Adam and Jenny were spending a quiet Sunday afternoon at home in his den. Lunch had been eaten, the dishes cleared away. Adam had turned on the television to watch a basketball game. He gave only half his attention to the game, the other half was reserved for Melissa, who lay contentedly in his lap, gumming her fist.
Jenny sat in a chair nearby, reading the Sunday newspaper. She was particularly interested in an article about a local business college that specialized in computer training. The school had evening classes available and even provided in-house child care for its students.
Perhaps she should look into it, she thought. She couldn’t go on indefinitely working as Adam’s housekeeper, and her lack of computer training was a major drawback in the contemporary job market.
“Jenny? Jenny, look!”
Adam’s urgent whisper drew her head up sharply. “What is it?”
Adam was leaning over the baby, grinning broadly. “Look at Melissa. She’s smiling. A real smile.”
Jenny dropped the paper and hurried to see for herself. Sure enough, Melissa was gazing up at Adam, her tiny mouth curved into a toothless smile. Her tiny feet flailed happily in response to his voice.
“She is smiling,” Jenny said, sitting close beside Adam and leaning toward the baby.
“Yeah. At me,” Adam pointed out smugly.
Jenny frowned. He was right. Melissa had given him her first smile. After all those long nights of nursing and walking her, she thought with a touch of resentment. No wonder so many mothers griped because their babies said “Da-Da” before “Ma-Ma.”
“Smile for Mommy, darling.” She cooed, blocking the baby’s view of Adam’s face.
Obligingly Melissa grinned again, this time obviously for her mother’s benefit. Jenny’s heart warmed.
Adam chuckled. “Wise move, kid,” he informed the baby. “Better stay on Mom’s good side.”
“She would have smiled at me first, if I’d been holding her,” Jenny informed him loftily, a bit giddy from happiness. “She was probably thinking of me when she smiled the first time.”
“Yeah, right,” Adam retorted. “She was looking at me. Melissa knows who brought her into this world.”
“Who carried her for nine months—er—a little over eight months?”
“Who changed her first incredibly smelly diaper?”
Adam and Jenny were looking at each other as they conducted their mock argument, still sitting so close that their faces were only inches apart. Adam’s gaze lowered to Jenny’s mouth, and held. “She has your dimples,” he said.
Jenny immediately felt self-conscious. She stopped smiling. “Does she?”
“Yeah. And your dark curls. I think her eyes will be a darker brown, though.”
“Possibly.”
Adam looked back at the baby. His voice was a bit too casual when he said, “I suppose she looks a little like her father.”
Jenny studied Adam’s profile. The firm cut of his jaw. The slight softness of his lower lip. The length and thickness of his dark lashes. That intriguing little bump on his otherwise perfect nose. “I can’t remember what he looked like,” she said, with complete honesty at that moment.
Adam slanted her a smile. “I’m glad to hear that,” he said huskily.
Jenny swallowed, suddenly aware of how very closely they sat. Shoulder to shoulder. Thigh to thigh.
She could feel his warmth. His strength.
His dangerous appeal.
Adam lifted one hand to Jenny’s cheek. “If Melissa turns out half as lovely as her mother, she can count herself fortunate,” he murmured.
Jenny flushed. “Don’t flirt with me,” she said gruffly. “It’s not your style.”
Adam’s smile was just a bit mocking. And a whole lot seductive. “How do you know it isn’t my style?”
“It just isn’t. Not with me, anyway.”
“Because you work for me?” The question was at least half-serious.
She refused to smile. “Because I’m all wrong for you.”
His thumb traced a lazy path across her lower lip. Jenny couldn’t help remembering that kiss she’d been trying so hard to forget. She looked into his eyes and knew that he remembered it, too. That he wanted to kiss her again.
She shivered.
“Why are you all wrong for me, Jenny?”
Melissa sneezed and Jenny latched on to the distraction. “I have a baby.”
“Yes, I know,” Adam said gravely, cradling Melissa securely with his free hand. “Maybe you’ve noticed that I don’t mind your baby.”
