“I like her, Daddy!”
She clutched his hand and skipped alongside as he approached the work trailer. “You do?”
“Mmm-hmm.” She bobbed her head and her curls bounced. “She has really pretty hair.”
He couldn’t fault her six-year-old reasoning because he’d noticed Josie’s hair, too. Dark brown, with copper-red highlights, but not enough to be called auburn. And those smoke-toned eyes with a hint of green. He’d noticed their odd shade as she turned the corner of the concrete walk and their eyes met.
“I would love a dolly with hair like that,” Addie confessed. “All of my dolls have hair like mine.” She sighed as if hair made a difference. It didn’t, of course. “I might be really, really tired of yellow hair.”
“Strawberry blond,” he reminded her and laid a hand over her head. “Really pretty strawberry blond hair, and I think you’re exactly the way God wanted you to be, Addie-cakes.”
“Well, I don’t think he’d mind if I had a brown-haired dolly.” The logic of her reasoning wasn’t lost on him. “I think he’d be okay with that, actually.”
He’d never really noticed that her dolls were all light-haired. A couple were from her early years, and several were more recent gifts, but she was right. Every one of them was pale and blond- or copper-haired. Clearly he and his parents thought alike, but that was shortsighted. Her playthings should have diversity, shouldn’t they? To reflect the real world?
He set up Addie with a juice box and crackers in the front room, then arranged for the conference call in the adjacent office. He made a note to check out the doll situation when he had time, then refocused his attention on dock-building bids. For the moment, Addie would have to get by with what she had with her, and she was such an easygoing child, he was sure that would be just fine.
* * *
“You never told anyone about the attack?” She’d surprised Drew Slade, Josie realized less than two hours later, and a man who used to be top security for the current president of the United States didn’t surprise easily. “Josie, why not? They could have helped you. They still could,” he added firmly.
Fear and shame had held her tongue seven years ago. She clenched her hands in her lap and wondered how all of her careful reasoning had come to this. “I wasn’t on the best terms with my family when I went to Louisiana.”
“How so?”
“Kimberly never told you?” That made her feel better, somehow. Not that she wanted Kimberly to keep secrets from Drew, but she was glad her stupid mistakes hadn’t become gossip fodder.
Drew shook his head.
“I messed up in college. Big-time. I cut loose, and partied with all the wrong people after my Dad died. I flunked out midway through my sophomore year and became a bitter disappointment to the Gallagher clan.”
“We all make mistakes,” Drew replied. “I’m a card-carrying member of Alcoholics Anonymous myself, so I hear you. But I don’t get what one has to do with the other.”
“I embarrassed my family, and they worked hard to help me get straightened out,” she told him. “Counseling, rehab and a job. They stuck by me despite what I did. When I decided I wanted to work the barbecue circuit in the Deep South, my mother and aunts tried to talk me out of it because there’s plenty of temptation in New Orleans. For a barbecue cook, though, it is the place to be if you want to learn all the aspects of good Southern cooking.”
“You moved down there anyway.”
She sighed. “Even though they asked me not to. New Orleans is too wild, they said. My mother begged me to stay home, or to go to some other Southern city, but anyone who is anyone in the barbecue business does a stint in New Orleans. And I was stubborn.”
Drew’s grunt indicated he understood that part well enough. Of course, he was married to a Gallagher, so he had firsthand experience.
“I was there for over two years with no problems, and learning all kinds of things. I got a chance to work with Big Bobby and Tuck Fletcher and Cajun Mary, so I learned from the best. And then this guy shows up—he starts flirting with me and it’s all in fun.” She frowned and gripped her knees tighter. “He seemed so normal, and I’d let my radar down because I’d been on the straight-and-narrow path for a long time. I’d forgotten how slick some guys can be. He was going to meet me for dinner, but then he called and said his car stalled near the parking lot of my apartment complex and it would be a while for them to tow it. Could he come up and wait? I said sure.” She bit her lip, remembering. “He slipped something into my glass of tea. When I woke up the next morning, he was gone.”
Drew didn’t just look mad. He looked furious. “Why didn’t you call it in? The guy’s a criminal.”
If Josie could have tucked her chin any deeper into her shirt, she would have, but it was impossible. “I couldn’t face those inquiries. And if they caught him and brought him to trial, then I’d have to face how stupid I was in college. They bring up everything, you know. They’d have brought up my past, and made it public knowledge. They shouldn’t, but they do.” She raised her eyes and faced Drew candidly. “I couldn’t go through all that again. I’d come so far. I just wanted to put it behind me. For the whole stupid thing to be over.”
“But it wasn’t.”
A tear slipped down her cheek. She dashed it away, but not before another one joined the first. “Three weeks later, I discovered I was pregnant.”
Drew had been jotting things down. He stopped.
“I had a little girl no one knows about. Her name is Addie. Adeline,” she added. “I worked with a very nice agency down there. I was determined that my child would have the best possible chance at life. I wanted her to grow up untarnished by the circumstances surrounding her creation. No child deserves to have that kind of baggage weighing them down, do they?”
“No. Of course not. The agency arranged everything?”
She nodded. “I wanted a closed adoption so I wouldn’t be tempted to check up on things, but I said I could be contacted for life-and-death situations. Two and a half years later, I was contacted by the adoptive mother, Ginger O’Neill. Addie had tumors on her liver. She needed a transplant and they couldn’t find a good match. They tested me and I was a match. I pretended I was taking a winter vacation from the restaurant. I flew to Emory, had the procedure done and saved Addie’s life.”
“All with no one knowing what was going on. That must have been incredibly difficult to go through alone.” Drew sat back. “You’re an amazing woman, Josie.”
She held up her hands, palms out, to stop him from saying more. “I did what any mother would do. But here’s the problem, Drew. The project manager for the Carrington Hotel going up next door? He has my daughter with him.”
“Here?”
Josie nodded, grimly “He came over here today to offer advice, and Addie climbed out of his car.”
“A lot of kids look alike, Josie.”
She handed over her phone with the obituary page highlighted. “Her mother died. Her adoptive father is out of the picture, but I don’t know how or why. This uncle, Jacob
