A Baby in the Bargain

“Because they made it clear there were risks, especially if I waited too long. ‘The earlier the better’—that’s what they said. And now I’ve turned thirty! Thirty and with all those years wasted on Reggie. I can’t wait any longer, GiGi!”

“Eat some grilled cheese, tell me if there’s enough garlic in the mayo,” her grandmother advised.

Jani knew that was a diversion to keep her from getting too agitated. But it was difficult not to get agitated over this. Until now she’d followed the traditional route—she’d tried to find the right guy, get married, then have a family. The route her grandmother approved of.

But that route had led to a dead end and cost her precious time. Time she certainly didn’t have to waste.

So she wasn’t going to. She’d come to the firm conclusion that she had to bypass the step of finding another man to have a relationship with. She couldn’t afford the months, the years that a relationship required to blossom, to develop. She couldn’t afford the time it took to get to an engagement, a marriage. To only then pursue a pregnancy and have a baby. More years could be spent on that course.

Instead she’d decided to have a baby on her own. Here and now, without a husband. That’s what she’d made up her mind to do. And that was what she was going to do. Despite the fact that to seventy-five-year-old Georgianna it wasn’t merely unconventional, but bordered on scandalous.

“I’m just saying,” Jani reasoned, getting back to her initial point, “that maybe it would be better to give this particular deal with Gideon Thatcher to someone else because so much of my energy will be devoted to getting pregnant.”

Hmm…But why did the thought of her grandmother giving this job to one of her female cousins make her feel a little jealous, a little territorial?

Jani didn’t understand it.

But it was that feeling that prompted her to add, “Maybe one of the boys would be better…”

GiGi shook her head as she took a bite of her own sandwich. “I’m looking at it this way—let’s say you do get pregnant—”

“I will get pregnant. I have to. It’s my last chance.”

GiGi humored her. “Yes, well. Once you do, then you’ll be pregnant and dealing with that without even a husband to take care of you or help you—that wouldn’t be a time to send you out on one of these missions, would it? Then you’ll have a baby—on your own,” the elderly woman emphasized. “I won’t be able to ask you to leave a baby in order to spend time getting to know one of these people to find out how much damage was done and how we can make up for it, will I?”

GiGi had always been sharp as a tack and that hadn’t changed with age. She’d also always been a step ahead of all ten of her grandchildren, and Jani could see that was still the case. Apparently GiGi had anticipated her arguments and prepared her rebuttal.

“So now is the best time for you to do this. Maybe the only time you’ll be able to do it,” GiGi concluded.

Jani had to laugh a little at her own defeat. Her grandmother was right—once she was pregnant and had a baby, she wasn’t going to be in any position to do something like this. So rather than continue to fight it, she supposed she might as well concede.

At least, she told herself, GiGi wasn’t trying to talk her out of having a baby on her own anymore, even if the elderly woman didn’t like the idea.

Jani just hoped her grandmother didn’t think that this project with Gideon Thatcher would keep her from pursuing the baby issue. Because she wouldn’t let that—or anything else—get in her way. She would just schedule her appointments with the infertility doctor around whatever she had to do with the oh-so-good-looking man who saw her as the enemy. She wasn’t going to cancel or postpone anything.

“Okay, you win,” Jani said over a spoonful of the soup. “But this Thatcher guy isn’t going to settle for only a park in his great-grandfather’s name. He threw that back in my face. If he agrees to let us do something, it’s going to have to be bigger. Probably a lot bigger.”

GiGi shrugged. “Fine. Do whatever it takes to find out how much damage H.J. did, and if we can do more for the Thatchers themselves to make it up to them. Whatever he wants.”

“What he wants is a Camden head on a platter.”

GiGi slid out of the breakfast nook with her empty water glass in one hand. As she passed by the side of the nook where Jani was sitting, she took Jani’s chin in her free hand, and tipped Jani’s face upward for close scrutiny the way she had when Jani was just a little girl.

“I don’t believe any man would want to take you apart, my darling. You make an old woman jealous.”

Jani laughed. “GiGi,” she chastised when her grandmother released her face and went to the refrigerator, “you’ve always said you were perfectly content with the way you are—that you’d rather be happy than hungry or all dolled up. Now you’ve changed your mind? Maybe because of your new old boyfriend?”

During the first of these projects to make amends, Jani’s brother Cade had put GiGi back into contact with GiGi’s first love, Jonah Morrison. GiGi and Jonah had been high school sweethearts in Northbridge, Montana, where they’d both been raised. The young couple had split up after graduation, and GiGi had subsequently met and married Hank Camden.

But now that both GiGi and Jonah were widowed and coincidentally living in Colorado, they’d reconnected, and they were seeing each other again. Dat-ing—although GiGi complained that she was too old to call it that.

GiGi laughed as she refilled her water glass. “My new old boyfriend,” she repeated. “Is that what you’re all calling Jonah?”

“That’s what he is, isn’t he?”

“I don’t think a man Jonah’s age can be called a ‘boyfriend.’”

“Your new old suitor? Is that better?”

“You just tend to the man you’re supposed to be tending to and don’t worry about what to call Jonah,” GiGi advised.

“You might be tending to Jonah, but I’m not tending to any man anymore, let alone the angry Gideon Thatcher,” Jani corrected. “I’m just doing what you want me to do—trying to get close enough, often enough, to find some things out about him and his family. I’m not doing anything that might qualify as tending to him,” she insisted.

“Does he look as good in person as he did in that newspaper picture?” GiGi asked as she slid back into the nook with her refilled glass. “That hardhat he was wearing made it impossible to tell some things—like without it, is he bald and lumpy-headed?”

“No…He has hair,” Jani said, instantly picturing Gideon Thatcher in her mind’s eye. It was something that had been happening incessantly since she’d left him on the street the evening before, dragging her into alarmingly involuntary daydreams…

“He has very nice hair,” she went on. “Actually, that picture of him in the paper didn’t do him justice. And neither did the ones of him on his website. He has great hair—kind of a sandy-brown—”

“Is it neat and clean or does he look like he needs a haircut the way Reggie always did?”

“It’s neat and clean. But not so neat that he looks stuffy or severe.”

“Clean-shaven or scruffy?”

“Clean-shaven.” Leaving that sharply chiseled jawline and that sexy off-center dent in his chin clearly visible. Visible, and such a perfect match to the rest of his bone structure. His face was just rugged enough that he couldn’t be considered a pretty-boy—which is what GiGi had called Reggie.

“Is he a big man? He looked like a big man in that picture. Bigger than whoever that was he was shaking hands with,” GiGi commented.

“He is a big man. Tall. With broad shoulders.” Im-pressively broad shoulders…

“Stocky or lean?”

“Lean. He’s not fat in any way.”

“Scrawny like Reggie?”

“No, definitely not scrawny, either. I think he was all muscle under the overcoat he was wearing.” All muscle and masculinity…

“What about his eyes? What color are his eyes?”

“The most beautiful green you’ve ever seen—a shimmering sort of sea-green…”

And then it struck Jani that these questions were out of the ordinary and she realized that her grandmother had set a trap for her. A trap she’d fallen into by rhapsodizing somewhat about Gideon Thatcher’s appearance. And now GiGi was smiling knowingly.

“Not that I care how he looks,” Jani added in an attempt to do damage control. “He could be a troll and it wouldn’t matter. He’s just the person I need to deal with to do what we need to do. Male, female, good-looking, not good-looking, it doesn’t make any difference.”

But her grandmother was staring at her from beneath raised eyebrows and still smiling.