And as he pounded shingles onto the roof of his brother’s new shed, thinking about his uncle’s wedding the day after tomorrow, about how there was no reason for him not to be on his way the day after that, the funk weighed heavily on him.
Never in his life had there been anything he didn’t want to do as much as he didn’t want to turn his back on Jessie and walk away.
Never in his life had there been a woman he felt about the way he felt about Jessie.
There had been plenty of women in his life, and yet there was no question that he hadn’t just plain needed a single one of those women like he needed Jessie.
And not even the possibility of a long-distance relationship, of making sure he came through Red Rock a whole lot more often, helped.
He wanted every day, every night to be the way they were now. He wanted to know that every day was going to end with the two of them together.
He just didn’t know how that fit with the fact that he was about as anti-marriage as any man could be. That after watching his mother run through too many men, after his own ugly lesson in the perils of marriage, he honestly believed it was not only a bad course to take, but also the worst course to take.
If Jessie were anyone else, the most he would suggest was that they try living together. But there were two ways in which Jessie wasn’t anyone else. First of all, she had four kids and parents who already lived with her. That was not a situation open to a just-living-together scenario.
Second of all—and even more importantly—Jessie wasn’t merely anyone else to him. And as unbelievable as it was, he wanted her to be a part of his life, of his future, in the most unbreakable way he could have. Which translated into marriage.
Which he didn’t believe in.
He hit a nail so hard that it bent in half rather than going through the shingle.
Marriage.
He’d sworn he would never make that mistake again.
But the thought of Jessie and marriage?
Regardless of what he’d thought of the institution before, when he put it together in his mind with Jessie, it somehow didn’t hit the same sour note.
Certainly she wasn’t Myra, he acknowledged. Yes, the physical attraction to Jessie was every bit as intense. But there was so much more to her than there had ever been to his ex-wife.
He admired Jessie. He respected her values. Those were not things he could ever have said about Myra.
Jessie was strong and resilient, loyal, trustworthy, reliable, dependable. There was nothing fly-by-night about her, nothing unprincipled or unscrupulous—like Myra. Like his mother, come to think of it.
And Jessie had even more qualities than the ones that reassured him that she wouldn’t end up stealing him blind and running off with another man or dumping him for someone down the road who seemed like a better ticket.
Jessie was fun and funny and loving and cute and sexy and caring and sweet and smart and talented and interesting. She was everything he’d ever found in any other woman, only she was all of it rolled into one.
She was everything to him.
That realization stopped his arm in midair, mid-hammer, when it struck him.
Jessie was everything to him.
It was true. Shockingly, surprisingly, stunningly true.
So Jessie and marriage? That was something that he could not only suddenly see as a possibility, but it was also something he discovered when he actually considered it, that he wanted. He wanted to marry Jessie…
And have every day for the rest of his life end with the two of them together… “Hi, Fwint!”
The sound of Adam’s voice made Flint glance down into the yard next door but the yard was empty.
“I’m up here.”
Flint altered his gaze and discovered the three-year-old looking out the bathroom window on the second level of Jessie’s house.
“Hey, Adam,” Flint called back.
“I see’d you up there. I gotta go potty.”
Flint laughed. “Okay, go ahead,” he said for lack of anything else to say.
“Bye.”
“Bye.”
Flint went back to pounding nails into shingles and reminded himself of that other way that Jessie wasn’t merely anyone else—with Jessie came four kids.
Four kids he had to factor in…
Marriage might be going from a sports car to a sedan, but add four kids to the picture and that was taking the leap all the way from sports car to minivan…
From childless bachelor to married man with children—it was daunting enough to give him pause.
Could he handle it?
He did like those kids, he admitted when he thought about it. Even Ella—who was still very lukewarm to him—was a sweetheart underneath her leeriness. And all the kids were similar to their mother in that they were strong and resilient and upbeat and funny and fun, too.
He was impressed by their outlook on things even after losing their father. And he got a kick out of their points of view, their senses of humor. He had a great time with them. And while he hadn’t ever seen himself as a parent, he thought he’d done okay helping to give baths and put them to bed, looking after them on all of their outings. He’d even found himself feeling pretty protective of them along the way.
Granted none of that, none of the time he’d spent with Ella, Bethany, Braden and Adam amounted to much, but still, when he considered himself taking on that role, that, too, suddenly didn’t seem so far-fetched. Especially not when he realized that Jessie’s four kids were all little reflections of her and it occurred to him that because of that he couldn’t help being smitten with them.
But having been a child of a single mother who had run numerous men through his life, Flint knew he couldn’t take lightly the responsibility of being the man in Jessie’s kids’ lives. He couldn’t risk disappointing those four kids if he couldn’t do the dad bit wholeheartedly and with a solid commitment to be there for them for the distance. To literally be a father to them. A father they could count on as surely as they would have been able to count on their own dad.
Could he do that?
He gave it serious, solemn thought.
But the more he thought about it, the more he realized that he’d liked the times when the six of them had all been together almost as much as he’d liked the times he’d had Jessie to himself.
That he even liked what being with her kids brought out in him—a side of himself that he’d just discovered that made him not only able, but willing and eager to put them and their needs before his own. A side that he’d seen in Coop since Anthony had come into his brother’s life. Another dimension that hadn’t seemed like something he or Coop might actually have at their disposal before this.
But finding out that they did? Finding out that they could be part of the Fortune family, and also finding out that they could be part of families of their own—even if it wasn’t something that had ever seemed likely given the way they’d grown up themselves—was doubly nice.
“Fwint! I’m done!” Adam called from the bathroom window again.
“Good for you, big guy. Did you wash your hands?”
“I fuh-got.”
“Do it now,” Flint instructed, feeling very paternal and amused by that.
But somehow at that moment, it also occurred to him that what he’d said to Jessie when he’d told her about Myra was more true than he’d known at the time—he’d told Jessie that there were worse things than being a childless bachelor.
And suddenly it struck him that one of the things that was worse than being a childless bachelor would be to have come to know Jessie and her kids, and go on being a childless bachelor. To go on without them. Any of them.
So sign me up for the minivan, he thought.
“Okay, I dood it,” Adam again yelled from the bathroom window a moment later. “Good job!”
“Me an’ Gramma an’ Grampa an’ all us kidses goin’ to the store but Mama doan’ wanna go. Do you wanna? ‘Cuz you could come wis us
if you did…”
“I think I’ll have to pass, buddy. But you go on,” Flint advised as the wheels began to spin even faster in his mind.
He wanted Jessie and he couldn’t wait to let her know that. To hopefully hear her say that she wanted him, too. That she’d have him. That they could have a future together. That they could be a family.
He just couldn’t wait…
They had plans to meet in the studio again tonight. But if everyone was going out and she’d be on her own now…
Be sure, he warned himself.
But he didn’t really need to think any more about it to know that he was.
He was absolutely sure that he wanted Jessie.
Not for any reason except that he couldn’t imagine his life without her.
Without her and everything that came with her.
Chapter Thirteen
Jessie 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?”
Fortune Found Page 16
