Read Online A Baby in the Bargain by Victoria Pade - Free Book Online

architect—an alumni of the Denver campus who had had to pay his own tuition, too. He was—and is—a tough old bird, but he takes on one paid intern to help them out. It’s something we do, too. A payback. I couldn’t have made it through without that help, so we have a program that offers the same thing to kids in that situation.”
    “That might be something we’d be interested in contributing to, too,” Jani said, glad to see another opening where she might be able to make amends.
    But Gideon shook his head. “It’s funded through the Thatcher Group. We don’t take donations for it.”
    Jani had the sense that even if he did, he wouldn’t accept donations for that from the Camdens. That accepting the community center for Lakeview and to honor his great-grandfather was as far as he was willing to go. So she didn’t push it.
    Instead she said, “Did you go to work for the ‘tough old bird’ when you graduated?”
    “I did. But my goal was to have my own office, my own firm, so going to work for Mathias was just to learn all I could, get some experience under my belt and save money.”
    “How long did you work for him?”
    “Five years. Long enough to figure out that I didn’t want my company to be limited to architecture.”
    “You didn’t like doing what you’d gotten two degrees to do?”
    “I did. I loved it. I still do most of our building design work. But I also wanted to do more than that—to serve a broader base of clients and design entire communities. To focus on urban development, not just on a single building here and there—”
    “You wanted to do city planning.”
    “Exactly. It’s like the community center,” he said with a nod toward the window that faced the run-down old building. “Sure I could bulldoze and design something else, but I like that that building has some history to it, a meaning in the landscape where it’s stood for generations. I want to see the whole picture, past, present and future. I want to do more than erect just one nice building. I want to create whole communities that serve all the needs of the people who live in them while still leaving them memories of what came before and inspiration for what they can do from there—”
    He screwed up his handsome face into a self-deprecating sort of grimace. “I didn’t mean to wax philosophic and sound so—”
    “Like you really do love what you do?” Jani supplied before he could put himself down. She admired his passion for what he did.
    “I do love it,” he concluded as if to avoid showing too much more of himself to her.
    “And you’re successful at it—I saw on your website that you’ve worked all over the world.”
    “We do okay,” he said with humility. “It’s put me in the position to rectify what happened in Lakeview, and that’s important to me.”
    Jani had the feeling as he spoke that he was reminding himself of who she was and why they were there, of the past he didn’t want to let go of.
    She didn’t try to distract him. “Actually, after reading your credits and awards on the website and a few other articles I found about the Thatcher Group’s work, I was surprised that you’d take on a project as small as Lakeview. It’s really kind of a coup for them to get you. You’ve done a lot of things that were bigger and a whole lot more high-profile.”
    “All that helped me get this project when just the name Thatcher was enough for Lakeview’s sitting city council to say no. I had to do a lot of lobbying for this and if the Thatcher Group didn’t have the reputation and standing it has, I probably wouldn’t have been hired anyway. As it was, I still had to underbid the lowest bidder and make promises to organize some extra fund-raising to sell them on me.”
    “Not something you have to do to get all your jobs, I’m sure.”
    “I don’t have to do that to get any other jobs. But when the Lakeview redevelopment project came on the radar I knew it was my chance to do what my