Somebody's Baby (6 page)

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.

“P
oor 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.”

“No, Josie.” He stabbed a bite of meat loaf. “This is nothing like that.”

“It certainly seems—”

“No. The prodigal son came crawling back, willing to live as a servant or to eat with the animals.” He gestured with the meat loaf still on his fork. “That is not the case with me. No.”

“Adam…”

“I’ve returned to Mt. Knott with a plan, and humbling myself before my father is not part of it.” He took the bite, chewed, then struggled to swallow.

Josie couldn’t decide if the food or the feelings were responsible for that. Just in case, she jumped up and got the gallon of milk from the fridge, poured him a big glass, then plunked it down in front of him. “If you don’t hope to reconcile with your family, then just why did you come to Mt. Knott?”

He froze with the glass of milk halfway between the plate and his mouth. He shifted his eyes quite pointedly in Nathan’s direction.

“Don’t give me some noble story about coming for your son.” She beat him to the punch.

By the look on his face he didn’t know whether to respond with indignation or by being impressed.

“If all you wanted was to claim Nathan, then you could have sent a lawyer or the sheriff or, more logically, shown up on my doorstep with both of those.” That’s how she’d envisioned it happening when she had nightmares about it. “You needn’t have bothered ruffling your hair with a long, nighttime Harley ride for that.”

“I would do far more than inconvenience myself for my son.” He touched his hair where the orange baby food had been. “But I would never send a stranger to take him from his mother.”

“His mother,” she murmured.

No matter how many times she heard it from his lips, it still took her breath away. Ophelia had signed the proper papers and this man saw her,
Josie
—not her sister—as Nathan’s mother. The thought of it caused a rush of hope to flood her being and she said a quick prayer that the Lord would bring to pass legally what she and Adam knew in their hearts to be true.

Then she went back on the defensive. Where her son was concerned, she could not afford to let down her guard for anyone. And she had to make sure Adam knew that, knew just what kind of person he was dealing with. “I’m saying I may not be one of those worldly, sophisticated women you are accustomed to—”

“What women?” he asked around a mouthful of okra.

She did not stop to answer his question, but just plowed right on with her thought. “But don’t make the mistake of thinking I’m so naive I can’t understand what’s going on.”

“I can assure you, I don’t think of you that way at all.” Another swig of milk. His dark brows angled down, he leaned forward on his elbow. “That said, I just have to ask—what
is
going on, Josie?”

“I have no idea,” she admitted freely. “There. Now you know exactly who you are dealing with. A lunatic.”

He laughed, then helped himself to a thick slab of pie.

She conceded her humility with a soft chuckle, then she sat back in the chair. “But you’ve told me this trip home, the timing, your plans are not just about Nathan. If not specifically, then by the things you
don’t
say and the way you say them.”

He set his fork down and allowed what she had just said to sink in.

He made her nervous. “See? A lunatic. But not one that’s entirely off base on this. I know things are not what they seem on the surface. And I know that I would be foolish not to be wary about that. I also know that—”

“What
I
know is this is very good pie.”

“Don’t change the subject,” she warned, then watched him stuff down a whopping bite, she went all mushy inside and had to ask, “Do you really think so?”

“I do.” He laughed over her response and took another bite. “I’ve certainly tasted a lot of pastry products in my lifetime. Desserts and more than one person’s share of snack foods, but this…this is special. Old family recipe?”

“I don’t even have an old family.” She shook her head and hoped that hadn’t come off too pathetic. To try to counteract that, she scooted her seat in close and decided to share what she had discovered today, “I’ve got a secret ingredient that comes from an old family recipe, though.”

“I bet you have a lot of secrets, Josie.”

“No.” She sat back. “I’m pretty much an open book.”

“And me without my library card.” He touched her hand.

She blushed. “My grandmother taught me how to cook. I lived with her from the time I…”

Became a Christian. She wasn’t embarrassed to talk about her faith, but she didn’t know any way of doing that without bringing up how her mother and sister had rejected her. And in doing so remind him that she was not Nathan’s mother by birth. She wondered if that was a weakness of faith on her part? “From the time I moved to Mt. Knott in high school until she died a few years later, when I already had a job at the Crumble.”

“You worked at my family’s factory?”

“I told you that. Didn’t I tell you that?”

Neither of them seemed to recall. That should have sent up a red flag to Josie that either the man wasn’t listening to her or she wasn’t paying attention to what all she said to him. Or perhaps that when they were together they were too…sidetracked to bother with the small details of a conversation.

She stared at her hands, determined not to look into his eyes in hopes she would remember this exchange in detail. “I didn’t survive the first round of job cuts.”

“I’m sorry.”

“Thanks. But in a way it was a good thing. It put me in motion to open the diner.”

“Yeah. Sure. What seems like a disaster can often provide people with the push they need to take control of matters, to make bold moves, to better their lives.” He sounded as if he needed convincing.

Josie found this odd as he hadn’t been a part of the mess at his family’s factory.

“I had Nathan to support after all.”

“You must have been terrified.”

“Not really. I had my faith.”

“In yourself?”

“In God.”

“I can’t…that is, I wish…”

“Your mother was such a strong woman of faith. Your brother has a wonderful, growing ministry. Don’t you share their beliefs?” There. She asked it outright. She had to. The man was not just Nathan’s father, it seemed that he was a seeker.

“It’s not my mother, it’s that…well, God is portrayed as a loving father, isn’t He?”

“Yes.”

“I don’t know how to relate to that.”

“Was your father really that bad?” Conner Burdett had always scared her. A powerful man, he tended to storm about not speaking, especially to an insignificant worker like her.

“Bad?” He cocked his head to the right and chewed slowly. “Wrong word.”

“What’s the right word?”

“Hard,” he said quietly.

“He was hard on you?”

“He was hard on everybody, including himself, I think.”

“Your mom balanced that out for him some.”

“Yes, she did.”

“But that didn’t make him any less hard, I suppose.”

“Hard?” He shook his head. “Maybe that’s not it, either. Because, as you say, my mother had some influence over that. And he wasn’t hard on any one person. There was a kind of fairness to it all. I think maybe the word I should have used is…unyielding.”

“That is different. Subtly, but…”

“Like your secret ingredient, it can change everything.”

She nodded. “I appreciate your being so honest with me.”

“Don’t kid yourself, Josie. Just because we’ve shared these few moments, you don’t really know me. You don’t really know what made me who I am.”

“Who are you?”

“Haven’t you heard? I’m the Stray Dawg.”

“But if you have a hundred sheep and you lose one, that’s the one that’s on your mind. That’s the one you worry about and go out and seek so that you can bring him home.”

“You had Sunday school with Miss Minerva, too?”

“No. I told you, I didn’t grow up here. I never had a home or a family or a regular church where I went to Sunday school each week. But I’ve always had a Bible. And last night I looked up Luke 15, the story of the prodigal son.”

Adam pushed his plate away, his mouth set in a grim line. “Maybe I made a mistake. Coming here, coming to you first before…”

“Before what?”

He did not look as if he felt any inclination to answer her, just took another bite of pie and stared at Nathan.