to give up my job and chase him around full-time.”
“Yeah, you wouldn’t want that.”
“Are you kidding? I’d love to give up worrying about how I’m going to keep the
Home Cookin’ Kitchen open and be a full-time mom to Nathan.” Her eyes grew wide
suddenly. “Not that I want my business to fail. I love what I do. I love
providing a service to Mt. Knott and seeing everyone, and I love cooking.
Especially…well, my specialty is not important beyond, you know, being a mother
being my specialty.”
She was babbling. Not in a ridiculous, silly way. She was just nervous. And
relieved. Nervous and relieved all at once. He could sense that in the way her
words all ran together, then stopped suddenly. He didn’t learn much from what
she said, of course, but it did help him see her inner conflict over her roles
as a woman business-owner and a mother to his son.
“But if I could somehow not have to keep the crazy hours at my Home Cookin’
Kitchen and could just spend all my time with Nathan, at least in these early
years, I’d do it in a heartbeat. No regrets. No complaints.” She stopped
abruptly again, and this time her eyes grew wide before she added, in a little
slower and more pronounced voice, “Not that I’m hinting that’s what I expect you
to provide.”
She’d babbled until she had spoken the truth. In doing so, she’d given Adam a
glimpse into her desires and perhaps some future negotiating power. He filed the
information away and, on the surface, let it go. “So, he’s not hungry?”
“No. I don’t think he’s hungry.” She kept swaying back and forth and jiggling
the baby, who had begun to fret and grunt quietly beneath the blanket. “He’s
been sleeping through the night for a couple of months now.”
“He has?” Adam was rocking now, too. He couldn’t seem to help himself. Though he
wasn’t sure, he figured this was how it felt to carry on a conversation on a
boat. “Well, maybe he’s sick, or needs some—”
“Maybe…” she interrupted in the same soothing murmur she used with the baby “…he
just had a bad dream.”
“Dream?” He stopped rocking long enough to consider that. “What on earth does an
itty-bitty baby like that have to dream about?”
“He’s not so itty-bitty. He’s got plenty of things to dream about, a whole
lifetime of experiences. His lifetime.” She shot him a look that even in the dim
light Adam interpreted as a challenge. I have been this child’s mother for his
entire life. Where have you been? “He’ll have his first birthday in two weeks,
won’t you, tiger?”
“He will?” Adam stretched out his fingers, needing a kind of visual cue to help
him do some lightning-fast math. “That means he was born in September, so
August, July, June—”
“January.”
“What?”
“He was conceived in January, one year, eight months and two weeks ago.” She
faced him, her mouth set in grim accusation. “Don’t tell me that doesn’t even
ring a bell. Maybe you’ve just been with so many women that it’s all a blur.”
“Oh, it’s a blur all right, but not for the reasons you think.” He scratched at
his cheek while his mind struggled to force all the pieces together. “Maybe you
don’t recall this, but…”
Adam faced a choice. Speak the truth and risk having it sound like a plea for
pity or at least leniency for his behavior or skim over it. He could stand here
and own up to that bad behavior without any preface or attempt to put it in
context.
His mother had died. He felt he had not only lost the only one who’d seen him
truly as her own but that he had also lost his place in his family. When his
suggestions to take the Carolina Crumble Pattie to a wider market had been
ridiculed by his father and brothers, Adam felt he had lost his reason for
staying in Mt. Knott as well. By the time he met Ophelia, a beautiful woman who
shared his disdain for the small town, he had not been thinking about right and
wrong.
He had been in pain. He needed to feel he wasn’t a lost cause, just a stray that
nobody wanted. He felt worthless and figured he didn’t matter to anyone, not
even God. It became easier to fall into sin, he had learned, when you take your
eyes off the Lord and start looking at the mess you have made of your life and
the mess life has made of the world around you.
He had long prided himself on being a man who told the truth. It was one of the
things, he felt, which set him apart from his father.
While Conner Burdett was not a dishonest man, he had built his business on the
belief that knowledge was power. And Conner protected his own power by
controlling what knowledge he allowed others to have.
On the other hand, telling her about all the years of pain and loneliness that
led up to those few wild nights that January would probably just sound like an
excuse.
Adam didn’t like people who made excuses. Besides, he had no way of knowing if
he could trust Josie with an emotional truth that could cut him to his core. She
may yet prove herself the enemy in a bitter custody case. He decided to tell the
truth, but not all of it. It twisted low in his gut that he would follow his
father’s path but if she listened, really listened, she would hear the message
beneath the words and have an inkling of what had fueled his angry rebellion.
“If you recall, I came into my inheritance in January.” I lost my mom. My only
ally.
Her determined jawline eased a bit.
“I found myself with a totally new status.” Finally, officially, on my own.
Alone.
Her gaze dipped downward.
“I didn’t handle it particularly well.” I’m not making any excuses.
She nodded, her brow furrowed. “I’m sorry about the loss of your mother.”
“Thanks.” He’d struck a chord, he supposed.
“She was a remarkable lady. A real force in the community. A good Christian who
supported so many social causes and cared about people. She really put her faith
in action.”
“More than you probably know.” He thought not only of how his mother had taken
him in as a child and raised him as her very own, but also of the ways she
devoted her own inherited fortune to help those in need. It tugged at Adam’s
heart to realize that back then he’d been so fixated on striking back at his
father and brothers that he had done nothing to honor his mother and the things
she had taught him. That did not alter his plan for revenge, however.
He was a Christian. He just wasn’t that kind of Christian. He fought back a
twinge of shame over having even thought that, much less allowed it to stand as
his justification. “If it helps, I am not proud of what I did.”
“I’m not the one you owe an apology to.” Josie poked her chin up, fidgeted with
the folds of the blanket that still concealed his son from him.
“An apology? I wasn’t aware I owed an apology to anyone.” It was what it was. He
felt bad that it had gone so wrong. Felt some shame that his grief and
resentment had uncovered his weaknesses instead of revealed his inner strength.
But getting all touchy-feely about it now wouldn’t change the past or set things
right today.
He had come to town with only two indisputable responsibilities, to claim his
son and ruin his so-called family. Neither Josie nor Ophelia Redmond figured
prominently in his designs. “Your sister was a willing partner in what happened
between us. Don’t forget that she was the one who failed to notify me about the
baby. It’s not as if I haven’t paid a price for my poor choices.”
“I don’t doubt that.” She gave him a look of sympathy that did not sink to the
level of pity.
He hadn’t known anyone who had ever managed that with him and appreciated it in
a way he could not for the world have articulated. His whole life, people had
given with one hand and taken away with two. Encounters with even the most
sincerely empathetic often left him undermined and exposed. He wondered if Josie
would finally be the exception.
“However…”
“I should have known,” he muttered under his breath.
“Hmm?” she asked over the wriggling and almost inaudible fussing of the baby in
her arm.
“Give with one hand, take with two,” was all he felt compelled to say.
“However…” She patted the blanket and adjusted the form beneath it, raising it
higher against her own small frame. The legs kicked and a tiny hand flailed out
to grab a strand of her hair. She ignored it and forged on. “Your choices have
resulted in this small life. And whether you have suffered enough or who is to
blame for how the two of us arrived in this situation no longer matters. When
you are a parent, it’s not about you and your feelings anymore, it’s about
what’s best for your child.”
“My child,” he echoed softly. “Thank you.”
“You’re welcome.” She batted her eyes in a show of seeming disbelief, then
leaned back to look under the blanket and the wriggling infant in her arms. “I
don’t usually yell at strangers like that, but…”
“I’m not thanking you for yelling at me.” He chuckled at the very notion. He
could go just about anywhere in this town and get yelled at, and by people a lot
more experienced and colorful at it than Miss Josie Redmond.
“Then, I don’t—” She hook her head.
“When,” he explained as softly as the baby’s gentle stirring.
“What?”
“You said when you are a parent. Not if. Your intention with that little speech
was to put me in my place. And with that small distinction, you did.” He reached
out and brushed the blanket from atop the child’s head.
The baby squirmed and made a sound that went something like “ya-ya-ya,” then
laughed.
Neither music nor birds nor even the grandest of majestic choirs could ever
sound as sweet as the sound of his baby laughing.
“Anyway,” he explained, knowing he’d have to appease Josie in some way before
she’d even think of allowing him to hold his son, “I admit to my part, my
shortcomings in all of this. I did spend time with your sister, obviously, and—”
“And it didn’t mean a thing to you.”
He lowered his head and his tone and took one step toward the woman holding his
son. “You will never understand what it meant to me, lady.”
She cupped the baby’s head and took a step back from him. “Then why didn’t you
call her? Why didn’t you try to find out what happened to her?”
