Somebody’s Baby
Annie Jones

For Elijah Dobben and Riley Davis, the two newest

babies in the Jones family tree. You already have

the blessing of wonderful parents who love you so

dearly, but a legacy of faith that will serve you all

your days.

And remember when they speak of your “Great”

Aunt Annie, that’s not just a label, it’s a promise!

Really. I already have toys in my closet for when

you come to visit.

Contents

Prologue

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Chapter Eleven

Chapter Twelve

Chapter Thirteen

Chapter Fourteen

Chapter Fifteen

Chapter Sixteen

Prologue

“What is your secret, Miss Josie?”

“Secret?” Josie Redmond wiped her hands on the long white bib-apron covering her pink T-shirt and black jeans. She swallowed hard to push down a bitter lump of anxiety. Her gaze darted from the face of the man sitting at the counter to the huge glass window with the swirling red lettering spelling out the name of her business—Josie’s Home Cookin’ Kitchen.

Did her customers know she hadn’t taken in enough money this month to pay her business loan to the Mt. Knott First National Bank? That the bleak downturn in business for the Carolina Crumble Pattie Factory had taken its toll on not only her customer base but also threatened to rob her of a very essential ingredient to her success? Or had someone gotten wind of the fact that her twin sister had been trying to contact her?

Just thinking of what her sister wanted left Josie feeling jumpy as a cat, fearing for everything she held dear.

Her eyes went to the far wall of her diner, the one she had painted with special black paint, virtually turning the whole side of the room into a giant chalkboard. She had meant it to keep young people from carving their initials on the tables and to allow children something to busy themselves with while their parents lingered over the last bites of dessert. But somewhere along the line, it had turned into a town message board. A place where people left notes to friends, reminders of upcoming events and, in a segment sectioned off by vines drawn in pink and green chalk, a prayer request list.

“Please remember Millie Tillson’s oldest girl—baby due any day.”

“Traveling mercies for Agnes and Virgil.”

“For our children and teachers as the new school year begins.”

Some farmer in the midst of a dry summer spell had simply scrawled in an earnest, oversize script: “RAIN.”

And of course: “Pray for the Burdetts. Our jobs. The whole of Mt. Knott.”

All summer Josie had been praying about all the things that got posted on her wall, as well as for the welfare of all the people she cared about in her adopted hometown of Mt. Knott, South Carolina. But her deepest concerns remained between her and the Lord, not something she wanted thrown out to feed the small-town rumor mill.

“Secret?” She laughed and tossed her head, knowing it would make her strawberry-blond ponytail bounce and give her an even younger appearance than her twenty-four years. “What secret?”

The older of the two long-past-middle-age regulars sitting on the stools at the lunch counter lifted his fork with the last bite of cherry pie for his answer. “Go-oo-od stuff.”

The other man leaned in on his elbows, his deep-set eyes twinkling. “When you going to marry me, Sweetie Pie?”

All the men over a certain age in town called Josie Sweetie Pie. They said it was because she was sweeter than a baby’s kiss and cuter than a bug’s ear and whatever other cornpone phrase they could toss out to make her laugh. But really, they called her that because Josie Redmond, who otherwise thought herself a most unremarkable young woman, made the best pies in seven counties.

Everybody said so. In fact, more than one person just passing through town had told her that if she could ever figure out a way to market the unique pastry to the masses, she’d make a mint. Right now, Josie couldn’t even afford to buy a mint, she thought, letting her eyes trail to the empty candy dish by the cash register.

“You? You’re not her type, Warren.” The more rough-around-the-edges of the two men looked into his coffee mug and grinned. “It’s me she’s going to marry.”

“And spend the rest of my life trying to stay ahead of your appetite for pie, Jed? No, thanks.” Josie teased the white-haired man in striped overalls and a short-sleeved plaid shirt. “I am on to you two. Always proposing and slopping sugar all over me like that when I know all you really want is to sweet-talk your way to a second slice on the house.”

The older men laughed.

“Best pie I ever tasted,” Warren pushed his plate forward, the fork rattling over the streaks of cherry pie filling adding to the simple pattern. “But don’t go and tell my wife.”

“About you proposing?” Josie took the plate away.

“Naw, she knows all about that. Don’t tell her what I said about your pie. She thinks I only come here to eat it because her new job keeps her too busy to bake.”

At the mention of someone having a new job heads turned and the room got real still.

“Part-time at the bowling alley over in Loganville. And no, they ain’t looking to hire anyone else.” Jed raised his head and hollered to everyone all at once. He lowered his head a bit and gave it a slow shake. “Rents shoes to snotty teenagers who don’t know they’re smarting off to a woman who probably did quality assurance on every Crumble they stuffed into their rude little mouths growing up.”

Warren huffed.

Crumble. What an apt word for both the dessert cake and for the condition that the poor management at the factory—which everyone also called “the Crumble”—had left the town in. All those hopes, all those plans, all those lives, crumbled like the crisp brown-sugar topping of the “coffee cake with the coffee right in it.”

Josie stared at the empty plates in her hands. “You know, y’all, I think I might have short-changed you a bit on the size of your pie slices this morning, let me get you a second sliver on the house.”

She would never make her bank payment doing business like this, but Josie couldn’t help it. The whole town had felt the sting since the Burdett family had had to make cuts at the factory. Nineteen jobs gone already and another half dozen on the line. It might not seem like a lot but in a town of less than two thousand, counting kids and retirees, it made a palpable impact.

What a great time to try to open a business, Josie thought as she picked up the clear plastic lid on the pie stand. But then, timing had never been her strong suit.

Josephine Sunshine Redmond had been born almost a half hour after her identical twin sister, Ophelia Rainbow. That led their free spirit of a mother to announce, often and all their lives, that this meant Ophelia embraced life, chased it, was unstoppable in going after what she wanted while Josie was a plodding, methodical, reluctant old soul.

All their lives her sister had rushed headlong into one, uh, adventure after another while Josie tried to find comfort and like-minded people wherever the family’s lifestyle landed them. Whenever they had arrived in a new place, chasing anything from freedom of expression—meaning a place where their mother could sell her art at local shops and craft fairs—to seeking out new experiences, which could mean anything, Josie had looked around for a nice, friendly church.

