by Susan Gable
But then again, they all started out that way. First impressions were often deceiving.
Pulling out her cell phone, she found five text messages. All from Jordan. All saying the same thing: Get a picture. I wanna see him.
Amelia had seen more than enough. She fired off a one-word response sure to anger her daughter: No.
She wanted to deliver the sperm to the clinic in Erie, get home and never look back. Her daughter’s DNA donor was attractive and sweet and definitely good with his hands.
She would tell Jordan all but the last.
Hopefully, that would be enough. It had to be.
Amelia reclined the seat back in the car, the warm sunshine combined with the still-lingering lethargy of a really good orgasm making her sleepy. She closed her eyes…. and awoke to rapping on the window. She bolted upright, hand on the seat lever, making it snap forward to whack her between the shoulder blades.
The construction crew had arrived during her nap, and men milled around the parking lot, toting tools and wood. Finn held aloft a brown paper bag.
Amelia started the car and lowered the window.
“Special delivery to go.”
“Thanks.” She took the bag, tucking it between her thighs.
He arched a brow. “Interesting place for it.”
“It has to be kept warm. Body temp if possible. I hate to…”
“Come and go?” he offered.
She forced her lips together hard, not wanting to smile. “Exactly. Time is ticking and I have to get this to Erie Bayfront Fertility Clinic ASAP.” Within an hour was optimal. She’d checked Mapquest and could be there in twenty minutes.
“I didn’t even know Erie had a fertility clinic.” He leaned on the window ledge. “Amelia, if you need anything…”
“Thank you. But I have what I need now. You can pretend this never happened.”
Finn might want to, but how exactly was he supposed to do that? “Will you keep me in the loop about how things go? Send me a note?”
She shook her head.
“An e-mail? A text?”
More negatives. He crouched lower. “Is it a boy or a girl, Amelia? Can’t I at least know that? Have a name?”
“No, Finn. I think this way is best. Now I really have to run.” She laid her hand over his forearm. “Thank you. My child means everything to me. I’d do anything…”
“I can see that.”
He straightened and stepped away from the car. She closed the window and backed from the space. She pulled onto the road and disappeared in the distance.
Disappeared as quickly as she’d arrived.
Two hours and change total.
Now he would always wonder about the child he knew was out there. Would he or she survive? Would the new baby be a boy or girl? How would Amelia cope if the bone marrow transplant didn’t work? Or if something happened, like it had with Ian, before they could even get that far?
And had the crazy attraction in his kitchen been strictly one-sided?
CHAPTER THREE
Eight Months Later
JORDAN YOUNG FOLLOWED the other passengers through the little airport. It wasn’t like she’d get lost. The place had only one baggage belt.
Which she didn’t need. All her stuff was in the wheeled backpack—her mother insisted on wheels, made a huge stink about how bad carrying backpacks was on the spine—that Jordan dragged behind her. It wasn’t going to be a long trip.Forget the aplastic anemia. Her mom was gonna kill her.
But at least she would meet her father first.
A tall blonde woman holding a sign with Jordan’s name on it stood near the revolving door.
The whole plan had been ridiculously easy once she’d finally found the investigator’s report about Finn Hawkins—Finn Hawkins. He had such a cool name. Plan the escape during the real chiropractic conference in Boston. Convince her mother to take her along. Use Mom’s TravelEasy online account and stored credit card info to book the flight from Boston to Erie. Reserve a car to get her from the airport to her father’s restaurant, Fresh.
Ridiculously easy, thanks to the Internet.
Which she’d probably never have access to again.
“Hi. I’m Jordan Young,” she said to the sign holder.
The lady did a double take. “Aren’t you a little young to be traveling by yourself?”
Jordan shrugged. “I’m thirteen. My parents aren’t together. School’s out, and it’s Dad’s turn to have me.” Not a lie at all. She and Shelby, her BFF, whose parents actually were divorced and who shuttled her back and forth across the country several times a year, had come up with the cover story.
“Ah,” said the driver, nodding. She reached for Jordan’s pack. “You want me to take that?”
“No, I’ve got it.”
