Dad in an Instant

by Lori Wilde

  “Is the spaghetti about ready?” Abbie was calling out to Maury, but when she turned toward Maury, she saw him.

  “Jake! Welcome”—then she saw Lucas—“home,” she said on a gasp. She came directly to him—well, not to him but to Lucas. “Who is this?” She gazed up at Jake, obviously stunned.

  No more stunned than he was.

  And no one had ever looked more stunned than Maury.

  They’d noticed, both of them, the uncanny resemblance of this baby to him. “I should have called ahead, but things happened too fast,” he said, looking straight at Maury. “My father, well, he left me a little something in his will, and this is the little something. Someone, I should say.” He tried to sound amused but failed.

  “Oh, Jake,” Abbie said, “he’s adorable.” Shocked or not, she seemed absolutely delighted that he’d brought home this human present from Dallas. “What’s his name?”

  “Lucas.”

  Maury still stood at the grill. He studied the baby for a moment, and then said to Jake, “He looks like you.”

  “True,” Jake admitted.

  Maury turned back to his work. “What will you do with him?”

  Jake knew what the real question was—how will this interloper change things?

  “I was asked to raise him. I’m his guardian, so I have to raise him. Somehow.” Almost as if he didn’t like the way Jake had explained the situation, Lucas reached up and gave Jake’s collar a hard tug.

  Abbie saw it and smiled. “Well, it’s nice to meet you, Lucas.” She did a mock curtsey, and for the first time in hours, Jake felt some of his tension ease.

  He shifted Lucas higher on his hip. “How’s Barney?”

  Abbie’s mouth twisted wryly. “Resting comfortably and doing as well as can be expected. That’s all the hospital staff will tell us.”

  Jake sighed. “I’ll visit him as soon as I can. How are things going without him?”

  She couldn’t seem to take her eyes off Lucas. “Fine,” she said absentmindedly. “Becky is helping out in the kitchen, and Colleen is covering out front,” Abbie told him. “A few of their relatives,” she waved vaguely around the room, “have pitched in, too.”

  “I appreciate what everybody’s done, and I’ll hire temporary help as soon as I…” Now that he had a baby to take care of, when would he find time to hire staff?

  Abbie stroked Lucas’ cheek, and he gurgled appreciatively. “He’s so calm, when this has to be a major upheaval in his life.”

  Jake looked down at Lucas, who was examining the kitchen with bright, curious eyes. He was so small, so helpless. The tightness returned to Jake’s shoulders.

  How was he going to take care of this child?

  His panic increased when the back door swung open, and Lilah, Rafe, and Clint all peered through it. “We had to see him,” Lilah said.

  “This is terrific,” Rafe said.

  Clint raised his eyebrows.

  Just the reactions Jake had predicted.

  “What a precious baby,” Lilah said, rushing toward Lucas with her arms outstretched.

  “Well, let’s see who we’re adding to the gang,” Rafe said easily. He lifted Lucas off Jake’s hip. Jake stretched to the right, getting his balance back. What a relief.

  “I want to hold him,” Lilah begged.

  “Me, too,” Abbie challenged her. “I saw him first.”

  “Wait your turn, ladies,” Rafe said. “Hey, Lucas,” he said, and Jake saw that Lucas was smiling at Rafe and reaching out for his hair. “Meet the rest of the gang. This is Maury,” and he went straight to the boy. “Maury is your new dad’s very best friend and right-hand man. You want to get on his good side.”

  Jake saw Maury turn slowly from his chopping. “Hi, Lucas,” he said awkwardly. Lucas chuckled and reached out for Maury’s arm.

  “I’m Uncle Rafe,” Rafe went on, “and this is Aunt Lilah.”

  Lucas gazed carefully at each face, as if there’d be a test later.

  “You’ve met Abbie, and this is Uncle Clint.” With a big smile, Rafe held the baby out to Clint, who accepted him with a look of horror and held him at a distance.

  “Hey,” Clint said, “you like sheep?”

  “My turn to hold him,” Abbie said swiftly as she rescued both Lucas and Clint.

  “Hey, you’re fast,” Lilah grumbled. “How can we help you settle in?” she asked Jake.

