The Man Must Marry

by Janet Chapman

  Seniors were the backbone of any society.

  They were not, however, supposed to start acting like rebellious teenagers—which is exactly what her Grand Point Bluff workers were doing. She stormed into work the very next morning and shot off a memo demanding that everyone older than seventy be in her conference room at ten o’clock.

  Willa sat at the head of the long mahogany table in her office suite and glared at the expensive antique wall clock that Silas had insisted Kent Caskets needed to present an air of success. It was ten-fifteen, and she didn’t recognize the lone person sitting four places down on her right.

  “You said you just moved into Grand Point Bluff a month ago, Mr. Goodard?” she asked. “And that Silas hired you last week?”

  Gary Goodard shot her a nervous smile. “Yes, ma’am. I originally retired to Florida, but there’s so many people down there I couldn’t breathe. I explained to Silas I probably should work in sales, considering I used to own a Mercedes dealership, but he told me the only opening you had was in shipping. If this is about that mix-up the other day, I’m really sorry. I don’t know why they ever changed the state abbreviation system. I thought AR meant Arizona, and that’s why I sent those caskets to Cedar Creek, Arizona, instead of Cedar Creek, Arkansas. I promise it won’t happen again, Miss Kent.”

  Willa sighed. “This isn’t about the mix-up, Gary, since no one told me about it, anyway. And please, call me Willa. We’re very informal here. Do you know if the others got my memo?” It was twenty-five minutes past ten.

  “Oh, yes,” Gary said, his expression brightening. “Your secretary hand-delivered it to all the departments. Say, you must know Isobel quite well, since she’s your personal secretary. Can you tell me how long she’s been widowed?”

  “Six or seven years, I believe.”

  “Would you know if she’s seeing anyone?”

  Willa sighed again. “I don’t believe she is.” She stood up. “Nor do I believe anyone else is coming to my meeting, Gary. And since it wasn’t about anything involving you, why don’t you head back to shipping? Oh, and welcome to Kent Caskets.”

  Gary had stood up when she had, his joints creaking loudly. “Thank you,” he said, hobbling toward the door. “I have to say, I love getting up in the morning and having someplace to go again. Retirement’s not all it’s cracked up to be. I spent so many hours working to make my dealership successful I never acquired any hobbies. It’s very community-minded of you to hire older citizens.”

  “Yes, it seems I’ve gotten a reputation for being very community-minded.”

  The door suddenly opened, and Silas, Maureen, and Levi walked in, followed by the rest of her older workers.

  “Sorry we’re late, Willa,” Silas said, pulling out the chair on her right and standing in front of it as the others went to their usual seats. “Isobel just tracked us down. It was such a beautiful day, we decided to go over our last-quarter reports outside at the picnic tables.”

  “Sorry to pull you away from your important meeting, but I wanted to talk to all of you together,” Willa said. She realized that for them to sit down, she had to sit down, so she did. The moment they sat, she stood back up.

  “Is this about the new line of pet caskets?” Maureen asked. “I haven’t finished the interior patterns, because Levi hasn’t given me the measurements yet.”

  “No, this isn’t about our pet line. I’ve called you here to talk about Sam Sinclair.”

  “I had to let him go, Willa,” Levi said. “The man’s all thumbs.” He shook his head. “I should have suspected it when he first showed up, considering how beat up he was.”

  “He was also disruptive,” Silas interjected. “He spent more time talking than working. Our production was falling behind.”

  “That’s right,” Maureen piped in. “All he had to do was walk through the sewing room, and the younger women got all a-twitter. Carol actually sewed her sleeve to the pillow she was working on.” She narrowed her eyes at Willa. “Sam Sinclair is a worse flirt than his grandfather was.”

