Single Mom's Protector - Complete Series

by Nella Tyler

  Mom, at least, I could trust with the real reason for leaving the house. “I’m going to bring Cade some of the soup I made for dinner,” I said. “I’m just going to run it by his house and make sure he’s okay.”

  “That’s a sweet idea,” she told me. “I’ll keep an eye on the stockpot for you and make sure it doesn’t get too low.”

  “If I’m not home by six, go ahead and drop the noodles in to cook through,” I told her, gathering my keys, my purse, and the insulated bag I’d stuffed Cade’s care package into.

  I checked out in the fields to make sure that Tuck and Dad were far enough away that they wouldn’t necessarily notice me walking out to the car; I could barely see them. I took a deep breath and carefully wedged the insulated bag in the passenger seat before climbing in on the driver’s side. I got the car started and tried to hurry down the driveway without looking like I was in a rush.

  My heart pounded in my chest right up until I turned onto the road leading into town—and then it only slowed down a little at the prospect of seeing Cade, even sick. I shook my head at myself, thinking how ridiculous I was being—but I couldn’t help it.

  Chapter Eight

  Cade

  I heard a knock at my door and very nearly pretended like I wasn’t home. My nose was somehow running and stopped up at the same time, I’d been sneezing since the night before, my head was killing me, and I had a nasty-sounding cough that was making my throat hurt. I wasn’t sure if I had a fever, but I was feeling pretty low all the same.

  I hated to have to call in sick, but I knew that if I didn’t nip my flu in the bud, I’d be useless out in the fields anyway; and I didn’t want to expose the Nelsons to my bug when there was a baby who would probably get much sicker, who could be in danger from the flu.

  But curiosity won out; I had no idea who could be at my door in the middle of the week, in the afternoon. I half-decided that it was probably either a salesman or a Jehovah’s Witness—those were the only two options I could really think of—when I got up off of the couch and started to walk towards the door.

  Instead of either one of them, though, I saw Autumn, standing there on my doorstep with an insulated bag. I almost started to walk away from the door—I was in my pajamas, and I especially wanted to avoid getting Adelyn sick—but then I decided it would just be plain rude to leave her out there on my front patio. I opened the door and pulled my shirt up to cover my mouth and nose. “I don’t want to get you sick,” I told her right off the bat. “Or Adelyn.”

  “It’s okay,” Autumn said with a smile. “Addie and I have both gotten our flu shots, so I should be safe. Can I come in?”

  I thought about that. Bob Nelson’s order that I not fall in love with his daughter was one that I took pretty seriously, and inviting her into my house probably wouldn’t be a good step on the road to obeying him. But I was sick; it wasn’t as though I was going to make out with her in my current state. I was also too tired to stand around talking.

  “Come in,” I told her, opening the door wider and letting the front of my shirt fall away from my face.

  Autumn stepped through the door and hefted the insulated bag on her shoulder. “I brought you a big jar of chicken soup—I made it this afternoon,” she told me as I closed the door behind her.

  “That’s kind of you,” I said, surprised at the gesture. “I’m sorry the house is such a wreck—I was going to clean last night, but started feeling under the weather and well…” I shrugged.

  “Don’t worry about it,” she said, shaking her head. “Go get on the couch and let me find a bowl to put some of this soup in.”

  She went into the kitchen and I smiled in spite of how miserable I felt, before walking heavily back to the couch I’d been sitting on when she knocked and sinking down onto it. I heard her moving around, checking cabinets, and I almost told her where to look—but then she emerged, with one of my trays in her hands. There was a big bowl with steam still rising off the top of it, a glass with some Gatorade in it, and a bottle of Nyquil. “Have you taken anything recently?”

  “No,” I said, shaking my head. “I was trying to get up the energy to heat something up to eat first, but then you knocked at the door.”

  “Well, you’re going to take something after you eat this fine soup,” Autumn told me. “You have to keep your fluids up if you’ve got the flu.”

