“It’s been a few days.”
“Don’t bite off my head, bro. I’ll call her again tomorrow and check on it if you want.”
“I want.” His voice was terse.
His brother waited a beat. “Have you talked to the hospital?”
Adam had called the hospital on his way to the motel from Fresh Pine. He’d spoken to Angelica, who was the main nurse assigned to Linus, and dissuaded her from transferring his call to Linus’s hospital room.
Since he’d met Eric, there’d already been too many conversations. He preferred putting off the next one as long as he could.
Eric was the man Laurel had planned to marry. That was reason enough to resent him.
He was also the man who had, for months, truly believed Linus was his son. Laurel had hurt him, too, unintentionally or not. They had that in common.
And that was something else Adam didn’t want to think about.
The only logical reason for any of it was that Laurel must have wanted Eric to be her child’s father. Maybe she’d suspected that he wasn’t, and that was why she’d disappeared.
“So far, Linus is doing well,” he told Kane, focusing his mind with an effort. “If everything continues that way, he’ll be released in a few weeks once they know he’s producing new blood cells.”
“And then?”
Adam pinched the bridge of his nose. “And then I bring him home.”
The silence from the phone was loud with all of the things neither one of them said.
Like how was Adam supposed to take care of an infant? Much less one with aplastic anemia?
When Eric had claimed Linus in February and taken him home to Houston, he’d hired a full-time nanny. He could afford it, thanks to owning his own company.
Adam, on the other hand, was a restaurant manager. His paycheck was dependent upon actually being there to do the managing. Provisions was already a success, but the restaurant was still new and no one was sure whether the town of Rambling Rose would be able to sustain it over the long haul.
And he was well aware that he’d never be more than a manager there despite the fact that it was owned and operated by his cousins, Ashley, Nicole and Megan.
They were all Fortunes, it was true. But they’d only discovered the fact that they were related in the last year. And the sisters were the money behind the restaurant.
Where Adam had gotten a homemade cake from his folks to celebrate his college graduation, his triplet cousins had received a couple hundred thousand dollars apiece from theirs.
Such was the difference between his father, Gary Fortune, and their father, David Fortune.
Adam brought a lot of work experience to Provisions, but he’d never have the stake in the restaurant that the girls did. He didn’t want one, either, because his goal lay elsewhere.
But now, he had a son he needed to provide for and he’d just committed to spending several thousand dollars a month for his son’s mother’s care.
A mother who didn’t remember either one of them.
“Yo. Bro.” Kane’s voice broke into his churning thoughts. “You pass out on me or something?”
He thumbed off the speaker button and held the phone to his ear. “I’m here.”
His brother’s tone sobered. “How was it seeing her?”
Miraculous.
Hard as hell.
Adam stretched, trying to find a more comfortable position. “Surreal,” he finally answered.
“You spend the past year thinking she’s in Houston, married to some other guy by now, participate in a donor drive for a baby you think you have no connection to and find out that you’re not just a good match, but you’re the match and then learn that the baby’s mama is none other than the loved-and-lost Laurel? The very woman whose complete disappearance from the planet had her fiancé convinced she’d met some untimely end?” Kane let out a laugh short on humor. “Surreal barely begins to cover it. You’re in Land of Oz territory.”
Adam muttered an oath. “You’re not helping.”
“Sure she’s not faking it?”
“For God’s sake!”
“Just playing devil’s advocate,” Kane defended.
“She’s not faking amnesia,” he said flatly.
When Kane spoke again, his tone was neutral. “When’re you coming back?”
“Tomorrow night. Last flight out.”
“How’s the back feeling?”
“Don’t ask.”
“Should’ve listened to the doctors. They advised you it was too soon to travel.”
“Yeah, well, they don’t exactly know everything that’s happened, do they?”
“They know you spent a night in the hospital five days ago,” Kane returned just as sharply.
“My supper’s getting cold,” Adam said abruptly. Since it was a cold deli sandwich, it was more likely getting warm, sitting on the cheap dresser next to the television. “You can save the lectures until I get home. Better yet, just save ’em from here on out.”
“You might convince me to save them, but what about the rest of the family? It’s only a matter of time before Mom is on the plane from New York to meet the new grandbaby.”
He couldn’t afford to let himself think that far ahead. Laurel was recovering. Dr. Granger said the odds of her never regaining her memory were slim, though she might never remember the trauma of her accident. But even if she didn’t regain the rest, they couldn’t keep the truth from her forever.
She had a child. Whether or not she returned to Eric, Adam couldn’t believe she wouldn’t want her son with her, regardless of what had motivated her five months ago.
“Not if Dad can talk Mom out of coming,” he told Kane. It was a lot easier to think about the tensions in their father’s family than in his own. “We might have talked him into coming to Texas last summer, but he said then that he’d never come back.”
“That’s because he’s got a bug up his ass about money. Bad enough to find out he’s one of Julius Fortune’s illegitimate sons. Learning you’re the half brother of the guy who started up Robinson Tech? Gerald Robinson’s so rich he probably owns half of Texas. And David’s no slouch, either, with those video games he designed. Toss in the others—what have
