Family in Progress Read online

  The cab driver whizzed through the streets, depositing her at the restaurant fifteen minutes later—and twenty-seven dollars poorer. She refused to think about her rapidly dwindling savings account as she paid the fare and added a small tip for the driver, but she couldn’t help but wonder why she’d thought it would be a good idea to start her life over halfway across the world.

  She’d had a good job in Tokyo, friends and family there. She missed them sometimes. A lot of the time, actually. Her four sisters and their families, even her father. And she missed Izumi, her great-grandmother, most of all.

  It had been Izumi who encouraged her to follow her heart, wounded though it had been at the time, and find her own path rather than continue to walk along the one that had been laid out for her. Since she’d embarked on her journey to do so, she’d returned to Tokyo only once—for Izumi’s funeral seven months earlier.

  Jenny and Richard had flown over for it, too, which had meant the world to Samara. And it was then she’d started thinking about returning to the States, though several more months passed before she actually did.

  Initially, she’d only planned to come for a visit. But a few days had somehow turned into one week and then two, and Samara found she wasn’t anxious to leave.

  Jenny and Richard both insisted she could stay with them as long as she wanted to, but they both had busy lives—even busier now that they were preparing for the arrival of their baby in only a few more weeks. So when Samara heard about a furnished apartment for rent near the Lincoln Park area, she’d jumped at it.

  She’d traveled and lived economically over the past couple of years and had managed to save a fair amount of money, which meant she didn’t have any trouble paying the required first and last months’ rent, but she did need to find a job soon if she was going to continue to put food on her rented table. She’d tried waitressing, responding to a sign in the window of a little café just down the street from her apartment, but that experience had been brief and unfortunate.

  When Jenny told her about the opening at Classic, Samara had been thrilled and relieved to think that she might actually have the opportunity to stay in Chicago and do something that she was good at. If she convinced Steven Warren she was good at it—and she wasn’t certain she’d managed to do that.

  But she pushed the worries and concerns aside as she entered the restaurant.

  Jenny was already seated and waiting for Samara, but she stood up and hugged her friend as best she could considering the baby bump in her belly.

  “How did it go?” Jenny asked, lowering herself into her chair again.

  Samara tucked her backpack under the table. “I think it went well enough.”

  Jenny’s eyebrows rose. “You think?”

  Samara shrugged, not wanting to give voice to her doubts or her friend any reason to pressure her brother-in-law. “He’s not an easy man to read.”

  Easy on the eyes, a little voice in the back of her mind taunted, but not at all the type to give away what he was thinking.

  “Well, what did he say at the end of the interview?” Jenny asked.

  “He said he’d let me know.”

  Her friend frowned at that as the waitress came to take their orders.

  “Cheeseburger and fries,” Samara said. Not having looked at the menu, she fell back on what she knew was a staple in most American restaurants.

  “What kind of cheese?” the waitress asked. “Cheddar, Swiss, Monterey Jack?”

  “Cheddar.”

  “Gravy on your fries?”

  “Sure.”

  Jenny looked at her with undisguised envy. “Chef’s salad with light dressing.”

  Then, after the waitress had gone to place their orders, she confessed to Samara, “I have to pick and choose my calories carefully these days, and I want a huge slice of banana cream pie for dessert.”

  “I didn’t think you liked bananas,” Samara said.

  “I don’t,” her friend admitted. “This baby, on the other hand, seems to love them. Bananas and ice cream. I have six different flavors in my freezer at home right now. Actually, it was seven before I finished the butter pecan last night.”

  “Then I would think a banana split would be more satisfying than pie.”

  The expectant mother laughed and laid a hand on her belly. “Junior certainly thinks so.”

  Samara watched her friend’s hand move over the curve of her expanded tummy as if to soothe the baby. Her eyes were lit with joy and soft with emotion, and Samara felt a tug of something that might have been envy deep within her own heart.

  “We were talking about your interview,” Jenny reminded her.

  “I don’t know what else to tell you.”

  “Maybe I should talk to Steven, to get his perspective on it.”

  “No,” Samara responded quickly. “Not that I don’t appreciate the offer, but if I get this job, I want it to be because I deserve it—not because the man doing the hiring is my best friend’s brother-in-law.”

  “You will get the job because you deserve it,” Jenny assured her.

  Samara wished she could share her friend’s certainty. Instead, she said, “You never did tell me why he was looking for a new photographer at the magazine.”

  “Did you look at the back issues I gave you?”

  “The pictures were good,” she said. “Uninspired, maybe, but technically good.”

  “Definitely uninspired,” Jenny said. “But Steven has some great ideas for the magazine, so when he realized he had to replace Erik Hendriksson, he decided to look for a photographer who could implement them.”

  “Why did he have to replace Hendriksson?”

  “Off the record?”

  Samara rolled her eyes. “I’m a photographer not a reporter, and your best friend, so ‘off the record’ is implied.”

  “Professional hazard of having been a journalist in a previous life,” Jenny explained. “But to answer your question, the managing editor found out Hendriksson was taking more than pictures of the vehicles. He was pilfering parts and fencing them to support a gambling habit.”

