Her Lost and Found Baby

by Tara Taylor Quinn

  The culmination had come when Mark told Braden he was taking off the anniversary date of his wife’s death. He’d told Mallory that he was over his wife. That the relationship hadn’t been working even before she died. There would have been no reason, then, for him to take time off from work to commemorate that date.

  “So...did she confront him?” Tabitha asked. She seemed to be doing so much better, although Johnny knew she had to be dying to see her baby boy. At that point, he was eager to meet the young man himself.

  Detective Shanley shook her head. “She called us and told us she was afraid she had a kidnapped toddler in her care.”

  “She called you this morning?” Tabitha asked.

  “No, she called first thing yesterday morning. Your first warrant had already been denied, but our second attempt granted a warrant for DNA immediately and we took the swab without his father knowing. We were able to get a positive match with the sample you left with Detective Bentley a year ago. We’ve had them both under surveillance ever since.”

  “Where’s Mark now?” Johnny had to know.

  “He’s been arrested and charged with kidnapping. A host of other charges will be following shortly, I’m sure.”

  “When can I see my baby?” Tabitha’s question was no more than a whisper.

  The detective nodded at a mirror Johnny suddenly realized had to be a one-way window. Seconds later, the door opened and Mallory Harris was there with a toddler in her arms, Braden right behind her.

  “Oh, my God!” Tabitha’s voice was soft, but filled with more emotion than Johnny had ever heard. He couldn’t imagine the control it must have taken her to approach the child slowly. To wipe the tears from her eyes and keep them away.

  “Jackson?” she said, reaching out a finger to the little boy’s hand.

  The toddler studied her, a half frown on his face. “You remember I said you were going back home to Mommy?” Mallory asked.

  Johnny figured the entire situation was going over the toddler’s head, but Jackson nodded.

  “Do you want to go to Mommy now?” she asked.

  Johnny held his breath.

  Jackson nodded.

  And Tabitha had her son back in her arms.

  Needing to look away, Johnny caught Braden watching him. The other man met Johnny’s gaze, apology clear, and Johnny nodded.

  He was no longer needed.

  * * *

  The first month after Jackson’s return would probably always be a haze to Tabitha. Certain moments stood out. Like the first time her son touched her face, reaching for the tears she’d shed when she’d first held him. The trip to the hotel to collect their things was a blur, as was the ride back to Mission Viejo in the car Johnny hired for her, driver and all.

  He’d had to go get the truck off the street and take care of business in San Diego. He’d made it home late Saturday night. She’d hoped he’d stop in, but didn’t blame him when he didn’t.

  She should’ve been asleep. But she’d been waiting to hear his car. To know that he was back. And she was having a hard time taking her eyes off Jackson for more than a minute. The first week she spent every night camped out on the floor of her son’s room. He was in his crib, but she was going to have to start thinking about a toddler bed.

  She’d taken a leave of absence from work; she had twelve weeks available to her and planned to take Jackson back to the daycare at the hospital when she did go back to work, just as she’d done before his abduction.

  She took him shopping. None of the clothes in his room fit. He needed age-appropriate toys. She took him to his pediatrician, cried when she heard that he was a completely normal and healthy two-year-old. One night she fed him peas just so he’d make a face and turn away, and then cried when he did.

  Johnny had stopped by the day after they returned home, but he hadn’t come in. He’d told her he was leaving, putting his house on the market and heading home to get back to the life of a corporate lawyer. He’d met his goal where the food truck was concerned. He wanted her to know that his first order of business was setting up the Angel’s Food Bowls franchise and the nonprofit, with franchise fees going to the charity. He’d be keeping his original truck, hiring someone to manage and run it for him, and the money it made would also go to the nonprofit. He said he’d be in touch.

  She’d hugged him. Cried a little. Kissed him one last time. And said she’d be waiting to hear from him.

  And she was. Waiting. Some part of her would probably always be waiting for Johnny. She wasn’t expecting to ever hear from him again, though—other than, maybe, to work at the nonprofit. But even then, whoever he hired to be in charge could get in touch with her.

  The third week Jackson was home she made an appointment to meet with a therapist. She couldn’t seem to let her son out of her sight and didn’t want her paranoia to have a negative effect on him. From what she was told, her feelings were completely natural, given what she’d been through. They’d dissipate to some degree with time. And the fact that she was aware of them, doing something about them, probably meant there was no reason to worry. She’d loosen up.

  In the meantime, it wasn’t hurting Jackson any to have his mother’s undivided attention. He missed his daddy, testimony to the fact that Mark had been good to his son, been loving with him, but as the days passed, Jackson asked for him less and less.

  At the end of the third week, Johnny called.

  “I wanted to see how you’re doing,” he said.

  “Good. We’re great,” she told him. And spent the next five minutes gushing about everything toddler. Then she felt self-conscious for wasting the time of such a busy, important man. “I’m sorry,” she said. “I shouldn’t have gone on like that. It’s just...it’s good to talk to you, Johnny.”

  “There’s no need for an apology,” he told her, but he sounded different. More...professional.

