Somebody's Baby (7 page)

“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.”

A
dam 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.