A Baby in the Bargain (2 page)

“Some token way—like a measly park?”

A park or whatever, Jani thought. She just needed to make enough of a connection with this man to get to know him, find out what actually happened to his family post-H.J. and learn if there were any other ways the Camdens could make up for the past.

“You were quoted in the newspaper saying something about a park in Lakeview,” she continued. “That’s the only reason we’re suggesting that. If there’s something else that we could do, something that you would rather have the Thatcher name on, we could certainly talk about it.”

“We could, could we?” he said sarcastically. “The high-and-mighty Camdens would
allow
that?”

She hadn’t said it that way and she certainly hadn’t meant it that way.

“Mr. Thatcher...” she said, hoping that calling him that would show her respect.

But that was as far as she got.

“Gideon,” he corrected as if she were insulting him in some way to use the formality, and Jani realized that she couldn’t win.

“Gideon,” she amended patiently. “We just want to do what we can to help Lakeview finally become what it should have, and we want to do it in the name of your great-grandfather.”

“It sure as hell wouldn’t be in the name of Camden.”

“Whatever we do can be absolutely anonymous. We aren’t looking for any kind of credit—”

“And you aren’t going to get any.”

Oh, he really did have a grudge against them. It seemed as if the mission to makes amends had been so much simpler for her brother Cade, who had ended up meeting the love of his life when he’d accomplished the first of these tasks a few months ago.

But rather than a repeat of that scenario, here Jani was, standing on a downtown Denver street being glared at by a man incited to fury by the mention of her family name. And she had something that was so much more important to her that she
wanted
to be putting her time and energy into. That she
needed
to be putting her time and energy into.

But she, like the rest of her siblings and cousins, was devoted to the grandmother who had raised them all. And since Georgianna had asked that they each accept whichever of these undertakings she assigned them, Jani was stuck. She had to make the best of this.

“We don’t want credit,” she assured him, “we only want to contribute in any way that you see fit to honor your great-grandfather.”

Gideon Thatcher went on staring at her, studying her as if he were trying to see through to the truth he seemed to think was behind what she was saying.

But there was nothing for him to see through because what Jani had said
was
the truth.

“Please. If you’d just think about it. It can be on your terms...” she told him in all honesty.

“My terms...” he echoed.

“Absolutely.”

His eyes narrowed even more at her, and she knew he wasn’t convinced.

But maybe something he saw in her helped a little because after what seemed like an interminable pause, he actually conceded. “I’ll think about it.”

Jani thought that was as good as it was going to get at that point, and she jumped on it.

She rummaged in the jumble of her purse until she found a pen and the small case that held her business cards. When she had them in hand, she wrote her cell phone number and her home phone number on the back of the card—wondering even as she did if he really needed her home phone number, yet inclined to give it to him anyway.

Not for any personal reason, she told herself. Only to make sure he knew that she meant everything she’d said and wanted to be accommodating. Whether he was a great-looking guy or not, she wouldn’t want to get involved with someone predisposed to despising her even if she had the time to spend on that. Which she didn’t.

When she finished jotting on the back of the card, she handed it to him. “These are all the numbers where I can be reached—day or night, whatever is convenient for you...”

Gideon Thatcher glanced at the card he held in a hand that was big and strong-looking—somehow one of the sexiest hands Jani had ever taken notice of. Although she wasn’t quite sure what constituted a sexy hand...

“January Camden,” he read out loud.

“Jani—you can call me Jani. My friends and family do.”

He raised those iridescent green eyes to her again and while the hostility was gone from his expression, what had replaced it was something that let her know that if he took her up on her offer he would make it a challenge for her.

Then he confirmed her hunch by saying, “You’re going to be sorry that you approached me today,
January.
If I decide to take your guilty-conscience money it’ll be for a lot more than a park. In the name of Franklin Thatcher and the community of Lakeview, I’ll make sure your bottom line feels some pain.”

Jani held her head high. “We’re serious about wanting to honor your great-grandfather in whatever way you think best. I hope you’ll be in touch soon.”

“Soon enough,” he said ominously.

Jani wasn’t sure how to respond to that. But since he was still standing there staring at her she thought that it was up to her to bring this meeting to a conclusion, so she said, “I’ll let you get on your way, then. I’m parked right over there...”

He glanced at the car she’d indicated then back at her, and it crossed her mind to offer a parting handshake the way she might at the end of a business meeting.

But the moment the thought flitted through her brain she realized that she liked the idea of making physical contact with him a little too much. That something in her was overly eager to experience the feel of that hand she’d found sexy.

