Stroke of Fortune

He thought about Lena, wondered where she fit into all this, how Josie had managed. Two jobs, a room in someone’s house, and a baby.

He said carefully, “You wore yourself out, I’ll bet.”

“No. I’m young and I like to work. You know that. Then, well, you know, my mama needed me so I came back.”

God. He could smell her. The sweetness of her. And something else.

Cigarettes. “You take up smoking, Josie?”

She stared straight ahead, her profile so fine and pure in the faint glow of the streetlamp down the block. She looked as sweet as an angel—an angry angel, right then. “I don’t much like your tone, you know that, Flynt?”

He put his hands on the steering wheel and held on tight to keep from reaching for her. “It was a simple question. You can just answer yes or no.”

“I just got off work and I work at the café.” She shot him a charged look, then faced front again. “The Mission Creek Café—which I’m sure you already know.”

He understood what she was telling him. At the Mission Creek Café, there were ashtrays on the tables and smokers lit up whenever they felt the urge.

“Not that it’s any of your business,” she said.

“I’d hate to see you do that to yourself, that’s all,” he told her softly.

She sent him another glance. “Well, don’t worry. I’m not. And if I ever considered takin’ up the habit, all I have to do is look at my poor mama to change my mind right quick.”

Flynt was pleased to hear her say that. He wanted the best for her. And that included good health—both for herself and for Lena. He didn’t want to think that she’d been smoking around Lena or, worse, before Lena was born.

But she said she hadn’t and he decided to believe her. “Well,” he said. “Good.”

She didn’t say anything, just went on staring out the windshield.

He scoured his mind for a way to get around gracefully to the subject of Lena. But there was no graceful way to ask a woman if, just possibly, she’d borne his child and then left her on the golf course at the Lone Star Country Club.

So he fell back on a safer subject. “How is your mom doing, anyway?”

She sent him another iceberg of a look. “What is this, Flynt? You came knockin’ on my bedroom window at ten o’clock at night to ask me how I liked it up in Hurst and find out how my mama’s doing?”

“Josie, I…”

“You what?”

Did you have my baby? Is Lena ours?

The questions were there; he just couldn’t quite bring himself to ask them. Yet.

She waited. When he gave her only silence, she started in on him again, her voice dripping with sarcasm. “Well, let’s see. I already told you about my life in Hurst. So, about my mama… Well, Flynt, my mama is sick. She will never be well again. But she is better than she was three weeks ago. The doctor says she’s improved enough to live on her own now, for a while. I’ll be getting my own place soon. But if you really came here tonight to tell me you want me out of town, you’re flat out of luck. My mama needs someone nearby that she can count on. Since my father’s no longer among the living and I’m their only child, no one else fits that description but me.” She left off and just glared at him for a minute, those eyes of hers daring him to speak. He didn’t.

She let out a hard huff of air. “So then, satisfied? Did you find out what you wanted to know? I don’t want your ten thousand dollars and my mama is not well. And if that’s all, I’m getting out of here.” She leaned on the latch and the door opened a crack.

He reached across her, grabbed the armrest and yanked it shut, his arm brushing her breasts in the process.

Both of them gasped. He jerked his arm back to his own side of the cab.

There was a silence—one with way too much heat in it. He stared at her profile some more, and then his gaze traveled downward.

Too bad he couldn’t see much in the shadows. He didn’t think she looked heavier or much different at all from the way he remembered her.

And damn. It was nothing short of bizarre to sit here, less than three feet from her, and wonder if she had borne his child.

He couldn’t tell. Shouldn’t there be something, some clue? Wouldn’t she have put on weight, the way Monica did?

He frowned. Not necessarily. Not all women were like Monica. Josie could be the kind who breezed through a pregnancy, hardly showing a sign, back to her former weight shortly after delivery.

She turned to him at last, her pale, thick hair catching the light, glimmering like moonbeams. He thought about burying his face in it, about the warmth of it, the warmth of her.

“Well?” she demanded.

“Josie, we’ve got to talk.”

She gave him another long, angry stare. “Well, all right. Why don’t you say it, then? Whatever it is.”

He studied her face, unsure. Her behavior and everything she’d said so far indicated that she had no clue why he’d sought her out.

But did those eyes say otherwise?

He just couldn’t say with any certainty.

And he still didn’t know where the hell to begin.

She let out a small, hard sound of impatience. “Flynt. I am not gonna sit here all night waiting for you to figure out what you want to say to me.”

There was probably no good place to start, so he gave up on trying to do it gracefully. He just told her, said what had happened that day, from the foursome on the ninth tee all the way to how Lena was now safe at the ranch.

By the time he finished, he was the one staring out the windshield. He didn’t have to turn to know she was watching him.

He made himself face her. “Look, Lena’s safe now, that’s what matters. And whatever—however—this happened, it can all be worked out. No one has to be to blame. Do you understand?”

She only looked at him.

He said, slowly and carefully, “I want you to tell me the truth. Is Lena ours?”

Her eyes were huge and dark as she slowly shook her head.

No.

By God, she was telling him no, that Lena wasn’t hers…wasn’t his. Wasn’t theirs…

She might as well have poleaxed him, popped him right between the eyes with a steel pipe.

He’d expected her to admit it.