  Willa held up her hand. “His firing is not the reason I called this meeting. I want to talk to you about this little…dispute you’re having with the coffee clubbers, of which Sam and I seem to be the center.” She placed her hands on the table and moved her glare from one person to the next. “Butt out, people. My love life is none of your business. If I ever decide to get married again, I will marry whomever I damn well please.” She straightened and pointed her finger at them. “If you don’t stop interfering in my life, I will fire every last one of you. Except you, Gary,” she quickly amended, “unless I hear that you’ve fallen in with these outlaws.”

  She glared around the table again. “Do we understand each other, ladies and gentlemen? And if any of you threaten Sam again, I will call the sheriff.”

  “But he’s only pretending to be interested in you to get back his inheritance,” Maureen cried.

  “Did you know he’s buying the old Ingall warehouse in Prime Point?” Silas said. “Avery Ingall has been trying to unload that place for years. I bet he takes Sinclair to the cleaners.”

  “Word on the street is that Sam’s planning to open some sort of mail-order food plant,” Levi said.

  Maureen snickered. “I heard he asked Doris Ambrose to head up his marketing department. I hope he knows his labels are going to have angels on them. That’s all the woman can paint.”

  “And Phil Grindle’s supposed to be his head chef,” Carl Sills, a retired lawyer in charge of her sales department, added. “Throwing lobsters into a pot of boiling water for thirty years is one hell of a résumé.”

  Willa was horrified. “My God, you really are all a bunch of snobs.”

  “What?” Silas said, his face reddening. He stood up. “We are not. But who the hell does Sam Sinclair think he is, coming here and opening a business, hiring a bunch of coffee-swigging old people to run it?”

  Willa crossed her arms. “Last time I checked, Maine was still part of the United States of America. I believe anyone can open a business wherever he desires, and that if he wants to hire retired people, he can. How is what Sam’s doing any different from what I did four years ago?”

  “Oh, Willa!” Maureen cried, also standing up. “You’re no better than my girls in the sewing room. You’ve taken one look at Sam’s pretty face and fat bankbook and lost your senses.”

  “My bankbook happens to be bigger than his at the moment,” Willa shot back. “And I have not lost my senses.”

  “Wait a minute,” Levi said, also standing up and looking at Maureen and Silas. “It might be okay if she falls in love with Sam. Now that he’s opening a business here, they’d be living in Keelstone Cove. It’s Barry Cobb we should be worried about.”

  That’s what all this was about? Willa sat down hard. They weren’t worried about her happiness; they were worried about their jobs! They were afraid that if she fell in love with Sam, she might sell Kent Caskets and move to New York. And they damn well knew the next owner wouldn’t put up with their shenanigans.

  “Willa. Willa!” Maureen said, thumping her cane to get her attention. “It’s okay, then, if you marry Sam. And we’re sorry we threatened him.”

  “And if Sam and I end up having a dozen children, is that okay, too, Maureen? And Silas?” she asked, her gaze moving down the table. “Levi? Carl? And the rest of you? Because I sure as heck wouldn’t want to do anything that you don’t think will make me happy.”

  “Now, Willa,” Silas said, his face red. “Your happiness is our only concern.”

  She stood and silently walked out the door. Ignoring Maureen’s calls to her, she continued down the hall and didn’t stop until she reached her truck. She looked back at her building and decided she was going to paint it white and green again.

  Sam turned down Willa’s driveway, smiling in anticipation of her reaction to his purchase. His new truck was identical to Jennifer’s, only black instead of red. Emmett, with his usual dry humor, had wished Sam good
luck this winter trying to keep it clean once they started salting the roads.

  He’d originally gone shopping for a pickup but had decided on the SUV when he remembered that his future might include a car seat and other baby paraphernalia. Not that he intended to mention that to Willa.

  He frowned as he pulled up beside Willa’s pickup in front of her cottage. It was five minutes to six, but there weren’t any lights on inside. All the windows of the main house were ablaze. Was she visiting her sister?

  Had she forgotten their date?

  He got out and noticed the smell of wood smoke as he walked up the cottage steps. He peeked into the door window and saw a fire burning in the stove in the corner, its cast-iron doors open and the screen set in place.

