A Baby in the Bargain

by Victoria Pade

  “I’m sorry,” Jani added then, deciding to use this as an opening. “We only know H.J.’s side of things, we don’t know what happened to your great-grandfather in the aftermath of the broken promises. Or to the rest of your family, either.”

  She saw Gideon’s jaw clench but he didn’t say anything to enlighten her. Obviously it was going to take more to draw that information out of him. This was something that made him angry. But he seemed to be containing that anger for the first time, so maybe she was making some headway with him.

  Giving up the hope of learning everything at once, she opted for starting with an easier topic and said, “The part of the article that will be about you... What slant will that take?”

  “So far my interviews have mainly been my friend and me talking about the Thatcher Group, how that came to be,” Gideon said, finishing his donut and focusing on his coffee.

  “How did the Thatcher Group come to be?” Jani asked.

  He still seemed to be struggling to suppress his anger, so he didn’t rush to answer that question. For a moment he merely stared at his hand around the paper cup as if he might not give her the courtesy of a response.

  But after a moment, Jani had the impression that he’d set that anger aside and when he answered his tone was neutral.

  “I got my degree in architecture—”

  “Where?”

  “University of Colorado in Denver. I had to pay my own way through, so I couldn’t afford Boulder campus.”

  “You worked your way through college and grad school? No scholarships or grants or loans?”

  “I got a few small scholarships and grants, but I tried to avoid loans. Instead I had a low-paying internship with a downtown architect—an alumni of the Denver campus who had had to pay his own tuition, too. He was—and is—a tough old bird, but he takes on one paid intern to help them out. It’s something we do, too. A payback. I couldn’t have made it through without that help, so we have a program that offers the same thing to kids in that situation.”

  “That might be something we’d be interested in contributing to, too,” Jani said, glad to see another opening where she might be able to make amends.

  But Gideon shook his head. “It’s funded through the Thatcher Group. We don’t take donations for it.”

  Jani had the sense that even if he did, he wouldn’t accept donations for that from the Camdens. That accepting the community center for Lakeview and to honor his great-grandfather was as far as he was willing to go. So she didn’t push it.

  Instead she said, “Did you go to work for the ‘tough old bird’ when you graduated?”

  “I did. But my goal was to have my own office, my own firm, so going to work for Mathias was just to learn all I could, get some experience under my belt and save money.”

  “How long did you work for him?”

  “Five years. Long enough to figure out that I didn’t want my company to be limited to architecture.”

  “You didn’t like doing what you’d gotten two degrees to do?”

  “I did. I loved it. I still do most of our building design work. But I also wanted to do more than that—to serve a broader base of clients and design entire communities. To focus on urban development, not just on a single building here and there—”

  “You wanted to do city planning.”

  “Exactly. It’s like the community center,” he said with a nod toward the window that faced the run-down old building. “Sure I could bulldoze and design something else, but I like that that building has some history to it, a meaning in the landscape where it’s stood for generations. I want to see the whole picture, past, present and future. I want to do more than erect just one nice building. I want to create whole communities that serve all the needs of the people who live in them while still leaving them memories of what came before and inspiration for what they can do from there—”

  He screwed up his handsome face into a self-deprecating sort of grimace. “I didn’t mean to wax philosophic and sound so—”

  “Like you really do love what you do?” Jani supplied before he could put himself down. She admired his passion for what he did.

  “I do love it,” he concluded as if to avoid showing too much more of himself to her.

  “And you’re successful at it—I saw on your website that you’ve worked all over the world.”

  “We do okay,” he said with humility. “It’s put me in the position to rectify what happened in Lakeview, and that’s important to me.”

  Jani had the feeling as he spoke that he was reminding himself of who she was and why they were there, of the past he didn’t want to let go of.

  She didn’t try to distract him. “Actually, after reading your credits and awards on the website and a few other articles I found about the Thatcher Group’s work, I was surprised that you’d take on a project as small as Lakeview. It’s really kind of a coup for them to get you. You’ve done a lot of things that were bigger and a whole lot more high-profile.”

  “All that helped me get this project when just the name Thatcher was enough for Lakeview’s sitting city council to say no. I had to do a lot of lobbying for this and if the Thatcher Group didn’t have the reputation and standing it has, I probably wouldn’t have been hired anyway. As it was, I still had to underbid the lowest bidder and make promises to organize some extra fund-raising to sell them on me.”

  “Not something you have to do to get all your jobs, I’m sure.”

  “I don’t have to do that to get any other jobs. But when the Lakeview redevelopment project came on the radar I knew it was my chance to do what my great-grandfather wanted done for Lakeview in the first place. It was also the opportunity to redeem the Thatcher name.”

  “Was that important to anyone in your family before you?” Jani asked cautiously, curious but unsure if the question would offend him.

  “It was important to everyone before me. But I’m the first to be able to do anything about it.”

  “That isn’t why you went into architecture in the first place, is it? With far-off hopes of fixing things in Lakeview? Would you have rather been a ballet dancer or something?”

