“I took it out, Ma! It was burning!”
“Here, look at my lip!”
“Theo ripped his new cords!”
“I did not! Tony ripped ’em!”
“Slow down,” Liv said to the swarm of boys clustering around her as she got out of the car. “One at a time.” But she was only half-aware of sorting out the nearly burned dinner, the torn pants and the split lip. A part of her was tuned solely to the man still seated in the VW, and a prickling on her neck made her aware that he had got out and was coming to stand beside her.
“Nice lip,” he said to Ben.
The ten-year-old grinned, flipping a strand of brown hair out of his eyes. “You shoulda seen the other guy.”
“A fight?”
“Naw. A misunderstanding. If you call it a fight, old Grish makes you stay after school.”
“I see.” Joe’s tongue traced a circle inside his cheek. “You must be Ben.”
“Yeah. Who’re you?”
Not something he was asked every day, Liv was sure. Thank heavens she didn’t have movie addicts among her children. Only Noel had seen Hills of Thunder, Joe’s latest box office smash.
“This is Joe Harrington,” she said. “He’s giving a speech tonight that I have to cover. And you have to baby-sit,” she turned to say to Noel who, at any other time, would have looked pained. At the moment, however, her tall, blond twelve-year-old son was staring in awe at the man before him.
“Steve Scott,” he murmured, slack-jawed at being face-to-face with the hero Joe had played in his last two movies.
Joe made a wry face. “Among other things,” he said, offering Noel a handshake. “Joe Harrington, really. Steve Scott is a lot of things that I’m not.”
A ladies’ man not being one of them, Liv recalled, remembering the bevy of gorgeous women chasing after the playboy adventurer Joe had been in the film. She had forgotten how enthralled Noel had been with that film.
“This is Noel,” she said quickly, putting her arm around the boy, who was almost as tall as she was. “My oldest,” she added. “He’s twelve. And this toothless urchin is Theo, who’s seven.” She hugged the brown-haired, gap-toothed boy leaning against her. “We’re missing Stephen, my eight-year-old. He’s at a cello lesson.”
Joe courteously shook hands with them all, and Liv, surprisingly, found herself relaxing a bit. After the initial moment of awe when Noel recognized him as a movie star, Joe seemed to fit right in. Better, in fact, than some of her occasional, few-and-far-between dates had. They had stood around looking as though they were trying to formulate their position on birth control, whereas Joe immediately organized the kids, sending Theo out to the car to rescue the rabbit and Noel after the cleaning, and telling Ben, “Let’s you and I set the table, and maybe your mother will feed us before I starve to death.”
It was easy to see why he was also a successful director, Liv thought. He seemed born to take charge, even in places where he had absolutely no business running anything! But it was hard to feel completely irritated with him when he was giving her five seconds to herself for a change. She couldn’t remember the last time that had happened to her.
“Thanks,” she told him grudgingly when she returned from the bedroom to find him moving around the table busily laying out forks and knives.
“Pure self-interest,” he said. “I haven’t eaten since St. Louis at seven this morning. Everyone else had chicken à la king during the speech in Chicago at noon.”
“What about you?” Liv asked, tearing up lettuce for a salad, but finding her attention drifting to the man behind her.
“I gave the speech.”
“Poor thing.” Liv smiled at him. “Such a rough life,” she teased. But privately she was beginning to think it wasn’t such a bed of roses after all. He was every bit as handsome as his pictures, but there was a weariness about the man that she wouldn’t have predicted. And he was obviously as hungry as he said he was. As soon as they sat down, he piled his plate with casserole, lettuce, and a large helping of her Jell-O salad, shoveling it in without a word, while the children chattered on around him.
“About the interview,” Liv said to him when the chatter abated momentarily.
“What interview?” he asked through a mouthful of Jell-O.
“The one you’re here for,” she reminded him archly. “You’re not getting out of it that easily.”
He grinned, unabashed. “Can’t blame a guy for trying.”
“I can if my job depends on it,” she said, feeling annoyed. The grin was provoking all sorts of flutters and unbusinesslike feelings in the pit of her stomach. “And for heaven’s sake, take some peas,” she snapped at him. “How can I get Theo to eat them if you don’t?”