  Willa wouldn’t leave an open stove unattended. He knocked, then cupped his hands to watch through the window again, but he didn’t see anyone rushing to let him in. He tried the knob and found it was unlocked, so he stepped inside.

  He could just make out the silhouette of her head rising above the back of the couch. “Willa?” he said, tossing his jacket onto the table.

  She didn’t answer him.

  “Did you fall asleep?” he asked, going to her. “I’ve made reservations for us at seven in Ellsworth.”

  “Go away.”

  “Honey, what’s wrong?” he asked, hunching down in front of her, only to find her staring blankly at the fire. He immediately scooped her up in his arms and took her place on the couch, setting her on his lap. “What’s happened? Is it one of your seniors? Is someone sick?”

  She buried her face in his shirt.

  “Okay, we’ll just sit together for a while.” He kissed her hair as he held her head to his chest.

  She released a deep, shuddering sigh.

  What had upset her? Or who? Sam knew it wasn’t his coffee gang; he’d spent most of the day with them inspecting the warehouse.

  Cobb better not have bothered Willa. He’d run into Cobb in town today, and the bastard had actually tried to strike up a conversation. Sam had nearly laughed out loud when Phil Grindle, at five-foot-four and a hundred and fifty pounds, had stepped between him and Cobb and asked Barry if he wouldn’t like to go on an authentic lobster run with a young fisherman friend of his. Fearing that Phil planned it to be a one-way trip, Sam had pulled his friend away before Cobb could answer.

  Had Cobb visited Kent Caskets this afternoon and said something to upset Willa? Maybe one of her workers had taken ill. Or even died?

  She shuddered again, as if fighting tears.

  “Grammy Rose always told me that sharing a burden shrinks it by half,” he said against her hair. “Please, honey, tell me what’s bothering you.”

  “I don’t like the people I work with,” she said in a ragged voice. “They’re selfish, manipulative snobs who are only interested in themselves, and I don’t ever want to see any of them again.”

  “They’re people, Willa, not saints. Ordinary, flawed people, just like you and me.” Her rubbed his hand soothingly up and down her arm. “And though they might put on a happy face every morning when they come to work, it’s really a mask hiding their fear.”

  She tilted her head back to look at him. “What are they afraid of?”

  “Of growing old and no longer being in control. They’re actually more afraid of not being alive but still breathing than they are of dying.” He smiled sadly. “That was Bram’s biggest fear after Grammy died.”

  “But we’re supposed to become less selfish as we get older.”

  “What did they do to upset you?”

  She settled back into the crook of his arm and stared into the fire. “I called a meeting to tell them all to stay out of my love life, but I might as well have been talking to the wall. They kept insisting that you were hanging around to get your inheritance.”

  “And this surprises you?”

  “Then they started trashing the coffee clubbers, dismissing them as simple-minded locals. And they scoffed at the idea of you opening a business just to give a bunch of old people something to do.”

  “But you agree with them about my opening a business here.”

  She sat up to look at him. “Not in principle, I don’t. But the real reason they don’t want me marrying you is that they’re afraid I’d sell Kent Caskets and move to New York. As soon as they realized that if you opened a business I’d stay in Keelstone Cove, they did an about-face and decided I should fall in love with you.”

  “I see. You’re afraid that more than wanting to see you happy, they really only want you sticking around?” He pulled her back against his chest and tucked her head under his chin. “So, fire the whole damn bunch of them.”

  “I can’t,” she muttered into his shirt.

  Sam smiled, unsurprised. “Okay, then sell Kent Caskets, and let some new boss deal with them.”

  “I can’t do that, either.”

  “Then quit. Give them the entire business—lock, stock, and caskets.”

  “No.”

  “Then I guess that leaves you only one option.”

  She lifted her head to look at him. “What’s that?”

  “You’re going to have to forgive them.”

  “I will not.”