Outside, Jordan climbed into the backseat of the black car. “You have the address, right? My mom was supposed to give that to you guys when she made the reservation and paid. I think she did it online.”
The driver unfolded a piece of paper. “Yep. Fresh. I’ve been there. I had dinner there a few weeks ago for my birthday.”
“How was it?” Jordan asked as they pulled from the curb.
“Great. The food was amazing. I had lamb chops that were probably the best I’ve ever had.”
Jordan smiled. “My father’s the chef there.”
The driver looked at her in the rear-view mirror. “My compliments to the chef, then.”
“I’ll tell him. How long will it take to get there?”
“You haven’t been here before?”
“No. It’s his new place. I haven’t been down since he opened it.” No lies there, either.
“About twenty minutes. Maybe a half hour.”
Exhausted, but too anxious to grab a quick nap, Jordan pulled her cell phone from her bag and shot a text to Shelby: In Erie. What if he hates me?
A few minutes later, Shelby responded: What? Y u think that?
Jordan’s fingers flew over the little keys. IDK. Nerves?
Shelby’s answer came faster this time. Worry more bout ur mom. She’s gonna b crazy mad!
No kidding. Call u later!
Kk. Send pics. Dying 2 c him!
They’d actually found pictures of him on the Internet. Loads of articles and reviews about him and his cooking had shown up on Google searches. Shelby had a huge crush on him, which sort of creeped Jordan out. Okay, so he was cute. So what? The guy was her father, not some movie star. Not even a TV chef.
Jordan closed the phone and settled back against the seat. They’d gotten onto a highway, leaving her with little to look at. One highway looked much the same as another, from Maine to Boston to Erie, apparently. Road surrounded by trees, broken up by exits, dotted with buildings.
The longer they drove, though, the more her stomach churned.
By the time they pulled into an overflowing parking lot, she was certain her father’s first impression was going to be of her racing to the bathroom. Or worse, puking on his shoes.
The driver opened the door for her, and Jordan slid out, handing her a five-dollar bill. Shelby, her personal travel expert, had instructed her on tipping.
“Thanks,” the woman said. “Hey, are you all right? You look a bit pale.”
Unless she’d had a recent transfusion, pale was normal for her. “Traveling does that to me. Airport food is the pits.”
“I’m sure your father can take care of that. Enjoy your visit.”
As the car backed onto the road—the packed parking lot made anything else impossible—Jordan shouldered her backpack by one strap and trudged down the sidewalk. At the bottom of the steps, she paused.
Now that she was here, she wasn’t so sure about this. He’d been good enough to go along with Mom’s “save Jordan” plan, and now Mom was six months pregnant with her brother or sister.
Mom had said he was a nice, kind man. And that, yes, there were certain resemblances between them.
But that had been all she’d sa
id. And her expression always got sort of weird when Jordan asked about him. More than it had before Mom had met him.
Jordan climbed the steps. The door opened into an entryway lined with empty coatracks, and another set of double doors. Once inside, she smelled tantalizing aromas.
A young woman with shoulder-length dark hair came out of the dining room on the right, several menus clutched to her chest. She wore black pants and a crisp white blouse. “Hi, there,” she said to Jordan as she placed the menus on a small wooden podium at the bottom of a wide staircase. “Can I help you? Is the rest of your group still outside?”
Jordan shook her head. “I’m here to see Finn Hawkins, please.”
“Chef’s really busy right now. Saturdays are kind of crazy.” The woman gestured at the room on the opposite side of the foyer, where people clustered around the bar, or small tables, drinks in hand. “All those folks are waiting to be seated. Do you want me to take a message for him?”
Jordan set the backpack on the floor. “Yes. Please tell him his daughter is here to see him.”
The hostess’s mouth dropped open, then closed with a click. She cocked her head, looking at Jordan from all angles, her blue eyes growing wider and wider. Then she pointed to the stairs. “Why don’t you sit there for a minute?”
She whipped a cell phone out of her pocket, turning toward the wall and saying in a low voice, “Hayden? Get down here right now. The front desk, that’s where. Yes, now. I don’t care if you have a date tonight. I think you’re going to want to cancel it.” She whirled around again as she set the phone on the podium. “What’s your name, sweetie?”
