The Blessing Page 3

  So now what? Jason thought, looking at his watch. It was four A.M. and New York wasn’t open, so he couldn’t do any business. Ah, he thought, New York might be closed, but London was open.

  After putting his wool suit on to protect him from the cold, he retrieved his portable phone from his coat pocket and went to the window, where the signal would be better, and dialed. Five minutes later he was being hooked up to a conference call with the heads of a major company that Jason had recently bought. In the background he could hear sounds of an office Christmas party, and he could tell that the managers were annoyed to be missing the fun, but it didn’t matter to Jason. Business was business, and the sooner they realized that the better.

  CHAPTER THREE

  I DON’T LIKE HIM, AMY THOUGHT AS SHE LAY IN BED. FOR some odd reason, Max was still asleep; she could see the great lump that was him in the old playpen that had once been Billy’s.

  “I don’t like him, I don’t like him, I don’t like him,” she said aloud, then glanced anxiously toward the playpen, but Max didn’t move. She’d have to wake him in a minute or two or she was going to explode from milk, but it was nice to have these few minutes just to think.

  When David had proposed that she allow his gay cousin to live with her for a week, Amy had readily said no. “What will I feed him?” she’d asked. “I can barely afford to feed Max and me.”

  “He, uh, he . . . He loves to cook. And, well, I’m sure he’d love to have someone to cook for. He’ll buy everything you’ll need,” David had said in such a way that Amy didn’t believe him. “No, really, he will. Look, Amy, I know this is an imposition, but Jason and his boyfriend just broke up, and my cousin has nowhere to go. You’d be doing me a real favor. I’d let him stay with us, but you know how my dad is about gays.”

  Actually, Amy had met Bertram Wilding only once and she had no idea how he felt about anything except chili dogs (he loved them) and football (loved that too). “Isn’t there someone else? You know everyone in town,” she had wailed. David had been so good to her; he hadn’t charged her a penny for either of Max’s ear infections or the immunizations, and he’d sent over his nurse to help out when Amy was sick with the flu those three days. It wasn’t easy being a single mother on a severe budget, but with David’s help she’d been able to survive. So she owed him.

  “You have a spare bedroom and you need him. You don’t have anything against gays, do you?” he asked, implying that he may have misjudged her.

  “Of course not. It’s just a matter of space and, well, money. I can’t afford to feed him much less pay him for baby-sitting services and—”

  “You just leave that to me,” David said. “In fact, leave everything to me. Jason will help you do everything, and he’ll make your life much easier. Trust me.”

  So she had trusted him, just as everyone else in this town trusted him, and what did she get? A six-foot-tall sneering man who made her want to run and hide, that’s what. Last night, or actually, this morning at the two o’clock feeding, she had had to bite her tongue to keep from making a snide remark as she watched him look about the house, his upper lip curled in distaste. He was wearing a suit that looked as though it cost more than her house had and she could feel his contempt. Right then she wanted to tell David to take him away, that she wouldn’t let him near her son.

  But then she remembered all that David had told her about this poor man and his broken heart. But to Amy the man didn’t look depressed as much as he looked angry: angry at the world, maybe even angry at her in particular. When he’d demanded that David go outside with him, Amy had almost bolted the door against the two of them, then gone back to her warm bed.

  But she hadn’t, and now she was going to have to spend a whole week with the jerk, she thought. One whole week of her life being sneered at. One week—

  She didn’t think anymore because through the thin wall came the heavy thud of something falling, and it was followed by Max’s scream of terror. Amy was out of the bed instantly and into her boarder’s room before he could pick up the child.

  “Get away,” Amy said, pushing at his hands, as she snatched up her baby and cuddled him to her. “Hush, sweetheart,” she said, holding him tightly, her heart pounding. He had fallen off the bed. Had he hit his head? Was he all right? Concussion? Brain damage? Her hands ran over him, searching for lumps, for blood, for anything wrong.

