Adam by Joan Johnston Page B

marry Jesse Whitelaw.
    â€œWell, do you think you could come?”
    If Tate didn’t realize the can of worms she was opening, Honey wasn’t about to be the one to tell her. Honey was afraid that if she didn’t take advantage of Tate’s offer, the girl might run into Jesse sometime when Honey wasn’t around. From facts Honey knew—that Tate obviously didn’t—it was clear the fur was going to fly. Honey wanted to be there to make sure everyone came out with a whole skin.
    â€œOf course we’ll come,” she said. “What time?”
    â€œAbout seven. See you then, Honey. Oh, and it was nice meeting you.”
    â€œNice meeting you, too,” Honey murmured as Tate turned and hurried away. Honey watched the younger woman yank open the door to the ’51 Chevy pickup her brothers claimed she had confiscated when she had run away from home.
    â€œHorsefeathers,” she said again. The word didn’t do nearly enough to express the foreboding she felt about the evening ahead of her.
    Meanwhile, Tate was floating on air. This was going to work out perfectly. She would introduce Adam to her brother and his wife, and later, when they were alone, she would tell Adam that he was going to be a father.
    Boy was he going to be surprised!
    Tate refused to imagine Adam’s reaction as anything other than ecstatic. After all, just as two people didn’t have to be married to have sex, they didn’t have to be married to have children, either. After all, lots of movie stars were doing it. Why couldn’t they?
    Long before seven o’clock Tate heard someone poundingon the front door. She knew it couldn’t be the company she had invited, and from the sound of things it was an emergency. She ran to open the door and gasped when she realized who was standing there.
    â€œJesse!”
    â€œSo it is you!”
    Tate launched herself into her brother’s arms. He lifted her up and swung her in a circle, just as he had the last time they had seen each other, when she was a child of eight.
    Jesse looked so much the same, and yet he was different. His dark eyes were still as fierce as ever, his black hair still as shaggy. But his face was lined, and his body that of a mature man, not the twenty-year-old boy who had gone away when she was just a little girl.
    â€œYou look wonderful, Tate,” Jesse said.
    â€œSo do you,” she said with an irrepressible grin. She angled her head around his broad chest, trying to locate Honey. “Where’s your wife?”
    â€œI came ahead of her.” Actually, he had snuck out behind Honey’s back and come running to save his little sister from that sonofabitch Adam Philips. Jesse had never liked the man, and now his feelings had been vindicated. Just look how Philips had taken advantage of his baby sister!
    â€œFaron and Garth have been worried to death about you,” Jesse chastised.
    â€œYou’ve been in touch with them? When? How?”
    â€œHoney talked me into calling them when she found out for sure she was pregnant. Is it true what Honey told me? Are you living here with Adam Philips?” Jesse demanded.
    â€œI work here,” Tate said, the pride she felt in her job apparent in her voice. “I’m Adam’s bookkeeper.”
    â€œWhat else do you do for Adam?”
    Tate hissed in a breath of air. “I don’t think I like your tone of voice.”
    â€œGet your things,” Jesse ordered. “You’re getting out of here.”
    Tate’s hands fisted and found her hips. “I left home to get away from that kind of high-handedness. I don’t intend to let you get away with it, either,” she said tartly. “I happen to enjoy my job, and I have no intention of giving it up.”
    â€œYou don’t have any idea what can happen to a young woman living alone with a man!”
    â€œOh, don’t I?”
    â€œDo you mean to say that you and