by Annie Jones
“How can you possibly see I’m not like Ophelia? We only just met.”
“I can see it—” he rubbed one knuckle along her cheek as gently as he could manage “—because you’re the one who’s here with my son, not her.”
“That’s because…” Her voice failed. She blinked. A single tear dampened her cheek. She pushed out a shuddering breath. “I love him. He’s mine.”
It killed him to hear that, and at the same time it made him proud and elated to know his boy had been loved and wanted by somebody. Adam studied her with a series of brushing glances.
Not just somebody, he realized when his gaze searched hers. The baby’s aunt. His birth mother’s identical twin. Someone with a blood bond and a heart with the capacity to put her needs aside to care for a helpless infant.
And grit. Josie had to have grit, he decided on the spot. How else could a woman choose to bear the burden of single motherhood? How else could she stay in Mt. Knott and watch the jobs and opportunities ebb away, partly because of his own actions, and even begin her own business because she knew she had to provide the sole support for a child?
“You can say that? After Ophelia just dumped him on you?”
“I never said she—”
“But that’s what she did, right?”
The woman lowered her gaze to the floor. “It doesn’t change how I feel about him.”
Adam swallowed, and it felt like forcing a boulder through a straw. Everything he’d determined about this lady flew right out the window when he considered all he’d learned in just a few moments with her. He liked her plenty, in all manner of ways, most he didn’t even understand yet—and he reckoned she was plenty good for his boy, as well.
“Please, Mr. Burdett,” she whispered, her chin angled up and her eyes bright with unshed tears. “Please tell me you haven’t come to take away my baby.”
“Actually, ma’am, I…” Adam sighed.
Who was he kidding? He couldn’t take his son away from the only mother the baby had ever known. He wouldn’t.
“I haven’t come to take him away, Josie.”
She shut her eyes and mouthed the words thank you.
Adam didn’t know if she spoke to him or to heaven—maybe both. He took one step back. So he’d wimped out of doing what he’d come here to do. That didn’t mean he’d called a complete surrender…and he respected this woman enough to make sure she understood that without question.
“But I think you should understand, ma’am.” He stuck his thumb through his belt loop and anchored his boots wide on the gleaming vinyl floor. “I won’t simply sign some papers and walk away, either. He’s my boy and I’ll do whatever it takes to make sure I stay involved in his life. Whatever it takes.”
Joy and apprehension battled within Josie, and in the end joy won. He said he wasn’t going to take her baby. Knowing that, she figured she could handle anything else thrown at her by this biker/cowboy with a voice that poured over her nerves like honey over sandpaper.
“Then let’s talk, Mr. Burdett.” She extended her hand toward the small kitchen table, her hope renewed that this could still work out in her favor. “If you still want some coffee, I can—”
The sputtered coughing cry of the baby halted her offer and Adam Burdett’s movement toward the table at the same time.
He gave her a quick, panicked look. “That him?”
“Unless my cat’s become a ventriloquist, I’d say yes.” She laughed but couldn’t make it sound real, not knowing that if the baby awakened she’d have to let this…this…father person see him. The very notion made her heart race.
She cocked her head to listen, praying that the baby was merely restless and would quiet and go back to sleep on his own.
“You got a cat?” Burdett leaned into the doorway to stare down the hall in the direction of the bedroom.
“What?” She blinked, moving to the door to lean out just a bit farther than he did.
“A cat.” He slouched forward, his face a mask of concentration all focused on any sound that might arise from the child. “I heard it said that it’s not good to have a cat around a baby.”
“That’s an old wives’ tale.” Josie rolled her eyes.
No other sound came from the baby’s room. She relaxed enough to appreciate the level of confusion and worry on Burdett’s face over the routine sounds the baby had just made and some silly superstition.
