loves company. Come have a drink with me.”
And she never should have come.
He didn’t remember a lot about what had happened after that.
There had been soft sounds and sad smiles and touches. He remembered vaguely tangling his fingers in her long dark hair. He remembered breathing deeply of the scent of cinnamon and shampoo that over the past week he’d come to associate so strongly with Josie. He remembered running his hands up the length of those very long, very smooth legs. Later, after another toast to lost fiancés and missing ones, there had been more touches and more kisses, and then he remembered—oh, God, yes, he remembered—those long legs wrapped around him.
And then...
He remembered waking up in the morning with a splitting headache and his cellular phone ringing and his secretary Elinor telling him that Mr. Nakamura was flying in this afternoon to talk with him about that shipment of teak furniture he’d promised.
Hungover, numb, Sam had promised to be there.
Then he’d looked around to see if he’d dreamed the whole thing. Josie, of course, because she was the innkeeper and made breakfast for the guests, was gone.
She might never even have been there at all—except there were two dirty glasses on the table next to the fireplace. And when Sam had looked further, he’d found her panties tangled in the sheet at the bottom of the bed.
He’d packed his bags before he went downstairs. He’d known he had to talk to her. But he hadn’t known what to say.
He’d found Hattie in the kitchen, but no Josie.
“Kurt called,” Hattie had reported. “He wanted to see her this morning. Since he missed last night with her, I said, go ahead.” She’d smiled. “She’ll be sorry to have missed you.”
Sam had doubted that very much.
She was probably regretting last night had ever happened. She’d certainly gone running back to Kurt the moment he’d called. Well, fine, Sam thought. It had saved him making an even bigger fool of himself as he babbled his apologies.
But only for seven months.
He’d have to make them now.
And he would have to sort out this nonsense of Hattie’s, leaving the inn to him. Josie was the one who had made it the success that it was. She was the one who deserved it. Not Sam. He didn’t want anything to do with it.
So, fine, he’d give it to her.
No, he couldn’t, damn it. There would be tax problems. For him. For her. His cash flow might permit him to cope with them, but hers wouldn’t. If he gave the inn to her, Josie wouldn’t thank him. She wouldn’t be able to afford to keep it.
Maybe, he thought, she wouldn’t even want it. Maybe she was already married to Kurt.
Stuffy, irritating Kurt certainly wouldn’t want it. He didn’t want Josie to have anything to distract her from him.
Sam groaned again, trying to figure it all out. He was sure it would be completely straightforward and logical if he weren’t so damned jet lagged. He was sure it would all make sense in the morning. Whenever morning was.
He was too tired to haul himself up off the sofa and go into the bedroom to sleep. He curled up where he was and folded a pillow over his head. His last conscious thought was a question he sent winging its way to whatever spot his great-aunt was holding down in the hereafter.
“Hattie,” he muttered, “what the hell are you up to?”
He gave himself twenty-four hours to fly to Dubuque, sort out the business with the inn, come to some sort of deal with Josie about running it until he found a buyer, and get back to New York to meet with a group of Thai businessmen he couldn’t afford to miss.
He would have preferred to wait until Herman Zupper was back and dump the problem of the inn on him. He would have preferred to handle the whole mess by mail or telephone or fax.
He would, in fact, have preferred not to inherit—or go—at all.
But he would go, because Hattie had been good to him, because she’d always loved him and sheltered him and supported him even when—especially when—being the only son and heir to the Fletcher empire got to be too much for him.
He wished now he hadn’t put her off back at Christ-mastime when she’d called and encouraged him to come for a visit. He’d been surprised to hear her voice on the phone that cold December afternoon. Hattie ordinarily sent him telegrams when she wanted to say something. But that time, uncharacteristically, she had called.
“You really ought to come, Sam,” she’d said. But she hadn’t been her normally abrupt self, and it had been easy to say no.
He’d told her he was busy. Really busy. It was only the truth: he had been.
But too busy to spend her last Christmas with her? No, not that busy. He could have taken a few days, brought Amelia, and spent Hattie’s last Christmas with her.
He hadn’t. Because of the situation with Josie.
It would have been awkward. Uncomfortable. Hell, she and Kurt were supposed to be getting married in December, right after he got his degree.
For all Sam knew, he might have had to go to her wedding and give her away!
No, thanks. So he had said no to Hattie’s last request. He hadn’t seen Hattie during the last months of her life.
It was too late for that now. But he’d go anyway because he loved her—and he owed her.
And Sam Fletcher always paid his debts.
“Yo, Sam.” The white-haired old man sitting on the porch swing hailed Sam as soon as he got out of his rental car and headed up the walk that crossed the broad lawn in front of The Shields House bed and breakfast. ‘“Bout time you got here!”
“Hey, Benjamin.” Sam grinned as he gave the old man a wave and quickened his pace. He took the porch steps two at a time, holding out his hand. “How’ve you been?”
The old man reached out and shook it, then sighed and slumped back against the swing. “Missin’ Hattie, you want to know the truth,” he said. He gave a shove against the porch with his foot and set the swing to rocking.
“Yes.” Sam commiserated. He’d expected that. Benjamin Blocker owed Hattie a lot. Like Josie, he was one of Hattie’s strays. Only not a waif, a man with a past.
Once upon a time Benjamin had worked for her husband on the towboat Walter had plied up and down the Mississippi, but he’d drunk too much to be reliable and got himself fired. He’d vowed to dry out and put himself in various programs to do so. None ever seemed to work, and he’d go off again. Periodically, though, he would show up on Walter’s doorstep, have a meal and take off again.
Then, the year Walter died, Benjamin had showed up on the doorstep when Hattie was in the midst of a plumbing
