Stroke of Fortune (4 page)

By the time he finished, he was the one staring out the windshield. He didn't have to turn to know she was watching him.

He made himself face her. “Look, Lena's safe now, that's what matters. And whatever—
however
—this happened, it can all be worked out. No one has to be to blame. Do you understand?”

She only looked at him.

He said, slowly and carefully, “I want you to tell me the truth. Is Lena ours?”

Her eyes were huge and dark as she slowly shook her head.

No.

By God, she was telling him no, that Lena wasn't hers…wasn't his. Wasn't
theirs…

She might as well have poleaxed him, popped him right between the eyes with a steel pipe.

He'd expected her to admit it.

But she hadn't.

And now that she'd denied it, did he believe her?

He wasn't sure. Josie Lavender was an honest woman, he knew that in his heart. And yet…

She was so young. Maybe the prospect of taking care of Lena alone had been too much for her. Maybe
she'd made the desperate mistake of leaving their baby for him to find and now she didn't know how to admit what she'd done.

Those huge eyes had gone soft and deep. “Oh, Flynt.” She barely mouthed the words. “I'm so sorry…”

What the hell did she mean by that?

He couldn't stop himself. He leaned across the seat and grabbed her. “Tell me, Josie.” He gave her a hard shake. “Tell me the truth.”

“Let go of me,” she commanded in a low voice. “I mean it, Flynt. Let me go now.”

He looked down at his own hands, at his fingers digging into the smooth skin of her arms. And he hated himself.

“God.” He released her, retreating to his own side of the cab. “I'm sorry.” He fisted a hand, hit the steering wheel with it. “It's just… It's no good, Josie. You can't hide the truth from me forever. I'm going to find out.”

“I gave you the truth.” She met his gaze dead-on. “I didn't get pregnant from that night we spent together. I didn't have your baby. I didn't have any baby. Ever. I don't know where that baby came from, but she is not mine.”

He felt compelled to warn her what would happen next. “I'm taking a test tomorrow. We'll know in two weeks or so if that baby is mine. If she's mine, then she's yours. There's been no one else but you. Do
you understand? The truth will come out, one way or the other.”

She was leaning on the door again. “I have to go.”

“Josie—”

“Just leave me alone, Flynt Carson. Just stay out of my life.” She pushed the door wide and jumped to the ground. Then she headed off down the street, walking fast, not looking back.

It took all the willpower he had in him, but he didn't go after her.

F
lynt should have gone home and he knew it.

But he couldn't face the questions in his mother's eyes right then—let alone the ones his father kept asking outright.

Ford Carson had come in from checking some downed fences with Flynt's younger brother, Matt, around four that afternoon. He'd gone looking for his wife and found her tending a baby.

He'd had a lot of questions, and he'd wanted answers on the spot. Ford was a fair and reasonable man, but he liked things clear and he liked them in order. Either Flynt had a daughter or he didn't. And if he did, who was the mother—and why the hell wasn't she taking care of her baby the way a mother should?

Flynt refused to give the old man the answers he demanded. So things were a little tense in the Carson house right then. Flynt wouldn't put it past his dad to come after him again that night. Ford would get nowhere, but that wouldn't stop him from trying.

After the grim and unsatisfying confrontation with Josie, Flynt just didn't feel up to fielding more ques
tions from his father. So when he came to the turnoff that led to the club, he took it. He found himself a nice, dim corner in the temporary structure they'd set up to house the bombed-out Men's Grill until the big-time architect they'd hired could finish building them a new one.

A young waitress, one he'd seen a lot around the club, Ginger Walton, came trotting up to take his order. “Your usual, right?”

He nodded.

“Then I can serve it to you.” It took him a moment to catch her meaning. She must be under twenty-one, which meant she'd be required to let the other waitresses handle the liquor orders when she worked in the Men's Grill.

But Flynt presented no problem for her. His “usual,” for the last year and a half, anyway, was club soda on ice.

When she returned with his drink, she had another waitress with her, a dark-eyed, faintly exotic-looking blonde. Flynt suppressed a sigh. There were a few drawbacks to the job of club president. One was the way the staff seemed to think he was just dying to meet each and every one of them. He never had the heart to disillusion them, so he was always saying hi and shaking hands. He did his best to keep their names straight, but there were a lot of them. Luckily for him, the majority wore name tags.

“Mr. Carson, this is Daisy Parker,” Ginger said.
“She's new. We've trained her in the Yellow Rose.” The Yellow Rose Café was the more casual of the other two restaurants at the club. “Now I'm showing her around the Men's Grill.” At the club, the wait staff received training in all three of the club's restaurants. That way they could work wherever Harvey needed them.

“Daisy.” He frowned. Something about her was familiar, he just couldn't put his finger on what—then again, maybe not. He shrugged. “Nice to meet you. Welcome to the Lone Star Country Club.”

