Daddy in the Making

chapter Eight

During the game, Rita had needed to sneak out and see to a few small matters in the hotel.

Conn hadn’t seemed to mind, though, even if he’d made her sit down and rest afterward, bringing her some herbal tea from the kitchen and cleaning the dishes they’d used. Meanwhile, he’d also helped with Kristy when she’d woken up from her nap. He’d sat at the table with her and Rita as the little girl ate her tostada, and they’d chatted about Vi’s wedding as well as all the things Kristy wanted to be when she grew up—a ballerina, a majorette and, this week, an inventor like Phineas and Ferb.

When they’d finally called it a night, he stood by the door. Kristy was in her room, drawing a picture for “Aunt Violet” for when she got back from her honeymoon.

“You know I’ll be getting in touch with you again,” he said quietly enough so that Kristy wouldn’t hear.

Rita wasn’t sure whether she should be encouraging Conn or saying a leave-no-doubt good-night to him. Her heart still told her one thing, her head another.

“In fact,” he said, “how about you clear tomorrow night off your schedule? Get a sitter for Kristy, arrange not to work.”

She didn’t reveal that Monday was her usual night off. Still, as the owner, she was always on call. “What do you have in mind?”

Conn gave her that heart-spinning grin. “More talking, of course.”

Right. He wanted to prove he could be reliable. And that was just how she wanted it.

Of course.

They’d said one of their awkward goodbyes again, with Rita avoiding temptation and closing the door behind him. And for the rest of the night, after she’d put Kristy to bed, then gone to her own big, empty one, she had slept restlessly.

Her mind was just too full of whats and hows: What was she going to do about Conn? How and when was she going to explain her relationship with him to Kristy?

She couldn’t even quite define it herself at this point.

In the morning, the questions still hovered, but there wasn’t much she could do about it as she manned the front desk and troubleshot for the few customers who were here during Thanksgiving week. She even called her sister, asking her to watch Kristy for a few hours tonight.

“Are you going out with that cowboy?” Kim asked over the phone.

Rita had told her that, yes, she was going out with the cowboy and she would tell Kim all about it later. She and her sister were close, but sometimes Kim, who would rather be hanging out on the ranch than fiddling around with a relationship, didn’t quite get matters of the heart. Besides, Kim and Nick were leaving town on business tomorrow afternoon, so why start this up with her sister right now?

It could wait until after the holiday.

The day seemed to take forever to go by. One reason was that Rita was keeping her eye out for Conn, who had told her he would be checking in to her hotel today. But even with all her due diligence, she missed him when she took a break.

No matter, though, because once Rita was relieved at the front desk, she rushed up to the room and got ready to meet him. Kim had already gone to pick Kristy up from preschool and take her out for a meal at the Orbit Diner, so Rita was on time and in front of the hotel by the time Conn pulled his truck by the boardwalk.

She made her way into the car before he could get out to open her door.

Conn looked surprised at her efficiency, but he didn’t comment on it. Then he gestured at a cluster of white bags waiting in a box between them on the seat.

“Do you mind making sure those don’t spill all over the place?”

Dinner. The air was baked with the aroma.

“Stuffed potatoes?” she asked.

“Yup. They’re from the market’s food counter. I picked up a few other things they say a pregnant woman should be eating, too.”

“Who’s ‘they’?”

“Online sites. I don’t have a smartphone for nothing.”

He’d done some research? The idea moved her in a way that most simple things didn’t. It was just that he didn’t have to take the time to do it, but he had.

Besides, Dr. Ambrose had advised her about eating healthy. Nice to know that Conn was going to help her with that.

He steered onto the street, and she asked, “So we’re having a picnic?”

She’d worn a long red skirt with boots and a blouse, bringing a sweater for when the night cooled.

“It’s not quite a picnic,” he said. “I heard there’s a drive-in about a mile away. You don’t see many of those anymore, and the weather’s still decent enough for us to go.”

She sent him a slow glance. “You’re taking me to the movies?”

Like...a date?

“They’re playing good revival stuff, Rita. When Harry Met Sally... is first, then Sleepless in Seattle.”

“Chick flicks?” She laughed. “You really are out to impress me with your sensitive side.”

“I wouldn’t say it’s sensitive. But I thought you might like a break from work with some comfort food and films.”

As they drove, she wondered if she had accidently told him during some one-night-stand pillow talk about how When Harry Met Sally... was one of her favorite holiday movies, even though there were merely a few festive scenes in it. But Harry and Sally finally got together at the end, during a climactic New Year’s party, and nothing made her happier in any film.

