Unexpected Father

She would have taken offense at his question, but she knew that he was nght. She was very close to being emotionally bankrupt. And he was partially to blame for that.

“Don’t you think you should let me clean this up a little?” she suggested, eyeing the kitchen counter awash in their used cooking utensils and spilled ingredients.

“Don’t you think you should put on a robe?” he countered, his eyes taking in her length again, this time lingering on her breasts.

Belatedly she realized she was standing near a window, her body all too visible through the thin cotton fabric of her nightgown. Flushing, she turned and left the room.

From the other side of the partition, she heard her son say, “Mom’s not a morning person.”

Just great, she thought. As if succumbing to Jordan McClennon’s charms wasn’t enough, now she had a family member making excuses for her behavior.

Hannah gathered up clean clothes from the small suitcase she’d left on the floor and carried them to the bathroom.

She definitely looked like a woman who’d had a near sleepless night because of the man in Esther’s kitchen. Hannah sighed. It wouldn’t do to look this tired when Ronnie and Jordan’s brothers arrived. They seemed all too adept at sizing up the situation. And far too interested in what was going on between her and Jordan.

She still couldn’t believe she’d actually seen him painting chocolate faces on pancakes. “No end to his talents,” she muttered to herself, but that made her blush again as she thought of his lusty lovemaking so long ago. And no doubt he’d had the opportunity to practice it many times since, on one besotted female after another.

She came into the kitchen dressed in her jeans and a clean T-shirt, this one a plain black.

“No message this time, I see,” Jordan said, looking up from the table where he was eating and grinning at her T-shirt’s simplicity.

“I don’t want to be the instigator of any more dietary disasters,” she said. But she nearly smiled back at him. It was almost impossible not to be taken in by him.

Until she realized what it was that her son was crunching.

“Potato chips?” she said in disbelief. “You’re eating potato chips for breakfast?”

“Esther doesn’t have any hash browns, Mom,” Kevin explained earnestly.

A strong lecture on fat and sodium was in order, but glancing at Jordan’s sheepish face sapped her determination. She had lost control long before she got out of bed, and she might as well acknowledge that fact.

“Here,” Jordan said, standing and holding a chair for her. “I’ll get you some breakfast.”

“No chocolate pancakes or potato chips, please,” she said, sighing.

“Bacon sandwich then,” he said, popping two slices of bread into the toaster and slipping the leftover bacon into the microwave. “And coffee.”

She really wasn’t a morning person, he thought, smiling to himself as he listened to her talk to Kevin about the importance of him staying out of the way today. “We brought your books, and the TV’s right here,” she told him.

“Can’t I hammer just one nail?” he begged.

Hannah shook her head. “I don’t want you to hit someone’s thumb instead,” she said, reaching out to tousle his hair. “Especially mine.” She made a face at him, and Kevin laughed.

Kevin reminded Jordan of Jake’s daughter, Molly. Molly was a little older. He didn’t remember anyone saying how old Kevin was, but the boy had told him something this morning about a picnic coming up soon to celebrate the end of first grade. That was a big milestone in a kid’s life.

He carried a cup of coffee to the table for Hannah, distracted from his thoughts when she smiled at him. How he liked her smile! He could imagine a man doing all sorts of things just to earn one. He glanced at Kevin again and wondered why the boy’s father hadn’t stayed around for those smiles.

But he had no time to dwell on that He heard the truck pulling up outside and started carrying dishes to the sink. He would have plenty of time to ponder the intricacies of Hannah Brewster’s life while he pounded nails today.

They had worked on the frame most of the morning, stopping only when Esther showed up again with hamburgers shortly before noon. Hannah had kept one eye on the grass while she worked, looking for her locket, but to no avail. Now they sat on the ground, resting their backs against the pile of lumber, and ate. Esther sat on the cement block that served as a step at her trailer door, her knees spread wide, her uniform skirt sagging between her legs. She was lecturing Ronnie on his lack of a love life despite her best efforts, and he was turning scarlet from his ears to the patch of pale chest that showed above his V-neck shirt. Kevin was listening with avid interest.

Jordan grinned, amused by the whole idea of Esther orchestrating a romance.

