Fletcher's Baby Read online

  Sam shrugged. “No big deal. I hope we will be.”

  “What?”

  “You heard me.”

  Josie shivered involuntarily. “I told you no.”

  “That was yesterday.”

  “Nothing’s changed.”

  “Yet.”

  Damn it. Why did he have to stand there and look so smug? So confident? So strong? So handsome?

  “I won’t change my mind.”

  He smiled. “Then I’ll have to change it for you.”

  She shook her head. “You can’t. You’ll be in New York.”

  “No.”

  “What do you mean, no?”

  “I’m staying here.”

  “You can’t! You have a job! You’re president of Fletcher’s, for heaven’s sake! People depend on you.”

  He looked straight at her. “There’s only one person I want depending on me.” Their eyes met, then his dropped and he looked at her belly. “One,” he repeated, “for the moment.”

  “Don’t be ridiculous!”

  “I’m not.”

  “You can’t stay here!”

  “I am staying here, Josie,” he said. “Get used to it.”

  He didn’t mean it, of course.

  He couldn’t possibly. How could he run a multi-million-dollar New York based corporation from an inn on a bluff in Dubuque, Iowa?

  He couldn’t, Josie decided. And she breathed easier—until that afternoon when a man came to hook up the extra phone and fax lines.

  “Where do you want ’em, miss?” the technician asked her over the top of a huge box he was struggling to hang on to.

  She stared at him, nonplussed, then heard Sam’s footfall behind her.

  “Just bring them right up here. I’m setting up shop in Coleman’s Room,” he told Josie as he ushered the technician in.

  “You can’t! I’ve rented it,” Josie protested.

  “Too bad. Give them another room. Send them to The Taylor House.”

  “I’m not sending them to The Taylor House.”

  He shrugged equably. “Give them the love seat.”

  “I’ll give them Mrs. Shields’ Room,” she said through her teeth.

  “They’ll like that. It’s bigger. Better.” Sam pointed the technician up the staircase to Coleman’s Room. Then he turned back to Josie, who was staring at him in openmouthed dismay. “Don’t fuss,” he said. “It’s not good for you. Or the baby.”

  Josie wondered how he’d like a lamp right between the eyes.

  Then she raised her eyes to heaven, though she thought she might do better sending this particular question in the other direction. “How could you, Hattie?” she asked her dearly departed friend and employer. “You don’t know what you’ve done.”

  Sam was not an easy man to ignore. It would have helped if he’d stayed in Coleman’s Room. But he didn’t.

  He kept popping into the kitchen, asking questions, scribbling notes, telling her to remind him about meetings with Thai businessmen and German watchmakers, or asking her to call his assistant, Elinor, and have her take care of the shipment of Japanese umbrellas.

  Umbrellas, for heaven’s sake!

  Josie wanted to tell him to go jump in the lake. But she didn’t want him to know he was rattling her.

  It would have helped, too, if he hadn’t decided to play innkeeper. Twice the doorbell rang, and when Josie was slow getting to it Sam was there before her, to greet the guests and show them around with the cheerful aplomb that made him such a successful businessman.

  Josie told herself it was his right. He was her boss. She just wished he would say so.

  Instead he always said, “This is Josie.” Not, This is Josie, the innkeeper. Just, “This is Josie.”

  And then he’d look at her possessively, and all the women would take in Josie’s protruding abdomen and Sam’s doting expression, and they’d coo and smile and ask her when the baby was due and say wasn’t it nice her husband was around all the time.

  Josie wanted to strangle him. She wanted to wear one of those T-shirts that pointed at the man next to her and proclaimed HE’S Nor MY HUSBAND. She didn’t dare.

  We’re not married, she wanted to yell at them. She didn’t, because innkeepers didn’t yell at guests.

  She might, however, yell at her boss the next time she had a chance. Mostly she smiled politely, then made her escape. If he wanted to greet the guests, it was fine with her, she thought grumpily. It saved her from having to smile all the time.

  “Look like you been suckin’ a lemon. Don’t she, Ben?”

