The Man Must Marry

by Janet Chapman

  “If you want to talk to me, you’ll have to drive me home,” she said, walking around to the passenger side. “That way, you can use the truck to come back to work.” She gave him a Cheshire cat grin when he got into the driver’s seat. “Levi is a tough boss. You ruin any more of his precious wood, and he’ll have you sweeping floors with a toothbrush.”

  Before she could read his intention, Sam reached over the console, took her face in his hands, and gave her a loud kiss on the mouth.

  “What did you do that for?” she snapped, glancing toward the building to see if anyone was watching. She narrowed her eyes at him. “Never mind. Just don’t do it again. The voyage is over, Mr. Sinclair, and I am no longer interested.”

  “That kiss was for not firing me,” he said with maddening calm, sliding the key into the ignition.

  Willa snorted. “Fat lot of good it would do me. Silas would just hire you back.”

  “I thought you owned Kent Caskets,” he said in surprise.

  “I do.”

  “Then how could Payne hire me back if you fired me?”

  Willa motioned toward her factory. “Do you like the color of my building?”

  Sam gave her a quizzical look. “It’s gray.”

  “I had the entire building painted white when I bought it, and I had the trim painted a really nice green. But then I went out of town for three days with Shel and the kids to do some shopping in Portland. When I came back, my factory was gray with blue trim.” She turned in her seat to face him. “What did you think of the lobby when you walked in this morning?”

  “It looks nice. I was a bit surprised to see the reception area painted in such cheery colors. I thought the collection of antique urns was a nice touch, though.”

  “Ten days ago, that lobby was deep green and brown, with gold leaf accents. And there was a beautiful bronze statue of a breaching whale. Now that’s sitting in my office suite, under a newly installed spotlight.”

  Sam stared at her. “Who has the authority to sign checks on your business accounts?”

  “Only me, but it doesn’t matter. If I don’t okay an expense, they simply use their own money. Or sometimes they pool their paychecks to buy whatever they think my business needs. My older workers are very well off, and a lot of them don’t have any close family to leave their estates to. So they indulge themselves by running Kent Caskets the way they want to run it.”

  “That’s actually very dangerous, Willa. If one of them dies and a relative comes out of the woodwork, you could be sued for whatever your deceased worker had contributed to your business.”

  “I have two retired lawyers working in sales, and they’ve made sure that can’t happen.” She shrugged. “Kent Caskets is more about people than it is about money. And if anything, they’ve taught me that gobs of money sitting in the bank is stagnant energy. They spent their entire lives working hard to accumulate it but found it has little value in and of itself. They claim they enjoy spending their money much more than they enjoyed earning it.” She sighed. “But I think their greatest joy is doing stuff behind my back.”

  “You have got to be the weirdest woman I know,” he said, more to himself than to her.

  “Thank you,” she snapped, turning to face the windshield. “Let’s go. Shelby’s waiting for me.”

  “I meant that as a compliment, Willa,” he said, starting the truck. “What the—where’s the gas pedal?”

  “On the left side.”

  He looked down, touched the pedal, and revved the engine, then looked at her. “Why is it on the left?”

  “This is the truck Abram bequeathed to Jennifer. She only has her learner’s permit, so I let her drive to school this morning, then I drove here.” She grinned smugly. “You can take her driving this afternoon. She wants to meet you anyway, to thank you in person for the truck.”

  “I didn’t have anything to do with this truck.”

  Willa shrugged. “She thinks it’s very nice how you Sinclair men don’t mind that your grandfather gave part of your inheritance to her. Oh, and she thinks you’re really sweet to let me keep the RoseWind without making a stink.” She fastened her seat belt, almost giddy with anticipation. “Drive. I want to be home when Richard shows up.”

  “Will he cause trouble for Shelby? Maybe I should hang around your house today.”

  “We don’t need you to protect us from Richard. He won’t do anything stupid. He was angry when he brought Abram down to New York because Shel had just told him about the divorce, and he blamed me. Let’s go.”

