Somebody's Baby (8 page)

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.

C
onner 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.”

“No. If we are going to start ‘making cases’—” she paused and made quotation marks in the air “—in order to ease our guilt, then I should make one for the fact that I didn’t track you down sooner to tell you about Nathan.”

“I thought you didn’t know about me until Ophelia sent you the adoption paperwork.”

“I didn’t. But I didn’t make that effort either.” She scanned the business card, the worn carpet, the baby who had just succeeded in pulling himself up onto his own two feet then promptly plopped back down onto his well-padded bottom. “And deep down I often thought that I should have made that effort. I may be naive about a lot of things. Innocent, even. But I do know it takes two people to make a baby, and I never once really tried to seek out Nathan’s father.”

“You are not just wise, Josie.” He cocked his head. He studied her in much the same way he had on the first night they had met, but this time there was something more in his eyes. Respect. He didn’t bother to conceal it when he said, with quiet conviction, “You are…amazing.”

“Nope. Just someone trying to do the best I can, to be a good person and a good Christian.”

“I know. You are.”

“I try.” She turned to watch Nathan again.

The baby grunted and groped at the couch cushion. He dug his tiny fingers into the fabric. His chubby legs bounced once, twice then his body jutted upward and he stood. “Ya-ya-ya!”

She smiled at her son. “Like everyone, I fail sometimes but I never stop trying.”

“That’s what makes you so wonderful.”

Josie wished she could scoop her son up to take the attention away from herself. But she didn’t want to take anything away from his hard-won accomplishment.

“You have to stop saying things like that or my head will swell up so big that I won’t be able to get my café apron over it.” She pantomimed putting on the apron that covered her from neck to knees.

“Ahh, you’ve caught on to my plan, to keep you from cooking for that barbecue.”

They stood there in silence. Josie didn’t know what to say or do.

Nathan lurched sideways for one step then another, his fingers curled into the soft cushion for support as he cruised toward the armrest.

Josie raised her head and now commanded Adam’s gaze. She wanted to please this man but she was not ready to surrender that kind of trust to him. He had plans he would not tell her about and she had rent to pay.

“I won’t take money from you.” She laid it out as plainly as possible. “Not when I have a terrific way to earn it for myself. It’s the right thing to do and won’t cause you any hardship.”

“I don’t know about…” He stopped, looked down at Nathan, then back at her. “Wait. You think me paying your back child support would create a financial hardship for me?”

“Everyone in town knows you went through your inheritance right away.”

“Oh,
everybody
knows that, do they?”

“You don’t have to be ashamed. Like I said, we all fail. The important thing is to keep trying to do better.”

He opened his mouth and raised his hand, like a man about to launch into a speech. Then his eyes shifted. His brow crinkled. He exhaled in a quick, hard huff. “I can’t stand here and talk about this now, Josie. Just believe me when I say that if you should decide not to take the job, I will support you emotionally and financially in that choice.”

Thump.

Nathan reached the end of the couch and sat down on the carpet, hard. He did not cry or fuss about it, just plunked down and sat there.

“It’s not
just
about money, Adam.” Now Josie did go to her child and pick him up. “It’s also about me giving something back to the people who have been so kind to me.”

His brow furrowed. “My family?”

“The people of Mt. Knott.”

“Even if you have to take money from the people who have let the whole town down to do it?”

“I don’t see them as having let the town down. They certainly did not want their business to flounder. I don’t understand your animosity toward your father. As a father yourself now, it just seems that you’d be more forgiving.”

He hung his head. “Maybe I haven’t been a father long enough.”

“But you’ve been a son for most of your life, a brother and a—”

“And a stray.”

You don’t have to be a stray,
she wanted to say.
You have Nathan now. Nathan and me.
“Why can’t you let go of that?”

He paused.

For a moment she thought he might break down, then he gathered himself, squared his shoulders and shook his head. “I have to go.”

She could have offered to walk with him. He’d left his motorcycle behind the Home Cookin’ Kitchen, after all, but she knew he wouldn’t want to be seen with her and Nathan. A protective move, he’d say, but Josie could not make herself accept that without some reservation. So she watched Adam leave the house via the back door and disappear into the night without anything more demonstrative than a mumbled goodbye.

Ten minutes later she shut her front door behind her, not knowing what to do first about all this. Should she panic or praise the Lord?

Praise. Definitely praise.

Once she had spent a little time in prayer and thanksgiving, she would surely not feel so overwhelmed by everything and underequipped to deal with it. She had to stop and marvel at that notion. She had lived from one crisis to the next for so long, hung on by her virtual fingertips to survive from her childhood to her son’s infancy.