  Josie looked up from the wreath she was making for one of the rooms to see Cletus and Benjamin coming in the back door. She did muster a smile for the two old men, then dragged a hand through her hair.

  The day had turned warm, and since she’d been pregnant she felt the heat more than usual and became grumpy. It was probably a good thing Sam had taken care of the guests. He’d be far more charming than she was at the moment.

  It would be all she could do to muster enough equanimity to chat with Benjamin and Cletus. She knew they’d worried about her since Hattie died. She supposed they’d shared their worries with Sam.

  Maybe, if she tried, she could get them to assure him she was fine. She clipped several small pieces of eucalyptus together and wired them to the frame, then looked up again and made an effort to broaden her smile.

  “No lemons,” she said. “I’m just hot.”

  “Want the air conditioning on?” Cletus asked.

  “No. I’ll live.”

  “Glad to hear it,” Benjamin said dryly. “You don’t sound ’specially thrilled.”

  Josie shrugged. “I’m feeling a little...out of sorts. That’s all.”

  “Sam ain’t draggin’ his feet ’bout the weddin’?”

  Josie’s head jerked up. “What wedding?”

  “Yours.”

  “There isn’t going to be a wedding,” Josie told them.

  “Whatdya mean, there ain’t gonna be a wedding?” Benjamin’s snow-white brows drew down. “Course there is. It’s why he come.”

  “It may be why he came, but that doesn’t mean I’m going to marry him.”

  Cletus looked affronted. “Why not?”

  “Because I don’t want to,” Josie said firmly.

  “Why not?” demanded Benjamin.

  Josie smothered a sigh. Where, she wondered, was it written that she had to explain her every decision to a couple of nosy old men?

  “You don’t get married just because you’re going to have a baby.”

  “Sounds like a damn fine reason to me,” Cletus huffed.

  “Damn fine,” Benjamin echoed.

  Josie shook her head. “Not in my book.”

  “You got a better one?”

  “Love.”

  “You do love him.” Both of them looked at her then, challenging her to deny it.

  Josie averted her eyes. She chewed on her lip. She wrapped some more pieces of eucalyptus and strangled them with the wire.

  “Don’t you?” Benjamin probed.

  “Once I had a crush on him,” Josie conceded with considerable irritation. “A long time ago.”

  Two pairs of brows lifted skeptically. Josie supposed she ought to be grateful they didn’t point out that she hadn’t gone to bed with him all that long ago. “It’s over,” she insisted.

  Cletus cocked his head. “You don’t still, um, got the crush?”

  “No, I do not have the crush.” It was only the truth. She’d gone far past “crush” years ago. She looked at them hopefully. “Do you suppose you could stay out of this?” she suggested.

  “We was only tryin’ to help,” Cletus told her.

  Josie mustered her patience. “I know that. But it isn’t helping. It’s making things harder.”

  “I’ll marry you,” Benjamin said.

  Both Cletus and Josie stared at him, mouths agape.

  “I will,” Benjamin said, coloring to the roots of his hair. “I mean,
if you’re lookin’ for someone who loves ya...” Pale blue eyes stared defiantly into hers.

  Josie’s heart melted. She dropped the eucalyptus and the wire and crossed the room to put her arms around Benjamin. It was a clumsy hug, made awkward by the child who burgeoned between them. But it was no less heartfelt for being so. “Oh, Ben.” Josie kissed his ruddy cheek. “You are so good to me.”

  “I mean it,” he said. shifting uncomfortably from one foot to the other. “I do.”

  “I appreciate the offer. You know I do. And I love you, too. Both of you.” Her smile included Cletus. “But not the way I want to feel about the man I marry. And not,” she added wistfully, “the way I want him to feel about me.”

  “You don’t reckon Sam feels that way?” Cletus asked after a moment.

  Josie shook her head. “No. It was a...mistake. We made a mistake. To marry him would be to make another one.” She looked from one of them to the other, seeking their agreement.

  Both men just looked at her and shook their heads.

