by Cindy Gerard
Phoebe propped her elbows on her desk with another huge sigh and stared morosely at the Globe’s spread on Daniel Barone. “Oh, well. I’ll never see him again, so I guess it doesn’t matter. Not that it would anyway. He is so out of my league.”
“Do you know how angry it makes me when you put yourself down like that?”
“I’m not putting myself down. A fact is simply a fact. Women like me don’t get the princes or the white knights,” she assured her friend levelly. She could admit things like this to Leslie and not feel as if she was wallowing in self-pity. “Women like me—plain, boring and on skittish terms with their own shadow—get the leftovers in life, not the desserts, which Daniel Barone definitely is.
“Go ahead and shake your head,” she said without heat, “but it’s the truth and you know it. He is everything this magazine article says and more. He’s unbelievably good-looking. He’s charismatic and charming. He’s also a globe-trotting millionaire adventurer who’s probably had scores of sophisticated and exotic lovers.”
She smoothed her thumb over a photo of Daniel, wind-whipped and smiling in anticipation at the base of Kangshung Face during his second triumphant but harrowing ascent of Mount Everest. “Stack all that up against a cat-coddling librarian, who according to this article is three years his senior and who is also being dogged by an ex-boyfriend turned stalker, and it’s pretty much a forgone conclusion that his world and mine are not going to collide in some universe-altering cosmic explosion.”
Unfazed by her little diatribe, Leslie pointed out the obvious. “He kissed you good-night, didn’t he?”
Phoebe closed her eyes to enjoy the memory and ride out the delicious little shudder that rippled through her body. “Oh, yeah.”
Leslie chuckled. “That’s got to say something.”
“It was a mercy kiss,” Phoebe assured her, snapping out of her little trip into sensory overload.
“Didn’t sound like it to me. Of course, I’d have to hear the details to make sure.”
“I already gave you the details,” Phoebe groused.
Leslie scooted a hip on the corner of Phoebe’s desk. “Yeah, but having been married for almost forty years now—to a wonderful man, mind you—I live vicariously through you young ’uns to get my cheap thrills. Indulge me. Again.”
Phoebe finally smiled at Leslie who was not only a co-worker but also a real friend. With her own children grown and scattered across the United States, Leslie looked upon her as a surrogate daughter. For that matter, Phoebe looked upon Leslie as sort of a mother figure. She provided a nurturing comfort that Phoebe had never received from her own mother. In fact, from the time Phoebe could remember, if there had been a mother in her life when she was growing up a lonesome and insecure only child of a single parent, she had played the role herself.
It wasn’t an unusual situation for children of alcoholic parents. She’d learned this through a lot of reading and the Al-Anon meetings that had helped her deal with her mother’s illness. No, it wasn’t unusual, but it didn’t make her feel the loss any less.
Just as she was still having trouble dealing with Jason’s alcoholism. When she’d met him four months ago he’d seemed like a dream come true. Then he’d morphed into a living nightmare. To this day Phoebe couldn’t figure out how she’d missed the signs. She’d lived with the disease. Possibly, as she had with her mother, she’d been too busy denying the truth to muster enough self-esteem to admit that Jason was the problem, not her, even after he’d started showing his true colors.
And quite possibly, she’d been blinded by the hope that Jason had represented the possibility of marriage and family. It wasn’t that she felt she needed a man to define her, or that she needed marriage to complete her life. She was making it just fine on her own. But children. Oh, how she dreamed of having children. To love. To nurture. To give what she’d never received as a child. To watch them grow strong and secure and loved as she’d never been.
“Helloooo,” Leslie crooned, making Phoebe realize that she’d lapsed into one of her little funks that thoughts of Jason and her mother always brought on. “Where’d you go?”
“Sorry. Short trip down nightmare lane. Look. I’d better get to work. I’ve got a dozen things to do this morning and then I need to get ready for children’s hour in—” She checked her watch. “Yikes. In twenty minutes. You need to change, too.”
