Surprise Dad (8 page)

She admitted to herself how glad she was that he’d called on her to help, that she was here with him. Now he looked calm, ready to see Brian through this glitch in his otherwise healthy state.

Mike stood slowly and carried Brian, still snuggled up, to his crib. She joined him and leaned over the crib railings. “He’s the most beautiful child,” she whispered. “He looks—”

She turned to gaze up at Mike, not wanting to see the remarkable resemblance of man to child but forcing herself to confront it. What she confronted were his eyes, and something in them turned her to jelly, pushing her doubts down deep inside her. He lowered his mouth to hers and brushed it softly. She felt more than a spark, a jolt of electricity as their lips met, then a sense of falling through space when he deepened the kiss. She responded to it with all her heart and soul, and when he raised his arms, she knew he would put them around her to hold her close.

Instead, he pushed himself away. “I’m sorry,” he said, making distance between them. “It’s been an emotional night. I didn’t mean to…”

Her eyes felt heavy. Her mouth felt swollen, even
though his touch had been so light, and much too brief. “For me, too,” she said softly.

“I have to shower and get down to the kitchen,” he said in a hurry, continuing to back away. “Do you mind if I—”

“Close the nursery door and I’ll sit here with Brian while you dress,” she said, but just now, she couldn’t take her eyes off him.

He gave her one last, confused look. When the door closed behind him, she collapsed into the rocker. Her whole body zinged with pleasure. She wrapped her arms around herself and wished they were Mike’s arms holding her tight against his chest, the length of his body.

The shower ran, and she shivered, imagining him soaping himself, picturing the water running over his muscular body. She ached with longing.

She wanted him. It came as a shock to her. She was in the grip of full-blown desire. And she wanted to believe the kiss had been a sign from him that he was seeing her differently—and liking what he saw.

Or was it just a sign of appreciation from a frightened new father?

She heard a soft knock on the door, got up and opened it to see Mike holding out a cup of coffee. How long had she been daydreaming? He was dressed and smelling of something nice and woodsy—and standing as far away from her as his arm could reach.

Yum
. Aloud, she said, “Manna from heaven. Thank you from the bottom of my heart.”

He shrugged awkwardly. “I’ll come up when things slow down to see how he’s doing,” he said, “but if there’s any change for the worse, call me immediately.”

“Okay.” She let her eyes drift over him for a moment, but he looked away. “Cream and sugar in the kitchen,”
he said, “and somebody will bring cinnamon rolls as soon as they’re out of the oven.” He gave her a shy, sidelong glance. “Then eggs and bacon and some of those biscuits.”

And with that romantic announcement, he skittered down the stairs.

Allie leaned against the doorjamb. She liked her coffee with cream, and her men sweet.

W
HAT HAD HE DONE
? Just as he’d thought he’d gotten through his first big crisis, he’d gone and kissed Allie.

And he was very much afraid she’d liked it.

He didn’t have time to do right by a kid. He sure didn’t have time for a relationship with a woman, because he was supposed to be bonding with the kid.

And if he grew really attached to her…

She’d leave the valley to get established in her career. He
couldn’t
leave the valley. He had the restaurant, and now he had a baby who needed to put down roots.

So he’d screwed up once, but he wouldn’t again. He and Allie could be friends, but that was all.

Oddly depressed by the thought, he started preheating the big ovens and the grill.

He missed Barney like he’d miss an arm.

Why, oh, why had he let himself kiss Allie?

Dear Lord, he had a baby to raise.

As these thoughts rambled through his head, he realized he was sweating like a longshoreman.

He’d almost suggested she nap on his bed, but the thought of Allie lying on his bed had sent a flash of sensation to his groin, as it was doing now.

He had to get off this dangerous, winding road. Mountains rising to the right, and a sheer drop on the left. A barrier in one direction, a dive into despair on the
other. They had totally different, totally incompatible goals. She was going out in the world. He was staying right here in LaRocque.

All alone, he sent up a cry of pain. “Ah-h-h,” he yelled, just as Mildred Witherington walked through the back door with two pans of unbaked cinnamon rolls ready for their last rising and trip to the oven. The pans she’d expertly balanced tipped, and he dashed forward to rescue them.