  Sam put his foot on the brake, pulled the shifting lever into drive, and pushed down on the accelerator with his left foot. Jennifer’s brand-new truck shot out of its parking space as if it had been kicked in the ass. Willa had to brace her hand on the dash when Sam slammed on the brakes and they came to an equally abrupt halt.

  “Hell,” he muttered, darting a glance at the building to see if anyone was watching. He shifted in his seat and tried to reach the gas pedal with his right foot.

  “I already tried that,” Willa said from behind her hand, which she was using to hold in her laughter. “It doesn’t work, because the brake pedal gets in the way. You have to use your left foot.”

  He turned and glared at her.

  “Switching the pedal to the left was Emmett’s idea, since Jennifer’s right foot is a prosthesis.”

  “Using my right foot is so ingrained it’s automatic. How did you get to work this morning without killing anyone?”

  “I actually got pretty good at it after several miles. Go ahead, give it another try.”

  “You set me up,” he growled, slowly letting his right foot off the brake, easing down on the gas pedal with his left.

  “Oh, like you set me up this morning? You’re supposed to be on your way back to New York—without telling anyone we spent the last five days together.”

  “They wanted to know who beat me up, and I told them you did,” he said, concentrating on idling out to the road.

  He looked both ways for traffic, and Willa’s head slammed into the headrest when they suddenly took off. She had to grab the door handle to stay upright because they were turning at the time. “Um…my house is the other way.”

  Sam muttered something appropriately nasty.

  He found a place to turn around and got them headed in the right direction, accompanied by the squeals of spinning tires. The ride eventually got less jackrabbitty as he got used to using his left foot, and they only had twenty cars behind them when they finally turned into her driveway.

  Willa decided it must be a guy thing, not pulling over to let honking traffic pass.

  Sam stopped the truck beside Peg’s car, shut off the engine with a deep sigh, and looked around. “Nice place. I can see why it appealed to Bram.”

  “He stayed in that cottage over there,” she said, pointing past him toward the bluff. “You can go see it if you want. I don’t know if there’s anything of his left in there or not; I haven’t had time to look around yet.”

  Peg and Shelby came out of the house and stood on the porch. Sam got out to greet Peg and introduce himself to Shelby, and Willa took her time following. Did she still own that book that explained how to wipe out bad karma, or had she foolishly donated it to the library book sale?

  Chapter Sixteen

  As soon as Peg got a good look at Sam, she dragged him inside and scolded him for making such a mess of himself. Willa and Shelby had to run upstairs so Sam and Peg wouldn’t catch them laughing hysterically. Neither of them could decide which was more outrageous, that Peg was making such a fuss over Sam or that he was letting her. “I thought she was going to start kissing his booboos,” Shelby said, flopping down onto Willa’s bed in laughter. “Cody runs in the opposite direction if I even ask if he’s hurt.”

  Willa walked over to her closet and started pulling out hangers of clothes. “You should have seen Sam in my break room this morning. He was pointing out every little bruise to my workers and blaming me for
each one.”

  Shelby sat up when Willa set an armful of clothes on the bed beside her. “My God, he’s handsome. Wait—why would Sam blame you? And how did he get so beat up?” Then her eyes widened. “Oh, my God! He sailed down from New York with you on the RoseWind! That’s what he meant when he told Peg you tried to drown him.” She jumped up and followed Willa back to the closet. “How come you didn’t tell me about Sam last night?”

  “I forgot.”

  “You forgot?” She grabbed Willa’s arm and swung her around. “You can’t just forget to tell me you spent five days on a boat with a man. I’m your sister! You’re supposed to tell me everything.” Shelby dragged her back to the bed. “Okay, out with it. Did he make a pass at you?” She grinned. “Did you make a pass at him?”

  Willa escaped back to the closet. “That’s none of your business.”

  “Emmett doesn’t call you Willy Wild Child for nothing,” Shelby said, following her. “You’re a completely different person when you’re at sea.” She grabbed the clothes out of Willa’s hands and tossed them in the general direction of the bed. “Or should that be wild woman?” Her voice dropped. “Willa, be honest now. You’re attracted to Sam, aren’t you? I mean, you’d consider having an affair with him if the opportunity presented itself, wouldn’t you?”

