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.
Once, the year she’d turned fifteen, even Sam had been here for the celebration. He’d given her a gift.
Of course she’d known he hadn’t picked it out especially for her. He’d been on his way back home from his first solo buying trip to the Orient and he’d stopped to see Hattie and Walter on his way.
It was the first time she’d met him. And the minute she did, her fantasies took on a whole new dimension. Next to the high school boys she knew, Sam was a god. Lean and lithe, not to mention more than a little handsome, he set Josie’s heart to going double time. But it was more than his looks that attracted her. It was the enthusiasm with which he threw himself into helping Walter. She’d expected Sam would find scraping and painting Walter’s boat beneath him. But he stripped off his shirt and pitched right in, laughing and talking to Walter—and sometimes even to her.
He and Walter compared what Walter called “sea stories” —tales of travels hither and yon. Josie had heard and enjoyed most of Walter’s before. But she hung on every word of Sam’s. He’d been everywhere, done everything—and enjoyed it all. Josie listened, enthralled. After that, she made sure that wherever he was, she wasn’t far away.
He must have noticed—and enjoyed—her attention, for, on her birthday, after she’d opened the gifts Hattie and Walter had given her, Sam offered her a small square box.
“It’s just something I picked up on my trip,” he told her, almost apologetically, when she opened the box. “Not much.”
To Josie it meant the world. She was stunned by the beauty of the tiny jade horse she found nestled inside. She caressed it with one careful finger, then smiled at it as it stood on the palm of her hand.
“Thank you,” she told him, her heart in her eyes. “I’ll treasure it.”
He looked embarrassed. “No big deal.”
But it was to Josie.
She still had that tiny horse sitting on her dresser. She still remembered that birthday as the best she’d ever had. She had dreamed of other birthdays with Sam to share them—for months afterward.
But eventually she grew up and realized that Cinderella stories didn’t happen in real life.
And so she was pleased when Kurt began to come around. He wasn’t gorgeous like Sam, but he was easy on the eyes. He wasn’t well travelled like Sam, but he’d certainly been farther than she had. He was often preoccupied, rarely attentive. But he needed her, which was more than Sam did. That was a start.
She’d met Kurt when she’d baked cookies for a church bake sale. He’d snagged one off the plate, told her they were marvelous and asked if she’d bake him some as well. She’d baked a lot of cookies for him since, and gone to a lot of church suppers and typed a fair number of papers that Kurt didn’t have time to type for his work on his Master of Divinity degree because he was, as he put it, “ministering to his flock.”
Josie understood. She was flattered that he thought enough of her to want to spend his few free moments with her. It wasn’t as if there were a lot of other men clamoring for her attention.
The only man she ever wished would was Sam Fletcher.
And then she learned he was engaged.
The despair she felt the afternoon that Hattie told her Sam was getting married astonished her. She hadn’t seriously thought he’d ever be interested in her, had she?
Well, no, but...
But, until he’d got engaged, somewhere in the back of her mind she’d dared hope.
With Sam’s engagement to Isobel Rule, Josie knew her dreams were dust. She hoped no longer. She focused on Kurt.
Still, she was stunned when he proposed to her in May.
“You want to get married? Us?” she said, not sure she’d heard right.
Kurt smiled and nodded, then leaned forward to brush a kiss across her lips. “Of course, us,” he said. “Why not? We make a good team.”
And, indeed, Josie thought, why not? They did make a good team: Kurt took care of the world, and Josie took care of Kurt.
“Do you love me?” she asked him.
“Of course I love you.”
She knew what he meant. Kurt loved everyone.
When she was alone, later, she said their names together. “Kurt and Josie. Josie and Kurt.” She liked the sound of it. It made her feel a part of something.
And if it didn’t have the same ring as “Sam and Josie”—well, she really hadn’t expected that, had she?
And she did love Kurt the way he loved her.
So she said yes. They planned to get married the following year, after Kurt got his Master’s and found a church. It seemed a long time, but Josie didn’t mind waiting. They were still a couple.
For Kurt’s birthday in July she got them reservations at a romantic riverside restaurant. She took a long time deciding on gifts for him, finally getting him the collected works of a theologian he particularly admired and a CD by the jazz group he liked that he’d gone to see in Chicago. She also knitted him a
sweater in shades of blue that brought out the depths of his eyes and baked him a batch of his favorite butterscotch cookies.
He was delighted. He kissed her and told her how much it meant to him—how much she meant to him. And then he apologized because they wouldn’t be able to use the dinner reservations. He had a church meeting to go to.
Josie understood. She smiled gamely and canceled the reservations. There would be other times, she assured him—and herself.
“Of course there will,” he promised. “We’ll go on your birthday.”
She hugged the thought to herself and, when her September birthday rolled around, Josie made the reservations again.
Maybe she should have let Kurt do it. If she had, he might have remembered.
She reminded him. The night before, as he left after coming to eat supper and pick up the paper she’d typed for him, she said, “Don’t forget dinner tomorrow night. Six-thirty.”
“Dinner,” he said absently, and dropped a kiss on her forehead.
She watched him walk down the drive, his head bent, his eyes already scanning down the work she’d done.
“What are you cooking him tomorrow night?”
The sound of Sam’s voice behind her made her jump. She’d thought she’d got used to him being in the house. He’d come almost two weeks before, silent and morose, and had thrown himself into working at whatever Hattie asked him to do.
Josie had waited for him to explain, but he hadn’t. He’d just sawed and banged and hammered.
The explanation had come from Hattie. “His engagement is off.”
Josie had tried desperately to ignore the leap of joy in her heart. In fact she’d tried desperately to ignore Sam. She didn’t want to love him anymore. He didn’t know she was alive. It was foolish to care. Besides, she had Kurt.
She ignored the sarcasm in Sam’s voice. “Nothing,” she said airily. “He’s taking me out.”
“Does he know that? You picked the place and made the reservation.”
“Because I want to go there,” she said through her teeth, “and Kurt’s very busy.”
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