The Blessing Read online

  “It won’t be easy.”

  “I guess you think the rest of my life is easy.”

  “You haven’t met this kid, and you haven’t seen how attached Amy is to him.”

  “Don’t worry about a thing. I can handle anything you throw at me. I’ll take care of the brat for one week, and if you don’t win this woman in that time, then you don’t deserve her.”

  Instead of gushing with gratitude, as Jason thought he would, David looked down at his beer again.

  “Now what is it?” Jason snapped. “A week isn’t enough time?” His mind was racing. How many Little League games could a man attend without going insane? Thank God for cell phones so he could work while sitting on the bleachers. And if he got into a jam, he could always call Parker. She was capable of handling anything at any time, anywhere.

  “I want your sacred promise.”

  At that, Jason’s face grew red. “Do you think I go back on my word?”

  “You’ll turn the job over to someone else.”

  “Like hell I will!” Jason sputtered, but had to look down so his brother couldn’t see his eyes. If the men he dealt with in New York knew him as well as his brother did, he’d never close a deal. “I’ll take care of the kid for one week,” he said more calmly. “I’ll do all the things that kids like. I’ll even give him the keys to my car.”

  “You flew; you don’t have a car, remember?”

  “Then I’ll buy a car and give him the damn thing, all right?” David was making him feel decidedly incompetent. “Look, let’s get this show on the road. The sooner I get this done with, the sooner I can get out of here. When do I meet this paragon of loveliness?”

  “Sacred promise,” David said, his eyes serious but his voice sounding as if he were once again four years old and demanding that his big brother promise that he wouldn’t leave him.

  Jason gave a great sigh. “Sacred promise,” he murmured, then couldn’t help looking around to see if anyone in the bar had heard him. In a mere thirty minutes he had gone from being a business tycoon to a dirty-faced little boy declaring blood oaths. “Did I ever tell you that I hate Christmas?”

  “How can you hate something that you have never participated in?” David asked with a cocky grin. “Come on, let’s go. Maybe we’ll be lucky and the kid will be asleep.”

  “Might I point out to you that it is two o’clock in the morning? I don’t think your little angel will appreciate our dropping in.”

  “Tell you what, we’ll go by her house and if all the lights are out, we’ll go past. But if the lights are on, then we’ll know she’s up and we’ll stop in for a visit. Agreed?”

  Jason nodded as he drained the last of his whiskey, but he didn’t like what he was thinking. What kind of woman would marry a man like Billy Thompkins? And what kind of woman stayed up all night? A fellow drunk seemed to be the only answer.

  As they left the bar and headed toward the sedan where Jason’s driver waited, Jason began to make up his own mind about this woman who had enticed his brother into wanting to marry her. The facts against her were accumulating fast: a drunken husband, an incorrigible child, a nocturnal lifestyle.

  Inside the car, Jason looked across at his younger brother and vowed to protect him from this hussy, and as they rode toward the outskirts of town, he began to form a picture of her. He could see her bleached hair, a cigarette hanging out of her mouth. Was she older than David? He was so young, so innocent. He’d rarely left Abernathy in his life and knew nothing of the world. It would be easy for some sharp-witted huckster to take advantage of him.

  Turning, he looked at his brother solemnly. “Sacred promise,” he said softly, and David grinned at him. Jason turned away. For all that his brother was often a pain in the neck, he had the power to make Jason feel as if he was worth what his accountant said he was.

  CHAPTER TWO

  THE OLD SALMA PLACE WAS WORSE THAN HE REMEMBERED it. It couldn’t have had a coat of paint in at least fifteen years, and the porch was falling down on one side. And from what he could see by the moonlight, he didn’t think the roof was going to keep anyone dry.

  “See, I told you,” David said eagerly, seemingly oblivious to the house’s decrepitude. “The lights are all on. That kid never sleeps; he keeps his mother up all night.”

  Jason glanced at his brother and thought that the sooner he got him away from this harpy, the better.

