Not long.
Finn and Izzy and their entire entourage left at the end of the week. When they did, Josie jumped back into the innkeeping business with a vengeance.
The moment the rooms were empty, she was filling them up again. Obviously it was to be business as usual for her.
Still Sam postponed his departure. He knew from the way Josie looked at him that she wasn’t happy about it. But she didn’t say anything. So he stayed on.
It might have been easier to look as if he was needed if Jake hadn’t been such an easy-going baby. If he’d cried all night or fussed all day, thereby exhausting his mother, Sam could have said. You need to rest. I’ll take over for a while.
But Jake was a perfect baby. He slept a lot, he nursed a bit, and when he was awake he seemed content to simply take in his surroundings with wide, unfocused eyes and periodically to gurgle and coo. The moment he did cry, Josie snatched him up, cuddled him or nursed him, and went right on with what she was doing.
Sam was superfluous, and he knew it.
He prayed she’d say, Stay. He would have in a minute. He hoped she’d say, I need you, or, better yet, I love you. If she had, he’d have dug in for the duration.
But she didn’t. She barely looked at him, much less talked to him. It was obvious she wanted him out of her life.
So when Elinor called and said drily, “Remember me? Remember Fletcher’s? Remember Mr. Rajchakit? He needs you in Thailand. Now,” Sam had no reason not to go.
Josie was sitting across the room in the rocker with Jake in her arms. She was chatting with a couple of schoolteachers from Ann Arbor who had come for their twenty-fifth wedding anniversary.
Just outside the window another couple sat on the front porch swing and listened to the lowdown on Dubuque history from Benjamin. Down the way, by the fence overlooking the road, Cletus was cutting back the dead peonies. Overhead Sam could hear a vacuum running, pushed by one of the students.
“I’m leaving,” he interrupted Josie and the teachers. The words fell like stones into the conversation. Words dried up.
They all turned to look at him. He looked only at Josie. Her face was devoid of expression.
“I have to go to Thailand. This afternoon.”
“Thailand. This afternoon? Imagine that,” the woman schoolteacher said. “All the way from Dubuque! That’s what they must mean about living in a global village.”
“That’s what I tell my students.” Her husband pushed his glasses up on his nose. “Just last semester I said...”
Sam didn’t listen. He was looking at Josie. At Jake. At Josie again.
Say something, he said to her with his eyes. Give me a sign. A word. A look. Stop me.
She didn’t move. Didn’t even rock. Just sat, motionless, like a stone.
“—getting smaller every day,” the man said with satisfaction.
“Where in Thailand are you going?” his wife asked Sam eagerly.
“I was in Bangkok once,” her husband said. “After Vietnam. Just before the monsoon season...”
Sam watched Josie. Waited, hoped. Prayed.
“Have you ever been to Thailand, dear?” the woman asked Josie.
The words seemed to take a moment to penetrate. “What?” Josie looked startled, confused. She blinked, then shook her head. “N-no,” she said, and turned her gaze on the guest. “No, I haven’t. I probably never will.”
Jake developed colic.
Sam never knew.
Errol Flynn had kittens. He missed that, too.
Cletus missed the forsythia and sliced into his thumb with the pruning shears. Both of the students quit to go on vacation. Josie had to find others. She did, but it wasn’t easy.
Not that Sam ever knew.
He called her from Thailand. The connection was terrible. It crackled and popped and the delay was so long that they talked over the top of each other—when they talked at all.
It was awkward. Miserable. Worse, Josie thought, than if he hadn’t called at all.
He called her from New York when he got back. The connection was better. They didn’t talk over each other. The pauses seemed to last for hours, though in fact they were probably only seconds.
“How’s Jake?” he asked every time.
“Fine,” Josie said, whether or not it was true. Of course generally it was true. He wasn’t ill or anything, just colicky. Fussy.
“What’s he doing?”
“Sleeping,” she said. Or, “Nursing,” if he was doing that. She never said, Crying.
