Unexpected Father

Jordan knelt beside her, swiftly hammering in a nail at the joint next to the one she had just finished. His thigh was so close to her that the denim lightly brushed her hip, making her fingers shake as she searched in the bag for another nail. Unwillingly she remembered how that thigh had felt naked, hard and muscular along the length of her own leg. She stared down at the board in front of her.

She could feel him watching her, and she was sure he knew what effect he was having on her. She was almost positive that he was provoking this physical contact deliberately to pay her back for her cool treatment of him. Either that or he was intent on luring her into his bed again—and that was never going to happen.

He reached across her for another nail, and his firm hand brushed her bare arm, the contact, brief as it was, igniting heat that flared across her skin. She was trembling inside, hoping it didn’t show. She wouldn’t let him see how addled he was making her. Her flash point reaction to his casual touch could be easily explained by her long celibacy, she rationalized.

“So, what accounts for your expertise?” he asked suddenly, throwing her off guard.

“What?” She forgot about her rehearsed indifference and looked into his eyes. A mistake. They were far too probing, and she hastily looked away.

“The hammering,” he said. “Where did you learn carpentry?”

“From my father,” she said shortly. “I helped when he remodeled our house about twelve years ago. He taught me a lot. Sometimes I helped him when he accepted outside carpentry work.”

“Did we talk about that when we went out?” he asked, surprised.

This time she looked at him deliberately, meeting his eyes and making sure he saw her coolness.

“Frankly, Jordan, I doubt that you’d remember much of anything I told you then,” she said. “I don’t think conversation was your prime objective.” She wanted to make sure he understood that she hadn’t mistaken their pnor involvement for anything more than it was—an office affair, short and meaningless.

It had been so much more to her. She could remember almost every word of their conversations, even if Jordan couldn’t.

Abruptly she stood and moved to another corner of the foundation, deftly hammering in two nails where the sill boards joined.

Jordan followed her, squatting beside her, far too close for her comfort.

“That house your father remodeled,” he said. “Does he still live there?”

“He died a few years ago,” she said flatly, reaching for another nail even though two were sufficient.

“I’m sorry,” he said.

“Are you?” she asked sharply, looking into his face. “Or is it just the polite thing to say?” She was aware that she’d spoken a little too loudly, and now Ronme and Jordan’s brothers were staring at her, the sounds of hammers and drills having ceased for the moment.

“I don’t know what’s wrong here,” Jordan said carefully. “What have I done, Hannah?”

“Nothing,” she said, lying, but still managing to sound tired and aggrieved, something she hated when other women did it. If something was wrong, a person should just come out and say it. At least that was what she believed. But this wasn’t the time or the place to get specific, not when half of Jordan’s family was listening with intense interest.

“Hey!” a commanding woman’s voice called over the whine of a car engine. “Who wants something to eat?”

Hannah turned as a battered, fluorescent orange Volkswagen churned the driveway’s gravel amid the grinding of gears. The car overshot the end of the driveway by a good five feet, coming to rest just inches from a scarred oak tree that looked like it had had more than its share of close encounters with the VW if the flecks of orange paint on the bark were any indication. Ronnie’s sigh was audible.

“Hi, Ma. How come you’re here so early?”

“Early, schmearly. I figured you wouldn’t think to feed these folks. Now was I right or was I right?”

“Yeah, Ma, you’re right,” Ronnie agreed, shifting his weight from one foot to the other.

The portly woman in the green waitress uniform arched an eyebrow at him as she passed, trailing the scent of hamburgers in her wake. She smiled at Hannah as she set a large white bag on the foundation.

“Now, Hannah, these boys haven’t been working you too hard, have they?” she asked.

“Not even hard enough to earn a meal, Esther,” Hannah said, smiling despite her recent bitter exchange with Jordan.

Esther turned toward the car. “Kevin, if you want a hamburger, you’d better get over here.” She winked at Hannah. “He’s been busing and setting up tables for me all morning.”

“He hasn’t gotten in your way, has he?” Hannah asked. “I could watch him here.”

