A Baby in the Bargain

by Victoria Pade

  And all of it tracked back to what her great-grandfather had done...

  “I’m so sorry...” Jani said, genuinely contrite. Then she asked another question she was dreading the answer to. “What about you? Did you grow up in that bar, too?”

  “I started out there, but no,” he answered without going into more detail. Instead he said, “I just thought that since we were this close, maybe you ought to see where the Thatchers landed post-Lakeview.”

  Landed and got stuck...

  Jani and Gideon had reached the much more trendy stretch of the street again but were only about halfway back to the restaurant. They drew up to a cart set among a ring of heat lamps outside an ice cream parlor. Gourmet hot chocolate was being sold from the cart, and the cold January night—and a heavy helping of guilt—inspired Jani to say, “How about a little hot chocolate for the rest of the walk? You didn’t let me buy you dinner, at least let me buy this.”

  He didn’t argue, so they both warmed up under one of the lamps while cups of molten chocolate and cream were prepared for them.

  When they were on their way again, sipping as they went, Jani decided to push a little and said, “So you started out at the bar but didn’t grow up there?”

  “My parents met there, too, but not because my mother was a barfly the way my grandmother was. My mother was a nurse’s aide at the medical center when the main campus for the medical school was farther north on Colorado Boulevard. She got off work late one night and her car made it just far enough to die outside of the bar. The bar was open so she went in.”

  “And your dad was pouring drinks,” Jani concluded.

  “Right. He was only about a year into it by then—my mother said his drinking was in the early stages. Anyway, he bought her a drink, flirted with her until closing, then went out to take a look at her car. They were married six months later. I was born ten months after that.”

  “And went home from the hospital to the apartment over the bar?”

  “Yep,” he said fatalistically. “My mother was young, she’d come from modest means herself, she wasn’t too put off by it at first—”

  “Were your great-grandfather and grandfather still living there, too?” Jani asked, finding it difficult to believe that a new bride was thrilled to live above that bar.

  “No, they gave the place over to the newlyweds and rented a room in a boarding house within walking distance of the bar.”

  “So at least they had the apartment to themselves...” Jani said, trying to find a silver lining somewhere.

  “Yeah. My father had told my mother that he was going to own the bar eventually, that they just needed to live there long enough to save some money. I was about four by the time she realized that was more my father’s pipe dream than anything that would ever actually happen. And his drinking had gotten worse and worse on top of it.”

  “She left him?”

  “No, but her goal had become to put some distance between him and that bar. He wouldn’t quit his job there—he was still swearing he was going to buy the place, that it was his future. But she at least forced him to make a move out of the apartment above it and told him he could only spend time there when he was working.”

  “He agreed to that?” Jani asked, sipping the steaming drink.

  “Well, he agreed, but he didn’t abide by the agreement. They got a little apartment a few blocks away, and my great-grandfather and grandfather moved back into the one over the bar. But my father still spent his off hours there. My parents were divorced by the time I was six. Which was when my mother and I had to move in with her mother.”

  Gideon’s frown when he said that was very dark, leading Jani to assume it hadn’t been a positive experience.

  “You didn’t like your maternal grandmother?”

  His eyebrows arched. “Oh, sure, I liked her. But my grandfather on that side had died before I was born and my grandmother wasn’t well. The living arrangement was really just a necessity all the way around. Financially, and so that my grandmother had the care she needed, and in order for me to have an adult around when my mother had to work night shifts. But my poor mother worked as a nurse’s aide, then came home to take care of my grandmother’s failing health. And me and everything else. Plus there were only two bedrooms in my grandmother’s house, so I grew up sleeping on the couch—”

  “The whole time you were growing up, you didn’t have a bedroom?”

  “Or a bed,” he said with a humorless laugh.

  “Was the couch a fold-out?”

  “Nope, just a couch. I did put sheets and blankets on it every night. And I had a pillow—”

  “But it wasn’t even a fold-out couch,” Jani lamented. “How long was it before you got a bedroom. And a bed?”

  “When my grandmother died. I was sixteen. Then my mother took her room and I got my mother’s room. And a new mattress, which was a treat.”

  “But still, you slept for ten years on a couch?” Jani said in dismay. “Finances were that bad?”

  “I loved my dad, he was good-hearted. But he drank everything he earned. My mom didn’t make much as a nurse’s aide, so yeah, finances were always bad. I worked wherever I could—mowing lawns, shoveling snow, anything for a few bucks until I was old enough to get a formal job along with the odd jobs. But even then it was only after school and on weekends—I’d seen enough, I was getting an education come hell or high water.”

  “Which you did—high school, college and a graduate degree,” Jani said, her admiration for him mounting along with the guilt she was feeling.

  “Is your mom still around?” she asked, hoping that the woman had at least benefited from Gideon’s success.

  But he shook his head sadly. “She died of a massive coronary three months before I graduated with my bachelor’s degree. Six months after my dad had died. At barely twenty-two I became all there was of the Thatchers or the Wadells—that was my mother’s maiden name.”