“Because…” Again a choice loomed before him. Tell the whole truth and risk
losing some of his power in the situation or say just enough to get what he
wanted now. He looked long and deep into Josie’s defiant yet anxious eyes and
knew he only had one real course of action. The truth. “Because I was only
thinking of myself. I acted like a wounded dog, snarling and mean and willing to
do anything to protect myself. I spent a night with your sister, drunk most of
the time but aware of what I was doing, and then I walked away and never looked
back. Because that’s what suited me.”
There he’d said it. He’d given her plenty of ammunition to take a potshot at him
and do some emotional damage. He did not deserve this child. But, as he hoped
both his words and tone made quite clear, he would do whatever it took to be a
part of young Nathan’s life. Because it suited him.
“Oh.” Clearly she did not know what to make of that. But she did not seem even
remotely willing to use his confession against him. “Are you saying that if you
had known sooner, you’d have returned sooner?”
“No.” Again he spit the hard truth out. He had worked diligently this past year
and a half to put himself in a position to do the most damage to…or good for,
depending on one’s vantage point, the Carolina Crumble Pattie Factory. If he had
learned about his son sooner, he would have come for the child, but not until
the time was right. “No, I can’t say I’d have come back sooner. But I can say I
am here now and that’s what we have to deal with.”
They stood in silence for a long, anxious moment.
Adam could practically see the thought process playing out over Josie’s
features. He wanted to say something to tip her confidence in his favor, but in
the end he could only say straight-out what was on his mind. “You asked me
earlier tonight not to take your son away, Josie, and I agreed. I won’t. I can’t
do that to him—or to you.”
He focused on her, standing in the shaft of light from the open door.
She seemed so small and alone in the otherwise dark room, that he felt drawn to
her and the child cradled against her body.
He moved in, so near that he could see the fearful questioning in her eyes. He
knew how it felt to wonder if anyone was on your side. To pray not to lose the
person you loved most in the world and wonder how you would survive if the worst
came to pass. He had prayed that prayer the night his mom died. But he had not
come to destroy this little family. He had it within his power to prevent his
son from losing the only mother he had ever known. He would not fail little
Nathan in that regard.
Because, even though he had only known about him for a short while and had yet
to even properly see him, Adam already loved the little guy. He supposed that
among all his many faults and flaws, this redeemed him just a little. That in
this feeling he knew a small taste of the greatest love of all, the love of God.
He placed one hand upon his baby’s head and one protectively on Josie’s tense
shoulder. “Since you know I’m not going to take the boy, Josie. Why don’t you
just let me…hold him?”
She wet her lips. Hesitated.
“Please.”
In one fluid movement Josie swept her hand beneath the child legs and then
carefully laid him in his father’s arms.
His son. Adam caught his breath. For all his good intentions and promises,
holding his child for the very first time made him wonder if he’d spoken too
soon. He did not want to tear this baby from the only mother it had ever known,
but this was his son. His flesh and blood. And Adam would not settle for
weekends and every other Christmas, just experiencing bits and pieces of his
childhood.
He felt Josie tense at his side, but he didn’t focus on her discomfort. Adam had
always made his own rules in life—or figured a way around the ones he didn’t
like. That’s exactly what he was going to do now.
He gazed into the baby’s bright blue eyes and found just enough voice to
whisper, “Hello, son. Daddy’s here now. Daddy’s here—and nothing is going to
come between us ever again.”
Chapter Four
“Nothing’s going to come between us again.”
Adam’s words to Nathan still rang in Josie’s ears twelve hours later as she
rushed about the diner trying to get ready for the morning coffee crowd.
Yes, crowd.
Large cities and fancy coffee shops and cafés with big noisy machines were not
the only places that people liked to gather to chat on their way to work in the
mornings. There had always been the usual fellows, the retirees who liked to do
a little of what locals lovingly called, “pickin’ and grinnin’, laughin’ and
scratchin’.’’ They met every day but Sunday, of course, to solve the problems of
the world, tell jokes and stories they had all heard a hundred times, and reward
their long-suffering wives with a little bit of “me” time.
Then there were the commuters. Ever since the layoffs had started at the
Crumble, more and more folks began their drives to workplaces in other nearby
towns with what Josie had listed on tent cards on the tabletops as “Cup O’Joe To
Go.” It wasn’t the kind of thing you could get at those fancy places. No grande
or venti size disposable cups with insulated wrappers to keep the drinker from
burning his or her hands or fancy tops that looked like Nathan’s sippy cup. No,
this was a bank of coffeepots, sweetener options and creamers where people
walked in, filled up the coffee conveyance brought from home, dropped a dollar
or two in an old pickle jar and headed off to face the day.
Often stopping to share a word of encouragement with one another or to check the
chalkboard for messages or new prayer requests. Always with a sense of community
that one couldn’t find anywhere else.
This was, to Josie, the essence of why she lived in Mt. Knott. It was also one
of the reasons she had brought Nathan to work with her this morning. She felt
safe here and felt her son would be safe here, as well.
Not that she thought Adam would do any harm to Nathan or even break his word
about taking the child but…
But in her whole life she could not recall ever having felt so vulnerable.
A product, she suspected, of more than just Adam’s introduction into Nathan’s
life. This emotion was also a byproduct of her realization that the man would be
a presence in her life for a long time to come, as well.
She went up on tiptoe to peer over the cash register at the baby playing quietly
in the bright blue portable playpen in the corner of the café.
She had promised herself she wouldn’t make a habit of bringing Nathan to work.
Maybe when he was older, she had thought, she would have him come by after
school. He could do his homework in one of the booths and she would serve him a
snack and whatever advice she could spare until he got into calculus or
something else she knew nothing about. But until then she had determined she
would have him at work as little as possible.
Josie didn’t need to bring him here, really. She had been blessed with a network
of moms and grandmothers around town who had taken turns watching her son since
Ophelia left him in her care. The original plan was to depend on this patchwork
safety net just until the newborn was old enough for day care. Well, that had
been the plan, but then when the jobs began to dry up, so had the town’s only
day-care center.
She wondered if Adam Burdett would see that as unacceptable and use it as a
wedge to take Nathan from her. He had promised he wouldn’t do that, but then,
what did she really know about him?
“Adam Burdett?” The first person she had asked, not giving the particulars
behind her sudden interest in the man, had pondered it a moment. “Oh, Stray
Dawg! Yeah. Yeah, I know which one he was, uh, is. The one who cashed out. Cut
and run.”
“Heard he went through that cash in nothing flat.” The woman at the cash
register took her change from Josie and, as she dropped the quarters and nickels
into her coin purse, she elaborated, “Gambling.” Clink. “Drinking.” Clink.
“Women.” Clink. Clink.
“Gambling?” Josie shoved the cash drawer shut. “Drinking?”
“And women!” Warren and Jed confirmed in unison as they broke off from the
morning gathering of curmudgeons to take their usual seats at the counter.
Of course Adam had women. A wealthy, handsome man like that probably had all
kinds of girlfriends. She blushed at her own lack of sophistication and what
many people would tsk-tsk as simple, out-of-date values. To hide her chagrin,
she ducked back into the kitchen to check on the morning’s first offering of
pies still cooling on the racks beside the oven. Girlfriends? She doubted very
much that a man like that thought of his conquests as girlfriends.
The aroma of apple and cinnamon and other spices filled the air. The tart
sweetness of cherries bubbling in deep-red juices stung her nose. All buffered
by the homey smell of flaky crust and Josie’s specialty topping.
She went to the back door and cracked it open a tiny bit, to allow some fresh
air into the hot, almost steamy kitchen. She paused only a moment, lifting her
ponytail and turning her head to cool the back of her neck before hurrying back
to her tasks, and to talk of Adam. She peered through the door and shut out the
noise and views of the room around her.
“Ended up with a factory job, they say.” A man took a wad of bills from his
wallet, showed them to some fellow coffee-bar patrons as if to say “this one’s
on me” then stuffed them into the pickle jar. “Ironic, huh?”
“Reap what you sow.” One of his cohorts raised his mug in grateful salute for
the freebie. “Bible says.”
Josie glanced around for one of the silicon gloves she used to handle hot pie
plates and the like. When she didn’t find it immediately, she grabbed the
nearest dish towel and used it to cover her hand as she picked up one of the
cherry pies. She didn’t want to miss a word of the conversation in the dining
room.
“I spotted that Adam at a hotel in Raleigh a year ago. Back when my husband went
to that International Snack Cake Expo deal, remember?” spoke up Elvie Maloney,
who had just started coming in after she went back to work when her husband lost
his middle-management job at the Crumble. “Kept to the outskirts of the show.
Didn’t interact with the old gang, not at all.”
“Well, can you blame him?” Micah Applebee scoffed. Micah had worked out at the
Crumble for even longer than Elvie’s husband. “After the mean-spirited way the
Burdetts treated him?”
“The way they treated him was to make him a millionaire,” Elvie shot back.
“Wish they’d up and treat me like that. I wouldn’t even care if it was
mean-spirited,” Warren joked.
