Father For Keeps. Ana Seymour

from branding me a fallen woman.”

      “But he’s come back.”

      Kate looked out the still-open door where Sean had disappeared into the night. “Yes.” Her voice was weary. “He’s come back.”

      

      “You’re not telling me what it felt like to see him again.” Jennie Sheridan looked nothing like her sister. Shorter, darker, her eyes were brown instead of Kate’s crystal blue.

      “Ouch! You don’t have to go clear through to the nail.” Kate watched with an intent frown as Jennie dug at the splinter in her finger.

      “I declare, sis, you’re a bigger baby than Caroline. He was as handsome as ever, I suppose. Aha, got it!”

      Kate let out a relieved breath and put her finger up to her mouth to suck the place where Jennie had poked. They were sitting on the bed in Kate’s room. Caroline was sleeping peacefully in her crib in the corner after taking her fill of her mother’s milk. “You were the one who always said he was a scoundrel and a scalawag and I don’t know what else.”

      Jennie bounced back against the headboard and made herself comfortable among her sister’s pillows. It didn’t appear that she would leave until Kate answered her questions to her satisfaction. “He is a scoundrel,” she said. “But I never said he wasn’t handsome. He’s a black-haired, blue-eyed devil full of Irish blarney, but a mighty pretty one. Of course—” Jennie’s eyes sparkled “—I’m partial to blondes, myself.”

      “Gray-eyed blondes. One in particular,” Kate added. She climbed over her sister’s legs to sit comfortably next to her at the head of the bed. “Yes, Sean’s as handsome as ever. But that has nothing to do with me anymore.”

      “There’s no feeling left at all?”

      Kate glanced sideways at her sister. Only sixteen months apart in age, the two had always been as close as twins. She’d never even bothered to try to lie to Jennie—it wouldn’t have done any good. “My heart was pounding like the steam pump at the mine. But it could have just been the surprise of it.”

      “So when are you going to tell him?”

      “Jennie, I’m not. My life is no longer any of his business.”

      “But Caroline is his daughter.”

      “Caroline’s my daughter.”

      Jennie grabbed a pillow and hugged it to her middle. She was quiet for a moment, then said softly, “Don’t you think Caroline has a right to a father?”

      Kate’s face was grim. “She has you and me. And she already has five men in her life—Carter, Barnaby and the silverheels.”

      From the day their three silver-mining boarders had come to rent rooms, tracking silver dust into the parlor, Jennie and Kate had dubbed the men their “silverheels.” Jennie reached for her sister’s hand and squeezed it. “The silverheels love your little girl, Kate, but one of these days when the silver plays out, they’ll be moving on. Barnaby’s just a boy, and Carter’s her uncle, not her father.”

      “So you think I should let Caroline learn to love Sean so that one day he can take off and leave her without warning the way he did me? I don’t think so.”

      “He may regret leaving. After all, he came back, didn’t he?”

      Kate knocked the back of her head against the headboard in frustration. “I can’t believe you’re arguing for him, Jen. After he left, you spent months trying to convince me that I was better off forgetting about any man who would be such a cad as to leave a woman pregnant and alone.”

      “But he didn’t know you were pregnant.”

      “He certainly knew we’d made love, didn’t he?” Kate’s voice rose in anger. “I can’t understand why you’re suddenly acting as if I should forget how he left without a goodbye, leaving me to face the consequences.”

      Jennie sighed. “I’m not trying to take his part, Kate. Or suggest that you forgive him. It’s just that-in all this time, you haven’t seemed to be interested in any other man. It’s as if Sean took over your heart so completely there’s no room for anyone else.”

      “Well, that’s silly to say. Lyle’s here almost every day.”

      “Oh, pooh. Lyle Wentworth is an arrogant, spoiled boy who’s never done an honest day’s work in his life. He’s not even worth considering.”

      “He’s a year older than you, sis, and he is working now.”

      “A token job in his pa’s bank. No one else would have him.”

      Kate sighed and slid down until she was lying flat on the bed. “I’m bushed, Jennie. If I have to face Sean again in the morning, I’m going to have to get some sleep.”

      Jennie’s face twisted with sympathy. She ran a hand over her sister’s forehead. “You’re working too hard for a nursing mother.”

      Kate reached up to squeeze her sister’s hand. “You’re one to talk about working hard. How about when I was in the hospital and you were running the boardinghouse all by yourself, and cooking for the men up at the Wesley mine?”

      Jennie grinned. “You’ll pay me back. When I get in a family way, I intend to let you wait on me hand and foot.”

      Kate smiled. “It’s a deal. And the way you and Carter disappear upstairs regularly, I suspect that time will come any day.” She ducked as Jennie swatted her with the pillow, then gave her sister a gentle push off the bed. “Now get out of here and let me get some sleep.”

      

      It was getting late in the season for flowers, but a two-dollar gold piece had spurred ambition in the usually indifferent hotel clerk. Within an hour after breakfast, the lad had rounded up a bouquet large enough to stir the heads of even the snobbiest Nob Hill debutantes back in San Francisco. Here in Vermillion, the offering should take Kate Sheridan’s breath away. For good measure, Sean stopped at the dry goods store, balancing the flowers precariously in one arm. What did one buy for a baby? Not just a baby—his own daughter. The concept still made him weak in the knees.

      The front table was stacked with bolts of heavy muslin, winter weight for the approaching cold. Did babies need winter clothes? he wondered.

      “May I help you, sir?”

      Sean gave an inward groan and wondered if it would be too impossibly rude to turn tail and run out of the store. Weaving her way through the colorful displays of cloth was Henrietta Billingsley, wife of the store owner and self-appointed guardian of Vermillion morality.

      “It’s Mr. Flaherty, isn’t it?” Mrs. Billingsley continued. She had a proprietor’s smile on her face, but her eyes could kill a duelist at thirty paces.

      “How do you do, Mrs. Billingsley?” Sean said, fumbling to remove his hat without dropping the armload of flowers. Lord, what had possessed him to come into this particular store?

      “We all thought you’d left Vermillion for good. Over a year ago, wasn’t it?”

      Sean had the feeling that Mrs. Billingsley knew to the day how long he’d been absent from town and also knew every detail of his transgression. Well, to hell with it. He didn’t expect to be in town long enough to care what she or anyone else thought of him. He’d come to collect Kate and his daughter, and as far as he was concerned, that would be the last he’d see of Vermillion.

      “Unfortunately, the family businesses required my attention,” Sean answered in his most imperious tone. He’d discovered that self-righteous people were often best handled with a superior air.

      “The family businesses…?”

      “Shipping, banking…Flaherty Enterprises,” he ended as if to say that anyone important would recognize the name.

      “Urn,