Dad in an Instant Read online

  The pain and anger in his face, the tension in his body, made Jake 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. “Rafe and Clint also had it rough.”

  “Yes, they did. We met because we didn’t have good homes,” Jake said. “We got in some trouble.” Jake knew he had to answer Maury honestly, so he said, “We had to make our own way in life, and we got over our past 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.”

  Before he could say more, 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, Jake heard a less-than-discreet knock at the front door of Jake’s Place, and everybody went into action.

  He raced to the door and unlocked it so the early customers could come in. “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.

  12

  Jake stared at the phone in his hand, gritted his teeth, and pulled up the number. 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 a deep breath and dialed.

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

  “It’s not good news,” Jake said.

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

  Jake 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. My father passed away, and I’m the guardian of his eight-month-old child.”

  “Wow. I’m very sorry to hear of your loss. That’s, well, a real change in your life.” Stein seemed to be gathering himself together.

  “I need to stay with the baby for a while until he gets to know me, so I won’t be able to come to New York this week.”

  Jake 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.”

  Jake 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, Jake! 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, Jake 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 Lucas and Abbie. They were both asleep, but Abbie’s eyes popped open as soon as he walked into the room, and she instantly rolled off the sofa and darted into Lucas’ room.

  Jake joined her. “Relax,” he whispered when he’d pressed his hand lightly to Lucas’ 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.”

  Jake 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.

  Abbie paced the room, physically agitated and yes, tired. And worried.

  She worried about the new passion she was feeling for Jake and the motherly feelings she’d had for Lucas from the first time she held him in her arms. Her mother had warned her about getting too comfortable in Falling Star and deciding to stay, and Abbie 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 Falling Star. So, as she’d told Jake, 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 her feelings for Jake. Realizing she was wringing her hands and that she didn’t want Lucas waking up to a distracted babysitter, she decided busywork was the thing to do. She put a load of Lucas’ laundry into Jake’s apartment-sized washing machine, then dived into one of the bags from Baby Heaven and started cutting off price tags. Nothing like good old-fashioned work to keep your mind occupied—and off dangerous topics.

  Jake woke up thinking about the nightmare yesterday had been. He’d checked on Abbie and Lucas 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. “Lucas needs to keep taking his medicine until it’s all gone, but he’s acting like a healthy baby. He’s asleep, clean, and should sleep through the night.”

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

  “Do you have to be awake to drive in Falling Star?” She gave him a mischievous smile. “Just kidding. Of course I’m awake.”

  “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 Lucas, then…”

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

  He’d checked on Lucas 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 Lucas one more time, left a light on in the baby’s room, slid into bed, and fell asleep at once.

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

  On the way back from one of these trips, he realized that if he told Abbie, or Rafe and Lilah, maybe even Clint about his night checks on the baby, they’d assume he was driven by love for his baby brother. They’d be wrong. At least partially wrong.

  What drove him was a sense of responsibility, something he hadn’t learned at home, but from being friends with Rafe and Clint. They had taught him about being dependable, someone another person could count on. Becoming Lucas’ guardian had been a surprise, but that didn’t mean the child needed to worry. He’d never need to worry. Jake would always take care of him.

  “I can only stay a minute,” Jake 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, hating that he couldn’t spend more time with his friend but knowing he had other responsibilities to handle.

  “A quick hello is fine,” Barney said. “I’ve got lots of folks stopping by these days. I’ve talked more in the past two days than I have in the last year.”

  Jake chuckled. Like him, Barney was an old cowboy, a man more used to action than words. Talking was a skill they’d had to work at.

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

  Barney actually did look better today, which made Jake feel better. “He’s being handed from Colleen to Becky to Abbie 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. “Children are worth any sacrifice.”

  That was the last thing Jake 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 is supposed to love his child.” He paused for a moment, wondering how to explain.

  Barney nodded as if to say, go on.

