Corporate Daddy

by Arlene James

  “Cole is well,” Lily said proudly. “His practice keeps him much too busy, but I still wish he’d find a nice girl and settle down. Maria, now…” Lily shook her head sadly and sent a speaking glance at Hannah. “I never really know what’s going on with my younger daughter or how she is. Maria prefers to keep her distance.”

  Hannah sighed. “Maybe I should talk to her.”

  “I think that’s a good idea,” Rosita said, never shy about speaking her piece. “You should drive down to Leather Bucket now while you’re this close, and take Logan and Eden with you.”

  “Yes, do that!” Lily prodded. “Ryan and I will entertain the baby.”

  “Sure, we’d be glad to,” Ryan said.

  “Oh, I don’t know,” Logan mumbled. “Amanda Sue doesn’t usually like me to leave her with anyone but Emily.”

  Eden rolled her eyes. “Honestly! There are doting fathers, and then there are doting fathers. You always did take everything to the extreme.”

  “It’s just that she’s had her world turned upside down once already, and she’s a little insecure about me disappearing on her.”

  “Emily who?” Ryan wanted to know, and Logan was obliged to explain that his talented, efficient executive assistant just also happened to be the world’s leading expert on child care.

  As if to bolster his assertions, Amanda Sue tapped him on the chest and said seriously, “Oan Mimy.”

  “We’ll see Emily tomorrow,” he promised.

  Amanda Sue pointed toward the door through which they’d entered and said, “Go!”

  “All right,” he said, getting up. “Come on, girls. We’ll take my car and drive down to Leather Bucket.”

  “I guess that’s that,” Rosita said briskly. “The little señorita knows her mind, eh?”

  Laughing, everyone got up and headed out. They said goodbyes at the door, and Amanda Sue dutifully dispensed kisses to Ryan, Lily and Rosita, but her attention was on the car. Hannah got into the back with Amanda Sue, while Eden rode up front with Logan. They were leaving the drive when Logan asked, “Was it just me, or did Rosita seem anxious for Ryan and Lily to be left alone?”

  Hannah smiled. “I keep telling her not to worry. Mama isn’t going to change her mind at this stage. Confidentially, we’re already planning the wedding.”

  Logan craned his neck around at that. “No kidding? That’s great!”

  “I hope it works out for them,” Eden said quietly.

  “So do I,” Hannah added soberly. “Sophia has been giving Mama fits, and I can tell Ryan’s losing patience with her.”

  “That divorce has already dragged on too long,” Logan commented. “Someone should do something about Sophia.”

  “I would welcome suggestions,” Hannah said darkly. “I just don’t understand why she’s doing this. She doesn’t love Ryan.”

  “She loves his money, though,” Eden muttered wryly, and Logan couldn’t help thinking that her acerbic judgment about summed up his uncle’s spoiled, immature second wife. The whole family knew he’d made a mistake marrying her, but after having been widowed after his first wife Janine died, Ryan had been especially vulnerable. It was beginning to look, though, as if Lily Redgrove Cassidy would turn out to be the love of Ryan’s life. They both deserved this happiness. After being separated from one another for over thirty years, it was high time that their old romance was rekindled. Logan wished them well.

  The rest of the drive was given over to small talk about shared experiences, children and business. Logan knew he went on too much about his daughter, but he couldn’t seem to help it. He was unaware, however, how often he mentioned Emily. He did realize that he missed her, though, even now with the chatter going back and forth so fast that he could hardly keep up with it.

  They stopped in the small town of Leather Bucket for soft drinks. Amanda Sue had fallen asleep in her car seat, so Logan stayed behind in the car while Eden and Hannah went into the convenience store. Finally, Hannah directed them to the run-down trailer park where Maria was living. This time, Eden insisted on staying behind with her sleeping niece. Reluctantly, Logan got out of the car and opened Hannah’s door for her.

  “Don’t be upset if Maria is rude,” Hannah whispered as they climbed the dusty sloping yard. “She’s got some kind of hang-up where you Fortunes are concerned. I think Mama hoped that having you and Eden drop in for a visit might convince her to lighten up.”

  “No problem,” Logan said. “I’ve learned to be too stupid to insult when it suits me.”

