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Fletcher's Baby!
Anne McAllister
The bride said no!Business tycoon Sam Fletcher was used to getting his own way. He'd never been in a situation he couldn't handle. So when Josie Nolan broke the news to him that she was expecting his baby, Sam was a little shaken - but not deterred!A Fletcher baby meant one thing to Sam: marriage. It was the logical, sensible, responsible thing to do, wasn't it? But Josie wanted to marry for love, not logic. The baby's birth was imminent, so Sam needed to change her mind - quick! Anne McAllister is a guaranteed fun, sexy, emotional read!
“I want my child to have my name. (#u1c1a53d9-7ca7-519c-979b-3d6c1d546b82)About the Author (#ua06344ea-e46f-5c19-b258-57f250fb0e0a)Title Page (#ufb530a61-c0d6-53bc-ab48-6b787a7480ff)CHAPTER ONE (#ued418455-8895-578b-8ac6-1510a91d10f7)CHAPTER TWO (#u0197f84a-8ce9-5bed-b8c8-40d1f990d301)CHAPTER THREE (#u17ee51cc-ca4b-5803-9fe2-ea9434a72b06)CHAPTER FOUR (#litres_trial_promo)CHAPTER FIVE (#litres_trial_promo)CHAPTER SIX (#litres_trial_promo)CHAPTER SEVEN (#litres_trial_promo)CHAPTER EIGHT (#litres_trial_promo)CHAPTER NINE (#litres_trial_promo)CHAPTER TEN (#litres_trial_promo)CHAPTER ELEVEN (#litres_trial_promo)Copyright (#litres_trial_promo)
“I want my child to have my name.
“I don’t want him denied his birthright,” Sam continued. “He’s a Fletcher!”
Josie stared, startled at his insistence on wanting a child he’d never counted on. “Or she,” she said lamely after a moment.
“Or she,” Sam amended firmly. “I want our child to know a father’s love. I’ll make it worth your while,” he added when she didn’t speak.
“I won’t marry for money,” Josie said firmly.
“Then marry me because you love our child.”
When Sam Fletcher didn’t get his girl in
Finn’s Twins! (#1890), Anne McAllister
simply had to find the right bride for him....
The result: Fletcher’s Baby!
ANNE McALLISTER was born in California. She spent long lazy summers daydreaming on local beaches and studying surfers, swimmers and volleyball players in an effort to find the perfect hero. She finally did, not on the beach, but in a university library where she was working. She, her husband and their four children have since moved to the Midwest. She taught, copyedited, capped deodorant bottles and ghostwrote sermons before turning to her first love—writing romance fiction.
RITA-nominated author Anne McAllister writes
with warmth and wit, creating heroines you’d love to
meet, and heroes you’ll fall in love with...instantly!
Her books are fast, funny and emotional—you’ll be
hooked till the very last page!
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Fletcher’s Baby!
Anne McAllister
www.millsandboon.co.uk (http://www.millsandboon.co.uk)
CHAPTER ONE
SAM FLETCHER was no stranger to jet lag.
He knew all about the gritty, bloodshot eyes, the general lethargy, the tendency to yawn at inopportune moments. But he’d never had it affect his hearing before.
“Hattie did what?” He stared at his mother, who had pounced on him the moment he opened his apartment door.
That in itself was odd. Amelia Fletcher lived in the same Upper East Side building as her son, Sam, but she made it a point never to impose. Imposing was bad manners. Amelia Fletcher had never been accused of bad manners in her life.
Yet here she was at—what was it?—one p.m. (three a.m. Tokyo time, which was what Sam was on)—standing in the foyer of his Fifth Avenue apartment with a list in her hand.
“The lawyer said he couldn’t wait until you got back in the States to read the will,” she told him. “And since I had power of attorney while you were gone, it was entirely legal to do so without you.”
“Of course, but—” More than his hearing must be going. He knew his devoted, eccentric aunt Harriet had died last week, and, while he regretted being abroad and unable to come to her funeral, he didn’t see what the will had to do with him.
“She left you everything,” his mother said again.
That was what he thought he’d heard the first time. Sam gave a quick, sharp shake of his head. “Everything? You mean the...” His voice died as he contem- plated what exactly Hattie’s “everything” might imply.
In case his contemplation missed something, his mother, consulting the list again, spelled it out for him. “The house—the inn, that is—and all the furnishings, including her Ming vases, her Tiffany glass, her entire collection of Stickley oak, her Grant Wood sketches and her Frank Lloyd Wright elevations.” Her voice slowed slightly as she continued, “She also left you three cats: Clark Gable, Errol Flynn and Wallace Beery by name.” She shot Sam an amused glance over the top of her glasses. “A dog called—”
“Humphrey Bogart,” Sam said heavily at the same time his mother did. He propped himself against the wall and shook his head. It was only marginally funny.
Amelia kept smiling. “Just so.” She glanced down at the list again. “A parakeet.”
Sam sighed and sagged. “Fred Astaire.”
“And,” his mother finished with a flourish, “an unidentified object simply called Josephine Nolan.”
Sam jerked upright “What?”
At the vehemence of his response Amelia took a step back, then looked at the list and nodded. “It’s the last item on the list the lawyer faxed me. Josephine Nolan.” She dimpled slightly as her lips curved in amusement. “I’ve never heard of a Josephine Nolan. What do you suppose it is? A rabbit? A hamster? A turtle?”
Sam didn’t think it was funny at all. He knew exactly what a Josephine Nolan was.
“What in the hell is Hattie doing leaving me a woman?”
Shakespeare was undoubtedly right. First they ought to kill all the lawyers. Starting with Herman Zupper, Hattie’s faithful retainer.
“What do you mean he’s gone on vacation?” Sam demanded when Zupper’s secretary said her boss was unavailable.
“For a month,” she said calmly. “He and his wife are in Germany for their fiftieth wedding anniversary. That’s why he had to call and speak with your mother before he left.”
Sam grunted. He rubbed a hand over his hair. It was too short to tug which was what he wanted to do. “It’s absurd,” he muttered. “What the hell would Hattie do a thing like that for?”
It wasn’t that he didn’t have enough on his plate. He was the sole director of Fletcher’s Imports, one of the most exclusive businesses of its kind in the world. Places like Gumps and Neiman-Marcus would die to offer some of the goods he imported for sale. But having such goods didn’t mean he sat on his laurels. On the contrary, he flew all over the world, seeking out treasures, negotiating multi-million dollar deals. He did not have time to drop everything to run a little bed and breakfast inn in Dubuque, Iowa!
“I assure you, everything is in top-notch condition,” the secretary said, apparently under the illusion that he thought he was being saddled with a slum.
Sam grunted again. He knew Hattie’s bed and breakfast was a profitable business. Housed in a twenty-odd-room late Victorian mansion situated on a bluff overlooking the town of Dubuque and the Mississippi River, it was a charming place. It had even become a sort of bolt-hole for him when the pressures in his life became too much. Hattie, a childless widow, had always welcomed him with open arms.