“I come from a very blue-collar background,” she said. “I’ve scrubbed filth out of rental trailers.”
“I never had to do that,” he agreed. “But I once spent a summer cooking hamburgers for a fast-food chain. Mother hated the very idea, but Granny Fran thought it would be a character-building experience.”
“And was it?” Jenny asked, momentarily diverted.
Adam grinned. “I met lots of girls.”
She sighed and shook her head.
“Tell me why else you think you’re wrong for me,” he said, prodding her relentlessly.
“Everything,” she said simply. “You’re a doctor—a well-known surgeon, for heaven’s sake. I’m a housekeeper—and not very well qualified for that. You have a big, loving family. I haven’t spoken to my parents in a year. You’re rich, I have only a few thousand dollars to my name. And I—well, I’ve made some really stupid mistakes.” She finished with a touch of bitterness.
“So have I, Jenny. But letting any of your frivolous arguments change my feelings about you would be the dumbest mistake of my life.”
He slowly closed the very short distance between them, his mouth hovering only an inch above hers. “I’ve been attracted to you from the first moment I saw you,” he said. “Even when you were cold and wet and miserable and heavy with child. You were no less beautiful to me then than you are now, slim and dry and stubborn. Only now I have the advantage of knowing you, and admiring you and respecting you. And the attraction has only gotten stronger.”
Jenny’s throat felt tight, her eyes hot. She hadn’t expected this, hadn’t known he felt this way. But was it real, or was he only being affected by circumstances?
Even worse, did he still feel sorry for her? Was this attraction—or pity?
She couldn’t bear for it to be pity. “Adam...” she whispered, wondering how to begin.
She was spared by the sound of the doorbell.
She drew a deep, shaky breath and told Adam she’d get the door.
It could only be his mother, she thought fatalistically as she headed for the front entryway. That was just the way her luck went.
And if Adam needed any more convincing argument of how wrong he and Jenny were for each other, she was quite sure his mother would be only too willing to provide it. In spades.
* * *
Instead of Adam’s mother, Jenny found a man, a woman and two young children waiting at the door. She recognized the woman and children immediately. She’d dusted their photograph often enough.
“You’re Adam’s cousin Rachel,” she said without stopping to think. And then almost winced at her lack of tact.
Rachel smiled curiously. “Yes, I’m Rachel Fletcher.” She said the last name—which Jenny knew to be new to her—with pride. “And you are?”
“Jenny Newcomb. Dr. Stone’s housekeeper,” she added, trying to sound a bit more conventional. “Please, come in. Ad—Dr. Stone is in the den. I’ll tell him you’re—”
She quickly discovered there would be no opportunity for her to formally announce the callers. The two children had already dashed past her.
“Uncle Adam! Uncle Adam!” the little boy was calling. “We’ve come to visit you.”
“Paige, Aaron, wait!” Rachel began, moving to grab them.
Her husband held her back. “They’re already gone,” he said ruefully. “Maybe we’d better have a talk with them about visiting etiquette on the way home.”
Rachel nodded her dark head in agreement. Her brown eyes were focused with interest on Jenny. “Cody and Granny Fran have told me about you,” she said. “They tell me you have an adorable little girl.”
“She’s with Adam,” Jenny admitted, abandoning the more formal address. It seemed a bit silly, under the circumstances.
“I’m Seth Fletcher,” Rachel’s sandy-haired, green-eyed husband said, holding his hand out to Jenny. “Nice to meet you.”
Rachel groaned as Jenny and Seth shook hands. “I’m sorry, I should have introduced you. I don’t know where my own manners have gone.”
Jenny smiled. “Shall we join the others?” she suggested, motioning toward the den.
They found Adam surrounded by children. Melissa was still in his lap, kicking and smiling, while Paige and Aaron sat on the couch at either side of Adam, making silly faces at the baby.
“Mama, look at the baby,” nine-year-old Paige said in delight. “Isn’t she beautiful?”
“Look, Mama, she’s got my finger,” six-year-old Aaron added, giggling. “She’s holding it tight.”
