“Del, you’re the best friend I have, and I don’t want to lose that, but I don’t want to rush into anything more serious.”
His smile faded. “Neither do I, Maggie.”
His ready agreement should have pleased her. Why didn’t it? “Uh, great. So it might be best to just go on like we were before and forget about that kiss.”
“I’ll always be your friend, Maggie, but that doesn’t mean I’m going to forget what it felt like to kiss you.” He ran his fingertips lightly along her cheek, then dropped his hand to his side. “I’m not going to press you for more, though. I’m aware of your physical condition.”
His directness made her blush. “Oh. I thought your expectations were different, but—”
“My expectations? Why would you think that?”
“Because of those flowers you sent.”
“Maggie, I didn’t send you any flowers.”
“But…” She turned her head to look over her shoulder. The arrangement sat in the center of the table.
“I didn’t send them,” he repeated.
“But your note…” She paused. “It wasn’t signed. I just assumed it was from you.”
Del took the bags of food to the table and picked up the card. His expression hardened. “I didn’t write this.”
She should have known better. The message in that bouquet wasn’t from Del. Of course, the flowers wouldn’t have been from him. He was too nice, too honorable, to try to push her into a more serious relationship under these circumstances.
So if Del hadn’t sent the flowers, who could have?
“Oh, no,” she breathed. She hurried across the room and took the card from his hand, squinting over the initial that had been used in place of a signature. She had thought it was a D. But now that she looked more closely, she could see it was slanted backward, and the ends of the letter extended a little too far. “It’s an A,” she murmured. “Not a D.”
“Could they be from Alan?” Del asked.
Alan. The warmth she had been feeling at seeing Del dissipated. Oh, God. It had to be Alan. Who else? She thought of the wording on the card. Once more I apologize for the way we parted. He was referring to his last visit here. The flowers were a peace offering. A bribe. A down payment. Whatever distasteful term she wanted to use, the purpose was the same. He hadn’t taken no for an answer.
Until I can see you again.
She crumpled the note in her fist and threw it across the room. “How dare he,” she said, her voice shaking. “How can he pretend he cares about me after all his lies. Oh, damn! Damn! I should have known he wouldn’t give up.”
Del caught her shoulders. “Maggie, I won’t let him bother you.”
“But what if he comes over again?” She gasped as another thought occurred to her. “Oh, Del, what if he decides he wants Delilah?”
“He won’t. Think, Maggie. Alan wouldn’t do that. He wouldn’t want his secrets exposed to his wife and family.”
The panic that had stirred instantly at the thought of losing Delilah quickly retreated. “You’re right. Of course, he wouldn’t want Delilah. He never did. I was such a fool,” she said for what had to be the hundredth time.
“You’re an open, generous-hearted woman, Maggie. You saw a shot at happiness and you took it. Don’t blame yourself for that.”
He really did understand why she had made the mistake with Alan, she realized. And he didn’t condemn her for it. Gratitude surged through her, along with something deeper, something she didn’t want to think about just yet. “It’s such a jumble,” she said. “I regret Alan, but I can’t regret Delilah.”
“Delilah’s a wonderful child.”
“Yes, she is. I just hope….”
“What?”
“That she doesn’t take after her father.”
“She won’t. You can already see that she’s going to grow up to be a terrific person, just like her mom.” He leaned down to smile at her. “Don’t be so hard on yourself. We all make mistakes.”
He’d said that before, she realized. “Have you?”
“What?”
“Have you ever loved the wrong person?”
He looked at her in silence as a flicker of what appeared to be pain crossed his face.
“Oh, Del,” she said. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to upset you.”
“It’s all right, Maggie.” He released her shoulders and turned to open the bags he had brought. “Yes, I was mistaken about someone I loved.”
It was on the tip of her tongue to take back her question. She didn’t want to make him relive any painful memories. But hadn’t she wanted to know more about his life? She waited for him to continue.
“I was engaged once.”
It shouldn’t have been a surprise. Considering what a great guy Del was, it would have surprised her if some woman hadn’t recognized that by now. “Who was she?”
“Her name was Elizabeth. I had known her since we were kids. We got engaged after high school. It didn’t work out.”
“What happened?”
He set out cardboard containers of food in an orderly row. The aroma of sweet-and-sour sauce drifted through the air. “It wasn’t her fault. I couldn’t give her what she wanted. She found someone else and I moved away. The last I heard, her youngest kid had already started kindergarten at the school where we met.”
How could anyone have rejected a man as wonderful as Del? Maggie wondered. He was such a kind, generous person. What possible fault could this Elizabeth have found in him? “I’m sorry,” she murmured.
“It was a long time ago.”
“That’s why you don’t visit your sister and her children often, isn’t it?” she said. “You don’t want to go home because of the bad memories.”
He rubbed the back of his neck and turned to face her once more. “When I told you that all the traveling I do keeps me too busy to get back to Missouri, that was only part of the truth. You’re right. Even without the demands of my job, I would prefer to stay away.”
“I can understand that, but you’re so great with kids, Del. It seems like a shame that you don’t see your nieces and nephews—”
“My sister and her family live in my house, Maggie.”
