Unexpected Father. Kelly Jamison

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СКАЧАТЬ brows. “Then maybe you’d better go get yourself some lessons at the Arthur Murray Dance Studio,” she told John tartly.

      When the laughter subsided, they all slowly stretched their muscles and walked back toward the frame. Jordan picked up a hammer and listened idly as Kevin asked Esther more questions about St. Jude.

      “Do you think he’d help me get something special for my birthday?” he was asking seriously. “I’m gonna be seven. It’s not until October, but I figure a kid has to start planning early.”

      “Now I don’t know,” Esther said. “Depends on what it is you want.”

      “Well,” Kevin said as he dug his toe into the ground, obviously reluctant to come right out with it. “Let’s just say it’s something every kid wants.”

      “Can’t be more specific?” Esther prodded.

      Kevin’s voice dropped, and Jordan strained to hear. “It’s got legs and a face and hair and all that stuff.”

      “Hmm,” Esther said. “A pony?”

      “No, no,” Kevin said plaintively. “A dad. You know, someone I could do stuff with. He doesn’t got to live with my mom. Lots of kids at school got dads who don’t live with their moms. I’m not picky.”

      He sounded so earnest and wistful that Jordan felt a chord of sympathy for the boy. Why didn’t Hannah have any contact with Kevin’s father? At least then the kid would have a token dad.

      “Well,” Esther said, “we’ll have to talk to St. Jude about this. I don’t know if he’ll be able to help or not, but we’ll see.”

      “Can I go back to work with you now so we can talk to him right away?” Kevin asked eagerly.

      “I don’t see why not,” Esther said. “Let’s go tell your mother.”

      Jordan glanced over his shoulder and saw that Hannah was working too far away to have heard the exchange. Just as well, he thought. It would be one more thing for her to worry about.

      Methodically he began driving nails into the cross brace in front of him.

      So Kevin would be seven this October. That meant he was born in...

      He mentally made the calculation while continuing to hammer. And Hannah would have conceived him nine months before that, in January of that year.

      Jordan frowned. Something was there in the back of his memory. Something else that had happened in January of that year.

      His loan. That was it. He’d received the loan that had enabled him to expand the business that month. He’d gone out to celebrate with...

      Hannah.

      He’d taken her out to dinner, and they’d ended up back at his apartment, toasting the growth of McClennon Industries.

      And then they had made love. About nine months before Kevin Brewster was born.

      The hammer came down again, but he was in such a state of shock that he paid no attention to his aim.

      Hannah nearly dropped her own hammer when she heard him howl in pain. John, Jake and Ronnie were already racing toward him, and Esther, about to get into her car with Kevin, bustled back toward the work site as well.

      Hannah danced around on tiptoe, straining to see over the shoulders of the McClennon brothers, but they were too tall, and with all of her bobbing she was beginning to feel like a kernel of popcorn on a hot skillet.

      “He’ll live,” Esther pronounced, and Jake and John clapped Jordan on the back.

      “Getting a little clumsy in our old age, aren’t we, brother?” John asked dryly.

      “There was a bee,” Jordan said, but his alibi sounded a little weak to Hannah. “It buzzed me, and I missed the nail.”

      “Hannah!” Esther called. “Take Jordan inside and put some cream on his thumb.”

      “Me?” Hannah said from the back of the group, trying to think of a way to avoid the assignment. “I don’t know where it is.”

      “Above the kitchen sink in the left-hand cupboard,” Esther said. “I’d do it myself, but I’m already late getting back to the diner. I’m outta here!”

      The men drifted back to work, leaving Hannah a clear view of Jordan. He stood by an upright support post, staring morosely at his thumb.

      “Can I see?” Kevin asked, and Hannah resisted the urge to tell him to leave Jordan alone, because she knew how entertaining something yucky like an injured thumb was to a six-year-old boy.

      Jordan held out the thumb solemnly, and Kevin leaned forward to inspect it.

      “Not much blood,” he said in disappointment. “I cut my knee once and, man, I bet there was gallons of blood.”

      “Look at this,” Jordan told him, pulling up his shirt to display a small scar on his ribs. “I fell off my bike once.”

      “Heck, I fall off my bike. all the time,” Kevin said with a shrug. “Especially if I’m trying to do wheelies.”

      “This is a big bike,” Jordan told him. “A motorcycle.”

      “You got a motorcycle?” Kevin asked, his eyes wide.

      Esther honked the VW’s horn, and Hannah decided it was time to put an end to the display of machismo on the part of both males.

      “If you boys are through trading war stories,” she said, “Esther is waiting.”

      “’Bye, Mom!” Kevin called as he bolted for the car.

      Hannah carefully tried to keep her eyes away from Jordan’s chest, which was still bared after his little scar display. But she had caught an eyeful of the dark hair and slab of muscles beneath, and she found that her pulse was thumping away in double-time.

      “Nurse Hannah,” he said with a teasing smile, “I’m ready when you are. What kind of first aid did you have in mind?”

      “A tourniquet to your neck,” she said dryly, turning and heading for the trailer.

      But she didn’t dare look at him, because she was feeling far less sure of herself than she’d sounded. She found the cream in the cupboard, then turned abruptly to find him much too close.

      “Stand in the light where I can see,” she told him, more to put some distance between them than as a visual aid. “It doesn’t look too bad,” she commented as he held up his thumb.

      “I’m wounded here,” he protested. “I’ll have you know I put considerable force behind my hammer.”

      “A regular Paul Bunyan,” she muttered. “The women must cluster around you just to sigh while you work.” It was a mean-spirited thing to say, but she couldn’t regret it. Not when she knew she was one of those clustering and sighing women.

      “I’ve СКАЧАТЬ