That was one new experience her mother just couldn’t understand. So when Josie announced she had given her life to Christ at seventeen, the family had left her behind with her grandmother right here in Mt. Knott to finish her senior year of high school and find her own way in life. Josie had done just that. She had gone to work for the Burdetts and used their college-payback program to get an associate’s degree in business administration. Then, at the beginning of this summer, when she knew her job was about to be phased out, she’d used the general goodwill toward her in the community to open the diner. It was early August now. They’d been open a full three months. Josie still had the community’s goodwill but not their financial support. No one had any money to spare!
Her sister had had her own set of new experiences, mostly involving men and substance abuse. She came to visit Josie from time to time, and Josie tried to influence her for the good, but it never lasted. A day or two of saying she was going to change was always followed by nights of partying and the inevitable taking off for parts unknown. The visits had stopped entirely a year ago when Ophelia had dropped a bombshell—well, a baby boy, actually—on her sister’s doorstep. She asked Josie to care for the child for a few weeks while she got herself together, then disappeared.
Now Ophelia was trying to get in touch. After a year of loving the little boy she had named Nathan, a Biblical name that meant gift, Josie was now afraid that her rotten timing had reared its head again and she was about to lose her son forever.
Beep. Beep.
The familiar bleating of their local mailman’s scooter horn jerked Josie out of her worried state.
She looked up and blinked, then looked at the two pieces of pie in her hands. She must have sliced them and plopped them on plates without even thinking about what she was doing.
“Here you go, boys.” She plunked the free food down on the counter and rushed toward the door and out onto the sidewalk in front of the diner.
“Got a letter for you, Miss Josie.” Bob “Bingo” Barnes waved a large white envelope. “Looks important.”
“From a lawyer?” Josie asked. Her fingers trembled as she reached for the suspect packet.
Bingo, a big man with bad knees who always delivered the mail on a small red scooter with an orange flag sticking out of the back, blinked at her. “I don’t think it’s from a lawyer.”
But now that Josie had suggested it, the man clearly wanted to hang around and make sure.
Josie fingered the name on the return label, then glanced over her shoulder trying to calculate which would draw more attention. Should she stand here on the street in full view of everyone, take the bad news and have the whole town know her business in a matter of minutes? Or rush inside past all her regulars and hide in the kitchen and raise all kinds of concerns and speculations that would follow her for days, maybe years to come?
“Better to just get it over with,” she muttered.
“Ma’am?” Bingo leaned forward, his eyes peering at her and his frown overemphasizing the fullness of his jowls.
R-r-r-rip. Josie worked her finger under the flap. She held her breath and slowly slid the papers out.
“Everything all right, Miss Josie?”
She was a struggling single mom, abandoned by her own family. Her business was teetering on the brink. Her town’s economic base was literally crumbling beneath it. And yet…
She stared in disbelief at the papers in her hands. The paperwork signed by Ophelia relinquished parental rights and included a birth certificate naming his biological father so Josie could find the man and secure his approval for her to go forward with Nathan’s legal adoption.
To the rest of the world Josie Redmond was just a plain little pie maker in a pickle, but when she saw the contents of that envelope she knew she was blessed beyond all belief. And all she could say was, “You know, Bingo, God is so good. And thanks for asking, because, yes, everything is going to be just fine now.”
Chapter One
Two Weeks Later
The South Carolina sky was black. His boots, jeans, T-shirt, all black. They matched Adam Burdett’s silent, gleaming Harley—and his mood.
He narrowed his eyes at the simple frame house before him. Though he had grown up around Mt. Knott, this part of the small town was unfamiliar to him. His family had tended to keep to their fancy homes outside of town and didn’t interact much with others.
“Bad for business,” his father had said. Better to draw a distinct line between employees or potential employees—which is how they saw everyone in town—and friends. Never ask a personal question. Never commit anything more than a name and face to memory. Never offer more than the job description spelled out on paper.
“You do those things,” the old man had warned his sons while they stood in the office of his snack food factory, “and it makes it a lot harder to have to fire a person later. And you will have to fire one of them, maybe a lot of them at some point.”
According to the letters to the editor in the Mt. Knott Mountain Laurel and Morning News that Adam had read when he hit town a few hours ago, the old man had known what he was talking about. A lot of people in town were out of work. Even more were out of patience with the lack of a solution to their plight. A few were pretty close to being thrown out of their homes.
He gritted his teeth and forced the mixed-up emotions in his gut to quiet. On one hand the failure of his father’s factory was just what Adam had wanted. On the other…
He gazed at the humble home again and exhaled, long and low. On the other hand, maybe there was something to be said for making connections, for caring about what happened to people once they walked out the factory door. He never had, and look where his callous attitude toward others had led him.
The empty matchbook in his hand rasped against his thumb as he flicked it open to check the address scrawled there. This was it. In this house, illuminated only by the pulsating light of a small-screen TV, Adam would find his son.
His son. The words tripped over his ragged nerves like a fingernail strummed over taut barbwire. Adam Burdett had a son.
He hadn’t even known it until yesterday morning when a slick-haired private investigator had weaseled his way into Adam’s office with the news and an unthinkable demand—that Adam sign away all rights to his child, sight unseen. There was about as much chance of that happening as there was of that P.I. ever suggesting such a notion again in this lifetime.
Adam hadn’t belted the guy. But then again, he hadn’t needed to.
Adam might look like nothing more than a good ol’boy, redneck rodeo rider with beef for brains, but looks, like too many other things in life, could be deceiving. Raised in a family of wealth and influence by a mother who treasured the value of an education, none of the Burdett boys were dummies. They could put thoughts and words together as well as they could fists and flesh.
And Adam had proven as much and then some to that paper-waving P.I. Give up his son for adoption and never look back? Adam huffed out a hard breath. Uh-uh. He’d never do to any child what had been done to him.
He folded his arms over his chest, fit one well-worn cowboy boot over the other at the ankle and leaned back against his parked Harley. Everything Adam had become in this life—and everything he had failed to become—he owed first to his adoptive mother, who had never treated him like anything but her own child and next to his own father. Whoever that was.
He knew who it wasn’t. It wasn’t his adoptive father,