Somebody's Baby by Annie Jones Page B

whole face transformed with delight.
    “Good. Then you can make the pies and, uh, side dishes, at your usual prices, of course.”
    Adam struggled to force down the dry bits of crust but it wouldn’t cooperate. His fist came down on the table but not hard enough to bring a halt to the conversation. And this conversation needed to halt. His father had it all wrong. Adam had his own plans and he wouldn’t let anyone or anything interfere with them.
    “Mr. Burdett, you may have just provided me with a way to keep my doors open at least a little while longer!”
    Adam gulped. He wouldn’t let anyone or anything interfere with his plans, except Josie.
    He had thought just moments ago that if she wanted him to walk through fire for her, he would never let her down.
    He was about to prove that. Obviously he was about to walk through fire for her—and that fire would be in the form of a barbecue with his family.

Chapter Seven

    C onner Burdett had gobbled up the last of his pie after he had offered Nathan a small taste, which the child smeared on his ear, his chin, his eyebrow, everywhere but his mouth. When Josie had come back from cleaning the child up, Conner had gone.
    “He wanted me to give you this.” Adam offered her a business card held between two fingers, the way she’d seen boys fling playing cards into hats.
    She took if from him and, reading the words imprinted on it, understood why the stray Burdett brother might have wanted to send the card sailing as far away as possible.
    “Burke Burdett,” she read the name softly, scanned his official title and then studied the number handwritten beneath it. His private line. Not the kind of thing the average citizen of Mt. Knott was privy to. Josie turned the card over in her hand. On the back were the words, “Timetable. Menu. Payment” in shaky handwriting.
    “I guess I’m supposed to call your brother about these things?”
    Adam only nodded before he slipped Nathan from Josie’s hold and turned the child so they could look each other in the eye. Of course, Nathan did not cooperate fully with that eye-to-eye plan, which made the picture of the father and son all the more endearing.
    Adam sniffed the air. “One of us doesn’t smell so good, buddy. Now, I’m always fresh as a mountain meadow myself, so I suspect it’s you. ”
    Nathan giggled.
    “I’ll handle diaper duty, Adam.”
    “No. I can do it. I’ve gotten pretty good at it over the course of the day.” He actually sounded pleased with his newly acquired skill. “Let’s go, kid.”
    He draped the baby over one arm. The position made it look like Nathan was flying through the air, and loving it from the pleasant sounds he was making.
    Good for Adam to get a little taste of what his own parents must have gone through with a headstrong, handful of energy in an adorable package. Looking at the two of them together now, she couldn’t deny that Adam not only was Nathan’s father but that he belonged in her son’s life.
    Her two fellas disappeared into the back room. Adam entertained the baby, alternating between making funny sounds and acting properly disgusted with the task at hand.
    Josie leaned against the doorway and slid the card into her T-shirt pocket, knowing she’d forget where she’d put it if she put it in her jeans, and it would probably get washed with her aprons and other work clothes this evening. Then she stood back and waited for Adam to finish with Nathan. That first night she hadn’t even wanted him to see the boy, now he was doing the dad thing as if he’d done it all along.
    She couldn’t help thinking of her own family. Not of the family made up of her mother and Ophelia, but the one she had always dreamed she would make for herself.
    When she was a young girl, being hauled from town to town as her mother chased everything from dreams to men, that family meant a mom and dad, Ophelia and Josie. Also a baby brother or sister, or maybe a calico cat with a bell on its