  The faint smile again. It really wasn’t much of anything and yet spotting it was still enough to send little shards of delight through Jani.

  “A ballet dancer?” Gideon asked. “Of all the occupations, you’re wondering if I might have wanted to be that?”

  “Well,” Jani said, smiling slightly herself for the first time, “even if you had become a doctor or a dentist or a lawyer or something, you still could have set up shop in Lakeview and helped the people and their economy that way. But there wouldn’t have been any way to use ballet dancing to help Lakeview. Unless they have a ballet troupe and I don’t know it.”

  “They don’t. And no, I didn’t become an architect just to get to do what my great-grandfather wanted done in Lakeview. It was what I was interested in and it just happened to put me in a position to help. Which I’m grateful for now.”

  “I do think they’re lucky to have you,” Jani said quietly, meaning it but worrying that he might think she was just blowing smoke to flatter him.

  She didn’t see the usual signs that he was put off but he did seem slightly uncomfortable with the compliment. Uncomfortable enough to change the subject.

  “What about you? College or just the family business?” he asked, surprising her by showing interest rather than animosity toward her.

  “I went to the University of Southern California in Los Angeles. It had the highest-rated program for public relations. And it was California—sunshine and beaches and celebrities—it sounded like the most fun.”

  “Was it?”

  He’d worked his way through college and struggled while she’d had it easy. Jani felt guilty for admitting it, but she didn’t want to lie to him,
so she said, “It was fun. But my older brother Cade nearly flunked out of his first year of college because of too much partying and I’d already seen that my grandmother wouldn’t put up with it, so I studied hard and basically kept my nose clean.”

  “And graduated with a bachelor’s degree or more?”

  “I have a bachelor’s degree in public relations, a master’s degree in marketing.”

  “All aimed at working in the family business,” he assumed.

  “Yeah,” she admitted. “H.J. helped my grandmother raise us—me, my three brothers and my six cousins—and he did a lot of talking about our responsibility to take over the family business. We all grew up knowing that working for Camden Incorporated was what we were supposed to do. GiGi—”

  “GiGi?”

  “Oh, sure, you wouldn’t know who that is. ‘GiGi’ is what we call our grandmother. Her name is Georgianna and somewhere along the way one of the older grandkids shortened Grandma Georgianna to GiGi. Anyway, GiGi reinforced H.J.’s lectures about taking over the company by making sure we all knew that a lot of people depended on the Camdens to make their living and so, yes, we did have a responsibility to keep things going.”

  “Did you want to be a ballet dancer instead?” he asked with just that hint of a smile and Jani suddenly found herself wanting badly to see the full version.

  A full smile was what she finally gave him.

  “You’ve seen how graceful I am,” she joked at her own expense.

  That brought a slightly wider curve to his supple lips but still not the unreserved grin she was hoping for. It was something, though—one more small step—and Jani was glad to see it.

  “So not a ballet dancer,” he said. “But was there another occupation you would have chosen if you weren’t a Camden who had to go to work for the family business?”

  “Actually, we were all raised knowing we were expected to work for the family business, but choosing what we do for it was completely up to each of us individually. If I had wanted to be an architect, for instance, I could have been. Then I would have designed Camden Superstores and facilities and office buildings. What each of us wanted to do, we’ve done, we’ve just done it for the family business. I liked public relations and marketing, so I head public relations and marketing.”

  “And who runs the family business as a whole?”

  “There are ten grandchildren—we make up the board of directors and we all have one vote on everything. My brother Cade holds the title of CEO, but in fact he doesn’t have any more power than any of us. H.J. set it up that way and so far it’s worked. I guess it helps that we’re a very close family. We get along, we were taught to cooperate with each other and we all just basically like each other.”

  “I’m an only child so I guess I don’t have much of a concept of that,” Gideon said.

  As they’d been sitting there, the donut shop had filled up considerably and there were now people searching for free tables. And there Jani and Gideon were, taking up a booth when they’d finished their coffee and donuts.

  So, as reluctant as she was to end what had turned into a normal, pleasant conversation with Gideon, Jani said, “We should probably eat more donuts or get going...”

  She was half hoping that Gideon might actually want another donut and would give her the excuse to draw this out a little longer. But when he looked around and seemed to notice for the first time that they weren’t alone in the place, he began to gather their empty coffee cups, napkins and the tissue paper the donuts had been served on.

  “Yeah, I guess we have been taking up space for longer than we should have.”

  As Gideon disposed of everything, Jani stood and put her coat on so she was ready to go when he returned to the booth and grabbed his own jacket, slipping it on as they left the shop.

  “If you’re still on board with the community center,” he said as they went across the street again, “I can have preliminary paperwork drawn up by Friday—a proposal of what needs to be done, an estimate of what it will cost. We can go over it and then you can take it back to your family. If they still want to put up the money, I’ll get things started.”