  Samara winced sympathetically. She understood betrayal. But even if she wasn’t a scrupulously honest person, there was no fear of her stealing anything on the job. She didn’t know the difference between a spoiler and a spark plug and was counting on her skill with a camera making up for that lack of knowledge.

  The waitress brought their plates to the table then disappeared again.

  “Speaking of previous lives,” Samara said, picking up the thread of the conversation as she reached for a fry. “Do you really not miss being a reporter?”

  Jenny shook her head as she stabbed her fork into a wedge of tomato. “I thought I would, but being the media communications coordinator for the newest division of TAKA-Hanson is such a challenge. Not to mention that I have the pleasure of working with my handsome husband now, as well as continuing to build a relationship with Helen and her extended family.”

  Despite her friend’s easy response, Samara knew she’d had some difficult moments when it had been made public that she would be working for the new TAKA-Hanson Hotels, a branch of the corporation that would ultimately and directly compete for business with Anderson Hotels, owned by Jenny’s adoptive parents. But the Andersons had always been—and continued to be—supportive of their adoptive daughter. In fact, they were the ones who had encouraged Jenny to reach out to her biological mother when she’d come into her life only a few years before.

  “Okay, enough shop talk,” Samara decided. “How are you doing?”

  “Other than being the largest mammal currently walking the face of the earth, you mean?”

  “Other than that,” she agreed with a smile.

  “I’m getting excited,” her friend admitted. “I can’t believe there’s only five more weeks to go before I’ll finally get to hold my baby in my arms.”

  “Unless he’s late. First babies usually are.”

  Jenny laid a hand on her rounded be
lly. “God, I hope not.”

  Samara laughed.

  “I wanted to thank you again,” Jenny said. “For painting the nursery. Richard’s been working a lot of long hours lately and I can hardly negotiate stairs in this condition never mind climb a ladder with a paint roller in hand, so I’m not sure the room would have been ready before the baby if you hadn’t done it.

  “I know we could have hired someone,” she continued. “But I wanted the nursery to have a more personal touch, and I know the baby’s going to love the cars and trucks you painted above the crib.”

  “It was the least I could do while I was living there,” Samara said. “And I had fun with it.”

  “I’ll remember that if it turns out the doctors are wrong and my daughter refuses to sleep in a blue room.”

  “It’s sky-blue, not boy-blue. And I doubt, with today’s technology, that the doctors made a mistake.”

  Jenny’s lips curved. “From the beginning, I said the baby’s gender didn’t matter so long as he or she was born healthy, and I meant it. But I think I would like a boy—with blue eyes and a smile just like his dad’s.”

  “And Richard’s probably dreaming about a baby girl with green eyes and copper hair like yours.”

  Jenny’s lips curved. “Well, maybe we’ll try for one of each.”

  “You’re really happy together, aren’t you?”

  “I never dreamed I could be so happy,” Jenny admitted. “Especially not when I think back to the day we first met.”

  “You mean the day you tried to brush him off?”

  Her friend smiled. “Yeah, that day.”

  But Richard had pursued Jenny with the single-minded focus and determination of a man who had found what he wanted and wasn’t ever going to let her go.

  That was all Samara wanted—for someone to love her the way Richard loved Jenny.

  Chapter Two

  It was with a tremendous sense of relief—and no small amount of guilt—that Steven realized Tyler’s principal hadn’t tracked him down at work to tell him that his son was in trouble but that he was sick. Apparently he’d tossed his Honey Nut Cheerios all over the floor in his math class, an unfortunate accident which might have mortified anyone else but seemed to be a topic of tremendous interest among nine-year-olds in general and those of the male gender in particular. Even more so because on this particular day the necessity of vacating the classroom had thwarted the teacher’s plans to administer a geometry quiz.

  Steven had known about the quiz, of course, and had assumed that his son’s complaints of a sore stomach at breakfast had been nothing more than pre-test jitters. Yet one more reason to question his judgment in parenting matters.

  In the almost three years that had passed since his wife’s death, not a day had gone by that he hadn’t thought about her with longing and regret. But it was incidents like this one with Tyler that made him realize how much he’d relied on her for more than comfort and companionship.

  It was possible that she might have sent Tyler off to school, too, but then they would have laughed about the incident together and reassured one another that no harm had been done. He missed that most of all—the talking, the sharing, the assurance that no matter what challenges they faced, they would get through them together. Losing his wife so suddenly and unexpectedly was tough. Being a single parent was sometimes even tougher.

  As he packed up Tyler’s knapsack, he considered checking in with Caitlin while he was at the school. A quick glance at his watch confirmed that it was almost time for the third period bell to ring, so he could probably catch her between classes. But he was pretty certain his twelve-year-old daughter would be mortified to find her father hanging out by her locker and left a note for her instead so she would know she didn’t have to look for her brother before she got on the bus to come home at the end of the day.

  He called Carrie from the road to tell her he wouldn’t be returning to the office that afternoon. After querying whether he had chicken soup and soda crackers at home, she assured him she could handle anything that cropped up in his absence. Steven knew that it was true and could only hope to find a photographer as efficient and reliable as his assistant.