  She wanted to ask how he’d been. What he was doing. But didn’t feel she knew this Johnny well enough to impose.

  “Listen, I also wanted to let you know that the initial paperwork for the nonprofit is done and I need your signature on a few things. I was planning to send someone by with a packet if you’re going to be home.”

  Jackson had left the blocks he’d been stacking and walked over to her. The smell that accompanied him told her he’d just filled his pants. And, judging by the expression on his face, he wasn’t quite done.

  “My signature,” she repeated.

  “I’ve named you executive director,” he said. “For now, that’s mostly going to entail signing documents, but once we’re up and running, you’ll have a staff working for you—”

  “Wait!” Jackson looked up at her sharp tone, so she softened it as she said, “Johnny, a staff? I have nowhere to put a staff.” Had the man gone bonkers? Forgotten, in three short weeks, what her life was like?

  “And I work three twelves,” she added inanely.

  “Are you saying you don’t want the job? The pay is good and you can do a lot of the work from home, to begin with.” He named a yearly sum that was triple what she made at the hospital. And would allow her to be home with Jackson.

  She loved her job, but to help parents who were suffering as she had—there was no question.

  “Of course I want the job, Johnny,” she said. She just couldn’t believe he was really offering it to her.

  “I’ll get the packet over to you this afternoon.”

  She was grinning. Nodding. Wanted to ask him if there was any chance he could deliver the paperwork himself, but knew he’d be far too busy to make the trip. With traffic, it could eat an hour or two out of his day. “Okay,” was all she said.

  And then, as he was ringing off, “Johnny?”

  “Yeah?”

  “Thank you.”

  He didn’t ask what she was thanking him for.

  She
didn’t elaborate.

  * * *

  Tabitha had another call from Johnny’s area code shortly after that. It wasn’t Johnny, though. It was his mother.

  Anne Brubaker introduced herself as though it was perfectly normal for the billionaire mother of her former billionaire lover to be phoning. She was phoning because, with Tabitha’s new position as executive director of the Angel’s Food Truck nonprofit, Don’t Forget Me, she felt they should at least meet. Johnny had told her about Jackson. He didn’t seem to have mentioned anything else between them.

  Including that she’d lived next door to him.

  Or worked the food truck with him.

  “I was wondering if you’d like to be my guest at a charity fundraiser four weeks from Friday. It’s a lunch event, but will last most of the afternoon,” she said. “It would give you an idea of the kinds of things you might want to think about down the road, when Don’t Forget Me is up and running.”

  Don’t Forget Me. She’d cried when she’d read the name Johnny had chosen for the nonprofit. It was perfect. And so Johnny to know that.

  “I...” How could she say no to her boss’s mother? “I’m not sure I’d have anything appropriate to wear,” she said, watching as Jackson continued to try to get a plastic truck to balance on top of a purple elephant, picking up the truck again and again as it kept sliding off.

  She was learning a lot from her boy. About patience. About the ability to roll with the punches and still find happiness right where you were.

  “It’s not all that formal an affair,” Anne was saying, “but I can have a nice day dress sent over for you.”

  She could imagine how much that would cost. But again, the woman was her boss’s mother. Did she know that their new executive director had also slept with her son?

  Jackson moved the truck farther onto the elephant’s back. It slid off the other side. She couldn’t go to the function. She’d have to leave Jackson. She had no idea how to refuse.

  “John’s arranged for a nanny to accompany us, and got a room in the hotel where the event is taking place. So that Jackson will be close by at all times,” Anne said next.

  At that point, Tabitha started to cry.

  Johnny was watching out for her, just as he’d said he would.

  Didn’t he get that that only made being without him hurt more?

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Johnny made it exactly a month before he couldn’t take it anymore. Barging into his father’s office the day after his mother told him Tabitha had confirmed her upcoming appearance at a charity lunch, he paced in front of the older man’s desk, waiting for him to get off the phone.

  Alex’s secretary had told him that while, yes, his father was alone, he was on an overseas call.

  Business was important, Johnny conceded that. He didn’t want to interrupt. But he couldn’t just wait outside if Alex was engaging in small talk, either.

  With raised eyebrows, Alex watched Johnny, completed his business—probably sooner than he would have otherwise—and dropped the phone into its cradle. “What’s wrong?”

  “Nothing,” Johnny said, plopping down onto one of the expensive leather seats in his father’s office. The cost of the damned thing could have made Tabitha’s house payment for six months.

  Alex gave him the eye. Not an “or else” look, but one that told Johnny his father knew he wasn’t telling him the truth.

  It was up to Johnny whether or not he chose to correct the lapse.

  “I’ve found my passion,” Johnny blurted, cringing as he heard himself sounding like a high school kid. Which was about how he’d felt for the past several weeks.

  “Your passion.”

  “Yeah, you know, the thing you have to do, no matter what. The thing you’re driven to do, even if you can think of a hundred reasons why it might not work.”

  Hands folded on his desk, Alex nodded.

  “I’ve never felt passionate about anything before.”

  “You never had to. It all came easy to you.”

