Stroke of Fortune Read online

  Gus sent Josie a glare. “You got six minutes left.”

  Josie gave him her sweetest smile. “You bet.”

  He followed the other two waitresses out. Josie sipped from her Coke and sank to the ladderback chair Margie had vacated. The paper was still open on the Formica-topped table. Josie read the ad again.

  And thought of Flynt.

  Of the stricken look in his eyes when she told him that the baby he’d found wasn’t hers.

  Oh, he had wanted that. Wanted it bad, for the baby named Lena to be theirs.

  Loving, experienced nanny sought. Live-in position…

  Josie set down her Coke and stared into the distance, thinking things she knew very well she shouldn’t be letting herself think.

  Things like how it was high time Flynt Carson got over what had happened in the past and learned to love again. Things like how he so clearly wanted to do that. That look in his eyes the other night had said it all. He was just about desperate for another chance—a chance to do things right, to know true love. To have a family of his own at last.

  He was a rich man, but fortune had never smiled on him. Not in the most important sense. He didn’t have the things that really mattered. He didn’t—

  “Stop,” Josie whispered under her breath. “No. Don’t go there.”

  She slapped that paper shut, so she couldn’t see the ad. Then she grabbed her Coke and she took a long sip, thinking that once again she was listening to her silly heart when she ought to be using her head.

  The Coke had left a wet ring on the battered surface of the table. She rubbed it away, scrubbing hard with the heel of her hand at first, then more gently. And then, idly, tracing the crude shape of a heart that someone had scratched there Lord knew how long ago.

  It’s been almost a year, a soft voice whispered in the back of her mind as her finger followed the rough outline of that heart.

  Almost a year—and she hadn’t gotten over that man yet.

  From the way he’d looked at her Sunday night, he hadn’t gotten over her, either.

  They did have something, together, the two of them. Something powerful. Something true.

  Maybe that lost little baby he’d found on the golf course could show them the way to each other.

  Maybe it was high time that good fortune—real, true good fortune, which Josie knew very well was a matter of the heart—finally smiled on them both.

  Maybe, she thought, she should help that good fortune along by taking a drive out to Carson Ranch.

  Five

  The new housekeeper’s name was Anita. She led Josie to a small room off the kitchen and took her single letter of reference.

  “Here’s an application,” Anita said in a pleasant tone. “Go ahead and fill it out. Then Mrs. Carson will speak with you.”

  Mrs. Carson.

  Grace would be handling the interview? When Josie hatched the plan earlier that day she hadn’t expected that.

  Apprehension knotted her stomach. Flynt’s mother was a kind, warmhearted soul, but she couldn’t have been pleased with the way Josie had vanished last year.

  “Something wrong?” asked the housekeeper.

  “Oh, no. Nothing.”

  “Have a seat, then.”

  “Thanks.”

  The housekeeper left. Josie stared after her, wondering how long the woman had been working for the Carsons. Had they hired her right after Josie left—or had there been others before they found someone who worked out?

  Well, whatever. Anita had the job now and she seemed pleasant and efficient. The Carsons were managing just fine without Josie Lavender to run their house for them.

  Josie picked up one of the pens that waited in a mug on the table. It didn’t take long to fill in all the blanks. A few minutes after she’d finished, Anita returned. She picked up the application. “This way, Ms. Lavender.”

  They went to the sitting room in Flynt’s wing of the house. Grace was waiting by one of the high windows that looked out over a lush section of the garden. She turned as Josie and the housekeeper entered.

  “Hello, Josie. So nice to see you.” Grace’s tone was warm. Her eyes were not. She crossed the room and took the application from the housekeeper. “Thank you, Anita.”

  The housekeeper nodded and backed out, pulling the double doors shut in front of her.

  “Well,” said Grace when they were alone. “Would you like anything? Coffee?”

  “No, thanks.”

  “Have a seat.” Grace gestured at a fiddle-back chair. Josie perched on the edge of it. Grace went around the coffee table and sat on the sofa.

