Stroke of Fortune (14 page)

“Delighted to meet you, my dear,” said the pastor. Josie shook his hand, which was long and thin and dotted with age spots.

“We'll go on out to the club now,” Grace an
nounced after Josie and Flynt had collected the baby. “For brunch in the Empire Room.”

Cara spoke up. “You four go on. I'll get Flynt to put the baby seat in my car and take Lena home with me.”

“Oh, honey, are you sure?” Grace asked the question, but clearly only for the sake of form.

“Absolutely.”

Grace turned to Flynt and Josie. “Well, now. What do you two say to that?”

Flynt leaned close to Josie. “Do you get the feeling we couldn't get out of brunch if we tried?”

Josie elbowed him in the ribs and told his mother, “Brunch in the Empire Room sounds just great.”

 

At Harvey Small's recommendation, they all had eggs Benedict. That time he didn't steer them wrong. The sauce was smooth and tasty, the eggs poached to perfection. They had fresh-squeezed orange juice, too, and the coffee was excellent. Josie couldn't quite finish hers, after the huge breakfast she'd eaten earlier, but she gave it her best effort, because it all tasted so good.

Josie spotted Rose at a table halfway across the room, with a woman Josie thought she recognized as Kate Wainwright, Rose's mother. Kate and Archy Wainwright, Rose's father, didn't enjoy the kind of marital contentment that Grace and Ford shared. They had divorced years ago.

Rose caught Josie's eye when no one was looking. The two women shared a quick nod of mutual acknowledgment. After that, Josie took care not to look Rose's way again, lest she somehow betray the secret she had sworn to keep.

As on Friday night, people kept dropping by the table. Either Grace or Ford would always make a point of introducing Josie. Josie would smile and say hello. There would be a moment or two more of casual chatting, and whoever it was would move on.

Judge Bridges, the tall, white-haired fellow who had represented Flynt and his buddies when Haley Mercado drowned, came over, too. As soon as Grace determined that he was alone, she insisted he join them. The judge didn't have to be asked twice. A waiter brought him a chair and a place setting and he said he would try the eggs Benedict, too.

“And how is the ‘mystery baby' doing?” he asked as he smoothed the snowy-white monogrammed napkin across his lap.

That set Grace off on what a darling Lena was. Such a sweet baby, a happy baby. A good eater, too. “I swear, she's grown an inch since she's been with us. Oh, and when that little beauty smiles, the world is a brighter place and that is no lie….”

Judge Bridges turned his white head Josie's way. “I think I heard that you're the one taking care of her?”

Josie nodded. “Grace is right. She's a darling.”

Grace gushed some more. “It's just like a gift, really, to have her with us. You know how I am. I've been longing for grandchildren. It's so wonderful to think I'm a grandma at last.”

The judge blinked. “Ah. Is that right? It's official, then?”

Grace frowned. “Official?”

“Ahem. Well. I understood there were some…test results pending.”

“That's right,” Flynt said in a patient tone.

“And?”

“No, Carl. The results haven't come through yet.”

“Ah.”

Grace waved a plump hand. “Oh, that. I'd forgotten all about that. We expect them any time now, don't we, Flynt?”

“Yeah, Ma. We do.”

“And what's next?” the judge asked. “When you finally know for certain, either way?”

Josie felt Flynt's eyes on her. She turned to him, met his gaze head-on and gave him a steady smile. He said, quietly, “We'll have to get back to you on that, Carl.”

“Long as I'm the first to know.”

 

Monday morning, Flynt woke before Josie.

He indulged himself for a minute or two, just lying there next to her, thinking that damned if this wasn't just how life should be. A man should fall asleep at
night exhausted from good loving with the right woman. When he woke in the morning, that woman should be there, beside him, her silvery hair all tangled on the pillow, a tiny, contented smile on her soft mouth. His sheets should smell of her, of soap and flowers and that indefinable sweetness that only her skin gave off.

He wanted to wake her with kisses and slow caresses, but he'd been loafing too much the past couple of days. He had a pile of things to do in his study and he had to get over to the club for lunch with a couple of cattlemen from Laredo.

Besides, for once, the monitor on the nightstand was silent. Might as well let the woman sleep until Lena woke and started making her demands.

Carefully he pushed the covers aside and slid from the bed. He tiptoed to his walk-in closet, got what he needed and headed for his bathroom.

Twenty minutes later he emerged, showered, shaved and fully dressed. In the bed, Josie slept on. He resisted the urge to bend down, brush a kiss on her cheek and another against her smooth throat.

He went to his study and had his breakfast brought up to him there. He worked until noon and stopped by Lena's room on his way out to meet with the men from Laredo.

