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She gave up the protest with a heartfelt sigh. “Do you have a magic wand?”
He laughed. “I don’t think you need that much help. Just a little,” he added, trying to bolster her morale. “Why don’t we divide up the work? Would that make things easier on you?”
“I used to be able to handle everything,” she told him with an air of helplessness.
The water in the pot finally simmered down, sinking to its new level. A lot of water had gone over the side. Wanting to replenish what was lost, she grabbed the pot by its handles in order to refill it and immediately yelped, releasing the pot again. Why she’d suddenly forgotten that there was no coating on the pot handles was completely beyond her.
Grabbing her hands in his, Adam quickly moved her toward the sink. He turned the faucet on and ran cold water over her palms.
What was wrong with her? She knew to do that, to instantly apply cold to the affected area in order to minimize the damage. Had giving birth completely diminished her brain power?
“And you’ll be able to handle everything again—soon,” Adam promised her, still holding her hands beneath the running water. “But for now, there’s nothing wrong with accepting a little help when you’re not firing on all four cylinders,” he added mildly. Releasing her hands, he reached for a towel and offered it to her. “Why don’t I take over the mashed potatoes—I am assuming they’re going to be mashed.” He looked at her, waiting for confirmation.
She bit back a wince as she wiped the towel over her tender fingers. “Yes, they’re going to be mashed.”
He regarded the potatoes for a moment, then raised his eyes to meet hers. “You make them with garlic, parmesan and mozzarella cheeses and milk?”
“That was the plan, more or less.” She wouldn’t have thought of adding the cheeses, but that did sound good.
“Great.” He reached for the whisk she kept housed in a colorful jar on the counter, along with several other utensils. “I can take out all my aggression on the potatoes.”
Opening the refrigerator to take out the one dessert she’d prepared last night, Eve stopped to give him a puzzled look. “What aggression?”
“Just a little joke,” Adam assured her as he moved over to the sink and, using pot holders, drained the potatoes. A cloud of steam rose, but he deftly avoided coming in contact with it, drawing back his head. “Apparently very little,” he commented more to himself than to her.
“I’m sorry, but you’ve thrown me off by coming now. I didn’t expect you until later,” she told him, then turned her attention to the stuffing she’d placed in the oven earlier.
Opening the top oven, she raised the aluminum foil away from the rectangular pan, wanting to reassure herself that nothing was burning. This represented three-quarters of the stuffing. The remaining quarter was inside the turkey, absorbing the bird’s juices for added flavor. She would make sure that Adam sampled it. She wasn’t quite sure why she was so set on showing him she was a good cook, but in the last few minutes, it had become very important to her.
“Sorry, I didn’t mean to throw you off,” he apologized. “But the store’s closed today and I had nothing to do. I don’t like having a lot of time on my hands.”
That much was true. There’d been a quick touching of bases with not only his handler—who was on his way to spend the holiday with his sister and her family—but with Sederholm, as well. He’d gone to see Sederholm to find out firsthand how things were coming along with the replacement shipment. He’d had to listen to the cocky college senior delineate his getaway plan, the one he intended to use on his parents by skipping out on the evening meal. Sederholm had sounded more than a little paranoid as he assured him that everything was on schedule and that he’d have his supply “soon.”
Once he’d gotten all that out of the way, Adam caught himself thinking about Eve. Constantly. That very fact should have thrown up all sorts of red flags for him. He should be trying to stay away from her. It just wasn’t working out for him. Being away from Eve only made him want to see her more. The trite saying was right. Absence, even absence involving a mere matter of hours, made the heart grow fonder.
Adam sighed. He was becoming entrenched in this “helpful lover” role he’d taken on. So much so that it was taking center stage with him. He knew the danger. It made him let his guard down, interfered with his focus. Which in turn endangered not just him and the people he worked with, but Eve and Brooklyn, as well.
He couldn’t allow anything to happen to them.
Maybe they’d all be better off if he just walked away.
Damned if he did and damned if he didn’t. What was the right call? He honestly wasn’t sure.
Tomorrow. He’d think about that and make up his mind tomorrow. Today, there were different priorities to consider.
