The Birth Mother Read online

“Almost done. He won’t find another thing wrong with this car, ma’am. Not unless he breaks it himself.”

  “Good. He’s been more than patient with us. I want him happy.”

  “I can guarantee it, Ms. Teal,” Bobby said, grinning at her as he stepped back beneath the car.

  Jennifer continued on through the mechanic’s bays behind Teal Ford, one of a half-dozen big sparkling dealerships in the Teal Automotive chain, taking in every last pristine detail as she exchanged pleasantries with her employees. She ran a good ship, an unusual ship, an honest ship. She was proud of that.

  Reaching the last of the sixteen bays, she stopped. “Okay, Sam, what’s wrong with her?” Jennifer’s gaze was focused on the Caspian Blue Mustang convertible up on the mechanic’s rack.

  “I think it’s the rear axle, Jen.” The gray-haired man had his head buried underneath the car.

  As soon as she’d noticed the clunking sound when she’d switched gears that morning, Jennifer had suspected that the internal gears in the rear axle were stripped, but she’d hoped she was wrong. “What about the U-joint?” She had to ask the question, though it was a waste of time. If Sam thought it was the rear axle, it was the rear axle. In the twenty-odd years she’d watched Sam Whitfield work, he’d never been wrong about a car. Which was why he was the only one she trusted near her Mustang.

  Shrugging out of the jacket of her suit, she stepped beneath the car, as familiar with its underside as she was with the driver’s seat.

  “See this?” Sam grunted, tapping a length of U-shaped piping with his wrench.

  Jennifer slid her fingers around the casing that connected the rear axle to the transmission, finding it as solid as it should be. “We’re going to have to drain the transmission fluid, aren’t we?” she asked. It was Friday, and she’d hoped to have her car over the weekend. She didn’t like being without it.

  “Yep. Be a sin to drive it like this.”

  Jennifer nodded, taking another cursory look before stepping back from under the car. She pulled a towel out of the dispenser on the wall of the bay and wiped the grease off her hands. She had an important lunch in less than an hour, and it wouldn’t do to have dirt under her fingernails when she shook hands with the mayor. She needed the rezoning if she was going to get that lot next to Teal Chevrolet for her trucks.

  Slipping into her jacket, she said to Sam, “Would you mind doing it tonight? I’ll bring dinner just like-”

  “I’ll be here, Jen. Ain’t I always?” he interrupted.

  “Six o’clock okay?”

  “Yep. And don’t bring none of that Chinese crap, you here? A man’s gotta have something more substantial than that if he’s gonna keep going.”

  “How about a T-bone steak?” Jennifer asked, grinning at the old man encased in greasy overalls. No Teal Automotive uniform for Sam. He was still wearing the striped denim overalls he’d worn when he’d been the only mechanic here, back when her parents had started Teal Motors with only one small lot of used cars.

  Sam cursed as his wrench slipped. “Burgers’d do.”

  “See ya at six,” Jennifer said, making a mental note to call her secretary and ask her to arrange for a steak dinner with all the trimmings to be here at six o’clock sharp. Rachel knew just how Sam liked his steaks.

  Jennifer was already looking forward to getting into the jeans and sweatshirt she had stashed in the trunk of the Lincoln she was driving today and joining Sam beneath her baby—the 1964 1/2 Ford Mustang convertible she’d rescued eleven years ago. She couldn’t think of a better way to spend a Friday night.

  But first she had to convince the mayor that the deserted plot of land next to Teal Chevrolet would be much better suited to a truck lot than to the garbageand graffiti-strewn crumbling foundation that resided there now. -

  “HEY, KID, YOU WANNA go up with me for a while? See the sunset? Go to Florida for some ice cream?” Bryan leaned against the doorjamb of Nicki’s bedroom, trying not to worry that his niece was right where he’d left her that morning, lying on top of her bed. He knew she’d been to school. Not only because they were under strict orders to call him if she didn’t show up, but because her book bag had been moved from the kitchen table where he’d left it after packing her lunch that morning. But she needed to be up out of bed for more than six hours a day.