  “Come on,” David said, already out of the car and halfway up the broken sidewalk that led to a fence that had half collapsed. “Are you afraid of this? If you are—”

  “If I am, you’ll double dare me, right?” Jason said, one eyebrow raised.

  David grinned, his teeth white in the moonlight; then he half ran up the porch steps toward the front door. “Don’t step on that, it—Oh, sorry, did you hurt yourself? The house needs some work.”

  Rubbing his head where a board from the porch had smacked him, Jason gave a grimace to his brother. “Yeah, like Frankenstein needed some fine tuning.”

  But David didn’t seem to hear his brother as he eagerly rapped on the door, and within seconds it was opened by a young woman. . . . And Jason’s mouth fell open in disbelief, for this woman was not what he had been expecting.

  Amy was not a Siren luring men to her; she wasn’t going to inspire sonnets written to her beauty. Nor was she going to have to worry about men falling at her feet in lust. She had long dark hair, which looked to be in need of a washing, pulled back at the nape of her neck. She wore no makeup, and her pale ivory skin had a few off-white-ish spots on her chin. Her dark eyes were huge, seeming to almost swallow her oval face; they certainly overshadowed her tiny mouth. As for her body, she was short and fragile-looking, and from the way her bones protruded from her clothes, she needed a good meal. The only thing of substance about her were her breasts, which were huge—and were marked by two large wet circles.

  “Damnation!” she said as she looked down at herself; then she scurried back into the house. “Come in, David, make yourself at home. Max is—thank you God—asleep for the moment. I’d give you some gin, but I don’t have any, so you might as well help yourself to the fifty-year-old brandy, which I don’t have any of either.”

  “Thanks,” David said brightly. “In that case I think I’ll have champagne.”

  “Pour me a bucket full of it too,” came the answer from a darkened doorway.

  David looked at Jason as though to say, Isn’t she the wittiest person you ever met?

  But Jason was looking around the room. It had been a long time since he’d left what David referred to as his “house in the clouds.” “You live so much in private jets and private hotels and private whatevers that you’ve forgotten what the rest of the world is like,” he’d said too often. So now, Jason looked about the room in distaste. Shabby was the word that came first to his mind. Everything looked as though it had come from the Goodwill: nothing matched, nothing suited anything else. There was an ugly old couch upholstered in worn brown fabric, a hideous old chair covered in what looked to be a print of sunflowers and banana leaves. The coffee table was one of those huge, cast off wooden spools that someone had painted a strange shade of fuchsia.

  The nicest thing Jason could think about it was that it looked like a place where Billy Thompkins would live.

  David punched his brother in the ribs and nodded toward the doorway. “Stop sneering,” he said under his breath; then both men looked up as Amy reentered the room.

  She emerged from the bedroom wearing a dry, wrinkled shirt, and most of the spots on her chin were gone. When she saw Jason glance at her, she gave another swipe, removed the remaining spots, then gave a half smile and said, “Baby rice. If he got as much in him as I get on me, he’d be one fat little hog.”

  “This is my cousin Jason,” David was saying. “You know, the one I was telling you about. He’d be really grateful if you’d let him stay with you until his heart mends.”

  This statement so stunned Jason that all he could
do was stare at his brother.

  “Yes, of course. I understand,” Amy said. “Do come in and sit down.” She looked at Jason. “I’m sorry Max isn’t awake right now, but you’ll get to see him in about three hours. I can assure you of that,” she said, laughing.

  Jason was beginning to smell a rat. And the rat was his little brother. The brother he had helped raise. The brother he had always loved and cherished. The one he would have died for. That brother seemed to have done a real number on him.

  Long ago Jason had figured out that if he kept his mouth shut long enough, he’d learn everything he needed to know. Many times his silence had achieved what words could not, so now he sat and listened.

  “Can I offer you some tea?” Amy asked. “If I can’t afford champagne, I can afford tea. I have chamomile and raspberry leaf. No, that one’s good for milk, and I doubt if either of you need that,” she said, smiling at Jason as though he knew everything that was going on.