“You mean with your parents?”
He shook his head. “When Elizabeth and I were engaged, I started building a house on a section of my parents’ farm. It wasn’t fancy, but it had plenty of bedrooms for the kids we had hoped to have someday. It wouldn’t have been practical to let it go to waste, so when my sister got married, she and her husband moved in.”
Despite his stoic demeanor, she could see the pain on his face. “What an awful situation.”
One corner of his mouth lifted in a sad smile. “I told you about that old Missouri homesteader tradition, didn’t I? Raising your own farmhands? Since I wouldn’t be filling all those bedrooms with Elizabeth’s children—”
“Oh, Del,” she said. Friends or not, she was unable to keep her distance any longer. Without hesitation, she put her arms around him and pressed her cheek to his chest.
No wonder he was so fond of Delilah, she thought. He had so much love inside him, but he hadn’t had the chance to share it. That Elizabeth must be a fool to have had his love and thrown it away.
And no wonder Del was so reserved when it came to talking about himself. After his broken engagement and the poignancy of having to abandon the house he had built, he had as much reason as Maggie to be cautious about whom to trust. He wasn’t secretive, he was just…private.
And now she could understand why he put so much importance in his job. He had probably turned to his work as a way to mend his broken heart.
“When Robbie saw the flowers today, he thought they were for a funeral,” she said.
“Because of his parents?” Del asked.
“Yes. He associated flowers with something painful, and that’s understandable, considering what he’s been through. But I tried to explain that flowers can mean other things, too.”
“Robbie’s a good kid.”
“He needs to make some positive memories to replace the negative ones.”
“That makes sense.”
She felt the weight of Del’s chin settle on top of her head. “I hope I got through to him,” she said.
“I’m sure you did. He adores you.”
“He likes you, too. And I hope that someday you’ll have some good memories of your home to replace the bad ones.”
He leaned back and tipped her chin so she would meet his gaze. “Trying to talk me into adopting your positive attitude?”
“Works for me.”
“Yes, it does,” he said. “Maggie, you’re quite a woman, you know that?”
“Well, thank you. You’re quite a guy.”
He smiled. It wasn’t merely a sad lift of one side of his mouth but spread all the way to the crinkles at the corners of his eyes. “So does this mean you’re going to keep Alan’s flowers?”
“What?”
“Positive attitude, good memories over bad and all that.”
“Hell, no.”
He laughed. “I’ll carry them to the trash for you.”
“I’ll hold the door.”
“And Maggie?”
“Mmm?”
“Don’t worry about Alan. He’s not going to bother you or Delilah again. That much I can promise.”
“But how…”
“For starters, I’m going to stay here tonight.”
Chapter 9
Del pressed his forearm over his eyes and drew up one leg. If he didn’t breathe too deeply and angled his hips just right, the broken spring on the back of the couch didn’t dig into his ribs. Much. And if he concentrated real hard on the multiplication tables, he could almost ignore the sounds of the creaking mattress in the next room. But there didn’t seem to be anything he could do to block out the images that teased his brain, images of Maggie on her bed, her body relaxed in sleep, her lips softly parted….
It had been a week since he had kissed her, seven days of exercising more self-control than he’d ever needed to call on in his eight years with SPEAR. She wanted to stay friends. He knew it was for the best. But that didn’t make the nights any easier.
Gritting his teeth, he sat up and rubbed his face. Well, it had seemed like a good idea at the time. Moving in with Maggie was the simplest way to discourage Alan from making contact again and to insure she didn’t have to face him alone if the bastard made another one of his surprise visits. Besides, apart from going back to the hotel room for a shower and a change of clothes when he finished his shift at the surveillance site, Del had been practically living here for weeks already. By moving in, he would be able to help Maggie with Delilah even more.
Sounded reasonable, didn’t it? he asked himself. And it had worked out well for Maggie, hadn’t it? Delilah was thriving, and Maggie was continuing to grow stronger. Alan had tried calling twice, and both times Del had answered. Nevertheless, the calls had upset Maggie. She wouldn’t feel completely at ease until she knew that Alan was out of her life for good.
According to the background material that SPEAR intelligence had gathered, Alan Blackthorn was more of a nuisance than a real threat. He had no criminal record, and there had been no hint of dangerous or obsessive behavior in the past. He was a successful, upwardly mobile insurance company executive with a twenty-year marriage who was going through a mid-life crisis. Since Maggie had thrown Alan out, he had had a hair weave and had begun sneaking off to strip clubs on his lunch hour.
Compared to the kind of people Del usually had to deal with in his profession, Alan was a harmless, almost pathetic cliché. All the indications were that Alan hadn’t been in love with Maggie. Instead, he had been infatuated with the clandestine adventure of his affair with her.
Both Maggie and Delilah deserved far better than that, Del thought. She was too warm and loving a woman to remain alone for long. Once Del moved on to the next assignment, Maggie would probably meet someone new and—
As always, Del’s mind shied away from carrying that thought to its logical conclusion. He didn’t want to imagine what kind of man Maggie would end up with, who would give her the stable home and the family she wanted. Because if he let himself think about it, he would feel like breaking someone’s arm again.