That was one new experience her mother just couldn’t understand. So when Josie announced she had given her life to Christ at seventeen, the family had left her behind with her grandmother right here in Mt. Knott to finish her senior year of high school and find her own way in life. Josie had done just that. She had gone to work for the Burdetts and used their college-payback program to get an associate’s degree in business administration. Then, at the beginning of this summer, when she knew her job was about to be phased out, she’d used the general goodwill toward her in the community to open the diner. It was early August now. They’d been open a full three months. Josie still had the community’s goodwill but not their financial support. No one had any money to spare!

Her sister had had her own set of new experiences, mostly involving men and substance abuse. She came to visit Josie from time to time, and Josie tried to influence her for the good, but it never lasted. A day or two of saying she was going to change was always followed by nights of partying and the inevitable taking off for parts unknown. The visits had stopped entirely a year ago when Ophelia had dropped a bombshell—well, a baby boy, actually—on her sister’s doorstep. She asked Josie to care for the child for a few weeks while she got herself together, then disappeared.

Now Ophelia was trying to get in touch. After a year of loving the little boy she had named Nathan, a Biblical name that meant gift, Josie was now afraid that her rotten timing had reared its head again and she was about to lose her son forever.

Beep. Beep.

The familiar bleating of their local mailman’s scooter horn jerked Josie out of her worried state.

She looked up and blinked, then looked at the two pieces of pie in her hands. She must have sliced them and plopped them on plates without even thinking about what she was doing.

“Here you go, boys.” She plunked the free food down on the counter and rushed toward the door and out onto the sidewalk in front of the diner.

“Got a letter for you, Miss Josie.” Bob “Bingo” Barnes waved a large white envelope. “Looks important.”

“From a lawyer?” Josie asked. Her fingers trembled as she reached for the suspect packet.

Bingo, a big man with bad knees who always delivered the mail on a small red scooter with an orange flag sticking out of the back, blinked at her. “I don’t think it’s from a lawyer.”

But now that Josie had suggested it, the man clearly wanted to hang around and make sure.

Josie fingered the name on the return label, then glanced over her shoulder trying to calculate which would draw more attention. Should she stand here on the street in full view of everyone, take the bad news and have the whole town know her business in a matter of minutes? Or rush inside past all her regulars and hide in the kitchen and raise all kinds of concerns and speculations that would follow her for days, maybe years to come?

“Better to just get it over with,” she muttered.

“Ma’am?” Bingo leaned forward, his eyes peering at her and his frown overemphasizing the fullness of his jowls.

R-r-r-rip. Josie worked her finger under the flap. She held her breath and slowly slid the papers out.

“Everything all right, Miss Josie?”

She was a struggling single mom, abandoned by her own family. Her business was teetering on the brink. Her town’s economic base was literally crumbling beneath it. And yet…

She stared in disbelief at the papers in her hands. The paperwork signed by Ophelia relinquished parental rights and included a birth certificate naming his biological father so Josie could find the man and secure his approval for her to go forward with Nathan’s legal adoption.

To the rest of the world Josie Redmond was just a plain little pie maker in a pickle, but when she saw the contents of that envelope she knew she was blessed beyond all belief. And all she could say was, “You know, Bingo, God is so good. And thanks for asking, because, yes, everything is going to be just fine now.”

Chapter One

Two Weeks Later

The South Carolina sky was black. His boots, jeans, T-shirt, all black. They matched Adam Burdett’s silent, gleaming Harley—and his mood.

He narrowed his eyes at the simple frame house before him. Though he had grown up around Mt. Knott, this part of the small town was unfamiliar to him. His family had tended to keep to their fancy homes outside of town and didn’t interact much with others.

“Bad for business,” his father had said. Better to draw a distinct line between employees or potential employees—which is how they saw everyone in town—and friends. Never ask a personal question. Never commit anything more than a name and face to memory. Never offer more than the job description spelled out on paper.

“You do those things,” the old man had warned his sons while they stood in the office of his snack food factory, “and it makes it a lot harder to have to fire a person later. And you will have to fire one of them, maybe a lot of them at some point.”

According to the letters to the editor in the Mt. Knott Mountain Laurel and Morning News that Adam had read when he hit town a few hours ago, the old man had known what he was talking about. A lot of people in town were out of work. Even more were out of patience with the lack of a solution to their plight. A few were pretty close to being thrown out of their homes.

He gritted his teeth and forced the mixed-up emotions in his gut to quiet. On one hand the failure of his father’s factory was just what Adam had wanted. On the other…

He gazed at the humble home again and exhaled, long and low. On the other hand, maybe there was something to be said for making connections, for caring about what happened to people once they walked out the factory door. He never had, and look where his callous attitude toward others had led him.

The empty matchbook in his hand rasped against his thumb as he flicked it open to check the address scrawled there. This was it. In this house, illuminated only by the pulsating light of a small-screen TV, Adam would find his son.

His son. The words tripped over his ragged nerves like a fingernail strummed over taut barbwire. Adam Burdett had a son.

He hadn’t even known it until yesterday morning when a slick-haired private investigator had weaseled his way into Adam’s office with the news and an unthinkable demand—that Adam sign away all rights to his child, sight unseen. There was about as much chance of that happening as there was of that P.I. ever suggesting such a notion again in this lifetime.

Adam hadn’t belted the guy. But then again, he hadn’t needed to.

Adam might look like nothing more than a good ol’boy, redneck rodeo rider with beef for brains, but looks, like too many other things in life, could be deceiving. Raised in a family of wealth and influence by a mother who treasured the value of an education, none of the Burdett boys were dummies. They could put thoughts and words together as well as they could fists and flesh.

And Adam had proven as much and then some to that paper-waving P.I. Give up his son for adoption and never look back? Adam huffed out a hard breath. Uh-uh. He’d never do to any child what had been done to him.

He folded his arms over his chest, fit one well-worn cowboy boot over the other at the ankle and leaned back against his parked Harley. Everything Adam had become in this life—and everything he had failed to become—he owed first to his adoptive mother, who had never treated him like anything but her own child and next to his own father. Whoever that was.

He knew who it wasn’t. It wasn’t his adoptive father, Conner Burdett, the father of Adam’s three brothers. Adopted brothers. It shouldn’t have been important to add the “adopted” part. Adam had never felt it mattered to his mother, but to the others?