Nah, she wouldn’t have told him that. Conn Flannigan was just that good at knowing what she wanted. And she couldn’t stop remembering that he’d probably been that good with other women, too.

The truck tires crunched over gravel as they drew up to the ticket booth. He paid the admission fee, then drove past the concession stand and children’s playground, finding a prime spot in the middle of the spread and cutting the engine.

Flicking on the radio, he accessed the sound system on low volume, providing pop songs to go with the advertisements for local businesses on the wide screen—the Queen of Hearts Saloon, Derry’s Drug Store, the upcoming first-annual Cowboy Festival in March. Then he parceled out the food.

“You did do your research,” Rita said as he set out the big baked potatoes stuffed with broccoli, then a salad, trail mix and apples swimming in a cinnamon sauce.

“I told you—I aim to give you the Pregnancy Comfort Experience.” He motioned in back of the seat. “If you need blankets, I’ve got those, too.”

Wow. Either he was truly this thoughtful or he was putting on one heck of a show for her. But she hated that her cynicism was rearing its ugly head, so she told herself to stow it away, just for a night. He had more than earned a chance.

As they were digging into dinner with their plastic spoons, a car with a young couple pulled into a spot in the row ahead of them. Through their rear window, Rita could see their silhouettes as they kissed.

She turned away, wishing her life could’ve been that easy with Conn.

But...wishing? She needed more reality, not fanciful thoughts.

“This is wonderful,” she said. “I haven’t been to a movie in...months.”

“That’s because you’re always running around. When do you think you’re going to get some rest?”

She dug into the potato, cheese stringing from her fork. “Are you about to lecture me?”

Yet didn’t he have that right, as the father of their baby?

“I’m not the type to lecture anyone,” Conn said, picking a bottle of water out of the box. “But I do want what’s best for y’all.”

She ate her bite of potato, then shook her head. “I never did take kindly to being watched over, you know. When people like Margery Wilmore at the hotel and other folks in town stick their noses into my business, it rubs me the wrong way. Sorry if I sound prickly with you.”

“Prickly is part of your charm, Rita.” He smiled, took a drink of water, put down the bottle. “And I don’t say that in a cruel way.”

“I’m not sure you have it in you to be cruel.”

He looked just as surprised as she did. Had she meant it? Because, before now, she’d believed that Conn was a low-down, no good jerk for four long months. Yet the man who’d come back to her, hat in hand, wasn’t anything like that.

What was the reality?

And which version should she count on?

“I hope,” he finally said, “that I don’t have it in me.”

She left her food alone. “What if all of your memories are slow in coming back? I’ve read about amnesiacs never regaining their memories, and it’s hard for them and their families.”

“Right.” He rested a hand on the steering wheel. “But all I can do at this point is make the most of what I’ve got, and that includes the baby.”

It hit her hard, right then and there, that Conn had lost just about everything, but what he had now, he was going to treasure.

His other hand was resting on the seat, and as the pre-show concession-stand cartoons played on the big screen, she put her fingers over his own. Affection flashed through her, but it had nothing to do with a memory of that night between them.

It was all about what was happening now.

He looked down at his hand, her hand.

“Things would be a hell of a lot simpler if we could just start over,” he said.

She bit her lip, then found the courage to answer. “Maybe we can try. A blank slate might do us a lot of good.”

It was as if she had been wanting to say it forever, and now that it was out there, she breathed easier.

He seemed content, too. “Kristy mentioned yesterday that your family’s going to be out of town for Thanksgiving. I’d like it if you’d come to our ranch, meet everyone.”

The oxygen gushed out of her lungs. Too soon, she thought at first.

But as Violet had pointed out before, Rita and Conn were attached now. A child was going to be a part of both of their lives, and sooner or later, she was going to meet the family, if she and Conn wanted to provide their child with a happy, no-stress life. Hell, if Conn had really wanted to make everything tough, he could have just insisted on getting a DNA test and laid claim to their baby that way—then the child could really meet the Flannigan family.

Why not get along the best they could?

He added, “If you wear bulky clothes, we won’t even have to tell them the news yet.”

“You haven’t said anything to them?”

“No. My brother Emmet pretty much knows we got together that night, but I haven’t told him the rest. Nobody else knows much of anything. So there’s no pressure for you. And I think Kristy would have fun with my three nephews. It’d be a good day all around.”