  The room had plum-colored walls trimmed in white. The furniture was big and fine and comfortable, the floors of dark, lustrous hardwood covered with beautiful Oriental rugs. It was just as Josie remembered it—and she remembered all too well.

  Once, in a rage, a very pregnant Monica had grabbed a crystal vase from the marble-topped table in the corner and hurled it at Flynt. “I’m fat as one of your prize cows.” She had called Flynt an ugly name. “It’s your fault, and I hate you, Flynt Carson.” And she’d let the vase fly. She hadn’t even cared that the housekeeper happened to be in the room at the time.

  Then, after Monica died, Flynt would sometimes drink himself to sleep in there. Not very often. He preferred his study for serious, all-night drinking. But now and then he would end up in the sitting room. More than once, Josie had come in to check on him and found him passed out on the sofa where Grace was sitting now. Josie would gently settle a blanket over him, her heart aching for him, loving him though she knew it was hopeless, calling herself a fool—and loving him anyway.

  “So,” said Grace, a little too brusquely for comfort, “I see you’ve been working at a day-care center.”

  “Yes. For nine months I was at Kid’s Place Child Care up in Hurst. That’s in the Fort—”

  “I know where Hurst is, Josie.”

  Josie shut her mouth and looked down at her folded hands, feeling all of a sudden like a badly behaved young child. Grace Carson knew how to put you in your place with a gentle word and a reproving glance.

  Grace said, “This is a glowing recommendation. They seem to have been very impressed with you.”

  Josie pulled herself up straight. “I loved working with the children. I had four months doing baby care, and then the rest of the time I had the toddlers.” She had also worked nights as a waitress. With the two jobs, she’d been able to support herself in a modest way, to pay Flynt back the money she owed him, to buy her computer—and to send a little home to Alva, as well.

  Grace sighed. “Josie.” The papers in her hands rustled as she tightened her grip on them. “I think we’d better just get to the point here, don’t you?”

  Josie’s stomach clenched all the harder. She kept her spine very straight. “Yes. Good idea.”

  “You…took off last year out of nowhere. One day you were here and we knew we could depend on you, and then you were gone. We never heard another word from you, until right now.” Grace lifted one shoulder in a sad little shrug. “Oh, yes, Flynt did mention something about family difficulties. But that hardly made sense. We heard you had left town, left your mother behind.” Grace hesitated, as if she couldn’t decide how to go on.

  Then she continued, “I’ll admit, we were quite concerned for you at first. We thought that maybe your father…well, that he’d been released and you were frightened he might come after you.”

  Josie’s father had died in Huntsville Prison, ten months ago. Everyone in town knew that Josie had been the one to put him there.

  Grace went on, “But then we heard about what happened to him.” Rutger Lavender had finally run into someone meaner than he was. He’d been stabbed in the prison yard by another inmate and died of the injury. “So we knew that your father couldn’t be the reason you left out of nowhere as you did.” Grace sat back against the cushions and looked steadily at Josie, giving her the chance to come up with some sort of explanation.


  Too bad she had none to give. Nothing she could say was going to make things any better. She would not tell Grace the truth—that she and Flynt had finally given in to the yearning that had grown too powerful for either of them to deny. They had given in and spent the night together in his bed. And then, the next morning, he had written her a check for ten thousand dollars and sent her away.

  No, she wouldn’t tell Grace that. She couldn’t. And she refused to make up any lies.

  Oh, what was she doing here? Obviously she had not thought this through. Assuming that Flynt would be handling the interviews, she’d had some crazy notion that he would simply hire her because she had showed up and applied for the job of caring for the baby he longed to believe was theirs.

  “Well?” said Grace, the papers in her hands rustling some more as she shifted on the sofa. “I’d like to understand, Josie. I truly would, but—”

  It wasn’t going to work. It was a bad idea. Josie stood. “I’m sorry. I thought…”

  “What?”

