The Chef's Surprise Baby

by Brenda Harlen

  Which wasn’t so unusual, considering that his name was not only on the frosted glass doors but printed on the menus.

  But his curiosity was piqued now, and as soon as the salmon was plated with lemon butter broccolini and creamy risotto, he washed his hands and headed into the dining room, pivoting automatically toward table four.

  He paused in midstride as he recognized the couple at the table: Martin Thomas and his wife, Amanda.

  Kyle’s father and stepmother.

  He hadn’t seen them in...two years?

  Was that how long it had been since Fiona, his half sister, graduated from college? Kyle hadn’t planned to attend the ceremony or the party afterward, but Fiona had pestered him for weeks and, in the end, he’d wanted to disappoint her even less than he’d wanted to avoid an altercation with Marty and Amanda.

  He liked his half siblings well enough. He would willingly give up a kidney if Duncan, Callum or Fiona needed one, but that didn’t mean he wanted to hang out with them. Every Easter, Thanksgiving and Christmas, he was invited to celebrate with his dad’s second family. And every time, Kyle politely declined the invitation.

  Because while Marty was busy with his second wife and their kids and her family, his first wife was on her own. Of course, Jo always insisted that it was her choice to be alone, and he didn’t doubt that it was true. Even now, at fifty-eight years of age, she wasn’t an unattractive woman. And on more than one occasion when he’d still been working at the pizzeria, he’d been a reluctant witness to male customers sniffing around his mom, interested in more than just her proprietary sauce recipe.

  But Jo had never given any of them the time of day. No one aside from Niall Byrne. A lot of years earlier, Kyle had suspected there might be a romance blossoming between his mom and the banker who came in for lunch several times a month, but Jo had been quick to nip it in the bud. Though she seemed to enjoy Niall’s flirtations, she didn’t take them seriously. When Niall demanded to know why, she explained that he had to be younger than her by at least a decade—eleven years, it turned out—and to her mind, he couldn’t possibly understand the obligations and responsibilities of a single mother. She made it clear that the restaurant and her kids were her priorities and the prospect of a romance wasn’t going to crack the top ten.

  Eventually Niall had given up and moved on, marrying Rhonda Barrow, an elementary school teacher, with whom he had two kids. A dozen years later, Niall and Rhonda parted ways and now shared custody of their son and daughter and a goldendoodle named Ducky.

  But according to Lucy, Niall had recently started coming around the restaurant again. And since Lucy and Claudio both worked at the pizzeria, they had a front-row seat to observe what was happening. With her daughter and son-in-law now partners in the business, Jo no longer had to be there from open to close, which meant that she actually had some free time. And apparently she was spending a lot of that time with Niall. They’d even been spotted sharing popcorn at Mann’s Theater Saturday night, and Kyle was pretty sure the last time his mom had gone to the theater prior to that was when she took Lucy and him to see Toy Story.

  So he was happy to know that Jo was finally starting to get on with her life, but that didn’t make him any more inclined to forgive his father for his infidelity—or for leaving his first wife to struggle financially while he moved into a big, fancy house in Prospector Point that his second wife’s father—one of Nevada’s most successful builders—had gifted to them.

  Amanda glanced up then and spotted him, lifting her hand to offer a tentative wave.

  Having missed his opportunity to turn back around and retreat to the kitchen, Kyle continued on his way to the table.

  “You’re a long way from home, aren’t you?” he asked, directing the question to his father.

  “Friends of ours were here for brunch on Mother’s Day and said it was more than worth the trip,” Martin replied easily.

  “Did you enjoy your prime rib?” he asked, noting that a small pool of au jus was the only remnant of the meal on his father’s plate.

  “It was incredibly tender and juicy.”

  Kyle directed the next question to his stepmother. “And how was your pasta primavera?”

  “Delicious,” she assured him.

  “If you have room for dessert, I’d recommend the tiramisu cheesecake or the lemon sorbet with raspberry coulis.”

  “The sorbet sounds lovely,” Amanda said.

  “I’ll send Hanna back to your table.”

  “Wait.” Marty said. “Please.”

  “I really have to get back to the kitchen. I’ve got a dozen things going on that need my attention.”

  “We didn’t just come here for dinner,” his father said, as Kyle started to turn away. “We also wanted to invite you to our place next weekend. You and Erin and Joel.”

  He didn’t need to ask how Marty knew about the baby—no doubt Lucy had filled him in on recent events. Perhaps it was because she’d been so young when their father walked out, and therefore less aware of the family’s change in circumstances, that Lucy was more open to having a relationship with him now. Or maybe she was just a better person than Kyle. He suspected the truth might be a little bit of both, but either way, his sister had been in more regular contact with Marty in recent years than he’d done.

  “Saturday or Sunday—your choice,” Marty continued. “We can’t promise a fancy meal like this, but we won’t let you go hungry.”

  “I work the dinner shift on weekends,” Kyle told him.

  “Come early then. We’ll have brunch.”

  “Or whenever you can,” Amanda interjected. “You don’t have to stay for a meal. Just come for a visit. Duncan, Callum and Fiona are as eager to meet their nephew as we are to meet our grandson.”