It was weird. And she didn’t think it was wise to give in to it.

So she merely said a perfunctory, “Thanks for your time.”

“Uh-huh” was his only answer.

He continued to stand there and Jani realized that, in the same way he’d helped with her spilled purse, he might be begrudgingly offering her the courtesy of making sure she got safely to her car. So that was where she headed.

It was unsettling, though, to have his gaze remain on her while she rummaged a third time in her purse for her car keys, unlocked her door and got behind the wheel.

More unsettling still when she started the engine and cast a glance out the passenger window to see that Gideon Thatcher had gone on watching her even now that she was safely locked in.

Didn’t he trust her to keep her word enough to drive away? Because suspicion was clearly in his expression, as if he were wondering what exactly she was up to.

Don’t worry, I’m a good person...

And she wanted him to know that.

In fact it surprised her to discover how much she wanted him to know that.

Almost as much as she wished that the way he’d looked at her before he’d heard her name had been the way he’d kept looking at her.

But none of that was important, she told herself. She had a job to do for the family and that was all this was. And when it was over she would get on with her plans to have a baby and that would be that for Gideon Thatcher.

Yet as she finally pulled out into a break in traffic and saw him turn and head in the opposite direction down the sidewalk, she felt the tiniest twinge of regret that a man like that disliked her so much just because of who she was.

A man like that...

It would be nice if a man like that had an entirely different response to her.

Nice if there had been a man like that in her life a while ago, when she could have started and built a relationship.

Because, oh, she and a man like that could have made wonderful babies together...

Silly, silly thought...

And it only popped into her head, she told herself, because she had making babies on the brain these days.

Not because of Gideon Thatcher in particular.

Even though he was a man like that...

Chapter Two

“Y
ou’re late.”

“Sorry,” Gideon said to Jack Durnham, his best friend and second-in-command of the Thatcher Group. “Bad night. Too many things rolling around in my head. I didn’t fall asleep until about four this morning, and then I slept through the alarm. Maybe the boss won’t notice if we sneak into the office with our coats over our heads.”

“Good plan, boss,” Jack said with a laugh.

The two had been friends since middle school. They’d gone to college together, been each other’s best man at their weddings, and Jack had quit a lucrative job with a local engineering firm to come on board when Gideon had started the Thatcher Group. Technically Gideon was Jack’s boss but Gideon saw him more as a partner than an employee.

“What was rolling around in your head to keep you up?” Jack asked after they’d ordered.

“You won’t believe it when I tell you. But you first—how did your weekend with Sammy go?”

Jack grimaced and shook his blond head.

Sammy was his two-year-old son. Jack and his wife were recently separated and the three previous days were the first time Jack had had visitation with the toddler.

“Not great,” Jack said. “Tiffany is making everything as difficult as possible. I don’t know why—she’s the one who decided our marriage was stagnating and wanted out. But for some reason I get to be punished. After the seven weeks in Florida with her parents that kept me from seeing Sammy at all, she came back to Colorado Springs rather than Denver. It’s blackmail—if I want Sammy closer, I’ll have to pay for a place for her to live here. Otherwise, it’s an hour drive to the Springs to pick him up and an hour drive back to Denver to have him for the weekend. Then two more hours in the car for the return at the end of the visitation.”

Jack’s voice had gotten louder and angrier. Gideon could see that he needed to vent so he didn’t point out that this was the same thing Jack had ranted about in advance of the three-day weekend he’d taken with his son.

“How about the visit itself? How did that go?” Gideon asked.

“I know how you ended up over Jillie. So you probably think that I should just count myself lucky that I get to see Sammy at all. But, dammit, this is so lousy! Sammy is two! He took one look at me after so long apart, latched onto Tiffany’s leg and acted like I was a stranger. He cried when I took him, then glared at me the whole drive back to Denver. And to make things worse, once we got here and I needed to put him to bed, Tiffany hadn’t packed that blanket thing he sleeps with—”

“Oh, that’s bad!” Gideon commiserated. “Whatever it is they need to have with them when they go to sleep, they
need
to have.”

“Right. I had to load him back into the car—tired, crabby and hating me for taking him away from his mother—and go to three different Camden Superstores to try to find a blanket thing exactly like the one he has. Luckily I did, but by then he was overwrought, and he just kept crying for Tiffany and—”

“You were both miserable.”

“We were just getting back into the swing of things with each other by yesterday and I had to turn around and take him back,” Jack concluded.

“You’re right—that is lousy.”

“I’m sorry,” Jack apologized in a voice an octave lower than the one he’d been using. “Again, I know I’m better off than you are, but it still stinks.”

