by Susan Gable
“Unfreakin’ believable. Your brother’s a mean-ass control freak.” She’d be deducting the cost of the meal from her next room and board check.
Hayden latched the glass doors. “Do you have any idea how deeply you just wounded him?”
“He wouldn’t take my money.”
“Another blow to a man’s ego. Look, Finn’s uncertain with all this. He’s doing what he can. And what he can do is cook. Feed you. And you just told him you prefer someone else’s food. For him, that’s like a lover telling him she’d prefer someone else in the sack. You just admitted you did it because he wouldn’t take your money. Not because you wanted the food, but because you wanted to teach him a lesson, right? So before you call him a mean-ass control freak…” Hayden jerked the bedroom door closed behind him, leaving her alone.
Amelia sank back into her pillow. The kitchen cam showed Finn barking new orders at his staff, scowling as he worked. Until Jordan appeared. Then he pasted on a smile for her, ushering her to a stool at the end of the island so she could watch while he prepared several plates.
Amelia had to grudgingly admit he was trying.
Which meant no more take-out orders. She reached for her cell to mollify him.
FINN SLAMMED PANS on the stove a lot harder than he should have. But every time he turned to face Jordan, he didn’t let it show. It wasn’t the kid’s fault. She hadn’t ordered food from the dive down the street.
He wiped his hands on his apron. “So, Jordan, what can I get you for lunch? I’ve got your mom’s Beef and Broccoli just about ready, but can you think of something else she might like?”“I’ll have some of the five cheese pastina.”
“You got it.” The upscale version of mac-and-cheese had been a big hit, not just with Jordan, but with most of his customers.
Jordan propped her chin in her hand. “I don’t know what Mom wants. Besides pumpkin pie.”
“Pumpkin pie? It’s not the right time of the year for pumpkin pie.”
Jordan shrugged. “I heard her mention it when she was on the phone to Sia this morning.”
Sia was Amelia’s best friend, who also managed her office. Amelia spent a lot of time on the phone with her, going over work details. Finn had overheard several conversations where his stuck-in-bed mom-to be lamented her situation.
After several near disasters, they’d discovered that finger foods worked best for a bedridden person. In a normal household, that would mean a lot of chicken tenders, French fries, and carrot and celery sticks for veggies. But when you had a personal chef to cook for you…
Too bad she didn’t appreciate his skills.
Hayden came from the back staircase, a large green duffel bag in his hand. He paused alongside Jordan. “You got things under control here? Keeping an eye on the chef to make sure he doesn’t burn anything?”
Jordan nodded. “What’s in the bag?”
“I’d tell you, but then I’d have to kill you.”
“Uncle Hay-den! Come on.”
He leaned over, spoke in a stage whisper. “Can you keep a secret?” Jordan nodded.
“You won’t blow my cover, right?”
“I promise.”
“I’m a superhero. My gear is in here.” He lifted the bag and drew back the zipper, exposing a flash of yellow spandex.
“Oh, puh-leeze. I heard all about Captain Chemo from Uncle Greg. That’s not a secret.”
Hayden clutched the bag to his chest, lower lip quivering. “Hopefully the kids at Cleveland Clinic, where the captain is due for an appearance this afternoon, will believe better than you do. Poor Captain Chemo. You’ve hurt his feelings.”
“He’ll get over it. Will you see any kids today who’ve had bone marrow transplants?”
Finn froze, pan in midair as he tossed the beef and broccoli.
Hayden lifted an eyebrow at him, but looked at Jordan as he answered. “The bone marrow transplant unit is harder to get into than Fort Knox. If any kids are almost ready to go home, we might see them. Why?”
Finn had read a bone marrow transplant handbook posted by the Portland hospital on their Web site. He hadn’t been in the loop during Ian’s illness, and wanted to understand just what Jordan would go through. Visitors were strictly limited in the early post-transplant days, and thorough precautions ensured the dangers of infection were kept in check as much as possible. The chemo before a BMT completely wiped out the immune system, and until the new bone marrow began to produce cells in great enough numbers, the recipient had no defense.