She’d been resigned to helping Margery Wilmore serve turkey dinner to the employees who’d volunteered, with the benefit of time-and-a-half pay, to work on Thanksgiving at the hotel. She’d been feeling like a bump on a log, as it was, so...

No contest.

“Yes,” she said. “We’d love to be there.”

He broke into a smile, and it was so powerful that Rita squeezed his hand under hers.

The movie started—the chords of a piano and a bass playing over the speakers—and Conn’s smile faded, his grip tightening on Rita’s hand.

She knew he was thinking of kissing her, and she got that same impulsive urge that he always kindled in her to respond just as ardently.

Why not? it asked. Be happy for once.

“Rita,” he said, and it was almost a question, but not quite.

Any way about it, an answer was all too easy. Without thinking, she surged forward, pressing her mouth to his, her hand sliding behind his head, her fingers burrowing into his thick hair.

It was more than a brush of lips this time—it was an explosion that shook her foundations, all her doubts sifting downward to tickle every throbbing cell.

He pulled her closer until she faintly heard the sound of bags and cardboard box crunching between them. Something—food?—hit the floorboards, but she didn’t care.

Not right now, while he was kissing her so thoroughly, so deeply that a moan gathered in her chest, rising until the sound seemed to fill her.

So good, she thought. So right...

After wiping the food and containers aside, Conn swept her halfway onto his lap, kissing the tips of her mouth, the line of her jaw, the pulsing vein in her throat. Rita leaned back her head, reveling in every beat of stretched, passing time. The world around her blurred—a smudged picture of the movie on the screen, the fogging windows—but everything also seemed clearer than ever.

How could she ever think this was wrong?

One of his hands had traveled to the small of her back, and with the rashness of a teenager, she grasped it, brought it to her breast, which felt so sensitive that she almost wanted to cry out.

But she only sucked in a tight breath because she was also feeling tight between her legs—achy, needful.

Conn was the only one who could make that go away, she thought. Only Conn.

His thumb sketched her nipple, making it go stiff. She wanted his mouth there, too.

She pressed her lips against his ear, knocking off his hat in the process. “Conn,” she whispered fervently.

That seemed to send a lance of need through him, and he shifted in an effort to bring her even closer to him.

At the same time, he hit the horn, and the sound chopped through the night.

In a flood of consciousness, Rita came up through the swampy state of her mind, breaking through to the surface of reality.

Her and Conn, in his truck, making out...

She wasn’t sure how it had come to this, but when he touched her belly, as if in another question, everything that had gotten her to this point zoomed back.

Kevin had kissed her like this once... Kevin had left her, just as Conn once had...

She slid off Conn’s lap, raising a hand to her hair, as if it were the most important thing ever for her to make it neat and tidy again. It had slipped from her barrette in a frenzy of curls, and that’s not how she’d intended for it to be at the beginning of the night.

It needed to be kept back, controlled.

As if knowing that anything he said would be the wrong thing, Conn kept silent, settling into his seat to watch the movie.

Even as Rita tried like hell to get herself back together, she thought she saw a slight smile on his mouth. Instinctively, she almost smiled, too, until she realized that it was the last thing she should be doing.

* * *

Slowly but surely, Conn thought as he walked by Rita’s side to his family’s front door a few days later on Thanksgiving.

At the drive-in, he’d believed that matters with Rita were going straight to hell after that kiss. Their casual night had gotten a little out of hand. He hadn’t intended to put any moves on her, but much to his shock, she was the one who’d started kissing him.

And he couldn’t have been happier, because day by day, he was surer than ever that he had fallen for Rita on the night they had first met. She had been the one woman who could settle him down, and he had wanted to come back to her for more.

Yup, progress was being made, even if she had kept telling him over the phone these past few days that she was busy with the hotel and had no time for more drive-in movies or meals.

But she was here with him now, on his family’s ranch, wasn’t she?

So was Kristy, and she scrambled up the steps to the door before either Conn or Rita could get there.

“Beat you!” she said, her curls held back by pink ribbons that matched her skirt set.

“We’re not far behind,” Rita said. She had followed his advice and donned a light, loose black sweater that ended well past her hips, plus a gray cotton skirt. Both hid her baby bump, although the outfit was probably too warm for the sunny day. Her hair was pulled back in a loose ponytail, pinned by a silver clip, and he wondered when she would let down her curls with him again.

His stomach tightened, just at the notion.

Conn waited for Rita to climb the steps ahead of him, then went to the door.

