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two weeks or so if that baby is mine. If she’s mine, then she’s yours. There’s been no one else but you. Doyou understand? The truth will come out, one way or the other.”
    She was leaning on the door again. “I have to go.”
    â€œJosie—”
    â€œJust leave me alone, Flynt Carson. Just stay out of my life.” She pushed the door wide and jumped to the ground. Then she headed off down the street, walking fast, not looking back.
    It took all the willpower he had in him, but he didn’t go after her.

Four
    F lynt should have gone home and he knew it.
    But he couldn’t face the questions in his mother’s eyes right then—let alone the ones his father kept asking outright.
    Ford Carson had come in from checking some downed fences with Flynt’s younger brother, Matt, around four that afternoon. He’d gone looking for his wife and found her tending a baby.
    He’d had a lot of questions, and he’d wanted answers on the spot. Ford was a fair and reasonable man, but he liked things clear and he liked them in order. Either Flynt had a daughter or he didn’t. And if he did, who was the mother—and why the hell wasn’t she taking care of her baby the way a mother should?
    Flynt refused to give the old man the answers he demanded. So things were a little tense in the Carson house right then. Flynt wouldn’t put it past his dad to come after him again that night. Ford would get nowhere, but that wouldn’t stop him from trying.
    After the grim and unsatisfying confrontation with Josie, Flynt just didn’t feel up to fielding more questions from his father. So when he came to the turnoff that led to the club, he took it. He found himself a nice, dim corner in the temporary structure they’d set up to house the bombed-out Men’s Grill until the big-time architect they’d hired could finish building them a new one.
    A young waitress, one he’d seen a lot around the club, Ginger Walton, came trotting up to take his order. “Your usual, right?”
    He nodded.
    â€œThen I can serve it to you.” It took him a moment to catch her meaning. She must be under twenty-one, which meant she’d be required to let the other waitresses handle the liquor orders when she worked in the Men’s Grill.
    But Flynt presented no problem for her. His “usual,” for the last year and a half, anyway, was club soda on ice.
    When she returned with his drink, she had another waitress with her, a dark-eyed, faintly exotic-looking blonde. Flynt suppressed a sigh. There were a few drawbacks to the job of club president. One was the way the staff seemed to think he was just dying to meet each and every one of them. He never had the heart to disillusion them, so he was always saying hi and shaking hands. He did his best to keep their names straight, but there were a lot of them. Luckily for him, the majority wore name tags.
    â€œMr. Carson, this is Daisy Parker,” Ginger said.“She’s new. We’ve trained her in the Yellow Rose.” The Yellow Rose Café was the more casual of the other two restaurants at the club. “Now I’m showing her around the Men’s Grill.” At the club, the wait staff received training in all three of the club’s restaurants. That way they could work wherever Harvey needed them.
    â€œDaisy.” He frowned. Something about her was familiar, he just couldn’t put his finger on what—then again, maybe not. He shrugged. “Nice to meet you. Welcome to the Lone Star Country Club.”
    Daisy Parker made a few polite noises. Then Ginger set his club soda in front of him and the two waitresses left him in peace. Flynt sipped his gutless drink and wished it was a Chivas on the rocks and stared into the middle distance, thinking of Josie, wondering if she might have been telling the truth when she said that Lena wasn’t theirs.
    No. More likely, she was lying in bed