  “Then you tell me what you’re going to do. You can’t fire them, because you’re too softhearted; you can’t sell your business, because it’s a big part of who you are; and you can’t quit, because that would mean they’ve won.”

  “Forgiving them would mean they’ve won, too.”

  He tucked her back under his chin. “Hmm,” he murmured. “Do you suppose that’s why you’ve never been able to forgive yourself? Because if you did, it would mean fate has won?”

  “What are you talking about?” She wriggled to get free.

  “I was just thinking out loud, trying to work something out for myself. I’m sorry they disappointed you, Willa.” He started rubbing her back in long, soothing strokes and felt her slowly relax. “So, does this mean you will support my new business venture?”

  “You’ll just get stabbed in the back by your workers.”

  “No, I won’t.”

  She tilted her head back. “What makes you so sure?”

  “Because, unlike you, I don’t trust people. That way, I’m never surprised or disappointed.”

  “But you must trust your brothers. And Abram. Surely, you trusted your grandfather.”

  “If I had trusted Bram, what do you suppose my reaction would have been to his will?”

  She looked thoughtful, then laid her head back on his chest.

  “I trust you,” he whispered into her hair.

  She popped back up and blinked at him. “You do? Why?”

  “Because I love you.”

  She tried to scramble off his lap, but Sam tightened his arms and held her against his chest. “I’m sorry if that bothers you, honey, but it seems to be one of those fate things I don’t have any control over. I tell you what. I’ll try my damndest to stop telling you I love you, if you’ll try to stop seeing me as the enemy.”

  She muttered something, and Sam realized he had to loosen his hold so she could breathe. “What was that?” he asked with a chuckle.

  She scowled at him. “I agreed to go to dinner with you tonight, didn’t I? And I do not eat with my enemies.”

  “So, that means Barry Cobb is your new best friend?”

  Her scowl intensified. “How come you never confronted me about that? I went out with him five times.”

  “Because I trust you.” And because as long as Cobb was with you, I knew exactly what he was up to. Sam cupped her face and pulled her mouth to his, giving her a big, noisy kiss before holding her so their eyes were only inches apart. “And because your going out with him to make me jealous actually gave me hope that you do care.”

  She looked ready to smack him, so he kissed her again.

  This time, she took his face between her hands and kissed him like a woman with something to prove. Sam was torn between wanti
ng to shout hallelujah and groaning. He’d promised himself he wouldn’t make love to her again until she quit seeing him as a casual fling and started seeing them as a couple.

  But surely he could indulge himself a little bit. She was so soft and pliable, her body filled with promise…and she wanted him, dammit!

  She darted her tongue into his mouth and pulled him closer. Sam sensed the world tilting on edge, not realizing that Willa was repositioning herself to straddle his lap until he felt her thighs gripping his. Her feminine heat sent shock waves coursing through him, every muscle in his body going instantly taut.

  He quickly grabbed her hips, stopping her maddening movements. She broke their kiss, her mouth moving over his jaw as her hands attacked the buttons on his shirt. Her lips soon followed, and Sam struggled to catch his breath against her passionate assault. She made little impatient sounds, her hips fighting his hold, her fingers fumbling with his buttons as she rocketed from zero to sixty in four seconds flat.

  If he didn’t get her under control, he would spontaneously combust. “Willa. Honey. I’m not sure we—”

  He yelped when her mouth found one of his nipples.

  Then she lifted her head to look him in the eyes. “Please, Sam, make love to me.”

  How in hell was he supposed to hold his ground against please?

  He framed her face with his hands. “I can’t take advantage of you like that. Not tonight,” he said, wondering whose voice was coming out of his mouth. “You’re upset and vulnerable right now.”

  “No, I’m aching to feel you inside me again,” she whispered, feathering her fingers over his exposed chest. “It feels so good when you fill me up, Sam. Please make love to me.”

  He groaned softly in defeat. He wrapped his arms around her, slid off the couch, and laid her beside him on the rug in front of the fire. She immediately went to work on his belt buckle.