The long-legged and fair-haired Burdett boys claimed Adam as their own even though Adam’s broad, muscular build, dark eyes and angular features told differently. The family never spoke of it outright, but Adam sensed the subtle differences. He knew the gnawing ache of never feeling sure that he truly belonged.

To the outside world, at least, Adam was just one of the wolf pack of Burdett boys. A picture flashed in his mind of the four of them standing on the porch of the huge Burdett home in T-shirts they’d had made with their family nicknames emblazoned on them. Those names not only told of each boy as an individual, but said a lot about the real nature of their relationship in the family.

The oldest son, Burke, was born to the title “Top Dawg” and he lived up to the designation. “Lucky Dawg,” Adam’s next younger brother, Jason, got his name after a near miss that could have cost him his life, or at least a limb, at the factory. The youngest of the Burdett boys, Cody, earned the name “Hound Dawg” for his notorious talent for trailing girls. It had hung with the kid even now that he had become the only Burdett son to marry. It even clung to him when he became a minister.

All three grown men now shared Conner’s lean build and eyes, which some called blue green, others green blue. They had straight noses and golden tan complexions.

Adam glanced at his reflection in the Harley’s side mirror. Dark-brown, hooded eyes stared back from a face the color of baked red Georgia clay. He swiped a knuckle at the small bump on the bridge of his nose and sneered.

If his looks didn’t give anyone doubts as to where Adam honestly fit into the Burdett family they would have only to hear his nickname to figure it all out. His mother said they’d tagged him with it young because they could never keep him in one place, that he shared her wanderlust. Her story rang true enough, he supposed, but that didn’t ease the twinge of pain he felt every time the man they all knew was not his father called him by his nickname—“Stray Dawg.”

All the old feelings twisted in Adam’s gut. He refused to let a child of his become another stray, raised by someone who could never fully call the boy his own. No way. Not possible. And he’d do anything within his power to keep it from happening—even go crawling back to the scene of his greatest bravado and worst behavior. Back to Mt. Knott, if not back to his family.

Not that they’d have him back.

Adam had roared out of Mt. Knott a week after his mother’s funeral, with an inheritance in hand, all ties to the family business severed and a hangover that had all but erased the events of his last nights in town.

He hadn’t heard from or seen his family now in a year and a half but they had surely heard of him. His new position with a competitor had all but run the Burdett boys out of business. Now in order to do the right thing by his baby, he’d had to come home to a place where he knew he would not be welcome. But he would do it. He’d do anything for this baby he had not yet seen.

He scuffed his boot heel on the pocked driveway as he straightened away from his treasured Harley. He’d waited long enough. It was time to go and claim his heir.

Josie hadn’t even bothered to lock up the diner. She had just tossed the keys to the young man who did the dishes and asked him to see to it. The message from the young girl who watched Nathan on Thursday evenings, when Josie stayed open until nine, had been muddled by panic. But two words stood out that had caused Josie to tear off her apron and all but run the two blocks from her business to her small rental house.

“Baby’s father.”

A shudder worked its way through her body. The man who had the power to grant her the one thing she wanted most in life—the chance to adopt the baby boy she’d loved as her own since his birth—was in her home.

She drew in the smell of coffee and day-old pie clinging to her pale-blue T-shirt and the fluffy white scrunchie holding back her curly hair. She’d had to wait a week to get up the nerve and the funds to hire a private detective to contact the man on the birth certificate. Not that she couldn’t have tracked him down herself but, well, just looking at the name made her anxious. Adam Burdett!

She hadn’t known him but she certainly knew of him. And in a funny way, what she knew had filled her with what now seemed false confidence.

After all, he was the one who had turned his back on his own family and a whole town. How serious could he be about wanting to play a part in his son’s life when he had done that? He was Mr. One-Night Stand. According to her sister, he hadn’t even called the next day to say…whatever it is a guy says after an encounter like that.

Josie wouldn’t know that kind of thing. She and her sister might be identical twins, but their lifestyles were as different as their personalities. Yin and yang. Their mother, a “free thinker” who couldn’t keep a job, didn’t want a marriage and seemed always in pursuit of the latest trend in spiritual enlightenment, called them that. Light and dark. Day and night.

Josephine and Ophelia.

Josie snorted out a laugh. Even their names said it all. Josephine sounded sturdy, practical. She worked hard and wanted nothing more than to serve the Lord, make a permanent place to call home, to create a family with a man she could trust and depend upon. And to be the kind of woman he could depend upon in return.

“He’s in your bedroom,” the sitter whispered the last word as Josie hit the front door of her house.

Josie gave the girl a reassuring nod and headed down the hallway. If she could afford a house with more than one bedroom, he’d be in the nursery, but since the crib was in her room, she had expected to find him there. She pulled in one long breath, peered into the dim room, illuminated by only a soft glowing light on her dresser. She stole a quick peek at her sleeping baby, then pushed open her door with one hand, ready to do battle. “I don’t know what you think you’re doing. But if you value your life, you’ll get your hands out of my drawers.”

He looked as if he was about to swear, but he didn’t, though Josie suspected it was more from shock than good manners or morality. He shut the small drawer he’d been peeking into. He peered at her, instead, then his whole face changed. His eyes narrowed. He smirked a bit. “I didn’t expect to run into you here.”

The deep gravel-throated whisper made her shiver. She froze in the shaft of light pouring in from the hallway. Her stomach clenched.

“I’d say you’re looking good, but then, you know that, don’t you? You always look good.” He did not move into the light, remaining just a silhouette against the mirror above her chest of drawers. “Even after all this time and after…everything you’ve been through. You look as good as the last time I saw you, Ophelia.”

Josie blinked in the darkness, hoping her eyes would adjust to sharpen his image. At the same time, she wanted to clear up a few things for him, as well. “Listen, pal, you’ve made a mistake. I’m not—”

He stepped from the shadows into the muted light.

Josie’s mouth hung open, her every sense in that one instant focused on the man who held her future in his big, calloused hands.

He wasn’t huge, though he seemed larger than life in presence. His shoulders angled up from a trim waist and western-cut jeans that bunched in furrows over his traditional-style cowboy boots. What she saw of his face, his strong jaw, determined mouth and slightly crooked nose made a compelling, if not classically handsome, image.

He moved in on her, like something powerful and wild sizing up his prey. His eyes glittered.

She pressed her lips together, too angry at his supposition and his presumptive presence to trust herself to speak.