“It’s time you thought about settling down,” Esther told him. “And Lord knows I’ve broken my neck checking out possibilities for you. Don’t you grin at me, Jake McClennon,” she said ominously, catching him before he ducked his head to his burger. “I got you married now, didn’t I?”

“Yes, Esther,” Jake said dutifully, still trying to hide his grin. “Though I can’t quite recall exactly how you got Laura and me together.”

Esther harrumphed. “Of course not. I ain’t obvious when it comes to affairs of the heart, so to speak. I took your problem to St. Jude, and he took care of the details.”

“St. Jude?” Hannah asked, realizing she’d opened a whole new can of worms when the men around her groaned.

“The patron saint of hopeless causes,” Esther informed her, shooting a dark look at each man in turn. “And, believe me, those McClennon boys were certainly hopeless causes when it came to marriage.” She brushed crumbs from her skirt like a duchess smoothing a fine swath of silk. “But I got my St. Jude statue, and he’s done come through for me many a time.”

“It’s more like a concrete elf she keeps behind the diner,” Jordan informed her in a low voice.

“I heard that!” Esther snorted. “And I don’t care what he looks like, he’s my St. Jude and he knows me!” Her eyes took in each member of the group, stopping on Jordan.

“I surrender,” Jordan said immediately, throwing his hands into the air as his brothers and Ronnie laughed. “When is St. Jude’s next miracle?”

Esther narrowed her eyes, looking from Jordan to Hannah until Hannah felt the heat climbing her neck.

“Maybe sooner than you think,” Esther said with satisfaction. “Could be you’re the next one on his list, Jordan. Might want to start pricing fancy suits for your wedding.”

“Not Jordan,” John said with conviction. “The day he gets married is the day I’ll dance naked around that St. Jude statue.”

Over the laughter Jake said, “And I’ll play the kazoo while he does it.”

Esther raised her brows. “Then maybe you’d better go get yourself some lessons at the Arthur Murray Dance Studio,” she told John tartly.

When the laughter subsided, they all slowly stretched their muscles and walked back toward the frame. Jordan picked up a hammer and listened idly as Kevin asked Esther more questions about St. Jude.

“Do you think he’d help me get something special for my birthday?” he was asking seriously. “I’m gonna be seven. It’s not until October, but I figure a kid has to start planning early.”

“Now I don’t know,” Esther said. “Depends on what it is you want.”

“Well,” Kevin said as he dug his toe into the ground, obviously reluctant to come right out with it. “Let’s just say it’s something every kid wants.”

“Can’t be more specific?” Esther prodded.

Kevin’s voice dropped, and Jordan strained to hear. “It’s got legs and a face and hair and all that stuff.”

“Hmm,” Esther said. “A pony?”

“No, no,” Kevin said plaintively. “A dad. You know, someone I could do stuff with. He doesn’t got to live with my mom. Lots of kids at school got dads who don’t live with their moms. I’m not picky.”

He sounded so earnest and wistful that Jordan felt a chord of sympathy for the boy. Why didn’t Hannah have any contact with Kevin’s father? At least then the kid would have a token dad.

“Well,” Esther said, “we’ll have to talk to St. Jude about this. I don’t know if he’ll be able to help or not, but we’ll see.”

“Can I go back to work with you now so we can talk to him right away?” Kevin asked eagerly.

“I don’t see why not,” Esther said. “Let’s go tell your mother.”

Jordan glanced over his shoulder and saw that Hannah was working too far away to have heard the exchange. Just as well, he thought. It would be one more thing for her to worry about.

Methodically he began driving nails into the cross brace in front of him.

So Kevin would be seven this October. That meant he was born in...

He mentally made the calculation while continuing to hammer. And Hannah would have conceived him nine months before that, in January of that year.

Jordan frowned. Something was there in the back of his memory. Something else that had happened in January of that year.

His loan. That was it. He’d received the loan that had enabled him to expand the business that month. He’d gone out to celebrate with...

Hannah.

He’d taken her out to dinner, and they’d ended up back at his apartment, toasting the growth of McClennon Industries.

And then they had made love. About nine months before Kevin Brewster was born.

The hammer came down again, but he was in such a state of shock that he paid no attention to his aim.