Rachel quickly introduced her children to Jenny, then rushed over to admire the baby. “She really is precious.” She cooed, already reaching to take her from Adam. She paused to look at Jenny. “Do you mind? I adore babies.”
Jenny assured Rachel she was welcome to hold Melissa.
His hands freed, Adam hugged his niece and nephew, then stood to shake hands with Seth. “How’s it going?” he asked.
Seth nodded, a deep glow of happiness clearly visible in his bright green eyes. “Couldn’t be better,” he said, his tone utterly sincere as he glanced from his wife to her children.
Rachel looked up from the baby for a moment. “Hello, Adam,” she said with a smile of apology for ignoring him.
He kissed her cheek. Jenny heard that by-now-familiar softness in his voice when he spoke to his cousin. “Hi, Rach. You look great.”
“I feel great,” she assured him. “I’ve never been happier.”
“Good for you. Did you meet Jenny?”
Rachel nodded and smiled at Jenny. “Yes, we introduced ourselves. Granny Fran and Cody both told me how beautiful your new housekeeper is, but neither of them did her justice.”
Jenny was annoyed with herself for flushing again. She seemed to do that a lot lately, she thought.
“We won’t stay long,” Seth assured Adam. “We had lunch with my parents today and the kids insisted on dropping by to say hello to you on our way back.” He glanced at Jenny. “My parents live only a few blocks from here,” he explained for her benefit.
“I’m glad you came by,” Adam replied. “Why don’t you stay for dinner? Jen, we have some steaks or something we can throw on the grill, don’t we?”
Jenny noticed that Rachel looked up from the baby again at that. She knew that Rachel must have noticed Adam’s rather possessive use of the word “we.” He’d made Jenny sound like much more than a housekeeper.
“Of course,” she replied with a forced smile, tempted to call him by his title to remind him of her true place in his household. She didn’t—not because it would embarrass him, but because she figured the hint would go right over his arrogant, dark head.
“Thank you, but we can’t stay,” Rachel said. “Paige has a report to finish before school tomorrow, so we have to be on our way.”
Paige groaned loudly. “I want to stay and have dinner with Uncle Adam,” she protested. “And the baby.”
“Your mom did try to get you to work on your report yesterday,” Seth reminded his stepdaughter good-naturedly. “You assured her you’d have plenty of time to work on it this evening. Next time maybe you’ll remember to get the necessary stuff out of the way early so you’ll have time to relax and have fun afterward.”
Paige hefted a heavy sigh. “Okay, Dad,” she grumbled.
Jenny noted the gleam of pride that lit his eyes when the little girl called him Dad. She also noticed that he was having a very hard time keeping his stern, parental expression.
She suspected that Paige and Aaron both had their new stepfather wound around their little fingers, and that he was struggling valiantly not to spoil them because of it. Probably with their mother’s help.
The family stayed for almost an hour. Jenny served soft drinks and cookies—Rachel insisted on helping her—and then allowed herself to be persuaded to join them as they sat in the den and chatted.
“Have you signed the final papers on your company yet, Rachel?” Adam asked, keeping one eye on Paige and Aaron, who were kneeling beside Melissa’s infant seat, laughing at the faces she made for their entertainment.
“Yes, on Friday,” she replied. She turned to Jenny. “My first husband left me a waste-hauling business when he died several years ago,” she explained. “I’ve recently sold it to have more time to spend with Seth and the children.”
“Now that you’re not working, Mama, can we have another baby?” Paige asked innocently. “A little girl, like Melissa?”
“I’d rather have a brother,” Aaron argued, then looked self-consciously at Jenny, as though concerned he’d offended her. “But Melissa’s real nice,” he assured her.
Jenny smiled at him.
Rachel had turned a bit pink. “We’ll—um—discuss babies later,” she said, avoiding her cousin’s amused eyes.
They left soon afterward. Paige and Aaron kissed Adam, then planted smacking kisses on Melissa’s chubby cheek.
Rachel bade a fond farewell to her cousin, cooed one last time at the baby, then clasped Jenny’s hand. “I’ll be seeing you again,” she said, the words sounding more like a promise than a wish.
