Bachelor Father (13 page)

“Oookay, if you’re sure.” Tina’s voice rose
suggestively.

Molly clenched her hands at her side as she
watched Tina slither across the room. What did Brett see in that
woman to make them such close friends?

The door buzzer sounded again.

“Yes,” she called, louder than
necessary.

“Hey, it’s Charles. Open up. It’s cold out
here.”

A minute later, Brett’s other friends arrived.
The guys surprised Molly with what quick order they made of moving
the furniture out and loading it in the truck, despite Tina’s
slinking around giving unnecessary directions.

“You coming, Molly?” Brett called as he
slammed the back door to the step van.”

“I need to check my mailbox. Go ahead and ride
back with Charles. I’ll follow.”

Brett shrugged. “All right. See you in a
while.”

Molly stood in the parking lot and stared up
at the dark window. Someone would be living in her house. But not
for long. She reached in her pocket and fingered the letter from
Donahue & Donahue, Esq., the letter that verified the release
of her trust funds as soon as her stepbrother Scott received a
certified copy of her marriage certificate.

Chapter Nine

“Nah, not this time. You know, Molly and the
kid.” Brett’s voice carried from the kitchen through the
hall.

Molly closed the front door and hung her
jacket in the hall closet. Walking to the kitchen, she noticed
Brett’s and Jake’s jackets tossed over the back of the couch. She
reached to pick them up, but changed her mind. No, their house,
their housekeeping rules.

The crackle and smell of something frying with
onions assailed her as she hit the kitchen doorway. Her eyes
watered at the pungent aroma. Brett’s culinary skills ranged from
no-cooking-required to fast, fried, and spicy. She’d never before
met anyone who fried Span, or for that matter, ate Spam. But who
was she to complain? She didn’t have to cook—or do the
dishes.

“Yeah, sure.” Brett lounged against the wall
and smiled at her over the phone receiver.

Molly lifted the frying pan lid. Stir-fry
hamburger. Well, at least Brett was taking her suggestion to add
more vegetables to his and Jake’s diet—if not her suggestion to cut
out some of the fat.

“Later.” Brett hung up the phone.

“Hi,” Molly said.

Brett pushed himself away from the wall. “Hi,
yourself. That was Josh.”

Molly stirred the hamburger concoction. “Mmm
hmmm.” Josh had helped move her furniture. She turned the burner
down to low.

“He wanted me to come over to the Sportsman
and watch the game tonight.” Brett turned and straddled one of the
ladderback chairs, his forearms resting on the top rung.

Placing the lid back on the pan, Molly turned
to Brett. His face had the same aren’t-I-a-good-boy look Jake
used.

“So, what time are you meeting him?” It would
be kind of fun having Jake all to herself this evening. She could
let her guard down. Brett had a tendency to try and draw them into
happy family time after dinner—unreal scenes that wouldn’t last and
weren’t fair to Jake.

“I’m not.” Brett went to the refrigerator and
pulled out a beer. “You want a glass of wine? I got some of that
dry white you like at the package store when Jake and I walked up
to the post office this morning.”

“Thanks, but not right now. Maybe later. How
come you’re not going to watch the game with the guys?”

Brett put his beer on the table and took three
plates from the cupboard. Molly reached in the drawer for
silverware.

Avoiding eye contact with Molly, Brett said,
“You know. I thought I should stay here with you and
Jake.”

“Brett, you haven’t gone out once the entire
month I’ve been here. From what I hear, that’s quite a change from
your usual routine.” Tina had been quick to fill Molly in on
Brett’s pre-marriage activities.

Brett took a swig of his beer and straddled
the chair again. “Being, um, a family man now, maybe I need a new
routine.”

“Well, yeah, but you don’t need to chain
yourself to me—I mean Jake. She wanted to kick herself for the
slip. Brett needed no encouragement.

“You need to get out and away from him
sometimes.” Even after seeing Brett day in and day out with Jake
over the past few weeks, she still had trouble accepting a parent,
especially a father, who wanted to be with his family so much. Her
friend Charles was like that, but Molly had figured Charles’ work
with children had influenced his “aberrant” behavior.

“Once spring gets here and more surveying jobs
start coming in I’ll be away from Jake all day.”

Molly placed the silverware on the table and
went to the cupboard for glasses, making sure she chose Jake’s new
Pooh bear sippy cup for him. She’d gotten such a kick out of Jake’s
excitement when she’d brought the cup home and showed him it
matched her pillow and the new storybook she’d bought him the week
before.

“Surely, your mother didn’t stay home with you
and Kate all the time.”

“Yes, she did. Pretty much. I told you she
taught right here in New Chatham, so she had all the same school
holidays as Kate and I did.”

“But,” Molly pressed. “She must have belonged
to clubs, or organizations, had friends she liked to meet for
dinner every so often.”

“Not really.” Brett studied her face for a
moment. “She did belong to the garden club at church. And she
chaperoned all the dances and stuff at school. We got to go whether
we wanted to or not,” he added with a grimace.

“Come on, you’re telling me she didn’t have
any friends?” Molly asked, certain Brett was deifying his
mother.

“I didn’t say that.” Brett took another
swallow of his beer. “She had her teaching friends.”

Molly surveyed the table to check if they
needed anything else, her perusal ending with Brett. No one spent
all of his or her free time with their kids. Looking directly into
his liquid brown eyes, she continued to push, “You mean she never
went out with friends, never dated.”

Brett scowled back. “No. I don’t know. Maybe
she went out when we were small. I was only about a year-and-a-half
old when my father was declared missing in action. Kate hadn’t been
born yet.”

This information was new to Molly. All Brett
had told her before was that they’d lived here with his grandmother
and grandfather, while his mother finished her teaching
degree.

