Accidental Parents

by Jane Toombs

  Not until then had she realized they were only a few miles from where Alice had been injured in the crash of her stolen van.

  “I think Nathan called for the helicopter.”

  “After it comes, can we still go to his place?”

  Shaken as she was by the day’s events, that sounded like a good idea to Jade and she nodded.

  “Doc saved us,” Tim added.

  Later, after the deputies had asked their questions and been told what happened, and the copter had transported the injured couple—who would live, Nathan had told her—to Washoe Med, Jade drove behind him to the clinic.

  Once upstairs in his apartment, he sat on the couch, pulled Tim onto his lap, then motioned for her to sit next to him. He put his arm around her shoulders.

  “Okay, we all survived. Let’s talk it through,” he said. “As our favorite shrink would say, that’s the best way to get it behind us.”

  “How come you were on that road?” Jade asked.

  “I was coming to your place. Had a emergency right after you called. A toddler swallowed a bunch of baby aspirin and needed his stomach washed out. Then it took me forever to arrange for someone to cover for me.”

  “They wanted to wreck us,” Tim said.

  “I saw that. I recognized your pickup right away, saw what the brown van was trying to do and did my best to stop it.”

  “I told Jade you’d keep us safe.”

  “You bet I will.” His arm tightened around Jade. “Your turn.”

  She repeated her story of the couple coming to the door up to the point where Tim disappeared. “He has to tell you about that,” she said.

  “Hot Shot showed me a good place to hide, so I climbed up in the tree house,” Tim explained. “But then Jade found me and so it wasn’t a real good place to go.”

  “Why did you think you had to hide?” Nathan asked.

  “’Cause they wanted to take me away and I got scared. But then Jade said we’d come to your place and I knew you wouldn’t let them.”

  “I wouldn’t have let them take you,” Jade said, upset that he’d think she might

  “There was two of them and only one of you,” Tim pointed out. “You said there had to be a mama and a daddy.”

  “We were talking about babies.”

  “Yeah, but Yasmin’s not a baby and she’s got Linnea and Talal. Danny’s got a mother and two daddies. If you’re gonna be my mother, why can’t I have a daddy? I only need one.”

  Silence followed his remarks.

  Nathan was the first to speak. “I agree that one daddy should be plenty. But first we need to find out more about Alice and why she brought you here with her. Anything you can remember might help.”

  “But I don’t ever wanna go back to him,” Tim protested.

  “You won’t have to.” The finality of Nathan’s tone was a promise.

  “I was asleep,” Tim said slowly. “Alice screamed and woke me up and I hid under the bed like I always do when he gets mad and starts hitting her. I saw her run down the hall by the bedroom, but he caught her and hit her some more. Then she hit him on the head with something and he fell down.

  “Alice knew I was under the bed. She made me get dressed and go with her. We walked and walked. Then she found the van and we drove.”

  “Did the man get up after Alice hit him?” Jade . asked.

  Tim shook his head. “That’s how come we got away.”

  When it was clear Tim was finished with his story, Jade said, “The man he’s afraid of claims to be Tim’s grandfather. Apparently he traveled to Vietnam and brought Tim to America.”

  “She tried to stop him,” Tim put in.

  “Alice?” Nathan sounded confused.

  “No, I think he means the woman in the brown van.”

  “Then there has to be some connection between her and the grandfather,” Nathan said. “A step toward getting this puzzle solved. Did you live in Sacramento, cowboy?”

  He nodded. “I didn’t wanna tell you before ’cause I was scared you’d make me go back to him.”

  Jade glanced at Nathan. Was he wondering, like she was, if Tim’s grandfather had ever gotten up after that hit on the head? Maybe Steve could find out.

  “That’s enough of a therapy session for now,” Nathan said. “Why don’t we go out and buy some food for supper? We can eat lunch on the way.”

  “Lunch sounds good,” Jade agreed. “But supper?”

  “You and Tim are spending the night with me. In fact, I think you should stay here until the police solve this whole mess. The two in the van will be out of commission for a while, but we don’t know who else might show up.”