Daisy Parker made a few polite noises. Then Ginger set his club soda in front of him and the two waitresses left him in peace. Flynt sipped his gutless drink and wished it was a Chivas on the rocks and stared into the middle distance, thinking of Josie, wondering if she might have been telling the truth when she said that Lena wasn't theirs.

No. More likely, she was lying in bed in that rundown shack of her mother's right about now, crying herself to sleep, eaten up by guilt over what she had done.

Ginger and the new waitress had retreated to one of the staff stations and begun folding the white linen napkins, each monogrammed with the letters
LSCC,
that were used in the Men's Grill and in the Empire Room, the club's most expensive restaurant.

The blonde said something, and Ginger laughed softly, not loud enough to disturb any of the men
smoking their cigars and sipping their whiskeys nearby. Then she leaned close to Daisy and whispered something in her ear. Daisy nodded, murmured a low reply. Flynt wondered again if he'd met the blonde somewhere before.

“Flynt,” said a voice at his shoulder. “How are you?” It was Judge Carl Bridges, stern-faced and sad-eyed as ever.

“Carl.” The men shook hands.

The judge indicated the empty chair opposite Flynt. “Mind if I join you?”

Flynt did mind. He'd rather sit and brood over Josie Lavender and the baby that might or might not be his. But his mama didn't bring him up to be outright rude. Besides, he owed the white-haired judge for getting him and his war-hero buddies out of a major jam in the past, owed him big time. If Carl Bridges didn't want to drink alone, Flynt would provide the company he needed. Anytime. Anywhere. “Be my guest.”

Carl took the chair and signaled for a waitress. Ginger sent over the new blonde, who greeted him politely and took his order of a bourbon and water on ice.

“Well,” Carl said when the waitress left them. “Heard from Luke Callaghan lately? I've been trying to get a hold of him, but he's not picking up the phone at the estate and his staff there is downright evasive about where the hell he could be.” Luke had more
money than the Carsons and the Wainwrights combined. He owned a huge place out at nearby Lake Maria that everyone referred to as “the estate.” Carl chuckled. “I suppose he's halfway around the world right now, playing baccarat at Monte Carlo, with a gorgeous woman hanging on his arm.”

Flynt shrugged. He'd always known there was more to Luke than the playboy image he showed to the world. They'd gone to the Virginia Military Institute together, served in the Gulf conflict side by side and even helped their former commander ferret out a money-laundering ring run out of the MCPD a few months back—the ring responsible for the bombing of the Men's Grill, as a matter of fact. There was no better man to have at your back in a tough situation.

But he didn't know where Luke was, and he told the judge as much. “All I know is he didn't make the golf game this morning. If he's in town, Luke always makes the game.”

Daisy returned with Carl's drink. He gave her a warm smile and a wink and then waited until she went back to folding napkins before he leaned across the table and pitched his voice low. “I heard your game this morning was interrupted at the ninth tee.”

Flynt suppressed a groan. “Who told you that?”

“What can I say? I have my sources, both at the MCPD and in the sheriff's office.”

Hell. He'd known this would happen. Once Spence
Harrison dragged the police and social services into the situation, all hope of keeping the story quiet was gone. “I'm trying to keep it low-key, Carl.”

“I understand. The child is at the ranch, right? Grace is looking after her?”

“Is there anything you
don't
know?”

Carl chuckled again. “Very little, and that's a fact.”

What could he say? “Your sources have it right.”

“You're keeping her?”

“If you mean, will she be staying at the ranch for a while, then yes. She will. Tomorrow we'll start the search for a nanny.”

“And then what?”

“Damn it, Carl. You can be as nosy as a maiden aunt.”

Carl raised his glass to Flynt in a quick salute. “You know how I am.” He took a sip. “I like to keep on top of what's happening in my district.”

“Yeah, well.” Flynt picked up his club soda and drank the rest of it. He set the glass down. “To put it to you straight, I don't really know what's happening. I'm taking a paternity test tomorrow. We'll have to wait for the results.”

“Ah,” said the judge. “Of course. I see…”

 

By Tuesday morning, the story of the mystery baby abandoned on the golf course for three war heroes and a top heart surgeon to find was all over town. All
the waitresses at the Mission Creek Café were talking about it.

Josie had the early shift that day. When she went in the back room for her midmorning break, another waitress, Margie Dodd, signaled her over and showed her the ad in the
Mission Creek Clarion.

“See there.” Margie sucked on a cigarette and blew out a stream of smoke through her nose, tapping a finger at the place she wanted Josie to see. “They're lookin' for a nanny out at Carson Ranch. Gotta be for the mystery baby.”

Josie knew she ought to just shake her head, shrug, mutter something meaningless and step outside for her break. But she did no such thing. She set down the Coke she'd poured for herself and she looked at the paper spread out on the table, at the words in bold print right where Margie's long red fingernail was pointing. “Loving, experienced nanny sought. Live-in position. Excellent salary, full benefits. References required. Inquire at Carson Ranch.”

