by Meg Maxwell
She’d just prefer him by her side, in general.
I don’t know how this will work... She could imagine Nick coming to the house every second or third Friday with a stuffed giraffe or a soccer ball, building a sandbox in the yard, then a play set, then a tree house. A visitor in their lives.
Yeah, yeah, she’d be fine on her own, but the wave of sadness that rushed through at the thought of Nick ringing the doorbell of the home she shared with their child made her very tired.
“If you need me, for anything, just call,” he said. He glanced at Timmy, who was looking at his little mobile, then he looked back at Georgia, nodded and left.
She missed him immediately.
* * *
Nick drove back to Dylan’s house. There was no car in the short driveway, and the curtains at the front windows were closed. Was Dylan inside? Hiding from him? Only one way to find out.
Nick walked up the three steps, expecting the elderly neighbor to poke her head out the window again. It only took a few seconds.
Her gray head appeared. “Did you find Dylan at the diner?”
“I did, thank you. But now I’m here to see his aunt.”
Curiosity brightened her expression. “If Dylan’s not home you’ll have to knock hard a few times. Helen’s hard of hearing.”
“Ah, thank you,” Nick said, recalling that the diner manager had mentioned that.
He felt bad about pounding on the door, but after two police-level knocks, he heard shuffling feet. The door opened and a frail-looking woman in her eighties wearing a pink sweat suit appeared.
“My name is Detective Nick Slater,” he practically shouted. “I’m—”
The woman’s face lit up. “Detective Slater! I know who you are. You were very kind to Eleanor when she was having all that trouble with her husband, who was my nephew, God rest his soul. You were kind to Dylan too. I’m Helen Patterson, Dylan’s great-aunt.”
“Nice to meet you,” he said loudly, extending his hand, which she took in both of hers with a warm smile. “May I come in? I’d like to hear how Dylan is doing.”
She pulled the door open wide. “Of course. You’ll have to sit on my left. I can barely hear a thing out of my right ear.” She led the way into the small living room.
As she moved slightly, Nick’s gaze landed on a photograph atop the mantel. He froze.
The photograph was of a baby, a newborn, wrapped in the standard hospital-issue striped blanket, a light blue cotton cap on his head.
The baby looked an awful lot like Timmy.
“May I?” he asked Helen, gesturing at the photograph.
“Sure. Such a darling baby,” she said, her expression faltering as she sat down on an easy chair.
He glanced back at Helen Patterson as he walked over to the mantel. The woman looked upset. She was shaking her head; then she reached to a basket beside her chair and pulled out a small stuffed teddy bear, her eyes downcast as she clutched it to her chest. Had this frail eighty-year-old managed to get herself to Blue Gulch to leave Timmy on his desk? Highly doubtful. Whose child was he?
Nick’s heart lurched as he stopped in front of the mantel and lifted the photograph, studying the baby. Timmy’s eyes had turned a bit more blue, less the gray-blue in the picture. The newborn redness in the face was gone. As were the crinkles and wrinkles. But it was Timmy. He had no doubt.
“Ma’am, whose baby is this?” Nick asked.
“Little louder, Detective?” she asked, pointing at her right ear.
“This baby,” he shouted. “Who does he belong to?”
“He belongs to me,” a male voice said. “I’m his father.”
Nick whirled around. Dylan Patterson stood in the doorway to another room, his hands stuffed in his pockets. The teenager glanced around the room, his blue eyes filling with fear. “Where’s Timmy? He’s okay, isn’t he? Why isn’t he with you?”
Nick’s mouth almost dropped open. Dylan was Timmy’s father? What?
He was just a kid himself. So much a kid—in Nick’s mind and memory, anyway—that it hadn’t even crossed Nick’s mind that Dylan Patterson could be Timmy’s parent. Though now that he thought about it, he’d been thinking mother the entire time. It had never occurred to him that Timmy’s father had left the baby on Nick’s desk. Not once.
Because you’re so damned blocked about fatherhood you couldn’t even imagine that a father, a father in some kind of trouble, would have written that desperate note to you, left the baby on your desk for you to safe keep for the week. A father.
