Stroke of Fortune (16 page)

J
osie left Carson Ranch the next day.

She worked until two, showing the new nanny what she needed to know, and then she went home to the little yellow house where her mother lived. She put her clothes away in her old chest of drawers and she hooked up her computer. Then she went over to the Mission Creek Café and asked for her old job back.

Gus Andros hired her on the spot. “You start tomorrow, seven to three.”

“I'll be here.”

She bought a pizza on the way home and she and her mama ate it in the living room while they watched her mama's favorite,
Law and Order.

“You gonna be okay, honey?” Alva asked softly after her program was over.

“It hurts, Mama. It hurts a lot. But I am gonna be fine.”

 

Friday night when Flynt went to check on Lena, the new nanny was there. He had known she would be.

Grace had told him she'd found someone. “She's
caring and bright, and she comes with fine references. She's not Josie, but then, nobody is.”

“Great, Ma. Thanks.”

Grace was not pleased with him and she couldn't resist telling him so. “That's all you've got to say? You've gone and thrown away the best thing that ever—”

“Ma, don't start on me.”

She'd pursed up her mouth and glared at him, but at least she shut up.

When he came in Friday night, he and the new nanny exchanged pleasantries. Then he told her to take a break. He'd look after Lena for an hour or two.

He fed Lena and diapered her and told her a silly story. Not that she understood it. But it cheered him a little, to watch her laugh and wave her arms around. He couldn't get enough of that smile of hers. And when he held her, for a moment or two he almost succeeded in forgetting that Josie was gone and she wasn't coming back.

At seven, he gave Lena to the nanny and he went downstairs to the main wing and joined his mother, his father, Cara and Matt for dinner. Fiona was off somewhere—getting herself in trouble, probably.

It was not a pleasant meal. His parents and Cara were all good and mad at him. Josie had worked her special magic on them and they had accepted her, were beginning to think of her as part of the family. Now they'd lost her—again. Even if they didn't have
all the details, they knew that he was the reason she was gone.

Matt was even worse than the others. Something was eating him, had been for a while now. He was surly in general lately. But with Flynt that evening he crossed the line into outright belligerence.

Right after they all sat down, he said, “I hear Josie's gone.” He glared right at Flynt.

Flynt nodded and kept his face a blank. “That's right.”

“I thought you had something good going with her.”

No way Flynt was getting into that. “She's gone. That's all you need to know. Would you mind passing the salt?”

Matt muttered something so low Flynt couldn't quite make it out, picked up the saltshaker and shoved it Flynt's way.

Flynt just didn't get it. Matt hardly knew Josie, really. Why the hell should he get all worked up because it hadn't worked out between her and his brother?

But Matt was worked up.

And whatever was eating him, he'd decided to exercise his frustrations on Flynt.

He started in with complaints—about a certain land deal Flynt had gotten them into that hadn't quite worked out the way they'd all hoped it might. About
some damn special feed orders. Matt said they'd been shorted and someone had to look into it.

Flynt tried to keep his cool, but he wasn't feeling any too even-tempered himself.

Finally he turned to his mother. “Great dinner, Ma. Thanks.” He threw his napkin on the table and got the hell out of there.

He figured he'd learned his lesson from that experience. Flynt generally managed to eat with the family two or three times a week, but not anymore. He was going into avoidance mode. No family dinners or get-togethers for a while. He'd give them all—himself included—a chance to get past the fact that Josie was gone.

Saturday night he had dinner at the club. There were rooms upstairs for the members and for guests—the club also operated as a resort of sorts—so Flynt spent the night there. He was waiting in the clubhouse the next morning, ready to get on the links with Tyler, Spence and Luke.

Again, Luke didn't show. But Michael did.

Flynt played badly. He had a hell of a time keeping his mind on the game.

Later he ate in the Grill with the men. Spence told them that he'd hired Ben Ashton. The P.I. would have a first report for them in a few weeks.

After the meal Flynt returned to the ranch—though he was under no illusions that anyone there would be glad to see him. Except for Lena. She smiled and
laughed and waved her fat little hands at him, totally unaware that no one else in the house wanted a damn thing to do with him.

But hell. His mother and father and sisters and brother had been mad at him before. It hadn't killed him.

Losing Josie, though, that just might. In the day, he couldn't stop thinking of her.

And at night, it only got worse.

He was in his study around four, balancing a few accounts, when Matt buzzed him on the house line.

“I need to talk to you,” his brother said.

“Okay. Talk.”

Complaints followed. A string of them. Problems in the breeding program, fences down, miles of them. Hands that had gone off and got drunk and not come back to work.

It was all just routine stuff.

But for some reason, Matt had decided it was all Flynt's fault.

“Damn it, what's eating you?” Flynt finally barked into the phone.

Matt said something ugly and hung up on him.

Very carefully Flynt put the phone back in its cradle. He wanted to break something. He wanted a drink.

Most of all, he wanted Josie.

Unfortunately it was a none-of-the-above situation. He decided he had to get out of there. He returned to
the club, ate in the Grill and again spent the night in one of the big suites upstairs.

Monday morning he decided he was through living at the club just because his brother was a fight waiting to happen. Flynt went home. He was hard at work in his study when his mother tapped on the door.

She came in and stood opposite his desk and looked at him with her sweetest, most conciliatory expression. “Flynt, we're all upset to lose Josie.”

As if he wasn't. “Got that. Loud and clear.”

“We all could see how much you two loved each other and it simply makes no sense to us that you couldn't work out your differences.” She paused, waiting, he knew, for him to say something.

No way.

Eventually she heaved a big sigh and went on. “But honestly, we don't want to let this drive a wedge between us. Let's all try to get along, can't we?”

“Ma, I am doing my best and that's a damn fact.”

“Join the family for dinner tonight, won't you?”