“I know what I need to do because it’s my day to work. Now, the reason you’re working on your day off is…?” Leslie left the question dangling like an accusation as she edged toward the door.
Phoebe lifted her chin. “Because Allison asked me to fill in for her.”
“You always end up picking up the slack for her. You’re too easy, Phoebe. You need to think about you for a change.”
Phoebe shrugged off her friend’s words. “It’s no big deal. Besides, I can use the money. According to Mr. Barone, I need to have the locks on my house updated.”
“Really?” Leslie said, sounding intrigued. “So the man’s concerned about you.”
“More like alarmed. And that doesn’t add up to interest,” she clarified quickly. “If I’d acted around you the way I acted around him last night, you’d be worried that I couldn’t handle brushing my teeth without supervision.”
She shook her head again, mortified all over by her inability to get it together around him. “He’d show the same consideration to any dim bulb who crossed his path. He’s just a nice guy.”
“Nice guys don’t kiss dim bulbs and up their wattage enough to light up the neighborhood just because they’re being considerate. Now, how did that kiss go again?”
With a snort and a reluctant grin, Phoebe opened her desk drawer and pulled out the latest release by her favorite romance author. She thumbed through the book until she found the page she was looking for. With a flourish, she held it out to Leslie and tapped the page with her finger.
“Right there,” she said. “That’s how that kiss went. Read it and weep, for both of us, ’cause we’ll probably never experience another one like it in either of our lifetimes.”
For a fact, she’d never experienced anything like Daniel Barone’s kiss. And it hadn’t felt like a mercy kiss at the time. It had been all energy and heat, seduction and promise. She’d never been kissed like that before. Like she’d been special to him, like she’d been amazing to him. Like he couldn’t get enough of her.
In the end, he’d had more than enough, though, she concluded as she closed the magazine and rose to dig her costume out of the storage closet. He’d left, hadn’t he?
Yeah. He’d left. And sorry sap that she was, she was afraid she’d let him take a little piece of her heart with him.
On all fours and perspiring delicately beneath the lightweight but cumbersome tortoise costume, Phoebe slowed her voice to the lumbering cadence of Tommy Turtle. Twenty-plus preschool boys and girls sat on the floor in a circle around her, caught up in rapt fascination while she and Leslie, as Robert Rabbit, played out the storybook tale.
“But it’s my home,” Phoebe, as Tommy Turtle, said, dragging each word out and blinking in sloe-eyed shock at Robert Rabbit’s absurd proposition. “I couldn’t sell you my shell. Why, where would I sleep? What would I wear?”
Tommy Turtle, no doubt, had been part of the reason Allison had begged Phoebe to take her shift today. Unlike Allison, Phoebe didn’t mind dressing in this ridiculous turtle getup and bumbling about on her hands and knees for half an hour. She loved this part of her job. The children’s bright, excited eyes, uncensored laughter and shouts of encouragement always elevated her mood.
“I couldn’t sell my shell, could I, boys and girls?” she appealed to her pint-size audience.
“No!” they all shouted in unison. “Don’t sell it! Don’t sell it!”
“There, see?” Tommy Turtle said to Robert Rabbit. “They agree. You’ll just have to find somewhere else to live. I wish I could help you. I really do.”
Phoebe smiled warmly as a
little brunette with a tentative expression and big brown eyes stood back from the cluster of children, shy over her late arrival.
“Hi,” Phoebe said, as Tommy Turtle. “What’s your name, little girl?”
“Kayla,” she said with a timid grin.
“Hi, Kayla. I’m Tommy. Say hi to Kayla, boys and girls.”
A musical chorus of, “Hi, Kayla,” resounded through the story room of the children’s library.
“Aren’t you going to say hi to me?”
Phoebe froze. That deep, amused voice could only belong to one man. She closed her eyes, let out a breath that would have made Darth Vader proud.
It wasn’t bad enough that I played the part of a mouse last night in front of him? she appealed to a twisted fate that apparently had it in for her. This morning he gets to see me as a turtle? How…fortunate.