“Where is Timmy!” Dylan shouted, tears welling in his eyes.
“Timmy is fine, Dylan,” he assured the young man. “He’s with Georgia—the woman who was with me at the diner earlier. We’re staying at a hotel in the theater district. Timmy is likely napping right now or else Georgia is giving him a bottle or singing one of her many lullabies to him.”
Nick watched Dylan’s entire body relax. The boy shut his eyes for a second, letting out a very deep breath. But he said nothing. No explanation.
Helen glanced uneasily from Dylan to Nick. “Dylan’s a wonderful father. But because Dylan is only seventeen and the sole parent of Timothy, a social worker came by and said she’d have to determine Dylan’s fitness to care for the baby, since I’m not in the best of health or able to help much. She said she was backlogged with cases but would be back in a few days. That was over a week ago. Every time someone knocks, I think it’s her coming to take Timmy away.”
Ah. So Dylan left Timmy on Nick’s desk because he was afraid Social Services would be coming to take the baby away.
“Okay,” Nick said. “Let’s back up.” He looked from Helen to Dylan. “Start from the beginning. You’re the sole parent? Who and where is Timmy’s mother.”
Dylan ran a hand through his mop of sandy blond hair and stepped into the room, his gaze on the photograph Nick held. “Madeline Connors is Timmy’s mother. She was my girlfriend. We had all these plans to get married and raise Timmy. But the closer she got to her delivery date, the more she changed her mind. When he was born, she said she was too young for marriage or motherhood, that she was only eighteen and had her whole life ahead of her.”
Nick sucked in a breath, his heart heavy for Dylan. So young and he’d been through the wringer, one major blow after another.
Dylan walked closer to Nick, clearly not wanting his aunt to overhear what else he had to say. “Madeline thought my mom would be around to help, since she’s not close to her parents. But then my mom—” He squeezed his eyes closed, as if willing himself not to cry, not to break down.
Nick’s heart clenched. He wanted to pull the boy into a hug and let him cry it out, but he knew he should let Dylan finish his story. “I’m so sorry about your mother, Dylan.”
Dylan wiped away tears, taking a deep breath. “My great-aunt is a widow and was living on her own, but that wasn’t working out. When Madeline found out Aunt Helen would live with us, it was the last straw for her and she wanted out of the whole thing. She signed away her parental rights.” Tears slipped down his cheeks. “How could she do that? How could she not want Timmy?”
“If that social worker comes back,” Helen said, “she might take Timmy away.”
Dylan nodded, looking from his aunt back to Nick. “That’s why I drove to Blue Gulch to leave him with you. I was afraid if you knew the details, your hands would be tied. So I put Timmy’s carrier on your desk with the anonymous note, and then I started freaking out that maybe you wouldn’t be back for a long time. But I saw the note you left about just going out for ten minutes to pick up lunch. I hid outside until you came back and watched through a window. Once I saw you pick up the note, I ran to my car and drove home.”
“Dylan, that was a huge risk leaving him on my desk,” Nick said. “I did have to call Social Services
. What if they’d come to take him into foster care until his parents could be tracked down?”
“I knew you wouldn’t let anyone take him. I knew that if I wrote the note asking you to care for him, I could trust you, that you’d take care of him until Saturday.”
“What happens Saturday?” Nick asked. Tomorrow.
His shoulders lifted. “I turn eighteen. I’m no longer a minor. No one can take Timmy away from me after tomorrow. Right?” he asked, his eyes worried again.
“No one is taking Timmy away from you, Dylan. You’ve got my word on that.” He opened his arms and the boy rushed into them, sobbing.
“I miss Timmy so much,” Dylan said, his voice breaking. “Leaving him was the hardest, worst thing I’ve ever had to do. And I’ve had to do some of the worst things imaginable.”
Such as worry about his mother. Such as bury his father. Such as bury his mother. Then he’d been dumped by his baby’s mother, was responsible for his elderly great-aunt, and had to take care of a baby on his own—a baby he’d been terrified he’d also lose.