He should have said no. But he never could refuse his mother when she gave him that pleading look she was giving him right then. “I'll be there.”

She thanked him and left.

That night both Cara and Fiona ate elsewhere. There were just the four of them: Ford, Grace, Matt and Flynt.

His parents put some real effort into making the whole thing bearable. They talked of the weather, of
how well that remodeling project in Corpus was going.

Matt scowled and glowered and muttered one-syllable answers to any questions directed his way. Flynt tried not to get into it with him. He honestly did.

Somehow they made it through the soup and the salad. The maid had just set their T-bones in front of them when Matt looked over and asked, “So, Mr. President, you gonna hang out at the club for the rest of your life, wheeling and dealing and practicing your sand wedge—or you think maybe I could get a little damn help around here now and then?”

It was enough. Way more than enough.

Flynt threw down his napkin and stood. “You want a piece of me, Matt?” Grace gasped. Flynt ignored her. “Is that what we're dealing with here?”

Matt shoved back his chair.

Ford said, “Now, boys…”

Flynt hardly heard him. He'd gone past the point where a “Now, boys” could stop him. His blood seemed to pound, hot and insistent, through his veins. “Come on. You want it, you got it.”

“Not in the house!” Grace cried. But the two of them had already stepped free of the table.

Matt came at him, fast. Flynt crouched down to meet him, butting him in the midsection with his head. Matt let out a hard grunt and grabbed on.

They went down to the rug, rolling, trading
punches, bumping into the furniture, sending breakable things like lamps and vases crashing to the floor.

Matt got the upper hand. He rolled on top and sat up and Flynt took one on the jaw and another one hard on the cheekbone.

Looming above him, Matt glared down. “You damn, stupid fool. You got it all and you toss it over. The only thing standin' between you and what you love is
you.
I'd give my right arm to be in your boots, you know that? And if I was, you can be damn sure I wouldn't throw it all away. If I was you, I wouldn't—”

Flynt didn't want to hear it—mostly because it rang all too true. He gave a heave with his midsection. It worked—at least to a degree. Matt flew forward on top of him and then they were rolling again.

Ford was shouting. Grace, too.

“Stop, now!”

“You boys, you stop right now!”

Flynt gained the top position. He reared up on his brother and he gave him two hard jabs, a left and a right.

Matt grunted twice. He had blood on his face and in his hair, not only from the blows Flynt had delivered, but from the bits of broken china and glass they were rolling in. Flynt knew he looked about the same.

Not that he cared.

He cared for nothing. Not anymore. There was
himself. There was his adversary. There was the next blow.

He brought back his fist to deliver that blow.

Two sets of strong arms stopped him.

Someone must have run out and called in a few of the ranch hands.

“Easy, now. Easy does it,” one of the hands muttered.

It took three of them to pull him off Matt and another two to hold Matt back from jumping him again.

Ford stepped between them. “All right, boys. You've had your fun. It's over. Calm down.”

 

Matt and Flynt agreed to pay for what they'd broken. Then they made up, more or less.

Matt admitted he was out of line. “I'm kind of on edge lately, you know?”

Flynt accepted his brother's apology. The thrill of the fight was behind them. Now came that dust-and-ashes feeling, that time when a man wondered what the hell it had even been about.

Grace wanted to herd the two of them to the big bathroom off the kitchen and patch them up the way she used to do when they were kids.

Flynt shook his head. “Thanks anyway, Ma.” He looked around at the mess they had made. “I'm damn sorry about this.”

“Now, now,” said Grace. “They're only things…”

He made his excuses and he got out of there, climbing the stairs, headed for his own wing. When he got there, he should have gone straight to his bedroom suite, stripped off his clothes and got himself into the shower. But he didn't. He entered his study and he shut the door.

Then he took a key from his desk and went to the cabinet next to the credenza. He kept the scotch in that cabinet, for the occasional meeting when someone wanted a drink.

There was no meeting now. He was alone. With that gray, bleak dust-and-ashes feeling.

Alone and finally admitting that he'd fought this battle long enough. That he was tired all the way to the bone, plain wrung-out with fighting—both his brother and the hell inside his own mind—and he wanted a damn drink.

He deserved a damn drink.

He stuck the key into the lock and gave it a turn. And then the cabinet was open and the Chivas was right there in front of him. He reached for the bottle and grabbed a short glass from a shelf. He poured out three fingers, then splashed in more.

“For good measure,” he said aloud to the silent room.

Nobody answered.

What a surprise.

He set the open bottle on the credenza and brought the glass to his mouth. The smell of it filled his nos
trils—strong and sweet, with the promise of comfort. Of that slow, drifting feeling, and then, sometime later, a welcome oblivion.

He put the glass to his lips.

And he heard his brother's voice.

You damn, stupid fool. You got it all and you toss it over. The only thing standin' between you and what you love is you….

Flynt blinked, pulled the glass away just enough that he could look into it.

Josie's face.

Oh, yeah. He could see her. Looking at him the same way she'd looked at him a year and a half ago, that morning when she finally doused him with ice water and told him off for hiding from his life—and his guilt—in a bottle.

He blinked again.

Her face was gone.

But still, he stared into the amber depths.

So, he thought, is this what it's come to, then? Now I go back to drinking my life away in order to bear the damn mess I've made of everything?

What had she said, a week ago, when he told her he wanted her out of his life?

That he couldn't go back. He only had now. And if he didn't live now, he might as well be in the grave with his dead wife and lost baby.

Evil, she'd called it. To let himself love her only for duty's sake.

Right then it came to him. The question that turned his whole world around.

What good did it do the dead? What would Monica and the baby get out of it if he wasted the rest of his life as a damn drunk, if he loved no one, gave nothing, brought no new life into the world?

Flynt set the untouched glass gently down.