Free Stroke of Fortune by Christine Rimmer Page B

to the bureau/changing table, laid her down and checked her diaper.
    â€œWet,” he said, bending so close his forehead and Lena’s almost met.
    â€œOog. Ga,” said Lena.
    â€œYes, ma’am,” Flynt replied. “I’m on it.” And he was. In no time at all, he was snapping her back into her lightweight pj’s. “There. All better.” Lena let out more nonsense sounds, waving her arms and kicking her legs. Her fat little fist ran into his nose, then opened and grabbed on.
    â€œHey.” He laughed, catching that tiny hand, whichinstantly wrapped itself around his thumb. “Cut it out.” He kissed the plump pink knuckles.
    Josie looked on, her poor heart melting right down to pure mush. He did have a way with that baby, now, didn’t he? And he didn’t even flinch at the prospect of changing a diaper.
    Heartbreaker, he might be. But there was good-guy potential there, a steady, dependable man inside him. Always had been.
    Josie’s job over the next two weeks or so—until the results of that paternity test came through and the unassailable truth finally had to be faced—would be to set that good man free.
    He slid a clean diaper onto his shoulder and then lifted Lena into his arms.
    Right then he looked at Josie and scowled. “What?” The word was pure challenge. He must have seen the softness in her eyes.
    She almost lied, almost waved a hand and told him nothing.
    But where would avoiding his challenges get her?
    Hey, she thought. I’ve quit my job and gone and moved in down the hall from him. Might as well go for it, starting right now.
    She asked, “How in the world did you ever get it in your head to marry someone like Monica?”

Seven
    F lynt had a little trouble believing she’d said that.
    He didn’t like to talk about Monica, and everyone close to him knew it. Josie knew it. She knew it damn well.
    People respected his natural desire for silence on the subject of Monica. They respected his grief and they knew of his guilt.
    They left it alone.
    Josie had always left it alone, too—at least, until now. It wasn’t as if she didn’t already know plenty. She’d seen way too much, both of the hell that his marriage had been and after, when he tried to drown himself in a river of good scotch.
    â€œFlynt?”
    He didn’t answer. He turned from her and carried Lena back to her crib, laid her down. Those innocent eyes looked up at him, that little mouth moving, hand still waving.
    Behind him, Josie said nothing.
    Damn her.
    It wasn’t the first time she’d presumed more than she should have with him.
    She was the one, after all, who had shamed him into getting sober a year and a half ago. She’d told him off good and proper, when no one else had the guts to do it.
    Shocked the hell out of him, when she did that.
    Josie, of all people. Josie, who looked after him, who took care of him, who kept her mouth shut and her eyes down.
    For a year or so after the accident, she’d coddled him. There was no other word for it. She’d help him stagger to his bedroom late at night when he was still just sober enough to get there before he passed out. And when he passed out before he got there, she’d take off his shoes and put a blanket over him. She’d clean up his messes.
    For that year, she gave him just what he needed in a woman: a combination nanny and servant. She had the patience of a saint. If someone had told him ahead of time that it was his housekeeper who would finally get him to put the cork in the bottle, he’d have laughed them right out of Texas.
    People did try in that year to talk to him about his drinking. His mother had come after him, and his father. They’d even sent Judge Bridges in one day to try to make him see the light.
    He’d ignored them all and kept on drinking.
    And then, a year and a half ago, in December, Josie came into his study one morning when he