Somebody's Baby by Annie Jones

and your hands always in tight little fists.”
    Adam froze.
    Josie’s gaze dropped from his face to his side.
    He shook his hand to release the tension as he unfisted his fingers.
    “And I felt about your daddy the way I bet he feels about you,” Conner said to the baby.
    Adam straightened, ready to deny that.
    “That even though you two just met and the way things are in life, you may never really feel as though you are much more than strangers with a shared history, he would walk through fire for you.” Conner did not look at Adam.
    Which was a relief because Adam could not have looked at Conner then if his life depended on it.
    Had he heard right? His father acknowledged that they were virtual strangers and yet he would walk through fire for him?
    Walk through fire but not walk into a bar or cheap hotel in Mt. Knott in those days when Adam needed him to come and ask him to return to the fold. To say one-tenth of the handful of healing words he’d just uttered and pave the way for Stray Dawg to find his way home while it still meant something.
    He couldn’t accept that. Would not accept it. It was just talk, after all, from a man who made his living negotiating to get the better end of every deal.
    Adam pushed his shoulders back. Conner wanted something. Adam could not be fool enough to let that slip from sight because the suddenly frail man had tugged at a few heartstrings.
    “Why don’t we sit down and have that pie?” Adam pulled Nathan from Conner’s grasp, then went into the kitchen, settled the child in the high chair and pointed out a seat at the small oak table for Conner.
    Josie frowned. Clearly she had expected more from Adam. Expected compassion, gratitude and mercy. Well, if that’s what she thought she’d find in him, she had better get used to being disappointed.
    But if, as Conner had put it, she expected nothing less of him than that he would walk through fire for her and their son, then he would never let her down. “Once you taste Josie’s pie and spend a few minutes around Nathan you’ll find yourself as proud as I am that she is the one raising my son.”
    Josie stilled with a knife posed over the pie. She blinked a few times and sniffled.
    He tipped his head to her, affirming that was, indeed, how he felt. He hoped she knew, too, that he had just laid down the gauntlet. He had asserted his position and confirmed hers. He would brook no interference, no custody battle, no questioning of his decision from his powerful father or family.
    She smiled and lifted her chin, making her soft, lovely ponytail bounce against her back. Then with a sidelong glance at Conner to make sure he wasn’t watching, she served Adam the larger slice of the two pieces of pie.
    He winked to show his thanks, then as soon as she set the plates down before the two men, he pulled the old switcheroo. Slid the larger slice right under Conner’s nose and accepted the smaller portion for himself.
    “You’re going to want to have as much of this pie as you can hold,” he told the old man, then leaned back and muttered to Josie, “and if his mouth is full it will give us more time to do the talking.”
    “Can I get you anything else? Some milk to drink? If you’d like some coffee you’ll have to wait a minute while I brew up a fresh pot.”
    Adam thought of how she had told him to make his own instant the night he had come to claim his son and so he took her offer to make a pot for them as a compliment. Pie. Coffee. Kid. That should mollify the old guy just fine.
    They’d show him what a fine home environment Nathan had. They’d get his assurance, for what it was worth, that he would not try to override their judgments about what was best for Nathan. They would send him on his way.
    Then Adam’s real work would begin.
    Josie pulled a foil bag of coffee beans from a canister on the counter. The whir of her grinding them in a small electric appliance made it impossible to carry on a conversation for a minute or