“So I thought I’d come over and see if I could lend you a hand or at least some support,” he continued. “My mother used to say that I was pretty handy in the kitchen.”
“Your mother?” she echoed. He didn’t strike her as the type to talk about his mother. She didn’t think of him as warm and fuzzy.
“You sound surprised.” Adam grinned, amused. “Even I had parents.”
“I didn’t mean to imply that I thought you didn’t, but you don’t exactly talk about your family.”
Adam forced his voice to sound light, as if the subject and what had happened hadn’t been carved into his heart.
“There’s a reason for that.”
Was it her imagination, or was he working that whisk particularly hard? He really was taking out his feelings on the potatoes. “And that is?”
“I don’t have a family,” he told her simply. “Not anymore.”
He’d told her that his sister was dead, but he hadn’t mentioned anything about his parents. She felt instant empathy in her soul. “Your parents are dead?”
“Yes.”
The single word was completely devoid of any feeling, any telltale indications of the boy who had once been cut to the quick at the sudden deprivation. He hadn’t had time to grieve. He had a sister to take care of and a life to carve out for both of them.
Eve turned away from the oven and toward him. “I guess that gives us something in common. I’m an orphan, too.”
It felt odd to phrase it that way, because, after all, she was an adult and had felt like one for a very long time now. But the realization that there was no one to fuss over her, to wonder trivial things such as was she eating right and keeping warm, that occasionally made her feel detached from the world at large.
Adam looked into her eyes. It felt as if he delved into her very soul. “I know exactly what you mean,” he affirmed softly.
Eve shifted restlessly. She felt herself reacting, not just to the words, but to him. To his very male presence within this, her female-dominated home. It seemed incredible that he still had that effect on her. Knowing what she knew about him, feeling as if he’d betrayed her, at least that initial time, she was still incredibly and irresistibly drawn to him.
She wanted to be with him. And not just with a table between them, but biblically, in the full sense of the word.
Out of the blue she remembered that she’d gone to see her doctor yesterday for her postpartum checkup. After it was over, Dr. Mudd had expressed surprise at how quickly she’d healed and how fast her body seemed to have bounced back to its prepregnancy form.
When Dr. Mudd had told her that she was “good to go” in all aspects of the concept and could even begin contemplating giving Brooklyn a little brother or sister, Eve had felt herself going pale. Very politely, she’d informed her doctor that she had no intentions of going that route for a very long time to come. Maybe never.
Dr. Mudd had merely given her a knowing look and said the choice, as always, was up to her, but that she’d felt she had to tell her that she could have “relations” if she wanted to.
As if she wanted to, Eve had silently scoffed at the time.
But the problem was that whenever Adam was around, she found herself wanting to.
A lot.
Why was she thinking about this? Heaven knew she had more than enough to deal with right now and Vera was dying to have her finally return to the practice. She made plans to that end, thinking that she would get started next Monday. Between the baby and her career, she had more than enough in her life to keep her occupied. She certainly didn’t need to complicate things even further by inviting a man into her life.
Into their lives, she amended. Because what affected her affected Brooklyn. They were a set now. The fact that the man she was contemplating—fleetingly—to allow into her life was Brooklyn’s father didn’t change anything. Hell, he was the reason she was feeling this edginess in the first place.
At bottom, despite the fact that he did pitch in on all levels to help her cope with the changes in her life, and more specifically, to help her take care of the baby, she still couldn’t bring herself to fully trust him or be able to take him at his word.
No matter how much she wanted to.
Chapter 10
“This has to be, by far, the best Thanksgiving turkey I’ve ever eaten,” Lucas told Eve as he consumed the last bite of his dinner. Josiah’s tall, muscular driver had the uncanny ability to appear both enthusiastic and quiet at the same time.
At first, when Eve had extended the invitation to join them at the table, the man had demurred, assuring her that he was fine with waiting for Josiah in the car. He’d held up the mystery he was currently reading and said that he would have an instrumental CD playing on the Mercedes’s sound system.
