Father For Keeps

“Do you think I did the right thing?” Jennie asked, snuggling against Carter in their soft bed.

“To go against your sister’s express wishes and write to Flaherty, putting her at risk of losing her child to his powerful family?”

Jennie winced and buried her face in his shoulder. “You don’t really think he’d try to take Caroline, do you?”

“I don’t even know the guy, honey. I think you were playing with fire, but I’ve learned my lesson about trying to make you change your mind when you get one of your notions.”

His voice held laughter and a lazy, post-lovemaking indulgence. “I find that hard to believe, counselor,” Jennie said dryly. “But, seriously, maybe this time I’ve made a terrible mistake. Kate and I have always tried to take care of each other.”

“And you’re still trying to take care of her, Jennie. That’s your problem. Your baby sister’s all grown-up now. It’s up to her to decide what she wants to do about Flaherty. You’ll just have to trust her to make the right decision.”

“I don’t want her hurt again, Carter. She deserves to be happy.”

Carter sighed. “Perhaps you should have thought about that before you wrote the letter, honey. But it’s too late now. He’s here, and, personally, I think Kate is perfectly capable of dealing with him.”

“Do you think she’s still in love with him?”

“She hasn’t said a single kind word, and her eyes flash daggers when she looks at him, so I would say…yes.”

Jennie pulled her head up to look at him. “That doesn’t make sense.”

He pulled her on top of him and gave her soft bottom a loving pat. “It makes perfect sense. How many verbal daggers did you throw at me before I could get you to admit that you were crazy about me?”

She smiled at him in the darkness. “I threw plenty. But that was before I fell in love with you.”

Carter shook his head. “Nope. It was because you fell in love with me. The opposite of love is indifference, not hostility.”

“So your theory is that if Kate is hostile, it means she still cares about him?”

Carter pulled her a couple inches along the top of him, enough for her to feel evidence of his renewed arousal. “We can have a heck of a tiff, baby,” he said in a low voice, “and you still do this to me. The one thing I can’t be when I’m around you is indifferent. If Kate were calm and nonchalant, I’d say Flaherty should start packing, but as it is. I don’t know. She just might weaken.”

Jennie shifted her legs to fit her body more closely around him, eliciting a low growl from her partner. “If he hurts her again, I’ll personally take Papa’s shotgun and run him out of town. I swear.”

Carter reached his hand up to pull her head down toward him. “I don’t want to talk about Flaherty anymore,” he said tersely. Then he proceeded to close her mouth with his own.

By the end of the week it was obvious that Carter had been right. Kate was anything but indifferent to her former lover. She tried to pretend that her interest was casual, but Jennie could recognize the signs in her sister—the extra primping before he was due to call, the starry gazes out the window when she thought no one was around, the flushed cheeks at the sound of his knock on the front door.

She hadn’t agreed to go off alone with him yet, so Jennie assumed she was keeping some degree of control on the relationship, but she suspected that would change. Sean could be very charming.and very persuasive. Even though she’d been responsible for bringing Sean back to Vermillion, Jennie’s misgivings grew. As the older sister, she felt as if she should at least warn Kate about giving in too far, too fast. But since the couple in question already had produced a child, the advice seemed a bit silly.

So when Kate asked shyly if Jennie would mind Caroline while she had supper at the hotel with Sean, Jennie merely agreed and held her tongue.

Kate sensed her sister’s apprehension and was grateful for her forbearance. She had enough doubts herself without adding Jennie’s. Sean had wanted to be alone with her all week, and she had continued to resist, though every day she felt more comfortable in his company, more tender watching his obvious delight in his daughter, and more reluctant to see him leave in the evening. He’d kept his word and had not tried to kiss her, but the tension between them as they parted each night made it obvious that at the barest nod from her, she would once again be in his arms.

The first chill of fall was in the air as they crossed the street toward the Continental Hotel. She was glad she’d worn the old silk shawl that had been her mother’s. She and Jennie had divided their mother’s clothes between them after her death. They were too short of money not to use them, though for weeks it had been a pang to see them on each other.

“I should have hired a rig,” Sean said, looking at the glowing western sky. “I remember how you liked sunsets.”

“I don’t get much time for a drive in the country these days,” Kate answered a bit wistfully. “I almost envy Jennie her job up at the mine. It gets her out into the mountains every day. Of course, I’d probably be intimidated cooking for all those men.”

Sean took her arm to help her up the stairs to the wooden sidewalk in front of the hotel. “You cook for the three miners boarding with you.”

“That’s different. Dennis, Brad and Smitty are almost like family nowadays. And they’re easy to please. They say anything I make tastes like heaven.”

