The Women in Joe Sullivan's Life Read online

  He smiled. They were finding a routine, he and the girls. It wasn’t the most peaceful one, but with Mrs. Phelps’s help, they were managing pretty well. “The same. Still fighting.”

  The word conjured up images. She thought of sad blue eyes. “And Sandy?”

  He knew what she meant. “Still hanging back. I’m hoping that she’ll come around eventually—if I can get Christine to stop picking on her long enough for Sandy to build up some self-esteem.”

  From what Maggie had observed of the girls, that would be no easy trick. She suddenly remembered the reason she had had dinner at his house instead of a restaurant. He’d shown up for every class. How had he managed?

  “Who’s with them now?” She shouldn’t even be asking. The less she knew—about Sullivan, about his nieces—the better. If you knew, you became involved.

  She didn’t want to be involved.

  “I have a new nanny for them.” The relief he felt was evident in his eyes. “She’s pretty good with them. Not like you, of course.”

  Maggie squelched the pleased feeling. “Flattery isn’t going to get you anywhere.” That’s all it was, empty flattery. She opened her car door and tossed the briefcase in.

  Joe placed his hand on the door, blocking her way. Watching her eyes, he ran the back of his hand along her cheek. God, but he wanted to touch her, to kiss her. To make love with her until one of them begged for mercy. “What will get me somewhere?”

  She felt her eyes fluttering and she moved her head back. Or thought she did.

  But when her eyes snapped opened once more, she hadn’t moved an iota. “I wish you wouldn’t do that.”

  Very slowly, he rubbed his thumb along the hollow of her cheek. “Why?”

  Her breath was growing shallow. She liked this too much. “Because it bothers me.”

  It bothered him, too. A lot. He felt himself being aroused. “Good bother or bad bother?”

  With effort, she took his wrist with both her hands and pushed him away. “Both.”

  They were on the cusp of something, something that he found himself wanting to explore. It seemed that the more she resisted, the more he was drawn to it. The excuse that he had the girls in his life now didn’t seem to carry the weight it had earlier. If anything, it tipped the scale in her favor.

  He smiled into her eyes as he cupped her face with his hands. “Then how do you feel about this?” He felt rather than saw the pulse in her throat throbbing just as he lowered his mouth to hers.

  The very same explosion went off inside her, except that this time, it was that much louder, that much more mind melting.

  Maggie was reeling from the first moment.

  Whatever words she had used to keep him and herself at bay, to keep thoughts of him at bay, dissolved like a spider’s web in a strong wind. She had no defenses against this feeling, no defenses against him, and it frightened her. Badly. She’d gotten where she had only through sheer control. The one time she’d let that control drop, she’d been hurt. Control over a situation, over herself, was everything.

  And right now, she had nothing.

  Nothing but this wondrous, pulsating feeling strumming magical fingers all through her, playing her as if she were the strings on a harp.

  It had been three weeks since he’d kissed her. Three incredibly long weeks. Rather than fading with time, the memory of her mouth on his had intensified. It preyed on his mind, demanding to be satisfied, like a craving that wouldn’t go away.

  He’d thought himself almost possessed by the memory. The memory paled in comparison to the real thing. He felt his gut tightening as if a fist had been driven full force into it.

  Damn, but he wanted her. Now.

  He was shaky as he held her away from him, afraid of what he might be tempted to do. To push this to the point where neither one of them had a say in what was going to happen.

  He knew very little about cooking, but he knew that if you raised the flame too high, too fast, you could burn the steak. It had to be cooked slowly, until it was ready to be savored.

  Joe shook his head, his hands still on her arms. “You pack some wallop, McGuire.” He waited a moment until he caught his breath. “There is most definitely something going on here worth looking into.”

  Maggie swallowed hard, wishing for a new moon instead of the steady stream of light that seemed to be flooding all around them. She wanted shadows to hide in. Gathering her scattered thoughts together, she shook her head.