He began to slowly circle her so close that his soft shirtsleeve rasped against her bare elbow.

The man was playing games with her—or more to the point, with Ophelia.

Ophelia liked games. They were her stock and trade. The man was no fool to go on the offensive to try to beat Ophelia at her own impressive bag of tricks. A sucker for excitement and danger, this predatory act might have been just the thing to get Josie’s twin to go all liquid and make her easier to negotiate with.

But she wasn’t Ophelia. She was smart, practical Josie. The dull one. The mom with a child to protect. This man’s act was totally lost on her.

His boots scuffed lightly at the floor.

She tossed her head back, lifted her chin in her best attempt at regal composure. If he wanted to deal with her, it would be as two mature adults, no games, no stooping to base animal attraction to put her at a disadvantage. “Listen, cowboy, I know what you’re up to.”

His shoulder brushed against the curls trailing down her neck from the knot of hair atop her head.

A wolf, that’s what he reminded her of, she decided. “I am not the same woman you shared a bed with a couple years ago.”

“Yes, I can see that now.”

About time. He’d spent at least one night in tangled passion with her sister, after all. Obviously, that was enough to help him see how very different they were, how very un-Ophelia-like and unappealing to a man like him Josie was.

“Yes, you’ve made a mistake, all right,” she said. “A big one. I am not—”

“I got it. Not the same woman. You think I don’t see that?” He slid his gaze over her, quick and businesslike, as if he were sizing up the marbling on a slab of pot roast before he tossed it in his shopping cart.

Marbling. As in fat. She shook her head at where her mind had immediately gone. Of the many ways she had been made to feel inferior to her sister, being a full size larger than Ophelia, was one Josie couldn’t shake. And all local jokes about never trusting a skinny cook didn’t really ease her discomfort over it, either. Now she couldn’t help feeling self-conscious under this man’s scrutiny. She found herself folding her arms over a stubborn pout of a tummy no amount of killer crunches had ever diminished.

He put his hand lightly on her back.

Josie gasped. She raised her hand to push him away and found muscles tight as steel beneath her fingertips.

His touch, warm and gentle, almost a reverent caress, belied the strength within the man. She lifted her gaze to his.

“How could I have not seen it? It was clear the moment I laid eyes on you,” he murmured. “You aren’t the same woman.”

“No, I’m not.” It sounded almost like an apology, she realized too late. This time she did push his arm away from her.

He let it fall easily to his own side as if she had had no effect on him whatsoever. “And you sure don’t look as good as the last time I saw you.”

Accustomed as she was to unfavorable comparisons to her sister in the attractiveness department, this man’s assessment stung like a backhanded slap to her self-esteem.

She hung her head. “I’m not surprised you’d think—”

He dipped his head and his eyes searched her face. “You look better.”

“Better?” she squeaked, cleared her throat, then matched his smoky whisper in depth and volume. “Better?”

“Mmm-hmm.” He nodded. “Motherhood becomes you.”

She smiled. Maybe this guy wasn’t a total jerk after all. He knew who she was and had picked up on the one thing in which she had outshone her vivacious twin. Motherhood did become Josie.

She managed a modest smile. “Thank you for noticing. I know we have a lot to deal with, but it’s good to know you can see how important being a mom is to me.”

“Oh, yeah, I can just guess how ‘important’ motherhood is to a girl like you—” a sudden change came over his features; a hardness rang in his tone as he wrung out the rest “—Ophelia.”

Yeeoow. Now she knew how those football coaches felt when the player dumped a tub of ice on them to celebrate a victory! She peeked to make sure that the baby was still sleeping, then turned with a flourish to face this cowboy-biker-Burdett creep. “How can you not know who I am?”

“I could ask the same of you. Do you know who I am?”

“Of course I know who you are,” she whispered back, closing in on him to keep her voice from disturbing her child. “You are the man who, if he doesn’t get out of my bedroom this instant, will be explaining himself to the whole Mt. Knott Police Department, every last one of them a close personal friend of mine.”

His mouth lifted in a one-sided sneer. “I’ll just bet.”

She spun quietly around to snatch the only picture she had of herself and her twin from on top of her dresser. “I know them all from going to school here. From working year after year alongside their moms and sisters and wives and friends at your family’s factory. I know them from serving them meals at my own diner.”

Confusion registered in his ominous expression. His gaze flicked downward to the framed photo, then up to her face as if asking if she expected him to understand what she wanted to show him.

She tugged it up higher for his inspection. “That’s Ophelia.” She jabbed her finger at the girl in the forefront of the photo with her hands up and her hair in her counterpart’s face. “That’s me. Josie.”

“Josie?” He shook his head. “Who is Josie?”

“Josie is me, pal. The woman who is kicking you out of here before we wake my baby.” She shoved at his shoulder to prompt him to get moving.

“For the baby’s sake, I’ll go, but just so we can sort this whole mess through somewhere else.”

“Agreed.” She ushered him into the hallway, pulling the bedroom door firmly shut after them.

“And for the record, ma’am,” he said, stopping short in front of her so that she could neither move past him or retreat.

“What?” she asked, trying to sound as brave as she had felt while defending her son.

“For the record…” He leaned down close until his face loomed before hers, his eyes demanding her total focus. “That little boy asleep in that crib in there—”

She held her breath.

“—is my baby.”

Chapter Two

“Go on home. I’ll be all right.” This woman, this spitting image of Ophelia Redmond only…softer, gave the babysitter a comforting pat as she nudged the wide-eyed gal out the front door.

Adam stuffed two fingers of each hand into his back jeans pockets and shifted his weight to one leg. Softer or not, that tangle of red-blond curls with the honest eyes and mama-tiger-protecting-her-cub ferocity stood between him and his son. He didn’t like that. Did not like that one bit.

And Adam was determined he would not like her, either. He’d come for his son and that left no room for anything but cold indifference toward the woman who wanted him to relinquish his parental rights.

Josie shut the door and turned to him, a smug expression on her pretty face. “I’d ask you if you wanted some coffee, but seeing as you’re not staying long enough to—”

“I take it black,” he told her. “The coffee, that is. In a mug, not some wimpy little teacup.”

Her eyes cut straight through him like two burning coals. They shone with emotion and life that he’d never seen in her twin’s gaze. Not that it mattered, of course. As far as he was concerned, Josie Redmond was the enemy.

