Sam lifted Jake out of the pram and held the squalling child up to get a look at him.
“Hardly,” Josie said, scrubbing furiously at her hands and glancing back at him. “What are you doing here?” she demanded again.
“Holding my son.” Sam shifted Jake in his arms, cradling him against his shoulder, rubbing his back. Jake sniffled and hiccoughed and gummed his fist.
Josie found herself patting her pocket, checking for the phone—as if she might have left it somewhere and had somehow conjured Sam up in the flesh to take its place.
She turned around to find Sam had brought Jake into the kitchen and was waiting expectantly until she’d seated herself in the rocker. She did, then looked at him, but he didn’t hand Jake over. He still waited.
Self-consciously she opened her blouse, then held out her hands for Jake, not looking at Sam at all.
There was a moment’s pause. Then she heard the soft intake of Sam’s breath, and he settled the baby in her arms.
Jake glommed on greedily. Josie held him protectively close, though who she was protecting wasn’t too hard to guess.
Sam hunkered down next to the rocking chair.
She didn’t look at him. Couldn’t. “What?”
“I love you.”
Her head snapped around. A girl could get whiplash hearing unexpected things like that!
Or maybe she hadn’t heard it. Maybe she’d just dreamed it. She frowned.
“Don’t.” His voice was soft, and he reached out a hand and smoothed her brow.
If she’d had a free hand, she’d have batted his away. What was he trying to do to her?
“Don’t what?” she said crossly, shaking her head, trying to escape his touch.
“Don’t frown. Don’t fight me.” His voice dropped, gentled. His warm brown eyes melted her. “Don’t tell me to go away.”
She shook her head, confused. Desperate. It was like having your best dream turn into your worst nightmare. “What are you talking about?”
“Us.”
“What us?”
“The us I want to be married for real.” His gaze never left hers.
“You don’t love me,” she argued, afraid to hope.
“I do.”
“You didn’t!”
“I do now. I have for—hell, I don’t know how long.” He shook his head. “I’m not exactly quick on the uptake, I guess.” He smiled ruefully. “I knew you were driving me nuts, but I didn’t figure out it was love until your labor started.”
“When my labor started? What happened then?”
“I wanted to make you smile.”
It was so simple—and so illogical—that Josie couldn’t doubt it. She laughed. She shook her head and blinked back a sudden surge of tears.
“Why didn’t you say so?” she asked, her voice wobbling.
A corner of his mouth tipped. “I didn’t think you loved me.”
“But—”
“You certainly never said you did.”
“I was supposed to? When you were pining over another woman?”
Sam grimaced. “Izzy told me I was an idiot.”
“You talked to Izzy about it?”
“I didn’t have to talk to Izzy,” Sam said ruefully. “She talked to me.”
“And you believed her?” Had it truly been that simple?
“I wanted to. I was afraid to. Then she sent me a picture.”
He straightened up and dug his wallet out of his back pocket. He took out a photo and handed it to her.
Josie looked at it—at herself. She’d had no idea her feelings for Sam were so apparent. She’d had no notion at all that every ounce of love and longing she felt for him was there for the world to read on her face. She bent her head and studied Jake’s soft hair. She touched his cheek. Sam’s hand came out and took hold of hers.
“You love me.” His whispered words weren’t quite a question. They were, however, brimful of awe—and of hope.
Josie dared to raise her head and look at him. “I have,” she said softly, “for years.”
“Years?” Sam sounded indignant.
“Since the very first time I saw you—that summer when I was the cleaning girl. You were my idea of the perfect man.”
He snorted and looked faintly embarrassed. “Hardly.” His voice was gruff.
“I thought so,” Josie said.
“You were going to marry Kurt.”
“You were engaged to Izzy,” she reminded him. “It was a mistake, getting engaged to Kurt. I know that now. I wasn’t right for him.”
“He wasn’t right for you.”
“Both,” Josie agreed. She wasn’t going to argue about it. “I hope I would have seen that before I did anything stupid.” She twisted the corner of Jake’s blanket around her fingers.
Sam hesitated. “You didn’t think going to bed with me was stupid?”
“Oh, no.” Josie shook her head. “Well,” she admitted, “maybe from a self-preservation standpoint it was. But...” She looked into his eyes and hoped he could read in them the feelings she still hadn’t found the words to say. “I’d do it over again,” she told him. Her gaze dropped then and she smiled down at her son.
“For Jake.”
Their eyes met. Slowly, Josie shook her head. “No. Not just for Jake. For you.”
He moved in then, angling around so that he didn’t mash Jake, still nursing between them, and he touched his lips to hers. Then, much too soon for Josie, he pulled back and fished another picture out of his wallet.
It was the one Finn had taken right after he’d taken the shot of Josie. In it Sam was looking down at his wife and son, and the expression on his face was a look identical to hers. Josie stared at it, then at her husband.
He smiled. “For you,” he said. “So you’ll never forget how much I love you, too.”
“Do you think Hattie will care if you sell the inn?” Josie asked him much later that night—well, actually sometime early the next morning—as they curled together in her bed.
“I think that’s exactly what Hattie had in mind when she left it to me,” Sam said. “I think Hattie orchestrated this whole thing.”
“What about the dog and the cats?”
“We could sell them, too.”
“No!” Josie started to sit up, but he tugged her back down into the curve of his body and held her there. “We can’t,” she said. “They’re family.”
“All right. We’ll keep them,” Sam said. Well-loved and at peace with the world, he was amenable to almost anything right now.
“What about Benjamin and Cletus?”
“We’re not keeping them!”
“But they’ll be lonely.”
“They can come and visit.”
“They’ll want to watch Jake grow up.”
“We’ll come and visit them,” he promised.
Josie smiled. “Good. I want to come often. I’ll miss them. I’ll miss the inn. I’ll miss Dubuque.”
“We’re not bringing Dubuque!”
She laughed. “I love you, Sam.”
He rolled her in his arms and braced himself over her. “I love you, too.”
“Show me?”
“Again?”
She traced the inner curve of his ear with her finger, sending a shiver along his spine. “Well,” she said, smiling impishly, “if you’d rather not...”
He grinned down at her. “Oh, I’d rather, Mrs. Fletcher. In fact,” he told her with considerable satisfaction as he began once more to love her, “I can’t think of anything I’d rather do.”
ISBN : 978-1-4592-6189-1
FLETCHER’S BABY!
First North American Publication 1998.
Copyright © 1997 by Barbara Schenck.
All rights reserved. Except for use in any review, the reproduction or utilization of this work in whole or in part in any form by any electronic, mechanical or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including xerography, photocopying and recording, or in any information stora
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