  Hannah shot him a look of pure gratitude. He noticed that she squared her shoulders and took a deep breath before running up the rusty iron steps to the door of the trailer. He stepped up beside her just as she tapped on the door and thrust it open, calling out, “Maria! It’s—” The last word trailed away as Hannah took in the scene inside the trailer’s shabby little living room. Logan ducked his head and followed her inside.

  The floor was strewn with baby toys. A bag of disposable diapers had been torn open and left to spill out onto the couch. A rumpled crib stood against the double window next to a small television set. Most shocking of all, Maria stood defensively at the end of a narrow hallway, a child in her arms. She was dressed in blue jeans, a dark T-shirt, running shoes, and a frilled black apron, her dark hair caught at the nape with a rubber band. The handles of both a purse and a bulging diaper bag were slung over one shoulder. Clearly, she was not happy to see them.

  “What do you think you’re doing?”

  “Dropping in on my sister,” Hannah said firmly. “Who’s baby is that?”

  Frowning, Maria shrugged and pulled up the hood on the lightweight bunting the child wore. “He belongs to a neighbor. I’ve been baby-sitting for extra cash, but if she doesn’t pick him up soon I’ll be late for work. It’s almost time for the dinner rush.”

  “You’re a waitress, I take it,” Logan said with a smile, hoping to lighten the mood.

  “That’s right,” Maria retorted. “Anything wrong with that?”

  Logan shook his head. “It’s hard work.”

  “A Fortune wouldn’t know about that, I guess,” she said cattily. Hannah caught her breath, but Logan forestalled a scolding with a hand clamped lightly on her forearm. Maria seemed disappointed that she hadn’t elicited an outburst from someone. She cocked one hip and said in a marginally more friendly tone, “I haven’t seen you in ages. Logan, isn’t it?”

  “That’s right.”

  “Figures. I hear Holden’s married now, so the little woman probably wouldn’t be letting him out of her sight yet, not if she’s smart, anyway. The question is, what are you doing here with her?” She nodded at Hannah.

  “My daughter’s in the car with my sister, Eden,” Logan said calmly. “We met Hannah and your mother at Uncle Ryan’s and thought we’d give her a ride when she said she’d like to check on you.”

  “Check on me?” Maria tossed her head and lifted a cryptic eyebrow. “Why am I not surprised? You just can’t accept the fact that I’m perfectly capable of living my own life, can you, Hannah?”

  “We only want to know that you’re okay,” Hannah said, but Maria scoffed at that.

  While the sisters bickered, Logan couldn’t help comparing Maria with both her mother and her sister. She had Lily’s dark good looks, but she was a little too thin for his taste, and she completely lacked her sister’s warmth. She was, in fact, as cold and hard as ice. It was difficult to imagine her as an adequate baby-sitter. He glanced sympathetically at the infant in her arms, seeing only the impression of a plump face and waving fist. He certainly wouldn’t want to leave his Amanda Sue with the likes of Maria Cassidy, but he supposed that some parents had little choice. Still, she was sure no Emily. But then, who was?

  Maria cut the visit short by insisting that she had to go. “If his mom won’t come get him, I’ll just have to take him to her,” she said.

  “Let me help you,” Hannah offered, reaching for the child as Maria drew near, but Maria jerked
back sharply.

  “No! H-he doesn’t like strangers. I won’t have him screaming all the way down to Sandy’s.”

  He didn’t seem particularly skittish to Logan, but it wasn’t any of his business. He did notice that the child seemed well cared for, and his opinion of Maria improved incrementally.

  “Let me carry the diaper bag, at least,” Hannah said, but Maria spurned even that offer.

  Stepping past Logan, she slipped out and down the steps, calling over her shoulder, “Just close the door behind you.”

  Logan motioned for Hannah to go first and followed, pulling the door closed. “I’m going after her,” Hannah said, and he nodded.

  “Take your time. I’ll wait in the car.”

  He got in behind the wheel. Eden said, “I didn’t know Maria had a child.”

  “Apparently he belongs to one of the neighbors.” He checked Amanda Sue, who was drooling all over her sweater in her sleep. “You think she’s cutting teeth? Emily says she could be.”

