Unexpected Father

“Early, schmearly. I figured you wouldn’t think to feed these folks. Now was I right or was I right?”

“Yeah, Ma, you’re right,” Ronnie agreed, shifting his weight from one foot to the other.

The portly woman in the green waitress uniform arched an eyebrow at him as she passed, trailing the scent of hamburgers in her wake. She smiled at Hannah as she set a large white bag on the foundation.

“Now, Hannah, these boys haven’t been working you too hard, have they?” she asked.

“Not even hard enough to earn a meal, Esther,” Hannah said, smiling despite her recent bitter exchange with Jordan.

Esther turned toward the car. “Kevin, if you want a hamburger, you’d better get over here.” She winked at Hannah. “He’s been busing and setting up tables for me all morning.”

“He hasn’t gotten in your way, has he?” Hannah asked. “I could watch him here.”

“The time a little boy gets in my way, honey,” Esther told her, “is the day that Esther Wardlow retires. He’s been an angel. Best bus boy we ever had,” she added in a loud voice as Kevin hopped from the car and trooped over to her, grinning at his mother.

“Look, Mom!” he called excitedly, holding out one small hand with four quarters on his palm. “I got tips. See? I’m rich. I done good, huh?”

Hannah couldn’t help smiling and gave him a short hug. He was such a good boy, always cheerful, always excited about something. He had her brown hair and eyes, but her sister’s short nose and bow-shaped mouth.

“Very good,” she said, tousling his hair. “I might even let you spend your fortune on some bubble gum since you worked so hard.”

“Really?”

“Really. I’m feeling generous. Are you hungry?”

Kevin shook his head. “I ate pancakes for breakfast and some toast and some bacon and some—” he wrinkled his nose, trying to think “—some sausages,” he concluded with satisfaction.

And this was the child who claimed he was never hungry in the morning, she thought, giving a mental sigh.

“I think you’re going to have to bus some more tables to pay for all that food,” she informed him. “Someday you’ll eat me out of house and home.”

Kevin laughed and danced up and down, clearly delighted with his mother’s familiar but good-natured complaint.

The men had gathered around the bag to get a hamburger, and Hannah glanced up to find Jordan still squatting by the foundation, his pensive eyes on her.

Good, she thought. Let him catch sight of a kid, and Mr. I’m-So-Irresistible will turn tail and run. And leave me alone.

“All right, sport,” Esther said to Kevin. “Let’s get going before the lunch crowd pours in.”

“I got work to do,” Kevin informed the group importantly, jabbing his thumb toward his chest and walking cockily to the car.

“Make sure you do a good job,” Hannah called after him. “Remember what I told you.”

“A Brewster always does his best,” he parroted as if he’d said the words a hundred times. But he smiled at her and waved as Esther backed the car erratically out of the driveway.

Hannah could feel Jordan watching her, but she carefully plucked a hamburger from the bag and sat on the ground a cautious distance away. She found it hard to eat when Jordan sat down right next to her. The other three men settled a few feet away, obviously interested in whatever was going on between Jordan and Hannah.

So, Jordan thought, Ronnie wasn’t sitting next to her. Maybe he’d misunderstood the situation.

“Nice kid,” Jordan said, clearing his throat.

It hadn’t escaped him that Kevin’s last name was apparently Brewster. So Hannah hadn’t married the kid’s father.

“They don’t come any better,” she agreed, her eyes on her food, her knees bent and pulled defensively to her chest. “I’d walk through fire for that child.”

He knew that she meant it. And he knew that somewhere in her words there was a warning aimed at him. He just didn’t know what to make of it.

Hannah was obviously self-sufficient and strong, far more sure of herself now than she’d been when he first knew her.

“So,” he said, swallowing a bite and leaning back against the pile of lumber, “do you come up here to Sandford often?”

Hannah turned to look at him, frowning. If this was another of his pick-up lines, it wasn’t going to work.

“I’ve been here a few times,” she offered, going back to her hamburger. “Ronnie asked me to plan a birthday party for his mother last winter. And Esther, the incurable matchmaker, has invited me here several times on one pretext or another to meet the latest eligible bachelor truck driver who stops at the diner.”

“She keeps fixing you up, huh?” Jordan asked, perking up.

“She tries, bless her,” Hannah said. “If she’s not working on me, she’s digging up girls for Ronnie.”

A very satisfied smile crossed Jordan’s face.

Hannah couldn’t seem to avoid Jordan the rest of the day, not when he followed her and worked right next to her during the entire framing process. But she did manage to keep her mind off him by dint of the hard physical labor that went into building a house.

By nightfall her back ached and her hands burned, but her mind was too peacefully exhausted to dwell on the dark-haired man who had shadowed her steps all day.

It was late when Esther fed them all spaghetti and insisted on cleaning up the dishes herself. Hannah heard the McClennons and Ronnie leave, the low hum of the truck motors fading into the twilight.

Hannah took Kevin to the spare bedroom in Esther’s trailer and read to him from one of his favorite books, the story of two misbehaving insects. Then she tucked Kevin in bed and kissed his forehead as he smiled sleepily.

“Close your eyes,” she said, beginning the ritual that ended each night for mother and son.

“Sweet sleep,” he responded.

“Dream a dream...”

“For me to keep.”

He was tired from the excitement of helping Esther all day in the restaurant, and she smiled as she watched his breathing soften almost as soon as his eyes closed.

Dream a dream for me to keep, she repeated in her head as she stepped into the dark hallway. Kevin was her dream now, though he had been thrust upon her before she had time to realize what was happening.

Marybeth, she whispered under her breath, you don’t know how much I love him.

Hannah had helped her sister financially and emotionally all through her pregnancy, but Marybeth had never been interested in motherhood. She’d been enamored of rock musicians and lived the uncertain, hazardous life of a groupie. The boy who fathered Kevin—though determining exactly which boy was impossible—had no interest in parenthood, either,

Hannah had taken in the baby each time Marybeth went off on one of her road trips with her latest heavy metal band of the hour. Hannah knew that Marybeth was no saint on those trips, and she had strongly resisted hearing any of the details. But, nevertheless, it was a shock the day a young policeman came to her door to tell her that her only living relative had died of a drug overdose in a motel room three hundred miles away.

Hannah had gone to court to gain formal custody of Kevin, and it was granted. She had inherited her parents’ house when they died, and she had let Marybeth live there rent free. After her sister was gone, Hannah had sold the house and invested the proceeds in a mutual fund, using the dividends to help defray the costs of raising a child.