  “You don’t have to take me. I’m big enough to stay home alone,” she said, scooting up to a sitting position. Bryan watched her, frustration eating away at him. He knew she’d only made the effort to sit up for his sake. The minute he left the room, she’d lie right back down. Dammit, would she ever again have traces of the impetuous imp who’d stolen his heart more than eleven years ago? Did that child even exist in Nicki anymore? Or had she died right along with the rest of his family?

  He wandered into her room, noticing how neat everything was. At least that was Nicky. “I don’t want to go alone, sprite. What fun is ice cream if you don’t get to share flavors?”

  “But it’s Friday night, Uncle Bryan, and you always said a Friday night without a date was like pizza without the cheese.”

  “I don’t want a date, Nick. I want you. Won’t you come?”

  She sent him a look that said she was certain he was humoring her and she didn’t need to be humored. But she slid off the bed.

  “Okay. But if you really want to invite a date, instead, I won’t care.”

  She wouldn’t. And that was what worried Bryan the most. Nicky didn’t care about much of anything these days. Not since the tornado had hit Shallowbrook eight months ago, wiping out half the town and an entire family, as well. Nicky’s family. Nicky’s and Bryan’s. His parents, Nicki’s grandparents, his sister and brother-in-law—Nicki’s parents—and a mass of cousins and aunts and uncles. They’d all been having a cookout, celebrating Nicki’s eleventh birthday. God knows why Nicki had chosen that moment to run inside to use the bathroom, the one room in the house without a window. Bryan only knew that when he’d rolled into the mass of rubble that had been his hometown, two hours late for the party, he’d found his niece, speechless and trembling, in the arms of the preacher’s wife. That good woman had been the one to tell Bryan that Nicki was the only family he had left.

  “YOU WANT TO TAKE HER for a while?” Bryan said into his headset an hour later, glancing at the child in the copilot’s seat.

  Nicki shrugged. “Nah.” Her voice, coming to him through his earphones, was as lifeless as her eyes. There wasn’t a hint of the glow he used to see when he took her up with him.

  Bryan despaired as he looked out from the cockpit of his four-seater Cessna. Even flying didn’t excite Nicki anymore. He was running out of ideas. Keeping a close watch on the myriad gages in front of him, he set a course for his favorite airport just inside the Florida border, remembering the first time he’d seen Nicki, the only child of his only sibling.

  Though he’d been well liked in Shallowbrook, the son of the town doctor, he’d never found the small community to be the nirvana everyone claimed it was. To him, during the long years of his growing up, it had seemed like a prison. He’d always yearned for whatever was in the next meadow or over the next hill. Within Shallowbrook’s slow-paced, if loving confines, he’d never been able to find the peace, the serenity that his parents and older sister bad thrived on. He hadn’t been content just to live his life; he’d wanted to shape it, to make it happen. By the time he’d graduated from high school, he’d felt like an explosion waiting to happen, and had hightailed it out of town as fast as his old Jeep could carry him.

  But he’d never forgotten the family he’d left behind, never abandoned them. No matter how claustrophobic he got, he made a point to visit them several times a year. And always, after a few days in town, he was more than ready to return to his condo in Atlanta, to a city full of opportunities, instead of one so predictable it made him want to run naked in the streets just to see something different happen.

  But he’d been in Shallowbrook the day Lori had brought Nicki home. H
e wouldn’t have missed that day for anything. Half the town had turned out at his mother’s house to welcome home the much-awaited newest addition to the Chambers-Hubbard clan. Just as they’d all grieved with Lori when she’d learned she couldn’t conceive, they’d rejoiced with her as she’d walked up the front steps with her newly adopted daughter in her arms and happy tears streaming down her face.

  And for once, as he’d taken his turn to peer down into the curious blue eyes of his infant niece, Bryan had felt magic, right there in Shallowbrook.

  Recognizing the terrain below him, Bryan banked the plane, waiting for landing clearance from the control tower.

  “What flavor you gonna have?” he asked the silent girl beside him.