“What’s the matter with you this morning?” she said crossly. “I’m only fifteen minutes early, and I’ve been walking through that door with something or other for four years.” She glared at him. “When do I get to meet that baby? The town’s talking about nothing else.”

He didn’t like the way she said it, that the town was talking. Mildred had been his pastry chef since he’d decided he couldn’t handle that job and everything else. She was well-known as the town’s best cook. She lived three doors away from the restaurant and she delivered eight pies, four cakes and now, forty-eight cinnamon rolls every day, walking them over as soon as they were ready, and seemed to enjoy it in her own glum, uncooperative way. On the other side of the coin, she was the worst gossip in town, and he had a bad feeling that the gossip was, once again, about him. And Brian.

Mike said, “What’s wrong with me is that Brian got an ear infection and I’ve been up all night. You can meet Brian as soon as he’s well.”

“Oh, the poor little thing,” Mildred crooned. “Earaches are so painful. If it would help, I could come over and bake the cinnamon rolls.”

Babies seemed to change everybody’s personalities. “Thanks,” Mike said hastily, “but I’ll have plenty of help in just a few minutes.”

“Well, all right,” Mildred said. “I have to run. I have cake layers baking.”

And phone calls to make.

Mike just had time to breathe a sigh of relief before Maury stepped in. After they’d said their hellos, Mike said, “Who were all those people in the kitchen when I got home?”

“Well, Colleen’s Uncle Fred was on the grill, but he wasn’t that great, so I’m on the grill now and he does toast and waffles. Becky’s daughter plates the food and Colleen and Becky wait tables like always.”

“So we’ve hired two extra people.”

“No, that’s just breakfast.”

“Enough!” Mike said. “I get the picture, and I’m grateful to everybody who’s helping, especially you, for pulling it all together.”

Maury blushed and ducked his head.

Mike’s smile faded. “This baby, Maury, is more trouble than you could ever imagine. Thank the lord for Allie. Brian got sick last night and she’s taking care of him today.”

“That’s what I thought when Barney keeled over,” Maury admitted. “That I was glad Allie was here.”

Mike gazed at him. “It was scary, wasn’t it?”

“Yeah,” Maury muttered and turned away, getting ready to cook breakfasts to order.

Mike’s heart went out to him. His own childhood was nothing compared to Maury’s. The boy would wear those scars the rest of his life even though Daniel had given him a safe, dependable environment, and the worst thing that could happen to him now was that he’d scorch a pan. But the past must have folded in on him, the terror, the feelings of helplessness, when Barney’d had his attack.

And next, Mike had brought Brian home.

“How’s he doing this morning?”

Maury had read his mind. He was trying to handle the matter of Brian gracefully, but it had to be hurting him. He still stood with his back to Mike, working away at the breakfast prep, and Mike went over to give him a hand.

“His fever came down right away, so I think he’s better. I tell you, son, when he got sick it nearly scared me to death. It turned out to be an ear infection. I guess babies get them all the time, but I didn’t know that. You can guess what a jerk I felt like. Somebody makes me the guardian of his child—biggest responsibility in the world, Maury—and right off, I screw it up.”

“No, you didn’t,” Maury said, looking straight at him now. “You don’t know what it’s like to have parents who screw up.”

The pain and anger in his face, the tension in his body, made Mike so sad that he said without thinking, “Yes, I do. Not like yours did, but it left me hurting inside just like you.”

“But you’re happy now.”

“It took time.”

Maury’s brow furrowed in thought, making him look more like an English bulldog than a St. Bernard. “Daniel and Uncle Ian had the same parents. Why didn’t they end up hurting inside?”

Yes, Maury thought slowly, but at times like this, much too well. Mike knew he had to answer the question, and he had to answer it honestly. “They did. We all got over it in time.”

“How much time?”

“The time it took us to grow up, educate ourselves
and find professions we liked. Seems like you’ve already done that. You’re a lucky guy.”

Colleen, the wiry man who had to be her Uncle Fred, Becky and Becky’s daughter rushed through the back door. “We’re late,” Becky gasped. “My son brought the car home on fumes last night and we had to get gas.”

As she spoke, Mike heard a less-than-discreet knock at the door of the diner and everybody went into action. He raced to the door and said, “Gosh, I’m sorry. I forgot to unlock it.” Behind him he heard the clatter of silverware as Becky and her daughter hurried to set the tables. The scent of coffee filled the air along with the smells of bacon and sausage Maury had just flung on the grill.

