Fletcher's Baby Read online

  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 sta
nding 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.” Th
is 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?