Slowly, she lifted her head. If she hadn’t already been on her knees, the look of him would have put her there.
He was dressed in a black, body-hugging T-shirt and snug, faded jeans that molded lovingly over every hard angle and intriguing plane of his body. He stood with one shoulder propped lazily against the stacks, his tanned arms crossed over his broad chest. A grin the size of Texas spread across his sinfully attractive face.
What was he doing here? And why did he have to look like a hero on the cover of a hard-edged romantic suspense novel while she looked like something that ate dead flies and had recently crawled out of a sand-box?
Life was not fair.
“Say hi to Mr. Barone, boys and girls,” she said, forcing herself to meet his eyes as the children rewarded him with another rousing greeting.
His smile shifted from her face to the children as he waved hello.
In spite of Leslie’s sly smiles and Daniel’s amused grin, Phoebe muddled through the rest of the story. As soon as the children dispersed to various corners of the room to find their favorite books to check out, she planned on making a speedy exit. She may be wondering why he was here but she didn’t have any intention of finding out.
He, however, had other plans.
His hand appeared before her, offering her assistance to her feet.
When she simply sat back on her heels and ignored him, he squatted down in front of her.
“Did you hear about the snail that got mugged by two turtles?” he asked without preamble, and she had a feeling it was just to see her cheeks flood with color.
“No,” she said with a weary sigh, then obliged him by biting on his joke. “What about the snail that got mugged by two turtles?”
“Well, when the police asked the snail to describe his attackers, he said, ‘I can’t. It all happened so fast.’”
She waited a beat, got it, then groaned. “That’s awful.”
“I know. Couldn’t resist.” Just as he evidently couldn’t resist teasing her. “Besides, you really think it’s funny.”
Yeah. She did, but she wasn’t going to admit it. She did not want to prolong this encounter. He, quite obviously, did.
“This is a good look for you,” he said, a smile in his voice. “Good color, too.”
She sighed again, resigned to the fact that he wasn’t going away. “Yes, well, moss green and mud brown have always been the staples of my wardrobe.”
She risked a look into his eyes then and began a slow and steady meltdown at the warmth and humor she saw there.
“I was talking about pink.” He brushed the back of a curled finger to her flaming cheek. “Very becoming.”
Oh, boy.
Powerless against his smile, disoriented by his proximity, she resorted to her only line of defense. She lifted her shoulders and, tucking in her chin, withdrew inside Tommy Turtle’s shell.
His soft chuckle enveloped her. “You really get into character, don’t you? I like that in a turtle.” When she didn’t respond, he gave the shell three light taps. “Hello? Hello? Are you in there?”
Why didn’t he just go away and let her suffer her embarrassment in martyred silence? Or, here was a thought, why didn’t she just suck it up and face the music?
With grim determination, she poked her head back out of the shell. “You have an uncanny knack for finding me at my very best,” she said, trying not to sound grumpy. “Let’s make it a clean sweep, shall we? I have a mud pack planned for seven o’clock. You’re welcome to attend.”
Oh, those eyes. Oh, that smile.
He stood, commandeered her hands and helped her to her feet. “Actually, I was thinking more in terms of dinner.”
“Dinner?” He was asking her to dinner?
“Even turtles have to eat, right? What time do you get off work?”
“Five. She gets off at five,” volunteered Leslie, who’d been watching the exchange in absorbed silence. She doffed her bunny ears and extended her hand, the grin between her own ears stretching wide. “Leslie Griffin.”
“Daniel Barone.” He returned Leslie’s handshake and smile before turning back to Phoebe. “So, seven-thirty will work for you? Unless you had other plans?”
“Just the mud pack,” Phoebe mumbled as she cast the beaming Leslie a warning glare.
“Great. I’ll pick you up.”
“What should she wear?” Leslie asked when Phoebe just stood there, too flustered to think that far ahead.
“Something casual.” He stopped at the door, turned. “It’s too hot to dress for dinner.” He tossed her another knee-melting smile and the temperature in the room heated up about fifty degrees. “See you then.”