Kristy peered in one of the long, beveled glass side windows, curious as a monkey.

“Now don’t let my nephews roughhouse with you,” he said to her before he opened the door to go inside.

She gave him a saucy glance. “I’m tough. Tommy Griffin tripped me at school once and he didn’t even hurt me.”

“Tommy did what?” Rita asked.

Kristy made an exaggerated shrug. “I’m tough.”

Conn stifled a chuckle, then looked at Rita. She was biting her lip, too, to keep from laughing out loud.

He bent and gave Kristy a tiny chuck under the chin. “You’re as tough as your mom, aren’t you?”

Rita said, “It’s in the genes.”

With a wink at Kristy, then a smile at her mom, he opened the door, indicating that the ladies should go in first. He heard Rita take a deep breath as she walked on by.

“No pressure,” he said quietly.

She grinned, just as his mom came around the corner from the hallway.

“I thought I heard a ruckus!”

Conn greeted her with a hug and was just about to introduce Rita when Mom laid eyes on Kristy.

“Oh, my,” she said, hand to her apron-covered heart. “Aren’t you a sweetheart?”

Kristy, who seemed to be used to the praise, smiled and shuffled her Mary Janes.

“What’s your name?” Mom asked.

“Kristy Niles.”

“I could just eat you with a spoon!”

“Mom,” Conn said. “This is her mother, Rita.”

His mom came forward to give Rita a hug, but she didn’t crush her bones as she tended to with her sons.

“We’ve heard a little about you, Rita,” she said after she’d pulled back from their guest. “You’re the reason Conn went back to St. Valentine.”

“Conn stayed in my hotel,” she said. “That’s why he remembered me.”

They had agreed on a cover story, and they would save the more colorful details for a later time, when she couldn’t hide the pregnancy any longer. Of course, Conn had told Emmet not to leak the tawdry details of Conn spending a night with Rita to Mom and the rest of the family, and it looked as if Big Mouth had actually kept his word.

Conn added, “Rita and I became friends when I went to St. Valentine to investigate. She’s been really helpful in trying to help me trigger memories there, and when I heard her family was out of town, I asked her and Kristy here.”

“As you well should’ve.” Mom’s full cheeks were flushed, probably from the kitchen. But she looked sort of joyful, too, and Conn realized that Rita might’ve been the first woman he had ever brought home.

Hell, Mom might as well get used to it...and more with the baby on the way.

Mom linked arms with Rita and led Kristy toward the back of the spacious house, where everyone else would be. “We’ve got a playroom for the little ones. The twins and Jacob are already in there. I’m sure Kristy would love to meet them.”

“When Conn told her about the littlest one, she couldn’t stop talking about him the whole way here,” Rita said. “She’s good with younger children at the preschool.”

The women chatted as Conn followed them down the hallway, with all its family photos on the walls. Apparently he had always been camera-shy, and Emmet had told him that he’d once gone through the collection and pulled all the pictures with him in them, hiding them somewhere on the ranch, much to Mom’s ire.

Rita seemed to be surveying the walls for a peek at him, but she was out of luck.

They got to the playroom, which used to be Dad’s ranch office until he’d passed on and Bradon had remodeled a room in his own cabin and taken over desk duties. Now this airy space held a big plastic slide and playground set, plus toys scattered all over the carpet.

Ned and Nate looked up when Kristy entered while, in the corner, Jacob sat down hard on his butt, a plush turtle in hand.

Kristy headed straight for Jacob, who widened his eyes and smiled with drool-drenched enthusiasm at the sight of her.

In another corner, Conn’s sisters-in-law had drinks in hand—wine for Trixie and lemonade for Hayley—as they sat in overstuffed chairs. The women greeted them from across the room, then fixed curious gazes on Rita.

Mom made introductions all around, and while she went to give hugs to her grandsons, Conn sidled up to Rita.

“Overwhelmed yet?”

“Not hardly.”

“Because I already told you what comes next.”

“Kitchen duty for you.”

Although Mom had already let him know that Trixie and Hayley had brought a few side dishes from their own kitchens this year to give Conn a break, cooking most of the food was a job he usually took on with relish. Or so they said.

“You go on ahead and take care of it,” Rita said. “I’ll hang out here and gab with the ladies. I’d like to watch and see how Kristy’s doing before I leave her alone, anyway.”

“You sure?”

“I’ll be in the kitchen hovering over you before you know it.”

She was so confident, and why not? The woman had been running a business since she was in her early twenties. She knew how to get along with people.