  Eden smiled. “I like this version of you, Logan. You’re a good father. Has Emily told you that?”

  “As a matter of fact, she has.”

  “Emily seems to have taken quite a major role in your life lately,” Eden said.

  Hoping to squelch Eden’s speculation, Logan looked into the rearview mirror, watching Hannah try to talk to her stubborn sister as they trudged down the rough street. “You have to understand,” he said. “I don’t think I could do it like you have, Eden. Emily’s great help. She’s made me a far better father than I would be on my own. And Amanda Sue deserves the very best I can give her.”

  Eden reached across the seat and took his hand. “She has it.”

  “I mean to see that she always does,” he told her. “Here comes Hannah.”

  He started the car and backed it up, stopping when he reached Hannah, who got in and swept her hair back with one hand, sighing. “I just don’t know what’s happening with my sister. It’s like she’s mad at the world. I doubt she’ll be baby-sitting that little one anymore after the way she talked to his mother. I could tell the woman was shocked to hear that she was making Maria late.”

  “I wouldn’t worry about it,” Logan said. “She’s probably keeping more than one. She certainly has the makings of an adequate nursery.”

  “Maybe so,” Hannah said. “I asked her if she wasn’t afraid of losing what money the woman owed her, but she didn’t seem concerned.”

  “Maybe she gets paid in advance,” Eden said. “Lots of sitters do.”

  Hannah nodded, but Logan could tell she was puzzling over something else as he turned the car around and headed out of the trailer park. He noticed, too, that Maria, who was supposedly in such an all-fired hurry, stood defensively by her old car until they were all the way at the end of the street.

  “How old would you think the mother of such a young child would be?” Hannah asked as he turned the car out into the intersection.

  Eden shrugged. “Early twenties to late thirties, usually, but we all know that these days a new mother can be a teenager or a middle-aged matron.”

  Hannah nodded, but the next instant she was shaking her head. “That woman’s too old,” she whispered.

  Something nudged Logan to speak up. “What woman?”

  But Hannah waved a hand and laughed at herself. “Never mind. It’s not important. Maria may not be the loving daughter and sister we’ve always wanted her to be, but there’s nothing new in that. At least I can tell Mama that she’s all right.”

  Logan smiled, but he couldn’t help thinking that he’d be brokenhearted and probably fit to be tied if Amanda Sue turned out like Maria Cassidy. But he wouldn’t let that happen. He wasn’t quite sure how he’d prevent it, but somehow he would. He wondered what Emily would have to say about it, and suddenly he missed her with a pang of such longing that he made up his mind to leave for San Antonio as soon as possible. He’d intended to put it off until nightfall, hoping Amanda Sue would sleep through the drive, but he knew now that he wasn’t going to wait a minute longer than necessary to say a polite farewell. Suddenly beyond endurance, he depressed the accelerator a little further and imagined that Emily waited for him, arms open.

  Nine

  Emily sat dejectedly on the bed in the waning twilight. Goody sprawled next to her, meticulously cleaning her paws, but Emily could not find the energy to raise her hand and stroke the tigerish fur. This was ridiculous. She’d always loved lazy weekends, lounging around with her cat, a good book and a cup of coffee or hot cocoa, snug in her little apartment despite the cold rain pouring down outside. She hoped the rain wouldn’t cause problems for Logan and Amanda Sue on their drive up from the ranch, but then, that was precisely the problem. She just couldn’t get those two our of her mind, couldn’t seem to get interested in anything else.

  She looked at the clock on the bedside table. Four minutes of five. Oh, would this weekend never end? If only Cathy hadn’t been too busy to come over. She’d sensed during their two brief telephone conversations that Cathy needed the break in her busy schedule even more than she, Emily, needed distraction from the monotony of a solitary weekend.

  Monotony. Who was she kidding? She was missing Logan and Amanda Sue as if they were her arms and legs. She felt incapacitated by their absence, however temporary, and she knew with awful certainty that it was just a taste of her life to come. How was it that the future had seemed so safe, so acceptable, so normal, only a few weeks ago?

