Second Time's the Charm

by Tara Taylor Quinn

  He didn’t know what to make of that, either.

  “You aren’t pushing yourself on us. We’ve agreed upon a fair trade.”

  “It’s just that...you have the right to raise your son as you see fit, Jon. I feel like I’m overstepping my professional boundaries here.”

  She wasn’t spying. She was just who she said she was. For that moment, his gut knew the truth. Knew, too, that for Abraham’s sake, he had to trust her.

  He had to trust someone.

  “I need the help.” The admission was tough. Because she was right—they’d made it through the day without a tantrum because sometimes Jon knew how to avoid them. Not because Abraham knew how to cope with life.

  “You’re a good father.”

  “I’m a single guy learning as I go. It was nice today, having a woman around. Abraham turned to you several times. He was glad to have you there. And it’s occurred to me that maybe that’s part of his problem. He’s a boy, but he’s also a baby. He needs a woman’s influence. Her nurturing...”

  More mile markers whizzed past. He’d scared her. He’d done that before, too. Luckily for him, unlike his son, he had the coping skills to deal with it.

  “Is his mother in the picture at all?”

  Kate Abrams? He’d named their son after her, hoping against hope that some kind of maternal instinct would kick in.

  He thought of Clara again. If the worst happened, if Lillie was on Clara’s payroll, he had to trust that she’d realize Abraham was better off with his father than with family money.

  “No, Kate’s not in the picture.”

  “She’s alive, though?”

  “Yep. Lives in New York City. She’s in advertising.” At least, the last he heard that was where she was, what she was doing. It wasn’t as if he kept track. Once she’d been satisfied that her parents were off his back, she’d disappeared just like she’d said she was going to do.

  And if he wanted Lillie’s help, she probably should understand a few things.

  “I was working for a construction framing company when I met Kate.”

  He didn’t like to think about those days. They served no purpose. The first few months he’d thought he’d died and gone to heaven.

  The bump back to earth had been more painful than any that he’d experienced before. But he learned something, too. He wasn’t going to go through that again.

  “Framing companies are hired by construction bosses—contractors who get the jobs and then hire smaller, more specialized companies who specialize in the various skills needed to put up buildings.”

  “So your specialty is framing?”

  He shrugged. Started to say, “When I got out,” and caught himself. “I worked two and three jobs back then,” he said. “I’m trained in framing, plumbing and electrical work, though I don’t have the certification to run big jobs. I was the guy who laid the pipes and put the wires in place, and the boss would check my work before turning on the juice.”

  “What does it take to get certification?”

  “Classes. A test.” He’d have gotten there one day—though more slowly once Abraham came along—if the Montford scholarship hadn’t changed his course.

  She’d asked about Kate. They were trying to solidify Lillie’s role in Abe’s life.

  For his son’s sake he said, “The contractor, a man with more money than I’d know what to do with, was a decent man. I rented a little two-bedroom house from his property management company, which is how I got the job to begin with.”

  His parole officer had referred him to the contractor when he’d been set free. A young kid with a sealed record, a GED earned while serving time for armed robbery and no references didn’t just walk out into the world and get received with open arms. The contractor had a history of hiring newly released juvenile offenders, his civic duty, he’d said, to give them a trade and a chance to be a contributing member of society.

  “Kate was the guy’s niece,” he said out loud. “She showed up on the construction site to see her uncle and asked me out.” She’d just graduated with a degree in marketing and had been bored, he’d later found out, waiting to land her dream job and leave Atlanta for even more populated pastures. The only problem was, her parents wouldn’t let her go. Kate had been determined, though. She’d been looking for trouble so that her father would agree that it would be a good idea for her to get out of town.

  Jon withheld that part of the story. Either Lillie already had the information, or she didn’t need to know about it to help Abraham.

  “Six months later she told me she was pregnant.”

  He’d never forget the day. The...

  “I’m assuming that was unexpected.”

  With a quick glance in the rearview mirror, an instinctive reflex assuring himself that his son was right there with him—not a heavenly dream—Jon said, “In more ways than one.”

  She was looking at him again. His peripheral vision told him her face was turned toward him.

  “The morning Kate found me on break to tell me that we were going to have a child, I jumped off a four-foot-high block wall and hugged everyone in sight. Understand this, professionally and every other way, I wanted my son. I was ready to shout the news to the world. I imagined we’d get married. She’d move in with me and we’d buy a house....”

  He’d been a fool. There was no point in hiding the fact.

  Lillie gazed out the front window. He wondered if she thought he was lying to her.

  And thought again about her childless state. About a husband who maybe hadn’t wanted children.

  “Kate had come to tell me the news with one goal in mind—asking me to put up the money for the abortion so her family wouldn’t know she’d had it.”

  They were supposed to know that she’d hooked up with an ex-con, not that she’d produced an heir to the Abrams throne.

  “Wow.”