If she did he might think she wasn’t coping.
He seemed to think that anyway. “I could come if you need me,” he said to her at one point.
“No. Oh, no.”
Missing him was terrible, but having him there, seeing him day after day, watching him with Jake and not being able to touch him would be even worse.
There was a silence. Then, “Fine,” he said shortly. “It’s not like I don’t have plenty of work to do.”
They never asked about each other. Only Jake.
Because only Jake mattered.
Josie told herself that every day a thousand times, whenever she thought of Sam, whenever she missed him and wanted him. She told herself that at night as she curled her arms around her pillow and tried to sleep.
Only Jake mattered. It was a mantra, echoing in her head over and over.
But as long and as often as she said it, she knew it wasn’t true.
Sam mattered, too.
He bumped into Izzy in Central Park. Literally.
He was walking home from work, staring at his feet, filling up the hours, keeping himself away from the phone. It was like a lifeline—connecting him once a day to the two people on earth who gave meaning to his life. But they didn’t know it, and he couldn’t tell them. He could only grab on for a few minutes, ask a few awkward questions, listen to Josie’s equally awkward answers, take what joy he could from it, and then let go.
He had three hours to kill until he could call again this evening. He was counting the minutes when he ran into Izzy, in-line skating with the girls.
“Ooof!”
He looked up at the body he’d connected with in time to grab her before she went down. “Izzy! Are you okay?”
He hadn’t seen her since she and Finn and the girls had left Dubuque a month ago. A decade ago. A lifetime ago.
She clutched his arms to keep herself upright. “Sam! Fancy meeting you here!” She beamed and gave him a smacking kiss on the cheek, then pushed herself back from him and frowned. “You look like hell.”
“Thanks very much,” he said. “Sorry I can’t say the same.”
Izzy looked wonderful. There was a bloom about her. A glow that seemed to go with impending motherhood, even though Izzy was still barely showing. He remembered that glow very well. He’d seen it on Josie’s face.
“You shouldn’t be skating,” he said. “You could get hurt.”
“I’m pretty well padded,” Izzy replied “And I’ll stop when the doctor tells me to stop. Unless you’ve taken a medical degree since I last saw you.”
Sam scowled at her. The twins, having glanced back and noticed that Izzy had stopped, now skated back and surrounded him.
“Hi, Sam! Where’s Jake? Where’s Josie?”
“Yes,” Izzy said, looking around. “Where are Josie and Jake? When did you get back?”
“A couple of weeks ago.” Sam didn’t answer the other question. “How’ve you been?”
“Fine. I’m glad you’re back, though. I’ve been feeling this funny fluttery feeling, though. I think it might be the baby,” Izzy confided. “I want to compare notes with Josie.”
Sam looked at the ground. He looked past Izzy’s left ear. He rocked on his heels and scratched the back of his head.
“Josie’s in Dubuque,” he said.
“In Dubuque? Why? Didn’t you sell the inn yet?”
“We aren’t going to sell the inn.” He still didn’t look at her. He wished he’d n
ever let Izzy and Finn come out there. It would be so much easier if he didn’t have to explain.
“So is Josie training a new innkeeper?”
“No, Josie’s not training a new innkeeper. Josie’s staying there.”
Izzy stared at him, her eyes widened, then narrowed. Her brows drew down. “What do you mean, staying there?”
“Just what I said. We’re...not staying together.”
“Why not?”
He scowled furiously. “Izzy! Damn it! You’re not supposed to ask things like that!”
She slapped her hands on her hips. “I’d like to know why not! It seems a perfectly reasonable question given the fact that a month ago you two were inseparable.”
“She was pregnant! She needed me then!”
“And now she doesn’t?” Izzy said sarcastically.
Sam ground his teeth. “No, damn it, she doesn’t.”
“A woman with a brand-new baby, three cats, a dog, a couple of doddering old men and a twenty-room inn doesn’t need any help?”
“Not from me,” he said stubbornly.
