Somebody's Baby Read Online Free PDF

I’m your father. I’m here now. I won’t allow you to grow up feeling as if the people who should have done anything within their power to keep you, gave you away and didn’t care.”
    Adam knew most adopted children did not feel this way. But he had. He had been made to feel that way. And now that he had returned to Mt. Knott, he would not only shield his child from those emotions, Adam would make his remaining family pay for having treated him so callously. He had the means and the motivation. The news of his unexpected fatherhood had hastened his plan but had not quashed it. If anything, it gave him new passion for the battle that lay ahead. He would do this not just for the child he had been, but for the child lying in this small, dark room before him.
    Adam strained to get a good look at the kid without getting too close. Deep in his gut, he truly wished to step forward and scoop his son up in his arms. But somehow his body would not cooperate. He hung back, his back stiff, his legs like lead, folding then unfolding his arms across his chest, then letting them dangle limp at his sides.
    “Is he…” He craned his neck to peer around a tossed-back flap of the blanket that draped from Josie’s shoulder to her midthigh. “Is he okay?”
    “Well, he’s not wet or…otherwise.” She rocked her body back and forth, and the crying died to gurgles and gasps.
    “Maybe he’s hungry.” Just saying it made Adam feel all fatherly. Maybe this wasn’t such a hard thing after all, to take care of a baby.
    “I doubt that.” She patted the bundle gently, still rocking.
    “He would have had a bottle before bed.”
    “But babies eat at all hours.” He spoke like a veritable authority on the subject even though, deep down, he felt like a complete dolt. Him! Adam Burdett, one of five highly valued and overpaid vice presidents of acquisitions and mergers for Wholesome Hearth Country Fresh Bakery, a division of Cynergetic GlobalCom Limited. How could one small, totally dependent creature reduce him to such uncertainty and ineptitude? “Don’t they need to, um, refuel, during the night?”
    “Refuel?” For the first time she laughed faintly.
    But still, something in the sound of it made Adam long to hear it again.
    “Yeah, you know. Like a minijet with diapers?” He pressed his lips together and made the sound of a sputtering engine. “Or a rechargeable battery.”
    “If they ever find a way to channel this kid’s energy into a battery or an engine, I’ll have to give up my job and chase him around full-time.”
    “Yeah, you wouldn’t want that.”
    “Are you kidding? I’d love to give up worrying about how I’m going to keep the Home Cookin’ Kitchen open and be a full-time mom to Nathan.” Her eyes grew wide suddenly. “Not that I want my business to fail. I love what I do. I love providing a service to Mt. Knott and seeing everyone, and I love cooking. Especially…well, my specialty is not important beyond, you know, being a mother being my specialty.”
    She was babbling. Not in a ridiculous, silly way. She was just nervous. And relieved. Nervous and relieved all at once. He could sense that in the way her words all ran together, then stopped suddenly. He didn’t learn much from what she said, of course, but it did help him see her inner conflict over her roles as a woman business-owner and a mother to his son.
    “But if I could somehow not have to keep the crazy hours at my Home Cookin’ Kitchen and could just spend all my time with Nathan, at least in these early years, I’d do it in a heartbeat. No regrets. No complaints.” She stopped abruptly again, and this time her eyes grew wide before she added, in a little slower and more pronounced voice, “Not that I’m hinting that’s what I expect you to provide.”
    She’d babbled until she had spoken the truth. In doing so, she’d given Adam a glimpse into her desires and perhaps some future negotiating power. He filed the information away and,