  And Jason was indeed beginning to understand. Now he noticed a few things about the room that he had overlooked before. On the floor was a stuffed tiger. No, it was Tigger from Winnie-the-Pooh, and there was a cloth book against the edge of the sunflower chair.

  “How old is your son?” Jason asked, his jaw rigid.

  “Twenty-six weeks today,” Amy said proudly. “Six months.”

  Jason turned blazing eyes on his brother. “May I see you outside?” He looked at Amy. “You must excuse us.”

  When David made no move to get off the old brown sofa, Jason dug his hands into his brother’s shoulders and pulled him upward. One advantage Jason had was that wherever he went he made sure there was a gym available so he could keep in shape. David thought that standing on his feet fourteen hours a day was enough exercise, so now Jason had the advantage and he nearly lifted his softer brother into a standing position.

  “We’ll only be a minute,” David said, smiling at Amy as Jason half dragged him from the house.

  Once they were outside, Jason glared at his brother, his voice calm—and deadly. “What are you playing at? And don’t you dare lie to me.”

  “I couldn’t tell you or you would have run back to your damned jet. But actually I didn’t really lie to you. I just omitted some details. And haven’t you always said that no man should assume anything?”

  “Don’t turn this back on me. I was talking about strangers. I didn’t think my own brother would—Oh, the hell with it. You go in there and tell that poor young woman that a mistake was made, and—”

  “You’re going back on a sacred oath. I knew you would.”

  For a moment Jason closed his eyes in an attempt to regain strength. “We are no longer in elementary school. We are adults and—”

  “Right,” David said coldly, then turned toward the car that waited at the curb.

  Oh, Lord, Jason thought. His brother could carry a grudge into eternity. In one step he caught David’s arm and halted him. “You must see that I can’t follow up on my promise. I could look after a half-grown boy, but this is . . . David, this is a baby. It wears diapers.”

  “And you’re too good to change them, is that it? Of course, the great and rich”—he sneered the word—“Jason Wilding is too good to change a kid’s diapers. Do you have any idea how many times I have emptied bedpans? Inserted catheters? That I have—”

  “All right, you win. You’re St. David and I am the devil incarnate. Whatever, I can’t do this.”

  “I knew you’d go back on your word,” David muttered, then turned toward the car again.

  Jason sent up a little prayer asking for strength, then grabbed David’s arm again. “What is it you’ve told her?” he asked while envisioning his secretary flying to Abernathy and taking over the kid. No, the baby.

  David’s eyes brightened. “I told her you were my cousin and you were recovering from a broken love affair and it was the first Christmas you’d had without your lover, so you were very lonely. And that your new apartment was being repainted, so you had nowhere to stay for a week. I also said you loved babies and she’d be doing you a favor to let you stay with her for a week and take care of Max while she job hunts during the day.” David took a breath.

  It wasn’t as bad as Jason had at first thought when he’d heard that “broken heart” remark.

  David could see his brother relenting. “All I want is a little time with her,” he said. “I’m mad about her. You can see that she’s wonderful. She’s funny and brave and—”

  “And has a heart of gold, I know,” Jason said tiredly as he walked toward the car. Leon was already out and had the back door open. “Call Parker and tell her to get here fast,” he ordered. It felt good to give an order. David made him feel as though he were back in nursery school.

  Jason turned back to his brother. “If I do this for you, you are never to ask anything from me ever again. You understand? This is the all-time, ultimate favor.”

  “Scouts’ honor,” David said, raising two fingers and looking so happy that Jason almost forgave him. But at least the good news was that now that David had lied to him, he felt free to do a little underhanded business of his own. He most definitely would get his competent secretary to bail him out of this.

  David could see by his brother’s face that Jason was going to do it. “You’ll not regret this. I promise you.”

  “I already do,” Jason muttered as he followed David back into the house. And once they were inside, it took David all of about four minutes before he excused himself, saying he had to get up early; then he left the two of them alone.