The baby was quiet. Maybe the fact that she’d dodged the letting-him-see-his-son-for-the-first-time bullet made her warm a little to the man. Or maybe it was the tenderness in those eyes that allowed her to loosen up a bit and say, “You don’t know much about babies, do you, Mr. B—I mean, Adam?”
“This is my first,” he said softly.
“Mine, too,” she said, even softer.
She bet no other new parents had ever shared such an awkward or awkwardly sweet moment. Josie found within herself the power to actually smile. Maybe after a few meetings, a few long talks about parenting philosophy, visitation expectations, some practical lessons in the care and feeding of a one-year-old, she’d be ready to allow this man to see their son. Then later, maybe, after he’d proved himself capable, he could hold the baby and—
Just then the baby broke out in a howling lament.
Josie froze.
“I don’t know much about babies, ma’am.” Burdett glanced at her and then down the hallway, his whole body tense. “But I do know that means someone needs to go check on him.”
She took off before he finished the sentence. Josie heard his big old boots clomping along the hallway right behind her stocking feet and it irritated her.
“So then, you’re saying it’s okay—your cat and the baby?”
“What cat?” She spun around, placing one hand and one shoulder to the bedroom door. He practically loomed over her as she glowered up at his concern-filled face and snapped, “I don’t have a cat.”
“You don’t?”
“No.”
The baby wailed again.
“But I do have a child who needs my attention. Now if you’ll just go wait in the kitchen and excuse me, I’ll take care of my baby.” She started to slip inside the room without opening the door to any unnecessary invitation.
His arm shot past her head, his palm flattened to the door just inches from her eye level. “Whoa, there, sweetheart.”
She twisted her head to peer over her shoulder.
“I promised I wouldn’t take the baby from you.” His dark eyes went almost completely black. She saw the heat in his cheeks and felt it on his breath as he lowered his voice to a raw-edged whisper. “But I double-dog promise you something else, as well, I won’t take this from you, either.”
“What?” A corkscrew curl snagged on her eyelash and bobbed up and down as she batted her eyes in feigned innocence.
“I won’t take this game of trying to shut me out of my baby’s life. I want to make that very clear.”
It was. And despite the anxiety it unleashed in her, Josie realized, she respected and admired his attitude. For a year now she had painted the baby’s father as some sleazy party animal who hadn’t even cared enough to find out what had become of Ophelia. It gave her some curious comfort now to know that wasn’t the case. Her son had a decent man as a father.
A decent, gorgeous, Harley-riding, Mt. Knott-deserting rich man who could change from rapt preoccupation over his child and some imaginary cat to issuing hard-nosed mandates about the boy in a matter of seconds, she reminded herself.
“Do you understand that, Josie?”
She understood that and so much more. Like her problems with the diner and the simple existence she had known before she took in Nathan, from this point forward the life she had planned was going to take a different turn, and, like it or not, it was going to have to include Adam Burdett.
Chapter Three
They both shuffled quietly inside the room, using only the stream of light from the hallway to guide them.
“Hu
sh, now, Nathan, shhh. Quiet down. It’s all right.” Josie, standing in profile to Adam, cooed some kind of magical, maternal comfort to the lumpy blue blanket she pulled from the crib.
“Nathan?” He turned the name over and over in his mind. He liked it. “Is what you named him?”
“Yes. It means…” She snagged her breath and held it a moment. “It’s Biblical. It means gift.”
“I like it.” He found himself nodding slowly to show his approval.
“I’m glad,” she whispered, but nothing in her body language underscored her claim. She cuddled the baby close and spread the blanket out over the two of them so that Adam could not even see a tiny finger or a lock of fine baby hair.
He longed to lay eyes on his boy for the first time, show himself and say, “Hello, Nathan. I’m your father. I’m here now. I won’t allow you to grow up feeling as if the people who should have done anything within their power to keep you, gave you away and didn’t care.”