  “I’m sure I’ve heard that,” I said as she set the tray down on the coffee table. She looked around the living room for a moment, and I gestured to the chair next to the couch. “Have a seat—that is, if you’re interested in visiting for a little bit.”

  “I can sit for a spell,” she said. She perched in the chair and pointed at the tray. “Eat!”

  It wasn’t hard to eat the whole bowl of rich, delicious soup; even with my nose stopped up and my taste buds off, after the first bite I knew it was exactly what I needed. “Are these homemade noodles?” Autumn nodded.

  “It’s nothing really,” she said, blushing slightly. “It’s easier to make up egg noodles when we need them then to buy them and have them take up cupboard space forever.”

  “They’re delicious,” I told her, taking more bites of the soup. It warmed me up and I could feel the pressure in my head starting to relax, my sinuses starting to ease up on me. It made my throat feel better, too; the heat, saltiness, and the chunks of chicken were just exactly what I needed.

  “There’s more in the jar—I left it out, but if you’re going to wait to eat the rest of it you’ll probably want to put it in the fridge so it doesn’t spoil.”

  “I appreciate it,” I said, nodding as I set the bowl aside and picked up the glass of Gatorade. “And, thanks for coming out all this way to bring it.”

  Autumn shrugged, blushing again. “I just thought… I didn’t know if you’d have anyone else to bring you soup or anything, and I wanted to make sure you were okay.”

  “You really don’t have to hang around if you don’t want to,” I told her. “I mean, I’m not asking you to leave or anything, but I’m sure you’ve got important things to do around the house, and of course Adelyn probably isn’t used to you being away from her for very long.” Autumn smiled.

  “She’s in very good hands with my mom. And, dinner at home isn’t for another few hours, so it’s not like anyone will miss me for a bit.” She gave me a quick, almost stern look. “Take the medicine before you finish off that Gatorade.”

  “Yes, Ma’am,” I said, almost laughing at her sternness. I poured myself a shot of the medicine in the little cup that came with the bottle and knocked it back, chasing it with the last of the Gatorade in my glass like chasing a shot of whiskey with a slug of beer.

  Autumn stood and gathered up the tray, taking it back into the kitchen, and I heard her rinse the bowl out in the sink. She came back into the living room and sat down. “If you don’t mind, I’ll just stick around until you start feeling sleepy,” she suggested.

  “I don’t mind at all,” I said, nodding. Autumn had brought the bottle of Gatorade with her and handed it to me.

  “You might as well drink some more of it while you’re still awake,” she pointed out. I poured myself another installment of the drink and sipped it, sitting back on the couch. I pulled the afghan my mom had made sometime years before around me.

  “You know, maybe it’s forward of me, and if you don’t want to answer, I’ll back off,” I said, “but what’s the story with you and Adelyn?” Autumn laughed—a little bitterly, I thought.

  “You mean, why am I a single mom?”

  I shrugged and half-nodded. “Not that I’m passing judgment or anything. I was just curious how a beautiful woman like you ended up taking care of a baby all on your own.” Autumn smiled sadly.

  “I was engaged when I got pregnant with her,” she began. “And for the record—I didn’t get engaged because I got pregnant, I got pregnant because Adelyn’s father and I had stopped being careful after we got engaged.”

  “Sounds normal.” I c
ould feel the medicine starting to work—not just drying me up, but making me a little drowsy, a little dopey. It wasn’t so bad that I’d tell Autumn to leave, but it was making my tongue a little looser than usual. “So what happened?” She looked down at her hands and sighed.

  “Titan was his name,” she said, meeting my gaze once more. “He—I guess—found someone online. I guess he was technically cheating on me just about the whole time, though it feels weird to say it since he never…”

  She shook her head. “Anyway, a few months into my pregnancy with Addie, he told me that he wanted to move out East because he’d found someone online who lived out there. New York maybe, or somewhere like that.”