Hannah nearly dropped her own hammer when she heard him howl in pain. John, Jake and Ronnie were already racing toward him, and Esther, about to get into her car with Kevin, bustled back toward the work site as well.

Hannah danced around on tiptoe, straining to see over the shoulders of the McClennon brothers, but they were too tall, and with all of her bobbing she was beginning to feel like a kernel of popcorn on a hot skillet.

“He’ll live,” Esther pronounced, and Jake and John clapped Jordan on the back.

“Getting a little clumsy in our old age, aren’t we, brother?” John asked dryly.

“There was a bee,” Jordan said, but his alibi sounded a little weak to Hannah. “It buzzed me, and I missed the nail.”

“Hannah!” Esther called. “Take Jordan inside and put some cream on his thumb.”

“Me?” Hannah said from the back of the group, trying to think of a way to avoid the assignment. “I don’t know where it is.”

“Above the kitchen sink in the left-hand cupboard,” Esther said. “I’d do it myself, but I’m already late getting back to the diner. I’m outta here!”

The men drifted back to work, leaving Hannah a clear view of Jordan. He stood by an upright support post, staring morosely at his thumb.

“Can I see?” Kevin asked, and Hannah resisted the urge to tell him to leave Jordan alone, because she knew how entertaining something yucky like an injured thumb was to a six-year-old boy.

Jordan held out the thumb solemnly, and Kevin leaned forward to inspect it.

“Not much blood,” he said in disappointment. “I cut my knee once and, man, I bet there was gallons of blood.”

“Look at this,” Jordan told him, pulling up his shirt to display a small scar on his ribs. “I fell off my bike once.”

“Heck, I fall off my bike. all the time,” Kevin said with a shrug. “Especially if I’m trying to do wheelies.”

“This is a big bike,” Jordan told him. “A motorcycle.”

“You got a motorcycle?” Kevin asked, his eyes wide.

Esther honked the VW’s horn, and Hannah decided it was time to put an end to the display of machismo on the part of both males.

“If you boys are through trading war stories,” she said, “Esther is waiting.”

“’Bye, Mom!” Kevin called as he bolted for the car.

Hannah carefully tried to keep her eyes away from Jordan’s chest, which was still bared after his little scar display. But she had caught an eyeful of the dark hair and slab of muscles beneath, and she found that her pulse was thumping away in double-time.

“Nurse Hannah,” he said with a teasing smile, “I’m ready when you are. What kind of first aid did you have in mind?”

“A tourniquet to your neck,” she said dryly, turning and heading for the trailer.

But she didn’t dare look at him, because she was feeling far less sure of herself than she’d sounded. She found the cream in the cupboard, then turned abruptly to find him much too close.

“Stand in the light where I can see,” she told him, more to put some distance between them than as a visual aid. “It doesn’t look too bad,” she commented as he held up his thumb.

“I’m wounded here,” he protested. “I’ll have you know I put considerable force behind my hammer.”

“A regular Paul Bunyan,” she muttered. “The women must cluster around you just to sigh while you work.” It was a mean-spirited thing to say, but she couldn’t regret it. Not when she knew she was one of those clustering and sighing women.

“I’ve had my share of... admirers,” Jordan admitted.

“Don’t you mean lovers?” she retorted.

“I didn’t always go to bed with them,” he said quietly, looking into her face until she was forced to look away. “I’m not the playboy you seem to think I am.”

Not if you don’t consider dumping one woman when a better one comes along the actions of a playboy, she thought bitterly.

But she arched her brows and didn’t comment. She ran the water in the sink until it was warm, then took his hand by the wrist and held his thumb under the running water. She could feel him looking at her, but she stoically ignored him. Instead, she rubbed some soap on two fingers of her free hand and began to lather his thumb.

“Ow,” he said softly.

“I’m sorry,” she said, looking up at him. “I need to clean it.”

“It didn’t hurt,” he said, and when she continued to stare at him, confused, he added, “I wanted to see your face.”

Flushing, Hannah looked away again, abruptly turning off the water and drying his hand on a paper towel.

Jordan remembered his brother Jake telling him that he was sure he fell in love with his wife at the moment she took a splinter from his thumb—but he hadn’t recognized it as love at the time.

But love was not an entanglement that Jordan McClennon wanted, and he carefully reined in his emotions. It was one thing to build an emotional bond with a son, quite another to fall in love with a woman.