He held the baby. He kissed his woman. And then he headed for the club.

He returned to the ranch at a little after four and
found Cara with the baby—which he'd more or less expected. At that time of day, Josie was usually gone for her visit with her mother.

He paused in the doorway just long enough to let Cara know he'd returned. “I'll be in my study. Tell Josie I'm there when she gets back in?”

“I'll let her know you're waiting for her.”

“Yeah,” he said, and knew he had the grin of a ridiculously happy man on his face. “Do that.”

In his study, he found a pile of mail to get through. Anita had left it where she always did, on the ebony tray table just inside the door. He grabbed up the stack of envelopes and circulars and carried it all to his desk to deal with in a while. The cattlemen from Laredo had given him a few ideas for improvement in the Carson breeding program. He had some figures he wanted to check right away, while it was all still fresh in his mind.

He'd brought up the spreadsheet program on his laptop and was just settling in for some serious number crunching when the phone rang—the outside line.

He picked it up. “Flynt Carson.”

“Hello, Mr. Carson. It's Eliza Guzman.”

Lena's caseworker. Flynt snapped to attention in his chair. “Yeah. Hi. How are you?”

“I'm doing well, thanks. I received the results of your test today. You should have them, too, I'd imagine. We need to discuss what we want to do next.”

“Next?” he echoed. What did that mean?

“Yes. Where do we go from here? That's the question, and we need to come up with some answers.”

“Oh. Right.” He grabbed the pile of envelopes off his desk and started going through them. “I don't…just a minute…”

“Sure.” The social worker waited.

He found the envelope—a full-size FedEx letter mailer. Which shouldn't have surprised him, as he'd arranged to have the test results sent to him that way. He had a lot of stuff sent via courier, though, so the damn thing hadn't stood out in the pile.

All at once, his mouth had a dry, coppery taste. He wanted a drink—more than
wanted.
In fact, the need was so intense at that moment, it almost doubled him over.

He tore off the strip that sealed the mailer shut, reached in and took out the smaller envelope inside. It, too, was sealed shut. He slid back his chair, yanked open the pencil drawer, got out a letter opener and sliced the envelope along the top fold.

He ripped out the single sheet of paper inside, read it over quickly, then read it again. And again.

After three times through, he began to accept what it said—that there was no possibility Lena could be his child.

N
ot his.

Lena was not his.

“Mr. Carson?”

“Uh, yeah. Right here.”

“You did receive the letter from the lab, then?”

“Yeah. Got it.”

“You understand what it—”

“Yeah. I've read it.”

“Well,” said the social worker. “Then you can see why I've called. Most likely, at this point, you'll want me to come and pick up the child. We have several options for her care and—”

“What options?” he growled into the phone.

“Well, foster care, actually. We have a sort of halfway house she can go to right away and—”

“A halfway house.”

“Yes.”

“You're saying there's no one, really, to take her.”

“Well, until we can discover who the real parents are, we'll just have to—”

“She stays here.”

There was dead silence from the other end of the line.

Flynt realized that, perhaps, barking orders was not the best way to handle this. He gentled his tone. “I mean, if we can work it out, I think it would be best for Lena to remain here. Until we can…find out more, find out who she belongs to.” He thought of Tyler. Of Spence. And Michael.

And Luke, damn it. Still off somewhere. As far as Flynt knew, no one had seen Luke Callaghan in several weeks now.

Flynt went on, polite but insistent, “It makes the most sense, don't you think? You've already approved things here at the ranch, and Lena seems happy here.”

There was another silence. Then the social worker said, “Well, that really might be best. If you're sure that would work for you….”

He saw Lena's sweet, round face in his mind, those blue eyes he'd been telling himself she got from him. “I'm sure.”

“I'll need to schedule a home visit right away, so I can note that the child is being well cared for. A matter of form, that's all. But necessary.”

“No problem.”

“Tomorrow, then? Say, around nine in the morning? Will that do?”

“Yes. Nine is good.”

The social worker said goodbye. He set the phone down.

He tried to go back to the spreadsheet, but it was no good. None of those columns of figures meant a damn thing to him right then. He shut it down.

After that, he just sat there, wanting a drink. And waiting for Josie to knock on the door.

 

Holding a finger to her lips, Cara rose from the rocker. She tiptoed from the baby's room and joined Josie in the hallway, pulling the door silently shut behind her.

Josie spoke softly. “How long has she been down?”

“Maybe half an hour.” Cara grinned. “I'd say you've got a little time to yourself.”