“Everything’s going to be all right, Dylan. I’m here for you, okay? You were one hundred percent right—you can trust me. We’ll get this settled with the social worker—but no one is taking Timmy from you. He’s your son.”
Dylan calmed down, wiping under his eyes with the bottom of his T-shirt.
There was no way Nick was leaving Dylan here in Houston with all this on his shoulders, eighteen or not. “I have an idea for a fresh start for you and your family. What do you think about moving to Blue Gulch, the three of you?”
He’d have to talk it over with Georgia, about offering Dylan a job in the kitchen at Hurley’s, and he’d have to find a home for the Pattersons, but all that seemed the easy part.
“I’d like that,” Dylan said, relief flooding his expression. “And I’m sure Aunt Helen would too.” They both turned to look at Helen Patterson, who was leaning toward them with her left ear and nodding with a smile. Dylan smiled back at his aunt, then turned to Nick. “Can I come see Timmy? I won’t take him till tomorrow—I won’t feel safe until I’m legally an adult. But I have to see his face. I have to see my son.”
Nick felt a punch to his gut at the longing coating Dylan’s voice, but ignored it and pressed a hand on Dylan’s shoulder. Would he ever feel that? What Dylan felt for the baby he’d been compelled to leave for a week. What Logan Grainger felt for his missing nephew. “Let’s go.”
If he was missing that...synapse or whatever the right word was, he’d do his child a terrible disservice, make his own boy feel unloved, unwanted. Something cold slithered up Nick’s spine and settled along his neck. Maybe staying away was the right thing to do. Maybe moving to Houston and visiting twice a month would be better than living in Blue Gulch a half mile away when he might as well be hundred of miles away.
He glanced at Dylan as he told his great-aunt they were going to see Timmy and that Dylan would be back in a little while. The boy seemed at once such a kid and such a grown-up that Nick wasn’t sure what to think about Dylan Patterson—teenager or adult. He only knew he believed in the young man 100 percent. Why Nick couldn’t believe in himself was another question, one with a lot of answers that added up to a big nothing.
“I can’t wait to hold my son,” Dylan said as he locked the front door and followed Nick to his SUV. “What’s that thing people say about your heart walking around outside your body when you’re separated from your child—that’s true. That’s how it feels.”
Maybe Nick would find that to be true. For his son’s sake, he sure as hell hoped so.
* * *
There was a knock on the hotel room door and Georgia ran to open it. Nick had texted her about ten minutes ago to explain about Dylan, the plan to move to Blue Gulch and that he was desperate to see his baby.
The handsome young man in the doorway looked over Georgia’s shoulder to see Timmy in his carrier on the desk. He rushed over and unlatched the baby, carefully cradling him against his chest, gently kissing the top of his head. Tears streamed down Dylan’s cheeks, and his knees seemed to buckle, so he moved to the bed and sat down, rocking Timmy gently in his arms.
“I missed you so much, little guy,” Dylan said, his cheek against Timmy’s head. “I’ll never leave you again. Never. Starting tomorrow I’m eighteen and no one can ever take you away from me.”
Tears pooled in Georgia’s eyes. She glanced at Nick and if she wasn’t mistaken, his eyes were glistening.
“Dylan, I’m Georgia Hurley,” she said, sitting down next to him. “I’ve been helping watch Timmy for the past several days. I adore this boy.”
Dylan ran a finger down Timmy’s cheek. “Thank you. Thank you, both of you, for taking such good care of him.” He looked at Nick. “I knew I could count on you.”
Nick lifted his chin, then nodded, clearly moved by what Dylan had said.
“Dylan, my family owns a restaurant in Blue Gulch,” Georgia said. “It’s called Hurley’s Homestyle Kitchen. Ribs, burgers, chicken-fried steak, po’boys—”
“And the best garlic mashed potatoes in the state,” Nick added.
Georgia smiled. “I have no doubt my grandmother Essie will hire you as a cook if you’re interested.”
“Really?” Dylan asked. “I have two years’ experience as a diner cook. I can make anything, from pancakes to steak to special orders too. Gluten-free, egg-free, dairy-free—I’m on it.”