  Unbidden, an image of Samara Kenzo came to mind. Efficient and reliable weren’t the most obvious words to describe his sister-in-law’s friend, though she’d certainly made an impression. Her résumé had piqued his interest, her appearance had snagged his full attention. Stunning eyes, sexy mouth, tempting curves. It was entirely possible that she could prove to be efficient and reliable, but Steven was more worried that she could also be a dangerous distraction.

  He pushed these discomfiting thoughts from his mind as he pulled into the driveway. His son’s unnatural pallor and clammy skin made him wonder if he should have stopped at the local clinic on the way home instead of relying on the principal’s assurance that there was a nasty—albeit short-lived—flu bug going around. The thought continued to worry his mind as he opened a can of chicken soup and dumped it into a pot to heat on the stove.

  Tyler managed only a few spoonfuls and a couple of crackers before racing to the bathroom to throw it all back up again.

  Steven hovered in the background, feeling completely helpless, while his son retched. He tried to remember what Liz had done when the kids were sick, but the fact was, she’d handled everything so competently and efficiently, he’d hardly noticed. Digging deeper back into his memory, he vaguely recalled his mother setting a cool washcloth on his forehead and giving him flat ginger ale to drink. There was only 7UP in the fridge, but he thought that might work and poured some into a glass for Tyler after settling him on the couch with a bucket close at hand.

  Missing work to care for a sick child was yet another new experience for him. Though both Caitlin and Tyler had endured the usual bouts of colds and flu that plagued all children as well as suffering through nasty cases of chicken pox, it was Liz who had nursed them through every childhood illness, Liz who had kissed away their tears and soothed their spirits. And Steven guessed that, as much as he was missing Liz right now, Tyler was missing her even more.

  He slid The Phantom Menace into the DVD player and sank down onto the sofa beside his son.

  He was surprised, but pleased, when Tyler shifted closer to cuddle and pillow his head against his father’s chest.

  “This is my favorite,” Tyler said, when the movie title flashed on the screen.

  Steven lifted an arm and slid it around his son’s slender shoulders. “I know.”

  The little boy snuggled closer, but when he spoke again, his voice had dropped. “Mom used to watch Bugs Bunny cartoons with me whenever I was sick.”

  Yeah, Tyler was missing her, too. “Did you want me to see if I can find some on TV?”

  His son gave a slight shake of his head. “This is okay.”

  Steven took ‘okay’ as a positive endorsement and accepted that he would just have to figure things out as he went along.

  “Guess I should have listened when you told me you had a tummy ache this morning, huh?”

  Tyler nodded solemnly.

  “I’m sorry, bud.”

  “S’ okay, Daddy. Mrs. Harper says we all make mistakes.”

  It took him a moment to remember that Mrs. Harper was Tyler’s homeroom teacher. “Do you like Mrs. Harper?”

  Another nod, then a yawn.

  “And your new school?”

  “Mmm-hmm.”

  “You’ve made some friends?”

  “James and Aidan and Andrew and Marcus and Nick and Jake and—”

  Steven interrupted the list with a chuckle. “I didn’t hear you mention any girls’ names.”

  Tyler wrinkled his nose. “The girls are okay, I guess.”

  “You’re not still mad that we moved from North Carolina?”

  “I was never mad—just sad that we had to leave Grandma Warren and Grandma and Grandpa Bradley.” His voice dropped a little. “And Mommy.”

  Liz was buried at Pleasantview Ce
metery in Crooked Oak. Steven had been sure to take the kids to visit her grave whenever they wanted to visit their mom, but that trip was obviously a lot more difficult now and an event that would, therefore, occur a lot less frequently.

  “Caitlin was mad,” Tyler continued, a reminder that was hardly necessary.

  “Do you think she still is?”

  His son lifted one bony shoulder in a halfhearted shrug and yawned again.

  Despite the movie being Tyler’s admitted favorite, he was conked out before the podrace even began. And while Steven knew there were a hundred things he could be doing while his son slept, at the moment, none of them was as important as cuddling with his child.

  Until now, he hadn’t realized how much he’d missed sharing this kind of closeness with his children, and he was suddenly, painfully, aware that as his children got older, the opportunities for doing so would be fewer and farther between. Even at nine, Tyler wasn’t much of a cuddler, except when he was sad or tired or feeling ill, so Steven had no qualms about taking advantage of this opportunity.

  He brushed a hand over his son’s thick, dark hair—a legacy from the Warren side of the family along with his blue eyes and broad shoulders. But the shape of his face, the curve of his lips and the long, thick lashes came from his mother, and every time he looked at his son, he caught a glimpse of the woman he’d loved. A glimpse that was both painful and reassuring, because though she was gone from his life forever, she would always live on in the children who were the best parts of both of them.

  Samara scoured the classified ads, searched the Internet and pounded the pavement, and the best job prospect she could find—aside from the position at Classic, of course—was at a photo studio in one of the big department stores. Not quite what she was looking for, but she filled out an application anyway. She needed a job or she’d end up on Jenny and Richard’s doorstep again, and her friends had already done so much for her.