She welcomed the whole world with open arms, Sam recalled grimly. As successful as Hattie’s inn, The Shields House, was commercially, it was also the site of the biggest collection of white elephants Sam had ever seen.
The cats were just one indication of her lamentable tendency to collect things other people tossed out. He supposed he ought to count himself fortunate that she hadn’t had more than three cats when she died. And a dog. And a parakeet.
And Josie Nolan.
And that was another thing! He’d assumed that Hattie, having no children of her own, would leave everything to Josie, whom she loved as if she were her daughter. What the hell was she doing leaving Josie to him?
He cleared his throat. “What’s that, um, business about, um, Josephine Nolan?” he asked the secretary now.
“Josephine Nolan?” The secretary sounded baffled.
“In the will,” Sam explained, feeling foolish. “Hattie left me the cats and the dog and the bird—” he grimaced as he said the word, all too aware of its appropriateness “—and Josephine Nolan.”
“I’m sorry, but I’m not conversant with the exact items in the bequest. I only know we ran the property through a title check. I could enquire, if you wish.”
“Never mind. I’ll do it.” He hung up, sank back against the sofa and stared up at the ceiling.
His mother, thank heaven, had delivered her bombshell and departed. Amelia had never much liked messy situations, and the look on his face and the words out of his mouth when she’d mentioned Josie had not promised tranquility, so she’d brushed a kiss across his lips, waggled her fingers at him and headed for the door.
“I’ll just see you when you’re rested, dear,” she’d said. “Don’t worry. You know Hattie. It’s probably just her idea of a little joke.”
Some joke.
Josie Nolan.
Josie Nolan was Hattie’s innkeeper. Long ago she had been one of Hattie’s white elephants. As a teenage foster-child living nearby, she had spent so much time gazing longingly at Hattie and her husband, Walter’s, big house, that Hattie had invited her in. A few weeks later she’d invited Josie to work for her. Eventually she’d supported Josie through college. When she’d graduated, Josie had come back to help Hattie out.
Sam had first met Josie when she was a big-eyed, dark-haired child of fifteen and he’d been a worldly man of twenty-two. He’d teased her and chatted with her and forgotten her the moment he’d gone away.
Of course he’d heard “Josie stories” from Hattie over the years, and he’d always pictured the big-eyed, dark-haired girl who’d blushed every time he’d looked at her. But he hadn’t seen Josie again until last fall, when he’d used Hattie’s as a bolt-hole to avoid having to be best man at his ex-fiancée’s wedding.
He hadn’t even recognized her. Of course, she still had big eyes and dark hair, but she’d developed curves and a bosom—and legs.
Sam had been astonished at the length of Josie Nolan’s legs. He hadn’t ever thought of himself as a leg man. Hell, he couldn’t even remember Izzy’s, his ex-fiancée’s, legs!
He’d hardly been able to put Josie Nolan’s out of his mind.
Only, he assured himself, because he was still edgy about having been dumped. He’d noticed her because he was noticing women. Trying to regain his equilibrium after Izzy had thrown him over.
He actually thought she’d been right to break the engagement. So he’d been nice about it He’d even understood He had only to look at Izzy to see how much more deeply she felt about Finn, the man she had since married, than she’d ever felt about him.
But being nice hadn’t been easy. And “nice” had its limits. He couldn’t have faced standing at the front of the church and watching her walk down the aisle to marry another man.
So he’d gone to Dubuque and had spent a week doing wiring, painting and wallpapering...and other things.
It was the “other things” he was concerned about now.
Had Josie told Hattie what had happened that last night?
Sam wished to hell someone would tell him.
Or maybe he didn’t.
He remembered parts of it. If he shut his eyes, he could see again the tear-streaked face of Josie Nolan when she’d opened her door to his light knock. He shouldn’t have been knocking at all. He should have shut his ears to her soft, muffled sobs back then rather than try to be a good Samaritan.
God knew he’d been in no shape to comfort someone else on a night he’d wanted only to be comforted himself. It had been the night Izzy and Finn were getting married. And though he was happy for Izzy, and knew she was marrying the right man, it didn’t help to know he’d been the wrong one.
He’d retired to his room with a bottle of his dead uncle Walter’s best Irish whiskey right after dinner, hoping perhaps that a little Irish companionship could make him forget.
Maybe the whiskey had sharpened his hearing. Or maybe the walls were thinner than he’d remembered. Or maybe his tolerance for tears had been at an all-time low. Whichever, he’d heard sounds that surprised him. He’d known Josie was waiting for her fiancé, Kurt, to come and take her out for her birthday. He’d seen her pacing the floor of the parlor, then standing on the porch and looking hopefully down the road. Hadn’t the bastard ever shown up?
Sam hadn’t known. Then.
But then he went and tapped on her door, to have it opened by Josie, in a robe and nightgown and a tear-streaked face. He should have turned and run. Instead, he’d sympathized. He’d smiled gently and said, “They say that misery loves company. Come have a drink with me.”
And she never should have come.
He didn’t remember a lot about what had happened after that.
There had been soft sounds and sad smiles and touches. He remembered vaguely tangling his fingers in her long dark hair. He remembered breathing deeply of the scent of cinnamon and shampoo that over the past week he’d come to associate so strongly with Josie. He remembered running his hands up the length of those very long, very smooth legs. Later, after another toast to lost fiancés and missing ones, there had been more touches and more kisses, and then he remembered—oh, God, yes, he remembered—those long legs wrapped around him.
And then...
He remembered waking up in the morning with a splitting headache and his cellular phone ringing and his secretary Elinor telling him that Mr. Nakamura was flying in this afternoon to talk with him about that shipment of teak furniture he’d promised.
Hungover, numb, Sam had promised to be there.
Then he’d looked around to see if he’d dreamed the whole thing. Josie, of course, because she was the innkeeper and made breakfast for the guests, was gone.
She might never even have been there at all—except there were two dirty glasses on the table next to the fireplace. And when Sam had looked further, he’d found her panties tangled in the sheet at the bottom of the bed.
He’d packed his bags before he went downstairs. He’d known he had to talk to her. But he hadn’t known what to say.
He’d found Hattie in the kitchen, but no Josie.
“Kurt called,” Hattie had reported. “He wanted to see her this morning. Since he missed last night with her, I said, go ahead.” She’d smiled. “She’ll be sorry to have missed you.”
Sam had doubted that very much.
She was probably regretting last night had ever happened. She’d certainly gone running back to Kurt the moment he’d called. Well, fine, Sam thought. It had saved him making an even bigger fool of himself as he babbled his apologies.
But only for seven months.
He’d have to make them now.
And he would have to sort out this nonsense of Hattie’s, leaving the inn to him. Josie was the one who had made it the success that it was. She was the one who deserved it. Not Sam. He didn’t want anything to do with it.
So, fine, he’d give it to her.
No, he couldn’t, damn it. There would be tax problems. For him. For her. His cash flow might permit him to cope with them, but hers wouldn’t. If he gave the inn to her, Josie wouldn’t thank him. She wouldn’t be able to afford to keep it.
