The Women in Joe Sullivan's Life Page 15

  Her article. He was handing it in without letting her read it first. He was breaking his promise. She felt betrayal slice through her. It was a familiar sensation, one she had never managed to successfully divorce herself from. “I thought you didn’t go back on your word.”

  He held his hand up to stem the flow of words he saw coming. “Can we back up here? What word are we talking about?”

  As if he didn’t know. “You said I could have final approval.” Suddenly, she felt naked, exposed. She thought she could trust him. That he couldn’t hurt her more than she thought possible.

  Amusement quirked his mouth. “I had no idea you were on the board of Wild West Parks.”

  “What?”

  “My article is about their new theme park opening up in L.A. Your article doesn’t go in until next week. After you look it over.” He crossed back to Maggie and kissed her cheek. “I always had a weakness for egg. In case you haven’t noticed, it’s all over your face.”

  She swatted him back. He eluded her, then caught her up in his arms, making her laugh.

  He kissed her quickly. “You know, I could always be persuaded to stop by your place after I drop off the article.”

  After a beat, she wiggled out of his hold. But not too quickly. “Too bad I’m not in the persuading game.”

  “Like hell you’re not.” He dropped his hands to his sides. “C’mon, McGuire, get your things. I’ll walk you to your car.”

  “I can walk to my own car, Sullivan. I thought you were in a hurry.”

  “I’ll drive faster.” He slipped his arm around her shoulders and guided her out the door. “You know, Maggie, you really don’t have to fight me on everything.”

  No, just on the things that count.

  But for now, she kept the thought to herself.

  Chapter Eleven

  Joe casually slipped his arm around Maggie as he walked her to her car. Dinner, as usual, had been a major three-ring affair. Afterward, all three girls had vied for Maggie’s attention. She seemed to be able to manage to give of herself without shortchanging anyone. The girls were crazy about her.

  That made it unanimous.

  A light, unexpected mist had begun to fall softly. He held her closer.

  Maggie felt her pulse accelerating. She tried to justify her reaction with an excuse. She just didn’t have any experience in this field. Why else would she react like a high school sophomore every time he touched her?

  Because when she had been a high school sophomore she’d been too busy working, trying to provide for herself and her brothers. There had never been that idyllic time for her, the way there had been for others, to wander through love’s tender pastures. Her one serious relationship had ended in disaster. She had only herself to blame. She’d been naively underequipped.

  She wasn’t any better equipped now, she thought. And far too busy for a crash course.

  Reasoning didn’t help. Her stomach was still knotting.

  Joe stopped beside the car, wishing that he could convince Maggie to come away with him for the weekend. Mrs. Phelps was perfectly amenable to staying with the girls. He thought it would give Maggie an opportunity to unwind, to trust him. To get to know him better. He knew all he needed to know about her.

  But she had countered by producing an agenda of work with a deadline that was at odds with his plans. She did it each time he made the suggestion.

  Eventually, he promised himself, she would run out of excuses. Until then, he would enjoy what he had.

  “I can’t believe the change in Sandy. In a little over a week, she’s become a different little girl.” He smiled, leaning against the car and resting his hands casually on the swell of Maggie’s hips. Waiting for her to come around was driving him crazy. He’d never had to wait for a woman before. He’d always had more than an ample selection at his disposal. None of them counted. They might as well have not even existed. Only Maggie did.

  “She doesn’t let Christine push her around anymore.” He laughed, thinking. “There’s a lot more arguing going on, but since it’s for a worthy cause, I can put up with it.” Drawing her closer, he pressed a kiss softly to her lips. “And to think, I’ve got you to thank for the extra noise.”

  She should be going. Instead, she was standing here slowly getting wet, for crying out loud. Didn’t she even have enough sense to come in out of the rain?

  Not when Joe was in it.

  Damn, but she saw problems looming ahead for her. Big ones. She had no time for a husband, much less an instant family. And she had less than no time for rejection. It still haunted her, like long-forgotten ghost stories that emerged in the shadow of night. Nothing could convince her that if she gave her heart again, she wouldn’t eventually be rejected.

  “You don’t have to thank me,” she murmured. She felt his hands as they slipped around her waist, his long, artistic fingers dipping languidly along her hips, and tried vainly to ignore them. “Seeing her come out of that shell is payment enough.”

  “Shell,” he echoed with a laugh. “She won’t be there again anytime soon.” This was the niece he had watched growing up these last seven years. The stubborn, laughing little girl. Not the sad-eyed child who had emerged the last few months. He knew it had to do with her parents’ deaths, but he hadn’t been able to find a way to bring her around. Until Maggie. “Thanks to you, she wants to be an actress now.”

  Linking his fingers with hers, he drew her back to the shelter of the eaves. It was misting harder. He didn’t want her to go just yet. The girls were finally asleep. The evening for them should just be beginning, not ending.

  Maggie watched the driveway grow slick with moisture and wondered why that seemed impossibly romantic to her. You definitely don’t get out enough, McGuire. “Most little girls do at her age.”

  He looked at her and tried to imagine what she had been like as a child. Probably a great deal like Sandy. “Did you?”