A son. It just couldn’t be. He had never imagined himself as a father. It smacked of...too much responsibility.

With the blood washed away, Hannah could see that he had scraped the knuckle badly. It would be sore and bruised, but the damage was minimal.

“Lucky you,” she said brightly. “It looks like your nail’s going to be okay.”

“Lucky me,” he repeated quietly. Something in his tone unsettled her, and she frowned down at his hand as she dabbed on the cream. When she finished, she turned away and capped the cream, reaching into the cupboard to put it away.

When she turned back around he was too close to her again. She pressed her back against the sink.

“Hannah, you don’t have to act like a scared rabbit,” he teased her, his eyes studying her. “I’m not about to eat you alive.”

“Yes, you are,” she told him in all seriousness.

“What makes you think that?”

“Because you did it before. I was alone in the city in my first job and nervous enough about doing it right, when the great Jordan McClennon decided to have his fun. Oh, you wined and dined me and whispered sweet things in my ear until my head was swimming with the excitement of it all.” She stopped to take a deep breath. “And when you’d had your fun with me, some other girl with long legs and collagen lips crossed your path and swiveled her hips, and you went chasing after her.” He started to say something, but Hannah held up her hand to stop him. “It’s all right. I learned my lesson the hard way, but you’d better believe I learned it, Jordan. I have no use for you or any other man of your kind. You think you’re God’s gift to women, and the sooner they unwrap the package the better.”

For all her bravery, Jordan saw that her lower lip was quivering. He wanted to gather her in his arms and tell her he was sorry for whatever had happened then. He truly did not remember another woman, and he certainly had never meant to hurt Hannah.

The loan approval had generated a ton of paperwork, and he had spent the next two weeks at either the bank or the office of the economic development agency, filling out a completely new batch of forms in triplicate. And, somewhere in between, he had to meet with lawyers to insure that all of those triplicate forms were in accordance with federal and local business regulations.

Just after 7:00 p.m. on the fifteenth day of the process, after he had signed his name for the last time and taken three aspirin for a roaring headache—triplicate had become a habit—he had tried to call Hannah.

Her phone had been disconnected.

He’d broken one of his cardinal rules and called his personnel manager at home. He found out that Hannah Brewster had resigned and left town. She had left no forwarding address with either the company or her landlady.

Jordan had been dumbfounded, and then annoyed. His attentions to the opposite sex had never before had the effect of driving them out of town.

Now he thought that perhaps he understood why she’d left.

Was it because she’d been pregnant?

He could think of no other reason, and yet he couldn’t find the words to come out and ask her. She was too defensive, too determined to keep him away from her, and if he asked now he was sure she would deny it, out of pride if nothing else.

But he didn’t get a chance to ask. The door burst open, and Ronnie flew inside, holding his nose. He looked at the two of them. Then, apparently recognizing the tension on their faces, he started to back toward the door.

“What is it, Ronnie?” Hannah asked in concern.

“A bee stung me,” he muttered through his hand. “My nose feels like a lightbulb.”

Hannah was still shaking inside from her speech to Jordan, but she struggled to appear calm.

“Come on,” she said, her voice even. “Let’s take a look.”

From the corner of her eye she could see Jordan moving toward the door. She refused to look at him. She had said her piece, and she was sure that he understood her position. He would be a fool to pursue her now.

As the door closed, Hannah mustered a smile for Ronnie and inspected his nose.

“Is Jordan giving you trouble?” he asked hesitantly.

Hannah shook her head. “We had an argument over something that happened a long time ago,” she said. “Nothing more.”

Ronnie looked unconvinced, but Hannah was determined that this was the end of all speculation about her and Jordan McClennon.

“There’s nothing between Jordan and me,” she told him. “And you can tell your mama that, too. St. Jude will have to find another victim.”

And that, she hoped, was the end of that.

Three

Jordan sat back in his office chair and stared out the window. In front of him the computer whirred and clicked as it exited the document he’d been reading, the one that confirmed what he’d remembered.

“Personnel.”

He’d found Hannah’s name, found the date she’d left the company—with excellent references. And that date had come shortly after official word had been announced on the business loan that had financed the company’s expansion.