  “No mystery. Just hormones, plain and simple.”

  He was well acquainted with hormones. This was no knee-jerk hormonal reaction. There was a lot more going on, and he, for one, intended to discover what.

  “They might be hormones, Maggie,” he granted. “But there is nothing plain and simple about them.” He didn’t want her to leave. Yet they couldn’t remain standing out here indefinitely, and she had already turned him down for tomorrow. He thought of the restaurants in the square across the street from the campus. “Are you up for a cup of coffee?”

  She allowed herself a smile. “I’m not sure I’m up at all.” Chagrined, Maggie glanced down. Her legs felt as if they were the consistency of gelatin at room temperature.

  She was still standing. Standing pressed against Joe, with a whole squadron of pulses throbbing all through her.

  He wanted her to himself a little longer. Anywhere. “There’s a coffee shop just down the street. Metcalf’s. They cater to kids pulling all-nighters. C’mon, one cup,” he urged. “In a public place. What are you afraid of?”

  Why did he continue to accuse her of being afraid? It rankled the self-image she had so painstakingly pieced together. “I’m not afraid. I just am not in the market for anything.”

  He placed his hand on her back as he ushered her into her car. “And I’m not selling anything.”

  “The hell you’re not.”

  He only grinned in reply. “Just follow me. I’ll lead you there.”

  “That’s just what I’m afraid of,” she murmured under her breath. She looked up sharply, but he didn’t appear to have heard.

  The coffee was excellent. And so was the company. In the dim atmosphere of Metcalf’s, it was difficult to concentrate on anything other than the person sitting opposite you at the table.

  Maggie spent an inordinate amount of time looking at her coffee.

  “Can I ask just one question?” Even in this lighting, he saw the wary look entering her eyes. “I promise it’s not about your parents.”

  That wasn’t good enough. There were still places she didn’t want him trespassing. “What?” She whispered the word guardedly.

  He’d had time to observe her. She was beautiful, dynamic, and he could personally vouch that she was great with kids. It was only natural that her marital status raised questions.

  He wanted to run his hand along hers, but refrained. Touching would only make him want to kiss her again. “Why isn’t a woman like you married, or at the very least, spoken for?”

  She hadn’t heard that term for a long time. Maggie shrugged noncommittally. “I just haven’t had the time. There’s always so much to do.”

  He couldn’t quite believe that she’d always walked alone. “There’s never been anyone? No serious boyfriend, no relationship that fell by the wayside when you began your astronomically quick climb in the corporate world of chocolate chip cookies?”

  Maggie avoided his eyes as she shrugged.

  Her silence told him what he wanted to know. He’d suspected as much. Instantly, Joe felt the cold, sharp prick of jealousy. He hadn’t the right, but he felt it, anyway.

  “There was, wasn’t there?” When she said nothing, he prodded. “When?”

  She supposed that there was no harm in telling him this much. It didn’t carry with it the taint of shame the way her childhood did. But when it was over, it had only reinforced it. “In college.”

  He leaned closer, effectively blocking out everyone else in the coffee shop. “What happened?”

&nb
sp; Maggie tilted her empty cup and watched the remaining drop of thick liquid slowly coat the sides. “Nothing.”

  The hell it hadn’t. “Did he break your heart, Maggie? Point him out and I’ll shoot him for you.”

  His words were light, but the smile on his face was just a shade tight. There was a time, she thought, when she would have loved to have had a champion. Someone to do things for her, to make her feel safe and secure. But that was before she had done it for herself. Before she knew that she could only rely on herself. If you wanted a thing done…

  She laughed. “No, he didn’t break my heart. Bruised it a little, maybe.” Looking back, she refused to attach that much importance to Jack. He’d done her a favor by showing her the error of her thinking. “I caught him with another woman. He told me he was going to be studying. He failed to explain that the lesson was in anatomy. Hers.”

  Joe nodded. “The classic story.”