“I hate peas,” Joe confessed, looking sheepish. Four pairs of eyes looked up with interest.
Liv glared.
Joe groaned “Pass the peas,” he said to Theo, who grinned and handed him the bowl. He took three quick bites from the helping he put on his plate, made an agonized face, and swallowed. “There,” he said to Liv, as if he had just thwarted the vilest villain.
“Hooray! Cake time!” Jennifer cheered.
“Whose birthday?” Joe asked when Ben produced a cake, rather lopsided but definitely made with love, and began poking five candles into it. “Jennifer’s?”
“Nope,” Noel said as he carried the lighted cake to the table and set it in front of Liv. “The three is in the tens column.”
Joe looked baffled for a moment.
“C’mon,” Liv said, laughing. “That’s not even new math!”
“It’s Mommy’s,” Jennifer announced, “and she gets thirty-two spanks, because on my birthday I got five.”
“No.” Liv shook her head quickly. “Kisses. Mothers get kisses.”
“Thirty-two is an awful lot of kisses,” Ben said with distaste.
“You do one each,” Joe said quickly. “I’ll take care of the rest.”
“What?” Liv felt herself go crimson.
“Come on,” Joe said to the kids. “Line up.” They got up, giggling, and marched around her chair, each administering a self-conscious peck, except of course Jennifer who literally threw herself into it, bestowing a wet, smacking kiss on Liv’s red cheek. She ducked her head, unable to take her eyes off her hands in her lap.
“My turn,’ ’ Joe said softly. He got up and walked down the length of the table so that he stood perilously close, almost touching her. “Happy birthday,” he murmured, and with an entranced audience of young Jameses looking on, he bent down and captured Liv’s chin in his hand, lifting her face so that he could brush his lips very lightly across hers. Almost unconsciously Liv leaned into the feather-light caress, and his lips returned, firmer, lingering, tantalizing. Then almost reluctantly he lifted his head, and she saw a smile on his face that sent shivers clear to her toes.
“Whoooo-eeee!” Noel yelled. “How about that?”
“Wait till I tell ’em at school!” Theo chimed in, his eyes like saucers.
“But even if you save one for Stephen to give her,” Ben, the ever-practical, said to Joe, “You’ve still got to give her twenty-six more.”
“Don’t worry,” Joe said, laugh lines appearing at the corners of his eyes. “I can manage it.”
My goodness, Liv thought, no wonder legions of women fall at his feet. He can charm the socks off anyone without even trying! Twenty-six kisses, indeed!
“Blow out the candles!” Jennifer urged.
“Make a wish!” Ben’s eyes were alive with excitement.
Liv looked across the candles, down the table at Joe. His gaze was unfathomable, and for the first time she wondered what the real Joe Harrington was like, the man behind the movie star. What was he besides a talented actor and director and a clever playboy who was notoriously good in bed? I wish I knew, she thought and, closing her eyes, she took a deep breath. Sighing, she blew out every candle.
Joe ducked his head under the shower letting the icy water drum mercilessly on his s
kull. He didn’t have much time. “Fifteen minutes,” Liv had said, “or we’ll be late.” But the shower was a necessity, as much to purify his mind as to cleanse his body of the grime of a long day’s travels.
Five kids! How could she have five kids? Not even he, Joe Harrington, had ever put the make on a woman with five kids!
Yet, a stubborn little inner voice mocked him. He tried to silence it but it persisted. You want her, it taunted him. No matter that she's up to her ears in children, thinks you crawled out from under a rock somewhere and obviously wishes you’d vanish back under one as quickly as possible, you still want her. He scrubbed himself viciously with a frayed orange washcloth, as though doing so might somehow eradicate this absurd desire. It didn’t work.
“So much for fresh faces,” he muttered. She was hardly the sort to fancy being next in line after Linda Lucas! His mouth quirked in a reluctant grin. He could well imagine her throwing the casserole at him if he tried a pass like the first one again. A momentary recollection of her nose-to-nose with the zoning commissioner flickered in his mind. No doubt now who won that altercation, he thought. She was definitely a force to be reckoned with.
