by Joanne Rock
"Was it your first time?"
Madeline stiffened. Some women shared their every sordid secret, but she had never been one of them.
Rose Marie laughed and reached over the desk to pat Madeline's hand. "I mean, is this the first time you've been in love?"
"Oh. Yes." Maybe Rose Marie could offer helpful advice on how to make the gnawing ache in her chest disappear. "Is it always this awful?"
"For me it has been." Rose Marie flipped her long hair over one shoulder. "None of the men I've dated understand my commitment to work."
Madeline knew a man who would understand perfectly. She wondered if Rose Marie would consider dating a physics genius whose heart had always been in the right place. Dr. Watson would definitely be impressed by Rose's ivy league credentials, and Rose Marie could help Madeline loosen her dad up a bit.
She made a mental note to invite her father back to Louisville soon.
"But I've been more unlucky than most," Rose Marie continued, oblivious to Madeline's cupid machinations. "And Cal Turner strikes me as a good guy, despite his reputation."
"He dated a lot after his divorce, but I think those were extenuating circumstances." She knew he'd been torn up about his wife's defection when she'd first met him. And his dating schedule seemed to settle down a lot a year or so later.
"Definitely forgivable. I think you'd be crazy to not fall for him. If a guy like Cal looked at me, I'd be trying to figure out how to get closer to him, not trying to quit my job and run away from him."
"That's not what I'm doing."
"No?" Rose Marie rotated her teacup, then peered inside. "My tea leaves tell me different."
"I'm not running," Madeline repeated, realizing how much she meant it. "I want to be with Cal."
"Have you told him as much?"
Ouch. Talk about baring your soul. "That sounds painful."
"Only if he doesn't reciprocate."
Which he didn't. He wouldn't have walked out yesterday if he'd felt the same way about her. "I think I'll spare myself the heartache. I already know how he feels."
Rose Marie flashed her a reassuring smile. "Love is all about risk, Maddy. If you try to spare yourself the heartache, you haven't really taken the plunge."
Madeline couldn't help but think Cal would never stand still long enough for her to take the plunge. He'd become an expert at making himself scarce.
She departed Rose Marie's office far more confused than she'd entered. Half an hour ago she'd had a purpose—quit her job so Cal could stay at his. Now she didn't know what to do.
Cal had walked out on her last night, then quit his job without warning today. He might not want to see her, but now that he'd gone and made her fall in love with him, he didn't really have a choice. She would have things out with him, and she would find a way to make him stay at U of L.
The idea of exposing her heart to him flitted through her mind, daring her to take her biggest risk yet. She'd already managed the singles scene and stilettos. She'd stood up to her father for the first time in her life, and next she was even going to take a stand with her dissertation committee.
Even at her most daring, mini-skirted best, however, Madeline Watson had never bared her heart and soul to anyone. But maybe, with Cal Turner as incentive, she'd find a way to face her biggest challenge yet.
* * *
Cal stood over his answering machine, patting Duchess's head and listening to the week's worth of messages that had piled up at his house in his absence.
The Lady Scholar had apparently been hunting for him all week and by the time her third message played, Cal could tell by her voice she was mad. Although he'd taken his cell phone and forwarded his business calls, he'd never thought to check his home messages while he was in Tennessee. The only people who ever called the house were Allison's friends.
He dialed Maddy's office and left a message, all the while telling himself to not be too optimistic about her calls. Although part of him had hoped she'd be just a little touched by him resigning, he knew she had probably returned to business as usual at her office.
She might have just called for some closure on their time together. Or maybe she just wanted to say goodbye.
Perhaps that was the real reason he hadn't checked the messages at his house. He hadn't wanted to finalize his farewells with Maddy yet. No matter how much he told himself he had no business being with a highbrow intellectual destined for a doctorate, he'd thought about her all week.
And somewhere between Knoxville and the Kentucky state line, he'd realized he loved her.
The notion still blew him away.
He'd tried to remind himself of his divorce, and what a nightmare that had been. He hadn't wanted to fall in love anytime soon, and he definitely hadn't wanted to think in terms of marriage ever again, but two weeks with Maddy Watson generated thoughts of both.
He tossed on work clothes and headed for the garage, too keyed up to do anything but wrestle with a motor. He had an early model Corvette engine he'd been restoring in his spare time. It was just the sort of greasy, physical labor he needed to cast off thoughts of a certain respectable woman who would have been better off in her ivory tower without him.
Even if she had called him three times.
Damning his runaway thoughts all the way to the converted barn, Cal pulled open the doors and let the sunlight stream over his workspace.
He wheeled his tools next to the propped engine, reminding himself why he absolutely would not drive over to Maddy's house uninvited again. She wouldn't be there anyway, for starters. She had office hours until five o'clock on Fridays, and it was only four-thirty.
But most of all, he wouldn't go because no matter how he added up the pluses and minuses of their relationship, he still came away thinking she'd be better off without him. Despite her brief walk on the wild side, Madeline would always be a refined, cultured woman. Cal, on the other hand, would always spend his weekends in his garage, up to his elbows in grease and enjoying every minute of it.