  “Oh, it doesn’t matter. I see now that I shouldn’t have come. I—I do regret if I caused your family any hardship, leaving so suddenly the way that I did. All I can really tell you is that I had a good reason. But it was a private reason, one I just can’t talk about.”

  Grace got to her feet. The coldness had left her eyes. “I’m sorry, too, Josie. You did a fine job for us. We had no complaints at all about the quality of your work.” They looked at each other across the inlaid coffee table. “However, this is a helpless infant we’re talking about now. I don’t think it would be wise to hire someone we weren’t certain we could count on one hundred percent.”

  Josie nodded. “It’s all right. I understand.”

  “Understand what?” The deep voice came from over by the door.

  A hot shiver skittered through Josie, a burning ripple of awareness sliding just below the surface of her skin. Flynt. He was a big man, but he could sure move quietly when he chose to. Josie hadn’t heard him enter the room.

  Apparently, neither had Grace. She put a hand to her throat. “Land sakes, Flynt Carson. What is it? Where’s that baby? I thought you were—”

  “Anita’s got her. She’s fine.” He was answering Grace, but his eyes were on Josie. That blue gaze moved over her, measuring, judging. She felt that raking look right down into the center of her soul. “Anita mentioned that you were here.”

  Grace said, “Josie came to see about the nanny job.”

  He didn’t even glance at his mother. “Yeah, Anita mentioned that, too.”

  Josie made herself smile and hoped it didn’t look too forced. She wished he’d stop staring at her. She’d kept her mouth shut about the two of them, but keeping quiet wouldn’t help if he was going to stare at her like that with his mama standing right there, looking on.

  “Yes,” Josie said carefully. “But it hasn’t…worked out. I was just leaving.” She started to move for the door, hoping against hope that he’d simply move out of her way.

  So much for her hopes.

  He came striding toward her, the look in his eye freezing her in her tracks. He didn’t stop until he was standing right in front of her. “Stay. We’ll talk.”

  Grace was looking worried. “Flynt, honey, Josie said she’s leaving. I think we ought to just let her—”

  He cut her off with a movement of his arm—a gesture toward the papers Grace held clutched in her fist. “Is that her application?”

  “Well, yes, and a reference, but—”

  “Let me see them.”

  “Flynt—”

  He held out his hand. Grace gave in and passed him the papers. “Thanks, Ma. Go on and relieve Anita, will you?”

  “But—”

  “I’ll handle this.” He had that look. Josie recognized it and she was sure his mother did, too. It was the look that said he would do what he meant to do. Nothing—and no one—was going to talk him out of it.

  Grace nodded, the slightest downward tipping of her round chin. She knew her own son well enough to see when she couldn’t win. “Josie,” she said quietly, “it is good to see that you are well.”

  “Thank you, Mrs. Carson. I’m pleased that you found another housekeeper who seems to be working out.”

  Grace nodded again and then slid around the end of the coffee table and left the room. Flynt let her get through the doors, then he spun on his heel and went to make certain they were both firmly shut. Josie waited where he’d left her, staring down at the rug beneath her feet, her pulse racing so fast and hard it made a rushing sound in her ears.

  She should tell him, firmly, to open the doors. That she was leaving. That she’d made up her mind. Coming here had not been wise.

  But she only went on, head down like some shy little miss, staring at the roses twining in the rug, thinking that this was what she’d wanted, wasn’t it? That this was why she’d come.

  She watched his fine, tooled boots come at her. They stopped not two feet from her chunky-heeled black shoes.

  He dropped the papers onto the coffee table and then he spoke very softly, for her ears alone. “Okay, Josie. You have something to tell me?”

  She made herself look up. He was wearing blue jeans and a slightly faded Western shirt. He smelled of that tempting, expensive aftershave he always wore, and of saddle soap. He’d probably been out riding earlier in the day. Unlike Matt, who was the real cowboy in the family, Flynt dressed like a businessman more often than not. He ran the family interests, while Matt saw to the day-to-day workings of the ranch itself.