“The time a little boy gets in my way, honey,” Esther told her, “is the day that Esther Wardlow retires. He’s been an angel. Best bus boy we ever had,” she added in a loud voice as Kevin hopped from the car and trooped over to her, grinning at his mother.

“Look, Mom!” he called excitedly, holding out one small hand with four quarters on his palm. “I got tips. See? I’m rich. I done good, huh?”

Hannah couldn’t help smiling and gave him a short hug. He was such a good boy, always cheerful, always excited about something. He had her brown hair and eyes, but her sister’s short nose and bow-shaped mouth.

“Very good,” she said, tousling his hair. “I might even let you spend your fortune on some bubble gum since you worked so hard.”

“Really?”

“Really. I’m feeling generous. Are you hungry?”

Kevin shook his head. “I ate pancakes for breakfast and some toast and some bacon and some—” he wrinkled his nose, trying to think “—some sausages,” he concluded with satisfaction.

And this was the child who claimed he was never hungry in the morning, she thought, giving a mental sigh.

“I think you’re going to have to bus some more tables to pay for all that food,” she informed him. “Someday you’ll eat me out of house and home.”

Kevin laughed and danced up and down, clearly delighted with his mother’s familiar but good-natured complaint.

The men had gathered around the bag to get a hamburger, and Hannah glanced up to find Jordan still squatting by the foundation, his pensive eyes on her.

Good, she thought. Let him catch sight of a kid, and Mr. I’m-So-Irresistible will turn tail and run. And leave me alone.

“All right, sport,” Esther said to Kevin. “Let’s get going before the lunch crowd pours in.”

“I got work to do,” Kevin informed the group importantly, jabbing his thumb toward his chest and walking cockily to the car.

“Make sure you do a good job,” Hannah called after him. “Remember what I told you.”

“A Brewster always does his best,” he parroted as if he’d said the words a hundred times. But he smiled at her and waved as Esther backed the car erratically out of the driveway.

Hannah could feel Jordan watching her, but she carefully plucked a hamburger from the bag and sat on the ground a cautious distance away. She found it hard to eat when Jordan sat down right next to her. The other three men settled a few feet away, obviously interested in whatever was going on between Jordan and Hannah.

So, Jordan thought, Ronnie wasn’t sitting next to her. Maybe he’d misunderstood the situation.

“Nice kid,” Jordan said, clearing his throat.

It hadn’t escaped him that Kevin’s last name was apparently Brewster. So Hannah hadn’t married the kid’s father.

“They don’t come any better,” she agreed, her eyes on her food, her knees bent and pulled defensively to her chest. “I’d walk through fire for that child.”

He knew that she meant it. And he knew that somewhere in her words there was a warning aimed at him. He just didn’t know what to make of it.

Hannah was obviously self-sufficient and strong, far more sure of herself now than she’d been when he first knew her.

“So,” he said, swallowing a bite and leaning back against the pile of lumber, “do you come up here to Sandford often?”

Hannah turned to look at him, frowning. If this was another of his pick-up lines, it wasn’t going to work.

“I’ve been here a few times,” she offered, going back to her hamburger. “Ronnie asked me to plan a birthday party for his mother last winter. And Esther, the incurable matchmaker, has invited me here several times on one pretext or another to meet the latest eligible bachelor truck driver who stops at the diner.”

“She keeps fixing you up, huh?” Jordan asked, perking up.

“She tries, bless her,” Hannah said. “If she’s not working on me, she’s digging up girls for Ronnie.”

A very satisfied smile crossed Jordan’s face.

Hannah couldn’t seem to avoid Jordan the rest of the day, not when he followed her and worked right next to her during the entire framing process. But she did manage to keep her mind off him by dint of the hard physical labor that went into building a house.

By nightfall her back ached and her hands burned, but her mind was too peacefully exhausted to dwell on the dark-haired man who had shadowed her steps all day.

It was late when Esther fed them all spaghetti and insisted on cleaning up the dishes herself. Hannah heard the McClennons and Ronnie leave, the low hum of the truck motors fading into the twilight.