  “What a pissant,” I said, frowning. I couldn’t imagine exchanging messages with another woman when the woman I was engaged to—the woman I loved—was carrying my child. But then, I knew from some of my friends that there were plenty of men out there who were only ever interested in the hunt. “That’s no kind of man.” Autumn lifted one shoulder in a half-shrug.

  “Anyway,” she said, sighing again, “he decided he wanted to try things out with her, and I didn’t think there was any real reason to try and convince him to stay—not for me, anyway. As soon as I found out that he was cheating on me, it was like…” She shook her head. “I can’t say my heart broke, exactly, but any feeling I really had for him just evaporated.”

  “That makes sense,” I said. I was relieved to hear that she had had the sense to sever ties with a man who’d mistreated her and enough command of her emotions to keep from wanting to salvage something with a man who obviously didn’t respect her.

  “It’s a shame in a certain respect,” she said. “He’s never even seen his own daughter. I don’t want him in my life anymore, but you’d think he’d at least put a token effort into his own daughter, wouldn’t you?”

  I smiled back at her sadly, hoping she knew just how sympathetic I felt.

  “Well, if he doesn’t want to know his own daughter, then she’s better off without him, right?” I shifted on the couch; my head was starting to feel heavy again—but not in the clogged-up way. I yawned and shook my head to try and keep the sleepiness from taking over.

  “The medicine is starting to kick in,” Autumn observed. “I should leave.”

  “You’re a good mom,” I told her, feeling sleepy and comfortable and content for the first time all day. “You’re a good mom, and you’re a much better woman than Titan could ever deserve—so it’s good you’re not with him anymore, anyway.” She snickered. My eyelids were so heavy.

  “I’m going to put this on the coffee table for you,” she said, and I felt her hand on mind, felt the glass of Gatorade sliding free of my fingers. “Get some sleep and feel better in the morning, okay?”

  “Okay,” I agreed. “I’ll call in if I’m not better…but I hope I am…” The medicine started to kick in more strongly and I wasn’t even sure if I said goodbye to Autumn; all I knew was that I was warm, my head wasn’t full of snot, and I was too sleepy to even think about staying awake. I hoped she’d understand.

  Chapter Nine

  Autumn

  About a week after I visited Cade’s house to check up on him and bring him soup, everything was back to normal at the farm. I had somehow managed not to come down with the bug—whatever it was—that Cade had had, and none of the members of my family had gotten it either, which was a blessing.

  I never told Tuck or even Dad about taking the soup to Cade; in the case of Dad, I was sure he’d think it was inappropriate, and Tuck would have teased me for the rest of my life about it. As far as I knew, Cade hadn’t mentioned it, either.

  “Let’s get some work done, baby girl,” I told Addie as I stepped out of the house with her in my arms.

  It wasn’t quite as hot as it had been the previous week, but it was still pretty warm out—and, of course, Adelyn’s baby skin needed protecting from the sun even if it wasn’t all that hot. I had set her playpen outside before I grabbed her, and I pulled it over to a shady spot underneath a tree so that she could enjoy the nice weather while I worked, and so I could keep an eye on her.

  Mom was inside, working on the accounts, and the guys were out in the field. I had to water the kitchen garden, do a little weeding, and clean the exterior windows. Mom and Dad always said that just because it was a farm house, that didn’t mean we could let it get to looking old or run-down. I’d probably have to take a few days later on in the season to paint—if I could get Tuck and maybe Cade to help me, it would be easier.

  I looked out at the fields and saw the shapes of the guys moving along the rows. It was still early in the growing season, but they were already putting down pesticides and fertilizer to give the soybeans and corn the best possible chance.

  For my own part, I had fertilized the vegetable garden a few days before. Things were starting to sprout, starting to show some progress, but it’d be another few weeks before I could even think of taking some early produce out—even the strawberries.

  I started walking around the garden, looking at everything, taking stock as Mom called it. By midsummer, it would be nearly impossible to keep up with everything; we’d be harvesting daily, pulling as much as we could, canning and preserving whatever we knew the family couldn’t eat in the week.