  “We will,” Jani assured him as they reached their cars. He escorted her to the driver’s side of hers this time.

  She unlocked her door and opened it but didn’t get in as she said, “When do you want to go over the paperwork? I’m swamped all day Friday, but we could do it over dinner Friday night, if you’re free. I’ll put it on my expense account and we’ll make it a dinner meeting....”

  There wasn’t a single part of that that Jani had thought about before she’d said it. Including that Friday night was not a time for a business dinner. Her mouth had just run away with her while her brain had been busy thinking about when she was going to see him again. And wanting it to be sooner rather than later.

  Then she realized she’d just basically asked him out, and even if it had been under the pretext of going over the paperwork, that wasn’t actually what was prompting her to do it.

  “I’m free for dinner Friday night,” Gideon said with surprisingly little hesitation.

  Well. Okay then...

  “There’s a great place, a Tuscan grill, near the Cherry Creek mall—”

  He said the name of it before she did and agreed that it was a good meeting place. “What time?” he asked.

  “Seven-thirty?” She was more inclined toward dinner at eight, which would make it easier to run home after work and change clothes. But somehow an eight-o’clock dinner seemed more datelike, while a seven-thirty dinner had a bit more of a business feel, and the fact that it was already taking place on a Friday seemed to call for at least that much reserve.

  “Seven-thirty is fine. I’ll meet you there.”

  “Great.”

  And why it suddenly seemed like they’d just been on a date, Jani didn’t know. But standing in the parking lot in the early darkness, looking up at Gideon, the question of kissing flashed through her mind as if that’s exactly what they’d been doing.

  Kissing?

  Of course not. It was out of the question.

  But still her gaze went to his mouth. To his full lips.

  And she wondered...

  She just couldn’t help it.

  She wondered what kind of kisser he might be. Good? Bad? Mediocre? Dry? Wet and sloppy? Just right...

  She’d never know.

  Of course she’d never know.

  But somehow, deep, deep down, a little part of her regretted that.

  Which was ridiculous, she told herself.

  “Okay then...” she said, realizing only in that moment that Gideon had been staring at her, too. Much the way she’d been staring at him...

  But probably not with thoughts of kissing.

  He doesn’t like me.

  Although he wasn’t looking at her as if he didn’t like her...

  Still, this was going nowhere because it had nowhere to go, so she said, “Friday night. Seven-thirty.”

  “Preliminary paperwork in hand,” he added, his voice slightly deeper, slightly quieter than she’d ever heard it, as if he were reminding himself of their business together.

  Then he said, “See you then,” and went around to the driver’s side of his sports car, getting in only after he glanced across the top to make sure Jani had gotten into her sedan.

  She waved, knowing she had no reason to have continued to watch him, and turned to look out her windshield while she started her engine.

  Another glance in his direction found him looking straight ahead while he did the same, and Jani took that as her cue to put her car into gear and leave.

  And yet as she drove through rush-hour traffic to get back to Denver, her mind wasn’t really on the slow-moving, bumper-to-bumper crawl that got her onto the highway.


  It was still on Gideon Thatcher.

  And her curiosity about what kind of a kisser he might be...

  Chapter Five

  “It’s a dinner meeting, not a dinner date. I’ll be paying and putting it on my expense account,” Jani insisted to her cousins.

  Livi and Lindie had dropped by her house on their way to a movie Friday evening to ask what she’d learned at her doctor’s appointment that afternoon.

  But they’d come in on Jani getting ready for her seven-thirty dinner with Gideon and accused her of prepping for a date.

  “The soup cans say you’re lying,” Livi said, pointing to the empty metal containers that Jani had her hair wrapped around as it dried from the quick shampoo she’d done in the shower when she’d rushed home.

  “Homecoming junior year of high school. Prom that same year. The Sweetheart Dance when we were seniors,” Lindie added. “Those are the times you went to the trouble of using soup cans to make the waves of your hair bigger, so they’re softer and sleeker and—”

  “Sexier—that’s what you said,” Livi finished her sister’s sentence. “Why do you want to be soft and sleek and sexy for a dinner meeting?”

  “I just wanted a little different look, okay? Without the damage of the heating tools. I remembered the soup cans and thought I’d try them again, that’s all. I told you guys the same thing I told GiGi and the boys—Gideon Thatcher is one of those people in the hate-the-Camdens camp. Top it off with the fact that I’ve taken myself out of the dating pool and put myself on the mommy track, and all you have here is a dinner meeting.”

  One she was looking forward to, but still nothing more than a meeting—that’s what Jani had been telling herself since she’d set it up.

  “GiGi says he has green eyes,” Livi prodded. “Reggie had green eyes. You’re a sucker for green eyes....”

  “I’m a sucker for babies. Reggie cured me of being a sucker for anything else.”

  “I have a friend who spotted Reggie on a plane to Las Vegas last weekend,” Lindie said as if she’d been debating about whether or not to tell Jani. “Just in case you have any doubts that you did the right thing...”