Maybe, he thought, she wouldn’t even want it. Maybe she was already married to Kurt.
Stuffy, irritating Kurt certainly wouldn’t want it. He didn’t want Josie to have anything to distract her from him.
Sam groaned again, trying to figure it all out. He was sure it would be completely straightforward and logical if he weren’t so damned jet lagged. He was sure it would all make sense in the morning. Whenever morning was.
He was too tired to haul himself up off the sofa and go into the bedroom to sleep. He curled up where he was and folded a pillow over his head. His last conscious thought was a question he sent winging its way to whatever spot his great-aunt was holding down in the hereafter.
“Hattie,” he muttered, “what the hell are you up to?”
He gave himself twenty-four hours to fly to Dubuque, sort out the business with the inn, come to some sort of deal with Josie about running it until he found a buyer, and get back to New York to meet with a group of Thai businessmen he couldn’t afford to miss.
He would have preferred to wait until Herman Zupper was back and dump the problem of the inn on him. He would have preferred to handle the whole mess by mail or telephone or fax.
He would, in fact, have preferred not to inherit—or go—at all.
But he would go, because Hattie had been good to him, because she’d always loved him and sheltered him and supported him even when—especially when—being the only son and heir to the Fletcher empire got to be too much for him.
He wished now he hadn’t put her off back at Christ-mastime when she’d called and encouraged him to come for a visit. He’d been surprised to hear her voice on the phone that cold December afternoon. Hattie ordinarily sent him telegrams when she wanted to say something. But that time, uncharacteristically, she had called.
“You really ought to come, Sam,” she’d said. But she hadn’t been her normally abrupt self, and it had been easy to say no.
He’d told her he was busy. Really busy. It was only the truth: he had been.
But too busy to spend her last Christmas with her? No, not that busy. He could have taken a few days, brought Amelia, and spent Hattie’s last Christmas with her.
He hadn’t. Because of the situation with Josie.
It would have been awkward. Uncomfortable. Hell, she and Kurt were supposed to be getting married in December, right after he got his degree.
For all Sam knew, he might have had to go to her wedding and give her away!
No, thanks. So he had said no to Hattie’s last request. He hadn’t seen Hattie during the last months of her life.
It was too late for that now. But he’d go anyway because he loved her—and he owed her.
And Sam Fletcher always paid his debts.
“Yo, Sam.” The white-haired old man sitting on the porch swing hailed Sam as soon as he got out of his rental car and headed up the walk that crossed the broad lawn in front of The Shields House bed and breakfast. �“Bout time you got here!”
“Hey, Benjamin.” Sam grinned as he gave the old man a wave and quickened his pace. He took the porch steps two at a time, holding out his hand. “How’ve you been?”
The old man reached out and shook it, then sighed and slumped back against the swing. “Missin’ Hattie, you want to know the truth,” he said. He gave a shove against the porch with his foot and set the swing to rocking.
“Yes.” Sam commiserated. He’d expected that. Benjamin Blocker owed Hattie a lot. Like Josie, he was one of Hattie’s strays. Only not a waif, a man with a past.
Once upon a time Benjamin had worked for her husband on the towboat Walter had plied up and down the Mississippi, but he’d drunk too much to be reliable and got himself fired. He’d vowed to dry out and put himself in various programs to do so. None ever seemed to work, and he’d go off again. Periodically, though, he would show up on Walter’s doorstep, have a meal and take off again.
Then, the year Walter died, Benjamin had showed up on the doorstep when Hattie was in the midst of a plumbing crisis. Benjamin knew about plumbing. He’d saved the day.
Hattie, in her gratitude, had said, “Why don’t you stay around? There’s lots of work to be done.”
Sam had thought she was asking for trouble, and had cautioned her against it.
But Hattie had just shrugged. “Let him have a chance.”
“You mean it?” Sam remembered the old man saying.
Hattie had nodded. “I could use a man around to help out.”
Benjamin stayed. Being needed—really needed—did something that all the well-meaning programs he’d tried couldn’t do. Benjamin grabbed the chance Hattie gave him with both hands and hung on for dear life. Sam didn’t think he’d ever taken a drink again. He’d certainly never turned up drunk as far as Sam had ever heard. From then on, Benjamin kept the plumbing in perfect running order, installed whirlpool baths in four of the rooms, and definitely earned his keep.
Later that year, when Hattie bought a little house halfway down the bluff, intending to use it for long-term rentals, Benjamin had helped her restore it, then moved into the bottom floor as an on-site caretaker. A little over a year ago Hattie had deeded the house to him. He was taken care of.
Which was probably, Sam reflected, the only reason he hadn’t got left Benjamin in the will.
Or Cletus, another of Hattie’s “projects,” who came ambling up the walk now. Cletus was perhaps seventy-five to Benjamin’s eighty, and he, too, had been aimless when Hattie had met him at the soup kitchen. They’d talked about how nice the lilacs were that year, and Hattie had invited him up to see hers.
He’d arrived on a bicycle, looking a bit shabby but clean in a threadbare navy blazer and khakis, with a distinctive sprig of lilac in his buttonhole.
He thought hers needed pruning. “Have to do it in the fall,” he’d told her. Then he’d surveyed the lawn and gardens critically. “Got to get wire props for those peonies,” he had told her. “And a better arbor for the grapes.”
“Can you make an arbor?” Hattie had asked.
Cletus had made the arbor and had been here ever since.
Now he set the wheelbarrow full of potting plants down and stood looking Sam up and down.
“How you doing, Cletus?” Sam offered his hand.
Cletus grunted and took Sam’s hand, but the shake he gave it was little more than a jerk. “Took you long enough.”
Sam frowned. “I got here as soon as I could I was in the Orient when Hattie died. I couldn’t get back in time for the funeral.”
He got another grunt. Two in fact. One from each of them.
He frowned. “I’m here now. Don’t worry. Everything will be fine. I’ll get things sorted out.”
Cletus looked stern. “Damn right you will.”
“I’m sure you’ll do the right thing.” Benjamin gave Cletus a satisfied nod.
Sam was glad someone had faith in him. “Of course I will,” he said stoutly. He looked at Clews to see how he’d taken Benjamin’s support. The glance netted him an uncompromisingly steely stare.
“We’re counting on you,” Cletus said at last. What the hell was going on here? Did they think he was going to sell the place out from under them?
“I’ll see that you’re both taken care of,” he promised.
“Tain’t us we’re worried about,” Cletus said. “It’s Josie.”
“I’ll take care of Josie,” Sam promised.
It was apparently the right thing to say. Both men beamed.
“Knew it,” Benjamin said.
“Good lad,” Cletus agreed, and clapped him on the back.
Sam allowed himself a moment to bask in their approval, then asked, “Where is she?”
“In the kitchen. She didn’t say you were comin’.”
Sam shifted from one foot to the other. “I didn’t call.” And he wasn’t explaining why. But there was one thing he wanted to know before he saw her. “Is...she married?”