Jordan shrugged. “Just curious.”
“You know what? I think one of Greg’s kids who’s had a bone marrow transplant will be at the wedding. You could talk to him about it then if you want.”
Three weeks tomorrow, Finn’s brother, Greg, would shackle himself to Shannon. Hopefully they’d have better luck with marriage than he had. Especially since he really liked Shannon. The ceremony itself would take place behind Fresh, on the bluff overlooking the lake. Shannon wasn’t a church-wedding kind of girl.
Finn had offered to do the reception, but as with everything else, Shannon had her own ideas—ideas that left his mother and sisters shaking their heads. He was in the wedding party and she wanted him to have a good time, too.
Then there were her restrictions on clothes. Rented or secondhand only.
“There’s going to be a boy there who’s had a BMT?”
“I think so, yeah,” Hayden said. “A lot of Greg’s kids will be there.”
Jordan had met some of them earlier that morning, when she’d had her first session with his cancer kids art therapy group.
“Am I invited?”
Hayden shot Finn a look that said answer her.
Finn waved the pan in his hand, shaking his head.
Hayden glared at him. Then he put his finger under Jordan’s chin and lifted it. “What did I tell you the night we met about the one thing a Hawkins values above all else?”
“F-family.”
“That’s right.” His brother’s dark expression and pointed stare proved he was talking more to Finn than the kid. “So of course you’re invited. You and your mom are family. Right, Finn?”
“Absolutely.” His stomach tightened.
Ready or not, like it or not, they were family.
His family.
And he would do his best to live up to that responsibility.
CHAPTER EIGHT
“ARE YOU SURE you’re up to this?” Finn glanced across his Explorer as he pulled into Wegmans’ parking lot the next day. Dark smudges underlined Jordan’s eyes. “You look tired.”
She lifted one shoulder. “I told you, I’m fine. This is your grocery store? It’s gigantic.”Finn let it drop. “For a chain grocery store, this place is amazing.” He’d fed everyone Sunday breakfast, but wanted to fulfill Amelia’s pumpkin pie craving. Plus he had an idea to break up the monotony of her day, but he needed Jordan and her video camera to do it.
Inside, he offered the cart to Jordan. Whenever he took one of his nieces to the store, she always wanted to push the basket. Jordan shook her head. “Mom says the handles on those things are like, one of the worst places for germs.”
Finn steered it to the wall, pulled a sanitizing wipe from a dispenser, and thoroughly cleaned the handle. “Okay now?”
Jordan shrugged. “I guess.” She leaned onto the basket as she maneuvered it through the store’s foyer, dodging a mom pulling a shrieking toddler by the hand. The scents of coffee and fresh roasting chickens filled the air.
A bunch of pink roses caught his attention in the flower section. Amelia didn’t strike him as the pink roses type. But if he was going to try to live up to family responsibilities…a little sugar went a long way. He veered left, away from the produce. “Does your mom like flowers?”
“I guess.” Jordan bent over a pale blossom, inhaling deeply. “This one smells nice.”
“Don’t your mom’s boyfriends ever bring her flowers?”
Jordan snorted. “Boyfriends?
My mom doesn’t have any boyfriends.”
“Now? Or ever?”
“Ever.”
Interesting. “She never goes out on dates or anything?”
“Mom says she’s got enough on her plate without adding the trouble of a man to her life.”
“Trouble, huh?” Finn dismissed a pot of orange flowers, purple orchids on their long, curvy sticks and fuzzy violets. Amelia’s lack of male companionship could have been a contributing factor to her willingness to…help him…when she’d arrived on her mission with the specimen cup last fall. Maybe she only got involved when she was out of Jordan’s sight, not wanting her daughter to know about it.
His brother Derek kept any meaningless dating he did well off his kids’ radar, not wanting them to be hurt. Or get the wrong idea.
“What about these?” Finn held up a bunch of bright yellow lilies. “Think your mom would like these?”
Jordan nodded. “Yes. They’re pretty.”
“Good.” He reached across her and lifted a cellophane-wrapped bouquet of the pale pink roses from the tall vase. “And these—” he handed them to her “—are for you.”
