Upper Hand (Cedar Tree Book 5) by Freya Barker Read Free Book Online Page B

mess. I’ll sort it—I promise—just look after Max for me, will ya? I’ll be in touch.” With a kiss on his son’s head and only a brief glance in my way, he walks straight to his truck, ignoring his mother’s plea for further explanation, and looking like he’s carrying the weight of the world on his shoulders. Yup, he’s got trouble. I make up my mind to put a bug in Gus’s ear, see what he can find out.
    I turn to find Beth standing a little forlorn on her front step with a now sleeping baby in her arms, watching her son drive off, and the worry is etched on her face. She knows it, too.
    “Let’s get the baby home,” I say again and her eyes snap to mine.
    “But—“
    “Let’s get off the lawn, go back to my place, put the little one down and figure it out over coffee. Okay?”
    She simply nods and looks around her at the car seat and bag that were left behind on her steps. She tries to balance Max on her shoulder while making a grab for the car seat.
    “Here, give that to me,” I reach for the seat and plop it on top of the walker. Beth follows behind with Max and the bag.
    “I’ve got to install his car seat.” Beth points out.
    “That’s just gonna wake him up. Give him to me.” I slide in the back seat and hold out my arms. After a brief hesitation, Beth leans in to deposit Max in my arms and his little baby body curls up against me easily. For a moment when Beth backs up, our eyes meet and a wan smile slips on her lips.
    “That baby looks good on you, Big Guy,” she teases, and I growl in response, which only makes the smile brighter. Good.
    -
    W ith Max boxed in with pillows on a quilt on the floor in Beth’s room, we settle in the kitchen with a pot of coffee on the go. Beth’s face is once again lined with worry.
    “He’s in trouble,” she says when she catches me watching her.
    “I know.”
    “It kills me, you know? Having him shut down like that. He’s not usually so closed off and bad-tempered.” She lets out a long shuddering breath, before adding. “Not sure what to do.”
    I take a minute to consider my response.
    “For starters, we’ll give Katie a call a little later and find out if we can borrow a travel bed, or crib, or something from them, so Max has a safe place to sleep. We can set him up in the other spare room, for now.” Katie is married to Caleb, both operatives for Gus’s company GFI. They worked together for years before their relationship developed into something lasting and they had a little boy, Mattias.
    “You want us to stay?” Beth seems surprised and frankly, so am I. I’d been quite convinced I was done with her, especially after finding out she’d been playing nice with my heel of a brother. I hadn’t wanted her here, but now that she is, I can’t envision letting her leave. Not now.
    “Seems like a decent enough solution. I mean for both of us. The doc doesn’t seem to think I can fend for myself just yet, not being able to drive and all, and you’re gonna need help looking after the little tyke. Seems like a win-win situation to me.” Even to my own ears it sounds like lame excuse, and the look on her face tells me she’s not sold on it either, but something inside me pushes me to keep her here at all cost. I didn’t like the way her son’s eyes were flicking around, scanning the darkness earlier. Although my gut instincts have let me down in the not so recent past, I’m not about to ignore the nagging feeling that whatever trouble he is in, he might just have dropped it on his mother’s doorstep, as well. Yeah, she and Max were much better off here, where I can keep an eye on them.
    “Look,” I reason, “you have a job to get back to sooner rather than later, and it’ll be some time for me to recover completely. You can’t take off work indefinitely, and surely I can come in handy looking after a two-year-old, every now and then.”
    She snorts loudly. “We’ll talk again when his energetic little body is fully awake, and