“Jordan.”
“Jordan, I’m Kara.” The woman took her by the arm, guided her to the stairs. “You look tired. Sit down.”
At the top of the staircase, a door opened and closed. Feet hammered down the wooden treads. A muscular man in jeans and a tight red shirt eased past her. “Excuse me. Kara, what’s the big emergency? Finn will pitch a fit if he catches me out front on a Saturday night dressed like this.”
“How old are you, Jordan?” Kara asked.
“Thirteen.”
She grabbed the man who’d come down the stairs by the arm and dragged him toward the hallway—to move out of hearing, Jordan figured. But she had ears like a bat.
“Fourteen years or so ago, did you sleep with someone and tell her you were Finn?”
“What? Did you get into the wine cellar? Fourteen years ago I was eighteen, pipsqueak.”
“I might have been a runt at the time, but I remember you had an ID in Finn’s name so you could get into the ‘wine cellars’ yourself. You and Ian both. So answer my question.”
“No, I did not sleep with anyone and tell her I was Finn. Why the hell would you ask me that?”
“Because it appears someone did. Oh, my God. You don’t think it was Ian, do you? After all, he knocked up Ronni about that time. Nick’s thirteen, too.”
“And Ian took responsibility for his son. Besides, he was crazy about Ronni. He wasn’t sleeping around on her.”
Although she wasn’t quite sure how it all fit in with her father, Jordan filed away the juicy tidbits to share with Shelby later. Kara led the man back over to her. “Hayden, this is Jordan. Finn’s daughter.”
After an initial double take, Hayden gave her the same long examination Kara had.
Jordan stood up. “Can I please see him now? I’ve come a long way. And my mother is going to find out I’m here any minute. Not that she can do anything about it right away, but still, I’d like to meet my father before that happens. Please?”
Hayden grinned. “Far be it from me to stand in the way of that. Come on, sweetheart, I’ll take you to the kitchen. Let me carry your bag.” In a flash, he had her pack over one brawny shoulder and was ushering her down the hall.
“You can’t take her to the kitchen now! You’ll throw everything into a complete mess.” Kara scampered after them. “No offense, Jordan, but really, can’t you wait until he’s done cooking for the night? Or did you plan to take over, Hayden? God help the customers.”
With every step closer, Jordan’s feet grew heavier. The hall seemed to expand in front of her, looming longer and longer. Outside the door labeled Women, she stopped.
Hayden bumped her, recoiling with an apology.
She didn’t move.
The man stooped down. “You scared?”
She jerked her head once. Terrified. She’d imagined this moment her whole life and now that it was here…
“Listen, my brother’s a good guy. It’ll be okay. If there’s one thing that a Hawkins values, it’s family. Remember, his bark in the kitchen is way worse than his bite.” Hayden gripped her hand and gave it a friendly squeeze.
His brother? That made this man…her uncle. And Kara, who’d called Hayden big brother, her aunt. Jordan’s family was growing by leaps and bounds, and she hadn’t even met her father yet. “Ready?”
The hallway had stopped getting longer. She nodded.
FINN SWIRLED WASABI SAUCE along the edge of the seared ahi plate, then slipped it onto the ledge beside the three other entrées. Gina came through the swinging door. “Table four’s ready,” he told her.
“Thanks.” She started stacking the dishes up her arm.Tracey stood behind the island at the pass, staring at him. “What?” He wiped his hands on the towel tucked into his apron.
“I need the soup and salad for table seven.”
“Yeah? So get it. Where the hell is my sous-chef?” Finn bellowed. “Jon!” he hollered at the busboy unloading dishes from a gray tub into the dishwasher tray. “Run outside and tell Marco to put out the butt and get his ass back in here or he’s fired!”
“Yes, Chef.” The teen darted out the back door.
Finn checked the tickets stuck to the ledge, then hauled open the oversize fridge, gathering two chilled bowls and quickly assembling Caesar salads. Moving them to the pass, he ladled out two bowls of the soup du jour, wiping the rims before setting them up. “Go! And next time, do it yourself if no one else can.”