She’d have to be, he acknowledged, to have managed to survive with those five kids. It would take a strong woman just to cope. He wondered what her ex-husband was like, other than being a fool for letting such a woman go. All he knew was that the man still lived nearby—“Dad’s bringing Stephen home,” Ben had told him when he asked where the other boy was. He would have liked to have asked about this “dad,” but Ben had gone on to tell his mother that his father had called and had said he would be bringing Stephen after dinner, not to wait for him, and Joe couldn’t see himself bring up the subject of her ex-husband with Liv. Approachable she wasn’t. Except when he had kissed her. Then there had been an electricity between them that had nearly knocked him off his feet, and he suspected that she felt it too. It wasn’t his run-of-the-mill reaction to a kiss, that was for sure, and he thanked heaven he had the option of giving her twenty-six more of them. He was going to use every one!
“Joe, Mom says hurry up!” A voice hollered at him over the noise of the shower. Whose voice? Noel’s? Ben’s? Theo’s? He felt suddenly out of his depth. What did he know about kids, anyway? Eat your dinner, give your speech and run, fella, he told himself. That’s what you ought to do. Then he thought, run to what? Linda Lucas? Hardly. Theirs wasn’t a relationship so much as it had been a mutual-usefulness pact, however possessive she might want to act at times. She was seen at all the right parties on the arm of the famous Joe Harrington, and in return she granted him certain favors he didn’t want to think about right now. It was as simple and meaningless as that.
And there was no doubt that Olivia James knew it. What had she called him? “God’s gift to women?” That and probably a few other things behind his back. Well, she was honest about what she thought, at any rate. And not far from wrong, he reflected. At least up to this point. The question was, what now?
He shut off the shower and pulled back the shower curtain, dripping his way across the bathroom floor as he tried unsuccessfully to discover a towel. It was a far cry from the Sheraton, he thought in amusement—half a dozen toothbrushes in a rack on the wall, a pair of moldy sneakers peering out from beneath the sink, a racquet ball in the soap dish, and not a towel to be found.
“Hell,” he muttered. He poked his head out the door, hoping to see a stray child who might fetch him one. No luck. He retreated to the bathroom and peered out the window. Craning his neck he could see Liv standing in the driveway talking to a tall, dark-haired man who was leaning against the door of a late-model car. “Dad” most likely. Joe squinted, but he couldn’t make out much at this distance and without his glasses. Besides, his gaze seemed to want to linger stubbornly on Liv.
She had changed out of the rust-colored skirt and paisley blouse and was now wearing a dressier light-blue jersey dress that was cinched by a belt at the waist, so that it accentuated the curve of her hips. Jeez, so much for cold showers. He groaned, feeling the tightening in his loins, and dragged his eyes away. No help that way, that was for sure. He opened the door again. Theo had looked like a sympathetic sort. Besides, Theo owed him one for the peas. Theo it would be.
“Theo!” he bellowed. “Theo! Come here!”
If Tom didn’t get into that car and drive away in five seconds, Liv thought she might scream. Of all the days that he should feel inclined to stand and talk, especially after his nagging her about having to get off to Chicago, this was the one she needed the least. She couldn’t even bring herself to look at him. She felt sure he would see Joe Harrington’s lips imprinted on hers. Besides that, the longer he stayed and the more he said, the angrier she got.
“I just can’t take them that weekend,” Tom was saying, looking far more like a harried father than she thought he had any right to. “Surely you can understand that!”
“What I understand,” Liv said, trying to hang on to the last shreds of her temper, “is that you never seem to want your children anymore.”
“That’s not true. I just have plans for next Saturday.”
“You had plans with the kids first.”
“So that’s what I’m telling you. I want to change it.” They had been through this before countless times. It was as though once he had divorced her, he had divorced the kids too. Looking at him now, it was hard to imagine what she had ever seen in him. Certainly he didn’t have the magnetism of Joe Harrington. But, at nineteen, he had swept her off her feet, and they had struggled together to get him through college and dental school, while she earned her degree and raised the kids. It hadn’t seemed terribly burdensome at the time—at least not to her. She had figured that the time they devoted to childrearing early on they could make up for later. After all, to her way of thinking, they had agreed to stick together forever. But Tom had other ideas. He had, he said much later, never been really satisfied with their relationship. But he hadn’t actually come out and said it until ten years later when it was more socially acceptable to admit that marriage and a family “cramped his style.” Then, when he did say it, he told Liv that he wanted “breathing space” and an “open marriage.” Liv, having learned about Trudy by that time, told him that what he really wanted was a divorce. And that was what he got. Now she just wished he’d go away. If he didn’t, Joe Harrington was going to walk out the kitchen door and create a situation that Liv had no desire to deal with tonight. Or any other night, for that matter.