“And piping hot,” he added, enjoying tweaking her anger a bit more than he really should have allowed himself.

She took in one long, deep breath, held it, then let it out, slow—real slow. “Anything else?”

“With sugar.”

“Do tell.”

“Yep.”

“Well, I like mine decaf. Instant decaf.” She jerked her head toward the open door to his left. “You’ll find everything you need on the counter.”

“Me?” He jammed his thumb into his breastbone.

“You want coffee, you make coffee.” She put her hand to the wall and kicked her thick white shoes off. “I’m officially off duty, Mr. Burdett.”

“Adam,” he drawled, hoping it hid his grudging admiration for her unflappable response and her no-nonsense approach.

She reached up and snagged the white hair-holding thingy loose. Spiral curls clung to it as she dragged it downward. She shook her head, her hair tumbling down to brush her straight shoulders. She put her hand behind her neck. “What did you say?”

“Huh?”

“Maybe I should make the coffee after all.” She narrowed one eye on him. “Wouldn’t want to tax you too much, you know, by expecting you to talk and handle a kitchen appliance at the same time. Could get tricky.”

Adam huffed a hard laugh, more amused than he wanted to admit. “Bet you get a lot of tips with that winning attitude of yours.”

“I do all right.” She turned and padded into the kitchen.

“I’ll just bet you do,” he muttered.

“What’d you say?”

“Adam.” He strolled into the glaring light of the kitchen and leaned against the cabinet where she was pulling out two coffee mugs. “I asked you to call me Adam. Mr. Burdett is my father.”

“I know.” She clunked one cup down on the counter.

“Yeah. Of course. Everyone around here knows the Burdetts.” He watched her for some sign that she shared his opinion of his family. Why he wanted to find that commonality with her, he didn’t know. It just seemed, standing here in this small space with her, that it sure would be nice to have a girl like her on his side. “You know which one I am, right?”

She placed the second cup down as though it were as delicate as an eggshell, then stretched her hand out for a jar of instant coffee. She wrenched the lid off the jar, then yanked open a stubborn drawer, making the silverware clatter as she pawed around inside it.

He tried to will her to answer. He wanted to hear firsthand from someone who didn’t share his last name, just what people in Mt. Knott thought of him and what he had done to his family’s business. He wanted to hear it from her.

“I know which one you are.” Her fingers curled around a spoon, and the room grew very quiet. Finally she said so softly that a draft from the nearby window might have blown the words away, “You’re the man whose name is on my baby’s birth certificate.”

She did not look up. She went right on making the coffee. But it didn’t escape Adam’s attention that as she scooped the dark-brown powder into each cup, her hand trembled. With one sentence she shifted from a smart, sassy woman in control to one scared little lady.

That’s just what he had wanted when he had first shown up tonight.

Then why didn’t he feel better about it?

“What am I doing?” The spoon clinked against the inner lip of the cup. She shut her eyes and shook her head. “I should have heated the water first.”

“Never mind.” He straightened away from the cabinet.

“No. I’ll fix this.” She lifted both cups. They rattled against each other, tipping one and sending instant coffee spilling over the counter. “Now look what I’ve done, I—”

“Look, forget it.” He stepped forward, feeling every inch the heel for having reduced her to this. “I don’t need any coffee.”

“No, I said I’d make it and there’s one thing you ought to know about me, Mr. Burdett. If I say I’m going to do something, I do it.” She set both cups down, then began to scoop up the dark dust in her palm. It sifted through her fingers like sand. “I can fix this. I can—”

“Josie.” He took her by the wrist and turned her to face him. That’s when he saw the tears rimming her eyes. They seemed held in place only by the sheer force of her will not to cry. He cupped her fisted hand in his palm. “I didn’t come here for coffee.”

“I know,” she rasped. “You came here to take my son.”

A few minutes ago he’d not only have agreed with her, he’d have thrown in a crude adjective to seal the deal. Now? All he could do was clear his throat and say, softly, “Then maybe we should just talk—”

She jerked her head up. “I’m not anything like my sister, you know.”

He smiled then. “I can see that.”

“You can?”

When she looked confused, Adam noticed, a small crease appeared between her eyebrows.

“How can you possibly see I’m not like Ophelia? We only just met.”

“I can see it—” he rubbed one knuckle along her cheek as gently as he could manage “—because you’re the one who’s here with my son, not her.”

“That’s because…” Her voice failed. She blinked. A single tear dampened her cheek. She pushed out a shuddering breath. “I love him. He’s mine.”

It killed him to hear that, and at the same time it made him proud and elated to know his boy had been loved and wanted by somebody. Adam studied her with a series of brushing glances.

Not just somebody, he realized when his gaze searched hers. The baby’s aunt. His birth mother’s identical twin. Someone with a blood bond and a heart with the capacity to put her needs aside to care for a helpless infant.

And grit. Josie had to have grit, he decided on the spot. How else could a woman choose to bear the burden of single motherhood? How else could she stay in Mt. Knott and watch the jobs and opportunities ebb away, partly because of his own actions, and even begin her own business because she knew she had to provide the sole support for a child?

“You can say that? After Ophelia just dumped him on you?”

“I never said she—”

“But that’s what she did, right?”

The woman lowered her gaze to the floor. “It doesn’t change how I feel about him.”

Adam swallowed, and it felt like forcing a boulder through a straw. Everything he’d determined about this lady flew right out the window when he considered all he’d learned in just a few moments with her. He liked her plenty, in all manner of ways, most he didn’t even understand yet—and he reckoned she was plenty good for his boy, as well.

“Please, Mr. Burdett,” she whispered, her chin angled up and her eyes bright with unshed tears. “Please tell me you haven’t come to take away my baby.”

“Actually, ma’am, I…” Adam sighed.

Who was he kidding? He couldn’t take his son away from the only mother the baby had ever known. He wouldn’t.

“I haven’t come to take him away, Josie.”

She shut her eyes and mouthed the words thank you.

Adam didn’t know if she spoke to him or to heaven—maybe both. He took one step back. So he’d wimped out of doing what he’d come here to do. That didn’t mean he’d called a complete surrender…and he respected this woman enough to make sure she understood that without question.

“But I think you should understand, ma’am.” He stuck his thumb through his belt loop and anchored his boots wide on the gleaming vinyl floor. “I won’t simply sign some papers and walk away, either. He’s my boy and I’ll do whatever it takes to make sure I stay involved in his life. Whatever it takes.”