“Yeah, it does,” Gideon agreed. He could see clearly how much his friend was suffering and knew the feeling well. Too well. It served as a reminder of the reason for the decision he’d made for himself. The vow.

Their breakfasts arrived, and when the waitress had left Jack changed the subject.

“Okay, you know if you let me I’ll gripe about this all day. Now tell me what was rolling around in your head to keep you up last night.”

“Speaking of Camden Superstores...” Gideon said sarcastically, referring to his friend’s mention of them.

“I know how you feel about the Camdens, but sometimes we all have to use the stores that made them rich. Even you.”

Gideon avoided them but Jack was right, sometimes, in a pinch, he gave in and went into one of them.

“But how do we feel about taking Camden money for the Lakeview project...” he said.

Jack’s forkful of eggs stalled midair. “Huh?”

“When I came out of work last night there was a hot little number waiting for me on the sidewalk—January Camden. I’ve had some messages from her but I’ve been ignoring them. Apparently the Camdens want to make a donation to fund a park in Lakeview, in my great-grandfather’s name. They want to
honor
him.”

“Guilty-conscience money?” Jack guessed.

“That’s what I said.”

“So, I know the story...” Jack mused as if he were updating himself. “H. J. Camden was friends with your great-grandfather and your great-grandfather was Lakeview’s mayor, right? Back when Lakeview was a dying-out farm community with good proximity to Denver, Camden wanted to build warehouses and factories there. But Lakeview didn’t want to be turned into a warehouse and factory district, so Camden sweetened the deal—he said if he could build what he wanted there, he’d spearhead the development of Lakeview into a post-war suburban dream. New homes, the coming of big and small businesses, schools and parks—”

“And he got my great-grandfather to support his plan,” Gideon said. “He needed somebody who was well respected to go to bat for him. He needed influence with the city council—”

“Which—as mayor—your great-grandfather had.”

“And trusting their mayor, Lakeview signed on—they gave Camden the okay for the factories and warehouses.”

“But that was it for Camden,” Jack said. “Once he had what he wanted, he didn’t come through on the rest.”

“And my great-grandfather got the blame.”

“Along with all the retribution and the hardship that came with it and sifted down to your grandfather and your father and, ultimately, left you with things to deal with...” Jack nodded now that he knew they were on the same page. “You have good reason to feel the way you do about the Camdens. So what were you up all night doing? Thinking of ways to get even with them?”

“More like rehashing all the reasons I have for hating them. Fuming,” Gideon said, not telling his friend that he’d needed to focus on the anger because otherwise his mind kept wandering back to January Camden.

The first thing he’d noticed was all that espresso-colored hair bathed in golden streetlight, falling in waves well past her shoulders like a dark frame around skin as flawless and pure as fresh cream—that image had flashed through his mind and defused some of the fuming.

And so had recollections of high cheekbones and that thin, perfectly shaped nose that was just long enough to lend a hint of the exotic to her face. Of those full lips, lush and lovely and way, way too kissable-looking. Of eyes so blue—so intensely, brightly, blueberry-blue—that he’d been bowled over by them by the time he’d reached the fourth step down from his office...

And here he was again, lost in the memory of the memory that had kept him up last night.

He shook his head. “Anyway, no, I wasn’t thinking about getting even with them—it’s not like I’m obsessed with them, or with payback or something. But it also isn’t as if I want to get in bed with them, either...”

Where had that particular turn of phrase come from? And why had the picture of January Camden popped back into his brain along with it?

It’s a figure of speech and that’s
all
it is,
he insisted to himself.
It doesn’t have any hidden meaning.

Still he found himself feeling a few degrees warmer all of a sudden and fidgeting in his chair a little to evade the involuntary response that was going through him.

“I know you wouldn’t ever ‘get into bed’
with the Camdens,” Jack said. “But would that be what a donation from them was?”

“I don’t know,” Gideon said with a sigh. “I do like the idea of putting my great-grandfather’s name on something of value and service to Lakeview. And the Camdens sure as hell owe Lakeview.”

“So you’d be killing two birds with one stone?”

“Except that the stone belongs to the Camdens, and they can’t be trusted—my family history proves that,” Gideon added, showing just how much he was vacillating about this.

“Do you think it’s a trick of some kind?” Jack asked, as he finished with his breakfast and settled in with his second cup of coffee.

“I know I won’t let it be. And she said that I can set the terms.”

“So maybe this is on the up-and-up?” Jack suggested. “Maybe they really do just want to make up for what H.J. did?”

Gideon shrugged, showing his reservations.