When she’d pressed him as to what he intended to eat while they were inside, consuming a turkey dinner with all the trimmings, he’d produced a couple of those breakfast energy bars that boasted of having chocolate and raspberries in its mix.
Shaking her head, Eve had confiscated the bars, telling him that there was no way he was going to sit in her driveway gnawing on hardened granola, especially not on Thanksgiving.
Observing the exchange, Josiah had chuckled drily. “I wouldn’t argue with her if I were you, Lucas,” he’d told his driver. “I know for a fact that Dr. Eve can be a very stubborn young woman when she wants to be.”
Listening, Adam had laughed. “Now there’s an understatement if I’ve ever heard one. But he’s right, you know,” he went on to tell Josiah’s driver. “She’s going to keep after you until you give up. Might as well not let the turkey get cold and just give in.”
He didn’t appear to be the type who liked stirring things up. Lucas capitulated. Coming inside, he’d sat down at the dining-room table, taking a seat next to Josiah. When presented with the meal, he had eaten with gusto, consuming a great deal more than the man he had been chauffeuring around, plus the other two people at the table, as well.
Retiring his utensils, Josiah delicately wiped his mouth and added his voice to the praise. “Yes.” He smiled at Eve warmly. “My compliments to the chef.”
“Thank you,” she replied, more than a little pleased. “But I really can’t take all the credit,” she protested in the next breath. “Dinner wouldn’t have been ready at all if Adam hadn’t helped.”
His words belied the intense look in his eyes as Josiah regarded Eve’s “helper.” “Well, then it was an excellent collaboration. I highly approve.” He patted what was still a very flat stomach. “I’m afraid that I am too full to move.”
“Then stay. Stay as long as you like,” she encouraged. She looked at Lucas. Her invitation was to both men. “I give you my word, no one’s going to chase you out.”
As she spoke, she rose to her feet and reached for Josiah’s plate, intent on clearing away the dishes. Lucas was on his feet immediately. For a large man, he moved with impressive agility. He took the dish away from her and began piling the other plates on top of it.
“The least I can do after that fantastic meal is to clear the table for you and do the dishes,” Lucas told her.
“Dishes don’t need doing, Lucas. That’s why God created dishwashers,” she answered.
“Well, I can at least get them from here to there,” he told her, piling the utensils on the top dish.
Beneath that polite exterior, she had a feeling that Lucas was as quietly determined to do the right thing as she was. She gave up trying to dissuade him.
Inclining her head, she politely accepted his offer. “Thank you.”
Josiah took advantage to the temporary break in the conversation. He leaned forward, his eyes on Adam’s. “So tell me, Adam, if you don’t mind my asking, how do you like doing business down here?”
The man wasn’t mildly curious, he was digging, Adam thought. Why?
“I like it,” he said casually, as if he wasn’t aware that the older man was placing him under a microscope. “The weather’s nicer down here, the people friendlier.”
“I see.”
Ordinarily, he would have attributed Josiah’s fishing to his needing to act as Eve’s surrogate father. But something about the way the other man looked at him made Adam rethink this simple conclusion. Maybe the job was really getting him paranoid.
“Is there much money in bookstores these days?” Josiah asked.
“There is in the kinds of books Adam deals in,” Eve told the older man. Something unnamed and protective had risen up inside of her.
As if Adam needed protectors, she quietly jeered.
“Still dealing in rare first editions, then?” Josiah asked, his eyebrows raised in query.
“Yes.”
“And how is that done, exactly? Where do you find these treasures?” Josiah wanted to know.
Definitely grilling him, Adam thought. “I go to estate sales. You’d be surprised what you can find if you look hard enough,” Adam replied.
“I’m sure I would be,” Josiah agreed thoughtfully. He glanced toward the kitchen where Lucas was rinsing off plates and stacking them into the dishwasher. “My driver has an affinity for murder-mystery books. Would you by any chance have a first edition of an Agatha Christie book?” he asked, then became more specific in his choice. “The Mousetrap.”
Adam chuckled. He had just had a mousetrap set for him. Lucky thing he had minored in English in college while working on his degree in criminology.
“The Mousetrap,” he informed Josiah needlessly, “was a play, not a book.”