Seth shook hands again with Adam, complimented Jenny on her beautiful baby, then ushered his new family out amid a flurry of chatter and laughter.
Adam’s house seemed very quiet when the visitors were gone.
“Whew,” he said, making a production of mopping his brow. “Those kids are full of energy, aren’t they?”
Jenny nodded. “Melissa seemed to enjoy watching them.”
“Yeah. Maybe we should think about putting her in a play group in a few months so she’ll have other children to play with,” Adam suggested seriously.
There was that “we” again—along with an assumption that Jenny and Melissa would still be around in a few months, and Adam still taking an active role in making decisions for them.
Jenny sighed. “I’d better start dinner,” she said.
“Jenny.”
She glanced warily over her shoulder. “Yes?”
He stood watching her, his hands in his pockets, his dark eyes narrowed intently. “We haven’t finished our discussion. Not by a long shot.”
“I know,” she admitted. “But would you mind if we table it for now? I—I really need to start dinner.”
Without detaining her again, he watched her leave the room.
* * *
Adam brought up the next difficult subject over dinner. “Tell me about your quarrel with your parents, Jenny.”
He didn’t phrase it as a request. This time he was determined to find out the whole story.
It had become all too important for him to do so.
As he’d expected, Jenny’s expression immediately shuttered. “Why?” she countered, already looking defensive.
“I have to know,” he said simply.
“Why?” she asked again.
“You’re the one who said your problem with your parents is one of the obstacles between us. How can I know what I’m up against unless I hear the entire story?”
“You aren’t up against anything,” she argued. “I was simply pointing out how close you are to your family, especially in contrast to my own. I saw that again this afternoon, while your cousins were visiting. I’ve never had that tight bond you seem to have formed with your family.”
“Not even with your parents?”
“My parents are the only family I have,” she answered with a cool shrug. “And, no, we’ve never been especially close.”
“Tell me, Jenny.”
She sighed. “You aren’t going to drop it until I do, are you?”
“No.” He didn’t smile at her plaintive tone.
Though her dinner was only little more than half-eaten, she set her fork down, as though the subject had destroyed her appetite. Adam regretted ruining her meal, but he couldn’t wait any longer for this.
“My parents were both in their early forties when I was born,” she began. “They’d been married for years and had finally decided they wouldn’t be having children. And then I showed up.”
“They should have been delighted.”
“I don’t think they were. They’d both resigned themselves to being childless, and I think they rather resented having their schedules so terribly disrupted. Both of them are a bit obsessive about schedules, I’m afraid. Dad’s a preacher—the old hellfire-and-brimstone type, you’d probably call him. He’s always been involved with small, poor churches that could hardly afford to keep him on, which is why he supplemented the family income with rental property.
“Mother is a retired librarian. It’s almost as though she tried to fit the stereotype. She worships order, quiet and tidiness. None of which are typical of toddlers, obviously. And I was a handful—stubborn, noisy, curious, restless. Neither of my parents quite knew what to do with me.”
“So what did they do with you?” Adam asked, watching her intently.
She shrugged. “They tried their best to tame me. And they succeeded, eventually. At least outwardly. I tried very hard to conform to their standards, to be the restrained, proper lady they’d raised me to be. I was so eager to please them that I didn’t outwardly rebel until my early twenties, when I met a man my father didn’t approve of. I don’t know, maybe that’s why I was attracted to Tommy in the first place.”
“Tommy?” Adam repeated with a frown.
She nodded. “He had a ponytail and an earring. My father nearly had a heart attack on the spot when I introduced them. Tommy wasn’t really a bad sort. We just didn’t have much in common after the initial attraction wore off. Dad couldn’t resist pointing out that he’d predicted a bad ending to the relationship, and I got mad and decided to finally break away. That was when I moved to Dallas.”
“And met Carl,” Adam said glumly.
“Well, not right away. I found and lost a few jobs—my career training had been sketchy, to say the least, since Dad doesn’t believe in women having careers. He only tolerated Mother’s work because they so badly needed the money.
