Stroke of Fortune

by Christine Rimmer

  “Flynt?”

  He didn’t answer. He turned from her and carried Lena back to her crib, laid her down. Those innocent eyes looked up at him, that little mouth moving, hand still waving.

  Behind him, Josie said nothing.

  Damn her.

  It wasn’t the first time she’d presumed more than she should have with him.

  She was the one, after all, who had shamed him into getting sober a year and a half ago. She’d told him off good and proper, when no one else had the guts to do it.

  Shocked the hell out of him, when she did that.

  Josie, of all people. Josie, who looked after him, who took care of him, who kept her mouth shut and her eyes down.

  For a year or so after the accident, she’d coddled him. There was no other word for it. She’d help him stagger to his bedroom late at night when he was still just sober enough to get there before he passed out. And when he passed out before he got there, she’d take off his shoes and put a blanket over him. She’d clean up his messes.

  For that year, she gave him just what he needed in a woman: a combination nanny and servant. She had the patience of a saint. If someone had told him ahead of time that it was his housekeeper who would finally get him to put the cork in the bottle, he’d have laughed them right out of Texas.

  People did try in that year to talk to him about his drinking. His mother had come after him, and his father. They’d even sent Judge Bridges in one day to try to make him see the light.

  He’d ignored them all and kept on drinking.

  And then, a year and a half ago, in December, Josie came into his study one morning when he was still passed out at his desk and she pulled all the curtains wide-open, letting in the hard, clear light of day. He’d groaned, growled at her to get out, and then turned his head away from the light.

  He hadn’t bargained on her bringing a bucket of ice water with her. She threw it on him.

  He came out of that desk chair bellowing, calling her a number of very bad names. He grabbed for her—and she slapped him, hard.

  And then she started talking.

  She told him off good and proper for throwing his life away. She called him a coward. She said he had no right at all to treat his body that way. She said he was hurting not only himself, but everyone who cared about him, by carrying on the way he was.

  She said it was time he quit rolling around in his own self-pity. That he had to pick himself up off the floor and get on with his life.

  Somehow, when Josie told him off, it worked. He hadn’t had a drink since that December morning.

  And she’d gone back to doing her job. They hardly spoke, except for the kind of things that pass between a man and a member of his household staff.

  “Coffee, Mr. Carson?”

  “Yeah—by the way, did you pick up those shirts?”

  “They’re in your closet.”

  “Great, Josie. Thanks.”

  But he was more aware of her than before. He felt the tension building between them. He noticed things he shouldn’t: that she had pretty, slim hands with long, graceful fingers. That her neck was white and smooth and seemed to beg to have his mouth on it. That she had breasts just the right size to fill his hands…

  And then came that night in July. It was a week-night, the twelfth. The day had been a scorcher.

  He’d arrived home from a series of meetings and property tours in Corpus. It was after eight and he went straight to the air-conditioned comfort of his own rooms, not pausing to greet anyone in the family. He wanted a drink. Since that wasn’t an option, he’d reconciled himself to settling for some food and some peace and quiet, followed by a shower and a good night’s sleep. He’d ordered a tray sent up to his study.

  He was there, at his desk—the same desk she’d splattered with ice water six months before—when Josie brought him the tray. He had his laptop open and he was studying some drawings for prospective additions to one of the family’s apartment complexes.

  She entered quietly, as always. She could move into a room, do whatever needed doing there and leave again with no one the wiser. But in his study, the desk faced the door. He saw her come in.

  He knew he should tell her to put the tray down on the low table across the room. But when he opened his mouth, the wrong thing came out.

  “I’d like it over here, Josie.” He indicated a clear spot on his desk.

  She came toward him, her head down just a little, not making eye contact, looking at the tray as if she didn’t dare not look at it.

  She reached his side. He smelled the clean, dewy scent of her. She put the tray down right next to him.