The day had begun. Just an ordinary day, except that upstairs he had a sick baby—and an all-too-enticing babysitter.

Mike stared at the phone in the kitchen, reached out for it, drew back, gritted his teeth and reached out again. He had to call Richard Stein and tell him he couldn’t come to New York Wednesday, and he was dreading it.

He also knew that when you dread something, the best thing to do is to get it over with.

He took the receiver and Stein’s number outside, pulled in a deep breath of the cool fall air, then dialed.

Stein was on the line swiftly with a hearty, “Mike! Good to hear from you!”

“It’s not good news,” Mike said.

“Oh?” Stein’s voice was filled with concern, even anxiety. “What’s the problem?”

Mike had thought carefully what to tell the man, and had decided to tell the truth, or almost the truth. “I inherited a baby.” He’d made it a mantra, that
I have a baby
line, hoping one day he could say it without feeling shocked.

“You—” Stein sounded nonplussed.

“Yes. An old friend died and appointed me guardian of his eight-month-old child.”

“Wow. That’s, well, a real change in your life.” Stein seemed to be gathering himself together.

“I’m supposed to stick with him for a while until he gets to know me, and the family tells me he ought to stay right here until he feels at home. So I won’t be able to come to New York this week.”

Mike waited for Stein to say, New York style, “So fuhgiddaboutid,” meaning forget about franchising the diner, but instead, he was murmuring, “Of course, of course.”

Mike rushed on to the hard part. “I feel bad about you having to cancel all the arrangements, and I want you to know I’ll be happy to pay for the expenses you’ve already incurred.”

“Nonsense, Mike! The expense is no problem. Of course you have to bond with your little one.”

Even Stein knew about bonding.

“I’ll keep in touch,” Stein said heartily. “When you think it’s okay for him to travel, let us know, and by all means, bring him along.”

With enormous relief, Mike disconnected the call. All done, no conflict, no recriminations.

He sauntered back into the kitchen, a new man. “I don’t have to leave town Wednesday,” he said cheerfully.

In the midst of a chorus of “thank goodness” from the rest of his staff, Maury just gave him a look. When the kitchen emptied out, the boy said, “You’re not going to franchise?”

“I have to think about it some more. I
will
talk to them in New York sometime, just to hear what they have to say. And I’ll tell you all about it.”

At ten he slipped out of the kitchen and ran upstairs to check on Brian and Allie. They were both asleep, but Allie’s eyes popped open as soon as he walked into the room, and she instantly rolled off the sofa and
darted into Brian’s room. Mike joined her. “Relax,” he whispered when he’d pressed his hand lightly to Brian’s forehead. “He feels cool. Has he been in any pain?”

“No, and he’d let me know if he had been. It’s about time for another dose of medicine, but I thought I’d wait until he woke up all by himself.”

Mike gazed at her. Her hair, usually as smooth as a raven’s wing, was mussed, and her eyes drooped with sleepiness. She looked beautiful. “Go back to sleep,” he said. “I can stay a while. I’ll take care of him when he wakes up.”

“Nope,” she said firmly, forcing her eyes wide open, “you have a job to do. We’ll be fine.”

He sighed. “Promise to call if you need help?”

“I promise. Breakfast was wonderful, incidentally. It’s good to be the chef’s babysitter.” She smiled at him, and her sleepy eyes began to sparkle.

She was wide awake now. He took one more look at her, hoping his longing didn’t show, and went back to the kitchen.

A
LLIE PACED
the room, physically agitated and yes, tired. And worried.

She worried about the new passion she was feeling for Mike and the motherly feelings she’d had for Brian from the first time she held him in her arms. Her mother had warned her about getting too comfortable in the valley and deciding to stay, and Allie could
not
let that happen.

She wanted a career as badly as her mother wanted one for her. Career opportunities were slim to none in the valley. So, as she’d told Mike, whatever career she chose, she’d have to be prepared to move, and perhaps move again. To be a desirable candidate for a job, she’d
have to be unencumbered. It would be different when she was firmly established in her chosen field, but not until then.