“Mom.” Theo appeared to tug at her arm.
“Say good-bye to your father,” she said, mentally urging Tom into his car.
“Good-bye,” Theo said. “Mom—”
“Hi, Theo, how’s it going?” Tom ruffled his son’s dark hair.
“Okay. Mom—”
“What?”
“Joe needs a towel.”
Oh, no, thought Liv.
“What?” Tom demanded, straightening up.
“Can I give him one of the new yellow ones?” Theo went on.
“Anything. Whatever you want,” Liv said, “All right,” she told Tom, “I’ll take them next weekend.” Anything, she thought frantically. Just leave.
“Joe who?”
“Then you can take them the following weekend.”
“Not Joe Harrington?” Tom looked stunned as the possibility occurred to him.
“I told you I had to interview him when I asked you to take Stephen to cello,” she reminded him, trying for a casual indifference she was far from feeling.
“An interview is one thing; a towel is something else!”
“What’s it to you?” she demanded, suddenly incensed by the proprietary attitude in his remarks. “You forfeited your right to all concern about my life a long time ago. Surely someone who can move from Janice to Patty to Di to Trudy to who knows how many others has no call to question me about anything!”
“Not in front of my children,” Tom retorted hotly.
“Oh really?
An ounce of discretion makes it all right, then?”
Tom’s face was as red as Jennifer’s kickball. “Joe Harrington, for heaven’s sake!” he fumed, scuffing the dirt in the flower bed with his toe.
“Oh, have a bit of sense, can’t you?” Liv hissed. “Do you honestly think that I’m going to run out and jump into bed with America’s number one heartthrob in the very house where all my children are eating dinner? Tom, we were married for ten years. Didn’t you learn anything about me? You said earlier that I wasn’t the passionate sort.”
“You sound passionate right now,” Tom said, staring at her as though she’d grown another head.
“I’m angry. I’m also going to be late for this speech I’ve got to cover. And as the speaker is riding with me, I hope you’ll excuse me now.”
Liv turned on her heel and strode into the house, not quickly enough to miss Jennifer throwing herself on her father and asking, “Did you meet Joe? He’s going to be Mommy’s boyfriend. Isn’t that neat?”
She was, fortunately, out of earshot before Tom could reply. It was sufficient to hear the tires squeal on the asphalt as the car peeled away.
“About our interview,” Liv said in her most businesslike tones once they were under way.
“I was born in Sioux City, Iowa thirty-six years ago. I have two older sisters, two very nice if a bit conservative parents. My father is an accountant and my mother bakes blue-ribbon pumpkin pie. When I was in third grade I had a dog named Goofy. I flunked economics in high school and dated the prom queen. I wasn’t the king, by the way. I went to Iowa State for one year to pacify my father, then left home to join a repertory company outside Chicago. A year later I went to New York. Then Hollywood. After three years I hit it big with films, and now I’m everybody’s fair-haired boy. The story of my life in a nutshell.” He blurted it all in a rush, then slumped back against the seat and looked at her assessingly. “Okay?”
Liv clicked her tongue against her teeth. “Well, I’m not going to be able to get ten inches out of it, that’s for sure.” She glanced at him out of the corner of her eye. He was dressed fit to kill now—the charcoal gray suit beautifully tailored, worn with a blue oxford cloth long-sleeve shirt and a navy-and-maroon striped tie. His overly-long hair had been substantially tamed with a comb, but it still flopped engagingly across his forehead in strands still damp from the shower. She could smell his distinctive, woodsy after-shave blowing in her direction because of the draft from his open window, and she inhaled deeply, knowing that she would remember the scent forever. Forget it, Liv, she told herself. Get to the job at hand.
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