Hannah took Kevin to the spare bedroom in Esther’s trailer and read to him from one of his favorite books, the story of two misbehaving insects. Then she tucked Kevin in bed and kissed his forehead as he smiled sleepily.

“Close your eyes,” she said, beginning the ritual that ended each night for mother and son.

“Sweet sleep,” he responded.

“Dream a dream...”

“For me to keep.”

He was tired from the excitement of helping Esther all day in the restaurant, and she smiled as she watched his breathing soften almost as soon as his eyes closed.

Dream a dream for me to keep, she repeated in her head as she stepped into the dark hallway. Kevin was her dream now, though he had been thrust upon her before she had time to realize what was happening.

Marybeth, she whispered under her breath, you don’t know how much I love him.

Hannah had helped her sister financially and emotionally all through her pregnancy, but Marybeth had never been interested in motherhood. She’d been enamored of rock musicians and lived the uncertain, hazardous life of a groupie. The boy who fathered Kevin—though determining exactly which boy was impossible—had no interest in parenthood, either,

Hannah had taken in the baby each time Marybeth went off on one of her road trips with her latest heavy metal band of the hour. Hannah knew that Marybeth was no saint on those trips, and she had strongly resisted hearing any of the details. But, nevertheless, it was a shock the day a young policeman came to her door to tell her that her only living relative had died of a drug overdose in a motel room three hundred miles away.

Hannah had gone to court to gain formal custody of Kevin, and it was granted. She had inherited her parents’ house when they died, and she had let Marybeth live there rent free. After her sister was gone, Hannah had sold the house and invested the proceeds in a mutual fund, using the dividends to help defray the costs of raising a child.

She was frugal, and when she returned to St. Louis she got a job at a branch library that paid enough to provide a reasonable life-style for a young mother and child.

Day care was trickier, but she had managed through careful budgeting to put Kevin in a cheerful, responsible center when he was younger. And once he started school she arranged her work schedule so that she could get home most days before he did. When she had to work weekends or the evening shift, she paid a mature, neighborhood teen to baby-sit.

She had planned carefully, and she had worked to give Kevin a good life. The only thing she hadn’t been prepared for was the fierce love she felt for the boy she considered her son. She had never known an emotion like it, and she found it humbling.

She reached up now to touch the locket with the picture of her and Marybeth and Kevin when he was a baby. Her fingers fumbled when they didn’t find it. Hannah went into the bathroom, turned on the light and searched the mirror, even shook out her T-shirt. But it was gone.

“Oh, damn,” she whispered under her breath. She must have lost it while she was working outside. It could be anywhere in the grass.

She knew she should just go to bed and worry about it in the morning, but the locket was important to her. It was virtually all she had left of her sister, all Kevin had left. It was the only photograph she had found when she’d sold the house.

A single lamp burned in the living room, and Hannah surmised from the flickering bluish light under the door of the main bedroom that Esther had retired to watch the old movies that were her addiction.

Hannah had insisted she could sleep on the convertible couch, and Esther had reluctantly given in.

Hannah went about quietly rummaging for a flashlight, finally coming across one under the sink. Slipping out the door, she closed it softly behind her and switched on the flashlight. It flickered errantly but steadied when she shook it. Good, she thought. It was especially bright, just what she needed.

She could smell the herbs that Esther had planted near the door as she stepped off the concrete block onto the ground. She stood quietly a moment, letting her eyes adjust to the dark. She walked a few more steps into the yard, pausing to look up at the sky. The stars seemed unnaturally bright to her after years of living in the city where streetlights muted the sky.

But she wasn’t here to stargaze. The most likely place for her locket was around the foundation where she’d been hammering most of the day. In the starlight she could see the section of house frame in place over the subflooring, like a skeleton against the sky. It gave her a strong sense of satisfaction to know she had helped put it there.

She was on her knees a moment later, crawling along the foundation, feeling in the grass with her hands while she shone the light on the ground.

“It’s a bit dark to hunt mushrooms, you know.”

She was so startled that she jumped, banging her head against one of the cross braces.