Benjamin stared at him. “Married?”
Cletus took off his spectacles and wiped them. Then, setting them back on his nose, he looked squarely at Sam. “Not yet.”
Sam sighed. He supposed he shouldn’t be surprised. He’d never had much appreciation for Kurt’s finer qualities. He might be God’s gift to deep thinkers everywhere, but he seemed entirely too cavalier about the woman he loved for Sam’s taste.
“I’ll go talk to her now.” He started around the house toward the back door.
He could have gone to the front, but that would have meant ringing the bell and waiting for Josie to let him in. It would have meant she could see him before she opened the double leaded glass doors. The advantage would have been hers.
He wanted the advantage to be his.
He saw her through the kitchen window. There was a long island counter just inside the door and she was behind it, arranging flowers. Josie was tall, a good four inches taller than Izzy, with long, lush brown hair that had always glinted red in the sun. Sam remembered wanting to run his fingers through her hair from the first day he’d met her when she was barely more than a child. He’d always restrained himself until—
He jammed his hands in his pockets.
She could have seen him coming if she’d been looking up. But she was concentrating on putting flowers in a variety of vases. Daffodils, baby’s breath, carnations—bright fresh bouquets that brought the outdoors into each room, as she’d once told him. Sam remembered the drill.
She’d been doing it the day of her birthday, the day Kurt had stood her up, the day he’d invited her to his room for a drink, the day—
Hell! The only thing now was to apologize, admit he’d made a mistake—that they’d both made a mistake—then, like the civilized individuals they were, they could put it behind them. And go on.
He opened the door.
Josie looked up over the vases, a smile on her face. It faded at the sight of him. All the color in her face faded, too.
Sam’s jaw clenched. He drew a careful breath. “Josie,” he said, with what he hoped was the right blend of distance and camaraderie.
She swallowed. “Sam.”
He felt as if he’d been slapped.
He was used to seeing Josie’s face light up when he came in the room. He was used to a sparkle in her eyes, a grin on her face. There was no grin now, no sparkle. The look she gave him was shuttered. As remote as if she were standing behind a steel wall. He wasn’t even entitled to the cheerful innkeeper persona that so endeared her to The Shields House clientele.
Well, fine. Sam pressed his lips together, then gave a curt jerk of his head, acknowledging the distance she’d put between them.
If that was the way she wanted it, so be it.
“I came as soon as I could,” he said briskly. “I’m sorry I couldn’t get to the funeral. I was in Hong Kong and I had to go to Japan before I came home.”
“Of course.” Josie picked up a carnation and with great care added it to one of the bouquets. She didn’t look at him. She didn’t say anything else. Not, How are you? Not, I’ve missed you.
The clock ticked. An airplane thrummed overhead. Sam drummed his fingers against his thigh.
“I should have been here for her. I should have come at Christmas. I didn’t because...because...” Of you.
No, he couldn’t say that. He sucked in a breath and tried again. “The last time I was here... I’m sorry about...”
He stopped there, too.
He owed her an apology, certainly. But she hadn’t exactly been unwilling! He remembered that much. He wished to hell she’d look at him now, give him some indication of what she was thinking.
Sam Fletcher, who had once been told he “oozed charm through every pore,” felt that at the moment he was oozing only sweat.
“About that night,” he said finally, deciding that bluntness was the best policy. “It was a mistake. A big mistake...asking you to have a drink with me. And af ter...well, after...” He paused. Damn it, at least look at me.
She did. It was no help. Her face was so expressionless he didn’t have a clue what she thought. Still, whatever he’d said so far, clearly it wasn’t enough.
“I didn’t mean... I never meant for what happened to... to happen.” He stopped, flushing in the face of her total silence. “It was the whiskey talking...”
“I assumed as much.” Josie’s voice was flat. toneless. She turned to stare out the window.
“I tried to see you the next morning. I got a call from Elinor. I went to see you then, to tell you, before I left...but Hattie said you’d gone out with Kurt...” He looked at her for confirmation.
Her profile nodded.
So he hadn’t screwed up her life. Thank God for that. He grinned shakily and breathed an enormous sigh of relief. “I’m glad.”
“Are you?” She picked up the two vases in front of her and moved to put them on a cart. Sam watched, hoping she was wearing shorts so he could see those long, wonderful long legs—legs that had once wrapped around him and—
He didn’t even notice her legs.
Only her belly.
Josie was pregnant!
And not just a little pregnant, either. She was huge.
“You’re having a baby!”
Josie set the vases on the cart.
She was having a baby and—“And Kurt still hasn’t married you?”
Suddenly Sam was furious. It was bad enough the jerk stood her up all the time! It was worse that he expected her to drop everything to type his damn papers! But this was ridiculous! “Just exactly how irresponsible is he?”
Josie turned to face him. “Why should he marry me? It’s not his child.”
“Not—?” Sam gaped, stunned. Not Kurt’s child?
He scowled furiously, his mind ticking over, processing this new bit of information, trying desperately to sort things out, to put it together with what he knew about Josie Nolan.
He hadn’t thought she was the type to sleep around! She’d always seemed so quiet, so dedicated. Sweet. He’d always liked Josie Nolan, respected her, had always thought she’d got the short end of the stick in life and even in her choice of fiancés.
He’d felt sorry for her that night last autumn, had wanted to comfort her. Maybe he’d been wrong. His jaw locked. Just how the hell promiscuous was she?
“I trust you know who the father is?” be said acidly.
Josie’s eyes widened. She went rigid. Her chin tipped up and Sam saw color flush her no longer expressionless face.
“As a matter of fact, I do,” she said flatly. “You.”
CHAPTER TWO
OH, WAY to go, Josie congratulated herself. Such tact. Such subtlety.
But it was hard to be subtle when you were as big as a rhinoceros.
Carefully, deliberately, she suppressed a sigh and strove to look as indifferent as she could. It wasn’t easy. It was, in fact, even harder than she’d imagined.
For the last six months—ever since she’d realized that the night she’d spent with Sam Fletcher last September was going to have lasting repercussions of a more than emotional kind—she’d known this moment was coming. She’d put it off, resisting Hattie’s continual exhortations to tell him, instead preferring to “stick her head in the sand,” as Hattie called it.
Josie called it self-preservation.
What else would you call facing a man with the news that he was going to be a father when he was obviously unhappy about facing her at all?
Their night of intimacy had been “the whiskey talking.” Hadn’t he just said so? Of course he had. She’d known it at the time. She’d just been powerless to resist.
Josie Nolan had loved Sam Fletcher unrequitedly and hopelessly since she was fifteen years old.
A realist, Josie had never expected a drop-dead gorgeous millionaire jet-setter to fall madly in love with the foster-daughter of his aunt’s next door neighbor. She might now be Hattie’s protégée and innkeeper, but she’d started out as her cleaning girl. Josie had read Cinderella, but that didn’t mean she was a fool.
But something must have.