“You say that now but you’d come in here blubbering like a baby,” Jed teased.
“Yeah, and using hundred-dollar bills to dry my tears,” Warren said right back.
They both laughed.
“Well, that Stray Dawg Burdett boy might have done better using money for
hankies. It might have got it soggy but at least he’d have some of it left.”
Elvie whirled her spoon through her coffee.
“How do you know he doesn’t?” Jed asked.
Elvie tapped the spoon on the edge of her cup, making everybody look her way.
“Because he was at that conference working for somebody else. If I had millions,
the last thing I’d want to do is work in a snack-cake factory all week and go to
conferences on snack cakes on the weekend. Real suspicious if you ask me.”
“Suspicious don’t begin to tell it when you’re talking about that one.” A man
wedging himself between two other people at the coffee bar snatched up a decaf
pot and poured two cups worth into a thermal travel mug as he called out. “He’s
a wild one.”
“The smart one, you mean,” someone else at a nearby table chimed in. “Got out
while the getting was good.”
“Really?” Josie tried to fit the pieces of information together. That wasn’t as
easy as it seemed. While she sincerely wanted to believe the best of the man,
she didn’t dare allow herself to dismiss words like suspicious, cut and run,
gambling…and women. As in multiples. Many.
The man who wanted to claim his place as her son’s father had been up to
something since he’d left town, and Josie needed to know what. And why he had
come back, if it wasn’t for Nathan’s sake alone. She stole a peek at her boy and
exhaled in relief to see him happily laughing over a game of peekaboo with Jed.
She’d done the right thing by bringing Nathan with her today. She simply could
not risk letting that wild one, that stray, that Adam Burdett get his hands on
her son.
Not until she knew more about the man.
She set the pie down, wiped a blob of cherry filling on her starched white apron
and asked, as she headed back toward the kitchen, “Is that when things soured at
the factory? When Adam left?”
“Die was cast long before that.” Jed paused with his red bandanna kerchief held
up between him and Nathan.
“Oh?” Josie tried to sound as if she didn’t care, but deep down it gave her some
solace to know Adam hadn’t been involved in the downward spiral of her beloved
Mt. Knott. “I worked there for years, part-time most of it, but still, I never
once saw any signs of the place heading for disaster.”
“What’s the Bible say? Pride goes before the fall? I reckon that place ran on
pride, mostly, the last few years. When the mama died, that really tore things,
though.” Jed made a show of inhaling the scent of pie, sighed then jerked the
kerchief back down and made a face at the baby, much to Nathan’s delight. “Can’t
say how many times my wife came home after a quarterly meeting worried for her
job. Hear her tell it, the son that took off was the only one bold enough to
stand up to his daddy and say things had to change or they’d go under.”
Josie’s heart swelled a little at that. It warmed her to know her son’s father
had once shown true concern about the business that supported so much of her
hometown.
She took up another pie, using only the dish towel as a hot pad and whirled
around to peer into the front room from the kitchen. “So then, Adam Burdett is
basically a good guy?”
“Yes he is,” came the whispered response from behind her. “And I’d appreciate it
if you didn’t talk about me behind my back.”
Splat.
“Awww.” Came the collective groan from the patrons.
The damp smell of pie, apple this time, rose around her. The heat from a stray
piece of fruit burned Josie’s toe through her discount-store tennis shoe. Bits
of crust lay smashed to smithereens all over the brown-red tile.
“Can you salvage any of it, honey?” either Jed or Warren asked.
She didn’t try to distinguish between them as the other one quickly followed up
with, “I had my mouth all set for a slice of that.”
Josie walked farther back into the kitchen, shut out all the comments from her
sympathetic customers and fixed her attention on the man who had slipped in
through the open back door.
“I wasn’t talking about you behind your back.”
“No? Well, you sure were listening about me behind my back.” He managed to sum
up the situation without coming off arrogant or angry.
She smiled. “Then come on out in the open. I’m sure people here will be more
than happy to talk about you right to your face.”
He did not look amused.
Josie felt bad. She hadn’t meant to hurt his feelings. She’d only tried to
lighten the mood, to distract the man a bit after he’d caught her trying to find
out more about him. And…and she wanted to show him her diner.
There. That was it. For some reason she wanted her baby’s father to see what she
had accomplished this last eight months since the first round of factory
layoffs. She wanted him to know his son was being cared for by someone with
drive, ambition, good sense and…and her very own pie carousel.
“I was just kidding, Ad—”
He put his index finger to his lips to cut her off. “Please. Don’t say my name.”
She glanced over her shoulder toward the dining room, which had gone
uncharacteristically quiet. “Why not?”
“I don’t want anyone to know I’m here. Not yet. I’m staying at a hotel on the
highway and being very careful about the streets I take. Please don’t undo all
that now.”
“I have to ask again, why not?”
He glanced toward the dinning room as well, then lowered his head and his voice.
“Look, I just came by to see the kid. Went by your house and your neighbor told
me you had to take him to work with you today.”
Wanted to, not had to, she thought. To keep him safe from you. And she was wise
to do it, apparently, since the man had already been by her home and it wasn’t
even 9:00 a.m. yet.
As if he sensed her trouble, the small boy in the playpen in the corner of the
café shouted and threw a toy in the direction of his mother.
And on the heels of that, Jed, who had been playing with the child, stood up and
called out, “Everything all right in there, Sweetie Pie?”
“Sweetie Pie?” Adam stood just inside the door of the kitchen.
Josie rolled her eyes then began pushing at the mess on the floor with the toe
of her already pie-plopped shoe. “That’s what everyone around here calls me.”
“Oh?” Adam squatted down and used the pie pan to scoop up the mess. Unlike the
spoiled, rich, suspicious-acting man she had been warned about, he didn’t seem
to mind getting his hands dirty. Josie could not say the same for his sense of
humor. “I thought that your sister was more the everybody’s sweetie type.”
“Leave my sister out of this,” she snapped.
He dropped the pie—pan and all—in the trash, then wiped his hands off on a
towel.
Josie rushed over and snatched the pan out again. “I already lost the cost of
ingredients on that. I can’t afford the price of a perfectly good pan, as well.”
“Sorry,” he said, and seemed to actually mean it. “My mind was on other
things…Sweetie Pie.”
Josie heaved an exaggerated sigh, then went to the cherry pie that had been
cooling all this time, cut a healthy slice, slapped it on a plate, then pressed
that into his hand. “They call me that because of this.”
He gave her a wary look.
“What’s the matter? You too good to eat small-town-diner, homemade pie?”
“No one ever accused me of being too good for anything, ma’am.” He dipped his
head, his eyes glinting. “But my mama did manage to instill enough manners in me
that I try not to eat pie with my fingers. At least not in front of a lady.”
Josie blushed at her oversight and hurried to get him a fork.
He dug in, taking as big a bite as the fork would hold. He tasted. He paused. He
swallowed. “Mmm.”
“Does that mean you like it?” Why it was important for this man to like her pie,
Josie didn’t want to think about. But it was. Very important.
“So good it gives me an idea.”
“I thought we’d already established I am nothing like my sister.”
“Leave your sister out of this.” He wagged his fork at her in warning.
She blushed again. Guilty of the same thing she had just nailed him over.
Jed called out, “Sweetie Pie? You having trouble with that clean-up in there?”
“No.” Josie would not lie but she didn’t want to just disregard Adam’s request
totally. “I’ll be out in a minute.”
“Thanks.” He took another bite, set the plate aside and began looking around. “I
don’t want people to know I’m in town.”
“How could you possibly keep a thing like that a secret?” Josie tugged up the
corner of her apron to wipe his hands on. “Your father or brothers will be sure
to make a big deal about your being back in town.”
Using the hem of her offered apron, he pulled her close to him and dabbed a bit
of pie filling and crust from the corner of his mouth.
The crisp cotton of her apron looked stark against the darker tone of his hands
and face. Just as the whites of his eyes and teeth did. The contrast might have
put her in mind of a wolf or some other predator, but when she let her gaze sink
deeply into his eyes she felt just the opposite. She felt protected.
He let the apron drop.
Josie stepped away.
Adam put his hands in the back pockets of his black jeans and began looking
around the kitchen as he said, “My father and brothers are the last people I
want to know I’m here.”
Josie did not have a suspicious nature but that did not sound good. She plunked
her hand on her hip. “Well, forgive me for this, but…why?”
He said it along with her, his smile playful.
She folded her arms and did not laugh.
“I can’t say, Josie.” He took her by the upper arms as if he wanted to fix her
in time and space so that his message could not go awry. “But I can tell you
this—if people start talking about me, someone will remember I was with
Ophelia.”
“So?”
“So, then they will start putting the pieces together. They’ll talk. Speculate.
They buzz and carry tales back and forth, building them up, getting half the
details wrong. That’s the way it is in an anthill of a town this size, right?”