  He’d been watching Abbie tickle Lucas’ stomach, giggling along with him. “I have a few things in the hall. They’re shipping a lot more. Man, I had no idea babies required so much stuff. I don’t even have that much stuff.”

  Lilah firmly removed Lucas from Abbie and started her own game with him, peekaboo. “Rafe and Clint can help you figure out where to put his stuff. We need to get your apartment set up with a crib, changing table, and stocked with diapers and formula."

  Jake gave Abbie a helpless look, and she laughed. “I’ll give them a hand,” she said. “I’m no good in the kitchen, anyway.”

  Boy, it was good to be home. The last two days had been unnerving, and the only thing that had gotten him through them had been the knowledge that soon he’d be home, surrounded by friends. Friends who would help him. Friends who would be his backup.

  And backup was what he really needed. With some help, it would all work out.

  When a desperate summons from the kitchen sent Abbie racing downstairs to wait tables, Rafe, Clint, and Lilah surrounded Jake.

  “He looks a lot like you,” Clint said.

  “I noticed,” Jake said.

  Rafe slowly shook his head. “Why would your father leave you his child to raise? He’s ignored you for the past fifteen years.”

  Jake sank onto a box of books and held his chin in his hands. “I’ve been trying to figure it out. I don’t think he really meant for me to raise him,” he said. “He didn’t know he and Lucas’ mother were going to die.”

  “Then why did he do it?” Clint persisted.

  “All I can think of,” Jake said slowly, “is that he got a kick out of imagining me, twenty-five years from now, sitting in a lawyer’s office with my tongue hanging out, hoping for a big inheritance, and finding out he’d left me nothing.”

  “But as you said, he didn’t know he was going to die,” Lilah argued, looking up from a box of clothes. “You’d have to like and trust someone implicitly to leave your child to him.”

  “My dad never gave me a second thought,” Jake said. He suddenly felt so tired, more tired than he could ever remember being. The adrenaline that had gotten him through the last two days and safely home with Lucas was all used up.

  “It’s getting late. If you’ll help me figure out how to get Lucas through one night, I’ll start organizing for real tomorrow morning after the breakfast rush. I need to visit Barney—” He halted. “I can’t visit Barney. I have a baby.”

  Lilah patted him on the arm. “I’ll keep Lucas for you while you see Barney. He’s doing fine, by the way. All he needs is a lot of rest before he comes back to work.”

  “I’ll go to the grocery store,” Rafe said, checking his watch. “A baby needs diapers and food.”

  “Anything for him to sleep in?”

  “A sleeper with feet, yes. But he doesn’t have a crib.”

  “We have a crib in the attic,” Rafe said.

  “I’ll take care of that,” Clint said. “Any sheets in,” he gestured toward the mountain of things Lilah was unpacking, “that stuff?”

  “Baby-blue linen,” Lilah said. “I’ll grab them when you get the crib.”

  “Go see Barney,” Rafe said. “We’ll have you all set up in a couple of hours.”

  Jake sent his gaze toward each of them. “How am I going to do this?” He whispered the words.

  “Nothing to it,” Rafe said. “Get outta here and go run the restaurant.”

  “Hello to you, too,” Jake said and smiled at Barney.

  It was hard for him to smile. Barney might be doing “as well as could be expec
ted,” but he sure didn’t look good. Too quiet lying there in the sterile hospital room, nothing like the whirling dervish he was in the Jake’s Place kitchen. His skin was gray, and his eyelids drooped. Seeing him this way was like having a knife stabbed into Jake’s heart, but he couldn’t let Barney know he was upset.

  Hiding his feelings, he sat in a chair next to the bed and got into a relaxed position. “Doctors say you’re doing great.”

  “I know I’m doing great,” Barney croaked. “What I want to know is when I can go back to work.”

  “Pretty soon,” Jake said easily. “When you’re well. Don’t worry, I’m hiring some temporary people when I can get around to it. Your job will be waiting for you.”

  “Who’s doing it now?” He actually sounded jealous.

  “Maury’s at the grill, and some people I don’t know are helping out. Thank God I hired Abbie.”

  “Nice girl. Just like her mom.”