“Anyway,” she continued doggedly, “I met Carl almost two years ago when I started working for the company where he was a supervisor. I had just begun to patch things up with my parents, who’d finally accepted that I wasn’t going to move back home and let them watch out for me.
“Then, just over a year ago, my father showed up unexpectedly at my apartment one evening and met Carl. He hated him on the spot. The feeling was mutual. I accused Dad of not giving Carl a chance, of disapproving because he was divorced and rather liberal thinking. I told him that I was an adult and he had no business trying to run my life. We ended up yelling at each other—again. Dad left my apartment in a rage, and I haven’t spoken with him since.”
“And your mother?” Adam asked, trying to keep his reactions to her tale out of his voice.
“I called her a week later. She told me I should have listened to my father, and that she would be willing to talk to me when I was ready to apologize to him. I hung up on her.”
“And you haven’t called back.”
She shook her head, her own face expressionless. “A few months later, Carl had dumped me and I found out I was expecting a baby without benefit of marriage. Do you really think I would call them under those conditions? Can you imagine what they would have said?”
Adam could see why Jenny had been so resistant to his well-meant advice. She would have resisted anyone she saw as taking over her life the way her father had tried to do. She couldn’t have known how different he was from the man she’d described—at least, not initially. She certainly should know better now.
“You should call them, Jenny. Give them another chance. They might surprise you.” He tried to make it sound like a suggestion, rather than a directive, though it wasn’t easy for him.
He was much more accustomed to giving orders and having them followed with little question.
She shook her head, so hard her curls bounced around her face. “No.”
“Why not? They haven’t talked to their only daughter in over a year. They probably bitterly regret the rift between you. I’d bet they’ve been praying for a call from you.”
“To tell them I’ve had an illegitimate child? I hardly think so.”
Adam scowled. He didn’t like the term she’d used to describe the baby he’d come to love, technically correct though it might be. “I’m sure they would soon grow to love Melissa,” he argued. “She’s their only grandchild. They’d be crazy not to want to know her.”
“I would be crazy to call them and open myself up to their abuse again,” Jenny retorted obstinately. “I won’t do it, Adam, and I don’t want you badgering me about it.”
“But—”
“I mean it, Adam. I’ve told you the whole ugly story, but now the subject is closed. Permanently. Okay?”
“Jenny—”
“Okay?” she repeated, a tenacious spark in her eyes.
He sighed. “Whatever you say.”
He would drop the subject for now, he assured himself. But that didn’t mean it was permanently closed. Jenny would never be able to plan for her future until she’d made peace with her past. And if he had to insist that she face that past—well, it wouldn’t be the first time.
She would understand, and forgive him, once she realized that he was only acting in her own best interest. Hers, and her daughter’s, he added self-righteously.
As though in response to his thoughts, Melissa began to squirm and fret in her seat, gumming her fist to indicate that it was time for her own dinner.
Jenny excused herself. “I’ll take care of the dishes later,” she added, reaching for her baby.
“You take care of Melissa,” Adam told her. “I’ll get the dishes tonight.”
“That’s my job, Adam.”
“Don’t argue with me about this, Jenny,” he said wearily. “I really don’t want another argument with you tonight.”
She lapsed into silence and carried Melissa away.
Adam could feel the resentment lingering behind her, and he suspected she was still irked with him for insisting that she tell him more than she’d wanted him to know about her family problems.
He dismissed that possibility with a wave of his hand. She’d soon realize that it had been necessary for him to know the whole story, he assured himself. After all, he couldn’t even begin to work on a solution until he’d understood the problem.
And now he thought he understood.
He reached for the dirty dishes, his analytical mind already creating and studying different approaches to healing Jenny’s heartache over her estranged family.
* * *
Jenny was in the den, rocking the now-fed baby to sleep when Adam rejoined her, leaving a spotless kitchen behind him.
She looked up when he entered. “You mentioned that her eyes are a darker brown than mine,” she said.
He remembered. “Yes.”
“She has my mother’s eyes,” Jenny told him, and there was the faintest trace of pain in her low voice.
Adam’s heart twisted for her.
He was only more resolved now to do anything he had to do to solve Jenny’s problems.