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

great-grandfather wanted done for Lakeview in the first place. It was also the opportunity to redeem the Thatcher name.”
    “Was that important to anyone in your family before you?” Jani asked cautiously, curious but unsure if the question would offend him.
    “It was important to everyone before me. But I’m the first to be able to do anything about it.”
    “That isn’t why you went into architecture in the first place, is it? With far-off hopes of fixing things in Lakeview? Would you have rather been a ballet dancer or something?”
    The faint smile again. It really wasn’t much of anything and yet spotting it was still enough to send little shards of delight through Jani.
    “A ballet dancer?” Gideon asked. “Of all the occupations, you’re wondering if I might have wanted to be that?”
    “Well,” Jani said, smiling slightly herself for the first time, “even if you had become a doctor or a dentist or a lawyer or something, you still could have set up shop in Lakeview and helped the people and their economy that way. But there wouldn’t have been any way to use ballet dancing to help Lakeview. Unless they have a ballet troupe and I don’t know it.”
    “They don’t. And no, I didn’t become an architect just to get to do what my great-grandfather wanted done in Lakeview. It was what I was interested in and it just happened to put me in a position to help. Which I’m grateful for now.”
    “I do think they’re lucky to have you,” Jani said quietly, meaning it but worrying that he might think she was just blowing smoke to flatter him.
    She didn’t see the usual signs that he was put off but he did seem slightly uncomfortable with the compliment. Uncomfortable enough to change the subject.
    “What about you? College or just the family business?” he asked, surprising her by showing interest rather than animosity toward her.
    “I went to the University of Southern California in Los Angeles. It had the highest-rated program for public relations. And it was California—sunshine and beaches and celebrities—it sounded like the most fun.”
    “Was it?”
    He’d worked his way through college and struggled while she’d had it easy. Jani felt guilty for admitting it, but she didn’t want to lie to him, so she said, “It was fun. But my older brother Cade nearly flunked out of his first year of college because of too much partying and I’d already seen that my grandmother wouldn’t put up with it, so I studied hard and basically kept my nose clean.”
    “And graduated with a bachelor’s degree or more?”
    “I have a bachelor’s degree in public relations, a master’s degree in marketing.”
    “All aimed at working in the family business,” he assumed.
    “Yeah,” she admitted. “H.J. helped my grandmother raise us—me, my three brothers and my six cousins—and he did a lot of talking about our responsibility to take over the family business. We all grew up knowing that working for Camden Incorporated was what we were supposed to do. GiGi—”
    “GiGi?”
    “Oh, sure, you wouldn’t know who that is. ‘GiGi’ is what we call our grandmother. Her name is Georgianna and somewhere along the way one of the older grandkids shortened Grandma Georgianna to GiGi. Anyway, GiGi reinforced H.J.’s lectures about taking over the company by making sure we all knew that a lot of people depended on the Camdens to make their living and so, yes, we did have a responsibility to keep things going.”
    “Did you want to be a ballet dancer instead?” he asked with just that hint of a smile and Jani suddenly found herself wanting badly to see the full version.
    A full smile was what she finally gave him.
    “You’ve seen how graceful I am,” she joked at her own expense.
    That brought a slightly wider curve to his supple lips but still not the unreserved grin she was hoping for. It was something, though—one more small step—and Jani was glad to see it.
    “So not a ballet dancer,” he said.