Because when Sam Fletcher had appeared at her door the night of her twenty-fifth birthday, all misery, commiseration and gentleness, she’d been powerless to shut it in his face.
And so she’d spent the last six months trying to figure out how to tell him about the results of that night.
There had seemed no good way. Only ways that would have him think of her as a scheming hussy out to trap him into a marriage he didn’t want.
At times—in the dead of night, for example, when she was remembering the tenderness of his touch, the urgency of his need, the firm persuasiveness of his lips—she tried to delude herself that there really had been something between them, that he’d welcome the news, that when he’d gone back to New York he’d missed her as much as she missed him.
In the clear light of day she knew that was so much hogwash.
But as long as he didn’t show up and say it had been a mistake, she’d dared to hold on to a tiny ray of hope.
Not any longer.
“I never meant for what happened to...to happen,” he’d said.
Neither had she.
But it had. And now they were going to have a child.
She stood now, waiting for him to ring a peal over her. To yell at her as Kurt had done. To turn bright red and point his finger at her, as Kurt had done. To say, “Well, what are you going to do about it?” in a hard, cold voice as Kurt had done.
“Mine?” Sam echoed. He wasn’t red. He was dead white under his jet-setter tan. And his voice wasn’t cold. It was hollow.
Still, he wasn’t yelling. His tone was quiet The quietness was momentarily reassuring. But looking at him wasn’t. He just stood there, looking as if a bomb had gone off at his feet.
Josie supposed, to his way of thinking, it had. He’d come prepared to deal with the inn and the animals, not this.
“Yes,” she said.
“You’re sure?”
Her spine stiffened again, and the pang of concern she’d felt for him vanished in a flash. Color burned in her cheeks. “Yes, I’m sure. Despite the impression I may have given, I do not ordinarily sleep around!”
“I didn’t mean—” he began quickly, then stopped, looked dismayed, then sighed and rubbed a hand over his short sun-bleached hair. “Oh, hell, maybe I did. But just because it was a shock. Sorry.” This last was muttered.
He didn’t look her in the eye. He couldn’t seem to stop slanting glances in the direction of her belly.
Josie took the apology in the spirit in which it had been muttered—grudgingly. She picked up two more vases and turned toward the cart. She wasn’t just going to stand there and let him gawk! And she didn’t want to watch the wheels turn in his head.
She would have liked to turn tail and run, but she was damned if she was going to do that, either.
So she stayed, aware of the silence, aware of the foot-shifting, aware of the eventual clearing of his throat.
“So...were you ever going to tell me?” His tone was conversational now, almost casual, but she could hear the strain in it and knew what control he was exerting.
She ran her tongue over her lips and shrugged in her own attempt at casual control. “Eventually I imagine I’d have had to.”
“You’d have had to?” So much for casual. “You don’t think maybe I’d have wanted to know?”
“To be honest, no.”
He stared at her, jaw slack. Then, as if he realized it, he snapped it shut. His eyes never left hers.
Defiantly Josie stared back. “Well, under the circumstances, this isn’t exactly a Hallmark moment, is it?”
A muscle in Sam’s jaw worked. “Are you saying you don’t want it?”
Josie pressed her hands protectively against her abdomen. “No, I am damned well not saying that! I want this child.”
That was the one thing she was sure of. The daughter of indifferent, incompetent parents, she’d been abandoned, then passed from foster home to foster home since she was six. She wasn’t having any such thing happen to her child. She was keeping it and taking care of it and loving it—and that was that.
“But I hardly imagine you do,” she said frankly. “Do you?” she asked him, with the same bluntness he’d inflicted on her earlier.
He didn’t answer for a moment.
She gave a satisfied nod, then turned on her heel and, pushing the cart toward the dining room, walked out the door.
Very little rattled Sam Fletcher.
Was he not a world-traveling entrepreneur of the highest caliber? Had he not negotiated with the pasha of a tiny west Asian kingdom with armed guards all around for the exclusive rights to a line of furnishings that his competitors would give their eye teeth for? Did he not routinely cope with multi-million dollar decisions upon which the fate of many peoples’ livelihoods—not the least his own—depended? Had he not kept a calm demeanor when his fiancée was throwing him over for another man?
Yes, yes, yes, and yes again.
But being told you were the father of a woman’s child when you could barely remember bedding her—well, that might ruffle the calmest of men.
Sam was beyond ruffled. He was moulting.
He stifled his first inclination, which was to tell Josie Nolan that she had rocks in her head, that there was no way he would be so irresponsible as to father a child on a woman he wasn’t married to! He knew his lack of memory of what precisely had happened that evening proved just how irresponsible he had been.
His second inclination was to run. To turn tail, head out the door and never come back.
But Sam Fletcher did not run. He’d never run in his life.
From the time he was a boy he’d been groomed to face his responsibilities, to take charge, to exert leadership, to do what was right.
He’d come to Dubuque today expecting to do what was right. He’d expected to have to cope with the mare’s nest that usually comprised Hattie’s affairs. He’d expected to have to find a buyer for the inn and even—because Hattie wished it—to find homes for three cats, a dog and a bird.
He’d envisioned showing up and, once the awkwardness of his apology was out of the way, laughing with Josie about Hattie’s having left him a woman.
It didn’t seem funny at all now.
He hadn’t expected a child.
The will had clearly been Hattie’s way of doing what Josie had not done—of bringing him back and making him aware of the facts.
He supposed he ought to thank her for that. He would, if he weren’t so rattled.
He was going to be a father?
That was rattling enough. What was worse was the idea that, without Hattie’s will, he might never have known.
It was like waiting for the other shoe to drop.
All the while Josie was putting flowers in the rooms, checking in the guests, delivering champagne to the newlyweds, making dinner reservations and answering questions about local attractions, she was looking over her shoulder, expecting Sam to appear.
He hadn’t been in the kitchen when she got back.
“Left,” Cletus had said.
“Poleaxed ’im, did you?” Benjamin had said.
Josie had denied it, but she’d seen the look on his face. She wondered if they had seen the last of him. But, no. His rental car still sat by the curb. So, wherever he’d gone, he’d walked. She remembered he’d used to walk down to the yacht basin or along the river whenever he’d come here to think before.
“He needs space,” Hattie had explained to her. “Perspective. He has to step back to understand his responsibilities.”
Was that what he was doing now?
Whatever he was doing, Josie wished it didn’t involve her.
She didn’t know whether she wanted him to come back so they could get it over with—or whether she wished he’d stay away so she could pretend he never would.
Probably the former, she decided, unless he agreed to do the latter for the rest of her life!
But the rest of the afternoon passed—the guests checked in, the flowers got delivered, the guests got settled, the questions got answered and the reservations made—and there was still no Sam.
Good, she thought. No. Not good.
Damn. She didn’t know what she wanted—except to tear her hair. She paced the front parlor. She peered out the windows. She even went out on the front porch and craned her neck to look down the road to see if she could see him, determined not to let him surprise her again.