“Ow!” she cried out, losing her balance and ending up sitting on the grass, her back against the foundation. She rubbed her head where it hurt and glared up at Jordan, who looked like a giant silhouetted against the starry sky

“Are you all right?” he asked, kneeling in front of her. He put his hand on her shoulder as if to check

“I’m. .fine,” she managed to snap. “What are you doing out here?”

“That’s what I was asking you,” he said.

“You didn’t ask,” she corrected him indignantly. “You just made some nitwit remark about mushrooms.”

“Nitwit,” Jordan muttered under his breath, and even in the dark she could see his frown. “Speaking of nitwits, I’m not the one skulking around in the middle of the night.”

“And just what would you call what you’re doing?” she demanded.

“I was sleeping—at least until you started shining that damn beacon all over the place.”

“Sleeping?” she repeated in disbelief. “Where?”

“In my camper,” he said irritably, and she squinted at the driveway, barely able to make out the shape of his truck.

Hannah realized she was still clutching the flashlight in her right hand, and she pointed it at Jordan’s face, still confused as to why he was here.

“Will you cut that out?” he complained. “You’re going to blind me in a minute.” The hand on her shoulder had tightened, infuriating her all the more.

“You’re the one who scared me half to death,” she said, pointedly aiming the light at his face again. “What were you doing creeping up on me if you were sleeping?”

“I told you,” he said, his voice rising. “The light woke me up. You were shining it around the yard like some halogen come-on at a car lot.”

“‘Come-on!’” She was truly furious now, and she moved to get to her feet, succeeding in nearly blinding him with the light once more. “You certainly have a big ego if you think I’m coming on to you, buster!” she informed him, waving the light about in her agitation.

Jordan took hold of the flashlight, but Hannah held on obstinately.

“I didn’t say you were coming on to me,” he argued.

“Well, I certainly was not,” she insisted.

“Hannah!” he said between clenched teeth. “Will you kindly let go of the flashlight!”

But she wasn’t about to do anything he wanted, kindly or otherwise. She jerked back on the flashlight and felt her sneakers slip on the wet grass.

The next thing she knew she was on her back with Jordan hovering over her. One of his hands was braced beside her head while the other held the flashlight. She was still so angry with him that she pushed against his chest to put some distance between them. Instantly she was aware of the hardness and warmth beneath her hands, and she froze.

The expression on Jordan’s face changed, as well. He had been irritated with her before, she knew, but now there was something akin to confusion sweeping his features.

He stared at her a long moment in the dark, his hand curled around the flashlight so tightly that his knuckles stood out in stark relief. His face was only inches from hers. An old memory came rushing back of this same face so close to hers as he made love to her. He was the man who had tutored her in the art of lovemaking, and even though it had been one time only, she had never forgotten it.

Hannah had to bite back a groan as her fingers lessened their pressure to fan out over his chest. She couldn’t look away from his face. He was even more mesmerizing now than he’d been seven years ago.

Slowly his mouth lowered to hers as if he wanted to stop himself but couldn’t. Hannah felt her breath release on a sigh as his lips finally touched hers. Her hands curled around the fabric of his shirt.

She could feel him start to draw away, but then he gave in to the need that they both felt and deepened the kiss. Hannah responded, her hands moving to the back of his neck, touching his hair and letting her fingers luxunate in the silkiness of it. She was kissing him back with all the need of a woman who had not felt the touch of a man for too long.

When Jordan raised his head, she saw something new in his eyes, something that made her wary.

“I’ve been wanting to do that all day,” he told her, his breathing not quite slowed to normal. “And there are a million other things I’ve been wanting to do, too.”

The blood rushed to her face as the full impact of what she’d just done hit her. He had been toying with her, luring her into his bed again, and he was sure he had made her compliant. She was so mortified that she abruptly dropped her hands from his neck and tried to stand up.

But he was ahead of her, standing and pulling her to her feet by her shoulders. She felt a rush of cool air across the dew-dampened back of her clothes.

“You can forget about those other things you’re wanting to do,” she said, trying to will her voice to coolness when she still felt out of breath. “I’m not interested.”