  “Doing yardwork for an entire summer, cleaning the house for another summer—those did not come easy to me.” He wasn’t in a congenial mood.

  Alex seemed to sense that Johnny was serious. And that things were about to change.

  “So...what is this passion? What does it entail? How much time off do you need?”

  He’d just returned to work. He had no intention of taking another vacation so soon. “I don’t need any time off.”

  His father sat forward, looking a bit tired as he smiled. “I have to admit I’m relieved to hear that.”

  “Why? Whatever made you think I was going to take time off?” He’d been handling his responsibilities and then some. Had closed two very lucrative deals in the month he’d been back, in addition to getting the Angel’s Food Bowls franchise operation started. They already had three trucks outfitted, painted and awaiting final permits to get out on the road.

  “You’ve been...different since you got back. Restless. It’s been obvious to your mother and me that you aren’t happy. I’d hoped the sabbatical would help you get beyond Angel’s death, but if—”

  “It’s not Angel’s death,” Johnny broke in, feeling a twinge. He’d loved his wife. Truly loved her. He’d been turned on by her, but there’d been no passion, other than sexual, from him to her. He knew the difference now. “As a matter of fact, I want to get married.”

  Alex’s jaw dropped.

  “That’s why I’m here,” Johnny said, only realizing the fact himself as he shot up from his chair. He wanted to marry Tabitha. “I plan to ask Tabitha Jones to marry me and to let me adopt her two-year-old son. There’s no father named on his birth certificate, so there shouldn’t be any legal obstacle.” Yep. That was it. He hoped to God the little guy liked him.

  And that he was good with kids.

  It was a challenge he hadn’t yet faced.

  Mark, who was in jail awaiting trial for kidnapping, was out of the picture. Probably forever.

  “You want to marry Tabitha? The new executive director of Don’t Forget Me? I was under the impression the two of you just met when you did interviews for the position. That you chose her because she’d been the parent of a missing child who found her son again.”

  He hadn’t really interviewed anyone for the position. He’d lined up possible candidates for Tabitha to consider as her assistant. But he’d tell her about that later.

  “I wasn’t just involved with helping her find Jackson. I’ve actually spent the past year with Tabitha,” he told his father as he headed toward the door. “She was my next door neighbor and helped me run the food truck.”

  He wasn’t hanging around to chat. Right now he had a mission.

  He’d finally figured out what it was and there was nothing...nothing...that was going to stop him from completing it.

  For the first time in his life, he was driven from the inside out.

  He hoped Tabitha was ready to deal with the results.

  * * *

  Tabitha took Jackson to work with her when she gave notice. She hadn’t planned to stay long, but they ended up spending more than three hours in the cafeteria as everyone came down to see him, a few at a time. And to talk to her. When they left, she had invitations stretching out until Christmas for get-togethers and gatherings. And she knew that leaving the hospital wasn’t going to be a goodbye. Her coworkers wanted to be in her life for the foreseeable future. And she was going to let them. She was not going to turn her back on love and friendship for fear of getting hurt. Being alone hurt more.

  She noticed a new small black car in the driveway next door when she pulled into her garage. Probably a Realtor. Or maybe the new owner. If Johnny had put his house on the market, there wasn’t a sign in the yard yet. But he might have sold it himself. Whenever she went outside, she tried not to look over
there, dreaded seeing the proof that their time together was really over, but she’d known it would come.

  “Ma! Ma!” Jackson was kicking his feet in the back, wanting out of his car seat. Unstrapping him, Tabitha tried not to think about that car. It looked expensive. Some kind of sports car. She wasn’t really up on them enough to know one from another.

  Not many fancy cars in their neighborhood.

  “I eat,” Jackson said, bouncing on her hip. She’d intended to take him straight into the house, but couldn’t resist opening the garage door again and taking another look at the black car. If a Realtor was over there, maybe she could find out what was going on. How Johnny was doing. If anyone was interested in the house.

  “I eat,” Jackson said, more loudly, sticking his fingers into her hair. “Mama, I hungy. Hot dog!”

  Her son knew his own mind. And had a healthy confidence in speaking it.

  A man in an open dark trench coat and shiny black shoes stood on her front porch. His hair was short and her heart started to thud. Had Mark escaped from jail? Been released on bond? She’d been assured he’d be remanded without bail as he was clearly a flight risk. But...

  The man turned and, for a second there, her breath stopped.

  “Johnny?” His suit looked ungodly expensive. Superbly cut, it fit him to perfection.

  He didn’t come down the steps. She didn’t go up them. Suddenly completely still in her arms, Jackson gaped up at Johnny.

  “You said you have to believe to see,” he told her. “Well, sometimes you have to see to believe. See me? I’m here.” He leaned against the rail as though he didn’t care that it was leaving a mark on his perfectly pressed coat. Arms folded, he stared down at her.

  “Why are you here?” If he had another job to offer her, she’d consider it, but with all the research she’d been doing, she had a feeling Don’t Forget Me was going to be a full-time venture and then some. She was itching to get started.

  “I plan to stay here until you believe that I’m not leaving.”