Then there was the uncertainty about Brian’s parentage. Realizing she was wringing her hands, and that she didn’t want Brian waking up to a distracted babysitter, she decided busywork was the thing to do. She put a load of Brian’s laundry into Mike’s apartment-sized washing machine, then dived into one of the bags from Baby Heaven and started cutting off price tags.

M
IKE WOKE UP
thinking about the nightmare yesterday had been. He’d checked on Allie and Brian twice more, but when he went up to tell her he was home for good and she could leave, she looked exhausted.

Even exhausted she was cheerful. “We had a wonderful day,” she assured him. “He needs to keep taking his medicine until it’s all gone, but he’s acting like a well baby. He’s asleep, clean and should sleep through the night.”

“What a relief,” Mike said, and yawned. “Are you awake enough to drive home?”

“Do you have to be awake to drive in LaRocque?” She gave him that mischievous smile.

“Just be careful.”

“I will,” she said more seriously. “See you in the morning.” She hesitated. “I’ll come in my waitress uniform, okay? But if I’d be more helpful staying up here with Brian, then…”

“Thanks.” He wished he could have thought of something more eloquent, but he couldn’t.

He’d checked on Brian and undressed himself, started to get into bed naked, as he usually did, then realized he wasn’t alone anymore and needed to observe a few
modesty rules. Was there anything about his life that wasn’t going to change? He picked out a pair of boxers, the green ones printed with apples. He should probably buy some pajamas, maybe a robe. Or was that going overboard? He pulled up the boxers, checked on Brian one more time, left a light on in his room, slid into bed and fell asleep at once.

But not for good. It must have had to do with rem cycles, because every two hours he woke up, got out of bed and made the short trip to Brian’s room.

On the way back from one of these trips, he realized that if he told Allie, or Daniel and Lilah, maybe even Ian about his night runs, they’d assume he was driven by love for his baby brother. They’d be wrong. What drove him was a sense of responsibility, something he hadn’t learned at home, but from being brothers with Daniel and Ian.

“I
CAN ONLY
stay a minute,” Mike told Barney when he dropped by for a visit the next day between breakfast and lunch. “Everybody’s getting less of me right now.” He sighed.

“What’ve you done with Brian?” Barney asked him. “Shut him in the pantry with cans to stack? Couldn’t be that. We don’t cook outa cans.”

Barney actually did look better today, which made Mike feel better. “He’s being handed from Colleen to Becky to Allie to Maury—he’s crazy about Maury, for some reason. Think about it, Barney. The diner’s going to hell.”

“It’s worth it,” Barney cackled.

That was the last thing Mike would have expected Barney to say. It opened up something inside him, made him want to tell Barney what he’d been thinking about
last night. “I know. He’s a great kid. I want to do my best for him, and one thing I do know is that a parent’s supposed to love his child.” He paused for a moment, wondering how to explain. “Well, what I’m feeling isn’t love. It’s sheer terror of not being able to meet the awesome responsibility of bringing him up right.”

“I felt that way, too, when my oldest boy was born. Like he was a new dress Midge had sprung on me, with the bill to boot. Like I had nothing to do with it. Just like you’re feeling now. Love comes later. Takes time. When they smile at you. When they say ‘dada.’ When they act like they’d like you to hold them. Stupid, ay-uh? But it happens.” He sent Mike the closest thing to a smile Barney was capable of.

Barney was, on the outside, the least sentimental person he could imagine. If Barney could feel that kind of love, maybe he could. Time and a couple of “dada” moments would turn Mike into the kind of parent Brian should have. He hoped so, but parenting was more than love and a sense of responsibility. He just wished he knew what the rest of it was. Brian was such a cute, funny, happy kid. He deserved a dad who knew.

He repeated the words in his mind, cute, funny, happy…Brian didn’t act like a neglected child. Had his father changed? He’d been in his mid-sixties. Had time mellowed him? Relaxed him? Calmed his workaholic nature? So that Brian might have had a father who played with him, cuddled him, talked to him, all the things Mike had never had? Or had Brian simply had a loving mother and a really great nanny?

If his father had changed, it hadn’t happened in time for Mike. Leaving Brian to him in the event of his death had been his last blow, and his most cruel.

“Barney,” he said, “I wish you’d been my father.”

S
INCE
B
ARNEY’S
heart attack, Allie had been doing double, triple duty at the diner. The chefs in training would arrive tomorrow, and the situation should improve. Brian was doing fine, and Mike was back in full force, but still she’d arrived early.