  Jani closed her eyes and shook her head slowly back and forth as they crossed First Avenue, threw their empty cups in a trash can and returned to the restaurant parking lot.

  She was grateful that Gideon hadn’t shown any animosity or hostility tonight as he told her his family history. But now she also marveled at the fact that he’d told the entire story without a drop of self-pity, either.

  It was impossible not to be impressed by him. And not only because he was tall and lean and broad-shouldered and drop-dead gorgeous, or because he exuded self-assurance in every step. It was impossible for her not to look at him and see how far he’d come, on his own, to achieve all he’d achieved. To be the man he seemed to be. A man who wanted some honor and dignity restored to his family name. Honor and dignity that her own great-grandfather had stolen...

  “It’s hard not to think about how different things might have been if Franklin Thatcher had gone on being mayor of Lakeview and owning his insurance agency, isn’t it?” Jani asked.

  “Sure. Over the years I’ve done a lot of that. After hearing as much as I did about the glory days when my great-grandfather was mayor, when my grandfather was king of the hill because he was the mayor’s son, after hearing as much as I did about what might have been, I had my own fantasies—”

  “Like what?” Jani asked, wondering if the Camdens might still be able to help make those fantasies a reality.

  “I’d imagine that we lived in the suburban dream community my great-grandfather might have built. That I was important because I was a Thatcher—the great-grandson of the mayor,” he said, smiling slightly at the flourish he used with that title. “In my head I’d make my grandfather a businessman—selling insurance at the agency he’d taken over. I’d imagine that my father wasn’t a slave to a glass, that he and my mother stayed together out in the burbs where he probably sold insurance, too—”

  “And I’m
sure you’d picture yourself with your own bedroom. Your own bed...” Jani said, her heart breaking for the young Gideon, that heartbreak echoing in the softness of her voice. “You do have a bed now, don’t you?”

  Something about that made him laugh as he leaned against her car, bringing him slightly closer in front of her. Enough so that Jani could feel a little of the heat radiating from him and smell the faint scent of a clean, crisp cologne that she liked. A lot...

  “You’re making me feel guilty,” Gideon said.

  “I’m making you feel guilty?” Jani asked in astonishment.

  “You look like a deer I’ve caught in my headlights. You really didn’t have any—any—idea of what H. J. Camden brought about, did you?”

  “Until very recently, all we knew was that we have factories and warehouses in Lakeview that were built there in the fifties.”

  Gideon’s eyebrows arched and he shook his head. “You’re kidding?”

  “I’m not. Business and family were always completely separate for H.J., for my grandfather and my father and my uncle, too. My generation has taken over and we’re committed to doing things fairly, doing things the right way. But as far as what went on in the building of Camden Inc.? We didn’t know anything about that. Not even my grandmother knew anything about it.”

  “Until recently...” Gideon repeated her earlier words.

  Jani merely shrugged; she couldn’t go into the discovery of H.J.’s journals and all they’d revealed.

  Gideon cocked his head. “So you really were removed from—”

  “Everything to do with the business until I was grown up and by then what was done was—”

  “History to you.”

  “But what was just history to me had a wide ripple effect for you.”

  “Which is why I get to pin the blame on you, to hold you responsible. But when I do, you can’t look so shocked—let’s make that a ground rule,” he joked, laughing again.

  He’d joked. He’d laughed. Gideon Thatcher had a sense of humor. A sense of humor that Jani appreciated. And reveled in when it caused the transformation of his oh-so-handsome face, when levity drew creases at the corners of those green eyes, and his chiseled features grew all the more striking...

  “I’m sorry for being shocked,” Jani joked in return. “Next time I’ll try to be callous and tough and—”

  “And you’ll say ‘Ah, suck it up, Thatcher’ so I can sling some more mud your way with a clean conscience rather than feel guilty for laying it all on you?”

  “I don’t know about being callous enough to tell you to suck it up—you had to sleep on your grandmother’s couch for ten years,” Jani said. Then, in all seriousness, she added, “But I really am sorry for what your family went through because of what H.J. did.”

  Gideon was looking intently at her, into her eyes, and maybe something he saw there convinced him of her sincerity because he merely nodded, accepting her apology.

  “And someday you’ll tell me your side of it,” he reminded, for once not defensively, actually sounding as if he might be opening the door to her. Just a crack.

  “Someday...” Jani said with less conviction than usual. What she had to say in H.J.’s defense now seemed more feeble than it had to her before.

  And then, as they stood there peering at one another, something seemed to change between them. Jani wasn’t sure what it was, but she felt some of the tension that had always been around them fall away. Suddenly it was as if they were just two people standing beside her car after spending the evening together.

  He smiled again. The smile was more open than she’d seen from him before and laced with a hint of mischief. “But if you really are sorry, I’ll tell you one thing you can do for Lakeview—”

  “Besides the community center?” Jani asked.

  “If you seriously want to make up for what went on way back when, you can help me man one of the flea market booths tomorrow. There’s a fund-raising bazaar in the park around Shones Lake. I’m signed on for the library booth to sell old books. All the money goes into the city coffers for the redevelopment. Or is that more down and dirty than you’re willing to go?”