Adam knew most adopted children did not feel this way. But he had. He had been made to feel that way. And now that he had returned to Mt. Knott, he would not only shield his child from those emotions, Adam would make his remaining family pay for having treated him so callously. He had the means and the motivation. The news of his unexpected fatherhood had hastened his plan but had not quashed it. If anything, it gave him new passion for the battle that lay ahead. He would do this not just for the child he had been, but for the child lying in this small, dark room before him.
Adam strained to get a good look at the kid without getting too close. Deep in his gut, he truly wished to step forward and scoop his son up in his arms. But somehow his body would not cooperate. He hung back, his back stiff, his legs like lead, folding then unfolding his arms across his chest, then letting them dangle limp at his sides.
“Is he…” He craned his neck to peer around a tossed-back flap of the blanket that draped from Josie’s shoulder to her midthigh. “Is he okay?”
“Well, he’s not wet or…otherwise.” She rocked her body back and forth, and the crying died to gurgles and gasps.
“Maybe he’s hungry.” Just saying it made Adam feel all fatherly. Maybe this wasn’t such a hard thing after all, to take care of a baby.
“I doubt that.” She patted the bundle gently, still rocking.
“He would have had a bottle before bed.”
“But babies eat at all hours.” He spoke like a veritable authority on the subject even though, deep down, he felt like a complete dolt. Him! Adam Burdett, one of five highly valued and overpaid vice presidents of acquisitions and mergers for Wholesome Hearth Country Fresh Bakery, a division of Cynergetic GlobalCom Limited. How could one small, totally dependent creature reduce him to such uncertainty and ineptitude? “Don’t they need to, um, refuel, during the night?”
“Refuel?” For the first time she laughed faintly.
But still, something in the sound of it made Adam long to hear it again.
“Yeah, you know. Like a minijet with diapers?” He pressed his lips together and made the sound of a sputtering engine. “Or a rechargeable battery.”
“If they ever find a way to channel this kid’s energy into a battery or an engine, I’ll have to give up my job and chase him around full-time.”
“Yeah, you wouldn’t want that.”
“Are you kidding? I’d love to give up worrying about how I’m going to keep the Home Cookin’ Kitchen open and be a full-time mom to Nathan.” Her eyes grew wide suddenly. “Not that I want my business to fail. I love what I do. I love providing a service to Mt. Knott and seeing everyone, and I love cooking. Especially…well, my specialty is not important beyond, you know, being a mother being my specialty.”
She was babbling. Not in a ridiculous, silly way. She was just nervous. And relieved. Nervous and relieved all at once. He could sense that in the way her words all ran together, then stopped suddenly. He didn’t learn much from what she said, of course, but it did help him see her inner conflict over her roles as a woman business-owner and a mother to his son.
“But if I could somehow not have to keep the crazy hours at my Home Cookin’ Kitchen and could just spend all my time with Nathan, at least in these early years, I’d do it in a heartbeat. No regrets. No complaints.” She stopped abruptly again, and this time her eyes grew wide before she added, in a little slower and more pronounced voice, “Not that I’m hinting that’s what I expect you to provide.”
She’d babbled until she had spoken the truth. In doing so, she’d given Adam a glimpse into her desires and perhaps some future negotiating power. He filed the information away and, on the surface, let it go. “So, he’s not hungry?”
“No. I don’t think he’s hungry.” She kept swaying back and forth and jiggling the baby, who had begun to fret and grunt quietly beneath the blanket. “He’s been sleeping through the night for a couple of months now.”
“He has?” Adam was rocking now, too. He couldn’t seem to help himself. Though he wasn’t sure, he figured this was how it felt to carry on a conversation on a boat. “Well, maybe he’s sick, or needs some—”
“Maybe…” she interrupted in the same soothing murmur she used with the baby “…he just had a bad dream.”
“Dream?” He stopped rocking long enough to consider that. “What on earth does an itty-bitty baby like that have to dream about?”