Joy and apprehension battled within Josie, and in the end joy won. He said he wasn’t going to take her baby. Knowing that, she figured she could handle anything else thrown at her by this biker/cowboy with a voice that poured over her nerves like honey over sandpaper.

“Then let’s talk, Mr. Burdett.” She extended her hand toward the small kitchen table, her hope renewed that this could still work out in her favor. “If you still want some coffee, I can—”

The sputtered coughing cry of the baby halted her offer and Adam Burdett’s movement 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 such uncertainty and ineptitude? “Don’t they need to, um, refuel, during the night?”

“Refuel?” For the first time she laughed faintly.

But still, something in the sound of it made Adam long to hear it again.

“Yeah, you know. Like a minijet with diapers?” He pressed his lips together and made the sound of a sputtering engine. “Or a rechargeable battery.”

“If they ever find a way to channel this kid’s energy into a battery or an engine, I’ll have to give up my job and chase him around full-time.”

“Yeah, you wouldn’t want that.”

“Are you kidding? I’d love to give up worrying about how I’m going to keep the Home Cookin’ Kitchen open and be a full-time mom to Nathan.” Her eyes grew wide suddenly. “Not that I want my business to fail. I love what I do. I love providing a service to Mt. Knott and seeing everyone, and I love cooking. Especially…well, my specialty is not important beyond, you know, being a mother being my specialty.”

She was babbling. Not in a ridiculous, silly way. She was just nervous. And relieved. Nervous and relieved all at once. He could sense that in the way her words all ran together, then stopped suddenly. He didn’t learn much from what she said, of course, but it did help him see her inner conflict over her roles as a woman business-owner and a mother to his son.

“But if I could somehow not have to keep the crazy hours at my Home Cookin’ Kitchen and could just spend all my time with Nathan, at least in these early years, I’d do it in a heartbeat. No regrets. No complaints.” She stopped abruptly again, and this time her eyes grew wide before she added, in a little slower and more pronounced voice, “Not that I’m hinting that’s what I expect you to provide.”

She’d babbled until she had spoken the truth. In doing so, she’d given Adam a glimpse into her desires and perhaps some future negotiating power. He filed the information away and, on the surface, let it go. “So, he’s not hungry?”

“No. I don’t think he’s hungry.” She kept swaying back and forth and jiggling the baby, who had begun to fret and grunt quietly beneath the blanket. “He’s been sleeping through the night for a couple of months now.”

“He has?” Adam was rocking now, too. He couldn’t seem to help himself. Though he wasn’t sure, he figured this was how it felt to carry on a conversation on a boat. “Well, maybe he’s sick, or needs some—”

“Maybe…” she interrupted in the same soothing murmur she used with the baby “…he just had a bad dream.”

“Dream?” He stopped rocking long enough to consider that. “What on earth does an itty-bitty baby like that have to dream about?”

“He’s not so itty-bitty. He’s got plenty of things to dream about, a whole lifetime of experiences. His lifetime.” She shot him a look that even in the dim light Adam interpreted as a challenge. I have been this child’s mother for his entire life. Where have you been? “He’ll have his first birthday in two weeks, won’t you, tiger?”

“He will?” Adam stretched out his fingers, needing a kind of visual cue to help him do some lightning-fast math. “That means he was born in September, so August, July, June—”

“January.”

“What?”

“He was conceived in January, one year, eight months and two weeks ago.” She faced him, her mouth set in grim accusation. “Don’t tell me that doesn’t even ring a bell. Maybe you’ve just been with so many women that it’s all a blur.”

“Oh, it’s a blur all right, but not for the reasons you think.” He scratched at his cheek while his mind struggled to force all the pieces together. “Maybe you don’t recall this, but…”

Adam faced a choice. Speak the truth and risk having it sound like a plea for pity or at least leniency for his behavior or skim over it. He could stand here and own up to that bad behavior without any preface or attempt to put it in context.

His mother had died. He felt he had not only lost the only one who’d seen him truly as her own but that he had also lost his place in his family. When his suggestions to take the Carolina Crumble Pattie to a wider market had been ridiculed by his father and brothers, Adam felt he had lost his reason for staying in Mt. Knott as well. By the time he met Ophelia, a beautiful woman who shared his disdain for the small town, he had not been thinking about right and wrong.

He had been in pain. He needed to feel he wasn’t a lost cause, just a stray that nobody wanted. He felt worthless and figured he didn’t matter to anyone, not even God. It became easier to fall into sin, he had learned, when you take your eyes off the Lord and start looking at the mess you have made of your life and the mess life has made of the world around you.

He had long prided himself on being a man who told the truth. It was one of the things, he felt, which set him apart from his father.

While Conner Burdett was not a dishonest man, he had built his business on the belief that knowledge was power. And Conner protected his own power by controlling what knowledge he allowed others to have.

On the other hand, telling her about all the years of pain and loneliness that led up to those few wild nights that January would probably just sound like an excuse.

Adam didn’t like people who made excuses. Besides, he had no way of knowing if he could trust Josie with an emotional truth that could cut him to his core. She may yet prove herself the enemy in a bitter custody case. He decided to tell the truth, but not all of it. It twisted low in his gut that he would follow his father’s path but if she listened, really listened, she would hear the message beneath the words and have an inkling of what had fueled his angry rebellion.

“If you recall, I came into my inheritance in January.” I lost my mom. My only ally.

Her determined jawline eased a bit.

“I found myself with a totally new status.” Finally, officially, on my own. Alone.

Her gaze dipped downward.

“I didn’t handle it particularly well.” I’m not making any excuses.

She nodded, her brow furrowed. “I’m sorry about the loss of your mother.”

“Thanks.” He’d struck a chord, he supposed.

“She was a remarkable lady. A real force in the community. A good Christian who supported so many social causes and cared about people. She really put her faith in action.”

“More than you probably know.” He thought not only of how his mother had taken him in as a child and raised him as her very own, but also of the ways she devoted her own inherited fortune to help those in need. It tugged at Adam’s heart to realize that back then he’d been so fixated on striking back at his father and brothers that he had done nothing to honor his mother and the things she had taught him. That did not alter his plan for revenge, however.