“Wonderful. Where's Flynt?” Just saying his name caused something hot and sweet to flare inside her.

“In his study.”

“He's probably working and doesn't want to be interrupted.”

Cara was giving her that teasing grin. “That would depend on who interrupted him.”

“Well,” Josie said, grinning right back, “you think he'll be glad to see me?”

“I know he will.”

Josie stopped in her own room for a minute, to put her purse away and grab the receiver for the baby
monitor. Then she went on down the hall to the room at the end, right across from his bedroom. She tapped twice on the door.

From the other side, she heard his voice. “It's open.”

His desk faced the door. He was sitting behind it, a pile of unopened mail and his shut laptop in front of him. He appeared to be doing nothing.

“Flynt?” Something was wrong. He sat too still. And the way he stared at her…

The warmth inside faded, to be replaced by a chill that slithered along beneath the surface of her skin. Prickly and frightening.

“Flynt?”

“Come in. Shut the door.”

She did as he instructed, then found herself hovering there, her back against the door, her stomach in a hard, cold knot. “What has happened?”

“Come here.”

Suddenly she was thinking of that night last summer. That night she brought him his dinner—into this very room—and he grabbed her hand, almost grinding the bones. And he pulled her close and kissed her.

And then carried her to his bed.

But no. There might be a similar intensity radiating from him as on that night, but it wasn't the same. That wasn't unsatisfied desire she saw in his eyes. It was something much darker and much more complex.

He picked up a white sheet of paper from the desk. “Here. Look.”

She knew then. Even before she made herself go to him and take the paper from his hand, even before she read over the proof of what she'd been trying to get him to see for two weeks now.

She set the letter on the desk, put the baby monitor on top of it and made herself meet his eyes.

He said, “So. You weren't lying.” It sounded like an accusation.

What had she expected? She had known all along that when he finally had to face the truth about this, it would be very tough.

She restated the facts, keeping her voice calm and low. “I told you I wasn't lying. I told you over and over. You wouldn't believe me. Even though I think you know I am no liar.”

He looked at her for a long bleak moment. Then he muttered, “Yeah. I know.” He shoved his chair back.

She flinched at the sudden, violent movement. She was, after all, Rutger Lavender's daughter. Where she came from, when a man made a fast, angry move, it was usually a good idea to get out of his way.

She flinched—but she held her ground. Flynt was not her daddy, thank God. Flynt would never raise his hand to a woman.

He didn't come toward her. He paced around the
other side of the big desk and then stopped with his back to her.

She waited. She didn't have anything that terrific to say right then, anyway.

Finally he turned her way again. “I wanted to think that Lena was your one lie. Your only lie. A lie I could forgive you, given the circumstances.”

“I know that,” she said softly.

“Then why, knowing that the truth would come out soon enough, did you come back here? Why the hell didn't you just stay away? Why did you have to start in with me all over again, put us through this all over again?”

“Flynt. I told you why. I told you from the first. Because I wanted another chance with you. Because I'm good with children, and that baby in the other room needed someone like me. Because I saw the look in your eyes that night when you came knocking on my bedroom window at my mama's house. You
wanted
Lena to be ours, wanted it so much that it gave me hope, gave me the will to fight for your heart.”

He was shaking his head. “I told you, Josie. Loud and clear. There is no chance with me. There never was a chance with me.”

She couldn't let him get away with that one. “Oh, yes, there was. If that letter had said Lena was ours, you'd be asking me to marry you right now, and we both know it.”

He was silent—for a few weighted seconds, anyway, in deference to the truth in her words. But then he said, “Lena is not ours.”

“That's right.” Josie stood tall, kept her head high. “So take a big risk. Ask me to marry you, anyway.”

He only looked at her, his face carefully composed and his eyes somewhere else, somewhere far away in a place she could never go.

She forged on. “All right. Don't ask me. I'll ask you.” She came around the end of the desk and started toward him.

“Josie, stop.”

But she didn't stop. She marched right up to him and she dropped on one knee, snaring his hand. “Flynt Carson, I love you. I want to spend my life with you. I want to have your babies and raise those babies, watch them grow strong and tall. I want…the two of us. I want what we are and what we can be. What we can build together if we stand side by side. I want my hope fulfilled and my dreams to come true. If you say yes, it will be a big step in that direction. So, will you please marry me?”

He was looking down at her. But he wasn't saying yes. Nothing about him said yes. He tugged on the hand she held. “Get up, Josie. Please.”

Something happened in her heart then—a sort of shrinking feeling. She was getting nowhere. She was down on her knees and his answer was still no.

His answer was and always would be no.

So who was the fool here? Who was the pitiful, deluded fool?