  She didn’t know what she wanted. For one of them to talk her out of it, perhaps? For them to tell her that their night of love had not been a mistake? That Sam loved her the way she had always loved him?

  But even if they had, it wouldn’t have done any good. She would have to hear it from Sam himself to believe It.

  And Sam would never give her words of love. Sam would only talk about duty and responsibility.

  Josie didn’t want to be just another of Sam’s responsibilities.

  She wished he’d go away.

  And if he wouldn’t of his own accord—well, she’d just have to see about helping him!

  CHAPTER FIVE

  IT SHOULDN’T have been so hard.

  Sam was used to running his business by phone and fax. He was used to using E-mail and telexes to get things done. And if his Thai businessmen balked at coming to Dubuque, that was just too damn bad. He’d get by without them.

  But nothing was going right. Nothing at all.

  Messages got lost or garbled or mislaid. His desk got cleared and the trash emptied if he so much as stepped out to the bathroom. Projects he’d been working on for months simply vanished into thin air.

  The new phone line kept disconnecting. The technician said he didn’t understand what the problem was, but he came out and checked it. Everything looked fine to him. The line behaved perfectly—for him.

  Sam wondered what inanimate objects had against him.

  He asked Josie if she had the same problem on the inn’s lines. She said no. It was almost the only thing she said to him.

  She seemed to avoid him half the time, and the other half she was right where he needed to be, vacuuming or hammering or taking guests on tours of the room.

  He’d always had a sort of vaguely romantic fantasy about how mellow and calm and, well, bovine, pregnant women were. Josie was neither mellow nor calm. And he didn’t dare speculate on her bovine qualities—at least not within her hearing.

  In any case, after three days, she was wearing him out. She couldn’t just be pregnant and run an inn like a normal person. Not Josie!

  She had to be pregnant, run an inn and simultaneously tackle six different remodeling and redecorating jobs.

  One afternoon he found her hanging pictures she’d bought at a recent estate auction. Lugging and stretching and lifting. Then straightening and standing back and contemplating. Then taking them down and moving to another room and going through the whole process again. Mostly in rooms where he’d gone to escape and get some work done.

  “You were in here already,” he reminded her when she trundled into the library with a great monstrous frame filled with photos of early Dubuque buildings.

  “I know. I thought I might find a better place.” She shrugged. “I didn’t.” Her face was red from the exertion. She started to lift it again.

  “Damn it! Give me that.” Sam snatched it out of her hands. “Where do you want it?”

  “There.” She pointed at the wall above the old built-in cherry wood bookcases. He hoisted the cumbersome thing. “No, there.” And she turned the other way and pointed to a spot above the brand-new built-in two-person whirlpool tub. “It’ll give them something to look at while they’re bathing.”

  Sam lowered the frame and carried it across the room. He set it on the edge, kicked off his loafers and climbed into the tub. “It’s not what I’d be looking at if I was sharing this,” he said over his shoulder.

  Her already alarmingly red color deepened. “Just hang it,” she said shortly.

  Sam hung it.

  “It’s tilting to the left,” Josie said. He adjusted it. “Too much.” He moved it back. “More.” He moved it again. “There. Just right.” She paused, contemplating iL “Maybe it would look better over the bookcases.”

  Sam got out of the tub. “Sorry, sweetheart. It’s staying there.”

  “But—”

  He turned on her. “Read my lips. It’s fine.”

  “Then I’ll move it.” Josie started toward it.

  Sam moved between her and the picture. But before he could head her off, he was interrupted by the shrilling of the phone.

  It was Elinor. She was trying to get a shipment of Indian textiles through Customs. She needed some paperwork she had faxed to Sam to sign.

  “I have to go upstairs and get them.”

  They weren’t there. His desk had been cleaned again. His trash had been emptied. The papers were nowhere to be found.

  Out in the hall he could hear Josie, vacuuming.

  She was trying to get rid of him.

  It didn’t take a genius to figure it out. Even a man could figure that much. Sam dug in his heels.