“He’s not so itty-bitty. He’s got plenty of things to dream about, a whole lifetime of experiences. His lifetime.” She shot him a look that even in the dim light Adam interpreted as a challenge. I have been this child’s mother for his entire life. Where have you been? “He’ll have his first birthday in two weeks, won’t you, tiger?”
“He will?” Adam stretched out his fingers, needing a kind of visual cue to help him do some lightning-fast math. “That means he was born in September, so August, July, June—”
“January.”
“What?”
“He was conceived in January, one year, eight months and two weeks ago.” She faced him, her mouth set in grim accusation. “Don’t tell me that doesn’t even ring a bell. Maybe you’ve just been with so many women that it’s all a blur.”
“Oh, it’s a blur all right, but not for the reasons you think.” He scratched at his cheek while his mind struggled to force all the pieces together. “Maybe you don’t recall this, but…”
Adam faced a choice. Speak the truth and risk having it sound like a plea for pity or at least leniency for his behavior or skim over it. He could stand here and own up to that bad behavior without any preface or attempt to put it in context.
His mother had died. He felt he had not only lost the only one who’d seen him truly as her own but that he had also lost his place in his family. When his suggestions to take the Carolina Crumble Pattie to a wider market had been ridiculed by his father and brothers, Adam felt he had lost his reason for staying in Mt. Knott as well. By the time he met Ophelia, a beautiful woman who shared his disdain for the small town, he had not been thinking about right and wrong.
He had been in pain. He needed to feel he wasn’t a lost cause, just a stray that nobody wanted. He felt worthless and figured he didn’t matter to anyone, not even God. It became easier to fall into sin, he had learned, when you take your eyes off the Lord and start looking at the mess you have made of your life and the mess life has made of the world around you.
He had long prided himself on being a man who told the truth. It was one of the things, he felt, which set him apart from his father.
While Conner Burdett was not a dishonest man, he had built his business on the belief that knowledge was power. And Conner protected his own power by controlling what knowledge he allowed others to have.
On the other hand, telling her about all the years of pain and loneliness that led up to those few wild nights that January would probably just sound like an excuse.
Adam didn’t like people who made excuses. Besides, he had no way of knowing if he could trust Josie with an emoti
onal truth that could cut him to his core. She may yet prove herself the enemy in a bitter custody case. He decided to tell the truth, but not all of it. It twisted low in his gut that he would follow his father’s path but if she listened, really listened, she would hear the message beneath the words and have an inkling of what had fueled his angry rebellion.
“If you recall, I came into my inheritance in January.” I lost my mom. My only ally.
Her determined jawline eased a bit.
“I found myself with a totally new status.” Finally, officially, on my own. Alone.
Her gaze dipped downward.
“I didn’t handle it particularly well.” I’m not making any excuses.
She nodded, her brow furrowed. “I’m sorry about the loss of your mother.”
“Thanks.” He’d struck a chord, he supposed.
“She was a remarkable lady. A real force in the community. A good Christian who supported so many social causes and cared about people. She really put her faith in action.”
“More than you probably know.” He thought not only of how his mother had taken him in as a child and raised him as her very own, but also of the ways she devoted her own inherited fortune to help those in need. It tugged at Adam’s heart to realize that back then he’d been so fixated on striking back at his father and brothers that he had done nothing to honor his mother and the things she had taught him. That did not alter his plan for revenge, however.
He was a Christian. He just wasn’t that kind of Christian. He fought back a twinge of shame over having even thought that, much less allowed it to stand as his justification. “If it helps, I am not proud of what I did.”
“I’m not the one you owe an apology to.” Josie poked her chin up, fidgeted with the folds of the blanket that still concealed his son from him.
“An apology? I wasn’t aware I owed an apology to anyone.” It was what it was. He felt bad that it had gone so wrong. Felt some shame that his grief and resentment had uncovered his weaknesses instead of revealed his inner strength. But getting all touchy-feely about it now wouldn’t change the past or set things right today.