  He was challenging her again but there was a hint of playfulness to it tonight.

  “Believe me, I’m feeling so guilty that I’d agree to build the booths with my own two hands, and then buy all the books myself.”

  “Guilt—I can work with that,” he said as if she were giving him ideas. “Does that mean I can count on you?”

  “Just tell me when to be wherever I need to be.”

  “We’re taking up a big section of the park—you won’t be able to miss us. I’ll be in the booth closest to the library—less distance to haul books. The bazaar and flea market opens at nine. Set up’s at eight. Dress for work. Don’t wear heels.”

  They both glanced down at her shoes and when they looked back up at each other he seemed to be just a little nearer.

  “I do have conservative shoes,” she assured him.

  “You’ll be on your feet all day, so wear them.”

  “Yes, sir!” she said with mock obedience that made him smile again.

  Oh, but she loved to see that smile...

  She realized then that regardless of the intense emotions that had been raised by Gideon’s revelations about his family history, she’d still had a good time with him.

  And maybe he hadn’t had such a bad time with her, because he was studying her with a new, softer expression that told her the tension between them really was gone. At least for the moment.

  Then, Gideon leaned forward and kissed her, shocking her even more than anything she’d learned tonight.

  The lightest press of his lips to hers and it was over before she could even tilt her head up. But still, it was a kiss. On the lips.

  He drew away as if it had taken him by surprise, too.

  After a moment of that surprise flitting across his expression, he acted as if it hadn’t happened.

  Maybe because he wished it hadn’t?

  “So. Tomorrow at the park. Bright and early. If you dare,” he said as he pushed away from her car and headed for his.

  “Thanks for dinner,” Jani belatedly called after him.

  “Thanks for the hot chocolate,” he called back as if not to be outdone, the sexy swagger of his walk making Jani slow to unlock her car door and get behind the wheel.

  As she drove home, she still felt ashamed of the pain her family had caused his.

  But somehow her thoughts began to turn more to the man who had risen from the ashes of his own family, and that caused her to think less and less about long ago and more about the recent past.

  About that kiss.

  Gideon Thatcher had kissed her....

  And even though it hadn’t really been anything, it still felt like something to her.

  Something she wanted to try again...

  Chapter Six

  “Whoa! Buddy! That couldn’t have felt good!”

  Jani had glanced up from putting money in the library booth’s cash box just in time to see a little boy fall flat on his face directly in front of their tented area, provoking Gideon’s comment. He rushed out of the booth and went to the child.

  It was Thorpe Armbruster, the four-year-old son of Lakeview councilwoman Amanda Armbruster, who was manning the Lakeview flea market’s popcorn booth.

  They couldn’t have asked for a nicer January day for the flea market—it was sunny and fifty-two degrees—and Thorpe had spent most of the day visiting many of the booths under the watchful eye of his mother. But he seemed to have developed a particular fondness for Gideon because his trips since lunchtime had been to the book booth alone.

  “I wuz bringin’ you popcorn...” the little boy lamented, working to fight tears as Gideon h
elped him get on his feet. “I spilled it.”

  “That’s okay. The birds and squirrels will take care of the popcorn.”

  After giving the child a quick once-over Gideon called to the councilwoman, “He’s all right.” Then, to distract Thorpe, Gideon said, “I knew someone who needed a particular book read to her every night before bed and sometimes when she didn’t feel good or got hurt like you just did. Want to see it, or do you want to get back to your mom?”

  “Wanna see it,” the child said, still blinking back tears.

  “It’s about a bunch of bears—I think you’ll like it.”

  The bear book...

  Jani had arrived at the flea market at 8:00 a.m. sharp. Gideon was just getting out of his car when she’d pulled into the lot and had not disguised his shock that she’d come to pitch in.

  The booths—some of them small, others larger and shaded by tent canopies—had already been set up when they’d arrived, but Jani had helped Gideon tote boxes of books from the library and they’d been working together ever since.

  She’d seen him stall over the bear picture book when they’d unpacked it and thought maybe it was a book he’d remembered from his childhood. But apparently that wasn’t the case, and now Jani’s curiosity was sparked.

  “Here it is,” he said when he’d located it on the table that held books for kids.

  Jani watched as he got the little boy interested in the book. It was only a matter of minutes before the blond child with the thick glasses seemed to have forgotten all about his fall, and Jani catalogued the technique for use when she had a child of her own to deal with.

  But by then taking note of how Gideon dealt with kids was something she’d been doing for a while. In fact she’d found reason to do it each time Thorpe visited the book booth and Gideon had had any exchange with him.

  The man was a natural with children, which surprised Jani as much as her early arrival had surprised him. He didn’t go overboard with Thorpe. He never talked down to the four-year-old. He didn’t try to be cool or cutesy or silly with him, he just treated him like anyone else, patiently answering his questions and listening to what Thorpe had to say. And all as calmly as if he were an old hand at it.