“For me?” A faint blush the same color as the flowers appeared her cheeks. She glanced at the floor, a small smile playing on her lips. “Th-thanks. No one’s ever given me flowers before. Well, Joey Greenwald gave me some dandelions when we were in first grade, but that doesn’t count.”
“Joey Greenwald better mind his manners around—” the words got stuck but Finn forced them out “—my girl, or he’ll have to answer to me. Dandelions. What was he thinking?”
Her smile grew larger, and she shifted, her sandals squeaking.
He set the lilies in the basket, reached for Jordan, then abruptly changed his mind, instead commandeering the cart she’d let go of. Basket wobbling because of a faulty wheel—kind of the way he felt at the moment—he headed for the natural food section.
“I think the canned organic pumpkin is around here somewhere.”
“Here it is. I found it!” Jordan called from the far end of the aisle. She stood on tiptoe to reach.
The turquoise top she wore rode up in the back as she stretched.
Revealing an ugly purple mark.
“Jordan.” He rushed to her side, grabbed the hem of the shirt and lifted it. The mottled mark was the size of a silver dollar. “How the heck did you do this?”
She twisted, looking over her shoulder. “Oh. I bumped into the end of the island the other day. It’s just a bruise. I’ve got plenty of them.”
“This is normal?”
She shrugged. “Sometimes.”
“Oh, my,” a wavering voice said from behind Finn. “That’s a nasty looking bruise.”
Finn turned to face the gray-haired woman, and Jordan pulled the bottom of the shirt from his grasp and tugged it down.
The woman stared hard at Finn, and to his surprise, she shook her head and gave him a wide berth, blue basket tucked on her arm.
“Don’t say anything to my mom, okay?” Jordan pleaded. “I’m going to the doctor tomorrow. She doesn’t need to know how bad the bruising is again.”
“Uhhh…no. While there are certain things your mother might not need to know, when it comes to your health, I will not keep anything from her. No way. I will be asking her about this later so I know what to tell the doctor tomorrow.”
“The blood count will confirm it.” Jordan sighed as she set the can of pumpkin in the cart. “More transfusions for me.”
This time he did pull her into an embrace, placing a kiss on the top of her head. Sometimes it was hard to remember she was so sick.
And other times, it consumed him.
She squirmed in his embrace, so he released her. “No big deal,” she mumbled, rearranging the flowers in the cart. “Not like it’s the first time.”
“It’ll be the first time for me,” he said. “I think maybe you’ll have to hold my hand.”
“You’ll get used to it.” One corner of her mouth quirked up as she shrugged.
It tugged at his heart that any kid, let alone his kid, had to get used to something like that. But she obviously didn’t want to make a big deal about it. He reached for another can of the pumpkin. “Let’s get out of here and on to the next activity, huh?”
“What’s that?”
“You’ll see.”
GIVEN HER HECTIC LIFE as a single mom and career woman, Amelia had often longed for quiet alone time.
She should have been more careful what she’d wished for.The empty house didn’t even creak. Sunshine battered the deck off her prison, and if she saw one more fluffy white cloud float by over the lake, she was going to lose it completely.
Rain would be much more to her liking.
She checked the clock on the laptop. Ten minutes later than the last time she’d looked. She flipped through the pages of the Journal of Chiropractic Medicine—Sia was forwarding her mail in weekly batches—but couldn’t focus. She tossed it to the foot of the bed.
Not a big fan of television, she nonetheless activated the flat-panel screen. Finn’s satellite dish delivered over a hundred channels. She surfed through the guide past all of them. Grown men driving around in circles. Grown men almost being washed overboard to catch crab. Grown men paid millions of dollars to stand in the outfield and scratch their crotches, occasionally catching a ball.
No, no, and definitely no.
She shut the TV off. The remote joined the discarded magazine. This boredom made the humiliating sponge bath Finn’s RN sister had given her that morning look like a fun day at the spa in comparison.
And it had been only two weeks since Amelia had arrived to get Jordan. Two lousy weeks.
