When he noticed the way Jenny's brows were starting to draw together, he said, "Please. You know you would let me stay if it were any other kid and I was the dad."
"But most dads have been in the picture all along, Caleb. At this point, all you are is a name on a birth certificate. I'm sorry if it sounds cruel or cold, but that's the situation. I don't know how you and Leah knew each other before, but the fact is you didn't know Jonah or anything about being his father until you brought the two of them here today."
"My name is on the birth certificate, Jenny, so you and I both know that gives me a legal reason to be here. I have no intention of harming her or the boy."
"All right. I'm not going to fight about this, but if Leah objects, then we're going to have to revisit this conversation."
And that turned out to be no problem at all because when they returned to Leah's room, she had fallen into an exhausted slumber.
Caleb settled into the chair in her room. Why they always had to make these things for munchkins, he had no idea. As he shifted his weight, trying to get comfortable, his phone chimed. A text from Jake wondering where he was.
Caleb hesitated telling him too much. As angry as he was at Leah, common decency demanded the two of them talk about everything before he shared any information with his family. But damn it was hard to hold it in.
Sticking here at the hospital, he finally texted. Leah and son both sick.
Not surprisingly, Jake texted back: You need me?
How to answer? Caleb could use the moral support; that was for darn sure. He also wouldn't mind siccing Jake on Bill Scott because Caleb sure as hell didn't believe Leah's lame story about the bruise on her cheek and the bandage on her hand. He transferred his gaze from his phone to Leah. As pale as she was, the discoloration on her face stood out. Anger simmered.
I don't but Leah might. He hit send before he overthought it.
"What are you doing here?" Her body language reflected her mistrust, and her gaze darted around the room as though she weren't entirely sure where she was.
Caleb shifted, locking stares with her. "We need to talk."
She closed her eyes and turned her head away. "Not now, Caleb. I can't think straight."
"Straight? Or clearly enough to make up more lies?"
She whipped her head back in his direction then groaned in pain. Caleb regretted his words. Talk about hitting someone when they were down, but didn't he have a right to feel just a little blindsided?
"Jonah?" Deflecting again.
Caleb sighed. "Next door. He finished a nebulizer treatment. Jenny's talking about moving you both to a room and keeping you overnight."
She was shaking her head before he could even finish. "I can't afford a hospital stay."
"Don't you have insurance?"
She shook her head. "Only on Jonah, and it's not a great policy."
Which meant she had an impossibly high deductible just to make her monthly premiums affordable. Surely she had qualified for some government health insurance program for Jonah. Either way, at least she'd been responsible enough to have some insurance. Caleb bit down on saying it out loud.
"Let me handle it. You can pay me back if you want to."
"Why would you help?"
He shrugged. "I feel a bit responsible. You exhausted yourself working on Becca's wedding. Jonah's asthma attack followed right on the heels."
She turned her head away again. "You don't owe me anything."
Caleb leaned forward in the chair. "What you mean is you don't want or need anything from me. I beg to differ. When you put my name on Jonah's birth certificate, you kind of made sure I would owe you something, didn't you?"
"I can't do this right now," she said.
As frustrated and angry as he was, Caleb couldn't keep pushing when she looked so exhausted
"Fine. In the meantime, you can count on my brother Jake showing up to ask you a few questions about the bruise on your face."
"Get out," Leah whispered. "Just get out. You have no right to interfere."
Caleb pushed to his feet and slid his phone into his back pocket before arching a brow at her. "I'll head next door to check on my son. I guess I better get used to saying it."
Chapter 9
Almost as soon as the door shut behind Caleb, Leah went limp, as if all her bones had dissolved leaving her helpless. How could she have been so stupid as to name Caleb on Jonah's birth certificate after he had ignored her attempts to contact him? But she knew why. She had been so sick throughout her pregnancy, she was worried what might happen to their son if something happened to her. The last thing she wanted was for her parents to get custody of Jonah—for any reason. Making sure Caleb's name appeared on the birth certificate seemed like the smartest thing to do.
Now she wasn't so sure.
She studied the treatment room Jenny still had her in. Maybe it would be for the best if she took Caleb up on his offer. The only place she and Jonah had to return to was the vacant box room at Mountain Plants, and Leah worried the room might be part of the reason for Jonah's asthma attack.
While she could understand Caleb's fury, she couldn't deal with it at the moment. There had been too much anger over the last four years. After all, hadn't she tried to let him know about her pregnancy in hopes he would support her and the baby? Wasn't she getting what she wanted?
Leah stiffened as the door to the treatment room opened, but it was only the nurse returning.
"We'll be moving you and Jonah in a few minutes."
"How's he doing?" Leah couldn't keep the worry out of her voice.
"His breathing is much better. Don't worry about him. You just concentrate on you getting better. Doctor Richardson should be in here in shortly to talk to you."
As if she could think of anything other than her son.
An hour later, Leah was in a room with Jonah sleeping in the bed next to hers. He looked so tiny in the oversized hospital bed. He no longer had the mask covering the lower part of his face. A nasal cannula was the only thing remaining. She, on the other hand, was hooked to an IV.