Marco ambled in the back door, followed by the busboy. “Sorry, Finn. What’s next?”
“Table nine. One salmon, one ahi. Get the garnish going.”
“You got it, boss.”
Finn was turning toward the stove when Hayden, in jeans and a T-shirt, came through the swinging door. “Hayden, what the hell were you doing in the front of my house dressed like that?” he demanded.
“See, told you,” Hayden said. Finn had already grabbed his fish from the fridge and was firing the entrées. He dashed some oil into a pan.
“Finn?” Kara said.
“What’s up? Everything okay out there? Everybody happy?” He didn’t turn to look. His baby sister, who also worked as an elementary teacher, ran the front of the house at night like she ran her fourth-grade classroom. No nonsense.
“Finn, there’s someone here who’d like to meet you.”
He glanced over his shoulder to see Hayden and Kara, at the far end of the work island, sensibly out of the traffic flow. They flanked a petite girl who looked too old to be one of Kara’s students, but not old enough to be applying for a job. “What’s kitchen rule number two?”
“No customers in the kitchen.”
“Exactly. I’m happy to come to the dining room. Let me get these entrées out and—”
“I’m not a customer.” The girl’s voice, thin and reedy like she was, shook. “Wow, it’s hot in…” Her eyes rolled back.
“Catch her, catch her! She’s fainting!” Finn yelled at Hayden. His brother grabbed for the kid. “That’s why customers aren’t allowed in the kitchen!”
“She’s not a customer,” Hayden repeated, easing the girl to the floor. “She’s your daughter.”
“My what?” The kitchen fell into relative silence, the sizzle of the fish in the pan now audible.
“I said she’s your daughter. At least, that’s what she told us. You gotta admit she’s got the Hawkins j
aw.”
“And your eyes,” Kara said.
Finn bolted around the island, dropping to his knees beside the child. He pressed his fingers to her neck. The steady beat reassured him. “Kara, wet a clean towel with some cold water.”
“She’s stressed, Finn. The poor kid was shook up about meeting you. And it is hot in here,” Hayden said.
Finn took the towel, laying it across the girl’s forehead. After a moment, he wiped her face with it. She had to be Amelia’s. The cheekbones were the same…the chestnut hair. Though for all he knew, Amelia’s hair color came from a bottle.
“She’s sick, idiot! She’s got severe aplastic anemia.” After Amelia’s visit, he’d studied the blood disorder on the Internet, learning how it affected production of the different types of blood cells, making sufferers susceptible to infection, fatigue, bruising and increased bleeding. “She needs a bone marrow transplant.”
Kara gasped. “You knew about her?”
“Kinda. Not really.” He’d done his best to put it out of his mind, as Amelia had suggested. Fat lot of good that had done. “It’s a long story.”
“Bone marrow transplant?” Hayden cursed like a sailor.
Knowing what he was thinking, remembering, Finn stole a quick glance at his younger brother. He’d gone as pasty-white as the girl on the floor, raking a hand through his short-cropped hair.
“She’s going to be okay, Hayden.”
“Yeah. Yeah. Of course she is. You’re right.”
“She is. Her mom’s pulling out all the stops for her treatment.”
The child’s eyes fluttered open, and she tried to sit up. Finn pushed her back. “No, take it easy another minute or two.”
“I’m okay.”
“You’re lying on my kitchen floor. That says otherwise.”
The girl’s lip trembled and she bit it. That little gesture slammed into his gut. Yeah, Amelia’s daughter for sure.
My daughter. Panic constricted his lungs. Two divorces had convinced him family wasn’t in his future. He wasn’t good at it. And yet…here was his daughter.
Slumped on his kitchen tile.
“Kara, call Elke, ask her to come over here.” Their sister Elke was an RN. He’d feel better having someone with actual medical knowledge check her out, reassure him. He scooped the child up and climbed to his feet, waving off Hayden’s hovering figure. “Hayden, get the door to the stairs, will you?” She couldn’t weigh much more than his niece, Katie, who was only seven. The girl, his daughter—the foreign phrase kept ricocheting around his brain—looped her skinny arms around his neck. “Where we going?”