A Baby in the Bargain

The two had been friends since middle school. They’d gone to college together, been each other’s best man at their weddings, and Jack had quit a lucrative job with a local engineering firm to come on board when Gideon had started the Thatcher Group. Technically Gideon was Jack’s boss but Gideon saw him more as a partner than an employee.

“What was rolling around in your head to keep you up?” Jack asked after they’d ordered.

“You won’t believe it when I tell you. But you first—how did your weekend with Sammy go?”

Jack grimaced and shook his blond head.

Sammy was his two-year-old son. Jack and his wife were recently separated and the three previous days were the first time Jack had had visitation with the toddler.

“Not great,” Jack said. “Tiffany is making everything as difficult as possible. I don’t know why—she’s the one who decided our marriage was stagnating and wanted out. But for some reason I get to be punished. After the seven weeks in Florida with her parents that kept me from seeing Sammy at all, she came back to Colorado Springs rather than Denver. It’s blackmail—if I want Sammy closer, I’ll have to pay for a place for her to live here. Otherwise, it’s an hour drive to the Springs to pick him up and an hour drive back to Denver to have him for the weekend. Then two more hours in the car for the return at the end of the visitation.”

Jack’s voice had gotten louder and angrier. Gideon could see that he needed to vent so he didn’t point out that this was the same thing Jack had ranted about in advance of the three-day weekend he’d taken with his son.

“How about the visit itself? How did that go?” Gideon asked.

“I know how you ended up over Jillie. So you probably think that I should just count myself lucky that I get to see Sammy at all. But, dammit, this is so lousy! Sammy is two! He took one look at me after so long apart, latched onto Tiffany’s leg and acted like I was a stranger. He cried when I took him, then glared at me the whole drive back to Denver. And to make things worse, once we got here and I needed to put him to bed, Tiffany hadn’t packed that blanket thing he sleeps with—”

“Oh, that’s bad!” Gideon commiserated. “Whatever it is they need to have with them when they go to sleep, they need to have.”

“Right. I had to load him back into the car—tired, crabby and hating me for taking him away from his mother—and go to three different Camden Superstores to try to find a blanket thing exactly like the one he has. Luckily I did, but by then he was overwrought, and he just kept crying for Tiffany and—”

“You were both miserable.”

“We were just getting back into the swing of things with each other by yesterday and I had to turn around and take him back,” Jack concluded.

“You’re right—that is lousy.”

“I’m sorry,” Jack apologized in a voice an octave lower than the one he’d been using. “Again, I know I’m better off than you are, but it still stinks.”

“Yeah, it does,” Gideon agreed. He could see clearly how much his friend was suffering and knew the feeling well. Too well. It served as a reminder of the reason for the decision he’d made for himself. The vow.

Their breakfasts arrived, and when the waitress had left Jack changed the subject.

“Okay, you know if you let me I’ll gripe about this all day. Now tell me what was rolling around in your head to keep you up last night.”

“Speaking of Camden Superstores…” Gideon said sarcastically, referring to his friend’s mention of them.

“I know how you feel about the Camdens, but sometimes we all have to use the stores that made them rich. Even you.”

Gideon avoided them but Jack was right, sometimes, in a pinch, he gave in and went into one of them.

“But how do we feel about taking Camden money for the Lakeview project…” he said.

Jack’s forkful of eggs stalled midair. “Huh?”

“When I came out of work last night there was a hot little number waiting for me on the sidewalk—January Camden. I’ve had some messages from her but I’ve been ignoring them. Apparently the Camdens want to make a donation to fund a park in Lakeview, in my great-grandfather’s name. They want to honor him.”

“Guilty-conscience money?” Jack guessed.

“That’s what I said.”

“So, I know the story…” Jack mused as if he were updating himself. “H. J. Camden was friends with your great-grandfather and your great-grandfather was Lakeview’s mayor, right? Back when Lakeview was a dying-out farm community with good proximity to Denver, Camden wanted to build warehouses and factories there. But Lakeview didn’t want to be turned into a warehouse and factory district, so Camden sweetened the deal—he said if he could build what he wanted there, he’d spearhead the development of Lakeview into a post-war suburban dream. New homes, the coming of big and small businesses, schools and parks—”

“And he got my great-grandfather to support his plan,” Gideon said. “He needed somebody who was well respected to go to bat for him. He needed influence with the city council—”

“Which—as mayor—your great-grandfather had.”

“And trusting their mayor, Lakeview signed on—they gave Camden the okay for the factories and warehouses.”

“But that was it for Camden,” Jack said. “Once he had what he wanted, he didn’t come through on the rest.”

“And my great-grandfather got the blame.”

“Along with all the retribution and the hardship that came with it and sifted down to your grandfather and your father and, ultimately, left you with things to deal with…” Jack nodded now that he knew they were on the same page. “You have good reason to feel the way you do about the Camdens. So what were you up all night doing? Thinking of ways to get even with them?”

“More like rehashing all the reasons I have for hating them. Fuming,” Gideon said, not telling his friend that he’d needed to focus on the anger because otherwise his mind kept wandering back to January Camden.

The first thing he’d noticed was all that espresso-colored hair bathed in golden streetlight, falling in waves well past her shoulders like a dark frame around skin as flawless and pure as fresh cream—that image had flashed through his mind and defused some of the fuming.

And so had recollections of high cheekbones and that thin, perfectly shaped nose that was just long enough to lend a hint of the exotic to her face. Of those full lips, lush and lovely and way, way too kissable-looking. Of eyes so blue—so intensely, brightly, blueberry-blue—that he’d been bowled over by them by the time he’d reached the fourth step down from his office…

And here he was again, lost in the memory of the memory that had kept him up last night.

He shook his head. “Anyway, no, I wasn’t thinking about getting even with them—it’s not like I’m obsessed with them, or with payback or something. But it also isn’t as if I want to get in bed with them, either…”

Where had that particular turn of phrase come from? And why had the picture of January Camden popped back into his brain along with it?

It’s a figure of speech and that’s all it is, he insisted to himself. It doesn’t have any hidden meaning.

Still he found himself feeling a few degrees warmer all of a sudden and fidgeting in his chair a little to evade the involuntary response that was going through him.

“I know you wouldn’t ever ‘get into bed’ with the Camdens,” Jack said. “But would that be what a donation from them was?”

“I don’t know,” Gideon said with a sigh. “I do like the idea of putting my great-grandfather’s name on something of value and service to Lakeview. And the Cam-dens sure as hell owe Lakeview.”

“So you’d be killing two birds with one stone?”

“Except that the stone belongs to the Camdens, and they can’t be trusted—my family history proves that,” Gideon added, showing just how much he was vacillating about this.

“Do you think it’s a trick of some kind?” Jack asked, as he finished with his breakfast and settled in with his second cup of coffee.

“I know I won’t let it be. And she said that I can set the terms.”

“So maybe this is on the up-and-up?” Jack suggested. “Maybe they really do just want to make up for what H.J. did?”

Gideon shrugged, showing his reservations.

“The Camdens are heavy into charity and benefits and good deeds now,” Jack pointed out. “Hospital wings, libraries, research labs, animal shelters. They’ve even made donations huge enough to be newsworthy in national and international disasters. Their name crops up with just about anything worthwhile that goes on these days. Could it be that this is a generation of new-and-improved Camdens?”