Leah lay back against the soft pillows. She should take advantage of this and relax. How long had it been since she'd felt anywhere close to secure enough that she could completely let down her guard? Maybe never. She closed her eyes. A nap was just what she needed.
Leah wasn't certain what made her wake up or how long she had slept. The sun no longer slanted any rays through the crack in the closed curtains. So it was night. From the hushed movements in the corridor, Leah guessed it must be late.
She turned her head from the window to see how Jonah was doing in the bed next to hers, but it was another who grabbed her gaze. Caleb. He had pulled two chairs between them. While he sat in one, he had his long legs propped in the other and one hand resting on his flat stomach. She had dreamed of seeing him like this, with his face softened in sleep, and his beard shadowing his jaw.
Leah swallowed and bit her lower lip to keep it from trembling. She hadn't realized until now, how much she had lost. Yes, she had Jonah, and she would never trade him, but had she sacrificed the chance to ever find someone who would love and respect her? It didn't seem like it was too much to ask out of life, especially a life that so far had given very little in return. She could fill a bucket with if-onlies. Some of those made her angry at herself. Some made her furious with Caleb.
She studied his face again and realized his green eyes, so like his son's, had opened. He gazed at her with the first slumberous look of morning. Her heart beat faster and her body tightened and swelled as it had the night they had shared drinks and so much more. She didn't want to be attracted to him. Leah both resented him and felt guilty she hadn't persisted in making him acknowledge his son.
"I'm sorry, Caleb," she whispered in a choked voice, not aware until the words came out of her mouth that she was going to say them.
He shifted, as if he was having some difficulty getting comfortable. Leah understood. She had spent plenty of nights
sitting up next to Jonah while he wheezed. Now he slept peacefully, his breathing even and easy.
"We have uninterrupted time right now," Caleb said, his voice deep and a bit rough. "I need to know what happened."
She didn't want to go down this road. While part of her had always longed for a family of her own, this wasn't the way she'd envisioned ending up with one.
"A faulty condom, I suppose."
He leaned forward, his eyes narrowing. "Not what I meant. The only person I've slept with around here in the time frame that would have created Jonah was a dark-haired woman who told me her name was Lee Jones. Was that you?"
"Yes."
"Then I think you owe me more of an explanation than a faulty condom."
She did. She owed him the truth, but it was such a pitiful, twisted truth. Where to start?
"Why did you do it, Leah? And if you were picking up random guys at a hotel bar—"
"Do not go there, Caleb."
He leaned back again and crossed his arms over his broad chest. "Then talk."
"I wanted a chance to cut loose a little, but I didn't want people to know it was me."
"Why not?"
Leah laughed. For someone who had grown up in a boisterous household like the Allreds’ had always appeared to be, he probably didn't understand.
"You've met my parents." She plucked at the sheet covering her. "Do you think someone coming up to my father and saying, 'hey, I saw your daughter at the Mountain View Motel' was going to go over well?"
"And what if it hadn't? You're an adult. You were then."
She raised the back of the hospital bed, so she could sit up better. He really couldn't understand. His frame of reference was so different. She tried to recall anything to help him understand.
"You remember when you and Noah helped roof our house?"
"Yes. Your dad smacked you. I remember that."
"For looking at you. He accused me of being the devil's spawn. It was one of his milder moments."
"Why didn't you leave?"
"I was trying to. I was saving every penny I had to get away from them. I'd purchased my own car, nothing fancy, but it got me where I needed to go, and I had nearly enough money for a deposit and rent on an apartment. I even had my name on the waiting list for the little complex here near the hospital."
Caleb started to say something, but stopped, as if the answer had already struck him. "You were ready to get out until you found out you were pregnant."
"That's right."
"So why didn't you say something? Why didn't you tell me?"
Leah didn't know how to respond. Was he serious? Where the hell did he get off acting like she hadn't sent him letters? She'd even tried to call.
"That's rich." She could play this game too. She certainly wasn't going to humiliate herself now by admitting how many letters she'd sent, how many times she'd called.
"Would you have believed me?" she asked instead. "Besides, I had no other way to get in touch with you but to ask Jake, who at the time was the brand new chief of police."
"So instead you made up some story about being married to a guy from out of state." Caleb snorted in disgust. "Like anyone believed that when little Leah Scott has never left Mountain Meadow in her entire life? If that was the way you felt, why even put my name on the birth certificate?"
"You were my insurance."
His gaze locked on her. "What?"
"Your name on Jonah's birth certificate was the insurance I needed to make sure if anything ever happened to me, Jonah had some place to go other than with my parents. That can never, ever happen."
"Jesus, Leah," Caleb swore. "If that was your thought process, why the hell didn't you get some help and get away from them?" He gestured toward her face. "Did your father hit you?"
She was too tired to keep protecting a father who had never shown any love for her. "Yes."
"I'm calling Jake so I don't get my ass thrown in jail for going out to your parents' house to beat the living daylights out of your sorry excuse for a father."
"Not right now," Leah protested. "Please. Can't we just get through this, get Jonah home..." she faltered.