  Jade stiffened, sliding away from Nathan and standing up. What had she said about him not being controlling?

  Before she could open her mouth in protest, he rose and set Tim on his feet, saying, “Ready, cowboy?”

  “Can we really stay?” Tim asked, looking from Nathan to her and back. “Nobody’ll ever find us here.”

  “I don’t think anyone’s looking for us,” Jade said firmly. “Not now. You heard Nathan say the people in the brown van aren’t going to be bothering anybody for a while.”

  “But what about him? What if he comes after us?”

  “I’m going to call Steve right now and tell him everything that’s happened and what we’ve learned. I’m sure he’ll do something about your grandfather.” Have the police check to see if the man’s still alive, for one thing, she thought. Was it possible Alice had killed him? That would explain why she’d fled and why she’d taken Tim with her—he’d been a witness.

  Tim didn’t seem particularly reassured by her call to Steve.

  “Maybe we can stay for supper,” she conceded.

  “And tonight? Can we stay tonight?”

  Although aware she was letting Tim manipulate her, she also knew he’d been thoroughly frightened and so she gave in. “Tonight,” she agreed. “But we’ll go home in the morning.”

  After Steve returned her call, promising to alert the Sacramento police, they left the apartment.

  Later, after a joint effort in cooking supper, even Tim helping, they sat down to a meal of rice and stir-fry, with ice cream to follow.

  Like a family, she thought unwillingly. Like the mama and daddy Tim wants. Still, she admitted to enjoying the fantasy; Nathan seemed to, as well. Why not? A family was the basis of life itself, two adults to nurture the child. But in this case it was no more than a temporary illusion.

  She still had a bone to pick with Nathan, once Tim was asleep. Which brought up the problem of where they all would sleep.

  “In my bed, of course,” Nathan told her. “There’s plenty of room for the three of us.”

  “Whoa, that’s cool,” Tim said.

  “I can tell you’ve been going to school,” Nathan observed, giving her a wry grin. “Enlarging your vocabulary, for sure.”

  “I get to sleep in the middle,” Tim added.

  Since Tim was so enthusiastic. Jade saw no reason to disagree. With the boy as chaperon, there’d be no problem.

  By seven-thirty, Tim was yawning. Once in his pajamas and read to, he settled down in the middle of the king-sized bed with Freddie. They left the door ajar. Speaking in a low tone so she wouldn’t disturb him, Jade confronted Nathan. “Don’t you ever try to control me again,” she told him. “I make my own decisions.”

  He gave her a blank stare. “Control you? What the devil are you talking about?”

  “Planning that we should stay here. I agreed to remain here tonight because Tim’s had a bad scare, but you know as well as I do there’s no danger. We’ll be perfectly safe at home.”

  “I said I thought you should stay here, and I still do think so. In what way is that controlling? Besides, if you weren’t planning on being here overnight, why did you bring pajamas and toothbrushes?”

  “That was before the accident. Since they’re now hospitalized, I’m no longer worrying about what the Vietnamese couple is up to. We’re
no longer in need of protection.”

  “I’m surprised you compromised your precious independence by asking me for help in the first place.” Jade heard the tight control in his voice and realized he was furious with her.

  Her own anger escalated, but before she could deliver a scathing reply, a loud buzzer sounded.

  “Emergency,” Nathan muttered, and headed for the door to downstairs.

  Evidently his coverage ended with nightfall. Whatever awaited him in the clinic took a while to tend to, and in that time she had a chance to cool down. Maybe she’d been too hasty in calling him controlling—she was inclined to be a tad sensitive about control. Overprotective might have been a better choice of words.

  He was truly concerned about Tim’s welfare, besides. It could be he was trying to protect Tim rather than her, but she came with Tim in a package deal. Once again she’d spoken before thinking it through.

  Apologize? She hated the very word, it always made her feel she was groveling. Perhaps she took after her grandfather, who never apologized for anything. Probably because he’d always believed he was right. Of course, he hadn’t been, any more than she was always right.

