Somebody's Baby. Annie Jones
toward the table at the same time.
He gave her a quick, panicked look. “That him?”
“Unless my cat’s become a ventriloquist, I’d say yes.” She laughed but couldn’t make it sound real, not knowing that if the baby awakened she’d have to let this…this…father person see him. The very notion made her heart race.
She cocked her head to listen, praying that the baby was merely restless and would quiet and go back to sleep on his own.
“You got a cat?” Burdett leaned into the doorway to stare down the hall in the direction of the bedroom.
“What?” She blinked, moving to the door to lean out just a bit farther than he did.
“A cat.” He slouched forward, his face a mask of concentration all focused on any sound that might arise from the child. “I heard it said that it’s not good to have a cat around a baby.”
“That’s an old wives’ tale.” Josie rolled her eyes.
No other sound came from the baby’s room. She relaxed enough to appreciate the level of confusion and worry on Burdett’s face over the routine sounds the baby had just made and some silly superstition.
The baby was quiet. Maybe the fact that she’d dodged the letting-him-see-his-son-for-the-first-time bullet made her warm a little to the man. Or maybe it was the tenderness in those eyes that allowed her to loosen up a bit and say, “You don’t know much about babies, do you, Mr. B—I mean, Adam?”
“This is my first,” he said softly.
“Mine, too,” she said, even softer.
She bet no other new parents had ever shared such an awkward or awkwardly sweet moment. Josie found within herself the power to actually smile. Maybe after a few meetings, a few long talks about parenting philosophy, visitation expectations, some practical lessons in the care and feeding of a one-year-old, she’d be ready to allow this man to see their son. Then later, maybe, after he’d proved himself capable, he could hold the baby and—
Just then the baby broke out in a howling lament.
Josie froze.
“I don’t know much about babies, ma’am.” Burdett glanced at her and then down the hallway, his whole body tense. “But I do know that means someone needs to go check on him.”
She took off before he finished the sentence. Josie heard his big old boots clomping along the hallway right behind her stocking feet and it irritated her.
“So then, you’re saying it’s okay—your cat and the baby?”
“What cat?” She spun around, placing one hand and one shoulder to the bedroom door. He practically loomed over her as she glowered up at his concern-filled face and snapped, “I don’t have a cat.”
“You don’t?”
“No.”
The baby wailed again.
“But I do have a child who needs my attention. Now if you’ll just go wait in the kitchen and excuse me, I’ll take care of my baby.” She started to slip inside the room without opening the door to any unnecessary invitation.
His arm shot past her head, his palm flattened to the door just inches from her eye level. “Whoa, there, sweetheart.”
She twisted her head to peer over her shoulder.
“I promised I wouldn’t take the baby from you.” His dark eyes went almost completely black. She saw the heat in his cheeks and felt it on his breath as he lowered his voice to a raw-edged whisper. “But I double-dog promise you something else, as well, I won’t take this from you, either.”
“What?” A corkscrew curl snagged on her eyelash and bobbed up and down as she batted her eyes in feigned innocence.
“I won’t take this game of trying to shut me out of my baby’s life. I want to make that very clear.”
It was. And despite the anxiety it unleashed in her, Josie realized, she respected and admired his attitude. For a year now she had painted the baby’s father as some sleazy party animal who hadn’t even cared enough to find out what had become of Ophelia. It gave her some curious comfort now to know that wasn’t the case. Her son had a decent man as a father.
A decent, gorgeous, Harley-riding, Mt. Knott-deserting rich man who could change from rapt preoccupation over his child and some imaginary cat to issuing hard-nosed mandates about the boy in a matter of seconds, she reminded herself.
“Do you understand that, Josie?”
She understood that and so much more. Like her problems with the diner and the simple existence she had known before she took in Nathan, from this point forward the life she had planned was going to take a different turn, and, like it or not, it was going to have to include Adam Burdett.
Chapter Three
They both shuffled quietly inside the room, using only the stream of light from the hallway to guide them.
“Hush, now, Nathan, shhh. Quiet down. It’s all right.” Josie, standing in profile to Adam, cooed some kind of magical, maternal comfort to the lumpy blue blanket she pulled from the crib.
“Nathan?” He turned the name over and over in his mind. He liked it. “Is what you named him?”
“Yes. It means…” She snagged her breath and held it a moment. “It’s Biblical. It means gift.”
“I like it.” He found himself nodding slowly to show his approval.
“I’m glad,” she whispered, but nothing in her body language underscored her claim. She cuddled the baby close and spread the blanket out over the two of them so that Adam could not even see a tiny finger or a lock of fine baby hair.
He longed to lay eyes on his boy for the first time, show himself and say, “Hello, Nathan. I’m your father. I’m here now. I won’t allow you to grow up feeling as if the people who should have done anything within their power to keep you, gave you away and didn’t care.”
Adam knew most adopted children did not feel this way. But he had. He had been made to feel that way. And now that he had returned to Mt. Knott, he would not only shield his child from those emotions, Adam would make his remaining family pay for having treated him so callously. He had the means and the motivation. The news of his unexpected fatherhood had hastened his plan but had not quashed it. If anything, it gave him new passion for the battle that lay ahead. He would do this not just for the child he had been, but for the child lying in this small, dark room before him.
Adam strained to get a good look at the kid without getting too close. Deep in his gut, he truly wished to step forward and scoop his son up in his arms. But somehow his body would not cooperate. He hung back, his back stiff, his legs like lead, folding then unfolding his arms across his chest, then letting them dangle limp at his sides.
“Is he…” He craned his neck to peer around a tossed-back flap of the blanket that draped from Josie’s shoulder to her midthigh. “Is he okay?”
“Well, he’s not wet or…otherwise.” She rocked her body back and forth, and the crying died to gurgles and gasps.
“Maybe he’s hungry.” Just saying it made Adam feel all fatherly. Maybe this wasn’t such a hard thing after all, to take care of a baby.
“I doubt that.” She patted the bundle gently, still rocking.
“He would have had a bottle before bed.”
“But babies eat at all hours.” He spoke like a veritable authority on the subject even though, deep down, he felt like a complete dolt. Him! Adam Burdett, one of five highly valued and overpaid vice presidents of acquisitions and mergers for Wholesome Hearth Country Fresh Bakery, a division of Cynergetic GlobalCom Limited. How could one small, totally dependent creature reduce him to