Only twelve more to go to hit forty weeks of pregnancy.
Maybe she could convince Dr. Hawkins to put her into a drug-induced coma for the rest.
Of course, that would leave Jordan alone with Finn. The man who didn’t want to be a dad to a young girl who so desperately wanted one she’d concocted the hare-brained plan that had landed them in this situation.
Amelia could have been stuck at home in her own bed if not for Jordan’s adventure. She sighed.
Chip—at some point she’d adopted Finn’s ridiculous nickname for the baby—shifted and rolled. The fabric over her stomach poked up, to the right of her belly button. Amelia held her breath. Every time he got rowdy in there now, she worried. Every time he settled down for too long she worried.
The coma idea sounded better and better.
The baby used her already-full bladder as a punching bag—or soccer ball, hard to say—and Amelia gritted her teeth and contracted her muscles. Wetting the bed would add another dimension to the fun and games for the day. “Thanks a heap, Chip. Now I have to go to the bathroom.”
She tossed back the sheet, pushed herself up into a sitting position. Black dots swam across her vision. After the dizziness passed, she swung her feet to the floor.
The muscles in her legs protested as she shuffled toward the bathroom. Her right lat muscle spasmed. She dug her knuckles into it.
Medication bottles littered the sink countertop, a minipharmacy. Prenatal vitamins no longer sufficed. Now she also took antinausea meds, stool softeners, plus steroid injections once a week to speed Chip’s lung development in case he did put in an early appearance. Antibiotics played a part, as well.
She’d never taken so much as a Tylenol while pregnant before this.
On the way back to bed, she lingered by Finn’s dresser and a framed photo of four boys in stair-step order, from shortest to tallest. She suspected Finn was the tallest. Which would make this the four middle boys—Finn, Greg, Hayden and Ian. They wore cutoff jean shorts, mud-splattered T-shirts and broad, mischievous grins. Each crooked his arm around the neck of the boy next to him. The smallest held up a tiny fish on a string.
Amelia ran her fingertip over the word Brothers etched into the dark wooden frame at the top. At the bottom was inscribed “All for one, one for all.”
Had his childhood actually been as idyllic as this snapshot implied? From what she’d seen of the family so far, the amount of togetherness they still shared, it must have been.
She was consumed with longing. Amelia caressed her belly as she trudged to the far side of the bed. For a moment she pressed her palm against the glass door, heat radiating into her skin. Every once in a while, she spent several hours on a chaise longue on the deck, enjoying the fresh air and sunshine. It was like a tropical vacation, a break from her normal “prison” of Finn’s bedroom.
With a sigh, she turned. Sat on the bed. Resumed the flat-on-her-back position and placed her still-warm hand on her stomach. “Feel the sunshine, Chip? Next summer, I promise, I’m taking you and Jordan fishing. I don’t know how to fish, but we’ll figure it out together.”
SHE WOKE SOMETIME LATER to wonderful smells from downstairs, mostly unknown, but one distinctly resembling the spices of a pumpkin pie. The sun had moved lower on the horizon. She dragged over her laptop and accessed the kitchen cam. No one appeared in view.
Footsteps clattered on the stairs. Just outside the door, Finn’s and Jordan’s voices carried on a murmured conversation for several minutes.“Hey!” Amelia called. “Either come in here or talk louder.”
Finn entered carrying a vase of yellow flowers. “We have a surprise for you,” he announced.
“I’m not much of a surprise kind of girl,” she said, every muscle in her body tensing. The last man who’d announced a surprise had been her so-called husband. His hadn’t been a very good surprise. Her stomach started to churn. She clenched her teeth and willed the churning to subside.
“I told you,” Jordan said, following him into the room. “Don’t call it that.”
He glanced down at the vase. “These are for you. They’re from Jordan and me.”
“No, they’re not. They’re from you.” Jordan waved a bouquet of pink roses. “And look, Mom. Finn got these for me. Aren’t they gorgeous?” She crawled onto the bed, sticking the flowers in Amelia’s face.
“They’re very pretty, honey. I’d appreciate them more if you didn’t try to shove them up my nose.”