  Or maybe she had some characteristics of the Kholi father who’d died before she was born. Talal was the only Kholi she knew, and she was well aware he had to work at not being arrogant.

  Yet Kholi genes were no excuse for her, raised in America by a no-nonsense grandmother who’d tried to curb her impulsiveness and make her the lady Grandfather expected her to be.

  “Okay, like it or not, I’ll apologize,” she muttered as she heard Nathan climbing the stairs.

  He forestalled her by speaking first. “I got a call while I was sewing up this guy’s cut hand in the clinic. I have to go out and see a patient. Be back as soon as possible, but it may take me a while.”

  It did. Jade got drowsy, so she put on her sleep T-shirt and crawled in beside Tim. She woke when Nathan returned and came to bed, becoming overly conscious of him lying just beyond Tim, close but untouchable. She hadn’t realized the situation would make her feel so frustrated.

  In this very same bed she and Nathan had come together, sharing a passion she hadn’t realized she was capable of. She imagined his arms around her, his lips on hers, heating her very soul. She bit back a moan at the thought of his hand and his tongue caressing her...

  How in heaven’s name could she expect to relax when she shared the same bed with him?

  Tired as he was, Nathan couldn’t go to sleep, all too aware of Jade on the other side of his bed, barred from him by the small body of Tim.

  Though a small residual remained, he’d gotten over being annoyed with her. It had always been difficult for him to hang on to anger for very long, a characteristic that Gloria had exploited.

  He couldn’t recall ever wanting Gloria with the febrile intensity of his need for Jade. Jade had gotten under his skin in a way no other woman ever had. He smiled to himself. You might say he’d become infected with her, and the only cure was to make love with her as often as possible.

  Or, perhaps, that was only a palliative treatment. How frustrating that he couldn’t reach out now and pull her into his arms, taste her lips, her breasts, feel her soft warmth against him as he—

  Damn. Aroused as he’d managed to get himself, he’d never get to sleep. Tossing restlessly, he almost welcomed the sound of the beeper when it went off. He leaped from the bed, grabbed the beeper from the dresser and clicked it off, then picked up the phone.

  Nathan’s beeper roused Tim. Jade put her hand on his back, rubbing it gently, and he fell back to sleep even before Nathan had hung up the phone. She heard the rustle of clothes as Nathan dressed, and realized he had to see another patient.

  It had never before occurred to her what a doctor’s life must be like. Because he had a rural practice in a relatively isolated area, Nathan might get called out more often than many physicians, but she realized that most doctors would have to take some calls at night.

  One thing about well drilling, the emergencies were almost always during daylight hours. And, if you knew what you were doing, the emergencies were few and far between. Doctors, though, couldn’t control emergencies, no matter how skilled they were.

  As she listened to him go down the stairs, then heard the roar of the Jeep engine, it suddenly occurred to her that, since she couldn’t sleep, anyway, there was a perfect way for her to apologize to him without the need for words.

  Chapter Eleven

  After Nathan left the apartment, Jade eased cautiously from the bed so she wouldn’t wake Tim. Padding into the kitchen, she began to poke into the cupboards and the refrigerator. When she’d amassed all the ingredients she needed, she combined the mixture for bran muffins, filled the cups of a rather battered muffin tin and popped it into the oven.

  While she was waiting for the muffins to bake, she unloaded the clean dishes from the dishwasher and slid the dirty ones in. Then she made coffee.

  The timer dinged to let her know the muffins were done just as Nathan opened the door.

  “Something smells good,” he commented.

  “Muffins and coffee. Be my guest.”

  He smiled. “How’d you know I like muffins?”

  “A natural deduction, given the state of the muffin tin.”

  “I inherited it from my grandmother—she called it a gem pan. By whatever name, I love ’em. All kinds.”

  While she put some of the muffins on a plate, he kicked of his moccasins, poured himself a mug of coffee and sat down at the kitchen table.