He was right about the nature of small towns, but he was wrong in assuming it
was automatically a bad thing. “I heard it said once that a good neighbor is the
best family some people ever have. That’s how I feel about the people in this
anthill. Outside of my grandmother and Nathan they are the only family I have. I
don’t plan to keep any secrets from them.”
“Okay. I’m not asking you to keep secrets so much as to not volunteer anything
for as long as possible. Not yet. To everything there is a season, right?”
Josie raised an eyebrow at his ease with scripture. She wondered if she should
be impressed or insulted that he could pull it out so readily for his use.
“I’m not suggesting you never tell anyone that I’m Nathan’s father. Just that
when you do, the timing should be right.”
“Right? Timing?” Josie shook her head. Her stomach churned. “That certainly
sounds a lot like keeping secrets to me, Ad—” she shifted her eyes to the bustle
that had resumed in the outer room “—uh, mister.”
“Fine, then think how this sounds. How do you think Conner Burdett will react to
the news that he has a grandson right under his nose? One living in a small
house with a single mom who sometimes takes the kid to work with her?”
The churning in her stomach turned ice-cold. She wanted to run out into the
dinning room, snatch up her child, take him home and hide. Instead she reined in
her fears and asked, “He wouldn’t…could he…challenge me for custody?’
“I don’t know what he would do, but if he wanted to, he could. Especially with
me not firmly established in the boy’s life.”
“No. No. Adam. Don’t let that happen.” Josie went to him and placed a hand on
his chest. She had no business making such a forward move. Only it was not a
move. It was an act of desperation. “Please.”
He put his hand on hers and held her in place before him so that he could gaze
directly into her eyes. “I won’t, Josie. I will do everything in my power to
protect you and Nathan and to keep you together, always.”
“Always,” she murmured. She had no reason to believe the man, but she did.
“Hey, Bingo!”
Josie’s heart skipped, but it wasn’t because of Adam’s promise. Or his nearness.
At least, she told herself those weren’t the reasons.
She’d just been startled. She had been in the kitchen so long she hadn’t heard
Bingo beeping for her to come out and collect her mail. Now he’d had to climb
down off his scooter and come inside to deliver the mail.
Talk about reasons to get the anthill buzzing!
“You know everyone, Bingo,” called out a woman Josie did not recognize—not Elvie
or one of the commuters—which only drove home Adam’s point about how quickly all
sorts of folks would be talking about him…and Nathan…and Ophelia. “Maybe you can
help us out here. Remember the second Burdett boy?”
“Huh? Oh, yeah. Yeah. The Stray Dawg!”
Adam flinched.
Josie hesitated only a moment before putting her hand on Adam’s sleeve and
giving a squeeze.
“What do you know about him?” the strange woman asked again.
“Who’s asking?”
“Josie was…where is that girl?”
“I’m still in the kitchen.” She nabbed the pie pan with one slice missing and
headed for the door, leaving Adam to finish clearing away the crumbs of the pie
she had dropped.
“Hey, Sweetie Pie.” Bingo waved to her with the stack of mail in his hand.
“Interesting y’all should bring up that Burdett now. Didn’t your sister spend
some time with that Stray Dawg last time she were in town, Josie?”
“I, uh…” Josie would not lie but she couldn’t bring herself to jog the memories
of people who might unknowingly threaten her relationship with Nathan.
“That’s how I remember it.” Bingo placed the mail down on the counter. “Not long
after his mama’s death. The pair of them tore around on that motorcycle of his,
then they both up and disappeared.”
“That’s right,” someone muttered.
“How could we forget that?” came another comment.
Bingo paused long enough to stretch his legs, being extra-careful of his bum
knees. “Until that Ophelia came back to give Josie her baby…”
Grrr-eeee. It went so quiet in the room they could hear Bingo’s joints creak.
Everyone in the room turned at once to look at Nathan.
Josie plopped the pie pan on the counter in front of Jed.
“Go get him,” Adam whispered.
She did not need a second urging.
In a couple of steps she had the baby in her arms. “Oh, y’all, what
imaginations.”
Not a lie. Just an observation. An observation intended to distract from the
truth. And it left Josie feeling guilty and uncomfortable.
“Now excuse me.” She slipped into the kitchen without further explanation.
Adam met her with his hands open to accept Nathan.
Josie hesitated for a moment.
“You are going to have to trust me sometime, Josie. I am this baby’s father and
I am not going to just go away. If we hope to raise him together, we have to
trust each other.”
“To everything there is a season,” she murmured back at him.
“Josie, hon? What’s going on?” From the sound of Jed’s voice, he had come around
the counter and was headed for the door.
Adam looked at her.
“What will you do with him?” she asked.
“Take him to your house for now.”
“You can’t take him on your motorcycle!”
He smiled. “I’ll walk. I can slip through the back alleys and side streets.”
She pressed her lips together. She was about to let this man she had only just
met, a man with the only claim to her son—until his father learned about the
connection—just walk away with him.
“Sweetie Pie?”
What choice did she have?
“Go,” she said. She gave her son a kiss on the temple, trying not to allow
herself to imagine it might be the very last time she could ever do that. “I’ll
slip away and get home after lunch.”
“We’ll be there, Josie.”
“I want to believe you,” she said so softly that she knew the man retreating
through the back door could not possibly have heard her.
Chapter Five
“Poor baby.” Josie looked at her grinning son with his T-shirt on backward and
inside out, only one sock on and wearing a cereal bowl on his head like a hat.
“Hey!” Adam, sitting on the floor in front of the couch beside the baby, fooled
with the waistband of the clean but haphazard diaper, trying to get it to look
right. He stood up and surveyed his work. “I think he’s in pretty great shape
considering I’ve never taken care of anything more demanding than my career or
my Harley.”
Nathan waved a wooden spoon like a regal scepter and babbled his favorite
“ya-ya-ya.”
“I didn’t mean Nathan. I meant you.” She laughed and trailed her gaze over the
man.
Barefoot, baby powder smudged up and down his jeans, his once crisp business
shirt had a row of tape—the kind Josie kept handy for when the disposable
diapers came unstuck—down the front placard. His neck and the hollows of his
cheeks were ruddy. The side of his hair that wasn’t jutting straight up was
globbed down by a blob of orange baby food.
“What?” He held his arms out.
“Nothing.” She put her hand to the tip of her nose to hide her laughter, then
added. “I like the new look. Takes business casual to a whole new level.”
“Guess I could use a little…” He whisked the back of his hand down his jeans,
creating a cloud of baby powder. Clearly pleased with that, he yanked the tape
off, muttering, “Kid kept trying to eat the buttons, so I improvised a safety
measure.”
“Nice.” She nodded. “And the reason for the mashed carrots in your hair?”
“The…” He thrust his fingers alongside his temple and raked them straight back.
He winced. He withdrew his hand, stared at the orange goo there and exhaled in
one exhausted groan. “I had no idea what I was getting into, obviously.”
“You did fine, I’m sure.” Better than Josie had suspected he would do. Her house
was not in disarray. Her child was happy. “You hungry?”
“Am I ever.” He reached down and picked up the baby, who promptly whapped him on
the head with the wooden spoon. He didn’t even miss a beat as he followed Josie
from the room. “I didn’t want to rummage around in your kitchen. But I did steal
a taste of Nathan’s baby food.”
“You didn’t!”
“I did.” He made a face then backed up a few steps and slid Nathan into his high
chair.
“How was it?”
“You know how some dishes—exotic food, delicacies, specialty dishes—a lot of
times are better than they look?”
“Uh-huh.”
“Well, baby food isn’t one of those dishes.” He worked his tongue around as if
he was still trying to get the taste off. “When does he start eating real food?”
She laughed then bent to place a kiss on her son’s cheek. “His diet is designed
to help him grow healthy and strong.”
“That’s fine for him, but I’m already healthy and strong.”
He certainly was. “Well, lucky for you I didn’t take that into account when I
made this plate up for you. I had taste in mind.” She held up the “to go” box
and flipped up the lid. The aroma of meat loaf and hot rolls and green beans and
fried okra filled the room. The collection of some of her specialties was
probably not the usual rich man’s meal, but if the gossip proved true, Adam was
no longer a rich man. Surely he’d appreciate the effort if not the flavor.
“Mmm. That smells wonderful.” He took the container and inhaled deeply. “Fried
okra? I love fried okra. My mom used to make that.”
“Really?” Josie took a step, slid open a drawer and retrieved a fork to hand
him, all the time managing to keep the plastic grocery-style bag over her arm
from swinging about and making a mess. “Did she ever make pie?”
“No, but she made cake—a few thousand a day.”
Josie stilled. “Are you saying the Carolina Crumble Pattie was your mom’s
creation?”
“Yep. Well, it was an old family recipe that she perfected.”