  He’d been poleaxed himself. “She wasn’t a bad person,” he said. Because Kate was Abraham’s mother—and because the words were true. When Kate had caught wind that her mother was petitioning to take Abe away from him, she’d moved hell and high water to make certain that didn’t happen. Of course, she’d done so partially because if Clara had Abraham, Kate would be forced to see her son, to be at least a part-time mother. But Jon also knew that Kate wanted Abraham with him. She’d had tears in her eyes when she’d told him how lucky Abraham was to have a father who cared as much as Jon did.

  “Kate just had different goals. She was going to New York, to make it big in advertising. She wanted to travel. She’d grown up under the strict thumb of an overprotective father and yearned for freedom more than anything else.”

  Logically, he understood it all.

  “Her worst nightmare, as she’d put it, was to live in the town where she’d grown up, changing diapers and wiping noses.”

  Lillie still wasn’t saying anything. Just staring out the windshield. Jon tried not to care about what she might be thinking.

  He checked again on Abe instead, satisfied to see that his son was still sleeping soundly, his head propped against the travel pillow Jon kept in the truck for such occasions, his little mouth open and wet with drool. God, he loved that kid.

  “I know it might sound like Kate’s heartless,” he told Lillie, what he’d told himself over and over during those early days. “But she’s not. As soon as she saw how much our unborn child meant to me, she agreed to have it. As long as I’d take full custody and release her from any obligations or responsibilities, legally as well as any other way.”

  “A surrogate mother.” Lillie’s voice sounded far away.

  “Right. She moved in with me while she was pregnant―” although they’d slept in separate bedrooms “—and followed through with excellent prenatal care. I was present for every doctor appointment and
was there when Abe was born.”

  A small cough sounded from Lillie’s side of the car. When Jon glanced over, he saw a tear slide down her face.

  He focused on the road in front of him. “A couple of hours later, she signed the baby over to me, checked herself out of the hospital against doctor’s orders and moved on with her life. I stayed at the hospital with Abe that night, and when I brought him home the next day, all of her stuff was gone.”

  Lillie didn’t say anything for so long, Jon wasn’t sure they were going to speak again for the rest of the trip. He wasn’t sure he wanted to.

  Pulling a tissue out of the pack on his visor, he handed it to her. She took it without saying a word.

  The woman cared enough for his son to cry for them. If he wasn’t careful he was going to fall right back into his own trap and make too much of that.

  They’d been driving without conversation for more than twenty minutes when Lillie’s words, “She was a fool,” fell softly into the silence.

  Shrugging, Jon said, “Or she was smart, and decent for being honest with me, rather than pretending that Abe and I were what she wanted and then being unhappy and eventually divorcing us. She did right by us. She had him.”

  Her gaze was on him again. “Do you ever hear from her?”

  “No. At her request, we went through the court and had her name removed from his birth certificate.”

  She’d also done it to make her mother’s quest to get custody of Abe a bit harder. But not impossible. Kate couldn’t do anything about the Abrams DNA running through Abe’s veins.

  “She could change her mind.”

  She wouldn’t. Because, in the end, Jon was an ex-con. And Kate Abrams was still an Abrams. She wanted a blue-blooded father for her children.

  “You never know. You might hear from her someday.”

  Was Lillie telling him something? Or just being her usual compassionate self?

  Either way, he hoped she was wrong. Because if he heard from Kate it could only mean that her mother had decided that Kate’s threat to keep her away from her future grandchildren was not enough reason for Clara to leave Jon and Abe alone.

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  “LIL?”

  Hearing her name on her way to her car in the mostly deserted clinic parking lot Thursday night, Lillie paused and continued to walk. She was exhausted. Hadn’t sat down since her bike ride with Caro just before dawn.

  “Lil!” The voice came again. Kirk’s voice. Louder this time. She hadn’t imagined that unmistakable tone of voice. She just hadn’t heard it in years.

  Turning, she saw her ex-husband, looking as perfect as always.

  “Kirk? What are you doing here?” Besides walking toward her from the other side of a brick wall where he’d evidently parked his car. In jeans and a blue-and-white long-sleeved shirt, he appeared younger than she remembered. More like the Kirk she’d known in college—back when she’d thought she wanted nothing more than to spend the rest of her life with him.

  “I didn’t think you’d take my call.” He reached her, standing a bit too close for her comfort.

  He’d been right. If he’d called, she wouldn’t have answered. The late-October evening breeze wafted from him to her, carrying the slightly musky scent that used to fill her nostrils every night and greet her at the breakfast table every morning.

  She’d liked it.

  “Why are you here?” she asked again, irritated that she was rumpled, still wearing her scrubs. After a ten-hour day between the day care and the clinic, her makeup would be worn away. And her hair was falling out of its ponytail.

  Kirk liked it loose and curling down her back.

  “I wanted to see you, to make certain you were okay.”

  She wanted him to look at her and eat his heart out.

  “I’ve been here five years,” she said. She was too tired to deal with him, to listen between the lines for the truth he didn’t speak. One thing she knew, Kirk took care of Kirk. If he was in Shelter Valley, it was because he needed something from her.