  Jake noticed that Barney’s gruff voice had softened a little. But everybody had a soft spot for Abbie.

  He was wondering whether to tell Barney about Lucas. He didn’t want to bring on another heart attack, but on the other hand, he didn’t want Barney hearing it from anybody else. “Um, I have a surprise for you, well, a surprise for everybody.”

  “Baked beans?” Barney said hopefully.

  “I have a baby.”

  Barney looked at him with such shock that for a second Jake wondered if he should call a nurse. “A baby? A baby what? Dog? Cat?”

  “Human,” Jake said, then recited once again his story about his father and his unexpected inheritance.

  “Well, I’ll be,” Barney said. “A baby.” To Jake’s surprise, he actually smiled. “That’ll perk things up.”

  “To say the least,” Jake said dryly.

  “How’s Maury taking it?”

  “Okay. Maury’s a great kid.” He hoped it was true.

  “Well, good.” Barney gave Jake a sly grin. “I hope you’re taking it the same way.”

  His smile faded, and he suddenly looked so tired that Jake realized even this short conversation had worn the old guy out. He said his goodbyes, and as he stepped out the door, Elaine Jackson stepped in, carrying a bouquet of flowers.

  “Elaine, good to see you.”

  “Abbie told me about Barney,” she said, looking embarrassed. “I know how busy you all are at the diner, so I decided to check on him and sit with him awhile.”

  “That’s very kind of you,” Jake said.

  “Oh, he’s asleep,” she whispered. “Maybe I…”

  “No, I’m not,” Barney said, sounding as if just saying the words was an effort. “Just resting my eyes.”

  Jake left them there together. Elaine Jackson was a kind woman. She’d be kind to Abbie, whatever Abbie decided to do. He was sure of it.

  At home he found Rafe and Lilah on the floor with Lucas crawling back and forth between them. They’d wrecked his tiny apartment to put a crib in it. Baby things were strewn everywhere.

  “Okay, the reinforcements have arrived,” he told them. “You two get home to your own kids.”

  “Are you sure you can handle it?” Lilah asked.

  “Of course he can,” Rafe said. “We’ll show you a couple of things…”

  Thirty minutes later, Jake was a trained father. A father figure, that’s what he was. But trained was one thing. Being a good father figure was a whole different thing. And he didn’t even know where to start.

  9

  “Want to see a restaurant in action?” Jake asked Lucas when they were alone.

  Lucas yawned deeply.

  “Bedtime soon,” Jake told him, “but D-Dad,” he stumbled over the word, “has to go to work for a few minutes first.” He heaved himself up off the sofa and took Lucas downstairs.

  Five minutes later, he realized he’d made a terrible decision. First, Colleen and Becky zeroed in on Lucas, and Abbie, who was plating desserts, had to pry them away to deliver the last orders of the evening.

  Abbie herself looked as if she’d like him to put desserts on plates so she could hold Lucas. It sounded like a good idea to him, too, so he handed the baby over to her, glanced at the order slips, and started slicing the cherry pie. And what did she do? She took Lucas out into the restaurant to show him off.

  From the pass-through, he heard her explaining about the baby to the regulars. They neglected their perfectly cooked—he hoped—properly hot—he hoped—dishes to play kissy-face with Lucas.

  He also saw he’d just cut up the whole cherry pie and put the wedges on plates. He checked the order and saw that everybody at the table had ordered something different.

  “Oh, shoot,” he muttered. He’d had a baby for one day, and he was already falling apart. He stalked out into the restaurant and took Lucas away from Abbie. “Your shift in the kitchen,” he told her, smiling for the customers’ benefit, and for her ears only, “and please do something with all that cherry pie.”

  Jake was exhausted, but not too exhausted to get up a dozen times in the night to see if Lucas was still breathing. On Saturday morning at five, he heard gurgles and coos coming from what had once been his office in the apartment and was now Lucas’ room. Once upon a time, as in he went to Dallas two days ago, he could wake up at five-thirty and still be in the kitchen by six. Those days were over.