The idea her pies relied on an old Burdett family recipe improved upon by Adam’s
own mother warmed Josie all over. She opened her mouth to tell Adam so, but he
stopped her by closing his eyes, lifting his chin, stretching up his whole body
and taking a larger-than-life sniff of the air around them.
“I’ll take care of Nathan for a week if you brought me a slice of pie.”
“Then I guess you’ll be taking care of him the rest of the summer and into the
fall, because I brought you a whole pie.” She let the bag rustle. “Sit. I’ll get
you a plate.”
“Don’t go to any trouble.” He took a seat at the kitchen table. “This won’t be
the first meal I’ve eaten straight out of a take-out box.”
“Nonsense.” She grabbed a plate, then shut the cabinet door quickly so he
wouldn’t see that she only owned two decent place settings and one of them was
chipped. “Food always tastes better when you eat it off a proper plate.”
“Thanks.” He transferred his lunch from the box, then grinned up at her when she
put the whole browned-to-perfection pie to his left. “Must say, your pie
certainly looks a lot better on a plate than on the floor.”
“It’s not the only thing that takes on a different appearance when viewed in a
more welcoming context.”
“Welcoming.” He said it slowly, his gaze fixed in the distance. He waited a
moment and she wondered if he expected to hear an echo or something. Finally he
pulled his chair up close to the table and said, “I like that word.”
“I mean it.”
“I believe you do.”
“And you don’t believe your family would feel the same way toward you?”
“If they are smart they won’t.”
Josie didn’t know what to make of that. Was his sentiment sad or sinister?
He dug in, unselfconsciously humming his approval with every bite.
Sad, she decided, and set about trying to change his perception. If you
scratched the surface of his stoic, stone-faced, wounded-stray image, many
things about Adam were just plain sad. “It all reminds me of the story of the
prodigal son.”
“No, Josie.” He stabbed a bite of meat loaf. “This is nothing like that.”
“It certainly seems—”
“No. The prodigal son came crawling back, willing to live as a servant or to eat
with the animals.” He gestured with the meat loaf still on his fork. “That is
not the case with me. No.”
“Adam…”
“I’ve returned to Mt. Knott with a plan, and humbling myself before my father is
not part of it.” He took the bite, chewed, then struggled to swallow.
Josie couldn’t decide if the food or the feelings were responsible for that.
Just in case, she jumped up and got the gallon of milk from the fridge, poured
him a big glass, then plunked it down in front of him. “If you don’t hope to
reconcile with your family, then just why did you come to Mt. Knott?”
He froze with the glass of milk halfway between the plate and his mouth. He
shifted his eyes quite pointedly in Nathan’s direction.
“Don’t give me some noble story about coming for your son.” She beat him to the
punch.
By the look on his face he didn’t know whether to respond with indignation or by
being impressed.
“If all you wanted was to claim Nathan, then you could have sent a lawyer or the
sheriff or, more logically, shown up on my doorstep with both of those.” That’s
how she’d envisioned it happening when she had nightmares about it. “You needn’t
have bothered ruffling your hair with a long, nighttime Harley ride for that.”
“I would do far more than inconvenience myself for my son.” He touched his hair
where the orange baby food had been. “But I would never send a stranger to take
him from his mother.”
“His mother,” she murmured.
No matter how many times she heard it from his lips, it still took her breath
away. Ophelia had signed the proper papers and this man saw her, Josie—not her
sister—as Nathan’s mother. The thought of it caused a rush of hope to flood her
being and she said a quick prayer that the Lord would bring to pass legally what
she and Adam knew in their hearts to be true.
Then she went back on the defensive. Where her son was concerned, she could not
afford to let down her guard for anyone. And she had to make sure Adam knew
that, knew just what kind of person he was dealing with. “I’m saying I may not
be one of those worldly, sophisticated women you are accustomed to—”
“What women?” he asked around a mouthful of okra.
She did not stop to answer his question, but just plowed right on with her
thought. “But don’t make the mistake of thinking I’m so naive I can’t understand
what’s going on.”
“I can assure you, I don’t think of you that way at all.” Another swig of milk.
His dark brows angled down, he leaned forward on his elbow. “That said, I just
have to ask—what is going on, Josie?”
“I have no idea,” she admitted freely. “There. Now you know exactly who you are
dealing with. A lunatic.”
He laughed, then helped himself to a thick slab of pie.
She conceded her humility with a soft chuckle, then she sat back in the chair.
“But you’ve told me this trip home, the timing, your plans are not just about
Nathan. If not specifically, then by the things you don’t say and the way you
say them.”
He set his fork down and allowed what she had just said to sink in.
He made her nervous. “See? A lunatic. But not one that’s entirely off base on
this. I know things are not what they seem on the surface. And I know that I
would be foolish not to be wary about that. I also know that—”
“What I know is this is very good pie.”
“Don’t change the subject,” she warned, then watched him stuff down a whopping
bite, she went all mushy inside and had to ask, “Do you really think so?”
“I do.” He laughed over her response and took another bite. “I’ve certainly
tasted a lot of pastry products in my lifetime. Desserts and more than one
person’s share of snack foods, but this…this is special. Old family recipe?”
“I don’t even have an old family.” She shook her head and hoped that hadn’t come
off too pathetic. To try to counteract that, she scooted her seat in close and
decided to share what she had discovered today, “I’ve got a secret ingredient
that comes from an old family recipe, though.”
“I bet you have a lot of secrets, Josie.”
“No.” She sat back. “I’m pretty much an open book.”
“And me without my library card.” He touched her hand.
She blushed. “My grandmother taught me how to cook. I lived with her from the
time I…”
Became a Christian. She wasn’t embarrassed to talk about her faith, but she
didn’t know any way of doing that without bringing up how her mother and sister
had rejected her. And in doing so remind him that she was not Nathan’s mother by
birth. She wondered if that was a weakness of faith on her part? “From the time
I moved to Mt. Knott in high school until she died a few years later, when I
already had a job at the Crumble.”
“You worked at my family’s factory?”
“I told you that. Didn’t I tell you that?”
Neither of them seemed to recall. That should have sent up a red flag to Josie
that either the man wasn’t listening to her or she wasn’t paying attention to
what all she said to him. Or perhaps that when they were together they were
too…sidetracked to bother with the small details of a conversation.
She stared at her hands, determined not to look into his eyes in hopes she would
remember this exchange in detail. “I didn’t survive the first round of job
cuts.”
“I’m sorry.”
“Thanks. But in a way it was a good thing. It put me in motion to open the
diner.”
“Yeah. Sure. What seems like a disaster can often provide people with the push
they need to take control of matters, to make bold moves, to better their
lives.” He sounded as if he needed convincing.
Josie found this odd as he hadn’t been a part of the mess at his family’s
factory.
“I had Nathan to support after all.”
“You must have been terrified.”
“Not really. I had my faith.”
“In yourself?”
“In God.”
“I can’t…that is, I wish…”
“Your mother was such a strong woman of faith. Your brother has a wonderful,
growing ministry. Don’t you share their beliefs?” There. She asked it outright.
She had to. The man was not just Nathan’s father, it seemed that he was a
seeker.
“It’s not my mother, it’s that…well, God is portrayed as a loving father, isn’t
He?”
“Yes.”
“I don’t know how to relate to that.”
“Was your father really that bad?” Conner Burdett had always scared her. A
powerful man, he tended to storm about not speaking, especially to an
insignificant worker like her.
“Bad?” He cocked his head to the right and chewed slowly. “Wrong word.”
“What’s the right word?”
“Hard,” he said quietly.
“He was hard on you?”
“He was hard on everybody, including himself, I think.”
“Your mom balanced that out for him some.”
“Yes, she did.”
“But that didn’t make him any less hard, I suppose.”
“Hard?” He shook his head. “Maybe that’s not it, either. Because, as you say, my
mother had some influence over that. And he wasn’t hard on any one person. There
was a kind of fairness to it all. I think maybe the word I should have used
is…unyielding.”
“That is different. Subtly, but…”
“Like your secret ingredient, it can change everything.”
She nodded. “I appreciate your being so honest with me.”
“Don’t kid yourself, Josie. Just because we’ve shared these few moments, you
don’t really know me. You don’t really know what made me who I am.”
“Who are you?”
“Haven’t you heard? I’m the Stray Dawg.”
“But if you have a hundred sheep and you lose one, that’s the one that’s on your
mind. That’s the one you worry about and go out and seek so that you can bring
him home.”
“You had Sunday school with Miss Minerva, too?”
“No. I told you, I didn’t grow up here. I never had a home or a family or a
regular church where I went to Sunday school each week. But I’ve always had a
Bible. And last night I looked up Luke 15, the story of the prodigal son.”
Adam pushed his plate away, his mouth set in a grim line. “Maybe I made a
mistake. Coming here, coming to you first before…”
“Before what?”