“No?” he said, investing the word with both skepticism and amusement. He caught her arm, pulling her to him, and for one breathless moment she thought he was going to kiss her again. But he made no move toward her. “There’s no sin in wanting someone, Hannah. And we’re hardly strangers.”

“We’re strangers as far as I’m concerned,” she told him, standing stiffly in his grip. “I made a mistake a long time ago, and I don’t intend to repeat it.”

He abruptly let her go, and Hannah turned, hugging her arms to herself as she hurried toward the trailer. She thought he said something softly, something she couldn’t quite make out, but she went on without missing a step. It sounded like “We’ll see.”

Once inside, she ran a weary hand through her hair. She had left the flashlight with him, and she hadn’t looked for her locket, but right now she was glad just to have escaped without humiliating herself any more than she had. She stood at the side of the window, looking out into the dark and letting her heartbeat slow to normal.

He was far too attractive and far too sure of himself. And she was...

Just what was she? she wondered. Lonely. Despite her son and her job, she was lonely, and that made her all too vulnerable.

“I thought I heard something.” Esther said from behind her, and Hannah jumped, spinning around.

“Your back is wet,” Esther said with concern. The next instant they both heard the truck tailgate slam with unnecessary force.

Hannah felt her face turn red. She knew her hair was disheveled, as well, and she didn’t have a ready explanation.

“Jordan and I were talking,” she said awkwardly.

“Honey,” Esther said with a significant glance at the window, “you was doing more than talking unless that man spit all over your back. And that’s all I got to say on the matter.” She turned and went back to her bedroom, her floral nightgown billowing in her wake.

Hannah stifled a groan of frustration. She knew she wasn’t going to sleep well that night.

Two

Hannah awoke to the sound of nearby giggling and the smell of bacon frying. The curtains were drawn, leaving her disoriented in the dim light. The giggling came again, and she recognized Kevin’s voice.

She must have overslept. She sat up in consternation, searching with her feet for her slippers. Something was going on behind her, but the couch where she’d slept was nght up against the partition that separated it from the kitchen, so all she was getting through the wall were those giggles and muffled talking.

She glanced at her portable alarm clock and saw that it was seven. Apparently, she hadn’t heard Esther leave for work.

Hannah shuffled around the partition, stopping short when she saw that Jordan was there with Kevin. And Jordan was cooking?

Her disbelief must have registered on her face, because Jordan laughed when he saw her and motioned her to come closer. She didn’t miss the fact that his eyes traveled down her length appreciatively before he carefully looked at her face. “We’re working on masterpieces,” he informed her.

“Come here and see!” Kevin called, impatiently waving his arm to get her to come to the stove.

Still bemused by the sight of Jordan in a domestic setting, Hannah went to the stove and peered over Kevin’s head. They were cooking pancakes. Or doing something indefinable with pancakes, she decided. Four of them sat on the griddle, two with strange marks on them, which, on closer inspection, she realized were faces. Kevin was in the process of drawing on the third with a small paintbrush and...chocolate syrup?

Hannah looked at the open can of chocolate syrup on the counter and then back at the pancakes. “What are you doing?” she asked, totally at a loss.

“Making faces,” Kevin informed her as if she were the densest mother in the world. “See?”

“I see. I just don’t believe.” She glanced at Jordan, finding him watching her with an expression she could only describe as interested.

“Do you have any idea what Esther used those brushes for?” she demanded of Jordan.

He shrugged, his eyes full of mischief. “Oh, I’m sure she doesn’t need them. They were just lying under the sink in an old can with—” He broke off and laughed at her horrified expression. “Actually, they were brand new, still in their wrappers,” he told her.

“But...chocolate,” she said, knowing that she should be aghast at something, but just not quite sure what it was.

“You were extolling the virtues of chocolate on your shirt yesterday,” he reminded her. “Don’t you ever do something just because it’s fun?” he demanded suddenly.

“I can’t afford fun,” she told him with absolute honesty.

“Are you financially or emotionally bankrupt?” he asked quietly, turning back to the stove to lift the pancakes onto a plate.