  Before she could slide silently away, he caught her hand—just reached out and snared it—and held on way too tight.

  She gasped. Then she met his eyes and whispered his name. “Flynt?”

  He was up out of the chair, yanking her into his arms, pulling her as close as he’d been dreaming he might get her and bringing his mouth down to taste hers, at last….

  In the crib, the way babies will, Lena had dropped off to sleep. She simply shut her eyes and in one split second she went off to dreamland, her little mouth slightly open.

  Behind him, Josie remained silent.

  He had to hand it to her. The woman had nerves of steel to stick there the way she was, saying nothing, waiting for the moment when he’d have to turn and deal with her.

  He gave in, straightening and turning to face her. “I don’t like to talk about Monica.”

  “I know.”

  He let an endless minute or two go by before he spoke again. “I met her on a business trip to Atlanta.”

  “Yes. I heard that somewhere. That she was from Atlanta.”

  “Is there anything you haven’t heard?” He spoke roughly.

  She refused to be put in her place by his tone. “Yep,” she replied downright cheerfully. “I never heard why you married her.”

  “So you asked.”

  “That’s right.”

  He probably should have told her to mind her own business and turned and left her there to do the job he’d hired her for. But he didn’t.

  “You saw her. All that black hair, those pale eyes and that white, white skin. And a Waverly. The Waverlys are a very important family in Atlanta.” There was a butterfly mobile over Lena’s crib. He tapped it and the butterflies danced. “Monica was an only child, pampered, thoroughly self-absorbed.”

  “Just your type, huh?”

  He sent her a lowering look. “I’ll pretend you didn’t say that.”

  She dared to shrug. “Suit yourself.”

  He turned to her fully, folding his arms across his chest. “What happened to the quiet, unassuming housekeeper I used to know?”

  Her gaze did not waver. “I’m not your housekeeper anymore.”

  “No. Now you’re the nanny.”

  She shrugged again. And she waited for him to go on.

  He went ahead and obliged her. “Let’s see. Why did I marry Monica? Well, for all the wrong reasons, obviously. Because she was beautiful. I really liked the way she danced, the way she laughed, the way all the other men wanted her. I wanted her. You could say I was…dazzled by her, I suppose. She was a prize to be won. I wanted to bring her home and show her off. One of the Atlanta Waverlys. My wife.”

  “Are you saying that you never loved her?”

  “Love.” He gave the word back to her, his ambivalence about it clear in his tone.

  “What does that mean? Did you love her or not?”

  “All right. Yeah, I loved her—or at least I thought at the time that what I felt for her was love. But looking back, with all the wisdom hindsight affords…” He let the thought finish itself.

  Josie said, “Well, I did get the picture that you wanted to start a family and she didn’t. That always seemed to be a problem between you.”

  Denials rose to his lips. He didn’t voice them. They would have been lies and Josie would have recognized them as such. After all, Monic
a had never been the quiet type. Whatever was on her mind came right out of her mouth. Josie had heard it all, especially after Monica finally got pregnant. Monica had hated watching her figure go and her ankles swell and she’d made no secret of her feelings.

  “I was ready for a family. Or at least, I thought I was. I’d been to college, been a soldier and a prisoner of war. Came back a hero—and then got myself in that big, ugly mess when Haley Mercado drowned.” He looked at her measuringly. “You know all about Haley Mercado, right?”

  “Well, Flynt, I do read the newspapers.”

  “It was our fault. Mine, Luke Callaghan’s, Tyler Murdoch’s and Spence Harrison’s.”

  “Wait a minute. The way I remember it, they found all four of you not guilty, at the trial.”

  “Carl Bridges got us off. That doesn’t mean we weren’t at fault. We were heroes home from the war. We were very drunk and very full of ourselves. We goaded Haley into going on a midnight boat ride on Lake Maria with us. The boat capsized and we all went under. Haley never resurfaced.”

  “It was an accident.”