  “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. When they smile at you. When they say ‘dada.’ When they act like they’d like you to hold them. That’s when love kicks in. Give it time but know it will happen.” He sent Jake the closest thing to a smile Barney was capable of.

  Barney was, on the outside, the least sentimental person Jake could imagine. If Barney could feel that kind of love, maybe he could. Time and a couple of “dada” moments would turn Jake into the kind of parent Lucas 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. Lucas was such a cute, funny, happy kid. He deserved a dad who knew how to be great.

  He repeated the words in his mind: cute, funny, happy… Lucas 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 volatile temper and workaholic nature? Maybe Lucas had a father who played with him, cuddled him, talked to him, did all the things he’d never done with Jake. Or had Lucas simply had a loving mother and a really great nanny?

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

  “Barney,” he said to himself quietly once he left the older man’s hospital room, “I wish you’d been my father instead.”

  Since Barney’s heart attack, Abbie had been doing triple duty at the diner. The chefs in training would arrive tomorrow, and the situation should improve. Lucas was doing fine, and Jake was back in full force, but still, she arrived early each day and stayed late.

  This morning she arrived first, in fact. She’d expected Jake 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 Jake’s apartment. Darting into the foyer at the foot of the stairs, she almost ran into Jake, disheveled, barefooted, and harried-looking, with Lucas in his arms, wailing.

  “What the blazes was that noise?” Jake’s teeth were clenched together.

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

  “Scared the daylights out of him,” Jake 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,” Jake said loudly. “I have to get dressed for work. I don’t know what to do.”

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

  “Okay,” Abbie 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.”

  Jake gave her a grateful look and fled. Abbie waited at the foot of the stairs, deafened by Lucas’ screams in the tiny space, until she was pelted by Lucas’ outdoor gear and the diaper bag, followed by a leather jacket and gloves that must be for her. Abbie flung on the coat, no time to think how sweet that was of Jake. Dressing Lucas was like dressing an enraged cat, but she managed at last and got the stroller onto the sidewalk with Lucas 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 Lucas 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. Abbie 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, Lucas’ 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 Jake’s Place 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, Abbie,” Jake said when she called him to let him know about the longer stroll they planned on taking. “I feel guilty.”

  “Don’t,” Abbie 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.” Jake 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 walk from the house, and I have everything else I need in
the baby bag. We’ll go to the store as soon as it opens. Everything will be fine—”

  “Thanks, Abbie. Your help makes all the difference in the world.”

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

  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. Once they got back to her house, Lucas turned back into his old sweet self, fascinated by every “toy” she pulled out of Mrs. Langston’s closets and cupboards, which she carefully washed before handing to him.

  When Jake’s car pulled up in front of her house at eight that evening, she was lying on the floor beside Lucas, gazing at him and thinking hard while he slept in a pile of Mrs. Langston’s comforters topped by a clean sheet. She got up to let Jake in and pointed to Lucas.

  “You know what I’m doing here, don’t you?” she asked Jake without even saying hello.

  “Saving my life,” he guessed.

  “No, I’m being the nanny,” Abbie said. She sighed. “So let’s give up and stop pretending I’m not. Between now and January, I’ll help you find someone permanent, but for now, I’m it.”

  She expertly scooped up Lucas and laid him across Jake’s arms, looking up into his astonished face.

  “I’ll see you at six tomorrow morning,” she said. “Don’t argue with me. I’m flat-out exhausted.”

  She got him onto the stoop and closed the door in his face. And then, unable to help herself, she smiled.

  13

  Jake was all ready to go and obviously waiting for her when she arrived at his apartment ten minutes early the next morning. He looked cheerful enough holding Lucas on his left hip, and Lucas waved wildly at her and giggled.

  “All quiet on the southwestern front,” Jake murmured.

  She took Lucas from him, snuggling him and blowing little kisses into his hair. He was clean and sweet-smelling, ready for another fascinating day.