“Sweetheart, we had some of the finest cooks in San Francisco at home when I was growing up, and not a one of them could produce a brisket like the one we had last night.”

“Ah, Sean Flaherty, you and your Irish blarney again,” she protested. But she was pleased in spite of herself. Sean’s descriptions of his wealthy childhood had always intimidated her. The luxuries of Nob Hill sounded much farther than a mountain range away from her simple Vermillion life. Meeting Sean had opened a whole new world to her, a world beyond the mountains, where men and ladies wore fine clothes, dined on exotic foods and delighted each other with their witty sallies. There had been a time when she’d dreamed of marrying Sean and being swept off to that enchanted world. But those days were over. She was happy at Sheridan House with her daughter and the rest of her family around her. Nevertheless, remembering Sean’s tales of lavish San Francisco banquets, she’d worked all yesterday afternoon to be sure the supper was perfect.

“I can tell you one thing,” Sean was saying with his crooked grin. “We won’t be dining as finely tonight. The Continental must have recruited the hotel chef from one of the neighboring mines. His steaks are hard as ore and twice as gritty.”

Kate chuckled. One of the things that had made her fall so fatally for Sean had been his humor. Though there’d always been plenty of lively talk around their table, Kate had to admit that her own family had been a serious bunch.

He did his best to keep her fascinated throughout the meal. The laughter felt good. She hadn’t laughed so hard or felt so carefree since a year ago spring, before Sean had left her, before the death of her parents in the flu epidemic, before she’d learned that she would have to face the town unwed with a baby growing inside her.

“Ah, Katie Marie, you need to laugh more often,” he said as the waiter cleared away their plates including the rum cake which Kate had scarcely touched. “It makes your face glow like a freshly opened rose.”

She nodded and swirled the coffee in her cup. “Yes. There was too much sadness in our household after Mama and Papa died…and then I was so sick with the baby. And Jennie had a terrible battle with Carter when the town was trying to close down the boardinghouse.” She straightened up in the chair and smiled. “But that’s all past now. Carter and Jennie are happy as two June bugs on a screen, Caroline is healthy…;”

“And her father’s come back,” Sean added softly.

Kate lowered her eyes. “Yes. He’s come back. And I’ve discovered that he still can make me laugh like no one else I’ve ever met.”

Sean reached across the table and grasped the hand that held the cup, stopping the swirling. “He can still make you feel, too, Katie. He can make you laugh and then cry from the intensity of it. Remember?”

He spoke softly, but the words drummed into her ears. She did remember. The intensity. The tears of release after Sean had brought her to incredible heights of passion. But she remembered other tears later, the ones she’d shed after he had left her. Oceans of them. She pulled her hand away and put down the cup.

“I think I’d better get back, Sean. Caroline will be wanting her mama before going down for the night.”

“I thought Jennie was going to feed her a bottle.”

“Well, it’s always better if I feed her myself.” She spoke the words in a rush and stood up abruptly, trying to tamp down the sudden panicky feeling.

Sean stood, as well, reached into his pocket and carelessly tossed three silver dollars onto the table. “Katie, it’s after ten. Caroline’s undoubtedly been asleep for over an hour.”

“Have you become such an expert on her schedule, suddenly, with less than a week’s practice?” Her voice was sharper than she had intended, but Sean didn’t seem to be offended. He walked around the table and took her arm.

“We’ve had such a lovely evening. I’m not ready to give you back yet.” He put an arm behind her waist and steered her toward the Continental’s narrow staircase. “We’ll have some Queen Charlotte in my room.”

“What’s Queen Charlotte?”

“It’s a raspberry claret—very much the rage in San Francisco. I brought some with me just for you.”

San Francisco. That mysterious, glamorous world he’d painted for her in tantalizing glimpses in between their magical moments of lovemaking. Yes, she wanted to go upstairs with him to drink Queen Charlotte and get heady on the elixir of faraway places and close-up passion. Her body was strumming with the wanting of it. But her mind told her that once she climbed those stairs with him, she’d be lost. She’d have unlocked her mended heart and left it vulnerable, out in the open, just waiting for him to rend it apart again.

She stopped his forward movement by holding on to the end of the banister. “I can’t, Sean.”

She was up on the first step so their eyes were level, just inches apart, hers anguished, his pleading. “Let me help you remember how good we were, Katie,” he said, low and husky.

Kate looked around for some sign of life to help break the spell of those intent blue eyes, but the hotel lobby was empty. Even the desk clerk had abandoned his post. She turned back to him and took a deep breath. “That spring I let you make love to me, Sean, because I was young and foolish and desperately in love. But it was a mistake.” He tried to protest, but she held up a hand and continued, “Mama always said the wisest people were the ones who make plenty of mistakes, because they learn so much from them.”