Something About Joe

by Kandy Shepherd

  What kind of a jerk was this Peter guy to leave her and the baby and then deprive Mitchell of his grandparents? How could he leave his own child? How could he leave an amazing, sexy woman like Allison Bradley?

  Allison and her parents-in-law were walking towards him. The mother-in-law, Nancy, was obviously aching to take Mitchell in her arms, so he handed the baby over. Allison made no protest. The older woman’s face shone with joy when Mitchell uttered a word that sounded very much like “Grandma” as he went willingly to her.

  Allison seemed to be finding it very difficult to meet his eyes. She bit her bottom lip and twisted her hands in front of her.

  “I won’t blame you if you quit. My behavior was completely out of line.”

  A few minutes ago he’d been thinking exactly the same thing.

  She went on. “I assumed you’d just let Mitchell go off with total strangers. But Nancy told me you were with them the whole time. ‘Just staying discreetly at a distance while we got to know our grandchild’ was how she put it.”

  Joe shrugged. Be damned if he’d make this any easier for her. It was only his concern for Mitchell that kept him there at all.

  “I’m sorry,” Allison said, lifting her gaze to his, her green eyes glistening with unshed tears.

  He’d be cruel if he dragged it on any longer. “Apology accepted.”

  She smiled her thanks, a smile that tilted her pretty mouth into an enchanting curve. He caught his breath. He hadn’t seen Allison smile before. It transformed her from pretty to truly beautiful.

  You could forgive a woman anything when she looked at you like that.

  “So, what next?” he asked, schooling himself not to show his reactions.

  “Bill and Nancy are staying at a hotel in North Sydney. They’re keen to get back, Bill is getting tired.”

  “So you won’t see them again?”

  “Oh yes. They’ll come to my house this evening. We have to get to know each other.”

  Nancy, too, sounded tired. “We’ll be off then, Allison,” she said. She gave Mitchell a big hug and kiss and reluctantly handed him to Allison. “Though I hate to say goodbye to this little tyke.”

  “This evening, I’ll keep him up especially for his grandma and grandpa,” said Allison.

  They all beamed. It seemed to give them inordinate pleasure to say the commonplace words. Odd. This was one sad story he’d somehow gotten caught up with.

  He thought of the wedding photos Allison displayed around her house. That’s how he’d recognized the grandparents. She may be divorced on paper but how divorced from her ex-husband was she in her heart?

  Warning bells sounded in his head. Remember what Deborah did to you, and your vow you’d never be caught like that again. When you settle down, you want it to be with a woman unencumbered by an ex-husband and a child.

  Joe walked with Allison’s parents-in-law to their rental car and joined in their farewells. He didn’t miss the calculating look the mother-in-law gave him. He suppressed a grin. The older generation weren’t used to the idea of a male nanny.

  Hang on. He’d seen that kind of knowing look before, in his mother’s eyes when she was summing up his sister’s new boyfriends. This woman thought he was getting it on with her daughter-in-law.

  Think again, lady. This gorgeous mommy was getting more and more off limits every minute. Someone still entangled with her ex was the last woman for Joe Martin.

  Allison waved her parents-in-law—correction, her ex-parents-in-law—goodbye as they drove off. She hadn’t given a thought to the fact that when she’d divorced Peter, she’d also divorced Mitchell from his grandparents. Now, thanks to their determination, they would be a part of her son’s life. She rejoiced in that.

  Her thoughts turned back to her situation at work. “Joe, I’ve got to get back to work. Pronto.” She sighed at the thought of what faced her. “I’ll walk with you and Mitchell to the house, then I’ll grab a cab. We’d better make tracks.”

  Joe took off, pushing Mitchell and his stroller at NASCAR speed, even up the steep incline away from the water. Allison had to run alongside to keep up. “Whoa,” she said, panting. “I didn’t mean that fast.” Joe slowed down to enable her to catch up.

  She matched her steps to his long-legged stride. Anyone seeing them, she supposed, would take them for a happy little family.

