Fletcher's Baby!

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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