Father By Choice. M.J. Rodgers

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СКАЧАТЬ you must give me the details of everything you said and what I told you,” she begged. “When I tell people about this, they’re going to want to be sure you didn’t give me any hints. Not that I blame them for being skeptical. There are so many fakes out there. Do you mind if I borrow some paper and a pen to take notes?”

      To his credit, he didn’t so much as flinch. But he was clenching the hospital chart so hard, his knuckles were white. It took an effort of will for Emily to keep a straight face.

      A nurse rapped once on the door, then stuck her head into the room. “You want the concussion or the bleeder?”

      “The bleeder,” he said. “Ms. Barrett is ready to be released.”

      He shoved the paperwork in the nurse’s hands and was out of the room so fast that Emily could feel the gust of air displaced in his wake.

      She let out a sigh of relief. Well, she’d managed to dodge that bullet. But only just. On paper, Brad Winslow had been very impressive. In person he was one formidable son of a gun.

      “ARE YOU SURE YOU’RE OKAY, EM?” Dorothy Mission asked for the umpteenth time as they worked together to prepare dinner in her kitchen.

      Dumping the romaine lettuce she’d chopped into a large salad bowl, Emily sent her friend a look of exasperation. “If you don’t stop asking me if I’m okay, I’m going to throw this salad at you.”

      Dorothy smiled. “Could you wait until you slice in the tomatoes? A green outfit always looks more festive with a nice splash of red.”

      Emily chuckled as she went back to her task. “Truth is, I nearly had a heart attack when it dawned on me that I’d unconsciously blabbed all that stuff to Brad Winslow.”

      “Imagine the jolt he must have felt hearing what you said.”

      “At least he made sure I was okay and everything that was medical had been attended to before he tried to nail me to the wall on it.”

      “Em, I know you said you never wanted to meet him, but now that you have, are you glad?”

      She gave the question some serious thought as she chopped the carrots. “I admit it did satisfy a certain curiosity.”

      “Is he everything that you…hoped?”

      Emily glanced over at the speculative look on her friend’s face. “Forget it, Dot. He’s just a man like any other. And, as far as I’m concerned, good for one thing and one thing only.”

      “Oh, I think they might have one or two other uses,” her friend said with a mischievous smile.

      “I can open tight jars and take out the trash myself, thank you,” Emily said, knowing perfectly well that was not what Dot had been referring to.

      “Come on,” Dorothy persisted. “You selected Brad Winslow out of the hundreds you could have picked. You must think he’s special. What stood out most strongly when you met him today?”

      “That he’s no one to fool around with. If I hadn’t lied my head off and known what button to push, he’d have found me out, and I’d be in serious trouble now.”

      “Em, I respect your wishes on this, really I do. But you’re such a nice person that… I mean even after all you’ve been through, I guess I still hope you’ll…oh, forget it. You’re right. I can’t pretend to understand what I haven’t experienced. And people who say they know how someone else feels are irritating.”

      “On that we agree wholeheartedly,” Emily said.

      “You two are agreeing?” Holly Mission said as she entered the room. “Oh, this can’t be good.”

      Dorothy gave her daughter a hug. Holly was both smart and sweet—a seventeen-year-old version of her mom.

      “So, is Lester gone?” Dorothy asked Holly.

      “Yeah, Josh and I stuck around until he got his stuff together and drove off.”

      “Did you get his key to the maintenance gate?”

      “Oh, hell, Mom. I forgot.”

      “Key?” Emily repeated.

      “Lester quit,” Dorothy said. “When I went to bawl him out about the leaf blower incident sending you to the E.R. this afternoon, I found him loading sacks of organic fertilizer into his pickup.”

      “He was stealing them?”

      Dorothy nodded. “First story he gave me was that he was moving the sacks to the other side of the Gardens so they’d be in place when he fertilized next week. But when I pointed to some of your new rose hybrids in between the sacks of fertilizer in his pickup, he had no convenient lie ready for why they were there.”

      Emily shook her head. “I’ve been wondering why so many of our supplies seemed to be missing lately.”

      “His father has opened a small nursery on the outskirts of town,” Dorothy said. “No doubt Lester’s been taking the supplies from the Botanical Gardens over to him. I told him he had a choice. Either quit or I’d see to it that you fired him.”

      “That must have been hard for you, Dot.”

      “I never should have suggested you hire him in the first place. I love my cousin but her kid is a loser. I swear he got all of his father’s genes and not one of hers. When Lester was thirteen, I caught him stealing from her purse so he could buy marijuana from another kid pushing it at school. Supposedly, he got himself clean. But clean or not, ten years later and he’s still a thief.”

      “I’m sorry about forgetting the key, Emily,” Holly said. “But I don’t think Lester will come back. I watched closely to make sure that he didn’t try to put anything that wasn’t his into his pickup. Josh was right beside me, scowling at him the whole time he was getting his stuff together. And when he started to drive away, Josh yelled at him not to come back.”

      “Well, good for our Josh,” Dorothy said. “He seems to be working out okay despite his grandfather’s claim that the boy’s clueless.”

      “Josh is a very good assistant,” Emily said. “He simply needs a little time to find his direction in life.”

      “Speaking of time,” Holly said, “Josh asked me to remind you to meet with the crane guy today.”

      “I have. The sundial has been prepped and readied for tomorrow.”

      “Do you need my help on anything?” Dorothy asked.

      “Thanks, but I took care of the other last-minute details before coming over. Gardens, dignitaries and media are all in line. We are good to go, Mission Control.”

      Dorothy smiled as she set a plate of sliced roast beef on the kitchen table. Emily put the mixed-salad bowl between the beef and a basket of steaming baked potatoes. The fact that her friend still insisted on eating in the kitchen when Emily joined them always made her feel like one of the Mission family.

      “Smartest thing I ever did was to convince СКАЧАТЬ