But afternoon turned to evening and evening turned to dusk and eventually the cool of the mid-April evening made her retreat indoors. She paced some more in the parlor, then retreated to the kitchen, but the kitchen reminded her too much of their encounter this afternoon.
She headed down the steps to the basement laundry room. There were loads of towels and sheets to be folded. And if he came looking for her there, the stairs would creak and at least she’d hear him coming.
It was stupid to fret so much. Nothing was going to change even now that he knew. She would still be pregnant. Her love would still be unrequited.
She asked herself for the thousandth time why she couldn’t have been satisfied with Kurt? Certainly he was a little too righteous and unbending for her taste. Certainly he thought his mission was more important than a wife.
But was he wrong?
He hadn’t had to point out how foolish she’d been to taste forbidden fruit
She made her way down the basement steps carefully, hanging on to the handrail. She’d used to trip down them thoughtlessly, light and easy on her feet. But with her new bulk and unaccustomed center of gravity, she had to move more cautiously.
Pity she hadn’t moved more cautiously seven months ago.
She bent and fished a load of towels out of the bin, dumped them on the countertop and began to fold them. She made neat stacks and ran her hands over the soft terrycloth. It was mindless, mechanical work, soothing. She finished one stack, then bent to get another.
The baby kicked.
Josie smiled. Even when she was fretting most, this child could always make her smile. Perhaps it was silly to feel as if she had a confederate within, but she did. It was no longer Josie apart from the rest of the world. Now it was the two of them.
“Awake, are you?” she asked it softly. She set the towels down, rubbed a hand on her belly and was rewarded with another soft tap. She tapped back and smiled again. Sometimes she felt as if she was communicating in Morse code with this person who inhabited her body.
“Had a rough day?” she asked it. “I have. And it’s going to get worse,” she confided. She shook out a towel and gave it a snap before folding it.
The baby kicked again. Hard. So hard Josie winced.
“What’s wrong?”
She nearly jumped a foot. She knocked the pile of freshly folded towels onto the floor and spun around to stare with equal parts horror and consternation in the direction of the wine cellar at the far end of the basement. Sam stood in the shadows.
“Now look what you’ve done!”
“That appears to be the least of what I’ve done,” he said dryly as he stepped forward.
Instinctively Josie stepped back.
“What’s wrong?” he repeated. “Are you hurt?”
She shook her head numbly. “No. It...it kicked, that’s all.”
“Kicked?” He looked blank.
“The baby.”
He looked at her belly. She couldn’t read his expression. He opened his mouth, as if he was going to say something. But then he just ran his tongue over his lips and shook his head. He bent to pick up the towels.
Josie watched him, dry-mouthed and silent, and wished she could push him aside and do it herself. She couldn’t. There was too much baby between her and the ground. “What were you doing skulking in the wine cellar?” she demanded, indignant.
“I wasn’t getting another bottle, if that’s what you’re worried about.” Sam straightened and set the towels on the counter.
“You might as well put them in the wash again,” Josie said crossly. “I can’t use them now.”
Obediently he dumped them in the washing machine. Then he answered her question. “I was thinking.”
“In the wine cellar?”
“It seemed appropriate.”
Josie pressed her lips together. She turned away and closed the lid of the washing machine, then reached past him to add soap, taking her time to measure it precisely. She set the dial to the right program. She had nothing to say.
Sam didn’t move away. She continued to fuss with the dial, then opened the lid again and checked the balance of the towels in the machine.
“I came because Hattie left me the inn,” he said at last.
“I know.” She didn’t look at him.
“I’d thought she was going to leave it to you.”
Josie shut the lid and gave the start button a push. “Why should she? I’m not family.”
“You were closer to her than anyone. You were the granddaughter she and Walter never had. She loved you.” He made it almost sound like an accusation.
“I loved her, too,” Josie said fiercely, and turned her head to meet his gaze. “She was the mother—the grandmother—the family I never had. But I didn’t ever expect her to leave me the inn! She did enough for me. She set up a trust fund. Mr. Zupper can tell you about it if you want. One for me and...and one for the baby.”
“You were supposed to have the inn, too,” Sam insisted. “When I was out here last fall—when Izzy... when I...”
“I know when,” Josie said sharply. Did he think she’d forgotten?
Sam sucked in a sharp breath. “Okay, you know when. Well, back then she told me I wouldn’t have to worry about the inn when she was gone. And I told her she wasn’t going anywhere.” He paused and Josie heard the ache in his voice. It matched her own ache, but she wasn’t going to comfort him.
“You didn’t know she was going to die,” she said. “None of us did.”
“Hattie did. She said, �This old heart of mine could go any day. So I want you to know this.’ And then she told me she meant no disrespect to the family, but she was going to leave it to you.” He rubbed a hand against the back of his neck. “So when she left it—and you—to me, she was making a point.”
Josie’s head snapped around. “She left me to you?”
“I thought it was a joke.”
A hell of a joke, Josie thought. But, “It is,” she said firmly.
Sam shook his head. “No. She was right.” He shifted from one foot to the other. His hands were jammed into his pockets. He looked at the floor for a long moment. The dryer swirled, the tap dripped. He lifted his gaze and met Josie’s. “We’ll get married.”
As a proposal it left a lot to be desired.
In fact Josie felt as if he’d stabbed her in the heart.
We’ll get married. Just like that. As if it were a foregone conclusion, a business negotiation with only one possible outcome.
She supposed where Sam Fletcher was concerned most business deals had only one possible outcome—the one he wanted.
But he didn’t want this!
She knew he didn’t want it. She could see it in his face, in his eyes. She heard it in the resignation in his voice.
And why would he? He didn’t love her. He didn’t want their child.
He was doing it because Hattie had forced his hand. He was doing it because he was used to doing the right thing, the necessary thing.
Just as Hattie had known he would.
Just as Josie had feared he would. It was why she wouldn’t tell him about the baby.
“A child has a right to know its father,” Hattie had said in a tone far more gentle than the bracing one she usually used.
“I know that,” Josie had replied. “I just...can’t tell him. Not now.”
“When?”
“Sometime,” Josie said vaguely.
“A father has a right to know his child, too,” Hattie had gone on implacably.
“I’ll tell him,” Josie had promised. But she hadn’t said when. And she’d changed the subject whenever Hattie brought it up.
“You can tell him at Christmas,” Hattie had said eventually.
But Sam hadn’t come. Josie had seen Hattie’s disappointment when he hadn’t come. She’d seen the older woman watching her with worry and concern in her eyes. But Josie had steeled herself against that concern because she knew why Sam hadn’t come.
After that Hattie hadn’t brought it up again.
Josie had dared to think Hattie had given up.
Obviously, once the will had been read, she knew she’d thought wrong. Hattie had made sure Sam would know.
Now Sam did know—and had done the very thing Hattie had hoped—and Josie had dreaded—he might.
It wasn’t the way he’d imagined proposing marriage, standing in a laundry room, willing his prospective, very pregnant bride to look at him, his hands in his pockets, fists clenched.