So almost immediately after he’d wined and dined her, as she put it, and then made love to her, she had left the company. And Jordan had no ready explanation except that she’d been pregnant with his child.

You’re in deep beef stew, Jordan, he told himself, echoing the words his mother spoke often enough to one of her three sons.

It had been four days since the revelation had hit him at Esther’s house that he might very well be Kevin’s father, and it had taken him all of those four days to get up the nerve to check the computer files.

He tugged at his collar nervously. What was he supposed to do now? Hannah didn’t even want to speak to him again, and her son wanted a dad. Not that he was dad material. Quite the contrary. He’d known for a long time that he didn’t care for domestication. He wanted his freedom. He didn’t feel anything like a father. All of his life, he’d hungered for something that would be his alone, and his business filled that need the way no person could.

But on the other hand, only a callous jerk would discover he had a son, then do nothing about it.

He threw down the pen he’d been tapping on his desk and stood, pulling impatiently at the tie he wore. Suddenly the office felt too confining. He wanted nothing more than to get out of here. But it was only five p.m., and Jordan McClennon never left the office before seven.

Maybe it was time to do something different.

Jordan parked his car half a block from her apartment, spotting her as soon as he got out of the car. She was kneeling beside a wooden barrel outside the front door of the building, planting marigolds. For a moment he was so bedazzled by her cutoff shorts and the length of leg they showed that he almost forgot the present he’d brought. He reached into the car to retrieve it, his eyes still on Hannah.

She saw him coming and slowly stood, her hands on her hips.

“How did you find me?” she demanded as soon as he was close.

“I...asked Ronnie,” he admitted. “He didn’t want to tell me. He thought we’d had some kind of falling out.”

“We did,” she said shortly.

He didn’t know what to say to that, so he stood there tugging at his tie.

“Is that supposed to be a peace offering?” she asked, nodding toward the package in his hand.

He’d almost forgotten he was holding it. “Yes,” he said as he held it out, unable to think of anything clever that might earn him one of her smiles.

Hannah stared down at the small, plastic tool box with its toy hammer, screwdriver and saw.

“A rubber hammer,” she said without any change in her voice. “I’ll have Esther’s house done in no time with a rubber hammer. Does it come with rubber nails?”

“No, it’s for Kevin,” Jordan said before he met her eyes and realized that she was teasing him. She started to smile, then caught herself, and he felt his pulse quicken.

“I’ll tell him it’s from you,” she said. “He’s at his guitar lesson.”

She started to turn away, and he took a step closer. “May I...come in?”

Hannah’s innate Brewster hospitality was suddenly at war with her common sense. Despite his trucelike overture, she was still determined not to let him into her life again.

“Hannah,” he said, “for whatever I did when we were together before—and I honestly don’t remember chasing after another woman—I do apologize.”

“It was more like another woman dangling her implants in front of you,” Hannah said, feelng jealous and petty. She sighed. “All right. I guess it’s just another episode in the Brewster Sisters ‘Bad-Date-of-the-Month Club.’” She picked up her trowel and the empty plastic flower containers and fished out her key.

He followed her into the apartment foyer, assuming he had just been invited in, though he wasn’t perfectly clear on the point.

An apartment door opened a crack, and Jordan could see a woman with gray hair and dangling earrings peering out at him. The landlady, he assumed.

“You have a sister?” he asked Hannah as he waited for her to unlock her first-floor apartment.

“Had,” she corrected him. “Marybeth got mixed up with a fast crowd. She died of a drug overdose.”

“I’m sorry.”

He didn’t remember her mentioning a sister before, but then he probably hadn’t gotten far enough beyond his raging lust at the time to ask. He started to ask another question, but she was disappearing into a back room. Shifting his weight, he stood uncertainly in the middle of the room, looking around.

It was a small apartment, but bright and clean. The kitchen and living room were one big room separated by a breakfast bar. Someone had stenciled a red and blue flower design at the top of the walls. It matched the big braided rug in the center of the living room’s wood floor. A bookcase sat opposite the blue couch, its shelves sagging under the weight of a considerable library. More books sat in piles on the floor nearby. He made a mental note—she read a lot, and for all her skill with a hammer, she hadn’t gotten around to building herself a decent bookcase.