  “I think he’s just scared,” Jason said. “He fell on the pillow, and besides, he has enough clothes on that you could drop him off a building and he wouldn’t be hurt.” At that he gave Amy what she imagined he thought was a smile.

  Amy glared at him. Max had stopped crying and was now bending at the waist as he moved his head downward, letting her know that he wanted to nurse.

  “Get out,” she said to Jason. “I don’t want you here.”

  The man looked at her as though he didn’t understand English.

  “Get out, I said. You’re fired.”

  She was having trouble holding on to Max as he jackknifed downward. “Take your . . . your telephone and leave.” It was easy to see that he had been standing by the window talking on the thing while he’d left a baby alone on a narrow bed. She wasn’t about to leave Max in the care of someone so careless.

  “I’ve never been fired from a job before,” Jason said, his eyes wide.

  “There is always a first time for everything.” When Jason didn’t move, she tightened her lips. “I don’t have a car, so if you want transportation, call David. I’ll get his number.”

  “I know his number,” Jason said quietly, still standing there looking at her.

  “Then use it!” she said as she turned away, her arms around Max’s squirming body. She stalked into the living room, put Max down on the two pillows on the couch, her hand behind his head, then angrily unfastened her nightgown to reveal her breast. Max made fast work of latching on, then he lay there looking up at his mother intently, obviously aware that something was going on.

  “Look, I—Oh, excuse me,” Jason said as he turned his back to her, and Amy could feel his embarrassment at seeing her breast-feeding. Pulling a baby blanket off the back of the couch, she covered herself and most of the baby.

  “I’d like a second chance,” Jason said, his back still to her. “I was in the . . .” He nearly choked on the word. “I was in the wrong to leave the baby alone on the bed. But I, uh, I meant well. I heard him, so I took him out of his pen. I just wanted to give you a couple more hours’ sleep, that’s all.”

  As far as Amy could tell, every word out of the man’s mouth was a struggle. You’d think he’d never apologized before in his life. No, actually, hearing the wrench in his voice, you’d think he’d never done anything wrong in his life before.

  “You’re asking me to take a second chance with my child’s life?” she asked calmly, still looking at the back of him.

  Slowly, he turned around, saw that she was covered, then sat down in the sunflower chair. “I am not usually so . . . so lacking in vigilance. Usually I watch over several matters at one time and keep them all going at once. Usually I can handle anything that’s thrown my way. In fact, I pride myself on being able to handle anything.”

  “You don’t have to lie to me; David told me everything.” When she said that the man’s face turned an odd shade of lavender, and she renewed her vow to get rid of him. I don’t like him, she repeated to herself.

  “And what did Dr. David tell you?” the man said softly.

  There was something about him that was a bit intimidating. She owed David a lot, but she wasn’t going to repay anyone at the expense of her child. “He told me that you’re gay and you’re recovering from a broken heart and—”

  “He told you that I’m gay?” Jason said quietly.

  “Yes, I know it’s a secret and that you don’t want people to know about you, but he had to tell me. You don’t think I’d let a heterosexual man stay here with me, do you?” She squinted her eyes at him. “Or do you? Is that what kind
of woman you think I am?” When he didn’t reply right away, she said, “I think you’d better leave.”

  Jason didn’t so much as move a muscle, but sat there staring at her as though he were pondering some great problem. She remembered that David had told her that his cousin had nowhere to stay, nowhere to spend Christmas. “Look, I’m sorry that this hasn’t worked out. You’re not an unattractive man. I’m sure you’ll find . . .”

  “Another lover?” he asked, eyebrows raised. “Now I must ask what kind of man you think I am.”

  At that Amy blushed and looked down at Max, who was still nursing, his eyes wide open and seeming to listen to every word that was being spoken. “I apologize,” she said. “I didn’t mean any slur on any group of people. Forgive me.”

  “Only if you forgive me.”

  “No,” she answered. “I don’t think that this arrangement will work. I don’t—” Breaking off, she looked down at Max again. He was no longer sucking, but he wasn’t about to let go of her. As she well knew, he thought she was one big pacifier.