It certainly wasn’t the way he’d proposed to Izzy. That had happened at a cozy dinner at a candlelit table in a restaurant on the top of Knob Hill. They had been laughing together, touching, and his suggestion that what they had was too good to waste on casual moments had been enough to make Izzy catch her breath, then turn a thousand-watt smile in his direction.
This time he was standing stiffly, touching no one, his head bent beneath the stone basement’s low ceiling. His voice was stiff and awkward. And, far from bestowing any thousand-watt smile, Josie was looking at him as if he’d just electrocuted her.
Surely it wasn’t a surprise. She had to know what they had to do. It was the only responsible thing to do—though heaven knew if he could have thought of something else, he probably would have done it.
Besides, what did she expect? A profession of undying love? Hardly. Especially not after he’d already assured her just hours before that his actions that night had been a mistake.
It was enough that he was willing to do the right thing, he assured himself. He looked at her expectantly and waited for her to do the right thing, too.
She said, “No.”
Sam gaped. He wasn’t jet lagged this time, but he thought his hearing was going just the same. He checked. “No?”
“No. Thank you,” she added after a moment, but he didn’t think she sounded very grateful.
His jaw tightened. “Why the hell not?”
It wasn’t as if he’d wanted to marry her, for heaven’s sake! He was being a good sport, though, and making the offer. The least she could do, damn it all, was accept it!
“When I marry, I’m marrying for love,” she said simply.
He stared at her. He glanced around the tiny laundry room pointedly, then at her now bare ring finger. “Forgive me if I’m wrong,” he drawled, “but I don’t see your own true love clamoring for a wedding date any longer.”
Josie got a tight, pinched look on her face and he immediately felt like a heel. “No,” she admitted quietly, then blinked and looked down at her hands.
Oh, hell. It was like kicking a puppy.
“I didn’t mean...” he muttered at last, his voice gruff. He started to reach for her, to comfort her, then remembered where that had got him last time. He pulled back sharply. “Sorry.”
In fact, he wasn’t sorry at all. This might not be the reason her engagement ought to have been broken, but Kurt Masters didn’t deserve a woman as kind and generous and open and—well, hell—as loving as Josie. But he didn’t suppose she wanted to hear that right now.
“Kurt doesn’t matter,” she said after a moment.
Sam wouldn’t argue about that. “Glad to hear it,” he said brusquely. “Then why are you saying no?”
“I told you.”
“Because you want love.” He fairly spat the word. “And what about the baby? Don’t you want it to have love?”
Her nostrils flared. “Of course I do! What are you talking about?”
“You’re depriving it of a father’s love.”
“You don’t love it,” she said flatly.
“How the hell do you know?”
“You can’t.”
“Why not?” He was incensed now, breathing down her neck.
“Because in the ten years I’ve known you I’ve never heard you express any desire for children whatsoever!”
“So maybe I changed my mind.”
Josie rolled her eyes. “Give me a break.”
“No, you give me a break. You’re the one who’s had all the time to get used to this. I’ve just had it sprung on me—”
“There was nothing stopping you coming back any time in the last seven months,” Josie pointed out with saccharine politeness.
“I thought I was making both of us happy staying away!”
“You were.”
He heaved a harsh breath. “And now I’m not. But I am being responsible. I am ready to do the right thing and—”
“And you’re so sure you know what the right thing is?”
He opened his mouth. He hesitated.
The hesitation was all it took. Josie folded her arms across her breasts. “You don’t want to marry me, Sam. You don’t want a child. You want to sell the inn and get the hell out of here and you never want to look back. Isn’t that right? Isn’t that what you came for?”
“I came because Hattie left me holding the bag!”
“Exactly. And I’m telling you, you don’t have to hold it any longer. Hattie wanted you here. Not me. It was a mistake, like you said earlier today.” She started toward the stairs, then turned back and faced him squarely. “It was, as you said earlier, �the whiskey talking.’”
“I didn’t mean—”
“Yes, you did. You were honest. And now you’re lucky. I’m not holding you accountable for what you did under the influence of whiskey.”
“What if I want to be held accountable?”
Their eyes dueled once more.
Then, “Go to hell, Sam,” Josie said, and stalked up the stairs.
Footsteps came after her. “Don’t you walk out on me!”
Josie turned halfway up, color vivid on her cheeks. “Don’t you yell at me,” she said, in a voice quieter than his, but no less forceful. “Not if you want The Shields House to keep a good reputation.”
“The hell with The Shields House!”
Josie shrugged. “Well, suit yourself. It’s your house. Your business.”
“I offered to share it with you.”
“And I said no. Thank you,” she added, the polite afterthought as damnably annoying as her refusal. “Don’t slam the door when you leave.” She turned then, and left him standing there.
Sam glared at her back until she went around the corner. Then he stomped into the kitchen, flung open the door to the entry hall and stalked out. He managed—barely—not to snarl at the guests in the parlor. But that was as far as his good behavior went.
There was no way, he thought as he banged out furiously, that you could have a satisfying argument if you couldn’t even slam a door!
It had been every bit as bad as she’d feared it would be.
Worse.
He’d asked her to marry him. Because he was a gentleman. A responsible man. A kind man.
All the things she wanted in a husband—and couldn’t have.
Because he didn’t love her.
And he was honest enough not to lie and say he did. That was what made it worse.
Josie stood behind the curtain and stared out across the lawn. She could see Sam now, standing on the edge of the bluff that overlooked the city, his shoulders hunched, his hands jammed in the pockets of his jeans. The wind ruffled his short hair. He looked miserable.
He ought to be rejoicing.
She’d told him no, hadn’t she?
Maybe it hadn’t sunk in yet. When it did, he’d be glad.
Even then, though, he’d still feel responsible. He’d want to make things right. It was the way Sam was. The way he’d always been. Hadn’t he come to console her the night Kurt had stood her up?
She shoved the thought away. She had done nothing but think about it for seven months. She’d hoped...she’d dreamed...she’d wished...she’d been the fool she’d promised herself she would never be. She had not been able to squelch the hope that he might have fallen in love with her.
He hadn’t. And now it was over.
Tomorrow would be better for both of them. He would still try to do the right thing, of course, but it would be a reasonable right thing this time. He would offer child support, acknowledgement, a trust fund, perhaps. Her child would be weighted down with trust funds, she thought with a rueful smile.
Being Sam, he might ask for two weeks in the summer when he could see their child.
She wouldn’t argue. It was his right. She would be polite and properly grateful. And he would be concerned and secretly relieved at having escaped the need to follow through on his proposal, but far too polite to let it show. It would all be very civilized.
And she would be tied to Sam Fletcher for the rest of her life.
It would be hard, but she would do it—for her child.
“Not for yourself?” she mocked herself now as she rocked back on her heels and looked down at the only man she had ever really loved.
If she was going to be scrupulously honest—she would admit that she didn’t dislike the idea of having Sam still a part of her life.
It wasn’t the same as marrying him. She didn’t want any part of forcing him into a relationship which ought to be based on love.
But to know how he was, where he was, what he was doing...