The older man seemed properly embarrassed. “Ah, my error.” His expression slowly turned hopeful. “Perhaps one of her other efforts?”
As it turned out, he actually had something to sell to Josiah—if the man wanted to continue with the charade. “I have The Man in the Brown Suit.”
“Excellent,” Josiah declared with just the right amount of enthusiasm. “If you give me the address to your shop, I’ll make a point of stopping by next Wednesday. Christmas is coming, you know.”
“It usually does after Thanksgiving,” Adam commented drily. He reached into his pocket and took out his wallet. In the interest of maintaining his cover, he carried several business cards with him at all times and offered one to the other man.
Taking the card, Josiah studied it for a moment before tucking it into his own pocket. “Next Wednesday,” he repeated.
“I’ll be looking forward to it,” Adam told him.
The old man was up to something. He would bet his last dollar on it. But what? That was the part that didn’t make sense. Could it just be that the man was looking out for Eve? Or was there something else involved?
He’d been at this too long, Adam thought darkly. Being undercover for two years had a way of getting to a man. Now a rose was no longer a rose, but could very well be an elaborate listening device.
He missed the days of roses.
“Anyone for dessert?” Eve offered. But just as she rose to her feet, Brooklyn made a low announcement, letting it be known that she had woken up from her nap and now wanted someone—or everyone—to pay attention to her. Eve sighed, then flashed an apologetic smile at her guests. Dessert was going to have to wait. “Looks like I’m being paged.”
“Why don’t you do what you need to do?” Josiah suggested gently. “I can entertain your little bundle of joy for a few minutes. If I’m not mistaken, I haven’t had the pleasing experience of holding the young lady yet,” he added.
Bless Josiah, she thought. “All right, then, she’s all yours.” She turned to look at Adam. “Adam, could you please—”
She didn’t have to finish her request. He knew what she needed him to do. Pushing himself away from the table, Adam rose to his feet. “No problem. I’ll go get her for you.”
Brooklyn had napped in the family room where the baby could easily be seen by her parents during dinner. Walking into the family room now, Adam bent over the port-a-crib and picked his daughter up.
A quick check of her diaper told him she was still miraculously dry, although he had to admit that the thought of depositing a slightly soggy infant onto Josiah’s lap did have its appeal. Something about the older man didn’t sit quite right. It was only a matter of time before he figured out why.
Holding his daughter, aware of her every movement and how incredibly soft she felt against him, Adam crossed back to the dining room. He made his way over to Josiah.
“Ah, there’s the lovely lady. The spitting image of her mother,” Josiah declared, his thin lips curving in a faint smile. He put out his arms, looking forward to holding the little girl.
Adam hesitated for a beat. “You know how to hold a baby?” he heard himself asking.
Damn, when had that happened? When had he begun making noises like some overprotective, clucking mother hen?
Josiah raised his gray eyes to look at him. The steely eyes reminded him of laser beams. “I’ve held a few babies in my time, Mr. Smythe,” Josiah answered.
Banking down a reluctance that had no rhyme or reason to it, Adam handed his daughter over to the other man. Josiah accepted the small, wriggling bundle, a look akin to awe gracing the gaunt face.
It was Adam’s turn to study the old man. There was no hesitation, no awkwardness. Josiah held the little girl as if he’d had infinite practice doing so. And then he remembered.
“Eve told me that you have a daughter.”
“I do. And a granddaughter,” Josiah added, never taking his eyes away from the baby in his arms.
“So I guess that makes you an old hand at this.” Adam found that if he engaged someone in conversation enough times, eventually, he found what he was after.
Josiah spared him the most fleeting of glances, his attention completely focused on the tiny human being in his arms. “I wasn’t around very much when my daughter was this age and by the time her daughter was, they were in England, so no, I’m not an old hand at this. Some things just require the right instincts,” he pronounced.
The man became more and more of an enigma. “And what is it that you did for a living when you worked?” Adam asked, turning the tables on the older man.