He tossed aside the light blanket, giving up on sleep. Clad in only his boxer shorts, he didn’t bother turning on a light. After one week straight of the same routine, he no longer tripped over the furniture. He pushed the coffee table aside and dropped to the floor.
Try to be positive, he reminded himself. He might not be getting much sleep, and all this extra exercise wasn’t doing much to lower his stress level, but thanks to Maggie he was able to bounce a dime off his abs. He counted off two sets of push-ups, then rolled to his back. Hooking his ankles on the arm of the couch, he laced his fingers behind his neck and curled his shoulders upward.
Del was just getting started on his third set of curls when there was a sudden crash from Maggie’s bedroom. Adrenaline surged through his system. He shot to his feet, closing the distance to the doorway in less than a second. He burst through the door and flattened himself against the wall to scan the room, prepared for anything.
In the glow of the night-light, he immediately saw that Delilah was still safe in her crib. She whimpered crankily a few times, drawing her knees to her chest, but she seemed unharmed. Her cries were sleepy and halfhearted, subsiding quickly.
Del’s gaze moved to the bed. It was empty.
His heart rate, already elevated by his workout and by the adrenaline, kicked into double time as he took a step farther into the room. And that’s when he saw Maggie. She was kneeling on the floor between her bed and the window. Pieces of the lamp she kept on her bedside table lay scattered around her.
Clearly, there was no intruder. Nothing sinister or dangerous had occurred. Maggie had accidentally knocked over a lamp, that was all.
Del really should apologize for barging in on her and go back to the living room.
Yet he couldn’t move. The way she was kneeling twisted her long flannel nightgown snugly over her hips and thighs, outlining her lush body. The soft illumination of the night-light etched fascinating shadows on her face. The hush of the late hour and the intimacy of the darkened bedroom only served to increase his awareness.
Oh, hell. He could exercise until he was exhausted. He could pretend to be noble. But he was still a man. It would be easier to glue that shattered lamp back together than to continue to keep himself from touching her.
Maggie knew she should stop staring. She should apologize for waking Del with her clumsiness and clean up the shards of the lamp. She wasn’t some blushing virgin. She had seen a half-naked man before.
Sure, but she had never seen Del half-naked.
She had known he was in good shape—just seeing the way he moved had told her that. She had already noticed and admired his large hands and muscular forearms. Yet the loose polo shirts and pleated khakis he usually wore had served to camouflage the rest of his build.
He was magnificent. There was no other way she could describe him. His shoulders were broad, in perfect proportion to his narrow hips. His upper arms were carved from muscle, not the puffy lumps of a bodybuilder but the firm, sinewy curves of a man who used his body often and used it hard. Dark hair dusted his chest and narrowed to a tantalizing line that bisected a set of six-pack abs.
He was wearing black boxer shorts. Until now, she had never considered boxers an appealing garment, but on Del they looked incredibly sexy. Riding low on his hips, skimming the tops of his thighs, they only hinted at what might lie beneath. From what she could see of the rest of him, he was probably as spectacular there as everywhere else.
“Maggie? Are you all right?”
His whispered question made her start. She snapped her gaze to his face, grateful for the shadows that concealed what had to be the mother of all blushes. She nodded.
He squeezed past th
e crib and squatted beside her. “You’re sure?”
In the tight space between her bed and the window, she could feel the heat from his body. The air stirred up from his movement carried a whiff of soap and male skin…and Maggie felt warmth kindle deep inside. This wasn’t the first time she had felt a sexual twinge because of Del, but it had never before been so strong.
Was it the setting? The atmosphere? A natural consequence of her healing body? Or was it due to an entire week of not so much as a kiss? “I’m fine,” she finally managed to say.
“What happened?”
“I was reaching for the light and missed. Sorry to wake you up.”
“I wasn’t asleep.”
“Oh.”
He watched her in silence. Crouched on the floor with him like this, she was close enough to see the gleam in his eyes. She could also see the exact moment his gaze dropped to her lips.
Oh, God, Maggie thought. She had wanted to take things slow. She had told him she wanted to remain friends. She wasn’t ready, either physically or emotionally, for anything more.
But would another kiss do that much harm? They were adult enough to ignore the fact that they were both undressed and only inches away from a warm bed, right?
Wrong. Even if she were a hundred years old, she wouldn’t be adult enough to ignore Del when he was practically naked and close enough to smell.
His fingertips brushed her cheek. He stroked her hair behind her ear, then caught her earlobe and squeezed gently, rolling the lobe between his thumb and forefinger.
It was only her earlobe, she told herself. It had never been an erogenous zone for her before. Nevertheless, a shiver of anticipation trembled through her.
She reached up to grasp his hand.
And something hot dripped down her wrist.
She pulled back and turned her hand over, tilting it toward the light. There was a dark gash just below her thumb.
Del must have seen it the same time she did. “You cut yourself,” he stated.
“It must have been from one of the pieces of the lamp. It doesn’t look bad.”
He placed his hand under her elbow and helped her to her feet. Without pausing, he slipped one arm around her back and the other behind her knees, then effortlessly scooped her up and moved toward the door.
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