Just to know...
She’d said no?
No?
Sam still couldn’t believe it.
Or maybe he could. Women seemed to be developing a history of not wanting to marry him. First Izzy, now Josie. Was it getting to be a trend?
His jaw was clenched so tight he had a headache. He forced himself to take a deep breath. But he didn’t relax. He paced along the bluff overlooking the downtown and didn’t see any of it. He saw only the disaster the evening, the day—no, his whole damn life—had become.
He didn’t think he was that hard to get along with. He certainly could keep any wife in the manner to which she’d never yet become accustomed. He wasn’t all that bad-looking.
Was he?
No, damn it, he wasn’t.
So what was the problem?
“�I want to marry for love,”’ he muttered in a falsetto mockery of Josie’s tone as he kicked a rock against the limestone wall that edged the bluff. “Well, hell, sweetheart, so do I. So did I.”
But there was a child to think about now. His child. Her child.
Their child.
That child might owe its existence to circumstances that had been fogged by a little too much whiskey. But their lovemaking hadn’t been a mindless, soulless coupling. He might not remember all that had happened that night, but his body had known, his emotions had known. He had responded to Josie and she had responded to him.
He was willing to bet she would still respond to him!
He looked over his shoulder at the house. On the upstairs landing, a curtain twitched. His jaw set, his eyes narrowed.
“You think the answer is no, Josie Nolan?” he told the woman he was sure was standing behind that curtain.
Well, Sam Fletcher never backed down from a challenge.
CHAPTER THREE
IT WAS fate, Josie decided.
Surely God couldn’t have that warped a sense of humor. Surely in a twenty-odd room inn, He wouldn’t deliberately stick Sam in the room next to hers tonight, in the bed right on the other side of the wall from hers—again—just for old time’s sake!
She’d actually entertained the notion that she might get away with not having him stay at all.
The inn was fully booked—even the third-floor garret that had been hers while Hattie was alive. Just three days ago Josie had finished fixing it up as a guest room and, with Benjamin and Cletus’s help, had moved her things down one flight into Hattie’s quarters.
“You ought to be pleased,” she’d told Sam when he realized the inn was full. “Another room to rent means more profit for you.”
“The hell with profits. Where’m I going to sleep?”
He’d tapped on her door about ten and she’d opened it warily, but he hadn’t said another word about marrying her. He’d been almost icily polite as he’d asked where he ought to put his things. The iciness had dissolved into irritation at the news that there were no rooms.
“I’ll see if I can get you a room at The Taylor House.” It was another Victorian era B&B. Not, in Josie’s estimation, as nice as The Shields House, but still quite comfortable.
“I’ll sleep in the sitting room,” Sam said, looking past her toward the small room that was part of her quarters. Josie knew Hattie had sometimes put Sam there when all the other rooms were full.
But that had been Hattie. Not her. “I’m afraid not.”
One brow lifted. “Why not? Did you rent that, too?”
Josie sucked in a breath. “I am trying to do my best to run your inn professionally, and that means renting the rooms. So I have. That doesn’t mean I have to give up my own.”
“You sleep in the sitting room?”
“It’s part of my quarters,” she said firmly. The innkeeper’s quarters consisted of two rooms—a bedroom and a parlor—and a bath. And, no, she didn’t sleep in her sitting room, but she didn’t want him sleeping there, either. It would be too intimate, too close.
“You certainly didn’t waste any time moving in, did you? Hattie’s been in her grave—what?—two weeks?”
His words hit her like a slap, and her reaction must have showed on her face, for he rubbed a hand against the back of his head and muttered, “Sorry. I didn’t mean that. I’m not usually so tactless.”
“No,” Josie agreed, “you’re not.”
His gaze nailed her. “But then I don’t usually discover I’m about to become a father, either.”
She pressed her lips together and hugged her arms across her breasts protectively, but she was damned if she was going to apologize. “I’ll call The Taylor House.”
“Don’t bother. I’ll sleep in the butler’s pantry.”
Josie’s eyes widened. “You can’t!”
“Why not? Did you rent that, too?”
“Don’t be an ass, Sam. There’s only a love seat down there.”
“Badly named, I’m sure.”
Josie ignored that “You can’t,” she repeated.
“Well, if you won’t let me use the sitting room...” He was baiting her, daring her.
Josie gritted her teeth. “No.”
“It’s not like we haven’t been closer than a room apart...” A corner of his mouth lifted mockingly.
She felt her cheeks begin to burn. “I said, no!”
Sam took a step back and raised his hands, palms out, as if to defend himself. “Fine. The butler’s pantry for me.” He started toward the stairs.
“I’m calling The Taylor House!”
“Go ahead. I’m not leaving.”
Josie watched him go, frustrated, annoyed, and determined not to give in. “Go ahead yourself! Sleep on the love seat!” Get a crick in your neck. Serve you right for being so obstinate.
She shut her door, barely managing to take her own advice and not slam it. Then she retreated to her bedroom, determined to ignore him. She had one more couple left to arrive, who would be getting there late. Ordinarily she’d wait for them downstairs in the butler’s pantry, reading or watching television.
Obviously that wasn’t an option tonight.
So she stayed in her room, alternately reading and hauling herself up to pace irritably. When the phone rang an hour later she snatched it up. The people who had been scheduled for Coleman’s Room couldn’t make it.
“Sorry to call so late,” they apologized. “Family emergency.”
“No problem,” Josie assured them. Then she hung up and closed her eyes. “Oh, damn.”
She didn’t have to do it. She almost didn’t do it.
But Josie had spent enough nights in her life sleeping in uncomfortable circumstances to have a modicum of sympathy—even for Sam. Reluctantly, she went down to the butler’s pantry.
It was dark, but in the moonlight spilling through the tall, narrow window, she could see Sam lying on the love seat, his legs dangling over the end.
“Come to see if I was comfy?” he drawled.
“Came to tell you that you can have Coleman’s Room,” she replied through her teeth. “The guests just canceled.”
In the moonlight she saw the slow spread of his grin. Her very own version of the Cheshire Cat. Then he stretched expansively and hauled himself up. He was wearing only a pair of boxer shorts.
Josie had beat a hasty retreat up the steps.
Unfortunately, the image had stuck in her mind.
And having him in Coleman’s Room was turning out to be worse than letting him sleep in her parlor would have been. Her parlor was on the other side of the bathroom. Coleman’s Room shared a common wall with hers.
She crawled back into her own bed and tugged the duvet up to her chin. Resolutely she turned away from the wall. From the memory. From Sam.
It didn’t help. She knew he was there.
Just like he’d been last time...
It was her birthday. September ninth. And she was determined that it would be the most special birthday she could remember.
For years she’d pretended an indifference to her birthdays. In foster families there were fewer disappointments if one didn’t expect too much. Even when she’d lived with her own parents, things had been so unpredictable that Josie had learned not to expect.
When she’d come to stay with Hattie and Walter, they had celebrated with her. That was as close to having a real family—and real birthdays—as she could remember.
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