by Annie Jones
She smiled. “Then come on out in the open. I’m sure people here will be more than happy to talk about you right to your face.”
He did not look amused.
Josie felt bad. She hadn’t meant to hurt his feelings. She’d only tried to lighten the mood, to distract the man a bit after he’d caught her trying to find out more about him. And…and she wanted to show him her diner.
There. That was it. For some reason she wanted her baby’s father to see what she had accomplished this last eight months since the first round of factory layoffs. She wanted him to know his son was being cared for by someone with drive, ambition, good sense and…and her very own pie carousel.
“I was just kidding, Ad—”
He put his index finger to his lips to cut her off. “Please. Don’t say my name.”
She glanced over her shoulder toward the dining room, which had gone uncharacteristically quiet. “Why not?”
“I don’t want anyone to know I’m here. Not yet. I’m staying at a hotel on the highway and being very careful about the streets I take. Please don’t undo all that now.”
“I have to ask again, why not?”
He glanced toward the dinning room as well, then lowered his head and his voice. “Look, I just came by to see the kid. Went by your house and your neighbor told me you had to take him to work with you today.”
Wanted to, not had to, she thought. To keep him safe from you. And she was wise to do it, apparently, since the man had already been by her home and it wasn’t even 9:00 a.m. yet.
As if he sensed her trouble, the small boy in the playpen in the corner of the café shouted and threw a toy in the direction of his mother.
And on the heels of that, Jed, who had been playing with the child, stood up and called out, “Everything all right in there, Sweetie Pie?”
“Sweetie Pie?” Adam stood just inside the door of the kitchen.
Josie rolled her eyes then began pushing at the mess on the floor with the toe of her already pie-plopped shoe. “That’s what everyone around here calls me.”
“Oh?” Adam squatted down and used the pie pan to scoop up the mess. Unlike the spoiled, rich, suspicious-acting man she had been warned about, he didn’t seem to mind getting his hands dirty. Josie could not say the same for his sense of humor. “I thought that your sister was more the everybody’s sweetie type.”
“Leave my sister out of this,” she snapped.
He dropped the pie—pan and all—in the trash, then wiped his hands off on a towel.
Josie rushed over and snatched the pan out again. “I already lost the cost of ingredients on that. I can’t afford the price of a perfectly good pan, as well.”
“Sorry,” he said, and seemed to actually mean it. “My mind was on other things…Sweetie Pie.”
Josie heaved an exaggerated sigh, then went to the cherry pie that had been cooling all this time, cut a healthy slice, slapped it on a plate, then pressed that into his hand. “They call me that because of this.”
He gave her a wary look.
“What’s the matter? You too good to eat small-town-diner, homemade pie?”
“No one ever accused me of being too good for anything, ma’am.” He dipped his head, his eyes glinting. “But my mama did manage to instill enough manners in me that I try not to eat pie with my fingers. At least not in front of a lady.”
Josie blushed at her oversight and hurried to get him a fork.
He dug in, taking as big a bite as the fork would hold. He tasted. He paused. He swallowed. “Mmm.”
“Does that mean you like it?” Why it was important for this man to like her pie, Josie didn’t want to think about. But it was. Very important.
“So good it gives me an idea.”
“I thought we’d already established I am nothing like my sister.”
“Leave your sister out of this.” He wagged his fork at her in warning.
She blushed again. Guilty of the same thing she had just nailed him over.
Jed called out, “Sweetie Pie? You having trouble with that clean-up in there?”
“No.” Josie would not lie but she didn’t want to just disregard Adam’s request totally. “I’ll be out in a minute.”
“Thanks.” He took another bite, set the plate aside and began looking around. “I don’t want people to know I’m in town.”
“How could you possibly keep a thing like that a secret?” Josie tugged up the corner of her apron to wipe his hands on. “Your father or brothers will be sure to make a big deal about your being back in town.”