  Nicki continued to stare sightlessly out at the lush green Florida landscape, her earphones seeming to swallow up most of her head. “I’m not very hungry.”

  “Chocolate, huh? I thought so.”

  That brought her eyes to him, if not a smile. “I really don’t need any, Uncle Bryan.”

  “No one needs ice cream, Nick. It’s a treat. So, you want two scoops or three?”

  He received clearance from the tower and headed in.

  “One,” Nicki said wearily, closing her eyes on his spectacular landing. Bryan felt completely helpless as he glimpsed the tear that slid slowly down her pale young cheek.

  “IT’S RISKY, Jennifer.”

  “Yeah.”

  “So why mess with a good thing? We’re not in high school anymore. You don’t have anything more to prove.”

  “You think that’s what this is? Me proving something? To whom?”

  “I don’t know, Jen. Your parents maybe.”

  “They’re dead, Dennis.”

  “Okay, maybe to yourself. But you don’t have to do this. You’re an incredible success. The business could run itself you have it so well established. Why would you want to screw that up?”

  “I don’t happen to think One Price Selling will screw that up, but if it does, that’s a risk I’ll have to take. As soon as I find the right agency to help me, I’m launching One Price Selling.”

  Dennis Bradford looked hurt as he fell back into the padded leather chair behind his desk. “What am I, vice president in name only? My opinion doesn’t count?”

  Leaning her hands on the front of his desk, Jennifer looked him straight in the eye, imploring him to understand, just as he always had. “Your opinion matters more to me than anyone’s. I wouldn’t be here, or probably anywhere else for that matter, if not for you. I need your support on this, Dennis.”

  He watched her silently for several long moments. “I need to know why, Jen.”

  “Because it’s right.” She sat down in the rich blue armchair in front of his desk. “We run an honest business here, which has a lot to do with our success. But One Price Selling is the step beyond that could make Teal Automotive more than just a successful business. It could make us great.”

  “It’ll give your competitors a golden opportunity to eat you alive.”

  “Which is why we need the best ad agency this city has to head them off.”

  “It won’t matter, Jen. Either way, we stand to lose. You may sell the idea to the public—hell, I’m sure you will—but as soon as some of the shysters in this business start doing the same, or say they’re doing the same, it’ll tarnish the whole thing. You’ll begin to look like all the others, just peddling some new gimmick.”

  “But that’s just it! It’s not a gimmick. We’ll have price tags on every car showing the factory list price and the lower Teal Automotive price right next to it. No haggling, no hard selling, just a fair honest price, take it or leave it. It’s just what the automotive industry needs.”

  “In theory, I agree with you one hundred percent. But what happens when everyone else starts saying they’re doing the same thing, but instead of following through in good faith, they jack down a trade, or make the ‘fair’ price a different price for each customer who walks in the door? We’re right back to the same old way of doing business, and we’ve cheapened ourselves by gimmick-selling.”

  “The difference will be that every customer who walks onto a Teal lot will get the same fair price for his trade and for his purchase. No exceptions. Period. If I’ve built the reputation you say I have, people will give me a chance to show them I mean what I say.”

  “You’re not going to budge on this, are you?”

  “I can’t, Dennis.”

  “Still paying for past mistakes?”

  Jennifer smiled. “Nothing so melodramatic as that, my friend. I just want to do things right.”

  “This doesn’t have anything to do with a certain birthday coming up, does it? You always push a little harder this time of year.”

  “I resent that, Dennis. I’m not going to make a business decision as important as this one on the basis of past pain.”

  Dennis studied her silently for a moment, then nodded. “Okay, Jen, but we better hope there’s a damn good advertising man willing to take this on.”

  “We’ll find one. But I need you behind me, too. Not only for the support, but for a lot of the decision-making, as well. We’re going to have to retrain our entire management and sales team, come up with a pay-plan alternative to the straight-commission policy we now run under, choose new incentive programs…” She grinned at him.

  Dennis came around his desk and pulled Jennifer up out of her chair. “You know I’m behind you, Jennifer. I always have been. If this ship goes down, we’ll be swimming for shore together.”