  “She shouldn’t have been in that boat. She wouldn’t have been in that boat. We razzed her like hell until she finally went with us.”

  Josie studied him from across the room, her pose a mirror of his, arms folded over those beautiful breasts. “You’re way too guilty about too many things.”

  “Maybe I have a lot to be guilty about.”

  “Everybody has a lot to be guilty about. It’s called being human. You pick yourself up off the floor and you try again. You do better the next time.”

  “Oh?”

  She dipped her head in a nod. “Yeah.” A lock of that white-blond hair of hers drifted over her shoulder. She lifted a hand and guided it out of the way behind her ear.

  He wanted to do that—to be able to reach out and smooth her hair, to run a finger over the silky skin of her soft cheek. To cross the room, right now, and reach for her. To pull her close and—

  He cut off the thought before it could get too dangerous. He didn’t have the right to touch her.

  Not yet. In a couple of weeks, maybe.

  But for now…

  “Any more ‘whys’ for me tonight, Josie?”

  “Hmm,” she said, as if the question required serious consideration. Then she smiled. “No. I think that’ll do it for now. You can go.”

  The cable people came at ten the next morning to install the line for Josie’s Internet connection. It always surprised her how fast a thing could get done when a Carson gave the order for it.

  By that evening she had everything all set up. Her room’s one window looked out on a pretty, sheltered section of the garden. She put the desk there. When Lena didn’t need her, she could be at the computer, writing in the journal she kept on disk, playing games and continuing her e-mail correspondence with a few friends she’d made at the day-care center and in that waitress job she’d had while she lived in Hurst.

  It would be nice sometimes simply to sit there at the window and read a book—she’d always liked to read. And then she had those three hours a day for going to her mother’s and making sure Alva had everything she needed.

  The nanny job would be fine. She’d keep busy even in the quiet times when Lena was napping.

  That whole first day Josie was aware of a kind of edgy, excited feeling, as if there were a thousand tiny butterflies trapped just under her skin, waiting for a certain signal to begin beating their wings.

  The signal being Flynt Carson’s presence, of course.

  The night before had raised her hopes a little. He had, after all, answered more or less honestly when she’d asked about Monica. She kept imagining more conversations in the same vein. She would get him to open up about himself, and she would share with him all the secrets of her heart.

  By the time he got the results of that paternity test, those results wouldn’t matter. He’d have realized that the two of them were meant to spend their lives side by side.

  Josie didn’t see him that whole day. He was most likely off empire building or out playing cowboy, getting his hands dirty with real ranch work alongside Matt.

  Cara appeared to relieve her when the time came to check on Alva. Three hours later, when Josie returned to the ranch, she ran into Flynt’s father in the back hall. Ford Carson was dressed in work clothes, with manure on his boots.

  “Hello, Josie,” he said in that deep, rather gruff voice of his, thick white eyebrows drawn together, eyes narrowed, as if he wanted to check inside her head and make sure there was nothing suspicious going on in there. Josie had always thought of Flynt’s father as a fair and good-natured man, a man who loved his wife and seemed pretty happy with how his life had turned out. The probing way he looked at her now made her feel more than a little bit nervous.

  Josie put on a friendly smile. “Nice to see you, Mr. Carson.”

  “How have you been?”

  “Just fine.”

  “Glad to hear it. I understand you’ll be taking care of little Lena for us.”

  “Yes, that’s right.”

  “Good, then.” He went on looking at her in that odd, intent way. She had the distinct impression he wanted to say something to her but didn’t quite know where to start. “Well,” he said, finally, gruffer than ever, “you’ve just been to see your mother, I suppose?”

  “Yes.”

  “She’s okay?”

  “She’s fine.”

  “All right. I hope…things are working out.”

  “Things are just fine.”

  “Glad to hear that. Yes. Real good.”

  Josie hurried to her own room to drop off a few purchases she’d made for herself when she stopped at the store to shop for her mother. Then she ducked into the bathroom to wash her hands.