He did not look as if he felt any inclination to answer her, just took another
bite of pie and stared at Nathan.
“Before what, Adam? What is it that you came to Mt. Knott to do?”
Even if he had decided to tell her, which Josie doubted very much, he did not
get the chance.
A thunderous pounding on the front door made her jump. “Hello?”
She looked at Adam. Her heartbeat had gone completely awry. “Is that…”
“I guess we didn’t get out of the diner fast enough to outrun the speculation.”
“What are we going to do?”
Adam pushed away from the table, stood and reached for Nathan. “I am going to
keep my son out of sight and you are going to go and get rid of my father.”
Chapter Six
Adam stood behind the door of the bathroom, holding Nathan in his arms. In the
split second he’d had to duck out of sight, it just seemed more prudent to do
this rather than head to the door at the end of the hall. Josie’s bedroom.
Yeah, Nathan’s crib waited in that room, but so did every private thing about
Josie. Her clothes. The pillow where she rested her head at night. The picture
of her and Ophelia.
Adam had enough problems dealing with her without confronting those kinds of
things right now. Besides, the bathroom was closer to the front door. Better
situated to hear what Conner Burdett had to say.
“Hello?” the masculine voice boomed. The knocking did not relent. “Hello in
there.”
“Just a…” Josie put her finger to her lips to remind him to stay quiet, then
waved her hand to order Adam to close the door. “Just a moment, please.”
“I know you’re in there, young lady. Don’t think you can hide from me.”
“Hide? Me? Hide from…him?” Adam looked his son in the eye. “This is not hiding.”
“Ya-ya-ya.”
“No, really. That is not who I am. It’s important to me that you know that, kid.
I’m not hiding. I’m exercising discretion. Control. Got that?”
“Ya-ya-ya.” Nathan waggled his head, his dark hair floating back and forth like
down.
“Don’t buy that, huh?” What Adam had intended as a joke left him uncomfortable
and defensive. He met his own eyes in the bathroom mirror and frowned. “How
about this? I’m protecting your mother. Both of your mothers.”
“Hello?” Josie’s voice was steady but tentative as the front door creaked open.
“May I, um, may I help you?”
“Josephine Redmond?” Conner got right to the point.
The door creaked even louder.
Adam could imagine his father blustering in past Josie as if she wasn’t even
there. He clenched his jaw.
“Yes.” Hesitation and anxiety colored Josie’s usually warm, friendly tone.
“Good.” Heavy footsteps thudded farther into the front room.
“Mr. Burdett, I didn’t expect anyone to drop by today. Sir, if you don’t mind…”
She let her voice trail off, leaving her uninvited visitor to do what anyone
with even the most basic good manners would do—apologize and offer to return
when it was convenient.
Poor naive Josie. She must not have known that not only did Conner not mind that
he’d inconvenienced her, he had counted on doing just that.
Keep ’em off balance. Always maintain the upper hand. Hold business meetings in
your own office and if you can’t, then never take a seat before your adversary.
Conner had whole lists of edicts about interacting with others.
Adam had once asked, “What about people who are not your adversaries?”
“There are no such creatures, boy,” Conner had replied with a look bent on
driving home the point that the man included his own sons in that sweeping
generalization.
“You didn’t expect company,” Conner’s voice grew louder, a sure indication he
had barged right into the house and had headed straight for the kitchen. “Yet
here you just happened to bring a pie home from your restaurant in the middle of
the day?”
Adam tensed. The last time he had heard that tone, that cadence of speech, that
calculating manner, was the day he’d gotten a check, the lump-sum payment to buy
him out of his share of the family business and the money his mother had left
him in her will. He thought the next time he heard it, the man would be begging
him to save the business. Now to hear him toying with Josie like this…
Adam flexed one hand over the doorknob. He wanted to go out there to rescue
Josie.
Nathan squirmed.
He studied his son’s face. Despite having only recently become aware the child
existed, much less knowing him, just looking at him filled Adam with so much
emotion. And he knew he would do anything to keep him safe. He knew Josie would
feel the same way.
“Is that your way of asking for a piece of pie, sir?”
Silence. Conner hadn’t seen that coming.
He wouldn’t. Kindness and hospitality were foreign concepts to the old man.
“Good for you, Josie,” Adam whispered.
“Uh, uh-huh. Pie would be nice.” The tone shifted slightly. “Thank you.”
Adam didn’t know what to make of it.
“But what I’d rather have—” the old bluster returned “—is to get my hands on my
grandson.”
“Get your hands on?” Josie repeated the demand with hushed anxiety.
Adam hated this. Hated having to stand by and make her endure his father. He
should be the one facing the old man down, bearing the brunt of the old man’s
belligerence.
“Just to hold him for a moment, you understand.”
It was the quietest, most humble sentence Adam believed he’d ever heard his
father speak to anybody but Maggie Burdett. Where did that come from? Who was
this person standing in Josie’s kitchen insisting…no, merely asking in humility
and faltering hope…to see his only grandchild?”
“Where is the little fellow?”
“I…I don’t think I should tell you that, sir.”
Something between a wheeze and a chuckle answered her. “You’ve already told me
more than you realize.”
And just that fast the man Adam readily recognized as Conner Burdett resurfaced.
He’d been a fool to think the seasoned bully could have changed. It had all been
an act. An act to manipulate Josie and unearth answers.
“I haven’t told you anything,” Josie said.
“Oh, yes you have. For starters you didn’t deny he was my grandson. Nor did you
say you didn’t know where he is, just that you didn’t think you should tell me.”
Adam drew in his breath and held it until his lungs ached. The Burdett offensive
has just begun. Conner would go after Josie, hammer away at her with every tool
in his considerable arsenal until he’d gotten every bit of information from her
and left her in tears and fearing for her son’s future.
“I know you have my flesh and blood.” The words came slowly, though Adam did not
know if that was for effect or because Conner was choosing them so carefully.
Either way they made the bile rise in Adam’s throat. “The child is a Burdett and
I have rights.”
“Please, Mr. Burdett…” Josie’s voice disappeared into a sob.
That was it. Adam could no longer stay out of this.
“This is my family, the son of my son,” Conner boomed.
“Wrong.” Adam stepped fully from the bathroom and reached the kitchen in just a
few steps. “This child is my son. That makes him nothing to you but the child of
some stray you took in and never really loved as your own.”
You can know a man a lifetime and still not know everything that he is capable
of, good and bad. That is not the kind of thing you can gauge in a matter of a
few seconds. Unfortunately, sometimes a few seconds is all you have—so make them
count.
Conner had taught Adam that a long time ago. Start with the details and work
your way out. Listen to what a man tells you, but don’t dismiss what your own
gut has to say. Adam applied those skills now to quickly size up the old man.
Eighteen months ago, Conner Burdett made an imposing figure. Though in his
sixties, the tall, raw-boned man had still sported a full head of mostly brown
hair, keen eyes that sparked with grit and vigor and the ever-present authority
that came from knowing no matter what, he still owned fifty-four percent
interest in the family business.
As far as Adam could see today, that controlling interest in the company was all
he still possessed. He made a fleeting study of the man before him.
The elder Burdett had lost weight. His hair had faded to white and thinned
considerably. The newly developed stoop of Conner’s shoulders had taken inches
from his height. The man who had once seemed a veritable pillar of confidence to
a younger Adam now stood almost eye-to-eye with him. And in those eyes Adam saw
a weariness and remorse that had never been there before.
Adam clenched his jaw and reminded himself to listen to his own feelings. His
son’s future could well be at stake and he wouldn’t risk it to something as
deceptive as appearances or sentimentality. Conner Burdett was still capable of
anything. Anything.
Adam braced himself to bear the full brunt of his father’s wrath.
“Adam? Son?” Conner reached out. His hand shook. He took one step forward and
then another as if he couldn’t quite believe what he saw before him.
“Yeah?” Adam shifted his weight, pulling Nathan more to one side so that he
could hand him off to Josie if he should need to.
“Thank you,” Conner whispered and it was clear he meant it as heartfelt
gratitude to God.
That humbled Adam but did not reassure him.
Then Conner placed his hand on Adam’s sleeve, balled the fabric in his fist then
pulled both Adam and Nathan into a tight embrace. “My prayers are answered.
You’ve come home.”
Adam stiffened.
Come home? Is that what he had done? He sought Josie. When their eyes met, he
tried in one look to convey his confusion, his uncertainty, his panic.
She smiled. A wonderful smile that spoke of long longed-for reunions, at the joy
of homecoming, of hope.
Conner took a deep breath and exhaled in short huffs as if he were…sobbing?
Adam tried to swallow. He had no idea how to respond to this. Anger, bitterness,
rejection, even hatred—he had steeled himself well for any of those. But this?