  Jennifer squeezed his hands, telling him with a look all the things she couldn’t say, before heading toward the door of his office.

  “Oh, Jen, I almost forgot. Tanya wanted me to ask you to come for dinner tomorrow night before the city-council meeting. She needs your opinion on her newest creation.”

  Jennifer turned with her hand on the door and smiled at him. “Her paintings are selling for thousands and she needs my opinion? Your wife has a screw loose, Den.”

  “So you’ll come? She’s already phoned twice today, nagging me to ask you.”

  Jennifer thought of the pixie-faced four-foot-nine-inch woman she’d brought home from college one summer several years ago with the express purpose of fixing her up with Dennis. “Yeah, I’ll be there.”

  She was still smiling as she walked down the hall of executive suites to the door marked President. She was lucky to have such good friends.

  CHAPTER TWO

  “CAN I TALK TO YOU, Uncle Bryan?”

  Bryan’s heart hammered as he spun away from the layout he’d been mulling over for most of the evening. Nicki was instigating a conversation?

  “Sure, sprite, whatcha need?” Anything. I’ll give you anything. Just tell me what. In the week since their impromptu trip to Florida, he’d barely been able to coerce her out of her room for dinner.

  “My mother.”

  He stared at his niece. Had she gone over the edge? Had she forgotten Lori was dead? Blocked the whole tragedy from her mind? The doctor had mentioned the remote possibility of such an extreme reaction, but Bryan had thought they’d passed that point months ago. Come on, Nick, hang in there, he silently implored her. We’ll get through this together if only you’ll let me help.

  “We can head to Shallowbrook first thing in the morning, hon. But we just visited the cemetery two weeks ago. You sure you wouldn’t like to go shopping or something, instead?”

  Nicki slid into an armchair, her skinny body barely filling half the seat. “I mean my real mother.”

  “Lori was your real mother.” Bryan’s words came out more sharply than he’d intended. He felt as if he was soaring over the Rockies in a plane whose engine had just died.

  Nicki didn’t budge. Her long auburn hair lay around her bony shoulders like a cloak as she stared at her fingers, fidgeting with them in her lap. “I want to find the woman who had me,” she whispered.

  He froze, on his way to a crash and burn. He wasn’t prepared.r />
  “I don’t think you can do that, Nick. They have laws against stuff like that.” Why, Nicki? You’re Lori’s baby. And now mine.

  She looked up at him, her hazel eyes pleading. “I think you can do it now sometimes. They have places you can go to find out.”

  Her look tore at Bryan, making him wish he were Superman. There was nothing he wouldn’t do for this child. But find her biological mother? The woman whose blood ties made Nicki more hers than his? The woman who’d given her away? He kneeled down beside her, sandwiching her thin cold hands between his own.

  “I don’t think it’s that easy, honey. Adoption records are sealed. What you’re talking about is when someone wants to be found, there’s a place where they can register their names and give pertinent information.”

  Nicki’s eyes were almost determined as she looked at him. “We have to go to that register, Uncle Bryan. Maybe she’s there. Maybe she’s been looking for me and we don’t even know it.”

  “And maybe she isn’t, Nick. Why set yourself up for disappointment? I know how much you miss your mother. Hell, I miss her, too. But she’s still your mother in here—” he tapped her rib cage “—and she always will be. That’s the way the woman who gave birth to you wanted it, honey.”

  Nicki looked down at their clasped hands. “She coulda changed her mind.”

  “That’s not the way adoption works, honey. It’s for keeps. She would’ve known that when she gave you up.”

  “But what if she did change her mind? What if she wants me?”

  “I want you, Nick. We’re doing okay together, don’t you think?”

  Nicki looked at him again, her eyes swimming with tears as she nodded. “I just gotta know who I am,” she whispered, her young body tense as if begging him to give her this, to move mountains if need be to find her missing link.

  It was just another of life’s ironies that the one thing in which Nicki expressed interest in the eight months since she’d come to Atlanta was the one thing he didn’t want to give her. But, looking into her eyes, Bryan knew he had no choice.