Fortune Found (15 page)

J
essie was in her kitchen when Flint appeared at her back door.

She hadn't expected him, but that didn't keep her pulse from picking up speed the minute she set eyes on his handsome face, on his disheveled hair, on his disreputably sexy jeans and the simple chambray work shirt he wore untucked with the sleeves rolled to his elbows.

“Hey, beautiful, are you busy?” he asked through the screen in that deep voice that was music to her ears.

Jessie grinned at the
hey, beautiful
part, thinking that he was teasing her because her hair was in a ponytail, and she was wearing her oldest, most comfortable, but hardly best jeans, and the
World's Greatest Mom
T-shirt she'd had on the first day he'd arrived at Kelsey and Coop's.

“Just loading the dishwasher,” she said, having finished that and closing the door to it as he opened the screen and came in without waiting for an invitation.

“A little birdy told me everyone over here was going to the store,” he said, not hesitating to head directly for her and hook his arms around her waist.

“Well, not—”

He kissed her before she could finish saying that Ella had stayed behind to watch a Disney movie on DVD in the den.

And almost the moment his lips met hers the same thing happened that happened every time they were together now—everything faded into the background and Jessie was lost in Flint.

Her arms went around his neck and she clasped her hands behind it, knowing the silence of a kiss was not going to draw her eldest daughter away from the den and movie, and allowing herself that one secret mid-afternoon indulgence.

But she couldn't allow it for too long because it took nothing at all to arouse in her what Flint aroused night after night, and a clandestine kiss with her daughter in the next room was one thing; more than that just couldn't happen.

“Tonight,” she reminded Flint when she ended the kiss. “Ella didn't go to the store. She's in the den.”

Flint released her from his arms and stepped back, nodding his understanding. And smiling a smile that confused Jessie.

“I came to talk to you anyway,” he said then.

A cold shiver ran up Jessie's spine.

She'd been blocking out the thought that he could be leaving anytime, that once his uncle's wedding on
Saturday was over, the logical assumption was that Flint would go back to Denver. And now she was afraid that that was what he wanted to talk about.

You knew it was going to happen,
she told herself.

But while that was true, their nights alone in her studio had acted like a bubble of time, of space, that had encased just the two of them, together, and protected them from ugly realities.

But she thought the bubble was about to burst.

“Okay,” she said quietly, tentatively, trying to keep the dread out of her voice. Trying also to be strong, to face this without showing how difficult it was for her.

“I don't know how you feel about—” he paused “—about us. But I've just realized some things—”

It took Jessie a moment to actually hear what he was saying, not to just be steeling herself for the blow she thought was coming.

And then an altogether different blow hit her when she actually began to absorb what he was saying.

He wasn't talking about returning to Colorado after the wedding the way she'd anticipated. He was talking about
not
returning to Colorado after the wedding. About staying in Red Rock. About staying with her. About them being together permanently.

“I think the website can cut my travel time way down,” he was saying when she fully caught up with him. “I can rearrange things, too, so that the majority of the buying trips to accumulate inventory get done during the summer months, when the kids are out of school and we can make it like a big rock-hunting outing, except we'll be hunting for art and crafts. What sales trips have to happen beyond the summers I can do more efficiently. I've always taken my time, but there's no reason I can't
get to where I'm going faster, piggyback meetings with buyers, and then be back before you've even missed me. Plus—”

“Wait…” Jessie said to slow him down. “Do you know what you're saying?”

He laughed. “I do. I'm saying that I'm so crazy about you, Jessie, that I can't even think about leaving you—”

“But with me comes
four
kids.” Four kids she'd thought it unlikely for any man to ever want to take on, let alone a man like Flint. A man who was committed to being a bachelor because his only experiences with marriage had been abysmal. A man who had told her himself that he wasn't in favor of having kids, that he'd been terrified at the thought that Anthony might be his…

“I want the kids, too,” he claimed enthusiastically, going on to tell her all he'd resolved about being a father to them.

“I want us to be a family,” he swore. “I know I'm not the best at parenthood right now, that I kind of blunder my way through, but I'm not too horrible and I can learn. I'll get better at it. The most important part is that I
want
to be a father to your kids—”

“No!”

The shriek from the kitchen doorway drew both Jessie's and Flint's attention.

Jessie had been so astonished by all that Flint had been saying that she hadn't noticed that Ella had joined them. And she had no idea how long her daughter had been standing there, how much the little girl had overheard.

“Tell him no!” Ella commanded her mother.

“Ella—” Jessie cajoled.

“No!” the seven-year-old repeated. “He can't be our father. He's not a dad. He's not like Daddy, like Grampa. He's different. He'll get tired of us and he'll go away like Daddy did only worse. Daddy couldn't help going away. But him? He'll just go and then what will Adam do? What will Bethany and Braden do? They like him. They'll think he's our dad and then he'll go away and they'll cry and be sad like I was with Daddy. And you'll cry again, Mama. All the time, like over Daddy. Tell him no!”

Ella was sobbing by then and Jessie's eyes filled with tears to see it, to hear all that her daughter was worried about. And while letting things with Flint go as far as they had in the last several days had not been about her kids or about her being a mother, when it came to this much bigger issue, it was her children who took precedence.

“Ella,” she said again, fighting her own tears and hating that she was going to have to turn down Flint this way, but knowing that Ella's feelings had to be her primary concern.

Yet before she had taken more than two steps toward her daughter, Flint said, “I understand, Ella.” And he was the one to cross the kitchen to her daughter, where he hunkered down on his heels so he could be at Ella's eye level.