  And it was then that Jason felt especially awkward. “I . . . ah . . .” he began, not knowing what to say to the young woman who stood there staring at him as though she expected him to say something. What did she want from him? A résumé maybe? Such a document might list several Fortune 500 companies he owned, but it wouldn’t say anything about his ability—or in this case his inability—to change diapers.

  When Jason said nothing, the woman gave him a bit of a smile, then said, “I would imagine that you’re tired. The spare bedroom is in there. I’m sorry, but there’s only a narrow bed. I’ve never had a guest before.”

  Jason tried to give her a smile in return. It wasn’t her fault if his brother was in love with her, but, truthfully, Jason couldn’t see what there was to love about the woman. Personally, he liked his women to be clean and polished, the kind of women who spent their days in a salon having every hair and pore tended to.

  “Where are your bags?”

  “Bags?” he asked, not knowing what she meant. “Oh, yeah. Luggage. I left it at . . . at David’s house. I’ll get it in the morning.”

  She was looking at him very hard. “I thought—” She looked away, not finishing her sentence. “The bedroom’s through there, and there’s a little bathroom. It’s not much but—” She broke off as though she weren’t going to allow herself to apologize for the inadequacy of the room.

  “Good night, Mr. Wilding,” she said, then turned on her heel and went through another doorway.

  Jason wasn’t used to people dismissing him. In fact, he was more used to people fawning over him, as they usually wanted something from him. “Right,” he muttered. “Good night.” Then he turned and went into the room she’d indicated. It was, if possible, worse than the rest of the house. The bed stood in the middle of the room, with a clean, frayed old red-and-white quilt spread over it. The only other furniture in the room was an overturned cardboard box with a lamp on it that looked as though Edison might have used it. There was a tiny curtainless window and two doors, one that looked as if it might lead to a closet and the other the bathroom. Inside that room was all blazing white tile, half of it cracked.

  Ten minutes later, Jason had stripped to his underwear and was huddled under the quilt. Tomorrow he’d send his secretary to buy him an electric blanket.

  It couldn’t have been more than an hour later that he was awakened by a sound. It was a scraping noise followed by something that s
ounded like paper being crumpled. He’d always been a light sleeper, but years of jet travel had made things worse; he was now nearly an insomniac. Quietly, barefoot, he padded into the living room. There was enough moonlight that he could see the shadow outlines of the furniture and keep from bashing into it. For a moment he stood still listening. The sound was coming from the woman’s room.

  Hesitating, he stood outside the open doorway. Maybe she was doing something in private, but as his eyes adjusted he could see her in bed, see that she was asleep. Feeling like a Peeping Tom, he turned away to go back to his own bed, but then the sound came again. Peering into the darkness, he saw what looked to be a cage in the corner, but as he blinked, he saw it was an old-fashioned wooden playpen and sitting up in it was what appeared to be a baby bear.

  Jason blinked, shook his head, then looked again as the bear cub turned its head and grinned up at him. He could distinctly see two teeth gleaming in the pale silvery light.

  Without thinking what he was doing, Jason tiptoed into the room and reached down to the kid. He fully expected the child to let out a howl, but he didn’t. However, the baby did grab Jason’s face and pinch in a way that made Jason’s eyes water with pain.

  After removing the little hand from his face, Jason carried the child back into his own room and put him down onto the narrow bed, pulled the quilt about him, then said sternly, “Now go to sleep.” The baby blinked up at him a couple of times, then squirmed around so he was lying crosswise on the bed, and promptly went to sleep.

  “Not bad,” Jason said in admiration of his own accomplishment. Not bad at all. Maybe David had been right when he said that his older brother had a way with children. Too bad Jason hadn’t used his firmest tone with that horrid boy so many years ago. Maybe . . .

  He trailed off as he realized that he now had no place to sleep. Even if he turned the kid around, the bed was too narrow for the both of them as the child was as fat as a Christmas turkey. No wonder his first impression of him was that he was a bear cub.