Josie stared at that ad and couldn't stop a certain image from flashing through her mind—the image of Flynt's face, as he'd looked the other night. So bleak. So lonely. Staring at her through the darkness, demanding that she admit the abandoned baby was theirs.

Her throat closed up, just the way it had when she first raised the blind and saw him there beyond the
glass. Oh, she was a sucker for Flynt Carson, and that was a plain fact.

He was exactly the kind of man she'd sworn she'd never let herself get near—tortured and troubled, with an alcohol problem. Truly, considering the daddy she'd had, and the things that had happened in her life so far, she ought to know better.

She
did
know better.

But sometimes a person's heart just loved where it wanted to, no matter that her brain kept ordering it to stop.

Margie let out a dry cackle of laughter. “The mystery baby is Flynt Carson's, did you hear that?”

Josie swallowed. Hard. “I heard it, but—”

“No buts about it. It's his baby and he ain't sayin' who the mother is.”

“Maybe he doesn't know.”

Margie blew out more smoke and squinted at Josie through the thick fringe of her false eyelashes. “Yeah. Right. Now
that
makes a lot of sense.”

“Maybe he's not even the father. The way I heard the story, they're not sure who the father is.”

Margie grunted. “Oh, come on. Flynt Carson knows that's his baby. I'll bet a month's worth of tips on it. If he didn't know for sure, that baby wouldn't be out at Carson Ranch right now. We wouldn't be standin' here readin' this ad for a lovin' and experienced nanny—and he's gotta know who the mama is, too. He's protecting her, that's all. She'll be ass-deep
in alligators when the truth finally comes out. And she should be, too, walkin' off and leavin' her kid like she did.”

“Margie, we have no right to go judging a woman when we didn't see how it happened, and we don't know why she did what she did. Come to think of it, we don't even know for sure it was the baby's mama that left her.”

“It was the baby's mama. Everyone says so.”

“Well, maybe everyone is wrong. Maybe it was someone else altogether who left that baby on the golf course.”

“Humph,” Margie said and dragged hard on her cigarette. “Someone else like who?”

“Well, now, how would I know?”

Margie tipped her red head back and blew a couple of perfect smoke rings. “You said it. You
don't
know. It was the mother that did it. Mark my words.”

“Wow.” Ellie Switzer, who was eighteen and very sweet and constantly getting her orders mixed up, craned over Josie's shoulder to look at the ad. Ellie let out a dreamy sigh. “The Carson Ranch. I'd like to look around that place. They say the house is gigantic, got a pool and gorgeous gardens. And those twins. What a life, huh?” Besides a younger brother, Flynt had twin sisters, Fiona and Cara; the twins were in their twenties. “I wouldn't mind being them.”

“Well, you ain't,” said Margie with another dry cackle. She puffed on her coffin nail some more.
“And if you got questions about the Carson place, ask Josie here. She used to work for 'em. She was their housekeeper.” Josie must have flinched, because Margie did some more cackling. “Didn't think I knew that, did you? I got my ear to the ground, girl, and don't you forget it.”

Josie shrugged. This was Mission Creek, she reminded herself. And people did talk. “It's no secret that I worked for them,” she said with an offhand shrug.

Ellie giggled in delight. “You did, Josie, really? As their housekeeper?”

“That's right.”

“Oh, tell me. What's Fiona like? And that Flynt—he is one fine-lookin' man.”

“Humph,” said Margie. “Fine-lookin', he may be. But you heard about what happened to his wife, didn't you? And that other baby—the one his wife was carryin' the night she died?”

“I read all about it, right there in the
Clarion,
” Ellie declared. “They said it wasn't his fault. The road was icy, and he spun out.”

“Humph.”

“It wasn't his fault,” Ellie insisted. “And you have to admit—” she made a motion of fanning herself “—he is so hot. And Matt, too. They're both just to-die-for handsome, rich as they come and sort of…dangerous, you know?”

Josie wondered why she was still standing here,
listening to this. She picked up her Coke and started to turn away. But the stars in Ellie's eyes stopped her. Everybody had dreams, everybody longed for things they'd probably never get. It was human nature to fantasize a little about the folks who seemed to have it all.

“Come on, Josie,” Ellie pleaded. “Tell me. What's that Fiona Carson like?”

Josie surprised herself by answering frankly, “Spoiled and kind of spiteful sometimes. Way too wild. And a better person deep down than she even knows.”

“And Cara?”

“Just as beautiful as her sister.”

“Well, I know that. They are identical, after all.”

Josie grinned. “You didn't let me finish. I wanted to say she's just as beautiful as Fiona, but in a softer, gentler way.”

“What about Matt?”

“Matt Carson is—”