“I understand,” he repeated, “that you're looking out for yourself, and for your brothers and sister, for your mom. My brother Ross always did that for me, for Coop, for our sister, Frannie. Ross was the oldest and he saw things the clearest, he knew when we needed protecting. So let's you and I talk.”

“I just want you to go away,” Ella cried.

“But what if I told you I want
never
to go away? That I know what it's like when you're a kid and you start to count on somebody, and how bad it is when they let you down?”

“How do you know?” she said venomously.

“Because it happened to me a whole bunch when I was growing up—that's how I know how bad it is. So I didn't come here today to say what I've said to your mom without knowing for sure that I want to come in here, with all of you, and be a dad to you in every way that being a dad means.”

“You're not my dad.”

“I know that. And I know that no one can ever take your own dad's place, and that's not what I'm trying to do. But what if you knew that if your mom said yes to me, you could count on me to always be here as your second dad? To be somebody you can always come to, who will always look out for you and Adam and Braden and Bethany the best way I know how? What if I promised you that I would never, ever leave any one of you willingly? Would it be such a bad thing to have me around then?”

Ella shrugged and Jessie could see that she was contemplating all that Flint had said, that she was wavering, and even though tears were still falling, she wasn't actively sobbing anymore.

“What if,” he continued, “I told you that I don't want to take your mom away from any of you, that I just want you to share her with me? And that I'll do everything I can to make up for that by being with you guys myself? By doing the dad things with you all to fill in?”

“We have Grampa,” she challenged.

“I know you do. And I'm not looking to take his place either. I'm just looking to be a part of what you all have here. Would that be so bad? To just have us all be a family?”

Ella's tears stopped, but the sniffles remained and she was having trouble keeping her bottom lip from jutting out. “Would we still have game night and go rock hunting and all the stuff we like to do with Mama?”

“You would.”

“But you'd be there.”

“If you—and your mom—will let me, I'd like to be, yeah.”

“Would you holler at us?”

“I'd like to say no, but there would probably be times when I'd get mad at something, just like there would probably be times when you would get mad at me. But there are times when that happens with your mom, too, aren't there? And with your gramma and grampa? Times when your dad got mad?”

Ella shrugged her concession to that.

“I'll tell you what, though. I know what you're talking about and I know how it felt when the man in my mother's life yelled at me or did something that made me angry, so I can also promise you that when that happens, you and I can talk about it. That you can tell me how you feel and we can see what we can do to make everything be the best it can be for everybody. Is that something you think you might be able to live with?”

“And you won't just go away if we're bad?”

“I won't. I'll stay and we'll make it work. I give you my word.”

He said that so solemnly that that, too, broke Jessie's heart and brought tears to her eyes as she looked on, as
she watched her daughter study Flint, as she watched Flint endure that scrutiny that seemed to be Ella searching for signs that he was lying.

Only after a long while did Jessie see Ella swallow hard, pull in her bottom lip once and for all, and say, “Okay, I guess.” Then, to Jessie, the seven-year-old said, “You can marry him.”

“He hasn't actually asked me to marry him,” Jessie pointed out, realizing that the ball was suddenly in her court again and not instantly sure what she was going to do about it.

“Why don't you go back to your movie and let me have a few minutes alone with her?” Flint said to Ella as if they were now in this together.

Ella still wasn't smiling. She was still clearly leery even if she had conceded. And before she conceded enough to leave, the front door opened and in came Jack and Jeannie and the rest of the kids.

“What's going on?” Jeannie asked as she took in the wet, red face of her eldest granddaughter and then looked from Flint as he stood up from his stance in front of Ella to Jessie.

“Mama and Flint are gonna get married,” Ella announced somewhat fatalistically.

“We're just talking!” Jessie was very quick to interject.

“Maybe we can go on doing that in the studio,” Flint suggested.

“Will you guys keep an eye on the kids?” Jessie asked her obviously shocked parents.

They agreed and without waiting for more, Flint took Jessie's hand and led her out the back door.

What am I going to do? Tell me what to do, Pete…

Jessie was in a panic as she crossed the yard with Flint. But when they reached her studio Flint had to stop to answer a call to him by Coop from over the fence and she went in without him, grateful for even a minute to herself to think.

But somehow once she was in her studio, where they'd spent every night, where her life seemed to have taken yet another change, a calm came over her.

Or maybe it was Pete bringing that calm over her because again she had the sense of his presence. But not in any way that relayed displeasure. Not even in any way that caused her to feel disloyal. Instead, if anything, she somehow felt as if she had his approval along with Ella's…

“Pete?” she whispered because the sense of him was so strong that she wasn't sure if she was having some sort of hallucination.

But of course nothing happened. Nothing but a continuing feeling that everything was okay. And then that sense of him went away, as if he'd left her to her thoughts, to make her own decision freely.

And yes, she thought she had a decision to make because, like Ella, she, too, had had the impression that all Flint had said was leading to a proposal. Having a future together, being a family, never leaving them. What else could he have been talking about except marriage?

But
marry
him?

Her mother had encouraged her to have this time with him while he was in Red Rock, this brief interlude, to indulge herself, to just enjoy what he had to offer. And she'd done that. To the hilt. And no, she hadn't wanted to so much as entertain the thought of his leaving. But
in the back of her mind, she also hadn't doubted that he would.

But now…

What if he didn't? What if she
could
have more than this passing fancy with him? What if she
could
have an entire future with him?

It was surprisingly simple to consider.

Her mother had been right in all of her observations of Jessie's response to Flint—she had gravitated toward him from the start, he did make her laugh, she did enjoy him. Every minute with him. Everything about him.