  She shook her head. Without a television set in her home, the thought of becoming an actress had never entered her mind the way it had with other girls.

  She sighed, remembering. “I didn’t want to be an actress. I just didn’t want to be poor. I wanted to do whatever it took not to have people look at me with pity or talk about my family behind our backs.” Emotion brimmed in her voice. “Or worse, taunt us to our face.”

  He could see her then, vividly. An unhappy little girl in ill-fitting clothing. Moved, he tightened his arm around her shoulders, wishing he could take the memory from her. Absorb it himself so that it never touched her again. “Was it that bad?”

  The smile that rose to her lips was without feeling. “Worse, really.” She closed her eyes as she sighed. It was something that she would never be completely free of, that specter of fear that haunted the perimeter of her mind.

  Maggie turned to look at him. “Sometimes I wake up in the middle of the night, thinking that everything I’ve accomplished was all just a dream and I’m back in that narrow little bed with the washed-out comforter, listening to cats rattle the garbage cans looking for food.” She struggled to shake off her mood. “I used to feel so sorry for those cats.”

  He kissed the top of her head. It was damp with mist. Droplets clung to her hair like a crown of pearls. “Why?”

  “Because there never was anything for them to eat.” She shook her head. “We never had enough to go around, much less to throw out so the cats could eat it.” Her mouth curved. “If I had a penny for every time I served oatmeal for dinner…Peanut butter sandwiches were a luxury. To this day, I can’t stand to look at either one.”

  He wanted her to talk about something else, something that didn’t drag on her soul as much. “How did you wind up making chocolate chip cookies?”

  That had been a supreme treat. She’d been so proud of that, to be able to bring a little simple pleasure into her brothers’ lives. The sense of satisfaction had been incomparable.

  “Not easily. As soon as I was able, I did odd jobs for people.” She had go
ne from neighborhood to neighborhood, knocking on one door after another. Even then, she had refused to accept the word no. “I washed their windows, walked their dogs, mowed their lawns. Anything just to earn some money.”

  That he could readily visualize. While other girls played jump rope and had tea parties with their dolls, she was out hustling business. “I’ve never met a handygirl before.”

  The term made her laugh. She’d learned how to do a great many things out of necessity. Mainly survive. “I was very, very handy.”

  He turned her around so that she faced him. His eyes held hers. His were full of compassion. “I’m sorry, Maggie.”

  She stiffened slightly, as she always did when she thought she was faced with pity. “About what?”

  He cupped her chin and slowly rubbed his thumb along her cheek. He could see that spark of pride igniting. That spark that attempted to hold back the world. Well, it wouldn’t hold him back.

  “That you had to go through all that.”

  She shrugged carelessly. “I’m not.” raised her head defensively. “I mean, I would have given anything to have had a loving set of parents and Christmas with all the trimmings.” Even over the bridge of time, it was difficult not to sound wistful. “But in a way, this was good. It made me stronger.”

  He laughed. “No arguing with that.”

  Her mouth hardened just a little. It was getting increasingly difficult keeping distance between them. He kept melting it as if the walls she had constructed around herself were all just an ice sculpture. “It taught me that if I wanted something done, I had to do it myself. I couldn’t depend on anyone else to do it for me.”

  He knew what she was telling him. But there was room for more than one in her world. “There is such a thing as carrying it too far, though.”

  And where had she heard that recently? She couldn’t help smiling. “Are my brothers paying you to play devil’s advocate?”

  Standing here like this, it felt as if there was no one else in the world except for the two of them. As if they were just a man and a woman with an eternity to discover each other instead of a businesswoman and a man with three very real responsibilities depending on him.

  “No one has to pay me to do that.” He’d never get enough of looking at her, he thought, absorbing her silhouette and locking it away in his memory. “I just want you to know that sometimes you can depend on someone else.” He could tell by the set of her shoulders that she was shoring up. He laid his hands on them, forcing her to look at him. “Not everyone is going to disappoint you like your parents and that guy in college who played doctor at your expense.”

  When he looked at her like that, it was hard to remember her own promises to herself. She said them aloud to reinforce them. “No, because I’m never going to let myself be in that position again.”

  She had enough determination to carry that out. He hoped she had enough sense not to. “You miss out on a great deal that way.”

  Maggie pressed her lips together. “Better that way than to get hurt.” She firmly believed that. She’d had enough rejection in her life. Only a fool wouldn’t learn how to avoid it.

  His eyes probed into her very soul. “You don’t mean that.”

  She shrugged him off, moving toward her car again. The mist had abated. The air still felt moist. “You know, you keep telling me what I mean and what I don’t mean.” Annoyance rose in her voice. Annoyance with him, with herself for hanging around. “You haven’t got the faintest idea what goes on in my head.” She pulled open her car door.

  He laid his hand over hers, stopping her. “Yes, I do.” It had taken him a while, but he understood now. “I can see you mirrored in Sandy.”

  Maggie bit her lower lip. She should have never said anything to him. That had been a moment of weakness, prompted by empathy.