He was a Christian. He just wasn’t that kind of Christian. He fought back a twinge of shame over having even thought that, much less allowed it to stand as his justification. “If it helps, I am not proud of what I did.”

“I’m not the one you owe an apology to.” Josie poked her chin up, fidgeted with the folds of the blanket that still concealed his son from him.

“An apology? I wasn’t aware I owed an apology to anyone.” It was what it was. He felt bad that it had gone so wrong. Felt some shame that his grief and resentment had uncovered his weaknesses instead of revealed his inner strength. But getting all touchy-feely about it now wouldn’t change the past or set things right today.

He had come to town with only two indisputable responsibilities, to claim his son and ruin his so-called family. Neither Josie nor Ophelia Redmond figured prominently in his designs. “Your sister was a willing partner in what happened between us. Don’t forget that she was the one who failed to notify me about the baby. It’s not as if I haven’t paid a price for my poor choices.”

“I don’t doubt that.” She gave him a look of sympathy that did not sink to the level of pity.

He hadn’t known anyone who had ever managed that with him and appreciated it in a way he could not for the world have articulated. His whole life, people had given with one hand and taken away with two. Encounters with even the most sincerely empathetic often left him undermined and exposed. He wondered if Josie would finally be the exception.

“However…”

“I should have known,” he muttered under his breath.

“Hmm?” she asked over the wriggling and almost inaudible fussing of the baby in her arm.

“Give with one hand, take with two,” was all he felt compelled to say.

“However…” She patted the blanket and adjusted the form beneath it, raising it higher against her own small frame. The legs kicked and a tiny hand flailed out to grab a strand of her hair. She ignored it and forged on. “Your choices have resulted in this small life. And whether you have suffered enough or who is to blame for how the two of us arrived in this situation no longer matters. When you are a parent, it’s not about you and your feelings anymore, it’s about what’s best for your child.”

“My child,” he echoed softly. “Thank you.”

“You’re welcome.” She batted her eyes in a show of seeming disbelief, then leaned back to look under the blanket and the wriggling infant in her arms. “I don’t usually yell at strangers like that, but…”

“I’m not thanking you for yelling at me.” He chuckled at the very notion. He could go just about anywhere in this town and get yelled at, and by people a lot more experienced and colorful at it than Miss Josie Redmond.

“Then, I don’t—” She hook her head.

“When,” he explained as softly as the baby’s gentle stirring.

“What?”

“You said when you are a parent. Not if. Your intention with that little speech was to put me in my place. And with that small distinction, you did.” He reached out and brushed the blanket from atop the child’s head.

The baby squirmed and made a sound that went something like “ya-ya-ya,” then laughed.

Neither music nor birds nor even the grandest of majestic choirs could ever sound as sweet as the sound of his baby laughing.

“Anyway,” he explained, knowing he’d have to appease Josie in some way before she’d even think of allowing him to hold his son, “I admit to my part, my shortcomings in all of this. I did spend time with your sister, obviously, and—”

“And it didn’t mean a thing to you.”

He lowered his head and his tone and took one step toward the woman holding his son. “You will never understand what it meant to me, lady.”

She cupped the baby’s head and took a step back from him. “Then why didn’t you call her? Why didn’t you try to find out what happened to her?”

“Because…” Again a choice loomed before him. Tell the whole truth and risk losing some of his power in the situation or say just enough to get what he wanted now. He looked long and deep into Josie’s defiant yet anxious eyes and knew he only had one real course of action. The truth. “Because I was only thinking of myself. I acted like a wounded dog, snarling and mean and willing to do anything to protect myself. I spent a night with your sister, drunk most of the time but aware of what I was doing, and then I walked away and never looked back. Because that’s what suited me.”

There he’d said it. He’d given her plenty of ammunition to take a potshot at him and do some emotional damage. He did not deserve this child. But, as he hoped both his words and tone made quite clear, he would do whatever it took to be a part of young Nathan’s life. Because it suited him.

“Oh.” Clearly she did not know what to make of that. But she did not seem even remotely willing to use his confession against him. “Are you saying that if you had known sooner, you’d have returned sooner?”

“No.” Again he spit the hard truth out. He had worked diligently this past year and a half to put himself in a position to do the most damage to…or good for, depending on one’s vantage point, the Carolina Crumble Pattie Factory. If he had learned about his son sooner, he would have come for the child, but not until the time was right. “No, I can’t say I’d have come back sooner. But I can say I am here now and that’s what we have to deal with.”

They stood in silence for a long, anxious moment.

Adam could practically see the thought process playing out over Josie’s features. He wanted to say something to tip her confidence in his favor, but in the end he could only say straight-out what was on his mind. “You asked me earlier tonight not to take your son away, Josie, and I agreed. I won’t. I can’t do that to him—or to you.”

He focused on her, standing in the shaft of light from the open door.

She seemed so small and alone in the otherwise dark room, that he felt drawn to her and the child cradled against her body.

He moved in, so near that he could see the fearful questioning in her eyes. He knew how it felt to wonder if anyone was on your side. To pray not to lose the person you loved most in the world and wonder how you would survive if the worst came to pass. He had prayed that prayer the night his mom died. But he had not come to destroy this little family. He had it within his power to prevent his son from losing the only mother he had ever known. He would not fail little Nathan in that regard.

Because, even though he had only known about him for a short while and had yet to even properly see him, Adam already loved the little guy. He supposed that among all his many faults and flaws, this redeemed him just a little. That in this feeling he knew a small taste of the greatest love of all, the love of God.

He placed one hand upon his baby’s head and one protectively on Josie’s tense shoulder. “Since you know I’m not going to take the boy, Josie. Why don’t you just let me…hold him?”

She wet her lips. Hesitated.

“Please.”

In one fluid movement Josie swept her hand beneath the child legs and then carefully laid him in his father’s arms.

His son. Adam caught his breath. For all his good intentions and promises, holding his child for the very first time made him wonder if he’d spoken too soon. He did not want to tear this baby from the only mother it had ever known, but this was his son. His flesh and blood. And Adam would not settle for weekends and every other Christmas, just experiencing bits and pieces of his childhood.

He felt Josie tense at his side, but he didn’t focus on her discomfort. Adam had always made his own rules in life—or figured a way around the ones he didn’t like. That’s exactly what he was going to do now.

