A Family of Her Own (Dundee, Idaho #3)(51)
Author: Brenda Novak

“He’s asleep.”

“Tell him Booker’s on the phone.”

She hesitated, but finally agreed. “Hang on.”

He heard her set the phone down. A few minutes later, Jon picked it up, sounding groggy and not pleased to be disturbed. “What do you want?”

“I want to know if it was you who called my house in the middle of the night.”

“What?”

Booker pulled a handful of change out of his pocket to see how much money he had for breakfast. “Do we have a continuing problem, Jon?”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“Someone threatened Delbert last night.”

“It wasn’t me.”

“You’re sure?”

“Call Earl Wallace. I was playing poker with him and some other friends until two o’clock.”

“What about your brother?”

“He was playing poker, too. If you don’t stop harassing me, I’m going to call the cops,” he said and hung up.

Booker slowly returned the phone to its cradle. He didn’t want to believe Jon, but Jon had seemed genuinely surprised by the whole conversation. Which meant last night’s call was a crank.

Or someone else was out to hurt Delbert…

MESMERIZED, KATIE STARED down at the tiny infant in her arms. Four pounds, two ounces. That was all her baby weighed. But, thank God, the doctors were very hopeful that her son would thrive. He needed to be kept in an incubator for a while, they said, to maintain his body temperature until he could put on some weight. But he could breathe and suck and swallow, which meant he wouldn’t have to be on a respirator or be fed through a tube.

How she’d pay for everything was an entirely different question, but she refused to let reality steal the peace of these few moments with her son. She’d just finished nursing for the first time. Because the baby’s temperature seemed stable, they were letting her hold him a little longer.

Adjusting the blue knit cap that was supposed to keep him from losing heat through his head, she tried to think of a name for him.

Matthew, after her favorite actor, Matthew McConaughey? Brandon, a popular boy’s name she happened to like? Eric, after her mother’s brother who lived in San Diego?

A shadow fell across the floor and she glanced up to see Booker standing in the doorway. Her breath caught at the sight of him, looking rugged and unkempt but as darkly handsome as ever.

“There you are,” she said. “I thought maybe you’d gone home.”

“Not yet.” He sauntered into the room as if he owned it, and she couldn’t help smiling at the way he’d stood by her last night. He’d tried to act as though he was taking the birth in stride—that he wasn’t disturbed by such a natural process. But the appearance of the afterbirth had definitely rattled him. He’d turned white as a ghost, very unusual for Booker whose skin was always swarthy, and had to put his head between his knees to keep from passing out.

“What’s so funny?” he asked, his eyes narrowing.

“You.”

“Me? I generally don’t elicit that kind of response.”

She knew what kind of response he generally elicited, at least from women.

His eyes seemed to search her face for…something, Katie didn’t know what. Then his gaze dropped to the baby.

“Want to hold him?” she asked.

He shook his head. “I don’t think so. He’s pretty…small.”

“You were the first person to touch him, Booker. After last night, I think you can handle it. Sit down.”

He didn’t look convinced, but he pulled the recliner that was next to her bed a little closer and took the baby.

Katie smiled at the contrast between Booker and her tiny, fragile son. Her baby’s skin was pale, almost translucent; Booker’s was scarred and dark. Her baby’s hands were delicate, perfect; Booker’s were nicked and calloused. Her baby was just starting out; Booker had traveled the road of hard experience. And yet, despite Booker’s obvious discomfort, they seemed to fit together perfectly.

“I’m trying to figure out a name for him,” she said. “Any ideas?”

He was studying her son. “You don’t have a couple of names in mind?”

“No.”

“Because you were going to put him up for adoption?”

“I was thinking about it.”

“Why?”

Katie pulled her blankets higher, the euphoria she’d felt since her baby’s birth giving way to exhaustion. “Considering my situation, you have to ask? I don’t have anything to give him, Booker. A couple like Josh and Rebecca could provide so much more. And yet—” she sighed “—now I realize I could never let him go. So I guess the two of us are stuck with each other.”

She thought of her computer and wondered how she was going to get by in the future. Maybe she’d have to go back to work at Hair and Now until she could save up for another computer. Maybe she’d have to build her Web business on the side.

But if she returned to cutting hair, who would baby-sit while she worked?

“What’s wrong?” Booker asked.

Katie smoothed the worry lines from her forehead and attempted a careless shrug. “Nothing I want to talk about right now.”

The baby squirmed, and Booker looked alarmed.

“He’s okay,” she said, laughing.

With a scowl, Booker changed the subject, probably because he didn’t like being so transparent. He typically held his cards closer to his chest. “Tell me what happened with Andy last night,” he said.

“I already did.”

“You said he wanted money and you wouldn’t give him any. You didn’t tell me how that chair got overturned or why your door was open while you were lying on the floor clear across the room.”

“When I wouldn’t give him fifty bucks, he took my computer. I tried to stop him and fell over the chair. That’s all.”

“And then what?”

“He left.”

“With your computer?”

“Yes.”

His face hardened, reminding Katie of how he’d looked the night the Smalls had picked on Delbert. Somehow she fell under his protection now, and he wasn’t going to allow Andy to hurt her. “Did he know you were in labor?”

“He didn’t stop to find out. He needed a fix, and that was all he could think about.”

Booker cursed under his breath. “Someday he and I are going to have a serious discussion.”