  “The little girl the world wanted to push around. You wouldn’t have identified so readily with Sandy if you hadn’t gone through it in some form yourself.”

  Admitting it made her too vulnerable. And she already knew what happened to people who were vulnerable. They got walked on. “Adam thought I was like Christine,” she pointed out.

  He could see the evolution as readily as if it was an equation written out on a page. “You overcompensated.”

  Her eyes narrowed. She didn’t like being analyzed. “Did I?”

  He knew a fight in the making when he saw one. Joe was quick to try to defuse it. “I can help you balance things out.”

  She shrugged off his hands, wishing she could shrug off his effect as easily. “I already told you—”

  Actions, he had always believed, spoke far louder than words. “You talk too much.”

  He felt her mouth moving beneath his in a protest that was never vocalized. His tongue skimmed her lips and the words melted into his mouth, silently disappearing as she responded to him.

  The kiss deepened. Whether he was instrumental in doing it or she was, Joe wasn’t sure. He only knew that it deepened and that he was falling headlong into the chasm he had created.

  His arms tightened around her body, pressing her to him, drawing in the heat, the desire he felt. Like an echo that ricocheted back and forth over the cavern walls, desire fed on desire, passion created passion and reverberated it back.

  He had a way of sucking away her thoughts, her will. He made her forget who and what she was. And why. He was taking away her identity and substituting his own in its place.

  Maggie pulled away, her chest heaving. She attempted to replenish her air supply and found that her lungs didn’t seem capable of holding it. “You have got to stop doing that.”

  Her eyes were dazed and her mouth mussed with the imprint of his. He liked that, he thought. Liked it a lot. He cupped her cheek, unwilling to break contact just yet. “Why?”

  Maggie swallowed, wondering how long it would take for the ground to level out and her equilibrium to return. “Because I like it too much.”

  He smiled at her. When was she going to get it into her head that resistance was futile? For both of them. “And that’s bad?”

  She tried not to sound breathless. “Yes.”

  “Why is that?”

  He thought it was a joke, she thought, but it wasn’t. Not to her. She wedged her hands between them as he leaned to kiss her again. “Because this isn’t what I want. Everything is mapped out in my life. And you’re not part of the legend.”

  The excuse wasn’t good enough. “Maps get altered. New streets get built, new roads get put in. Happens all the time, McGuire.” He wanted to hold her, but knew that now wasn’t the time. She looked too vulnerable and would only hate him if he took advantage of that small opening. Being noble was wearing the hell out of him. “If it didn’t, mapmakers would go out of business.”

  She saw desire in his eyes and backed away from it. Away from the twin emotions that swirled within her. She had to think with her head, not with the rest of her.

  “I don’t want a new map. I like the one I have.” She was almost shouting. Even to her own ear it sounded as if she was protesting too much. “I like the life I have,” she added more softly.

  He wondered if she was actually succeeding in fooling herself. She certainly hadn’t managed to fool him. “It’s a little lonely, don’t you think?”

  And who was he, the great white knight, riding to the rescue? “Do I look lonely?”

  There was no smile on Joe’s face as he answered. “Yes.”

  Defenses flew to the ramparts, armed. “Is that what you’re going to put into your article?” A cold fist formed in her stomach. She was always trying to outrun the past, to bury it in an unmarked grave, and here she had told everything. What was wrong with her? “That I’m some lonely, deprived woman who tries to fill the emptiness in her life by working?”

  The accusation was as sharp as the blade of a newly honed razor. “I would have thought that after all this time, you would have known me better than that.” He tried to temper the pain her words had inflicted. Ma
ggie had known a great deal of adversity and it had made her suspicious of everything. And everyone. “I’ve no intentions of putting that into the article. Speaking of which, I’ll drop it off at your office tomorrow.”

  Maggie looked at him, surprised. “It’s finished?”

  He was glad it was over. She couldn’t accuse him of ulterior motives now that it was no longer between them. “Yes.”

  And after he showed it to her, he’d talk to her again about the weekend. He had a friend who had given him unrestricted use of his cabin in Big Bear. Joe could picture Maggie there, by the stream, dressed in only a smile.

  She wanted to read Joe’s article, but there were two reports she had to review for the upcoming production meeting. “That doesn’t give me much time.”

  Just how carefully did she think she had to scrutinize the material? “I figure you’re already familiar with the pertinent points. You’re just checking for grammar and spelling.”

  She looked at him pointedly. “And truth.”

  Did she think he was going to make things up? “I didn’t need to fabricate anything.”

  No, that was just the trouble. She had given him far too much material. “That’s not what I meant. I meant checking for just how much ‘truth’ you included in the article.”

  His first impression of her had been that she was utterly self-confident. Was she really so skittish of public opinion? The imprint of her childhood must have gone deep.

  “Enough to make it interesting,” he said easily, hoping to set her mind at rest, “not enough to make you angry.” He really wished that she would trust him. Maybe in time.

  He kissed her cheek. “Go, before I change my mind and drag you to my lair.”

  It was getting late and she should have left half an hour ago. She smiled at the image he created. “The girls would stop you.”

  He shook his head. “The girls are asleep, remember?”