  “Didn’t feel very classic at the time.” She set down her cup on the saucer. It was getting late.

  He watched emotions play across her face and wondered if she was aware of them. Probably not. If she were, she would have found a way to seal them away. “So you swore off dating.”

  “Not really. I just didn’t make the time for it.” She didn’t have the time to set herself up for more rejection. Her father and mother had set a precedent. And her experience with Jack had just cemented it.

  Maggie frowned. Once again she’d told Sullivan more than she had intended. This was supposed to have been just a friendly little cup of coffee, not another stroll down memory lane.

  Maybe that was why she was stonewalling him. She was afraid of getting hurt again. His smile was warm, sympathetic. “Don’t you know that when you fall off a horse, you’re supposed to get right back on again?”

  Once had been enough for her. “I not only didn’t get back on, the horse ran back to the stable, took a shower and died of old age. I don’t intend to go ‘riding’ again for a long time.”

  “And that was the sum total of your dating life?”

  “I already told you—” Maggie picked up her purse, but got no farther than that. His hand was on hers.

  His mouth teased hers. “Maggie, for the good of humanity, as well as your own, I think I should ease you back into the process.”

  “My good,” she echoed knowingly. “And your own?”

  He placed a hand dramatically to his chest. “We martyrs never think of ourselves. It’s against the rules.”

  She had to go before he made her want to stay. He was far too persuasive. Maggie began to rise. “I finished my coffee.”

  “I can get a refill.” One hand on her wrist, he raised his other to signal for the waitress.

  Maggie disengaged her hand from his. “Not tonight.”

  He leaned back. As far as he was concerned, he had already shown a great deal of patience and restraint. But he wasn’t the only one concerned here. Obviously she needed more. “Then when?”

  She didn’t answer. Instead, she merely shook her head and began to leave.

  He rose in his seat. “I’ll call you,” he promised, his voice following her out.

  Maggie paused to look over her shoulder. “It isn’t advisable.”

  With that, she left the coffee shop.

  Joe signaled for the check. He smiled to himself as he looked after Maggie’s departing figure. He was getting to her. It was slow going, but he was getting to her.

  He was getting to her, she thought, half listening to the two children reading lines in her office. Damn, but he was getting to her.

  Sullivan had no place in her thoughts, but here he was, sneaking in and throwing everything into a jumble, like a child standing up beneath a fully set dining room table, upending everything. She didn’t have time to daydream about him. She had decisions to make, a commercial to okay.

  Why was he doing this to her?

  Maggie looked up and realized that Adam was speaking to her. From the sound of his tone, he was repeating himself.

  “I’m sorry, what?”

  Adam McGuire frowned. First his sister had taken complete control of the commercial away from him; now she seemed to be here in body only.

  “I said, so, what do you think?” He nodded toward the two children. They had been listening to children read lines for the last two hours.

  Maggie linked her arm through her brother’s and turned him away from the people in the center of the conference room. “I think that I have never seen such a collection of artificial children in my life. Where did you get them?”

  “The casting agent sent them over.” His impatience was evident in his voice.

  He was tired, she thought. Maybe he was carrying too much responsibility. She glanced again toward the children. The little girl’s mother was fussing with her hair again. Maggie wondered if it was worse to have a mother who insisted on overseeing every tiny aspect of your life, or one who wasn’t aware of any part of it.

  The latter, a small voice whispered.

  “They look as if they had all just been dropped from the latest sitcom.” None of them had the sparkle, the personality, she was looking for.

  Adam fervently wished that Maggie would go back to looking over Ethan’s shoulder instead of his. “Some of them have an impressive list of credentials,” he pointed out stubbornly.

  That didn’t impress her. She wanted naturals, not miniature adults who had to pretend to be children. “At six? I don’t want a list of credentials, I want scraped knees. I want real kids.”

  Adam struggled to curb his temper. Ethan knew how to keep quiet when Maggie stuck her fingers into his pie. He wasn’t as good as Ethan at shrugging it off. “Real kids aren’t disciplined enough.”