“I, uh, I don’t—” He started to pat the old man’s back but couldn’t bring
himself to do it. Again he fixed his eyes on Josie’s.
“You know what, Mr. Burdett? Why don’t you come into the kitchen and have a seat
while I dish you up a big old slice of that pie I promised?”
Adam had charged out ready to come to Josie’s defense no matter what it took and
here she had ended up rescuing him. And with nothing more substantial or less
significant than pie.
“Hmm?” Conner pulled away at last.
“Pie?” She laid her delicate hand on the curve of his shoulder to draw his
attention toward her. “It’s cherry. And if you’ll have a seat, I’d be honored to
serve you up a piece.”
“Thank you, my dear.” He gave her a nod. “But first, give me a moment. I want
to…” He raised his hand.
Without thinking, Adam shied away, caught himself and forced his body to go
perfectly still.
Conner’s dry, trembling palm brushed along the side of Adam’s face.
“I just…” Conner touched Adam’s cheek, his jaw, then dropped his hand to his
shoulder. “I just want to look at my boy.”
My boy? Even commanding up every ounce of anger and disappointment he had ever
felt toward this man, Adam could not make those words sound pejorative or
hard-hearted. There was just so much yearning in them, so much peace and pride.
Don’t you mean your stray? Adam wanted to say. Yes, wanted to say it with all
his being. Not because it seemed appropriate but because he wanted to push the
old man away.
He wanted to throw a barrier up between them. One that had existed there for so
long. Adam had based his every decision the last eighteen months on the belief
that that barrier justified his contemptible plan. And now…
And now Conner Burdett was standing before him, a shell of his former self,
wiping a tear from under his eye with one gnarled knuckle. “I didn’t think I’d
ever see you again, Adam. Not before…well, not before we met again in heaven.”
“Oh.” The softest, saddest sound ever escaped Josie’s lips.
Adam looked at her, knowing she was thinking not just about him and his father
but also about what she would have given to have heard such conciliatory words
from her own mother or even her sister. The sweetness of her sorrow penetrated
Adam’s life-hardened exterior and opened something up in him that had been
closed off for far too long.
“And this little fellow.” Conner gave Nathan’s plump leg a shake. “Hey! I know
who you are. Do you know who I am?”
“Ya-ya-ya.”
“Um, uh…” Adam had no idea what to say.
Conner didn’t wait for him to come up with something. He lifted Nathan’s small
body from the crook of Adam’s arm. “You know who I am, little man? I am your
daddy’s daddy.”
“Since when?” Adam muttered, needing to put things back in perspective. He
stepped forward to take the child away.
“Since the first time I held you in my arms. You were about the same age as this
young fellow.” Conner patted the small boy’s belly. “Looked a lot like him,
except you were a skinny thing, with big, sad eyes, and your hands always in
tight little fists.”
Adam froze.
Josie’s gaze dropped from his face to his side.
He shook his hand to release the tension as he unfisted his fingers.
“And I felt about your daddy the way I bet he feels about you,” Conner said to
the baby.
Adam straightened, ready to deny that.
“That even though you two just met and the way things are in life, you may never
really feel as though you are much more than strangers with a shared history, he
would walk through fire for you.” Conner did not look at Adam.
Which was a relief because Adam could not have looked at Conner then if his life
depended on it.
Had he heard right? His father acknowledged that they were virtual strangers and
yet he would walk through fire for him?
Walk through fire but not walk into a bar or cheap hotel in Mt. Knott in those
days when Adam needed him to come and ask him to return to the fold. To say
one-tenth of the handful of healing words he’d just uttered and pave the way for
Stray Dawg to find his way home while it still meant something.
He couldn’t accept that. Would not accept it. It was just talk, after all, from
a man who made his living negotiating to get the better end of every deal.
Adam pushed his shoulders back. Conner wanted something. Adam could not be fool
enough to let that slip from sight because the suddenly frail man had tugged at
a few heartstrings.
“Why don’t we sit down and have that pie?” Adam pulled Nathan from Conner’s
grasp, then went into the kitchen, settled the child in the high chair and
pointed out a seat at the small oak table for Conner.
Josie frowned. Clearly she had expected more from Adam. Expected compassion,
gratitude and mercy. Well, if that’s what she thought she’d find in him, she had
better get used to being disappointed.
But if, as Conner had put it, she expected nothing less of him than that he
would walk through fire for her and their son, then he would never let her down.
“Once you taste Josie’s pie and spend a few minutes around Nathan you’ll find
yourself as proud as I am that she is the one raising my son.”
Josie stilled with a knife posed over the pie. She blinked a few times and
sniffled.
He tipped his head to her, affirming that was, indeed, how he felt. He hoped she
knew, too, that he had just laid down the gauntlet. He had asserted his position
and confirmed hers. He would brook no interference, no custody battle, no
questioning of his decision from his powerful father or family.
She smiled and lifted her chin, making her soft, lovely ponytail bounce against
her back. Then with a sidelong glance at Conner to make sure he wasn’t watching,
she served Adam the larger slice of the two pieces of pie.
He winked to show his thanks, then as soon as she set the plates down before the
two men, he pulled the old switcheroo. Slid the larger slice right under
Conner’s nose and accepted the smaller portion for himself.
“You’re going to want to have as much of this pie as you can hold,” he told the
old man, then leaned back and muttered to Josie, “and if his mouth is full it
will give us more time to do the talking.”
“Can I get you anything else? Some milk to drink? If you’d like some coffee
you’ll have to wait a minute while I brew up a fresh pot.”
Adam thought of how she had told him to make his own instant the night he had
come to claim his son and so he took her offer to make a pot for them as a
compliment. Pie. Coffee. Kid. That should mollify the old guy just fine.
They’d show him what a fine home environment Nathan had. They’d get his
assurance, for what it was worth, that he would not try to override their
judgments about what was best for Nathan. They would send him on his way.
Then Adam’s real work would begin.
Josie pulled a foil bag of coffee beans from a canister on the counter. The whir
of her grinding them in a small electric appliance made it impossible to carry
on a conversation for a minute or so. That, coupled with the time Conner was
devoting to savoring his first bite of pie, gave Adam time to think things
through.
He’d have to act fast. Make his move before the rest of the family found out how
long he’d been in town without telling anyone. That fact would arouse
suspicions. He loved his brothers but he would never make the mistake of
underestimating them. Conner might have loved them more, but he certainly had
not gone easier on them.
Burke, older than Adam by four years and known by all as Top Dawg, would be the
first one to start putting the clues together. A few phone calls to contacts in
the business would tell him plenty—contacts, not friends. Top Dawg had many
things in life, money, looks, power, brains and the fawning adoration of most of
the town of Mt. Knott, but the one thing he did not have was friends. Jason and
Cody would neither know nor care about what Adam had in mind. They had long ago
given up looking upon the lowly Carolina Crumble Pattie as their livelihood.
According to Adam’s sources, they each still held their small percentage of the
company stock but did little else except show up for meetings and rubber stamp
whatever Burke and Conner asked for. They would be no problem.
That left Conner.
The aroma of freshly ground coffee beans filled the air and Adam fixed his
attention on the man sitting to his right. “Great pie, isn’t it?”
“Very good.” Conner jabbed his fork toward the half-eaten slab of golden crust
and red, juicy cherries dripping in a thick syrup. “You know we could use
something like this down at the Crumble. Your brothers keep telling me we need
to try new things. Expand the line. Innovate. Burke says we have to do something
or—”
“I’m glad you like it, sir.” Josie finished loading the coffeemaker and pressed
a button to start the brewing. It gurgled and grumbled and she turned her back
on it to let it do its work. “But I don’t think it would do you much good as a
new product because I used—”
“Because she used to work for you already and you fired her. She has moved on.”
Adam lifted a bite of pie up as if offering a toast before he poked it in his
mouth.
Josie gulped in some air. Her eyes got big. The room grew so quiet they could
hear the coffee drip, drip, drip into the carafe. She shook her head. “Mr.
Burdett, that’s Adam talking, not me. I never said—”
“I’m sorry about your job, Ms. Redmond. We did what we had to do. Greater good
and all. Been a regular struggle to keep the doors open these past few years,
even though I haven’t taken a cent out of the company myself, sunk everything
right back in hopes of…not that it’s made a difference.”
Adam frowned. Had his father just apologized? And admitted weakness? And said he
hadn’t taken any money out of the company for how long?
“I absolutely do understand, Mr. Burdett. I am trying to keep my business
afloat, as well.” She poured a cup of coffee for Conner. Only Conner.
“Our layoffs can’t have made that easier.”
“No, sir.” She pushed the sugar shaker and a bowl of creamer packets toward him.
Still offering nothing to Adam.
“But that’s going to change.” Conner dumped two teaspoons of sugar into the rich
dark liquid in his cup.
“It is?” Josie stood up, still not making a move to get anything for Adam to
drink.
