A Baby in the Bargain

Jani didn’t have any trouble finding it on Wednesday afternoon—it was on the same road that led to the Cam-den warehouses and factories. She must have driven past it on the few occasions she’d been to the facilities in Lakeview. She just hadn’t taken any notice.

As she drove up, what initially struck her was that Gideon hadn’t been kidding about it needing a lot of work. But then she spotted the parking lot, Gideon’s sports car and Gideon himself, and everything else flew out of her mind.

Wearing tan slacks and a short leather jacket over a cocoa-colored shirt, he was half sitting, half leaning on the hood of his car. His long legs were stretched far out in front of him and crossed at the ankles. His arms were locked over his chest, his hair was slightly windblown. And had the backdrop been more scenic, it could have been an ad in GQ for the car or the clothes. Or the man himself. He looked dashing with just a hint of bad boy thrown in to make it interesting.

That’s the picture that should be on his website, Jani thought as she parked alongside of him and tried to get her pulse to stop racing. She reminded herself that this was not a social visit, that Gideon Thatcher reviled her and her family and that she had way too much on her own personal agenda to be distracted by him. Gideon Thatcher was just one little compartment that she had to deal with in the whole spectrum of things.

But that first glimpse of him made it difficult to recall that anything else existed. In her life, on her agenda or in any other way.

Especially when her heart was beating at such an accelerated pace.

She took a deep breath as she turned off the ignition and ordered herself to just calm down.

“Am I late?” she asked when she got out of her car, quickly slipping on the hip-length jacket she hadn’t wanted to wear while she was driving.

Gideon shoved off his hood. “No, I wanted to get here ahead of you to turn on some power, maybe get a little heat going in there so it wouldn’t be too miserable to walk around.” His eyes dropped to where her legs were generously displayed below the short hem of her fuchsia dress. “Looks like it’s a good thing I did or you might have frozen to death.”

It sounded as if he were trying to be critical but somehow missed the boat. Maybe because his gaze lingered on her legs and Jani recognized appreciation when she saw it.

Then he raised his green eyes to her face and said, “Be warned, it isn’t a pretty sight inside. Looks like kids have broken in and partied, and there’s been some wildlife activity, too—mice, a raccoon, maybe, and I found a dead squirrel on the third floor. I threw an old newspaper over it, but in case you’re inclined to touch anything, my advice is not to.”

Jani held up her hands, palms out, then made a show of putting them in the pockets of her jacket. “Noted,” she announced.

He nodded in the direction of her three-inch heels. “And watch your step in those things—there are cracks in the cement all around here.”

Again the words were purely precautionary but a split-second lingering of his gaze told her that he wasn’t otherwise opposed to the black suede shoes that accentuated her ankles and calves.

“Oh, don’t worry, I’m so used to heels I could climb Mount Kilimanjaro in them,” she assured him.

Just then her heel caught in a crumbling spot in the parking lot, and she would have gone down had Gideon not grabbed her arm in the steadying grip of one big hand.

“Okay, maybe not,” she said with an embarrassed laugh, hating that she seemed to be such a klutz around this man.

“Are you okay?” he asked.

“Fine,” she said, trying to ignore how much she liked having his hand on her arm. And how much she didn’t like it when he took it away. “I’ll just be more careful.” Maybe by watching where she was going instead of looking at him…

He must not have trusted her, though, because he stayed close, walking beside and slightly behind her as they went up to the old building, as if he were there to catch her should she lose her footing again.

He really does think I’m clumsy….

It wasn’t an image she wanted to project so she was extra cautious climbing the steps to the building.

When they reached the wide double doors, Gideon opened one of them and waited for her to go in before following. It was warmer inside than out but not by much, and there was only the dim glow of light shining through aged and dusty globes. But one quick glance around made Jani think that was a blessing—she didn’t really want to be able to see too many details.

Gideon launched into tour-guide mode, pointing out the good and the bad, outlining what he had in mind for room after room, floor after floor of the musty-smelling building.

It was actually a little creepy to be there and it occurred to Jani that had she not been with Gideon, she might have been more unnerved by the dusty, cobweb-laced, littered and decaying old place. But there was something about his presence that made her feel less uneasy.

Having once been Lakeview’s only courtroom, the third floor was one large open space. When they arrived there, Gideon warned her around the sheet of newspaper hiding the dead squirrel and led her to the windows that weren’t broken and boarded up. The glass in them was dirty and sometimes cracked, but from that height they could look down on the surrounding area.

After talking about the need to completely dig up the parking lot and repave it, Gideon pointed out the best positioning for the sports fields and the play park on the grounds below.