Upstairs Downstairs Baby

by Cat Schield

  Linc settled into his chair, looking completely at home in the casual atmosphere. “I didn’t realize they had a dock,” he said. “Next time we should come by boat.” He noticed her looking at him and cocked an eyebrow. “What?”

  “You look like you fit right in.”

  “Why shouldn’t I?”

  “This place is a little more casual than what I imagine you’re used to.”

  “You forget I didn’t always have money. In fact, I waited tables at a place very much like this the summer before my senior year of high school.”

  “I have a hard time picturing you waiting tables.”

  “Why?”

  She was used to thinking about him as someone she took care of. It was hard to imagine him taking orders and schlepping food.

  “You don’t really seem the sort.”

  “The money was good.” He paused and regarded her with a slight frown. “I know what it’s like to struggle and worry about taking care of my family.”

  “I know.” But she couldn’t picture him as desperate or poor.

  “I didn’t go to private school. My mom worked hard to take care of Sawyer and me. When I got old enough to pitch in and help, I did.” As he spoke, his gaze grew more piercing. “So you see, we’re not so different. If I hadn’t been good enough to make it in the majors, our paths might’ve crossed in a restaurant instead.” He frowned thoughtfully.

  While she wondered what had prompted his change in mood, a waiter approached to take their drink order. When she ordered a lemonade, Linc shook his head.

  “What about a glass of wine?” he prompted. “We’re celebrating, remember?”

  She wasn’t sure alcohol was a good idea but didn’t want to disappoint him. “What are you having?”

  “I’m going to have a beer.”

  “Make it two.” She turned her attention to the menu. “This all looks delicious.”

  “Is there anything in particular you had in mind?”

  “They’re known for their steampots,” she pointed out, noting there were six to choose from.

  “Let’s get the Battery Street Bucket.”

  Naturally, he’d pick the most expensive dish on the menu. Her mouth watered as she scanned what all was included. In addition to shrimp and sausage, the pot contained both Alaskan snow and king crab as well as lobster. It was something she’d never have been able to afford, but since Linc insisted they were celebrating, Claire nodded.

  “And how about a dozen raw oysters to start?” he prompted.

  “Why not.”

  When the waiter returned with their drinks, Linc placed their order and Claire selected macaroni and cheese for Honey. Linc insisted they needed a side of hush puppies as well. She laughed as she contemplated how they were going to get through so much food.

  “You must be hungry.”

  “I worked up an appetite at the batting cages with Knox this afternoon.” Linc took a long pull from his beer and set the bottle down. “He seems to think that I need the practice because of my end-of-season slump.”

  “He should be nicer to you. Doesn’t he realize you were under a lot of pressure this year because of what was going on in your personal life?”

  Linc snorted. “No one cares.”

  “That’s not fair.”

  “They’re not paying me all those millions so I can let a failed romance distract me,” he pointed out.

  “I suppose not.” She pushed her glass around the weathered table. “But you didn’t have a failed romance,” she countered, unsure where the compulsion to stick up for him was coming from. “You decided things weren’t working. It wasn’t anyone’s fault. Sometimes love dies.”

  His gaze sharpened. “Are you speaking from experience?”

  “Sure.” Claire pondered her relationship with Jasper.

  “So you were in love with someone before you met your husband?”

  Recognizing her mistake, Claire said, “I guess I thought I was.”

  She hated lying to Linc about being married to Jasper but couldn’t change her story a year into her deception. If only she’d thought the whole thing through before deciding life would be less complicated if everyone thought she was still grieving her hero husband. And the truth was, she had moments when she missed Jasper. Or at least the Jasper she’d fallen in love with. The one who’d been a gentle lover and romantic boyfriend.

  “You guess?” Linc echoed, his expression curious.

  “Sure. I mean, how much does anyone know about being in love when they’re still in their teens?”

  “How old were you when you met your husband?”

  “I’d just turned twenty. It was Mother’s Day. He’d come into the florist where I started working after high school, looking for a gift for his mom.” She’d thought it was sweet the way he’d considered her opinion on the perfect bouquet.

  “Did he sweep you off your feet?”

  “No. I was dating someone. And Jasper was almost eight years older than me. That, combined with his military experience, made him seem too mature.” Plus, at the time, he’d just gone through a horrendous divorce and wasn’t in a place where he was interested in dating. He was more interested in getting Stephanie out of his system with a string of hookups.

  “So, what changed?”

  “My boyfriend at the time was an immature idiot.” She smiled faintly, remembering the day she’d woken up to the fact that she wanted to date someone whose idea of fun went beyond partying and playing video games. “I realized that a man who knew what he wanted and went after it was way more appealing.”

  “And Jasper wanted you?”

  Claire nodded. “He’d made it pretty clear from the start.”

  “So you fell in love.”

  Linc made it sound so simple, but Claire couldn’t look back on that time without remembering how Jasper had grown edgier each time he came back from an overseas tour. The way he behaved had made her a little afraid to tell him she was pregnant. But once he learned he was going to become a father, he’d gone back to the man she’d first met and had given her hope that he would be able to overcome his PTSD.