  Despite her worry about work, she smiled. How incongruous they must seem, Joe in his faded jeans with his long hair and earring, her in her boss-lady suit. Then she sobered. What did she know of happy little families? Her dismal childhood had taught her nothing.

  As they hurried along, Allison was conscious of how close she was to Joe. When his body nudged hers, every now and then, tremors of awareness shot through her. One part of her wanted to fight the feeling; another just to enjoy it.

  She glanced at her watch. Lunch would be over, she’d have to head straight back to the office.

  “Running late?” asked Joe.

  Briefly, Allison filled him in on what had happened. To her dismay, he laughed. He didn’t take her dilemma with anything like the seriousness she felt it warranted.

  “Why do you take that kind of crap?” he said. “You’re allowed to have a family life, aren’t you?”

  “Not really,” she said, and realized she meant it.

  “Can’t you be a banker and a mother too?”

  “There are hundreds of men in our organization but very few woman at that level of management. Some of them resent me; think I’m not part of the club. I cramp their style. They believe I should be home with my child, though they actually don’t come out and say that. I have to act as if I have no family encumbrances if I’m to meet them on their own ground.”

  “Aren’t some of them fathers?”

  “Of course. But it’s different for them. Every one of the guys in my team has a stay-at-home wife to look after the kids.”

  “So why do you stay in this job?”

  “When I started out, I loved it. It was such a buzz to make the figures work, to set up deals worth millions of dollars. Every day was fun, exciting. It didn’t matter that I was a woman because I wasn’t at the same level of management—and I didn’t have Mitchell. I still love the work, but it’s different now.”

  Corporate environments at the executive level were not kind to women who wanted to spend time with their children. She thought about the current deal and how, if she made it happen, she might have more choice about how she lived her life.

  She’d talked enough about her. “What about you? Why did you leave your job? Teaching, I mean? You’ve obviously got a gift for dealing with children.”

  Joe was silent. All she could hear was the sound of Mitchell’s stroller wheeling rapidly along the sidewalk. One wheel had squeaked from the get-go, but she’d never gotten around to oiling it. Mitchell had gone to sleep almost as soon as they’d started walking.

  “Yeah. I guess I do,” said Joe. “I love kids and I think I understand them. But I didn’t like the way the state education system was going. Bureaucracies and I don’t mix.”

  Somehow that didn’t surprise her. Joe didn’t seem the kind of guy who’d easily kow-tow to an authority he didn’t respect.

  Not like her. She’d had her path in life dictated for her by her father. Work hard at school, harder at college, get a good job as soon as you can and stick with it. Her own need for security had seen her follow that path without veering. With men, too, she’d only dated the safe and predictable. Marrying Peter and moving to Australia had been an aberration. And look where that had gotten her.

  “Couldn’t you have found a school that suited you? A private school maybe?”

  “Heck no.” Joe grinned at her. He was impossibly handsome. Those amazing navy blue eyes, those marvelous teeth, so white against his tan. No wonder every woman who had walked past them since they left the park had covertly checked him out. “I won’t knuckle under to any boss ever again. I just want to play music.”

  �
�Play music?” Somehow, she knew he didn’t mean in a symphony orchestra.

  “Sure. All I want to do is play in my band. My band is going to get me where I want to go. And that’s why I nanny. It doesn’t tie me down.”

  “Great,” she said. “That’s great for you.”

  She tried to feign enthusiasm. Chasing a dream of being a rock star was hardly her definition of an ideal career. The musicians she’d known at college had scarcely earned more than what had been thrown into their busking hats. What a waste of Joe’s education and abilities.

  He laughed. “You like to see guys all trussed up in suits and ties and counting beans at a bank.”

  “Not true,” she protested.

  “I hate suits,” he said, pulling at the neck of his T-shirt as if being strangled by an imaginary necktie. “You’ll never catch me in one again.”

  She laughed. “I guess not.” She was the one wearing the suit—and all that went with it. Her smile died.

  He was way too perceptive. “You’re thinking of what’s happening back there, aren’t you?” he said.