  “I just heard about the break-ins you’ve been having here,” he said. “The one last night made the news in Phoenix.”

  Truth be known, she was a tad unnerved by the latest break-in herself. Everyone in town was. An older woman who lived alone had been in bed asleep and never heard the intruder who’d removed her sliding glass door, helped himself to the money and credit cards in her purse and left. She’d woken early that morning to a chilled house and gone out to her kitchen to find the sliding glass door off the track and her purse contents dumped on her kitchen table.

  Nothing else had been disturbed.

  “According to the news, the thief’s getting more daring,” Kirk told her. “Until now the thefts have taken place when people weren’t home.”

  He was right, which still didn’t explain his presence there.

  “I’m not giving you any money, Kirk.” It was the only reason she could think of for him to have made the almost-hour-long drive from his home in Scottsdale, the high-end suburb north of Phoenix where she’d last heard he was living.

  “I broke up with Leah.”

  She knew. But didn’t want to feed his ego and let him know that she and Papa and Gayle ever mentioned him. “I’m sorry to hear that,” she said, proud of her even voice, her expressionless face.

  Because inside, she was seething. How dare he show up in her new hometown? So what if he’d attended college there. They’d met and fallen in love in Shelter Valley. He shouldn’t have the balls to show his face there. Not anymore.

  “I couldn’t marry her.”

  “Oh? Why not?” The question slipped out because she was too tired to stop it. But she wished she had. She didn’t give a rat’s ass about Kirk Henderson. Didn’t want to know anything about him. And didn’t want him to think she did. “Is she already married?”

  The dig was beneath her. But the small part of her that lived in a lower place liked the justice that would have been served if that were the case—since his own wedding vows hadn’t stopped him from pursuing the other woman.

  “No. She’s never been married.”

  But she had a five-year-old son. Kirk’s son. She wondered what kind of custody agreement they had come to. Biting the inside of her lip, Lillie hitched the big bag she carried with her “doctor’s kit”—items designed to divert children of varying ages from whatever immediate trauma they might be facing—farther up on her shoulder and hugged her arms around her waist.

  “She’s been expecting me to marry her since our divorce was final.”

  “Because you told her you would.” The point was pertinent. Kirk lied.

  “I meant to. I thought I wanted to.” She’d never heard that insecure tone in his voice. Kirk was the man. Always had been. She’d been fool enough to be attracted to his confidence when she’d been too young to recognize the difference between ego and a healthy self-image.

  A car drove slowly past the parking lot. Becca Parsons, the mayor, probably on her way home from the city offices just down the street from the clinic. She waved. Lillie waved back.

  Shelter Valley sign language for “Yes, I’m fine.”

  “The truth is, Lil, I kept putting the wedding off because I just didn’t feel ready. At first I thought it was too soon.” He shrugged, looked down at his casual designer leather shoes that probably cost him a couple hundred bucks. At least. “You know, I felt I had to be divorced long enough to let the end of our marriage sink in....”

  He stopped as she flinched, as though realizing that he’d misspoken.

  “It took me a while to figure out the truth,” he said, scuffing the toe of his shoe as he kicked a small rock a couple of inches in front of him.

  He was silent, as though waiting for her to ask about the truth. She wasn’t tha
t tired.

  “The truth is, I couldn’t marry her, or anyone, because I’m still in love with you. I told her so the night I left.”

  Lillie’s jaw dropped.

  * * *

  WOULDN’T YOU KNOW it, the boxes of farina were all gone. Staring at the bottom shelf in the grocery store with a hungry boy kicking his feet back and forth in the cart after work on Thursday, Jon considered his options. He’d used up the last of their hot cereal that morning. He and Abe lived on the stuff. Mostly because it was Abe’s favorite.

  He glanced at his watch. Six-thirty. He had to be at Lillie’s at seven to measure for the tile backdrop she wanted along the counter in her bathroom. And to install the second safety catch he’d picked up during lunch that day to install on her sliding glass door.

  No time to get to the store outside of town for cereal.

  “Eat!” Abe’s voice was loud, even for him.

  “I know, son,” Jon said, smiling at the pudgy-cheeked little boy. Abe’s hair was getting a little long, curling along his forehead. He liked it. “We’ll splurge on a grilled chicken sandwich at the drive-through just as soon as we’re done here. We’re going to see Lillie tonight.”

  “Illeee,” Abe said, kicking his feet harder against the cart. Leaning over, he reached for the colorful box of breakfast treats closest to his line of vision.

  There’d been another break-in the night before, which made Jon tense as hell. He’d been a thief once. And if people knew that...

  If Lillie knew that...

  She wouldn’t let him in her home to measure her backdrop. He had to get over there to ease his mind.

  “Daddy just has to find some cereal for us to have in the morning,” Jon said, confident that Abe’s reach wouldn’t quite make his target. He and Abe were experienced shoppers. Jon had learned the hard way how to measure shelf and cart distances.

  “And then we’ll go see Lillie.” He used the mention of the name shamelessly. Sometimes a guy had to do what a guy had to do.