Using the hem of her offered apron, he pulled her close to him and dabbed a bit of pie filling and crust from the corner of his mouth.
The crisp cotton of her apron looked stark against the darker tone of his hands and face. Just as the whites of his eyes and teeth did. The contrast might have put her in mind of a wolf or some other predator, but when she let her gaze sink deeply into his eyes she felt just the opposite. She felt protected.
He let the apron drop.
Josie stepped away.
Adam put his hands in the back pockets of his black jeans and began looking around the kitchen as he said, “My father and brothers are the last people I want to know I’m here.”
Josie did not have a suspicious nature but that did not sound good. She plunked her hand on her hip. “Well, forgive me for this, but…why?”
He said it along with her, his smile playful.
She folded her arms and did not laugh.
“I can’t say, Josie.” He took her by the upper arms as if he wanted to fix her in time and space so that his message could not go awry. “But I can tell you this—if people start talking about me, someone will remember I was with Ophelia.”
“So?”
“So, then they will start putting the pieces together. They’ll talk. Speculate. They buzz and carry tales back and forth, building them up, getting half the details wrong. That’s the way it is in an anthill of a town this size, right?”
He was right about the nature of small towns, but he was wrong in assuming it was automatically a bad thing. “I heard it said once that a good neighbor is the best family some people ever have. That’s how I feel about the people in this anthill. Outside of my grandmother and Nathan they are the only family I have. I don’t plan to keep any secrets from them.”
“Okay. I’m not asking you to keep secrets so much as to not volunteer anything for as long as possible. Not yet. To everything there is a season, right?”
Josie raised an eyebrow at his ease with scripture. She wondered if she should be impressed or insulted that he could pull it out so readily for his use.
“I’m not suggesting you never tell anyone that I’m Nathan’s father. Just that when you do, the timing should be right.”
“Right? Timing?” Josie shook her head. Her stomach churned. “That certainly sounds a lot like keeping secrets to me, Ad—” she shifted her eyes to the bustle that had resumed in the outer room “—uh, mister.”
“Fine, then think how this sounds. How do you think Conner Burdett will react to the news that he has a grandson right under his nose? One living in a small house with a single mom who sometimes takes the kid to work with her?”
The churning in her stomach turned ice-cold. She wanted to run out into the dinning room, snatch up her child, take him home and hide. Instead she reined in her fears and asked, “He wouldn’t…could he…challenge me for custody?’
“I don’t know what he would do, but if he wanted to, he could. Especially with me not firmly established in the boy’s life.”
“No. No. Adam. Don’t let that happen.” Josie went to him and placed a hand on his chest. She had no business making such a forward move. Only it was not a move. It was an act of desperation. “Please.”
He put his hand on hers and held her in place before him so that he could gaze directly into her eyes. “I won’t, Josie. I will do everything in my power to protect you and Nathan and to keep you together, always.”
“Always,” she murmured. She had no reason to believe the man, but she did.
“Hey, Bingo!”
Josie’s heart skipped, but it wasn’t because of Adam’s promise. Or his nearness.
At least, she told herself those weren’t the reasons.
She’d just been startled. She had been in the kitchen so long she hadn’t heard Bingo beeping for her to come out and collect her mail. Now he’d had to climb down off his scooter and come inside to deliver the mail.
Talk about reasons to get the anthill buzzing!
“You know everyone, Bingo,” called out a woman Josie did not recognize—not Elvie or one of the commuters—which only drove home Adam’s point about how quickly all sorts of folks would be talking about him…and Nathan…and Ophelia. “Maybe you can help us out here. Remember the second Burdett boy?”
“Huh? Oh, yeah. Yeah. The Stray Dawg!”
Adam flinched.
Josie hesitated only a moment before putting her hand on Adam’s sleeve and giving a squeeze.
“What do you know about him?” the strange woman asked again.
“Who’s asking?”
“Josie was…where is that girl?”