Caleb's eyes narrowed. "You left, didn't you. Jonah was with you this morning because you finally left."
"Yes. I left."
"Exactly where were you going to stay? You said you were having to save up money. Doesn't Landrum pay you enough to live on your own?"
"I had debts to pay." Like the hospital bill from Jonah's birth. Her father had paid it, but made her pay back every cent on top of the exorbitant rent he'd been charging her.
"Come live with me."
Her gaze jerked to Caleb's. He seemed as surprised by what he'd just said as she was. For a moment, she allowed herself to fantasize a Rockwell-esque picture of what life with Caleb might look like.
"No," she said, cutting off the fantasy swirling in her brain as much as answering him.
"Be realistic, Leah. I have plenty of room. I'm renting Doc Jenny's house out near the old Crawley place. Plenty of room in the house and on the property."
Leah knew the place. It was a beautiful example of modern architecture done in wood. Something so far out of her experience she couldn't imagine what it might be like inside.
"No. I'll find a place for Jonah and me to live. We don't need your help."
The lean planes of Caleb's face hardened into granite. Leah had never thought of green eyes as being cold, but the ones she was looking at now would freeze hell.
"This is no longer your decision alone. I’ve already signed an affidavit acknowledging paternity."
"Are you threatening me?" She couldn't help how incredulous she sounded.
"You put my name on Jonah's birth certificate. I’ve accepted responsibility. Don't force this into a legal battle, Leah, but know I am not going to go away now I know about him."
She bit her tongue. Who was he trying to kid? Now he knew about him? She still could not quite believe he was ignorant after the efforts she had made to contact him.
Caleb closed his eyes and bowed his head. When he looked at her again, his expression had softened. "Give it a try. I'm not suggesting we pretend to be one big happy family, but I am asking you to give this a chance. Let me get to know my son while you get on your feet."
That was logical and practical. She would be a fool to turn him down. What he was offering was more than what she'd hoped. At best, Leah figured she might get some monetary support when she'd sent the letters letting him know about the pregnancy, and then later when she'd tried to call after Jonah was born. So what was holding her back?
"What are we going to tell everyone?"
Caleb's posture relaxed, as if he sensed her capitulation. "I would suggest the truth. People will see the resemblance, and I won't lie to my parents. Besides, they'll welcome another grandchild."
More than anything else, his parents tipped the scales for her. Jonah deserved grandparents who would love him and want him. It shamed her to have to say he had no experience with that. Her mother had only ever offered grudging acceptance, and her father had gone out of his way to ignore or deny Jonah. Her wants took second place to the opportunity Caleb offered.
"I want to pay my share of the rent."
"We can work all of it out." He picked up her hand, cradling it in his larger one. At last he said, "Get some rest, but I'll be back in the morning to pick you up. Is there anything you still need from your parents' house?"
What she had taken with them was a pitifully small number of belongings, but Leah didn't want to go back for anything. Nothing was so important she wanted to set foot anywhere near her father ever again.
"No. I have Jonah. He was the only thing that mattered."
Chapter 10
Caleb pulled into his parking spot behind Last Call, unlocked the door and stepped inside the cool, dark interior. After turning on the lights over the bar, he picked up a cloth and wiped the counter from habit. He needed some time to process. Holy cow. He h
ad a son. He was a dad.
He had to tell his parents.
And the rest of his family.
That shouldn't seem like a huge deal, but it kinda was. He could almost predict the reactions. His parents would be surprised but supportive, especially his mom. Becca he didn't have to worry about until she and Eli returned from their honeymoon, but his brothers? Lord, was he going to take a ribbing from Luke and Jake. Harder to read would be Noah. In his current frame of mind, there was no telling how his twin might react.
He slipped his phone out of his pocket but then almost immediately shoved it back again. This he had to do in person. Caleb leaned his forearms along the edge of the bar. Damn he was nervous. He'd start with his parents.
"Oh! Another grandson!" His mother exclaimed less than an hour later as she wrapped him in a tight hug, her graying head resting against his shoulder. Just as fast, she leaned back to look up into his face. "How did this happen? I mean, I know how...I didn't know you two were..." his mother's face clouded. "I didn't realize you even knew her."
His dad had one brow arched. "Why don't we have a seat at the kitchen table and you can fill us in on some of the details."
"So why didn't you tell us about Leah?" His mother set glasses in front of everyone and poured sweet tea.
"It's not a story I'm particularly proud of. I thought she was someone named Lee Jones. I didn't recognize her because the person I knew had dark hair and wore a lot of makeup."
"That doesn't sound like Leah at all. She's so—I don't know—wholesome."
Dowdy was the word that popped into his head, but Caleb pushed it away. She wasn't dowdy; the clothes she wore were. She was a fairy queen, and an avenging one when it came to defending their son.
"Well, then you can see why I might not have recognized her."
His dad frowned. "Doesn't seem like her not to have tried to tell you."
Caleb cleared his throat. "That's one of the details we still need to work out. She did name me as the father. Of course, I'll get a paternity test to back that up."
Last Call (A Place to Call Home Book 3) Page 6