“Whatever I had to,” Josiah replied quietly, his attention still exclusively focused on the bright, animated small face before him. The barest hint of a smile graced his lips as he added, “You might say I was a jack-of-all-trades. Good at all,” he added, changing the old saying to suit him. “The fact that I survived attests to my ability to remain alive even in the most adverse conditions.”
He knew even less than he knew before, Adam thought. But now wasn’t the time to continue digging. He had a strong suspicion that Josiah enjoyed weaving answers that went around in circles.
Adam nodded toward the kitchen. “If you’re okay, I’ll go lend Eve a hand.”
“Of course I’m okay.” Josiah addressed his answer to Brooklyn. He looked—and felt—younger just by holding this radiant life form. Powerful medicine, he mused, these newborns. “Why shouldn’t I be?” he challenged mildly, finally looking up at Adam. “Go, help Eve. She isn’t as strong as she’d like to believe she is. It usually takes more than a month to recover from bringing a child into the world.”
Josiah said it with authority, as if familiar with the process. Just who was this old man who saw himself as Eve’s benefactor and secret guardian? He hadn’t a clue. Yet. But he would, he promised himself. He would.
Adam went to the kitchen, crossing paths with Lucas. The driver, finished loading the dishwasher, was on his way back to the dining room. The man nodded at him the way one tenant passing another in an apartment complex might, anonymous but friendly.
What was his story? Adam couldn’t help wondering. Lucas looked a little too robust, too buff under his uniform to be just a driver. Did he double as the old man’s bodyguard? And why would Josiah need a bodyguard?
“How much do you know about Josiah?” Adam asked Eve, lowering his voice so he wouldn’t be overheard by the men in the other room.
The question surprised her. She regarded Josiah with nothing but deep affection. Being around the older man made her feel as if a piece of her father was still alive. “I’ve known Josiah all my life.”
That didn’t answer his question. He was certain that there’d been people who’d known Ted Bundy all their lives—or thought they had.
“But what do you know about him?” Adam pressed.
She stopped decorating the pumpkin dessert and turned to face Adam. “That he’s a lonely old man who’s very sweet and occasionally takes in rescued dogs when his own pass on.” Her eyes narrowed as she looked at him, trying to guess what this was actually all about. “Why?”
Adam shrugged dismissively. “No reason. He’s just trying to stare me down.”
“He’s curious about you,” she corrected, going back to putting the finishing touches on one of the desserts. Shaking the can of whipped cream, she added a swirl right on the top, then drizzled the finished product with a handful of crushed pecans. “He thinks my judgment might be influenced by the fact that you are, after all, very good-looking and you’re Brooklyn’s father.”
His mouth curved in amusement. “You really think I’m handsome?”
She pretended to be engrossed in what she was doing. “I believe the exact description I used was ‘good-looking.’”
He was grinning now, not just smiling. “You want to quibble?”
What she wanted to do, Eve realized with a sudden jolt to her entire system, was make love with him. She found it unnerving that nothing had really changed. That incredible attraction that had drawn her to him in the first place was still there, alive and well. Perhaps even stronger than it had been originally.
The question was, what to do about it? Would she ignore what she was feeling, or give in to it?
Could she trust him, or was she just being an idiot? She really wished she knew, but the jury was still out on that.
Eve took a breath, trying to clear her head and focus. Finished with the whipped cream, she placed the last dessert onto the tray on the counter and then turned to Adam. “Would you carry that in for me, please?”
He paused to take in her handiwork, seeing it for the first time. He’d been too lost in thought to pay attention to what she was actually doing.
“This is like in a restaurant where they bring out a cart with a whole bunch of desserts for the customer to choose from,” he observed. Josiah had brought a traditional apple pie with him. Obviously Eve had forgotten that she’d asked him to and had put in a great deal of work on this array. “When did you get a chance to do all this?”
“Yesterday afternoon while Brooklyn was napping. Cooking and creating different desserts relaxes me,” she explained, though she figured he probably thought that was strange.
Making love relaxes me.
Adam stopped abruptly, slanting a look at Eve. Had he just said that out loud?
No, thank God. Judging by the expression on her face, he’d managed to keep his unexpected remark safe in the recesses of his mind. It was a lot better for both of them if it remained there.