She smiled. “I think my grandmother would love to have you as part of the kitchen team. And I think you’ll love Blue Gulch. It’s a great place to raise a child.” She was aware of Nick’s eyes on her. She hadn’t said that for Nick’s benefit and hoped he didn’t think she had. Blue Gulch was a great place to raise children. She and her sisters had grown up there, running through the woods, spending weekends on Blue Gulch Street, where kids were always welcome in the shops and restaurants, and of course, learning the restaurant business at her grandmother’s hip. Her child would. Maybe Dylan’s too.
“I could tell,” Dylan said, gently rocking Timmy. “The minute I pulled into town last week, I could tell it was a nice place. And since my great-aunt is happy to move to Blue Gulch too, I’ll see about selling our house, which my mother left to me.” He frowned. “I can’t wait to sell that place. I wish I could tear it down myself.”
Georgia glanced at Nick. His gaze was soft on the teenager, and Georgia’s heart lifted at just knowing that Dylan had a friend and protector and father figure in Nick—yes, father figure, whether he’d like that “title” or not.
Nick walked over and sat down on the other side of Dylan and slung an arm over his shoulder. “I know what you mean. I felt that way about my childhood home with its share of bad memories. I’m not sure if you remember from our talks two years ago, but our childhoods have some unfortunate things in common.”
Dylan glanced at Nick, cradling Timmy against his chest. “Are you kidding? I remember every word you ever said to me. If it hadn’t been for you, I don’t know what would have become of me.”
“What do you mean?” Nick asked. “Your mother took good care of you.”
“Well, yeah, she did. But you’d been there, you know? You went through what I went through. And you became a police detective on the Houston force. I...wanted to be like you,” he added, glancing down.
Nick’s his hero, Georgia realized, her heart squeezing in her chest.
Nick tightened his arm around Dylan’s shoulder. “I’m proud to know that, Dylan. I’m glad I was there for you. And I’m here for you and Timmy now.”
Dylan nodded, then nodded again, and Georgia could tell he was holding back a floodgate of relieved tears.
“I’ll help you house-hunt,” Nick said. “There are lots of different homes available in Blue Gulch, from apartments in town to houses to condo developments to ranches. In t
he meantime, you’ll all stay in my house.”
“I’ll help too,” Georgia said. “If I could be selfish, I’d love to have you near the restaurant so I could see Timmy often. Hurley’s is in the center of town, on Blue Gulch Street, not too far from the police station.”
“That sounds good to me,” Dylan said. “My great-aunt would like to be able to walk to shops.” He shifted Timmy in his arms. “So, um, I’d like to ask one more thing of both of you. If it’s too much, I’ll totally understand.”
“Shoot,” Nick said.
Dylan looked at Nick, then at Georgia, then down at Timmy’s little blue-capped head. “I, um, was kind of hoping you’d both agree to be Timmy’s godparents. I need all the help I can get.”
Georgia smiled and touched Dylan’s arm. “I’d be honored.”
Nick ran a finger down Timmy’s little face. “That goes double for me.”
Georgia bit her lip, her heart bursting.
As Timmy began fussing, Dylan stood and rocked the baby. Timmy settled down, his eyes closing. “I’d better get Timmy back in his carrier for his nap.” With Timmy fast asleep, Dylan gently kissed his forehead, then headed toward the door. “Can we meet in the lobby at six tomorrow morning so I can officially take over as Timmy’s dad? I’ve waited a week—I can wait one more night until I’m eighteen.” He glanced at Nick and Georgia. “Six too early? We can make it seven.”
Nick laughed. “Timmy’s up at five, so six is no problem. We’ll be awake.”
At the “we,” Dylan glanced at Georgia and she could tell he wondered what her and Nick’s relationship was all about. Wish I knew, she thought.
Dylan smiled. “Aunt Helen and I will pack some clothes and stuff. Once we find a new home in Blue Gulch, I can come back to Houston with a van to move what I want. See you in the morning,” he added, then rushed away.
“Wow,” Nick said as the door closed behind Dylan.