He slid a chair over to the engine to work on it, thinking sooner or later Madeline would begin to feel as if she were missing out on something by staying with him. And sooner or later, she'd walk away just as his first wife had.
Not that he was thinking about her.
He sprayed a few rusty screws to loosen them up and then searched for the right wrenches.
He unscrewed and re-screwed, cleaned and oiled for almost an hour. Several stubborn bolts gave him trouble, but none so much as the thoughts of Maddy. He was about to head inside to call her office again—only because he felt obligated to return her calls and not because he longed to hear the sound of her voice—when the crunch of gravel alerted him to a car turning into his driveway.
It couldn't be Allison, because she'd already left to study at a friend's house.
Curious, Cal set down his wrench and peered outside in time to see a virago in sensible shoes and an oversize buttoned-down shirt leap from a gold Honda and stomp up the drive.
The visitor's hair had come undone from its topknot and slithered around her shoulders to bounce in time with her determined steps. The pinched set of her mouth and the furrow over her brow proclaimed to him she was madder than a wet cat, but he'd never been so glad to see anyone in his life.
He stepped just outside the barn door to meet her.
"Hey, gorgeous," he drawled in his best, fresh-from-Tennessee accent. He might have thought about her every waking—and God knew every non-waking—moment since last Sunday, but if she was here to give their fling a failing mark and move on, he didn't want to seem too eager.
She stopped two feet in front of him and planted her small fists on her hips. The afternoon sun glinted off her brown hair, giving her a golden glow.
"Don't you dare, 'Hey, gorgeous' me, Cal Turner." Her gaze pelted him with evil-eye darts straight through the barrier of her glasses. "You've got exactly one hour to drag yourself over to U of L to teach your Friday night class, or I'm afraid I'm going to have to haul you back to ca
mpus myself."
* * *
Chapter 15
« ^
A little of Madeline steam evaporated when she feasted her eyes on the vision from her past. Cal looked as delicious as the first time she'd seen him, his blue work shirt stretched over muscles that had clearly spent more days jacking up cars than pushing pencils.
His sleeves were rolled up to his elbows, attesting to his labors. He wiped his hands on a towel as she approached, leaving dark prints on the worn white terry cloth.
Madeline wondered what it would be like to be touched by a man who left handprints. The image struck her as very primal, more than a little territorial, and definitely a turn-on.
If she wasn't careful, her anger would turn to lust and then she'd never get anything accomplished today.
And heaven knew, she wasn't leaving here until she got a few things straight with a certain sexy mechanic.
"So what'll it be, Cal? Are you going to head back to the classroom willingly? Or am I going to have to tow you over to campus myself?"
"Sorry. Can't do it. Besides, they've already hired my replacement." He crossed his arms and grinned down at her. "My money says you don't stand a chance of budging me anyway."
"I could if I was mad enough." She'd been pretty angry before she'd found him today, but her ire had faded the moment she'd seen him again. A week apart had been too much. "Care to tell me why you didn't bother returning my calls all week?"
"I went to Tennessee."
"You did?" She'd imagined Cal sitting at home this week, listening to her messages on his machine and not bothering to pick up the phone. It hadn't occurred to her he might have left town. "Why?"
He shrugged. "I needed to file a few papers for Allison's guardianship. I had a long talk with Allison's aunt Delia, too, while I was at it."
"Did it do any good at this late date?" Madeline was surprised. "She couldn't withdraw her motion now, anyway, could she?"
"I don't think so. But that wasn't my point. I just hated to think that she genuinely feared for Allison's well-being while in my care." He flashed her a dimpled grin. "I took my own advice, in fact, and worked up a proposal for her on what life would be like in the Turner household for Allison."
"You're kidding."
Cal shook his head. "And she loved it. She even had me look at her car while I was there, so I think I won her over."
The man could probably charm good grades out of his students. Madeline wished she'd thought to sic him on Aunt Delia before. "But that doesn't help your custody case on Tuesday, does it?"
"Probably not. But I shared my proposal and some other information with social services and it went well. Looks like the hearing should go off without a hitch and Allison will finally have some closure on a rough chapter in her life."
No doubt Cal had gone to Tennessee to assure social services he'd quit his job to alleviate any fears they might have about his integrity.
Madeline could have told them men didn't get any more honorable than Cal Turner. "What about you?"
"What about me?" He rocked back on his heels, watching her with wary eyes.
She gathered courage and asked him what was on her mind anyway. "Are you still looking for closure on a rough chapter?"
He studied her for so long she almost retracted the question.
"Not necessarily." He scuffed his boot through the loose gravel outside the barn. "I mean, I used the time to think about things, but I wouldn't say I was trying to close any chapters."
Whew. Surely that counted for something. He hadn't come straight out and said he wanted to move beyond their relationship.
He gazed at her steadily. The warm light of the setting sun locked on the shades of green in his eyes, making Madeline see him in a different way than she had before.
"How about you?" he asked.
She shook her head so hard her glasses thumped against her nose. "No closure needed here." She realized they'd never get anywhere if she didn't start laying some emotional cards on the table. If she didn't want him to slip by her, she needed to at least be honest with him.