  I grabbed the hose and started watering everything down, careful not to flood any of the little plots with their sprouts reaching up towards the sky.

  Addie gurgled at something and I looked over to see a squirrel watching her intently, chattering at her. I would have intervened, but I didn’t see any sign that the squirrel was going to launch an attack. Addie lurched up in her playpen, reaching ineffectively out to grab at the distant squirrel, and I laughed to myself, shaking my head.

  I watered the garden and plucked a few obvious weeds, but so early on—and with such constant supervision—there weren’t many to pull. Mom stuck her head out the window right about the time I finished up. “Can you do me a favor and put the washing out on the clothesline? I was going to get it done this afternoon, but I can tell I’m going to be stuck in here all day,” she called out.

  “I can handle it,” I told her. I glanced at Addie; my baby would be safe for the few minutes it would take for me to go inside, grab the laundry, and carry it out. I hurried into the house and down the hall from the kitchen into the laundry room.

  The washing machine had obviously just finished up a few minutes before; the sheets and towels were still a little warm from the hot water Mom had used in the cycle. I pulled them out and dumped them into a basket, hefted it onto my hip and then hustled out of the house as quickly as I’d gone in.

  Addie was fine, of course; the squirrel had moved onto more important things like finding food, and my baby was playing with one of the toys my cousin had gotten her, babbling to herself in nonsense syllables.

  Everything had more or less gone back to normal after I’d visited Cade’s place to bring him soup, but something about the conversation we’d had continued to nag me ever since. I hadn’t minded telling him about Titan; he had to be one of the few people in the county who didn’t know the story, and honestly, it was better coming from me than from someone else.

  But it had brought the whole situation with my ex back to the forefront of my mind. I straightened a towel over the clothesline and reached automatically for the pins to hold it in place, thinking about the day that Titan had broken up with me.

  I’d noticed that he was pulling away, but I hadn’t really thought anything too serious was going on. After all: I had been pregnant with his child, we were engaged, and he had told me more than once that everything was fine between us. I’d come to the conclusion that it was just one of those things that happen—that Titan was pulling back because things were just getting intense.

  But then, one day, he’d sat me down in the living room of our apartment. “I have to tell you something, Autumn,” Titan had said, looking both shamefaced and cocky somehow.

  When w
e’d started dating, I’d thought he was one of the most gorgeous men I had ever met; and even though I didn’t have feelings for him anymore, I couldn’t be too upset at the fact that Addie had half Titan’s genes. She would grow up to be a beautiful woman one day, and that was partially because of Titan’s dark hair and bone structure.

  “What’s going on?” I’d felt my heart beating faster in my chest, and some part of me had to have known—but I couldn’t bring it to the forefront of my mind, form words to describe what I’d been suspecting for weeks.

  “I’ve met someone,” he had said. “I didn’t mean to—I loved you—but things just sort of...happened.”

  “What do you mean, things happened?” I could remember the way my hand had gone down to my abdomen, to where Addie was growing inside of me.

  “We started chatting, and we have a lot in common…we fell in love, Autumn. I’m sorry—I wish it was different—but I can’t stay with you when I’m in love with someone else.”

  I closed my eyes for a moment and then took a deep breath. Titan breaking up with me hadn’t exactly broken my heart—at least, not in the way that other breakups, with other guys, had done. I’d felt strange, almost free but at the same time trapped. I’d been angry, and I’d told Titan that I didn’t give a fuck whether he was sorry. I’d told him that he could move to the East Coast as far as I cared, and I wouldn’t even bother saying goodbye to him.

  My feelings had softened a little bit after Titan had gone, but not in any way that made me want to get involved with him again. The fact that I was carrying a child, that I was going to give birth to Titan’s baby, was the important thing—the only thing—that connected me to him.

  He’s been a dad for almost a year, and he’s never once seen her, I thought, glancing at my daughter. It wasn’t fair to Addie. She doesn’t know anything about having a father, I pointed out to myself. She doesn’t ever even have to know anything about it.