“She told you that?”
“Yes.” The word hissed through his teeth.
“I don’t believe it.” She paused, considering, then said almost musingly, “Maybe I do.”
“What’s that mean?”
Izzy cocked her head and looked at him. “Did you ever once tell her you loved her?”
Sam hunched his shoulders. He scuffed the toe of his loafer in the gravel on the pathway. He didn’t answer. That, apparently, was answer enough.
Izzy groaned. “Sam,” she said in long-suffering exasperation.
“She wouldn’t want to hear it,” he argued. “She didn’t want to marry me! We got married because of Jake, damn it! I forced her to marry me.”
“Figures,” Izzy muttered under her breath. Then she looked at him. “But you didn’t force her to make love with you when you got her pregnant, did you?”
Sam stared at her, aghast. “Of course not!”
“Well, then, why do you think she did it?”
He felt the flush creep up his neck. He didn’t want to explain the circumstances of that evening to anyone—especially not to Izzy!
“We’d been drinking,” he said. “It was a trying time for both of us. You—She—Kurt—” He couldn’t articulate it. “It wasn’t because she loves me!”
“Sam,” Izzy said, disgusted, “just how big an idiot are you?”
CHAPTER ELEVEN
SAM FLETCHER had always had the courage of his convictions, the determination that came with knowing he was doing the right thing, making the smart move. When it came to his business dealings, he stepped boldly, willing to risk unflinchingly whatever was needed to get what he wanted.
So why couldn’t he just pull up his socks and go straight out to Dubuque and confront Josie—ask Josie if she loved him, tell Josie that he loved her?
Why did he stall three days? A week? More? Still unable to make the move Izzy had told him he was crazy not to make.
“I can’t believe you,” she’d railed at him that afternoon in the park. “Are you blind? Josie is nuts about you!”
“No,” he’d said. She wasn’t.
Was she?
Did he dare start hoping again? He’d hoped before. He’d watched her every waking moment, it seemed, looking for clues—a word, a gesture, a smile.
He hadn’t seen a thing.
Was that what he was still afraid of? But then, he asked himself, what would be worse than what he already had, which was nothing?
He was afraid she could tear out his heart.
Maybe—and this he hadn’t told Izzy—it was because he’d been rejected once before.
He’d thought he was in love when he was engaged to Izzy. He’d thought Izzy was in love with him. But what they’d had hadn’t survived Finn’s challenge. And though he’d let her go with a smile and a wave, the truth was he’d been hurt.
He knew how badly her rejection had hurt him. And that hurt didn’t compare to what he would feel if Josie were to flat out tell him she didn’t love him, never could love him.
If he didn’t go, he could pretend. He could convince himself that she cared a little, might care more someday if he gave her space, time, and if he nurtured the notion of loving him carefully and let it grow on her. It could take years.
Sam had always thought he was a patient man. Hah.
Still he didn’t go. He called. Every night.
“How’s Jake?” he asked her. Do you love me?
“Is he getting bigger?” Do you miss me?
“Does he smile yet?” If I told you I love you, would you care?
And every night he got her answers. But what he wanted were the answers to the questions he never dared voice.
Every night he hung up the phone lonelier and more bereft than the night before.
“I don’t understand why Josie is staying in Dubuque?” his mother said every other day. She’d fix a frown on her son. “I don’t understand why you’re letting her?”
“Josie had a life before she married me,” Sam replied. It wasn’t an answer. But he couldn’t find the guts to tell his mother the truth.
“You know,” Elinor, his assistant, said conversationally one afternoon as she scraped into a pile the deskful of phone messages he’d never returned, “if I didn’t doubt that cloning humans was a cottage industry in Dubuque, I’d swear they cloned a Sam Fletcher and sent the incompetent one back to New York.”
Sam looked at her blankly. “What?”
“Let’s just say you were more efficient when you were wallpapering with one hand and running the whole show on the phone long-distance with the other! Go on back to Dubuque, Sam. Go home to your son and your wife!”