  “I did.” And she had. At least, she’d been in love in the beginning. “It happened pretty fast. Sometimes I think that was due to the fact that he was going to Fort Benning for training in a few months.”

  “Did you get married before he left?”

  “No, we hadn’t been together that long and I was in culinary school.” Nor had Claire been convinced that she wanted to be a military wife, traveling to wherever her husband was posted, worrying whenever he was deployed.

  Suddenly Claire didn’t want to talk about Jasper or spin any more half-truths about their relationship. She was overcome by relief as the waiter brought their appetizers and she focused on breaking up a hush puppy so it would cool down enough for Honey to be able to eat it. Several minutes went by before Claire shifted her attention back to Linc.

  “I’m sorry if I made you uncomfortable with my questions about your husband,” he said, squeezing lemon onto several of the oysters.

  “You didn’t.”

  “I don’t think that’s true.”

  His ability to read her made Claire wary. At least he didn’t know why she was uncomfortable. “It must seem like I can’t move on...”

  “I can’t imagine what it’s like to lose someone you love like that.” Linc doctored one of the oysters with horseradish and cocktail sauce before lifting the shell to his lips and letting it slide into his mouth. When he set the empty shell down, his eyes glinted with pleasure.

  Claire followed his example and sighed in delight as the sharp bite of horseradish mingling with the richness of the oyster lingered on her tongue. “This is exactly what I imagined when I decided to move to Charleston. Dining on fresh seafood by the water.”

  “California
has water and seafood. What brought you here?”

  “Believe it or not, my great-great-grandfather is from Charleston. He left here ten years before the Civil War began and chased gold all the way to California.”

  “Did he have any luck?”

  “A little. But there were nearly a hundred thousand people who descended on California in 1849 alone, and the chances of getting rich weren’t all that high. In the end, he decided there was more money to be made in supporting the gold-seekers and married a widow nearly ten years his senior. Together, they ran her hotel business.” Claire’s lips twitched.

  “What?” Linc prompted.

  “It’s been argued among my family that it might have been more of a gaming establishment or brothel than a hotel.”

  “You don’t say.”

  “It’s pretty scandalous, don’t you think? Especially when the story goes that James Robbins came from an elite Charleston family.” Claire laughed. “Of course, none of it’s true about my great-great-grandfather’s background. But it sure makes for a good story.”

  “What makes you think it’s not true?”

  “Did you miss the part where James was a scoundrel? He probably told people he was from a wealthy Charleston family so they’d take him seriously as a businessman. At the time, Charleston was one of the richest cities in the country.”

  “How do you know all this?”

  “Grandma Sylvia kept diaries. She and her first husband traveled from Massachusetts in 1848. He died on the way, and when she got to California, she figured out that men coming out of the mountains with gold would want all the creature comforts they could afford.”

  “You know a lot about this.”

  “My great-aunt Libby was really into all this genealogy stuff. She was a women’s studies professor at Berkeley.”

  “Did she ever look into James Robbins of Charleston?”

  “I don’t know. Libby died five years ago.”

  “You should talk to Sawyer about this. Her friend Ruby likes to dig into old records. Maybe she could find some mention of James.”

  As a member of the preservation society, Sawyer would be a good resource for such a quest. “I wouldn’t want to bother her.”

  “Are you kidding? One thing about this town is they love their history. I’ll bet Ruby would enjoy hearing your story.”

  Although Claire knew Sawyer wasn’t prone to gossip, she didn’t want anyone to start poking around her background and discover that she wasn’t a widow. The best thing would be to let the whole matter drop, but she knew Linc wouldn’t understand why she wanted to do that. Abruptly, Claire wished she’d never said anything about her family.

  “I’ll give Sawyer a call,” she said and hoped her promise would pacify him, because the last thing she needed was for Jasper’s parents to find her in Charleston.

  Four

  Dinner wasn’t going quite the way Linc had hoped. Claire had become subdued and distracted after talking about her husband. He’d intended for the evening to be fun and entertaining. Instead, he’d dredged up her past and reminded her of all she’d lost.

  How terrifying it must have been for her to lose the man she’d planned to spend the rest of her life with. What must it have been like for her to be widowed with a newborn? Claire didn’t talk much about the family she’d left behind in California except to say that she didn’t have a relationship with her mother—who’d left when Claire was seven—and that her father had his hands full with three kids from his second marriage.

  “You know, it occurs to me that you haven’t had any significant time off since you came to work for me,” Linc said. “If you want to go visit your family over Christmas or Thanksgiving, I’m sure we could make that work.”

  Claire’s eyes widened and she immediately started shaking her head. “That’s really nice of you, but I remember how much you entertained last year, and now that you aren’t seeing London, you’ll be hosting all the parties.”

  “I don’t have to be the host. My mother is always happy to show off the Mills-Forrest House.”