  “You don’t trust me? You don’t want to forgive me? You don’t what?”

  “Like you,” she blurted. “I’m sorry, but you wanted to know.” Sticking her finger in the side of Max’s mouth, she broke his powerful suction and removed him from her breast, covering herself, all in one practiced motion. She put him on her shoulder, but he soon twisted about to see who else was in the room.

  “And why don’t you like me?”

  At that moment she decided that her debt to David had been paid. “You have done nothing but sneer since you got here,” she blurted. “Maybe we can’t all afford to wear hand-tailored suits and gold watches, but we do the best we can. I think that somewhere along the way you lost your memory of what it’s like to be . . . be part of the masses. When David begged me to take you in, I got the idea we could help each other, but I can see that you think you’re above Billy Thompkins’s widow.” She said the last with a rigid jaw. She hadn’t been in Abernathy for a week before she learned what people thought of Billy.

  “I see,” Jason said, still not moving from where he was, and he looked as though he had no intention of leaving either the chair or the house. “And what would I have to do to prove myself to you? How can I prove that I am trustworthy and can do this job?”

  “I haven’t a clue,” she said, wrestling with Max as all twenty-two pounds of him fought to stand on her lap, but his balance wasn’t good, so he wobbled about like a very strong piece of wet spaghetti.

  Suddenly, Jason leaned across the room and took the baby from her, and Max let out a squeal of delight.

  “Traitor,” Amy said under her breath as she watched Jason hold Max aloft, then lower him and rub his whiskery face against Max’s neck. Max grabbed Jason’s cheeks with his hands, and Amy well knew how he could hurt; twice Max had drawn blood with those little love holds of his.

  After several minutes of tossing Max about, Jason sat the baby down on his lap, and when Max started to squirm, Jason said, “Be still,” and Max obeyed. Sitting there on Jason’s lap, looking utterly content, Max smiled up at his mother.

  Amy hated being a single mother, hated that Max didn’t have a daddy. It wasn’t what she had planned. For all that Billy had lots of faults, he was a sweet man, and he would have made a good father. But fate had decreed differently, and—

  “What do you want?” Amy said tiredly when she realized he was staring at her.

  “A second chance. Let me ask you, Mrs. Thompkins, has he ever fallen when you have been watching him?”

  Blushing, Amy turned away. She didn’t know how, but Max had fallen off the bed once and off the kitchen countertop once. The second time he’d been strapped to a thick plastic booster seat and he’d landed on his back, still strapped in, looking like a turtle in his shell. “There have been a couple of incidents.”

  “I see. Well, this morning was my first and only ‘incident.’ I can assure you of that. I thought he was asleep, and since he took up all the room in the bed, I couldn’t go back to sleep, so I made a few calls. It was wrong of me to assume anything, but I wasn’t negligent by intent. What else did David tell you about me?”

  “That you were homeless for the moment and that you came home to mend your broken heart.” she said. Max, the traitor, was sitting calmly on Jason’s lap, playing with his big fingers, looking for all the world as though he’d found his throne.

  “Have you noticed that your son seems to like me?”

  “My son eats paper. What does he know?”

  For the first time the man actually smiled, just a hint of a smile, but it was there. It was a bit like seeing the figures on Mount Rushmore smile. Would his face crack?

  “May I be honest with you?” he asked, leaning toward her. “I don’t know diddly-squat about taking care of a baby. I’ve never changed a diaper in my life. But I’m willing to learn, and I do need a place to stay. Also, I think I’d like to change your opinion of me. I can be quite likable when I make an effort.”

  “Does this mean you can’t cook either?”

  “David told you I could?”

  She nodded, thinking that she should demand that he leave this minute, but Max did seem to like him. Now her son was beginning to twist around and, easily, Jason held him in Max’s favorite standing position. The books said that babies didn’t start standing until about six months, but Max had been standing on her lap and trying to pull her arms from their sockets since he was five and a half weeks old. Maybe if Jason did watch after Max she could take a shower. A real shower. One of those where she could shampoo her hair twice, then put on conditioner and leave it. Oh, heavens! maybe she could shave her legs! And afterward maybe she could rub moisturizer into her dry skin. Making milk seemed to remove every bit of moisture from her body, and her skin felt like sandpaper.