“The Camdens
are
heavy into charity and benefits and good deeds now,” Jack pointed out. “Hospital wings, libraries, research labs, animal shelters. They’ve even made donations huge enough to be newsworthy in national and international disasters. Their name crops up with just about anything worthwhile that goes on these days. Could it be that this is a generation of new-and-improved Camdens?”

“New-and-improved Camdens?” Gideon parroted. “I might not be looking to get even but I also don’t know that I buy that, either. Don’t forget that H.J. came into Lakeview a wolf in sheep’s clothing.”

“True. But your eyes are wide open when it comes to these people. And if their donation benefits a community they owe plenty to and your great-grandfather gets paid a little homage in the process, aren’t those two good things?”

“I’m thinking about it,” Gideon said evasively.

The waitress came to find out if they wanted anything. Jack took a refill on his coffee. Gideon just asked for the check.

“This is on me for keeping you waiting,” he told his friend. “But I’m gonna have to leave you while you finish your coffee—I need to get to that meeting with Lakeview Parks and Recreation.”

“Oh, right, I forgot about that. I’ll see you at the office when you get back.”

As Gideon fished in his wallet to leave the money for the check and a generous tip he said, “Don’t worry about things with Sammy. This is the roughest time. He’s still your son and you have every right to him, so it’ll work out.”

“Yeah,” Jack said glumly. “But it’ll never be the same.”

Gideon couldn’t refute that because he knew it was true. So he didn’t try.

He merely said he’d see Jack later and left, knowing what his friend was going through and feeling a wave of old pain himself at the thought.

That pain lasted until he got behind the wheel of his SUV and headed for Lakeview. The thought of Lakeview brought January Camden and what she’d proposed back to mind to distract him.

If he decided to take her up on her offer and had to have contact with a Camden, at least it would be with a Camden who was easy on the eyes.

She’d been some kind of liaison to send. A real attention-getter. He had to give them credit for that, at least.

And she’d weathered the storm he’d sent her way with composure—she got points for that. Dignity and composure. And style—she had that, too. Dignity, composure, style, beauty...

Okay, yes, January Camden was something, he admitted reluctantly.

But she was still a Camden.

And even though he didn’t remember seeing a wedding ring, she must be a married Camden. If that book that had fallen out of her purse was any indication, she was in starting-a-family mode.

The old pain swung back and hit him when that thought went through his head. Family. Babies. Kids...

And suddenly it wasn’t January Camden he was picturing but the little girl who had been his own daughter. If only for a while...

Jillie.

His little Jillie-bean...

All this time and it could still knock him as cold as a fist to the jaw...

And it occurred to him that he’d actually
rather
think about January Camden than about Jillie. About all the Camdens. He’d rather be mad than maudlin and depressed....

So think about the donation...
he told himself.

But
only
about the donation and the lousy, stinking, underhanded Camdens.

Not
about the way January Camden looked or carried herself.

Not about her blue, blue eyes.

Not about what might be going on in her personal life.

Just the donation the lousy, stinking, underhanded Camdens wanted to make to Lakeview.

And whether or not he was going to let it happen...

* * *

“Aren’t you guys having lunch with GiGi and me?” Jani asked Margaret and Louie, referring to Georgianna Camden by the nickname everyone used for her. Jani had come to her grandmother’s house hoping for time alone with GiGi. But Margaret and Louie Haliburton were more than GiGi’s house staff; they were the adopted members of the family who had helped GiGi raise her ten grandchildren. They continued to work and live on the estate, and to be important to GiGi and to all of the Camdens.

Because they were in the kitchen with GiGi when Jani arrived, she’d expected them to be staying for lunch, which meant she’d have to have a few words with her grandmother in private later. But after they’d all exchanged pleasantries, Louie announced that he and Margaret should be going.

“I’m being taken out to lunch,” Margaret said with delight on her lined face. “I’d say Louie was becoming a romantic in his old age but I think you’re grandmother put him up to it since he forgot our anniversary.”

“Nah! It was my idea,” Louie insisted.

“Better make it a long lunch, Louie, with a shopping spree afterward, or you’re never getting out of the doghouse,” GiGi advised him, laughing.

The camaraderie among the three older people was obvious. They were genuinely close friends and indispensable to each other.

“Yes, shopping—that’s a good idea,” Margaret said, although Jani wondered why it would appeal to the woman who mainly wore elastic-waistband slacks and either T-shirts or sweatshirts that always had messages printed on them.

Regardless, the couple said goodbye and went on their way, leaving Jani alone with her grandmother to sit at the breakfast nook that was large enough for fourteen people.