She let go of his hand and stood. “It was a big step for you, to give up drinking,” she said quietly. “To live your life straight. But you're still not really living, Flynt Carson. Not until you give up that guilt you carry around with you like it was something so precious, so sacred, so special.”

He didn't say anything. He wore a tired, patient expression, as if he was only waiting for her to run out of words.

She hadn't. Not yet. “You wear your guilt like a medal, Flynt. It means more to you than that Silver Star you won in the war. It means more to you than I do. A whole lot more. More to you than—”

“Stop.” His voice was ice-cold. “Just stop. Let it go, Josie.”

“No, I won't. I will have my say, even though I can see in your eyes that I've lost this fight. That I never had a chance—not unless I'd had your baby, not unless you could believe you had a duty to marry me. Oh, now, you think about that. Now that is just plain crazy, if you ask me. You would marry me for duty's sake but not because you love me. Not because you know that together we could be something really good—and you do know that, don't you?”

“Josie—”

“Just say it. Just admit it. We could be the kind of partners married people ought to be. We could build
us a fine life, a life with room for lots of children, children who could grow up and give back to this world.”

He uttered her name again, his voice low and ragged.

“Say it, Flynt. Say that you know it.”

He tried to turn from her.

She didn't let him. She grabbed his arm, pulled him back around. “Say it.”

“All right, damn you.” He shook off her hand and then confessed roughly, “I know it. Now, are you satisfied?”

“No. No, I am not satisfied. How could I be? To give yourself permission to love me only for duty's sake, that is so…sad and crazy. That is plain wrong. That is right next-door to evil, Flynt Carson. You have to see that.”

He opened his mouth to say something, then shut it and looked away. “You don't understand.”

“Well, fine. If I don't, then you explain it to me. You make me understand.”

“Monica
knew,
damn it.” The words seemed to come from him of their own accord.

“What?”

He said it again, flatly this time. “Monica knew.”

“What? She knew what?”

“That I…that I had…noticed you. That you were there, in the back of my mind. She knew it before I knew it. She knew it that night. The night that she
died. That's what she was mad about, what we fought about in the car. She said she didn't like the way I looked at you. She said there she was, fat and ugly, giving me the baby I wanted so much, and I was looking at the housekeeper.”

“But that's not true, Flynt. You know it's not. I was the housekeeper and that's all I ever was to you until a long time after Monica was gone.”

He waved a hand. “I told her she was nuts. And you're right, at the time I believed it myself, believed I hadn't so much as looked in your direction. I remember how I felt. Self-righteous and furious that she would dare to accuse me of putting moves on the household help.”

“So you did tell her, right? You told her she had it wrong?”

His mouth twisted bleakly. “That's what I should have said. Gently, reasonably. Or I should have said nothing, till later. I should have kept silent while I was driving that car on that cold winter's night on that very icy road. But I didn't. I said, ‘Damn it, Monica. You are off your rocker. You are certifiably nuts.”'

Josie shook her head.

Flynt shrugged. “I know. Seriously bad move. It just made her madder. She called me a bastard and grabbed the steering wheel.”

“Oh, God,” Josie whispered.

“You know the rest. And you know how it turned out. That I wanted you, after all. That she was right.”

“Flynt, it's what you
did
that matters. And you did nothing. Nothing. You never so much as looked at me. You didn't. Not till long after Monica was dead.”

“I just can't…it stays with me. That she wouldn't have died if I hadn't been so damn self-righteous about the whole thing. She'd be alive and so would the baby.”

“Would she?”

He gave her a dark look. “What is that supposed to mean?”

“Just that you can't know what would have happened if you could go back. You can't go back. You can only live now. And if you don't live now, you might as well be in the grave with your dead wife and that poor little baby that never even got to be born.”

He turned away again.

She thought she had already accepted the fact that she'd lost him. Still, it was like a knife turning inside her when he said, “I'm sorry, Josie. Whatever excuses you try to make for me, I can't accept them. It's not going to work. I want you to go.” He turned on his heel and went back to the desk, where he pulled one of those big professional-size checkbooks out of a drawer, grabbed a pen and filled out a check. He tore the thing off and held it out. “Here's what I
owe you. Go home to your mama. Make yourself a decent life. Find a decent guy.”

Josie stared at that check, knowing she should have at least been a little bit prepared for what was happening. But somehow, she hadn't. She'd imagined that it would be rough, yes. But in her heart she'd been certain love would win in the end. That it would all work out to a sweet happily-ever-after for the two of them.

Naive, that was what both Flynt and Rose Wainwright had called her. She guessed they were right.