“The Service declared my father dead a couple
of years later.”

Molly’s eyes teared at the thought of Brett’s
mother left alone with a toddler and an infant, not knowing if her
husband were dead or alive. She couldn’t have been any older than
Molly.

“Grandpa always thought Mom harbored hopes
that my dad was alive. That’s why she didn’t go out. As I got
older, I decided she never met anyone she could love as much as she
loved my dad.”

Memories flooded Molly. Memories of her mother
all dressed up for another big date, searching for love and money.
Faced with similar situations, Brett’s mother and hers had
certainly taken different directions.

Molly placed her hand on his shoulder. “Brett,
you’re not your mother.” How many times had Charles used exactly
those words to her? “Being a parent—or being married for that
matter—doesn’t mean being constantly tied to the other
person.”

Brett continued to frown. “You learn that in
one of your sociology classes?” he asked.

“No.” She winced; she’d deserved that. She’d
sounded sanctimonious, even to herself. “I think that if you change
your lifestyle completely, never leaving time for yourself, you
might start feeling resentful of Jake, of the
responsibility.”

He looked at her skeptically. “Jake needs
me.”

“Of course, he does and you need him, but not
constantly. Believe me. I know a lot about resentful parents and
how it makes a kid feel.”

“Oh, yeah?”

Molly reached for her cross. Why did she say
that? She didn’t want to talk about her childhood.

“Unca!” Jake called from upstairs where he’d
been napping.

Saved by the
kid
. Molly sighed with relief as Brett
swung out of the chair to go check on Jake.

“Unca!” Jake’s voice was more
urgent.

Brett smiled at Molly. “You’re right, it is
kind of intense being with him all the time. Maybe I’ll call Josh
back after dinner, if you don’t mind watching Jake.”

“I don’t mind.” She could use a break from
Brett’s watchful eye. For some reason, she couldn’t totally relax
with Jake when Brett was around. She was too conscious of his
presence, of his expectations of her professional abilities to
handle children.

“Unca.” Jake’s voice sounded from the living
room now.

“I’m here,” Brett reassured him.

Jake charged into the kitchen. “Boo!” He
hurled himself at Molly.

She still couldn’t get over the way the boy
radiated exuberance, his welcome as enthusiastic today as it had
been the Monday after the wedding when she surprised him by
returning after work. Swinging him into her arms, she let him
plaster her face with wet kisses as he had in his after-work
greeting every day since she’d moved in. She squeezed him. “How’s
the big boy today?”

“Boo’s big boy.” He beamed.

Molly’s heart filled with a sense of
belonging. She really shouldn’t let Jake think of himself as hers.
“Do you have any kisses left for Uncle Brett?”

Jake squirmed to get down. He hit the floor
running and raced over to plaster Brett with kisses. Brett tickled
Jake and lifted him high above his head, making the child squeal
with delight.

The warm glow of their affection encompassed
Molly. Brett and Jake looked so right together—Brett’s hard
chiseled features contrasting with the roundness of the
toddler’s.

A stab of guilt dimmed the glow. This morning
she’d received a memo from the director of adoptions, reminding her
that she hadn’t finished putting together the International
Adoption Program’s Waiting Children Book for this month. She’d put
off the job to avoid listing Jake as available. Until Brett
received approval on his application and a referral could be made,
Korean Child Welfare required Jake to be included in the book. By
doing her job, Molly could pave the way for someone else to adopt
Jake.

“Boo, now.” Jake’s voice cleared Molly’s
thoughts.

“What, Jake?”

“Kiss Unca.”

Not again. Molly had hoped Jake would lose
this part of the welcome-home routine; she’d asked Brett to
discourage it. She looked at Brett. He held out his arms and
grinned. No help from that direction. She had to put a stop to
this. They were giving Jake the wrong idea. It couldn’t be good for
the little guy to see them as a couple, not when she’d be gone in a
couple of months.

“Boo.” He stomped his little shoeless foot.
“Kisses.”

Brett quirked an eyebrow.

Molly felt like stomping her foot, too. Brett
thought it all a big game. Well, two could play. Imitating Jake,
Molly hurled herself into Brett’s open arms, hoping to throw his
intentions off balance. She caught him off balance all right. He
stepped back, knocking the chair over. It hit the floor with a loud
thud.

“Go boom!” Jake squealed with delight and
clapped.

Molly struggled to maintain her
balance. What had she been thinking? Visions of Brett falling and
cracking his head open on tile floor flashed before her. She could
see the news headline now.
Man bleeds to
death on kitchen floor when wife passes out at sight of
blood
.

She flung her arms around Brett’s waist as he
took another step back and reached back to brace himself on the
wall.

“Oomph.” His elbows hit the wall and he slid
to the floor, taking Molly with him.

Jake danced around them. “Unca, go boom. Boo
go boom. We all fall down.” He plopped himself on the floor next to
them.

Pulling her arms out from behind Brett, Molly
scrambled to her knees between his sprawled legs and placed her
hands on his shoulders. “Are you all right?”

He leaned against the wall and rubbed one
elbow, a smile returning to his face.

“I’m fine.” His smile widened, making Molly
wonder if he had hit his head and knocked himself silly. His elbows
must be smarting, yet he sat there grinning at her.

To avoid meeting his eyes, she
began to dust herself off. As she brushed at her skirt, her sleeve
button popped off and hit the floor with a
ping
. Molly watched it roll across
the floor to Jake. He scooped it up and popped it in his
mouth.

“Jake, no,” they cried in unison.

Jake froze at the strident tone of their
voices, the button still in his mouth.

“Give the button to me.” Brett rushed to Jake
and held out his hand. Jake spit the button into Brett’s
palm.