“I’m still in the kitchen.” She nabbed the pie pan with one slice missing and headed for the door, leaving Adam to finish clearing away the crumbs of the pie she had dropped.
“Hey, Sweetie Pie.” Bingo waved to her with the stack of mail in his hand. “Interesting y’all should bring up that Burdett now. Didn’t your sister spend some time with that Stray Dawg last time she were in town, Josie?”
“I, uh…” Josie would not lie but she couldn’t bring herself to jog the memories of people who might unknowingly threaten her relationship with Nathan.
“That’s how I remember it.” Bingo placed the mail down on the counter. “Not long after his mama’s death. The pair of them tore around on that motorcycle of his, then they both up and disappeared.”
“That’s right,” someone muttered.
“How could we forget that?” came another comment.
Bingo paused long enough to stretch his legs, being extra-careful of his bum knees. “Until that Ophelia came back to give Josie her baby…”
Grrr-eeee. It went so quiet in the room they could hear Bingo’s joints creak.
Everyone in the room turned at once to look at Nathan.
Josie plopped the pie pan on the counter in front of Jed.
“Go get him,” Adam whispered.
She did not need a second urging.
In a couple of steps she had the baby in her arms. “Oh, y’all, what imaginations.”
Not a lie. Just an observation. An observation intended to distract from the truth. And it left Josie feeling guilty and uncomfortable.
“Now excuse me.” She slipped into the kitchen without further explanation.
Adam met her with his hands open to accept Nathan.
Josie hesitated for a moment.
“You are going to have to trust me sometime, Josie. I am this baby’s father and I am not going to just go away. If we hope to raise him together, we have to trust each other.”
“To everything there is a season,” she murmured back at him.
“Josie, hon? What’s going on?” From the sound of Jed’s voice, he had come around the counter and was headed for the door.
Adam looked at her.
“What will you do with him?” she asked.
“Take him to your house for now.”
“You can’t take him on your motorcycle!”
He smiled. “I’ll walk. I can slip through the back alleys and side streets.”
She pressed her lips together. She was about to let this man she had only just met, a man with the only claim to her son—until his father learned about the connection—just walk away with him.
“Sweetie Pie?”
What choice did she have?
“Go,” she said. She gave her son a kiss on the temple, trying not to allow herself to imagine it might be the very last time she could ever do that. “I’ll slip away and get home after lunch.”
“We’ll be there, Josie.”
“I want to believe you,” she said so softly that she knew the man retreating through the back door could not possibly have heard her.
Chapter Five
“Poor baby.” Josie looked at her grinning son with his T-shirt on backward and inside out, only one sock on and wearing a cereal bowl on his head like a hat.
“Hey!” Adam, sitting on the floor in front of the couch beside the baby, fooled with the waistband of the clean but haphazard diaper, trying to get it to look right. He stood up and surveyed his work. “I think he’s in pretty great shape considering I’ve never taken care of anything more demanding than my career or my Harley.”
Nathan waved a wooden spoon like a regal scepter and babbled his favorite “ya-ya-ya.”
“I didn’t mean Nathan. I meant you.” She laughed and trailed her gaze over the man.
Barefoot, baby powder smudged up and down his jeans, his once crisp business shirt had a row of tape—the kind Josie kept handy for when the disposable diapers came unstuck—down the front placard. His neck and the hollows of his cheeks were ruddy. The side of his hair that wasn’t jutting straight up was globbed down by a blob of orange baby food.
“What?” He held his arms out.
“Nothing.” She put her hand to the tip of her nose to hide her laughter, then added. “I like the new look. Takes business casual to a whole new level.”
“Guess I could use a little…” He whisked the back of his hand down his jeans, creating a cloud of baby powder. Clearly pleased with that, he yanked the tape off, muttering, “Kid kept trying to eat the buttons, so I improvised a safety measure.”
“Nice.” She nodded. “And the reason for the mashed carrots in your hair?”