  “I wouldn’t feel right about it,” Claire said, smiling in a way that was both polite and firm. Arguing with her would get him nowhere.

  “Fine, not the holidays, then. Maybe you could take some time off in January and go see them.”

  “I’ll think about it.”

  “You know, Charleston is a great place to visit. You could invite them to come out here and see you.”

  She was shaking her head before he had even finished speaking. “With the kids in school and all their activities, it’s just too hard for them to take time off during the winter. Plus, it’s really expensive to fly everyone.”

  “What about your in-laws? How long has it been since they’ve seen their granddaughter?”

  “Jasper didn’t get along with his parents,” Claire said in a breathless rush. “And didn’t want them anywhere near his daughter. So it’s really just Honey and me. She’s all the family I need.”

  As close as Linc was to his mom and Sawyer, his father had been mostly absent during Linc’s childhood, so he recognized Claire’s reluctance to reach out. Had her family not been there for her after her husband’s death? Was a lack of support the reason she came to Charleston in search of her ancestors?

  Interesting about her great-great-grandfather’s connection to Charleston. Linc didn’t have a passion for the city’s history like Sawyer and Knox, or his mother’s obsession for improving the Thurston family’s status in society, but he knew enough that the surname Robbins wasn’t familiar. Likely, the entire story was little more than a family legend. Still, it wouldn’t hurt to bring the matter to Sawyer’s attention. Who knew what his sister might dig up?

  As much as Linc wished they could linger over dessert and coffee, Honey was up past her bedtime and she was getting fussy. So he paid their bill and carried the sleepy toddler out to his car. As he buckled her into her safety seat, he considered what a contrast this evening had been to when he and London went out.

  First of all, they’d rarely gone out alone. Even when they’d started the evening with a romantic dinner, inevitably the meal was merely a prelude for the main event, a gathering of friends at one of the local bars or the yacht club. Most of the time when they’d gone out, it was to attend a party or charity event. Sometimes it had seemed like the only time he and London were alone was when they were in bed.

  While the low-key meal had given him an opportunity to get to know Claire better, he still sensed there was more to her that she didn’t want to share. In the year since he’d hired her as his housekeeper, he’d held a picture of her in his head as sweet, earnest and haunted by her husband’s death. Tonight’s conversation had added dimensions to her personality and raised more questions than it had answered. She wasn’t as uncomplicated as he’d thought.

  “This was nice,” Claire said as he eased the car out of the parking spot and headed for the exit. She sounded relaxed and a bit dreamy. “Thank you for dinner.”

  “I’m glad you enjoyed it.” He had as well. So much, in fact, that he wanted to repeat it. “We should make a habit of it.”

  They were stopped, waiting for cars to pass so he could merge onto the main road. She turned her head so that she was no longer staring out the passenger window. Her eyes locked on him and he was besieged by the urge to slide his hand under her thick brown hair and draw her closer. Imagining the softness of her full lips yielding beneath a passionate kiss sent a flare of heat through his body.

  “I’m sure you’d much rather be spending your time with your friends,” she said and then yawned.

  Despite his heightened awareness of the curve of her breasts barely outlined beneath the thin cotton of her sundress, he forced a light laugh. “Am I boring you?”

  She covered her mouth and said, “Of course not. I’m just so full. I don’t remember when I
’ve eaten so much.”

  “It was a lot of food.”

  He tightened his hands on the wheel and told himself to relax. At an opening in the traffic, he sent the car surging forward. When the car was settled into the flow, he glanced at her and noticed her eyes were closed.

  “As for spending time with my friends,” he continued, “I get more than enough of their company. They like to go out, hit the bars and pick up women. It gets old. One thing I realized about myself after being with London is that I’m looking to settle down and have a family.”

  In fact, the escalating desire to become a dad had been one of the reasons he’d ended things with London. She’d been very clear that with her event-planning business starting to pick up, she didn’t want to disrupt the momentum by starting a family.

  “I think that will make your mother very happy,” Claire said.

  She was right, but he refrained from adding that he had to choose the right woman. And if his relationship with London had taught him anything, it was that making everyone happy was impossible. Dating London had made his mother miserable. His mother’s not-so-subtle digs at London’s “off” status had irritated him. Having the women in his life at odds was the furthest thing from peaceful. The question he had yet to settle was could he succeed in being happy if he married someone his mother was dead set against?

  That was why this attraction he felt for Claire was eating him up. If he pursued her and desire turned to lasting love, there was no way his mother could ever accept that he married not just an outsider, but a penniless one as well. Claire lacked London’s confidence and sophistication. Charleston society would eat her alive.

  “What my mother doesn’t realize is that I’m not interested in any of the women she might choose for me,” Linc said.

  “Don’t underestimate her.”

  “Charleston has a limited number of old families, and I know nearly all of their eligible daughters.”

  “Don’t forget you’ve been off the market for several years. Isn’t it possible that someone new may have come on the scene? Someone who was previously unavailable?”