He would, he thought as he dropped the mail on the kitchen counter of his Fifth Avenue penthouse apartment, if he thought for one minute that Josie wanted him the way he wanted her.
He sighed and idly spread the mail around, pushing the junk and the ads and the circulars into the trash. That left the bills. And—he frowned at the handwritten envelope addressed to him.
He picked it up and slit it open. A photo fell out. And a note. From Izzy. It had just one sentence written on it: “Finn says to tell you a picture is worth a thousand words.”
He let the note flutter to the countertop. He stared at the picture in his hand. It was one of the ones Finn had taken the afternoon Sam had brought Josie and Jake home from the hospital. She was sitting on the porch swing holding the baby, but she wasn’t looking at the baby. She was looking up at the man wearing the khaki trousers who stood beside her.
Sam knew the man—he was the man.
He remembered the moment. He’d been looking at Jake, wishing he dared look at Jake’s mother, that he dared tell Jake’s mother how much he loved her. But he hadn’t.
Now he saw Jake’s mother looking at him.
He never remembered having seen Josie looking at him that way before. He’d never caught that tender yearning in her eyes, had never dared imagine that look of longing on her face.
Was it real?
Or was Finn just a very good photographer?
Josie was elbow-deep in cream cheese, apples, cinnamon, raisins and praying that Jake wouldn’t wake until she had finished mixing the filling for tomorrow’s breakfast crepes. He’d been fussy all day.
“Teething,” Benjamin had said.
“He’s only six weeks old,” Josie had pointed out.
But Benjamin had been adamant. He and Cletus doted on their “honorary grandson,” and as far as they were concerned he was miles ahead of every other child his age—even when it came to making his mother miserable with his crying, apparently.
He had fallen asleep, at last, shortly after nine. Josie had been relieved because then Sam wouldn’t hear him crying when he called.
He called every night—not always around nine, but generally within the hour. She’d had the cellular phone in her pocket while she ran up to
remove a feather quilt that one of the guests had suddenly discovered she was allergic to, then came back down to transfer Errol’s kittens out of the butler’s pantry, where the cat had carried them and put them back in the basement where they wouldn’t be underfoot tomorrow.
She’d set the phone in the middle of the table while she’d laid out place settings for the fifteen guests who would be there tomorrow for breakfast. She’d lugged it with her while she went up to the third floor to deliver a late-arriving bouquet of flowers, and when she’d tracked down Cletus to go rescue a couple whose car had died in the parking lot of the riverboat casino.
By the time she got to the cream cheese and apples, she was worried that Jake might be stirring and start to cry again. But a quick check of him in his pram, tucked away in the butler’s pantry where she could hear him while she worked, proved that he was, blessedly, still asleep.
So she dove into kneading the apples, cinnamon and raisins into the cream cheese and prayed that Jake wouldn’t wake and Sam wouldn’t call until she was done.
She had cream cheese all over her hands when she heard the first whimper. Then there was a sniffled. A sob.
Then a full-throated Mommy-where-are-you-I’m-hungry! cry.
“Damn!” She gave the cream cheese mixture one last squish and tried to scrape it off her hands. It globbed and plopped. Mostly it stuck.
“I’m coming, sweetie!” she crooned, grabbing up the bowl with her forearms and carrying it into the butler’s pantry.
Jake howled on.
“I’m coming. Just hang on.”
She turned to put the bowl down and ran smack into a hard, masculine chest.
“What’s wrong with him?”
She opened her mouth and closed her mouth, wordless, gaping. Sam? Here?
He took the bowl out of her hands, set it on the counter. “What’s wrong with him?” he demanded again, craning his neck to see past her toward the pram.
“H-he’s hungry,” Josie sputtered. “I’ve g-got to feed him.”
“So wash your hands.”
“I will. I am! What are you doing here?”
He didn’t answer, just moved past her to pick up the baby. “God, he’s grown! He’s twice the size he was!”
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