“The…” He thrust his fingers alongside his temple and raked them straight back. He winced. He withdrew his hand, stared at the orange goo there and exhaled in one exhausted groan. “I had no idea what I was getting into, obviously.”
“You did fine, I’m sure.” Better than Josie had suspected he would do. Her house was not in disarray. Her child was happy. “You hungry?”
“Am I ever.” He reached down and picked up the baby, who promptly whapped him on the head with the wooden spoon. He didn’t even miss a beat as he followed Josie from the room. “I didn’t want to rummage around in your kitchen. But I did steal a taste of Nathan’s baby food.”
“You didn’t!”
“I did.” He made a face then backed up a few steps and slid Nathan into his high chair.
“How was it?”
“You know how some dishes—exotic food, delicacies, specialty dishes—a lot of times are better than they look?”
“Uh-huh.”
“Well, baby food isn’t one of those dishes.” He worked his tongue around as if he was still trying to get the taste off. “When does he start eating real food?”
She laughed then bent to place a kiss on her son’s cheek. “His diet is designed to help him grow healthy and strong.”
“That’s fine for him, but I’m already healthy and strong.”
He certainly was. “Well, lucky for you I didn’t take that into account when I made this plate up for you. I had taste in mind.” She held up the “to go” box and flipped up the lid. The aroma of meat loaf and hot rolls and green beans and fried okra filled the room. The collection of some of her specialties was probably not the usual rich man’s meal, but if the gossip proved true, Adam was no longer a rich man. Surely he’d appreciate the effort if not the flavor.
“Mmm. That smells wonderful.” He took the container and inhaled deeply. “Fried okra? I love fried okra. My mom used to make that.”
“Really?” Josie took a step, slid open a drawer and retrieved a fork to hand him, all the time managing to keep the plastic grocery-style bag over her arm from swinging about and making a mess. “Did she ever make pie?
”
“No, but she made cake—a few thousand a day.”
Josie stilled. “Are you saying the Carolina Crumble Pattie was your mom’s creation?”
“Yep. Well, it was an old family recipe that she perfected.”
The idea her pies relied on an old Burdett family recipe improved upon by Adam’s own mother warmed Josie all over. She opened her mouth to tell Adam so, but he stopped her by closing his eyes, lifting his chin, stretching up his whole body and taking a larger-than-life sniff of the air around them.
“I’ll take care of Nathan for a week if you brought me a slice of pie.”
“Then I guess you’ll be taking care of him the rest of the summer and into the fall, because I brought you a whole pie.” She let the bag rustle. “Sit. I’ll get you a plate.”
“Don’t go to any trouble.” He took a seat at the kitchen table. “This won’t be the first meal I’ve eaten straight out of a take-out box.”
“Nonsense.” She grabbed a plate, then shut the cabinet door quickly so he wouldn’t see that she only owned two decent place settings and one of them was chipped. “Food always tastes better when you eat it off a proper plate.”
“Thanks.” He transferred his lunch from the box, then grinned up at her when she put the whole browned-to-perfection pie to his left. “Must say, your pie certainly looks a lot better on a plate than on the floor.”
“It’s not the only thing that takes on a different appearance when viewed in a more welcoming context.”
“Welcoming.” He said it slowly, his gaze fixed in the distance. He waited a moment and she wondered if he expected to hear an echo or something. Finally he pulled his chair up close to the table and said, “I like that word.”
“I mean it.”
“I believe you do.”
“And you don’t believe your family would feel the same way toward you?”
“If they are smart they won’t.”
Josie didn’t know what to make of that. Was his sentiment sad or sinister?
He dug in, unselfconsciously humming his approval with every bite.
Sad, she decided, and set about trying to change his perception. If you scratched the surface of his stoic, stone-faced, wounded-stray image, many things about Adam were just plain sad. “It all reminds me of the story of the prodigal son.”