  And there it was—the frustratingly irrefutable fact that no matter how much he tried to limit his interactions with his father’s second family, they were his family—which meant that they were Joel’s family, too.

  “I’ll have to check with Erin and get back to you,” he said, unwilling to commit.

  Marty nodded. “We’ll look forward to hearing from you.”

  It had been a brief and yet unsettling interaction, and Kyle hadn’t quite succeeded in shaking off the mood when he left the restaurant at the end of his shift. He hated to think it was possible that he still resented his father for walking out on his family, because nearly a quarter century later, he should have gotten over it.

  He didn’t harbor any ill will toward his half siblings, but he wasn’t sure he could say the same about his stepmother. Amanda claimed she didn’t know Marty was already married when she met him, and by the time she found out that he had a wife and child (and another one on the way!), it was too late. She was head over heels in love—and pregnant.

  Kyle had spent a lot of years assuming that his father had been not just unfaithful but careless. Because it took less than half a minute to put on a condom before being intimate with a woman and anyone who couldn’t be bothered to take that simple precaution deserved the consequences.

  Of course, Kyle now knew that taking precautions wasn’t always enough. That “ninety-eight percent effective” statistic was impressive, but the other two percent shouldn’t to be ignored. Which made him wonder if his dad was a member of the exclusive two percent club, too, and maybe they had more in common than he realized.

  Chapter Fifteen

  Erin’s brows lifted as she glanced at the clock when Kyle walked in while she was bathing their son in his baby tub, which was set carefully inside the big tub. “I wasn’t expecting you for at least another hour.”

  He shrugged. “Service finished early, so I decided to take off and spend some extra time with Joel.” He was already rolling back his sleeves to take over bath time duties, and Erin willingly stepped aside to let him.

  After the baby was clean and dry and dress
ed in a sleeper with screen-printed images of the Golden Gate Bridge all over it—a souvenir from Uncle Owen and Uncle Roger’s recent trip to San Francisco—Kyle sat down in the rocking chair with him to read a bedtime story, because Erin insisted that reading to him at a young age would provide the foundation for a lifetime habit. Of course, the book was all of ten pages, so five minutes later, he settled the now sleeping baby in his crib and ventured out to the living room where Erin was sitting cross-legged on the sofa, working on her laptop.

  “I can’t tell you how happy it makes me that you enjoy hanging out with Joel,” she said, when he dropped into the chair facing her. “But he’s only four months old. I don’t think you need to adjust your schedule to accommodate his just yet.”

  “But if I don’t start making changes now, I’ll be working all the time when he’s four years old, and by the time he’s fourteen, I won’t even know him.”

  Her gaze narrowed speculatively. “Did you talk to your dad today?”

  “What? Where did that come from?”

  “You’re always a little on edge after he calls.”

  “Am I?” He frowned, uncomfortable with the realization that he wasn’t as unaffected by his interactions with his father as he wanted to be.

  “So he didn’t call?” she pressed.

  “No. But he and Amanda had dinner at the restaurant. They want us to take Joel to Prospector Point for a visit next weekend.”

  “I’m guessing you’re not too keen on the idea.”

  “If he’s really interested in meeting his grandson, shouldn’t he come here?”

  “Maybe. But if we go there, we can leave whenever we want,” she pointed out.

  “There’s a plus,” he acknowledged.

  “But it’s your decision,” Erin said. “You’re the only one who can say if this is something you want to do.”

  “But you have some thoughts,” he guessed.

  She shrugged. “Regardless of your relationship with him, he is Joel’s grandfather. And until your mom agrees to marry Niall, he’s the only grandfather that Joel has.”

  “My mom isn’t going to marry Niall,” he said.

  Not that he objected to her having a relationship, he just couldn’t imagine her making such a drastic lifestyle change after so many years on her own. Or maybe that was the reason she wanted to make a change.

  But he pushed those thoughts aside for now to refocus on the conversation with Erin. “You think I should encourage a relationship, but I don’t want our son to be disappointed when his grandfather loses interest.”

  “Is that what you think happened—why he left?” she asked gently. “Do you think he lost interest in being a dad?”

  “No,” he denied. Then, “I don’t know.”

  “I’m beginning to realize that your relationship with your dad is probably as screwed up as mine with my mom.”

  “And that’s probably why we’re both determined to be better parents to our son,” he acknowledged.

  “Which is why I’m confident that when you fall in love and have a family with someone else in the future, you’ll never let Joel feel as if he comes second.”

  “I’m not going to fall in love with someone else,” he told her.

  “You don’t know that,” she chided. “Just because it hasn’t happened yet doesn’t mean that it won’t.”

  But Kyle did know—because he was already more than halfway in love with Erin.

  And wasn’t that realization an even bigger shock than his father’s appearance at the restaurant today?

  * * *

  In the two weeks that had passed since Mother’s Day, Kyle hadn’t kissed her again. Obviously he’d taken the hint that she didn’t want to complicate their relationship, and she was relieved he’d respected her decision.