“Oh, it’s hot all right.” Leslie used her bunny ears to fan her face theatrically after Daniel disappeared out of earshot. “Good Lord, Phoebe. He’s incredible.”
“I’m not prepared to talk about this with you right now,” Phoebe muttered with a troubled scowl.
“I can wait,” Leslie said with a knowing grin. “But I’ll expect details on Monday,” she added, her voice full of laughter as it trailed Phoebe into her office, where she shut the door soundly behind her.
Once there, she unstrapped herself from the bulky turtle shell then slumped against the wall. She forked her hair away from her face with splayed fingers, stared at the ceiling and wondered if her heart had ever before beaten this hard or this fast.
She pressed a hand over her breast, drew a bracing breath. Daniel Barone had sought her out. On a Saturday, when he probably had a hundred other things he could have been doing. A hundred other women he could have been seeing. But he’d come to see her.
He’d flirted and smiled. With her. And he wanted to take her to dinner. Her.
“Maybe there’s something wrong with him,” she mused aloud when she met Leslie in the story room, as a new and wary panic kicked in. “Maybe he’s socially maladjusted, or has athlete’s foot or bad breath or maybe he has a small—”
“Uh, uh, uh.” Leslie cut her off with a waggling finger.
“I was going to say ego.”
“There is nothing wrong with that man’s ego—or anything else for that matter.
“Phoebe, did you ever think that maybe he just likes you?” Leslie suggested, her tone and her look both supportive and censuring. “Did you ever think that maybe he’s simply intuitive and intelligent and knows a good thing when he sees it? Did you ever think of that?”
No, she never had, Phoebe realized, then allowed herself a brief, delicious moment to consider the possibility.
So much for his plans to stay away from her, Daniel thought as he pulled out of the library parking lot and headed for his parents’ brownstone.
It was fast turning into a day of should-have and shouldn’t-haves. He shouldn’t have slept so late. He should have realized that his aimless driving wasn’t aimless at all when he found himself on Boylston Street and then cruising by the McKim Building, with its sloping red tile roof and green copper cresting that housed the Boston Public Library.
He should have just checked on Phoebe. That had been his excuse, after all, for stopping at the library in the first place. He
’d just wanted to make sure she was okay and he’d ended up asking her to dinner. He hadn’t planned it. It had just happened, and it shouldn’t have. Just as he shouldn’t have kissed her last night. Or thought about it as much as he had.
He should have made his first stop at his mother’s, he realized with a sense of guilt when he opened the front door to the brownstone and her face lit up at the sight of him.
“Daniel, darling, it’s so good to have you home!”
He returned her embrace as he shut the door behind him.
“It’s good to be home, Mom. You look fantastic,” he said, holding her at arm’s length. Sandra Barone was a very young fifty-nine. Her tall frame was fit and trim, her blond hair was stylishly short and her gray eyes were lively and intuitive.
She waved a hand. “And you are a charmer, as usual. Your father is going to be so sorry that he missed you. He ran into the office for a bit.”
“It’s okay. I’ll catch him later,” he promised.
“So tell me. When did you get in? And more important, how long are you going to be home?”
For eight years, those had been her standard opening lines. For eight years, he’d given his standard reply. “Just last night and for a little while.”
“Oh, Daniel.” Arm linked with his, she walked him into the sitting room. “I know you get tired of hearing this but your father and I so wish that you’d settle down, return to Boston for good and finish your law degree. Baronessa Gelati could use your brilliant mind on the legal team. Besides, I worry about you. We both do.”
She stopped abruptly, shook her head in self-reproach. “Here I am, nagging already when I promised myself I would stop doing that. It’s just that we see so little of you.”
“I know. And it’s okay.” And then he did the other thing he always did. He sidestepped her concerns. “So what’s been happening around here since I was home last month? Anybody get married or have a baby?” It was a legitimate question. Many of his cousins and even his little sister, Emily, now engaged, had been dropping into the happily-ever-after pool at an alarming rate over the past several months.