  She nodded, feeling nauseous at the thought of the visiting bankers she’d left sitting in the restaurant. “I don’t know how I can face them.”

  Joe stopped the stroller, put on the brake, and turned so she was forced to stop and look up at him.

  “I meant what I said before. Don’t take any crap. You’re a parent. Who would think less of you for going to your child when you thought he was in danger?”

  “But they—”

  “Just march in there and take over your meeting again. Don’t apologize, don’t explain. Just say the danger is over, your child is okay, and take up from where you left.”

  He was right. Of course he was right. That’s exactly what she would do, quaking inside as she did it.

  She’d had a nightmare of a day—imagining Mitchell in danger, finding out Peter had lied about her to his parents, maybe blowing the deal at the bank—yet she felt amazingly calm. She was sure it had something to do with Joe and his attitude.

  As unsettling as being around him could be, he also made her feel like her personal life wasn’t the constant crisis she sometimes felt it was.

  At work she could be as calm and professional and tough as any of them, but outside work she sometimes felt like the wheels had fallen off. In just a couple of days, Joe had made her see it didn’t need to be like that. It was an attitude thing.

  “Thank you,” she said.

  Their gazes held for a heartbeat too long. He was beautiful. It wasn’t a word she would usually choose to describe a man. But Joe was beyond handsome, in an entirely masculine way. She ached to trace with her fingers the laugh lines around his eyes, the crooked bridge of his nose, the firm strength of his mouth. Especially the firm, sensual strength of his generous mouth. Then follow her fingers with her lips, her tongue.

  This was crazy. Her heartbeat accelerated with a leap. Her lips parted in a gasp. She moistened them with the tip of her tongue. She should walk away.

  A pulse throbbed in Joe’s temple, clearly visible. His eyes deepened, shadowed, became unreadable as he searched her face. She swayed toward him, scarcely aware she was doing so. He took both her hands in his and pulled her close.

  His breath fanned warm on her skin. Now was the time to shake off his hands, pull back. But she edged closer. Then his mouth met hers in a kiss—a kiss as delicious as it was unexpected. Warmth spread through her body as his lips moved on hers. A little moan of delight escaped from her throat. Bliss.

  Then the kiss was over. Joe pulled away, abruptly ended the contact. He held her gaze for a long, stunned moment and she thought he was going to say something. But, without a word, he turned, released the brake, and wheeled the stroller forward again, its squeaking wheel the only sound.

  Allison stood on the sidewalk watching him walk away, her heart pounding a million miles an hour, her knees so shaky she could scarcely stand. “Joe!” She managed to force out his name.

  But he didn’t turn around. “We’d better get a move on or you’ll be late back to work,” he said, the only sign anything out of the ordinary had happened was an even deeper tone to his husky voice.

  Disjointed thoughts spun in Allison’s head wiping out the bank, her parents-in-law, Peter.

  For that crazy, inexplicable moment she’d wanted to kiss Joe Martin back with hungry passion. Wanted it badly. Wanted it so badly she nearly forgot she was a city banker five years older than him—and that he was her child’s nanny.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  All next day, Allison couldn’t stop thinking about the kiss. Blissful memories of Joe’s mouth on hers, her hands in his, flitted in and out of her mind, even when she was nailing down the final numbers of a deal worth multiple millions. He had wanted her as much as she’d wanted him. She was sure of that. But he’d ended the kiss so abruptly, said nothing about it afterward, and she could hardly call him on it. There’d been no opportunity since to explore what had happened. Or to repeat it.

  Now she found herself anxiously fixing her makeup in the mirror of her car before she locked it and headed into the house. All she was doing, she convinced herself, was repairing the ravages of a frantic day at the office. An even more frantic day than usual, with the deal finally struck with the Hong Kong bankers. She paused, the lipstick halfway to her mouth. Who was she kidding? Mitchell was hardly likely to notice the state of Mommy’s makeup.

  But was Joe?

