Dirty: The Complete Series (Secret Baby Romance Love Story) (29 page)

Chapter Thirty Eight

Cade

We were nearing the end of the harvest and I
was actually starting to think that of all the jobs I’d done in my life, being
a farmhand for Bob Nelson was the most rewarding. Even above and beyond finding
Autumn and falling for her, the work itself made me feel like I was doing
something more useful than any of the construction jobs I’d taken before.

I was still avoiding Tuck. He seemed like he
was cooling off, but I didn’t know for sure what would get him riled up again.
It was better to just avoid getting into it with him if I could.

Bob had set me on working on the equipment close
to the sheds, which I’d thought would make it easier for me and Autumn to spend
a little time together; but as the day wore on, I started to wonder if she was
actually avoiding me. All of her chores seemed to keep her inside the house.

I had a lot of time to think while I was going
over the harvester, making sure everything that needed to be tight was tight,
and everything that needed to be clean was clean, and so on. I thought about
the fact that Autumn had gotten so jumpy, so distracted, at the end of our last
date together. Obviously the text message she’d gotten was more than just some
random bit of news, but she hadn’t been willing to tell me.

I had to wonder if she was really as invested
in a future with me as I hoped. I had been careful not to talk about the future
in terms of Addie
—
at least not beyond the fact of wanting to
move in and what that would involve
—
but maybe Autumn was concerned more than I
thought she could or should be at the possibility of another man raising her
child.

I still wasn’t certain that things were as
finished between her and Titan as she insisted to me that they were. He was the
father of her child, and they had been engaged. He had broken their engagement,
but I couldn’t help thinking that she would have to feel some kind of
connection to him in spite of that.

At lunch, Autumn came out with food for me,
and I hoped we’d have a little bit of time for me to see what she was thinking.
“What’ve you got for me today?” I slithered out from underneath the harvester
and grinned at her; she smiled back at me, but there was something in her eyes
that made me worry.

“Nothing too special,” she said, setting down
the basket. “A couple of toasted roast beef sandwiches with cheese, cucumber
salad, some lemon squares, and iced tea.” She looked like she wanted to sit
down, but then started to step back.

“Sit down a while,” I suggested. She
hesitated, but pulled a chair over from just outside of the shed and settled on
it.

I used some of the water from the cooler to
rinse my hands off and opened the basket, glancing at Autumn. She looked like
she was ready to jump up at any moment, and I wondered what was so much on her
mind. I kept going back to our last date in my mind, and kicking myself for not
pressing the issue of what she’d read on her phone just a little harder.

“Tuck seems to be cooling off,” she said,
giving me a quick smile.

“He does,” I agreed. “I’m glad to notice it.”
I started digging in the basket and brought up the container of salad and one
of the sandwiches. I tried to think of how to get Autumn to talk to me;
normally there wasn’t anything between us, but I could feel it since the last
date
—
there was something wrong. I turned to look at her as I unwrapped one
of the sandwiches and took a bite. “Is there something wrong?” Her eyes
widened.

“Why would you think that?”

I raised an eyebrow and grinned. “You’re jumpy
and distracted and avoiding me a little bit. Did you get in another fight with
Tuck?” I speared a chunk of cucumber at the end of my fork and bit into it.

“No, no fight with him,” she said, shaking her
head. “I guess I just feel anxious about something ,but I don’t know what.”

That didn’t seem like her, but if she was
anxious, then pushing her about it would only make it worse. I changed the
subject and saw her relax a little bit, but I didn’t think that it did much
good for her. She still seemed on edge in a way that made me feel instantly
protective towards her.

When she went back to the house after giving
me a quick, loving kiss, I went back to work and thought about the situation. I
remembered that Titan had been planning on coming back into town to visit his
family; it had been the source of an argument between Autumn and me only weeks
before. But in the weeks since, she hadn’t mentioned anything about it, and I’d
more or less come to the conclusion that Titan’s plans had fallen through.

The thought of Titan being in town made me
restless, too. I resented the fact that Titan would have at least some natural
entitlement to Addie
—
and that he hadn’t been interested in having
anything to do with the little girl at all for the first year of her life.

The rest of the afternoon, I barely caught
sight of Autumn, and I tried not to be hurt at the fact that she was obviously
hiding something from me; if she was hiding it, I had to have the basic trust
in her that either I didn’t want or need to know, or that when it was
important, she would tell me.

I was coming to the end of my formal contract
with Bob Nelson, and the future of my relationship with Autumn was ahead of me.
We had talked about so many possibilities, and I wanted to see them through.
Now that it was heading into fall, and into the off-season for the farm, we’d
both have a little more time to be together. I’d help around the farm if Bob
wanted me to, and if he ran out of work for me in the winter, I’d find
something I could do temporarily until it was time to start tilling and
sectioning the fields again in the early spring.

Bob came by where I was working in the middle
of the afternoon, wiping his hands clean on a side rag he kept tied to his belt
loops as he hunkered down. “Everything’s looking good. I think you did this
better than Tuck usually does,” he told me, smiling slightly.

“I’m sure he’ll be glad to hear that,” I said
dryly. Bob laughed.

“I’m sure he will,” he jokingly agreed. “I
wanted to have a talk with you about the offseason work.”

“I was actually just thinking about that,” I
admitted. “Do you think you’ll have enough to keep me on for very long, or will
it just be a few weeks?”

Bob half-shrugged. “I think I can promise to
keep you on until about Christmas, the week of,” he said. “I’ve been thinking
of seeing what price we get on this year’s corn and soy, and from there, I
might develop the farm a little more. I’d need someone to help me execute that
beyond just me and Tuck with occasional help from Autumn.”