  “What in bloody hell do you think you’re doing?” he demanded the next day when he came back to Coleman’s Room after breakfast, shuffling through a stack of faxes on a missing shipment of jade, only to bump up against a ladder right inside the door.

  Josie was on top of it. She arched around so she could peer down at him past her enormous belly. “Peeling off wallpaper. What does it look like?”

  Sam glowered up at her. “Like you’re trying to kill yourself. Get down.”

  “No.” And she turned her back and continued to pull at the strip.

  No?

  No?

  Sam felt as if his tie was choking him to death. He reached up to loosen it—remembered he was wearing a T-shirrt. He dropped the wad of faxes on the floor, reached up and grabbed Josie by the hips, lifting her off the ladder.

  “How dare you?” The second her feet hit the floor, she whirled on him, spitting fire.

  “How dare I not when you’re doing something as stupid as that?”

  “It’s my job! ‘The innkeeper is responsible for upkeep.’ Read my job description.”

  “I’ll do better than that. I’ll change your damn job description. Now stay off the ladder!”

  “But I have to get it done. It’s on my list. Hattie and I made a list over the winter—which rooms to paper, which rooms to paint. Paint fumes are bad for the baby, but wallpaper is fine. I’ve stripped wallpaper a dozen times. More. Who do you think did all this wallpapering?”

  She was struggling against the hold he had on her as she babbled. But Sam wasn’t letting go. He shifted his grip from her hips—the feel of which kept him from making a level-headed reply—to her wrists, which were only marginally less tempting.

  “You did. But you weren’t pregnant when you did them.” Pause. “Were you?”

  At last Josie managed to snatch her hands out of his grasp. “You know damned well I wasn’t!”

  “Well, you are now. With my child. So you’ll damned well stay off the ladder.”

  She looked away. Impasse. She backed up and then allowed herself to glower at him. “It needs to be done.”

  “Then we’ll hire someone to do it.”

  “Money solves everything? Is that it, Sam?”

  His jaw tightened. He knew she was trying to goad
him. Josie knew money didn’t matter to him one way or another. But she didn’t care about that. She only cared about keeping up a fight.

  Did stubborn irrationality go with being pregnant? He didn’t suppose it would be tactful to ask.

  “Money will solve this,” he said as calmly as he could. “Call someone and get him up here to do the stripping.”

  “Him?” Josie said scornfully. “How sexist is that?”

  Sam ground his teeth. “Fine. Get a her. Get a set of identical triplets or a two-headed hyena! I don’t care! Just stay the hell off the ladder!”

  Josie glared. He glared back.

  His phone rang. He ground his teeth, but didn’t answer it. “I’m going to take this call down in the library,” he said, holding up a hand to forestall her protest. “I don’t care if it’s rented tonight. They can damned well wait. Or they can go somewhere else. I have work to do and I’m going to do it. Here. And you’re not going to stop me. The only thing you’re going to stop is standing on ladders!”

  Another shrill ring punctuated his words.

  “Somebody gonna answer that phone?” Cletus hollered.

  Sam punched the button of his portable and barked, “Fletcher. Hold on.” He hit the hold button and fixed her with a hard glare. “Got it?”

  For a full thirty seconds neither of them spoke. Then, “I’ll get someone who needs the work,” Josie said. Lifting her chin, she brushed past him out of the room and down the stairs.

  From the back there was nothing pregnant about her. She looked just as she always had—like a very sexy woman with the world’s longest, loveliest legs. Only the gentle roll in her movements betrayed the changes in her body. But—he swallowed—she still had the sexiest damn walk he’d ever seen.

  He groaned.

  The phone’s hold light kept flashing. The fax number rang.

  “Ain’t anybody gonna answer the phone around here?” Cletus yelled.

  Sam ignored the fax and punched the button on the portable. “What?”

  “About time,” Elinor said testily. “Mr. Rajchakit would like to speak with you. He’s waiting. This is a conference call.”

  “Ah...” Sam mustered his smattering of Thai from the four winds. “Sa-waht! Dee Krahp, Mr. Rajchakit.”