  Maybe she would fire him later. After she’d had a bath. After all, he couldn’t be too bad if Dr. David had recommended him so highly. “Would you mind if I took a bath?”

  “Does that mean I get my second chance?”

  “Maybe,” she said, but she smiled a bit. “You wouldn’t let anything happen to my baby, would you?”

  “I’ll guard him with my life.”

  Amy started to say something else, but instead she scurried off to the bathroom, and an instant later the hot water was running.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  “DEAD,” JASON SAID INTO THE PHONE, MAX SLUNG OVER his arm like a sack of potatoes. “Little brother, you are dead.”

  “Look, Jase, I have about twenty patients waiting to see me, so what exactly is going to cause my death this time?”

  “Gay. You told her I was gay. She thinks I’ve just broken up with my boyfriend.”

  “I couldn’t very well tell her the truth, could I?” David said, defending himself. “If I’d told her my rich and powerful brother who owns half of New York City had agreed to help me woo her, I don’t think she would have agreed.”

  “Well, she didn’t agree,” Jason snapped. “She fired me.”

  At that David took a deep breath. “Fired you?”

  “Yeah, but I talked her out of it.”

  David paused, then began to laugh. “I see. She gave you a way out of all this, but you were too proud to take it, so you used your powers of persuasion to keep your job. Now you don’t know what to do with the job, right? Tell me, what did you say to persuade her?”

  “The kid likes me.”

  “What? I can’t hear you. We’re giving flu shots today, and there’s a lot of screaming. Senior citizens’ day. It almost sounded like you said that Max likes you.”

  “He does. The kid likes me.”

  “Why would that horrible child like you?” David half shouted into the phone. “He doesn’t like anyone. Has he bitten you yet? Don’t tell me he lets you hold him? He only lets Amy hold him.”

  “I have him right now,” Jason said smugly. “And you know what, Davy? I think your Amy likes me too.” At that, he hung up the
phone. Let his devious little brother contemplate that one.

  Once the phone was down, Jason looked at the bundle hanging over his arm. “Is it my imagination or do you stink to high heaven?” Max twisted around and gave Jason a toothy grin, showing two teeth in his bottom jaw. Suddenly the thought of breast-feeding an infant with teeth went through his mind, and Jason shuddered. “Brave lady is your mother. Now, hang on, and she’ll be out of the shower in a minute or two.”

  But Amy wasn’t out of the shower in a minute. Or five. Or ten. And Max began to squirm. Jason put him down on the floor, but the baby lifted his legs high in the air and began to whimper, all the while looking up at Jason with big eyes.

  “I am going to kill my brother,” Jason muttered in what was becoming a chant; then he began to look for changing facilities. Not that he’d know how to use them, but he had seen movies and had occasionally watched TV. Wasn’t there supposed to be a tall cabinet that you put the baby on and it had shelves full of diapers and whatever else was needed? On the other hand, maybe if he thought about all this long enough, Amy would get out of the shower.

  But still the shower ran, and the baby was looking up at Jason mournfully. Didn’t babies cry at the drop of a hat? he thought. But this little guy was a trooper and even a bucketload wasn’t making him howl. “Okay, kid, I’ll do my best.”

  Looking about, he saw a pile of plastic-coated diapers under a table, so he figured it was now or never.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  AFTER WHAT HAD TO BE THE WORLD’S LONGEST SHOWER, Amy slipped into an old bathrobe that had raspberry stains on it and began to towel dry her hair as she went in search of her son. She was sure she would win the title of World’s Worst Mother for leaving her son in the hands of someone she had tried to fire, but maybe Max was a better judge of people than she was, for, inexplicably, Max certainly did like this man. And considering that Max didn’t like any men and only a few women, Amy was indeed intrigued.