“I’d definitely be game,” I said, nodding. “If
you’ve got the work to do, then I’m game to do it. I like having longer,
steadier work.”

“And if it gives you a chance to spend some
more time with my daughter, that’s icing on the cake?” he said with a grin.

I chuckled, feeling a little embarrassed, but
not as worried about Bob’s opinion of me dating Autumn as I had been in weeks
before.

“It’s definitely a very important fringe
benefit,” I agreed. “I want you to know that I really, truly have the best of
intentions towards Autumn.”

“That much I can see,” he said. “It’s obvious
to me that you two fancy each other, and I think you’re much steadier than that
Titan she took up with.” Bob shook his head, sighing at the fate that had
befallen his daughter at Titan’s hands. I couldn’t blame him.

“I want to do right by her, and if that means
that you eventually need me to move on because you don’t feel comfortable with me
working for you and dating her, I’ll do it,” I said firmly. “But if you’re okay
with seeing so much of me, I’ll definitely work for you just as hard as ever.”

“That’s exactly why I wanted to make sure you
were still good to sign on with me for the offseason,” Bob said, knocking some
dust off of his coverall legs. “You’ve been a good worker for me all along, and
in spite of what Tuck is trying to pull off, you’ve done better even than I
expected from anyone I might have hired. You’ve got a spot here as long as I’ve
got work to give you.” He checked the time and looked around. “As soon as
you’re done with this, you can knock off for the day,” he told me, gesturing to
the harvester and the other equipment I’d taken out to do the repairs.

That was actually welcome news to me: I had
been thinking of finding a way to corner Autumn without making her feel
threatened.

I finished up my work and put everything away,
briefly remembering the time that Tuck had tried to accuse me of stealing from
the farm when he’d merely misplaced the equipment himself.

I didn’t try and find Autumn after I cleared
up for the day. I wanted to get into my truck, get home, and get a shower
before I came back. I thought about buying her some flowers either on my way
home or on my way back to the farm; all I knew was that I wanted to get to the
bottom of whatever was bothering her, before it did something to our
relationship. I smiled to myself, remembering something that she had told me a
few months before, when we’d still been seeing each other in secret. I thought
to myself that it ought to be fairly easy to accomplish what I had in mind, and
I started my truck and headed down the dirt driveway leading to the road with a
little more optimism in my mind.

Chapter Thirty Nine

Autumn

When I realized that Cade had left early for
the day, something inside of me relaxed. I couldn’t bring myself to tell him
that I had made arrangements for Titan to come over and meet Adelyn, and every
time I got close to Cade, I was torn between blurting it out and saying nothing
at all. It was just too stressful to be around him when I knew that Titan was
coming, even if I no longer had any interest in Titan as a potential partner.
All I wanted was to get the meeting over and done with, see if there was any hope
at all for Titan as a father, and put it behind me. If Titan had any promise as
Addie’s dad, I could bring Cade into the discussion as to just how much
influence Titan should have in her life.

My parents didn’t even know that Titan was
going to be visiting me, so I had to make excuses for going back to the guest
house so early. I didn’t bother showering, but I did get Addie cleaned up
because I wanted her to make the best possible impression on her dad.

She deserved to be loved, she deserved a
father who cared about her, but I wasn’t above hedging my bets a little bit. A
little one-year-old girl who was covered in mud might not be as promising a
prospect to Titan as a clean, bright toddler in a dress with her hair combed.

She fought me when I tried to get the dress on
her, but once it was on, she was more or less set, with her dark hair clipped
up out of her face. I put her in her playpen with a few of her favorite toys
and tried not to check the time more than maybe once every five minutes as I
waited for Titan to arrive.

I caught sight of Titan’s mom’s car moving up
the driveway with only about five minutes to spare before the time we’d agreed
on, and once more something started to relax in me. Whatever else happened, I
would have done the right thing by letting Titan have a chance to meet his
daughter. Whether he actually followed through and did right by her as her
father was up to him.

I pulled my hair back into a ponytail and
carried the playpen out onto the patio. I felt weird about the possibility of
inviting Titan into the guest house. I sat down and waited for Titan to park
the car, my heart pounding in my chest. I wasn’t sure why; I had long since
given up on having anything with him, and I had just about given up on the
possibility of him having anything to do with Addie.

“Hey, babe,” Titan said when he got out of the
car, grinning at me. I smiled back, even though his calling me babe made me a
little uncomfortable; it was what he’d called me when we were together.

“Come on over here and meet your daughter,” I
called back to him. Titan closed the driver’s side door and walked up to the
porch, and I gestured to Addie in her playpen. I watched Titan’s face intently
—
would he fall in love with her the same way I
had, the first time I’d laid eyes on her? Titan bent over the playpen and
looked in at our daughter, and I felt a kind of clench in my stomach.

“She’s just as beautiful as her mama,” he
said, glancing at me with a little smile. “Can I pick her up?”

“She’s a little squirmy,” I told him, “but go
ahead.”

He reached into the playpen and lifted Addie
out; she fidgeted in his arms, but she’d never been all that fussy in general,
so once she saw that I was okay with her being held, she more or less settled
down.

“I am going to be the best daddy to this
little girl,” Titan said, giving her a little hug and sitting down on the bench
swing. He looked up at me. “You never did send me many actual pictures of her,
you know.” I shrugged.

“You never seemed all that interested,” I
pointed out. “In fact, I seem to recall…” I pressed my lips together. My mom
would say that it was in bad grace for me to chastise Titan at a moment like
this. “I’m glad you took the time to come and finally meet her.”