  “No, but they can make the ordinary consumer believe…” She stopped and looked up at him. “What did you say?”

  Adam blew out a breath. “When? I wasn’t listening to me, either.” Just as she clearly wasn’t.

  Why was he so annoyed? “I listen, Adam.”

  Adam shoved his hands into his pockets and turned to look out the window. There was nothing to see but parked cars. “Yeah, right.”

  He was chafing again. Lately, Adam had seemed unhappy, and she couldn’t get to the heart of the reason. That bothered her. A great deal. Maggie always wanted to fix everything and make it right. There just never seemed to be enough bandages to go around.

  But at the moment, they had an immediate, pressing problem to handle. Adam had signed up a film crew to begin work next Monday. “No, I meant, what did you say about discipline?”

  “Real kids aren’t disciplined enough,” he repeated. Just what was she getting at?

  Maggie grinned as she steepled her fingers together. “Perfect.”

  “I’d be happier about the compliment if I knew what you were talking about.”

  For a second she’d forgotten that he was even there. She looked at him as if he’d just roused her from a dream. “What? Oh. I have the perfect little girl for the commercial.”

  He looked down at the résumés he was holding and began to thumb through them. There hadn’t been anyone who stood out as far as he was concerned. “Which one is she?”

  Maggie shook her head as she glanced at the papers in his hand. “She’s not here.”

  “Figures.” They had seen several children yesterday afternoon. “You want a call back?”

  Maggie was already out the door and on her way to her office. “No, I want a call first.”

  Adam followed. Though he was taller, he had to hustle just to keep up with her. “Maggie, talking to you is like trying to keep up with the Road Runner on megavitamins. What the hell are you talking about?”

  Maggie sat down at her desk and drew the telephone to her. “Opportunity, I think.” She had a gut feeling about this. Her gut feelings were hardly ever wrong.

  Adam sighed and slumped down on the sofa. He was accustomed to sitting on the sidelines while Maggie did her thing. They all were. Someday, she was
going to have enough confidence in them to let them do the work for her. At least some of it.

  Until then, he was just going to have to be content to let Maggie be Maggie. It wasn’t easy.

  The telephone on the other end was ringing. Maggie braced herself for the sound of his voice.

  “Sullivan.”

  She became all business, trying to bury the fact that even the sound of his voice stirred things within her. She was dealing with that. She could always deal with setbacks and obstacles. She just wasn’t sure which category he fell into.

  “How would you like to provide for Sandy’s college fund?”

  “Ever hear of the word hello?”

  “Hello. So how would you like to provide for Sandy’s college fund?”

  “She’s seven. I haven’t really thought about it.”

  “Well, think about it.” Maggie launched into her idea. “We’re shooting a commercial next week and I need a little girl who’s believable. I think using Sandy might be beneficial to her as well as to us.” She was thinking of the girl’s faded self-esteem. “Can you bring her over today?”

  Here he’d been, knocking his head against the wall, and when he least expected it, luck threw him an ace. “I could.”

  She heard the contingency note in his voice. “But?”

  “Let’s make a deal first.”

  She sighed. Adam looked at her quizzically but she didn’t stop to explain what was going on. “What do you want?”

  “I think you know what I want.”

  Yes, she knew exactly what he wanted. Her privacy. “This is no time to haggle about the interview.”

  “On the contrary, this is the perfect time to haggle about the interview. I bring Sandy over, you pay her scale and I get my interview.” He knew that something like this would make the girl feel better about herself. She was his first concern. But if it helped him out with a problem, so much the better. “Deal?”

  “Bring her. We’ll iron out the details.”

  “Deal?” he pressed.

  Maggie gritted her teeth together. It wasn’t as if she couldn’t find someone else to play the part. But time was short and she knew Sandy was exactly what she was looking for. And she wanted to help the girl. Maggie sighed. “Deal.”