  Jake changed Lucas, washed him off—he needed a lesson before he attempted a full bath—and after examining the supply of baby food, decided that cereal was a logical starting point. He held Lucas on his lap to feed him. He’d need one of those chairs kids sat in to eat, but Lucas seemed perfectly happy on his lap, gobbled down his cereal, and was delighted by the pureed apricots straight from the jar.

  Curious, Jake tasted them. They weren’t bad, although, personally, he might have added an eighth of a teaspoon of cinnamon. Or maybe a touch of grated fresh ginger.

  Well, not for a baby, but maybe for him.

  After he’d fed his new baby and washed him off— again—and changed his diaper—again—he dressed him in the outfit Lilah had laid out—an overall kind of thing embroidered with seriously cute ducks and a yellow turtleneck to put under it.

  He had no place to put Lucas while he showered, shaved, and dressed except the crib. Lucas complained, his babbling sounding cross and impatient, and Jake couldn’t blame him. He understood, oh, wow, did he ever understand, the frustration of being ignored. They had to have some kind of chair or swing, something Lucas could sit in and watch Jake shave.

  Down to the restaurant they went. Weekend mornings were the busiest, and Maury was already there, preparing for the rush. Abbie was at the stove getting a head start on the home fries.

  Jake took a look at the home fries. Not your usual Jake’s Place breakfast potatoes. A little too brown here and there… but you couldn’t look a gift horse in the mouth. They’d still taste great.

  “Ah,” she said brightly. “You both made it through the night alive.”

  Colleen and Becky arrived with a couple of the strangers he’d seen last night, then the first wave of customers. Toast burned and over-easy eggs turned into hard-cooked ones while they all, even Maury, left their jobs to engage Lucas in conversation. At last Jake grabbed a sausage, wrapped a pancake around it, moved himself and Lucas to the corner of the room farthest away from the action, and directed things from there.

  This situation had to change, too. But how?

  First, he had to hire temporary help. Real, experienced help. But before or after he bought equipment for Lucas? Overwhelmed, he ate his makeshift breakfast, then checked on his customers.

  Everyone who’d come to dinner the night before had told everyone who might come to breakfast this morning about the baby, so he had to go out and make the rounds.

  Nobody complained about the eggs, the potatoes, or the cold biscuits. Every customer was smiling—at Lucas, who rewarded them with gurgles, waves, and occasional dives at their plates.

  Of course, Lucas didn’t unders
tand the lifted eyebrows, the knowing looks, the sidelong glances among the diners that went along with the smiles and coos. No one understood how a father who’d ignored Jake could leave him his son.

  The breakfast crowd didn’t dissipate until almost eleven, much later than on weekdays, and he took Lucas back upstairs while his motley crew cleaned up and got to work on lunch. Glumly, he surveyed the boxes and bags, the piles of unpacked clothing and toys stuffed into every nook and cranny of his apartment. It was a nightmare come true.

  He’d barely had time to change Lucas’ diaper—was it normal to be wet as often as Lucas seemed to be?—when his whole family descended on him.

  “You still need a high chair and lots of other baby equipment,” Lilah announced. “Are they shipping any of those things from Dallas?”

  “Some,” Jake said. “What I need most are more diapers.”

  Lilah took Lucas from him. Jake would have liked to think he wasn’t relieved, but he was. Getting used to being a parent was not a piece of cake.

  “I could go get diapers right now,” Clint said. “What kind?”

  “They’re cotton,” Jake explained.

  “Not disposable ones?”

  “Cotton’s disposable.”

  The group, even Clint, fell silent. “You’ve been throwing them away?” Lilah said at last.

  “Well, yes! They aren’t pleasant to live with. And I’m running out.”

  Lilah was alternating between staring at him and rolling her eyes at Clint and Rafe.

  “Jake, cotton diapers are fashionable right now. The theory is that if the baby is uncomfortable, you can toilet-train him faster. You don’t have time to worry about toilet-training him right now. You need disposables. You don’t throw away cotton ones. You hire a diaper service. I think the closest one is in Amarillo.”

  “Toilet-training?” Jake said weakly. “Amarillo?”

  “You can buy them on your shopping trip. I’d like to help you shop,” Lilah said, “but I’ve got my hands full with the kids today. Give Abbie time off to go with you.”