Frustrated, Adam considered getting up to fetch his own coffee, then decided to
wait it out, and defiantly broke off a big piece of pie crust and ate it.
“Of course,” Conner took a sip then beamed a huge smile. “Adam is back. Things
are going to turn around now.”
Adam coughed and covered his mouth to keep pie crust crumbs from spewing
everywhere.
Conner forged ahead without the slightest response to Adam’s reaction. “And to
celebrate we’re going to host a barbecue and invite the whole town.”
“Oh, Mr. Burdett, I think that’s exactly what Mt. Knott needs.” Josie knelt down
by Conner’s chair, her whole face transformed with delight.
“Good. Then you can make the pies and, uh, side dishes, at your usual prices, of
course.”
Adam struggled to force down the dry bits of crust but it wouldn’t cooperate.
His fist came down on the table but not hard enough to bring a halt to the
conversation. And this conversation needed to halt. His father had it all wrong.
Adam had his own plans and he wouldn’t let anyone or anything interfere with
them.
“Mr. Burdett, you may have just provided me with a way to keep my doors open at
least a little while longer!”
Adam gulped. He wouldn’t let anyone or anything interfere with his plans, except
Josie.
He had thought just moments ago that if she wanted him to walk through fire for
her, he would never let her down.
He was about to prove that. Obviously he was about to walk through fire for
her—and that fire would be in the form of a barbecue with his family.
Chapter Seven
Conner Burdett had gobbled up the last of his pie after he had offered Nathan a
small taste, which the child smeared on his ear, his chin, his eyebrow,
everywhere but his mouth. When Josie had come back from cleaning the child up,
Conner had gone.
“He wanted me to give you this.” Adam offered her a business card held between
two fingers, the way she’d seen boys fling playing cards into hats.
She took if from him and, reading the words imprinted on it, understood why the
stray Burdett brother might have wanted to send the card sailing as far away as
possible.
“Burke Burdett,” she read the name softly, scanned his official title and then
studied the number handwritten beneath it. His private line. Not the kind of
thing the average citizen of Mt. Knott was privy to. Josie turned the card over
in her hand. On the back were the words, “Timetable. Menu. Payment” in shaky
handwriting.
“I guess I’m supposed to call your brother about these things?”
Adam only nodded before he slipped Nathan from Josie’s hold and turned the child
so they could look each other in the eye. Of course, Nathan did not cooperate
fully with that eye-to-eye plan, which made the picture of the father and son
all the more endearing.
Adam sniffed the air. “One of us doesn’t smell so good, buddy. Now, I’m always
fresh as a mountain meadow myself, so I suspect it’s you.”
Nathan giggled.
“I’ll handle diaper duty, Adam.”
“No. I can do it. I’ve gotten pretty good at it over the course of the day.” He
actually sounded pleased with his newly acquired skill. “Let’s go, kid.”
He draped the baby over one arm. The position made it look like Nathan was
flying through the air, and loving it from the pleasant sounds he was making.
Good for Adam to get a little taste of what his own parents must have gone
through with a headstrong, handful of energy in an adorable package. Looking at
the two of them together now, she couldn’t deny that Adam not only was Nathan’s
father but that he belonged in her son’s life.
Her two fellas disappeared into the back room. Adam entertained the baby,
alternating between making funny sounds and acting properly disgusted with the
task at hand.
Josie leaned against the doorway and slid the card into her T-shirt pocket,
knowing she’d forget where she’d put it if she put it in her jeans, and it would
probably get washed with her aprons and other work clothes this evening. Then
she stood back and waited for Adam to finish with Nathan. That first night she
hadn’t even wanted him to see the boy, now he was doing the dad thing as if he’d
done it all along.
She couldn’t help thinking of her own family. Not of the family made up of her
mother and Ophelia, but the one she had always dreamed she would make for
herself.
When she was a young girl, being hauled from town to town as her mother chased
everything from dreams to men, that family meant a mom and dad, Ophelia and
Josie. Also a baby brother or sister, or maybe a calico cat with a bell on its
collar.
During her early years of living in Mt. Knott, when her grandmother was alive,
she had been content to think of the two of them as their own special little
family. Lately, though, being a single mother and running a business on her own
sometimes had her daydreaming about what it would be like to have a husband as a
helpmate. Not just to shoulder the chores and responsibilities but also to hold
her hand in church and take her in his arms while they sat on the porch on warm
summer evenings.
“Well, you may want to call in the toxic-waste disposal team to take care of
that diaper, but I can sound the all’s clear for the kid.” He moved Nathan on
his arm down the hallway again making a siren-type waaa-ooo, waaa-ooo before he
reached the kitchen and said, “The kitchen is now safe for noses everywhere!”
She gazed at Adam holding Nathan. It was too soon to allow herself to wonder
about Adam as potential husband material. In fact, his history with Ophelia made
that prospect a bit…strained. Then again, when had anything with her sister been
anything but strained?
That thought only made Josie feel more isolated. More adrift in the world. More
wistful for her own home, family and husband, one who shared her values and
would not disappear on a whim.
“Okay, you little rug rat. I’ve enjoyed spending the day with you but I’ve got
to go now. You be good for your mom and no more wasting any of her delicious pie
as face paint.”
He covered the boy’s rounded belly with one large, tanned hand.
Nathan kicked and laughed.
That made Adam do likewise. Laugh, not kick.
They had the same laugh, Josie noted. Soft and deep at first with a sort of
raspy quality as it played itself out, growing quieter and quieter even though
their faces remained bright and their bodies still shook. Finally it ended with
a satisfied sigh.
“You don’t have to run off on my account. If you want to spend more time with
Nathan, that’s all right with me. I have to get back to the café and set up for
the dinner rush.”
“Rush?” He cocked an eyebrow.
“Okay, trickle,” she confessed. It was true that she did most of her business
before one o’clock, but she did get a small flurry of activity around six when
commuters stopped in to pick up take-home orders they had called in earlier in
the day. Later another cluster of people would come in after their suppers to
have pie for dessert. On really hot days she kept even busier because many
thought it was worth the extra expense of eating out to avoid heating up their
own homes.
Josie knew the people of this community. She knew their habits and their tastes,
and it had paid off as much as it could. “But I can’t afford to miss even a
dribble of business these days.”
“I realize that.” He nodded. “Which is why I have to get moving.”
“Moving?” The word made her shiver.
“Have a lot to get done, and now that my family knows I’m here, I don’t have
much time to do it.”
“What’s the supposed to mean?”
“It’s not supposed to mean anything, Josie.” His dark eyes fixed on her. His
expression remained calm, but she could see the storm beneath the surface—as if
what he felt and what he thought did not match up and he was going to have to
reconcile them or choose. “I don’t skirt around issues or try to pretty up the
ugly truth. You know I came here for a reason, a reason I am not inclined to
discuss with anyone.” He handed Nathan back to her. “I will tell you this,
though.”
Josie pulled Nathan close. “What?”
“One of the reasons I don’t want to tell you details about my plans is that,
having met you now, having seen how you and Nathan fit into the fabric of Mt.
Knott, I am not as sure of my intentions as I once was.”
“That’s a lot of words, Adam, but hardly any information.”
He smiled, not too much and not with any joy in his eyes. “Maybe all you need to
know, Josie, is that no matter what, from this point on I am not going to make a
decision without taking you and Nathan into account first.”
“Taking us into account is one thing. Taking us, um, that is, me into your
confidence is quite another.” She settled Nathan onto the floor in the front
room to let him crawl around and play. As she bent forward the business card
slid from her pocket and fell onto the ragged gold carpet. She snatched it up
and went on with her point. “Taking us into account sounds nice, but really, it
just means you are going to do what you decide anyway without asking me what I
think.”
He did not deny it or offer to do anything differently. He just brushed her
cheek with his thumb and asked, “Did anyone ever tell you you’re very wise for
your age?”
She tapped the card against her open palm. “I’ve had to be to get by.”
He nodded. “And now you have to do the wise thing and take the job cooking for
this barbecue deal.”
“You’d rather I not do this, wouldn’t you?” She couldn’t look down her nose at
his not confiding in her if she didn’t speak honestly with him.
“If it’s just the money—”
“It’s not.” She held her hand up to cut him off, noticed the card in her fingers
and folded her arms.
“If that’s even a part of it, though, I could help you out on that score.”
She took a step backward. “I can’t take your money.”
He looked down at Nathan, who had crawled to the couch and was trying to pull
himself up into a standing position. “A case could be made that I owe you a
year’s worth of back child support.”
“No. I don’t see it that way.” Josie shuffled one foot in Nathan’s direction,
ready to lunge out and nab him if he should fall. “You didn’t know about him.”
Adam shifted to the side, as well, only he seemed to be doing it in response to
Josie, not a gut reaction to protect his child. “That doesn’t change the fact
that you had expenses.”