  “He’s ten times crazier than Abram, Shel. The man jumped out of a helicopter in the middle of Long Island Sound, for crying out loud.”

  Shelby pulled her into a huge hug. “Oh, this is wonderful! It’s about damn time you had a fling.”

  Willa pulled free and crossed her arms under her breasts. “And you think he’s just the man to end my drought? Well, let me tell you something about Samuel Sinclair. Five days after meeting me, he asked me to marry him, and three days ago, he actually told me he loved me.”

  Shelby backed up and plopped down onto a clothes-covered chair as she gaped up at Willa.

  Willa nodded. “Do you still think he’s a candidate for a fling?”

  “He…he asked you to marry him?”

  “The very night of Abram’s funeral.”

  “And…oh, my God, Willa, what did you say?”

  “I hightailed it out of there the very next morning.” Willa sat on the bed with a sigh. “It’s a long story, Shel, so don’t interrupt, okay? It all started when Spencer read Abram’s will after the funeral.” She paused, then shook her head. “No, actually, it started when the elevator door opened on the thirtieth floor of Tidewater International…”

  Sam sat at the kitchen table, nursing a large mug of maple-syrup-laced coffee. Willa’s home was a classic old New England farmhouse, surrounded by towering maple and elm trees, and the kitchen looked as if it hadn’t been updated in the last fifty years. The cupboards were white bead-board that ran all the way up to the ceiling, and the counter was faded and chipped first-generation Formica. The appliances were copper-tone. There was even an old cast-iron wood cookstove on one of the outside walls, looking as if it had just come out of a Montgomery Ward catalog. The floor was made of pine boards stained dark brown, and it tilted toward the inside hallway.

  Something suddenly brushed up against his leg under the table, and he leaned over to find a one-eyed, semi-bald, wheezing gray cat that looked as old as the appliances. He extended his hand to it. “Hey there, old chump,” he said, smiling when it pushed its scraggly face against his fingers. “You must be on, what, your ninth life?”

  “Poor old thing’s deaf,” Peg said as she walked into the kitchen. She pulled a vacuum cleaner out of the closet. “Took me a while to figure that out,” she continued, grabbing a dust rag, which she stuffed into her apron pocket. “I nearly sucked him up in the vacuum the second day I was here because I didn’t see him sleeping under the coffee table. Cody said Willa found him on the beach, nearly starved to death, about three years ago. There’s no telling how old he is. His name’s Ghost.”

  “Cody?” Sam repeated, lifting Ghost onto his lap.

  “Shelby’s boy. There’s Jennifer, who’s sixteen, and Cody, who’s ten. They’re wonderful kids. You’ll get to meet them at dinner tonight.”

  “I’m invited to dinner? Can I bring a friend?”

  Peg narrowed her eyes at him. “Male or female?”

  “Male. My housemate, actually. Emmett Sengatti is a close friend of Willa’s. He was kind enough to take me in when she abandoned me on the dock yesterday.”

  “Better the dock than the middle of the ocean,” Peg returned with a laugh. She wheeled the vacuum toward the living room. “And there’s always room at my table.”

  Sam looked down at the cat on his lap. “So, Ghost, has Willa got you building your own casket, too?”

  “We have a line of pet caskets and urns coming out this fall,” Willa said, walking into the kitchen, her arms laden with clothes. “But the bulk of them will likely be shipped out, since most Mainers are too thrifty to spend money on something they’re going to bury in the ground.”

  He set the cat on the floor and stood up. “Here, let me have those,” he said, reaching for the clothes. “Where are you going with them?”

  “I’m moving out to the cottage so Shel can have my room,” she told him, not relinquishing her load.

  Sam perked up at that. “You’re moving to the cottage?”

  She spun away and headed for the door. “Do you honestly have the audacity to miss your first day of work?”

  “I have an empathetic boss. Levi told me not to come in until I’m ‘back up to snuff.’ Kent Caskets is a rather laid-back company.”