Arrived first, in fact. She’d expected Mike to be there, but he wasn’t, so she turned on the lights, and as she was wondering what to do next, Maury dashed in, started the ovens and the grill and got to work.

She began setting tables. While she was laying out silverware, she heard a sound unlike any other in her experience, a deafening clang as if a thousand steel rods had hit the ground all at once.

Rushing outside, she saw that next door, just in front of the three-story historic building that was scheduled for restoration, someone had, indeed, dropped a thousand steel rods onto the ground.

Maybe not a thousand, but a lot. She waved at the truck driver and the men with him, and her heart stopped pounding. Scaffolding, of course, so that the workmen could painstakingly replace the original crumbling mortar between the bricks and replace broken slate tiles on the roof.

When the reverberations from the rods died down, she heard screams coming from Mike’s apartment. Darting into the foyer at the foot of the stairs, she almost ran into Mike, disheveled, barefooted and harried-looking, with Brian in his arms, wailing.

“What the hell was that?” Mike’s teeth were clenched together.

“Language,” she said, then tried to explain over Brian’s screams. At last she pointed out the foyer window.

“Scared the—daylights out of him,” Mike said.

She could only read his lips. “Do you think his ears could be hurting again?” she asked him, pulling on her own ears.

“He was just fine until the moon fell to earth,” Mike said loudly. “I have to get dressed for work. I don’t know what to do.”

At the moment, he was rubbing Brian’s back, trying to cuddle him at the same time he was fighting off punches from Brian’s fists.

“Okay,” Allie said, reaching for the baby, “go back upstairs and toss his coat and hat downstairs. Then get dressed while I take him for a walk. Maybe that’ll settle him down.”

Mike gave her a grateful look and fled. Allie waited at the foot of the stairs, deafened by Brian’s screams in the tiny space, until she was pelted by Brian’s outdoor gear and the diaper bag, followed by a leather jacket and gloves that must be for her. Allie flung on the coat, no time to think how sweet that was of Mike. Dressing Brian was like dressing an enraged cat, but she managed at last and got the stroller onto the sidewalk with Brian in it, twisting in his seat.

She tried showing him the steel rods, explaining they were the source of the noise, but wasn’t surprised when that didn’t work. So she set off with him at a swift pace. Motion might put him back to sleep. At just that moment, the workmen began to move the rods, and Brian went into high gear.

She began to sing. He screamed louder, if that were possible. Lights went on in the houses on the square. Curtains twitched. Allie gritted her teeth and marched on.

Deciding to give the residents of the square a break, she turned down a side street. In a few minutes, Brian’s
wails turned into quiet sobs, even sadder than the screams. She stopped the stroller, crouched in front of him and said, “There’s nothing to be afraid of. It was just a loud sound. It won’t happen again. Want to go back and see Dad?”

She turned back toward the diner and heard a wail building up from the stroller. “I guess not,” she said, making a swift U-turn. “Then let’s go to my house,” she said. “How about that?”

“This is above and beyond the call of duty, Allie,” Mike said when she called him. “I feel guilty.”

“Don’t,” Allie said. “If he stays at the restaurant, he’ll close the place down, and then I won’t have a job.”

“That’s the truth.” Mike sighed. “Okay, thanks from the bottom of my heart, and I’ll pick him up as early as I can this evening.” As an afterthought, he said, “He doesn’t have anything to eat.”

“The grocery store is a two-block stroller ride from the house. We’ll go as soon as it opens. Everything will be fine—”

“What was that?” Mike said, sounding panicked by the deafening sound coming from her kitchen.

Allie put her hand over her other ear. “One pan being banged against another one,” she said. “I hope you see the irony here. It’s the same kind of sound that scared him this morning.”

“Except that this time,
he’s
making it. All the difference in the world.”

“Just get to work, Mike, and try to relax. I’ll call if we need you.”

“Okay, Brian,” she said enthusiastically when she’d hung up, “give these spoons a try.”

Soon after seven she walked him to the store, supplied herself with everything he might need during the
course of the day, and congratulated herself that the crisis had passed. He was back to being his old sweet self, fascinated by every “toy” she pulled out of Mrs. Langston’s closets and cupboards, which she carefully washed before handing them to him.