  “Paiute myth has it there’s a trickster lurking about,” she said as she lowered herself into the chair across from him. “He delights in confounding humans every chance he gets. Sometimes I can believe it’s true-especially when he puts words in my mouth that don’t get edited first by my brain.”

  Nathan’s puzzlement changed to admiration mixed with a touch of exasperation as he realized what she meant. Trust Jade to find a way to apologize for what she’d accused him of earlier without actually coming right out and saying she was sorry. He took a bite of muffin and, savoring the taste, decided no matter what she’d said, all was forgiven.

  After the next bite of muffin, he asked, “How do you know the trickster is a he?”

  “The stories say so. Who am I to doubt another culture’s myth?”

  “How come you know so much about the Paiutes?”

  He listened while she told him about the delinquent adolescent boy she’d big-sistered by teaching him how to work on a drilling rig. “He’d rejected his Paiute heritage, so we learned about it together,” she finished. “I was thrilled when Steve located the father who’d thought his son was dead and father and son got together.”

  “Steve seems to be good at finding out things.”

  “If anyone can help with Tim, he can.”

  “Didn’t you mention once that Zed and Karen tried to match you up with Steve?” He knew damn well she’d told him that. Was that why he didn’t enjoy hearing her praise the man?

  “One unhappy, failed marriage convinced him women were to be avoided—except for brief flings. That’s not my style and he knew it. A very astute man, Steve.”

  Even though he liked the guy well enough, he’d had quite enough of Steve Henderson. “Failed marriages do tend to make us men wary.”

  “Oh? Why would you assume all women are alike? You certainly don’t think all men are the same, do you?”

  Jade could leap with both feet into a argument faster than anyone he knew. “No two people are alike,” he said tersely and picked up another muffin. “These are comparable to Grandma’s gems,” he said.

  “I’ll take that as a compliment. I also take it you don’t care to talk about your divorce.”

  “Not particularly, no. Among other things, what it did was persuade me that one try at marriage was enough.”

  “I’ve never wanted to get married,” she said. “Not that I have anything against it, but I’ve never found a
man I cared to share the rest of my life with.”

  Jade would certainly not make what he’d call a comfortable life partner. “No man, ever?” he asked.

  She shook her head.

  He grinned at her. “All of us men are alike, is that it? Too controlling?”

  He saw she was trying not to laugh. She failed. “Touché,” she told him.

  Sliding down in the chair until he rested on the end of his spine, he couldn’t recall feeling so relaxed with anyone, not for a long time. Jade was like family. The word had struck him earlier when they, with Tim, were getting supper—family. But not blood realatives, not with this intense physical attraction he felt for her. Need simmered in him.

  “Your grandmother would tell you sitting that way will ruin your posture,” she said.

  “You must be thinking of someone else’s grandma. Mine was not a nitpicker.”

  Jade sighed. “My own, actually. She and Grandpa raised Zed and me. I loved them, but they were never quite satisfied they’d done their best with me. Zed, . yes. Me, no.”

  “So you’re still rebelling?”

  She blinked, finally saying, “Maybe.”

  “You sound like Tim with that ‘maybe.’ Where did he get this mother and daddy idea, anyway?” He watched her blush, wondering why.

  “I think it came from his finding out Linnea is going to have a baby,” she said as her color receded. “Also, his grandfather told him his mother was dead and buried in the ground. No heart, that man, in addition to his other major deficiencies. Anyway, Tim wanted to know if I’d be his mother. I told him I wanted to be.”

  Had she blushed because Tim had picked him as the daddy? No way could that be arranged, no matter how fond he was of the poor kid.

  After a silence Jade said, “Okay, I’ve decided we can eliminate controlling where you’re concerned. But you are a tad overprotective.”

  He started to deny it and paused. Could be she had a point. “Possibly,” he said after a moment. “I suppose it comes from way back, from the time I didn’t protect my sister when I should have.”

  “Laura?”

  “Yeah. It was a long time ago, when we were kids. She’ll be in Reno for a job interview soon, by the way. I’d like you to meet her.”