  When the telephone rang, she very nearly didn’t pick it up, but then she thought about cold rain falling on slick roads and unexpected panic had her grabbing for the receiver before the answering machine could switch on.

  “Hello?”

  “Em? Is that you? Are you okay?”

  Logan. Relief swept through her, and another emotion that scared her half to death welled up, pushing a lump into her throat. She closed her eyes and tried to sound relaxed. “I’m fine. How are you?”

  “Tired,” he said, “and hungry. We just got in.”

  “You’re home.” She couldn’t prevent the relief from creeping into her voice.

  “Safe and sound.” She heard insistent little-girl babble in the background. Then, “Hold on a sec. Amanda Sue wants to talk to you. Say ‘hi’ to Emily,” he coached, sounding far away.

  “Hi-i-i, Mimy.”

  Emily smiled, tears building behind her eyelids. “Hello, darling. How was your weekend at the ranch?”

  “Traz n Awya run-run n gibby-ub Guhmama gimme num-num un eed iggle tummy.”

  “She’s patting her tummy, whatever that means,” Logan supplied. “I think she’s telling you about her cousins Travis and Sawyer.”

  “Yeah,” Amanda Sue confirmed, “Traz n Awya.”

  She went off on another tangent, babbling away as if totally confident every word was understood. “Guhmama” came up several times.

  “I think she’s talking about her grandmother now,” Logan interpreted. “She’s nodding.”

  Finally Amanda Sue’s babble came to an end with, “Mon, Mimy. Mon bing Gooey hom.”

  Logan chuckled. “She’s telling you to come on home and bring Goody with you.”

  Emily smiled, wanting nothing more than to do just that, but she had no justification for such unwise action, none at all. She swallowed against the lump in her throat. “I’ll see you tomorrow morning, darling. You have a nice dinner and get some rest.”

  “Which darling would that be?” Logan said directly into her ear. “The short one has had her say and abandoned the post in favor of making my bed a shambles by building a ‘house’ with my pillows, a little trick taught her by her rowdy cousins.”

  Emily laughed. “Sounds as if she had a very eventful weekend.”

  “We both did,” he said. Then, softly, he added, “We missed you.”

  Heat expanded the lump in her throat so that she couldn’t speak for a long moment. “H-how is your mom?”

  “Oh, Mom is great. She loves being a gra
ndmother again, but she’s worried about my uncle Ryan.” He filled her in briefly on Ryan’s difficulties. The kidnapping she knew about, the divorce and possible remarriage were news—to which she wasn’t at all sure she was entitled. “We had a strange visit with Maria Cassidy,” he went on. “That’s Lily’s youngest daughter. She seems to hate Fortunes on principle, which is odd since she used to work at the big house. It made me feel sorry for Lily and Hannah—she’s the older daughter. It made me glad that my sister Eden isn’t like Maria. Hannah’s nice enough. My sister wants to come and see you, by the way.”

  “Me?” Emily was shocked.

  “I told her to drop by the house anytime. That’s all right, isn’t it?”

  She wanted to say no. She didn’t know why, but she very much feared meeting Logan’s family socially, getting to really know them, like them. What if she and Eden didn’t appreciate one another? What if they did? She took a deep breath and said the only thing she could. “Sure.”

  “Okay, then. So, how was your weekend?”

  Miserable, she thought. “Fine,” she said. “I love staying in and snuggling down when the weather’s miserable like this.”

  He sighed. “I guess that means I can’t talk you into coming over tonight.”

  She bit her lip. “I don’t think that’s wise. My old car—”

  “You’re right,” he said. “I don’t want you out in that thing. We could always come and get you.”

  “You shouldn’t be taking Amanda Sue back out in this weather,” she said briskly. “I’ll see you in the morning.”

  “But not for long,” he complained. “I’ll be in the office all day.”

  “I thought that was the point,” she said, smiling because he wanted to spend time with her, then frowning because she wanted to spend time with him.

  “Daddy,” Amanda Sue demanded loudly in the background. “Hungy num-nums.”

  “I guess I’d better rustle up some dinner,” he said reluctantly. “You’re sure you won’t—”

  “I’m glad you’re home safely,” she interrupted. “Kiss Amanda Sue for me. I’ll see you in the morning.”