  Finally she entered the baby’s room to find that Grace had taken over for Cara.

  Grace turned a cool smile on Josie. “Ah, there you are.”

  “Am I late?”

  “No. You’re right on time.”

  Grace let the smile fade. Without it, she looked vaguely put-upon, as if Josie had injured her or insulted her somehow.

  But a lady was a lady, after all. Grace couldn’t stop herself from asking, “How is your mother doing, Josie?”

  “Better, Mrs. Carson. Better all the time.” Yes, all right. The improvement, according to the doctors, was most likely only temporary. But Grace Carson didn’t need to hear the depressing details.

  Grace stood from the rocker, slowly, careful of the baby in her arms. “You give her my very best, will you?”

  “I sure will. And thank you.”

  “Josie, I…”

  Josie waited, wearing an expression of polite attention, for Flynt’s mother to find the right words.

  At last, they came. “You know, you’ve got your whole life before you. You’re young. Quite lovely. And I know you’re very bright.”

  In Josie’s experience, when people felt a need to start out by listing your good points, bad news was sure to follow. She didn’t like the sound of this. She ventured a cautious, “Thank you.”

  Grace gave a tight little nod. “You must have boyfriends, social activities you hate to miss. I would think this kind of job would be so…limiting for you.”

  Josie caught on then. Grace knew. She’d picked up on the tension between the housekeeper-turned-nanny and her older son. She might not know how far it had gone, but she did know now that an attraction existed.

  And she didn’t approve.

  Suddenly that narrow-eyed look of Ford’s in the back hall made a bleak kind of sense. He’d wanted to talk to her, all right.

  He’d wanted to tell her to stay away from his son.

  What had she expected? For them to throw open their arms and beg her to join the family?

  Yes, some very young, hopeful voice in the back of her mind whispered ardently. Yes, I did expect that.

  “You’ll be here, in these two rooms, so much of the time.” Gra
ce clucked her tongue. “I can’t believe you’ll be happy, with only this baby for company day in and day out.”

  Josie kept her shoulders back and her head high. “Mrs. Carson, I told you yesterday in the interview, I love babies. And I’m good with them. I will be happy alone with Lena. And as far as all those other things you mentioned, well, in my life there hasn’t been a lot of time for boyfriends and partying.”

  “There should be.”

  “Should doesn’t mean a lot to me. There’s what is. And there’s what I’ll make of what life has handed to me. That’s about it.”

  “I think you should consider carefully.” There it was—another should. Grace didn’t even seem to realize she’d said it. She went on, “Ford and I would be willing to—”

  Josie put up a hand. “Please don’t say anything we’ll both regret later.”

  One of Grace’s slim eyebrows inched toward her hairline. “Pardon me?”

  “Let me put it this way. If you had some idea of making me an offer to just go away again… Well, I wouldn’t take it and we’d both always know that you had made it. So we’d both be better off if you never offered and I never knew for sure that you meant to.”

  Grace’s hand, gently stroking Lena’s feathery curls, went still. “You know, Josie, it’s possible that you are a little too smart for your own good.”

  Too smart for her own good.

  It was what her daddy used to say to her—usually just before he whacked her upside the head. Josie had always wanted to talk right back to him, to tell him that yes, she was very smart. Smarter than he was, for certain. And that brains, no matter what some folks would like a girl to believe, were a blessing and she was proud to have them.

  Josie considered saying that very thing to Grace Carson right then. But she didn’t. She also had a big urge to just get it all out there, to tell Flynt’s mother proudly that yes, it was true. She was after the Carson’s precious older son and before she gave up this time around, she planned to put up one hell of a fight.

  But what would saying something like that accomplish? What she and Flynt had or didn’t have together was between the two of them. His family had to be secondary. The Carsons’ disappointing attitude toward Josie would be a problem only if there was a relationship in the first place.