  The kiss they’d shared had been a mistake—not because she didn’t want him but because she did. Because kissing him stirred up all kinds of feelings inside and made her want all manner of things she couldn’t have. And since that kiss, she’d found herself wondering what if all over again.

  What if she stopped ignoring the sparks that zinged between them whenever they were in the same room together?

  What if she admitted that she wanted everything he was offering?

  What if she confessed that she loved him?

  What if she told him the truth about why she couldn’t marry him and ruined everything?

  As they fell back into a familiar routine that included Kyle spending every free minute with their son, he spent a lot of those minutes with Erin, too. During those times, it was almost like they were a family, and it tempted her with the possibility of what might be.

  To give herself a little bit of distance and perspective, Erin had been meeting more regularly with her clients, and Joel would hang out with his daddy while she was gone. Some days she and Kyle barely crossed paths, but at other times, he’d hang out for a while and they’d talk not just about Joel but his job and her job and all manner of other things. But he hadn’t brought up the topic of marriage again.

  She was relieved, of course. And maybe just the tiniest bit disappointed.

  And now she was annoyed—albeit for a completely different reason.

  “What did you do to my kitchen?” she demanded, when Kyle returned to her apartment after being summoned by a text message.

  “What do you mean?”

  “I can’t open my cutlery drawer.” She yanked it again in frustration, rattling the contents inside but making no progress in her efforts to access them. “Or any of my drawers or cupboards.”

  “Oh.” He had the good sense to look chagrined. “I forgot to tell you—I had them childproofed.”

  “You had my drawers and cupboards childproofed?” she echoed.

  “Mine, too,” he said. “I wanted to make sure Joel will be safe when he’s at my place, too.”

  “You do realize it’s going to be a while before he’s walking—or even crawling—and trying to open drawers and cupboards.”

  “I know. But if even half the stories I’ve heard Liam tell about his kids are true, by the time we actually need these safety measures, Joel will be keeping us too busy to get them done.”

  “Liam has three kids,” she reminded him. “Triplets. We have one four-month-old who wants his dinner, but I can’t get a bowl or spoon to make his cereal.”

  “You just slide your finger in the gap and press to release the catch,” he said, demonstrating for her.

  “Thank you,” she said, reaching into the drawer for one of the plastic baby spoons.

  Anticipating, he opened the cupboard overhead and handed her a plastic bowl.

  “Did it ever occur to you to ask me before you locked me out of my own kitchen?”

  “It did, but I knew you were meeting with a new client today and I didn’t want to interrupt.”

  “Potential new client,” she reminded him. “And why did it have to be done today?”

  “Because Ron Lawson was already here, fixing a leaky pipe downstairs for Mrs. Powell.”

  Which all sounded perfectly reasonable, and yet she couldn’t shake her irritation.

  “Did your meeting not go well?” he asked.

  “The meeting was fine.”

  “Then why are you making such a big deal over a few latches?”

  “I don’t know.” She sighed. “I do know.”

  “Do you want to share?” he asked cautiously.

  “Ignore me,” she said instead. “I’m just tired. I didn’t get much sleep last night.”

  “Was Joel restless?”

  “No, I was. Because I couldn’t stop thinking about your ridiculous proposal.”

  “Did you want to change your answer to the question?” he asked, his tone hopeful.

  “No.” Her response was blunt and firm.

 
“Are you sure? It seems to me you wouldn’t have lain awake thinking about it if you weren’t considering the potential benefits of a legal union.”

  “There you go again, turning my head with romantic talk.”

  “I can do romance, if you want romance.”

  She shook her head. “What I want is six hours of uninterrupted sleep.”

  “I can do that, too,” he said.

  “How?”

  “I’ll stay here tonight and deal with Joel when he wakes up.”

  “I appreciate your willingness to pinch-hit,” she told him. “But as soon as he wakes up, I wake up.”

  “You won’t hear him—because you’re going to be upstairs in my apartment.”

  She was intrigued by the offer, but still more than a little hesitant.

  “You can trust me to take care of our son for one night,” he assured her. “And if anything comes up that I can’t handle, I’ll know where to find you.”

  The prospect of uninterrupted sleep beckoned enticingly. “I have always wanted to try out your bed.”

  “All you had to do was ask,” he said, with a teasing wink.

  Erin rolled her eyes. “I didn’t mean because it’s yours. Only because it’s so big.”

  “Stop—you’re making me blush.”

  But really, she was the one whose cheeks were hot. “The king-size bed,” she clarified.

  “Oh. Right.”

  Though she wasn’t sure that she’d be able to sleep so far away from Joel, she decided it would be foolish to turn down this opportunity to at least give it a try.

  “I’ll have my phone right beside the bed,” she told him.

  “I won’t call,” he promised.

  She smiled then. “Thank you.”

  He kissed her forehead. “Go get some sleep.”

  Of course, she checked on the baby one last time before she said good-night to Kyle and headed upstairs. It felt odd being in his apartment when he wasn’t there.

  Odder still to pull back the covers and climb into his bed.