He gazed into the baby’s bright blue eyes and found just enough voice to whisper, “Hello, son. Daddy’s here now. Daddy’s here—and nothing is going to come between us ever again.”

Chapter Four

“Nothing’s going to come between us again.”

Adam’s words to Nathan still rang in Josie’s ears twelve hours later as she rushed about the diner trying to get ready for the morning coffee crowd.

Yes, crowd.

Large cities and fancy coffee shops and cafés with big noisy machines were not the only places that people liked to gather to chat on their way to work in the mornings. There had always been the usual fellows, the retirees who liked to do a little of what locals lovingly called, “pickin’ and grinnin’, laughin’ and scratchin’.’’ They met every day but Sunday, of course, to solve the problems of the world, tell jokes and stories they had all heard a hundred times, and reward their long-suffering wives with a little bit of “me” time.

Then there were the commuters. Ever since the layoffs had started at the Crumble, more and more folks began their drives to workplaces in other nearby towns with what Josie had listed on tent cards on the tabletops as “Cup O’Joe To Go.” It wasn’t the kind of thing you could get at those fancy places. No grande or venti size disposable cups with insulated wrappers to keep the drinker from burning his or her hands or fancy tops that looked like Nathan’s sippy cup. No, this was a bank of coffeepots, sweetener options and creamers where people walked in, filled up the coffee conveyance brought from home, dropped a dollar or two in an old pickle jar and headed off to face the day.

Often stopping to share a word of encouragement with one another or to check the chalkboard for messages or new prayer requests. Always with a sense of community that one couldn’t find anywhere else.

This was, to Josie, the essence of why she lived in Mt. Knott. It was also one of the reasons she had brought Nathan to work with her this morning. She felt safe here and felt her son would be safe here, as well.

Not that she thought Adam would do any harm to Nathan or even break his word about taking the child but…

But in her whole life she could not recall ever having felt so vulnerable.

A product, she suspected, of more than just Adam’s introduction into Nathan’s life. This emotion was also a byproduct of her realization that the man would be a presence in her life for a long time to come, as well.

She went up on tiptoe to peer over the cash register at the baby playing quietly in the bright blue portable playpen in the corner of the café.

She had promised herself she wouldn’t make a habit of bringing Nathan to work. Maybe when he was older, she had thought, she would have him come by after school. He could do his homework in one of the booths and she would serve him a snack and whatever advice she could spare until he got into calculus or something else she knew nothing about. But until then she had determined she would have him at work as little as possible.

Josie didn’t need to bring him here, really. She had been blessed with a network of moms and grandmothers around town who had taken turns watching her son since Ophelia left him in her care. The original plan was to depend on this patchwork safety net just until the newborn was old enough for day care. Well, that had been the plan, but then when the jobs began to dry up, so had the town’s only day-care center.

She wondered if Adam Burdett would see that as unacceptable and use it as a wedge to take Nathan from her. He had promised he wouldn’t do that, but then, what did she really know about him?

“Adam Burdett?” The first person she had asked, not giving the particulars behind her sudden interest in the man, had pondered it a moment. “Oh, Stray Dawg! Yeah. Yeah, I know which one he was, uh, is. The one who cashed out. Cut and run.”

“Heard he went through that cash in nothing flat.” The woman at the cash register took her change from Josie and, as she dropped the quarters and nickels into her coin purse, she elaborated, “Gambling.” Clink. “Drinking.” Clink. “Women.” Clink. Clink.

“Gambling?” Josie shoved the cash drawer shut. “Drinking?”

“And women!” Warren and Jed confirmed in unison as they broke off from the morning gathering of curmudgeons to take their usual seats at the counter.

Of course Adam had women. A wealthy, handsome man like that probably had all kinds of girlfriends. She blushed at her own lack of sophistication and what many people would tsk-tsk as simple, out-of-date values. To hide her chagrin, she ducked back into the kitchen to check on the morning’s first offering of pies still cooling on the racks beside the oven. Girlfriends? She doubted very much that a man like that thought of his conquests as girlfriends.

The aroma of apple and cinnamon and other spices filled the air. The tart sweetness of cherries bubbling in deep-red juices stung her nose. All buffered by the homey smell of flaky crust and Josie’s specialty topping.

She went to the back door and cracked it open a tiny bit, to allow some fresh air into the hot, almost steamy kitchen. She paused only a moment, lifting her ponytail and turning her head to cool the back of her neck before hurrying back to her tasks, and to talk of Adam. She peered through the door and shut out the noise and views of the room around her.

“Ended up with a factory job, they say.” A man took a wad of bills from his wallet, showed them to some fellow coffee-bar patrons as if to say “this one’s on me” then stuffed them into the pickle jar. “Ironic, huh?”

“Reap what you sow.” One of his cohorts raised his mug in grateful salute for the freebie. “Bible says.”

Josie glanced around for one of the silicon gloves she used to handle hot pie plates and the like. When she didn’t find it immediately, she grabbed the nearest dish towel and used it to cover her hand as she picked up one of the cherry pies. She didn’t want to miss a word of the conversation in the dining room.

“I spotted that Adam at a hotel in Raleigh a year ago. Back when my husband went to that International Snack Cake Expo deal, remember?” spoke up Elvie Maloney, who had just started coming in after she went back to work when her husband lost his middle-management job at the Crumble. “Kept to the outskirts of the show. Didn’t interact with the old gang, not at all.”

“Well, can you blame him?” Micah Applebee scoffed. Micah had worked out at the Crumble for even longer than Elvie’s husband. “After the mean-spirited way the Burdetts treated him?”

“The way they treated him was to make him a millionaire,” Elvie shot back.

“Wish they’d up and treat me like that. I wouldn’t even care if it was mean-spirited,” Warren joked.

“You say that now but you’d come in here blubbering like a baby,” Jed teased.

“Yeah, and using hundred-dollar bills to dry my tears,” Warren said right back. They both laughed.

“Well, that Stray Dawg Burdett boy might have done better using money for hankies. It might have got it soggy but at least he’d have some of it left.” Elvie whirled her spoon through her coffee.

“How do you know he doesn’t?” Jed asked.

Elvie tapped the spoon on the edge of her cup, making everybody look her way. “Because he was at that conference working for somebody else. If I had millions, the last thing I’d want to do is work in a snack-cake factory all week and go to conferences on snack cakes on the weekend. Real suspicious if you ask me.”

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