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 crisis. Benjamin knew about plumbing. He’d saved the day.
Hattie, in her gratitude, had said, “Why don’t you stay around? There’s lots of work to be done.”
Sam had thought she was asking for trouble, and had cautioned her against it.
But Hattie had just shrugged. “Let him have a chance.”
“You mean it?” Sam remembered the old man saying.
Hattie had nodded. “I could use a man around to help out.”
Benjamin stayed. Being needed—really needed—did something that all the well-meaning programs he’d tried couldn’t do. Benjamin grabbed the chance Hattie gave him with both hands and hung on for dear life. Sam didn’t think he’d ever taken a drink again. He’d certainly never turned up drunk as far as Sam had ever heard. From then on, Benjamin kept the plumbing in perfect running order, installed whirlpool baths in four of the rooms, and definitely earned his keep.
Later that year, when Hattie bought a little house halfway down the bluff, intending to use it for long-term rentals, Benjamin had helped her restore it, then moved into the bottom floor as an on-site caretaker. A little over a year ago Hattie had deeded the house to him. He was taken care of.
Which was probably, Sam reflected, the only reason he hadn’t got left Benjamin in the will.
Or Cletus, another of Hattie’s “projects,” who came ambling up the walk now. Cletus was perhaps seventy-five to Benjamin’s eighty, and he, too, had been aimless when Hattie had met him at the soup kitchen. They’d talked about how nice the lilacs were that year, and Hattie had invited him up to see hers.
He’d arrived on a bicycle, looking a bit shabby but clean in a threadbare navy blazer and khakis, with a distinctive sprig of lilac in his buttonhole.
He thought hers needed pruning. “Have to do it in the fall,” he’d told her. Then he’d surveyed the lawn and gardens critically. “Got to get wire props for those peonies,” he had told her. “And a better arbor for the grapes.”
“Can you make an arbor?” Hattie had asked.
Cletus had made the arbor and had been here ever since.
Now he set the wheelbarrow full of potting plants down and stood looking Sam up and down.
“How you doing, Cletus?” Sam offered his hand.
Cletus grunted and took Sam’s hand, but the shake he gave it was little more than a jerk. “Took you long enough.”
Sam frowned. “I got here as