  “You expect eighty-year-olds to be workaholics? They tell anyone with a hangnail to take the day off.”

  “Is your entire workforce retirees?”

  She laughed at that. “Are you kidding? My production would be two caskets a year if I had to rely on my Grand Point Bluff residents. I have ten able-bodied men and women who do most of the real work.”

  “Yet you have at least twenty on the payroll.”

  “Which the older workers put right back into my business.”

  “Sam!” Shelby shouted from the top of the stairs. “Can you come up and carry this box down for me?”

  Having figured out some time ago that Willa had a thing for his chest, Sam threw back his shoulders and puffed up, shooting her a grin. “Looks like your sister appreciates my muscles.”

  Willa immediately walked out of the house, muttering something about hormones.

  Sam headed into the hall, ran up the stairs, and stepped into the bedroom of a teenage girl. The furniture was white, the bedspread pink and green and blue-flowered lace. Like the rest of the house, Willa’s bedroom seemed to be frozen in time.

  “That’s the box?” he asked in surprise when Shelby handed him a shoe box full of what looked like hair thingies.

  “No. Put this in that box,” she said, pointing to the bed. “And carry it over to the cottage.”

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  “Please,” she quickly tacked on, her cheeks turning as pink as the curtains behind her. She sighed. “I’m sorry if I sound like a drill sergeant. With children, you either give orders or get ignored. Why did you tell my sister you love her?”

  Sam stopped in mid-step. “Is directness another characteristic of motherhood?”

  “Do you?” she asked, lifting her chin much as Willa did.

  “Yes.”

  “Just like that? You know her a week, and you fall madly in love with her?”

  He shrugged. “Not on purpose.”

  “Is that the price of love these days? A fat bankbook and a few shares of some business?”

  Sam picked up the large box on the bed and walked to the door. “No,” he said softly. “It’s the price your sister has to be willing to pay to get back her soul.”

  Sam decided he rather liked Maine—at least, the area around Keelstone Cove and Prime Point, of which he was getting a firsthand and personal tour. He’d just sat down to his afternoon snack when Jennifer and Cody Bates had arrived home fr
om school, and Jennifer had promptly thanked him for her new truck and boldly asked him to take her driving.

  Even though Emmett had promised Sam he was in for a treat when he met Jennifer, the old man had failed to mention that for all of her precocious charm, the girl was also drop-dead beautiful.

  Shelby had blue eyes, but Jennifer’s eyes were more the startling blue of Willa’s. Her long hair was less curly and a bit lighter than her aunt’s and definitely more manageable. But whenever the teenager canted her head just right or glanced over her shoulder with a mischievous smile, Sam got the eerie feeling that he was looking at a younger Willa.

  His gut had twisted in a knot as he’d watched Jennifer wolfing down a large piece of cake. What if Willa did marry him and they did have children? And what if they had a daughter as beautiful as Jennifer? He’d never survive her teenage years! Not if the images that came to mind were any indication when Shelby asked her about a particular boy at school. Sam had become positively outraged when Jennifer said she’d heard he was planning to ask someone else to the homecoming dance.

  Was the boy an idiot? And blind?

  “That kid, Steven, I think you called him,” Sam said as Jennifer expertly guided her SUV down the narrow and winding road. “You can’t take it personally if he doesn’t ask you to the dance. Until the age of thirty, all males are self-centered idiots.”

  Jennifer briefly glanced over at him, then back at the road. “I rarely take anything personally. That’s my aunt’s infuriating habit.” She sighed. “I really asked you to bring me driving so we could talk, Mr. Sinclair. I think you should know that I’m fully aware of what Abram’s will said.” She darted another quick glance in his direction, this time hitting him full force with her heart-stopping smile. “In fact, your being here means I won the bet. So, tell me, are you planning to find a way out of the bequest, or are you going to try to marry my aunt?”

  She knew? And had even placed a bet? On him?

  “If you’re about to threaten me with bodily harm if I break your aunt’s heart, you’ll have to stand in line. I’ve already gotten this speech from Emmett and your mother, as well as from Willa’s entire workforce.”