He didn’t want to crowd her, so he went off to the kitchen, where everything he needed had already been laid out for him on the island in the middle of the bright, window-edged room.

The aroma of the turkey in the oven poked at a memory, but it didn’t come to Conn just yet. It was weird how all the details seemed so striking to him, though: the copper rooster clock, the bluebonnet-print curtains, the iron pots hanging over the island.

On any other normal Thanksgiving, he would’ve been in here, merely taking time off from tagging and feeding calves and weighing bull calves, but not today.

Now he was wrangling a woman.

Every time he went to sleep these days, a little more of the brief affair with Rita would return to him. And every flash would fill him with a happiness that he knew he’d never felt before—an emotion that had made him want to stay, holding her, smelling her hair, getting every bit of her inside of him that he could.

Nobody had to tell him what the old Conn might’ve done in this situation he’d found himself in. But he wasn’t the old Conn.

He wasn’t even sure he liked him all that much.

Behind him, he heard movement, and he turned to find his mom entering.

“You feeling all right?” she asked, her Flannigan blue eyes tinted with concern.

Conn grinned, and the instant he did, he could tell that Mom was used to being assuaged by the gesture. Not convinced, necessarily, but consoled.

Picking up a potato peeler, he started to go at a sweet potato he’d already washed. The peels fell into the sink. “I’m feeling fine. Better and better, as a matter of fact.”

Emmet’s voice sounded from behind them. “Mom, you know that pot rustlers like Conn need their peace while they’re cooking.”

At the nickname for a chuck-wagon cook, Conn tossed his older brother a sarcastic glance, and Emmet grabbed a carrot stick from the island cutting board, munching on it and grinning. His brothers never let up on the teasing about his talent for cooking, calling him every quaint nickname from a biscuit shooter to a bean master. All Conn could say for sure was that he’d been comfortable in the kitchen when he’d come home from the hospital, his cooking skills intact even if parts of his brain weren’t.

He went back to peeling. “I sense a varmint in the kitchen.”

“Just grabbing some football snacks,” Emmet said.

Mom said, “I want you to meet Rita. She’s in the playroom.”

“I’ve met her. Kind of.”

“No, you didn’t,” Conn said.

“I’ll do it at halftime.” Emmet was already scramming. “Bradon and Dillon will come with me.”

“No,” Mom said. “They’re greeting our guest now. They know how to be gentlemen, just as I raised you to be.”

Mom went to the oven to check on the turkey. Meanwhile, Emmet had already moved on, muttering about missing even five minutes of the game, then pausing by a window to peer out of it.

There was something about the smell of turkey, something about the way Emmet was standing by the window that—

A flash came to Conn. Emmet looking out a window in the family room, then smiling as a pair of headlights washed over him. She’s here, he’d said, turning around to the rest of them. In his hand, he held a diamond ring as if it were the most fragile thing in the world. Don’t even hint to her about anything, got it?

He’d been uncharacteristically nervous, unbelievably excited about the woman he loved pulling into the driveway on another Thanksgiving, long before Conn had gotten in the accident and lost his memory....

Emmet saw the expression on Conn’s face. “You look like you saw a ghost.”

The smell of turkey, a diamond ring...

“I remembered you on another Thanksgiving,” Conn said. “You had a ring and—”

Emmet held up a hand. “Yeah. The Great Thanksgiving Debacle. I was sort of hoping everyone would ultimately forget that year.”

Although Emmet looked relieved that another piece of Conn’s past had clicked into place, he also seemed a little heartbroken. Then again, the impression was gone before Conn could even be sure.

Emmet shrugged. “Sarah Humphries. Senior year in college, visiting me on her way to her own family’s Thanksgiving. To make a long story short, she said no.” He nodded in the direction of the front porch, where there was a swing that would be perfect for a marriage proposal. “‘We’re too young,’ she said, and she was right. It’s no big deal, though.”

But as Emmet took up a bowl of chips and left the room, Conn wasn’t so sure.

Even worse, he felt like half a person, because he didn’t remember this seemingly big event in Emmet’s life. Actually, he was just getting to know this brother—and the others—all over again.

Someday he was going to sit Emmet down for a beer and he was going to ask him about Sarah Humphries, not because it might jar a memory, but because he just wanted to be a brother again.

Would things ever be the same, though? Or would he always be experiencing his family’s lives—and his own—through secondhand stories?

He continued peeling that potato, watching the skin fall away, as scattered as all his lost memories.