The Baby Gift. Bethany Campbell
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“Larry’s a physical guy. He likes it.”
He turned to Briana. “And what about Larry? Did he offer to let me use his guest room?”
“No.” She cast him a cool look. “He hasn’t got one. All his rooms are full of kids.”
“He still thinks of me as the guy who deserted his big sister?”
“He doesn’t change his mind easily.”
No. He’s like a Rottweiler or a water buffalo that way. Once an idea worked its way into his thick skull, it seldom found its way out again.
Josh didn’t really care about Larry’s opinions. But he knew down the line he’d have to grapple with them. As well as the far more complex ones of Leo Hanlon.
“Just when do you plan to tell them?” Josh asked. “About her?” He nodded toward Nealie, who was sleeping with her head on his shoulder. “And about—us?”
Every visible muscle in Briana’s body seemed to tighten. “I don’t want to discuss it now.”
“Have you thought about it? How you’re going to tell them? When?”
Her chin was stubborn. It was a look he knew well. “I said not now. She might wake up.”
As if to prove Briana right, Nealie stirred, rubbed her eyes, murmured something incomprehensible, then nestled against him.
She’s so small, Josh thought, so thin. She wasn’t this thin last time I saw her. She was light as a bird, like a creature with air in its bones.
“You and I,” he told Briana, his voice hard, “have to talk soon. And for a long time. I didn’t come all this way to be stonewalled.”
She nodded without looking at him. “Tonight. When she’s in bed.”
He frowned. “This thing you want to do—another baby—it’s going to cause all kinds of—”
“Shh. Tonight.”
“Fine,” he countered. “Tonight. And where am I supposed to stay? Am I invited to use your guest room?”
She shot him a look. “I don’t have one, either.”
“I’ll sleep on the couch.”
“No. People would talk.”
He sighed in exasperation. She was worried what people thought? She wanted him to father another child for her—like that wasn’t going to make people talk?
She said, “If you don’t want to stay with Poppa, you can stay at the motel. I’ll loan you my truck to get back and forth.”
He groaned. He remembered Illyria’s motel from the photo shoot when he’d met Briana. It was a far cry from the five-star Kempinski in Moscow. Instead of private bars in every suite and a view of the Kremlin, it had a soda machine at the end of the hall and a view of a cornfield.
But that wasn’t what bothered him. What bothered him was that he and Briana had spent their wedding night there. They’d married in a kind of ecstatic haste, too hungry for each other to go anywhere else. They’d made love, then dozed, woke, made love again, and when the sun came up, they made love again.
If Briana remembered, she didn’t show it.
He tried to steer the conversation to neutral ground, not sure they had any.
“The farm’s a success?” he asked.
“Oh, yes,” she said, businesslike. “These days people are careful about what they eat. The more particular they get, the more they like us.”
“No preservatives,” he quoted from memory. “No additives. No artificial fertilizers. Only natural pesticides. No hybrid or patented seeds. The heritage of pure, old-fashioned food.”
“You’ve got it,” she said with a hint of the smile that used to make him crazy with wanting her.
“As George Washington said, ‘agriculture is the most healthful, most useful and most noble employment of man.’”
“Wow,” Briana said. “You really do remember.”
I remember much more. Too much.
“Yeah. I remember,” he said.
“In growing season, we do well at the farmers’ market,” she said. “We always sell out. We have buyers from restaurants as far away as St. Louis.”
He thought about this past growing season. During it he had traveled over half the earth. She’d stayed home and tended her garden. And their child.
She said, “Was it a problem, getting time to come here?”
He shook his head. “No. Gave up a couple of short assignments. Nothing major.”
“Where do you go next?”
He tried to sound casual. “I’m not sure.”
“Are you still tied up with that crazy Adventure magazine?” she asked, an edge in her voice.
“I’ve got one more assignment,” he said. “That’s all.”
She tossed him a displeased glance. “Where?”
“Don’t know. Maybe Burma. An outside chance of Pitcairn Island.”
“Burma?” she asked with alarm. “Pitcairn Island? Josh, those are dangerous places. When would you have to go?”
He shrugged. “Burma? Probably not for a month, maybe more.”
“Burma has terrorists,” she said. “It has land mines.”
“I’ll be careful. Besides, a few weeks in Burma beats months on Pitcairn.”
Briana had said he needed to be in Missouri for at least three weeks. He’d told Carson he wasn’t touching anything for three weeks, and Carson had been bitter because there was money at stake, a lot of it.
From the unhappy look on Briana’s face, he decided the subject needed changing. “So how’s the seed business?”
She seemed relieved to talk of something else. “It keeps me busy. We’ve got a Web site now. And I computerized as much of the business as I could.”
One corner of his mouth pulled down. “Computerized? Didn’t Poppa object to that?”
The ghost of her smile flickered again. “Until he saw the results. He liked the profits.”
“So it’s the same as just after his heart attack. Larry’s the brawn, you’re the brains. In fact, it’s the same as before his heart attack.”
Her mouth went grim. “That’s not fair. He’s never been the same since my mother died. I told you that when we met.”
“Sorry,” he said, but he felt little true sympathy.
Briana’s mother had died two years before Josh came to Missouri. She had been the one with the business mind. She kept the books, made the payments, studied new directions to take the business.
Leo Hanlon had neither the patience nor the sort of mind to take over the job his wife had done. It fell to Briana to do, and she did it brilliantly.
Leo’s bachelor brother, Collin, a true workhorse of a man, died shortly after Leo’s wife did. He had done all the farm’s heavy work.
Without his wife and brother, Leo was nearly helpless. His back bothered him, his joints ached, and he was lonely. He wore his depression like a badge that exempted him from responsibility. He hired out more and more of the physical work. He was a genial man, sweet-natured, but he seemed to Josh to have drifted into a sort of privileged laziness.
“So what exactly is your father doing these days?” he asked, trying to quash the sarcasm in his tone.