"But I did try to resolve some of what went on here last weekend. I tried especially hard to quit my job, but Rose Marie wouldn't let me."
"You what?" He stepped closer, threatening to sap all the starch from her spine.
"I tried to resign the assistantship, Cal." She had wanted to do something unselfish for once—to think about him instead of her career. But he'd been a step ahead of her, robbing her of a chance to be gracious. "I can transfer most anywhere that has a Ph.D. program, but your life is here. You deserve to stay."
He frowned. "We went over this on Monday, Maddy. The university is your territory. Always has been." He rested his hands on his hips, broadening the expanse of his body and shielding everything but him from her view.
She couldn't stand this close to him without touching. His chest rested less than a foot away, near enough to trail her fingers over.
"I couldn't…" Her thoughts drifted. She really wanted to. "I mean … I can't stay at U of L, knowing you'd left because of me."
"I'll go back and teach in a couple of years. But until Allison is eighteen I'm going to keep a lower profile. She really needs more time with me, anyway. I was getting a little sapped between my teaching and the stress of Perfect Timing."
"Oh." So much for Madeline's effort to be unselfish.
"You'd really transfer somewhere else … for me?"
She rushed on. "I think I could be in a different program as soon as the spring semester. You could still keep your classes. It would be just like you'd been absent."
"I thought you liked it here." He looked almost offended.
"I do, but—"
"And for a northern girl, you're developing a sweet little Kentucky twang."
"You're kidding."
"Yeah." He grinned. "But I keep hoping."
Madeline smiled, and then realized for the first time how Cal's laid-back charm had always made it easy for her to keep their relationship light and undemanding. He could tease her into a better mood or coax a smile from her even on her busiest days. But she wouldn't be satisfied with that anymore.
She'd come here to lay her heart on the line.
Seeing her chance to take a risk, Madeline didn't want Cal to let her off the hook this time. Closing her eyes for a long moment, Madeline jumped in with both feet.
"What I mean to say is that you're more important to me than my job, Cal."
Silence greeted her declaration for a drawn-out moment.
"Look at me, Maddy."
Slowly she raised her eyelids.
He squinted in the sunlight, as if to see her better. "You mean that?"
"I mean it." Having come this far, Maddy took one step further by reaching out to lay a palm on Cal's chest.
She felt him suck in a breath as she did.
"But I thought your career came first until you got the doctorate." He lifted a hand as if to touch her cheek, but his fingers hovered in midair and then fell to his side. "I've known that for as long as I've known you."
"Priorities change." Hers shifted in an instant, although maybe she'd been growing away from her old values for years and just hadn't realized it until now. "I knew last Sunday after you walked out of my house that you mattered to me more than my work. The chances of my dissertation being approved had just been severely compromised, but that seemed like nothing compared to the hurt I felt when you left."
The steady beat of his heart under her palm reassured her.
He shook his head. "Honey, you don't know what you're saying."
"Yes, I do." This was it. Make or break time. "I love you, Cal."
Again, he lifted his hands as if to touch her, then slammed them back down on his hips in frustration.
"Damnation, woman. How can you love a man who can't even touch you because he's covered with grease?" His easy manner vanished as he glared at her. "I've always got grease on my hands, Maddy. I live out here in the boondocks
with my dog and my cars and I'll never be right for some uptown professor whose name will be followed by more letters than there are in the alphabet." He stepped back from her, dodging her touch.
She stared at him, trying to recover her balance from his outburst. When she'd imagined this conversation earlier this week, she had envisioned a more gentle scenario in which he explained to her that he didn't love her in return.
She never guessed her declaration would have him up in arms.
He paced away from her, then suddenly turned back. "And another thing, your father would kill me."
"I think you could handle Daddy, Cal."
He rolled his eyes. "He's your father, Maddy, I'd have to let him kill me. It's a respect thing."
Hope funneled through her. "So you're considering it?"
"What?"
She'd just laid her heart on the line for him. How could he be so obtuse? "Liking me in return?"
He crossed the driveway to stand nose-to-nose with her. "Honey, I want you so bad it's been killing me all week. I want to unbutton that crazy shirt with my teeth and make love to you until we're both delirious, then lay down by your side until you come to your senses."
She swallowed. All her nerve endings leaped to alert, wishing Cal would make good on his words.
"But that's the bad news, Maddy," he continued. "You will come to your senses one day, and you'll decide you no longer see the appeal of a simple guy who spends half his day up to his elbows in grease."
"Is that what you think?" Her heart pounded with new fury, her lust sliding away in a rare fit of anger.
"That's what I think."
"Then let me tell you something, Cal. In case you haven't noticed, I am not some untouchable princess who walks around in silk and satin every day. I'm pretty much a cotton kind of girl."
Maddy thought he might have winced at that statement, but she was too mad to be sure.
"I don't know where you got the idea that I'm some sort of uptight goody-goody, but you're dead wrong. Because looking at those hands of yours right now, all I can see are the talented instruments of your trade, and the fingers that teased me to the best orgasm of my life, and the palms I want planted all over me right now." She plucked up one hand and jammed it squarely against her waist.