  She hesitated for a long moment, then carefully slicked on her lipstick. She smoothed back her hair. Considered it, then decided another spray of perfume would be going over the top.

  An involuntary little shiver of excitement ran down her spine as she remembered a piece of advice she’d read in a magazine—apply your perfume wherever you expected to be kissed.

  She shook her head to clear her thoughts. She had kissing on the brain. And she’d better forget it if she was going to act in a coherent, sensible manner when she saw Joe.

  She could hear music playing in the house as she climbed the three steps to her front veranda, and she found herself jangling her keys in time to it. She wasn’t familiar with this particular kid’s song. It was a catchy one. Joe must have chosen it from among the CDs she’d recently bought Mitchell and hadn’t had time to play.

  She liked it. It reflected her happy mood. Happy in anticipation of seeing Mitchell. Happy in anticipation of seeing Joe again. Happy in anticipation of the possibility of kissing Joe again. And exultant that the deal with the visiting bankers had gone through. Maybe, just maybe, things were beginning to go her way.

  When she pushed open the door she saw Joe wasn’t playing a CD. He was singing and playing guitar, his black-booted foot banging out the rhythm on her carpet. Neither he nor Mitchell had heard her.

  Mitchell was dancing; an adorable, unsteady toddler’s dance, dissolving into delightful peals of laughter as he acted out the motions Joe was directing in the rocking, rhythmic song about a dancing teddy bear.

  Her son looked so cute as he wobbled and wavered on his chubby little legs, her heart nearly burst with love.

  Her heart had an altogether different reaction to Joe. His dark head leaned intently over his guitar as his long, tanned fingers coaxed magic from its strings. Some of his hair had worked away from the leather string that held it back and it curled wildly around his face.

  The men in her life had had conservative short back and sides—to go with their suits. How could she possibly find long hair attractive on a man?

  But she did. Oh yes, she did.

  There wasn’t anything about Joe she didn’t find attractive. Even the earring was growing on her.

  His voice was the ultimate turn on. That husky, gravelly voice sounded even better singing than it did speaking. Her heart started an insane pounding and she felt her knees go weak and her mouth go dry.

  He sang well. Really well. And he sure knew how to play that guitar. His music was surprisingly, amazingly good. It vibrated t
hrough her body and made her want to tap her feet and sway her hips, the beat throbbing through her body, pulsing, arousing.

  Joe was truly talented, an accomplished musician. For the second time in as many days, she felt ashamed of the way she’d misjudged him.

  She’d disparaged his ambitions to play music, just because he’d chosen not to tread the same ulcer-ridden path to success as other men she knew. As, indeed, she trod herself.

  He’d had the courage to strike out on his own path. And, with talent like this, he might very well succeed.

  She pushed away unwelcome thoughts of how that sexy, husky voice would sound crooning a love song...or murmuring erotic suggestions in her ear.

  Or how he would look on stage, dressed in tight black leather, belting out hard, driving rock and roll to a one-woman audience—herself, reclining on the front row, dressed in something slinky and revealing, waiting for him to step from the stage and come to her.

  She shook her head to clear her thoughts. This was crazy. Her imagination was really running away with her.

  Mitchell spotted her. “Momma!” he squealed and toddled toward her, throwing his little arms around her legs. She dropped her briefcase and reached down to sweep him into her arms.

  “Dance, Momma, dance,” Mitchell ordered excitedly, struggling to get back down.

  Joe looked up from his guitar, shaking the stray piece of hair back as he did so. “You’re home,” he said as he continued to strum his guitar.

  That was all.

  There was nothing in his eyes but friendly courtesy. Nothing hot. Nothing passionate. Nothing to make her believe he wanted to kiss her again.

  Nothing.

  Allison fought back the disappointment that threatened to drown her happy mood. She wouldn’t let it. She took a deep breath and she met his cool gaze. “Looks like you have everything under control.”

  She had never let her father know just how much his indifference had wounded her. As a confused ten-year-old, she had wondered what it was about her that had earned her father’s dislike. Then acted as if she wasn’t hurting inside. She’d do the same now.