  Josie’s glance stopped at the top snap of his shirt. Somehow, she couldn’t bring herself to look into those eyes of his right then.

  He whispered her name, putting a question mark at the end of it.

  Something in his tone did it. She was able to raise her head and look into his face.

  “Well?” He put those hands of his on her shoulders oh-so-gently.

  Her knees turned to water. She wanted only to sway against him, feel the heat and hardness of him. Oh, she had missed him. They’d only shared that one night, and that had been eleven months ago, eleven months that felt like forever—and somehow, at the same time, like just yesterday. He was smiling, the most tender, gentle smile. “It’s all right,” he told her. “I’ll stand with you. I promise you. I just need the truth from you, and we can start to figure out how to handle all this.”

  She blinked. “How to…?” And then she understood.

  He thought she had come to confess about the baby.

  She had to press her lips together or else she would have burst out into a wild-woman shout of hysterical laughter. He just wouldn’t get it. Wouldn’t listen. He wasn’t a stupid man, but on this subject you would have thought he had a block of wood for a brain.

  Some of her agitation must have shown on her face, or maybe he felt her stiffen under his hands. “Shh,” he said soothingly, in the way a man would gentle a spooked horse. “It’s okay, settle down.”

  “Flynt.”

  “Go ahead. You can say it. Just say the truth and we can go on from here.”

  “Flynt, please.”

  “Josie—”

  “No.” She stepped back. He resisted letting her go, but only briefly. Then he caught himself and dropped his hands to his sides. She said, slowly and clearly, “I didn’t come here to tell you that the baby is mine. I can’t tell you that, Flynt. Because she is not mine.”

  He was the one who stepped back then, leaving a yawning chasm between them. The tender look in his eyes had vanished. His jaw was set.

  “Not yours,” he said flatly and with no belief at all.

  “That’s right. Not mine. Not ours.”

  “Hell, Josie.” He blew out a weary breath.

  She wanted to scream and jump up and down and call him a thousand kinds of pigheaded fool. But she controlled herself somehow. She spoke slowly, carefully, reasonably. “I am not a liar, Flynt. I’m not a woman who will do something and then say I never did. I’ll
keep my mouth shut, maybe. I’ll skirt the truth now and then. But I’m not going to lie bald-faced over and over. You know I’m not that kind.”

  He looked away, then back. “Even the most honest people will lie when they have to, when they feel they’ve got no other choice.”

  “Flynt, look at me. Look in my face.” She waited until his eyes were burning into hers. “I think a big part of what you’ve always liked about me—and you do like me, don’t you?”

  “What kind of question is that?”

  “A straight one. I’m not talkin’ about wanting, about whatever it is that makes our hearts beat too fast when we get near each other. I’m just talking about respect. About one person liking how another person is. And I’m asking, do you like me?”

  “Damn it, Josie.”

  “Do you?”

  “Yes. Yes, I like you. You know I do.”

  “That’s right. I do know. And I know why, too. You like me because I’m strong and I’m straight. Because I’ve been through a lot and things haven’t always been so good for me, but I’m still standing. I’m still keeping on, doing the right thing as best I can—and not usin’ any drugs or alcohol to soften the edges of how hard life can be. My daddy was a messed up, wife-abusing drunk. And you know and everyone knows that I am the reason he ended up in prison. I called the police on him and I testified against him so they could put him away where he belonged. In spite of all of that, I got through high school with a three-point-six GPA and someday, the good Lord willing, I’ll get a college education. I ran this whole big house of yours before I was twenty years old. I moved up to Hurst when you sent me away and I worked hard and I paid you back every penny you gave to me.

  “I may be more than ten years younger than you, but that doesn’t make me weak and helpless. Not by a long shot. I don’t know what I would have done if I’d had your baby. I can’t talk about what never was. Because that baby you found on the golf course is not mine. And I think, if you’d only be honest with yourself, that you know she’s not mine.”

  He looked at her sideways. “If she’s not yours, then what are you doing here?”