Stroke of Fortune

“You’re keeping her?”

“If you mean, will she be staying at the ranch for a while, then yes. She will. Tomorrow we’ll start the search for a nanny.”

“And then what?”

“Damn it, Carl. You can be as nosy as a maiden aunt.”

Carl raised his glass to Flynt in a quick salute. “You know how I am.” He took a sip. “I like to keep on top of what’s happening in my district.”

“Yeah, well.” Flynt picked up his club soda and drank the rest of it. He set the glass down. “To put it to you straight, I don’t really know what’s happening. I’m taking a paternity test tomorrow. We’ll have to wait for the results.”

“Ah,” said the judge. “Of course. I see…”

By Tuesday morning, the story of the mystery baby abandoned on the golf course for three war heroes and a top heart surgeon to find was all over town. All the waitresses at the Mission Creek Café were talking about it.

Josie had the early shift that day. When she went in the back room for her midmorning break, another waitress, Margie Dodd, signaled her over and showed her the ad in the Mission Creek Clarion.

“See there.” Margie sucked on a cigarette and blew out a stream of smoke through her nose, tapping a finger at the place she wanted Josie to see. “They’re lookin’ for a nanny out at Carson Ranch. Gotta be for the mystery baby.”

Josie knew she ought to just shake her head, shrug, mutter something meaningless and step outside for her break. But she did no such thing. She set down the Coke she’d poured for herself and she looked at the paper spread out on the table, at the words in bold print right where Margie’s long red fingernail was pointing. “Loving, experienced nanny sought. Live-in position. Excellent salary, full benefits. References required. Inquire at Carson Ranch.”

Josie stared at that ad and couldn’t stop a certain image from flashing through her mind—the image of Flynt’s face, as he’d looked the other night. So bleak. So lonely. Staring at her through the darkness, demanding that she admit the abandoned baby was theirs.

Her throat closed up, just the way it had when she first raised the blind and saw him there beyond the glass. Oh, she was a sucker for Flynt Carson, and that was a plain fact.

He was exactly the kind of man she’d sworn she’d never let herself get near—tortured and troubled, with an alcohol problem. Truly, considering the daddy she’d had, and the things that had happened in her life so far, she ought to know better.

She did know better.

But sometimes a person’s heart just loved where it wanted to, no matter that her brain kept ordering it to stop.

Margie let out a dry cackle of laughter. “The mystery baby is Flynt Carson’s, did you hear that?”

Josie swallowed. Hard. “I heard it, but—”

“No buts about it. It’s his baby and he ain’t sayin’ who the mother is.”

“Maybe he doesn’t know.”

Margie blew out more smoke and squinted at Josie through the thick fringe of her false eyelashes. “Yeah. Right. Now that makes a lot of sense.”