Oh…no.
Patrick lunged from his chair, only to fall flat on his face when his feet tangled with the trash can.
“Does anyone out there know why men are so confusing?” Maddie continued. “Maybe a man could explain it, though we probably confuse you, too. It must be all that ‘men are from Mars’ stuff I’ve heard about. I have to admit we do seem to be from different planets. And I told you how he feels about marriage. To tell the truth, I’m not sure why he’s so much against it, but you’d think it was worse than being boiled in oil.”
Muttering curses, Patrick limped as quickly as possible to the broadcast booth. Maddie was perched on the corner of the console, still chattering away about marriage and kissing and men, and asking one and all for their opinion. Jeremy Hollings seemed to be in shock, but when he saw Patrick’s face, he dissolved into laughter.
Patrick made a slashing motion across his throat, but Maddie just returned with a helpless gesture and pointed to the microphone as if it explained everything.
He pushed inside the booth.
“Announce a song,” he snarled.
“I don’t know how to play one,” she said, then sighed. “Oops, everyone, I was talking to the owner. Mr. O’Rourke wants me to play something, which I guess is the point since this is a country music station. We’ll get some Garth Brooks going as soon as I figure out how to work these dials. Honestly, the equipment in here is so complicated you’d think it was designed for the space program.”
Patrick snatched a CD from the rack, stuffed it into the right slot and started the music. Just to be safe he disconnected Maddie’s microphone and headset, then scowled.
“What in hell are you doing?”
“Mack got sick and you said there’s nothing worse than dead air on the radio. So I just talked.”
“You…” Patrick kicked the door shut so Jeremy wouldn’t be able to hear them. “That isn’t what I meant.”
The hurt expression he dreaded filled her eyes.
“But I talked about how great the Crockett Café is, and told everyone that the Liberty Market is now open twenty-four hours a day. They’re two of KLMS advertisers. I didn’t break any of the FCC rules. I’m sure I didn’t, so what’s the big deal?”
“You were talking about me! That’s the big deal.”
“Not by name. How could anyone know it was you?”
She didn’t get it.
She just didn’t have a clue.
Anybody who knew them would put two and two together and come up with 250.
“You shouldn’t have said anything about me, period.”
“Why not? You are a good kisser.”
“How would you know? You don’t have anything worth comparing it against. You wouldn’t know a good kiss from a bad one.”
“Are you saying you aren’t a good kisser?”
“Yes. No! That isn’t what I…” He ground his teeth together. Maddie was doing it to him again, and he had only himself to blame. “All right. I’ll figure out a way to clean up this mess later. In the meantime, let’s get out of here. We have to talk.”
“But Mack is too sick to finish, and there’s nobody to handle his show.”
Patrick looked at the clock on the wall and realized it would be at least an hour before his next DJ and her producer arrived. If they arrived and hadn’t been caught by the flu along with everyone else.
The week was just getting better all the time.
“Go back to your desk. I’ll take care of the booth until Lindsay Markoff arrives.” He crossed his fingers, hoping that Lindsay would arrive early. Maybe he could call and make sure she was coming. She was always wanting more airtime, anyway, and he’d make it up in her paycheck.
Maddie seemed doubtful. “I thought you hated talking on the radio.”
“I’m not going to talk,” Patrick snarled. He knew he wasn’t being fair. Maddie had done her best to help out, and now he was taking out his frustration on her. He tried to calm down. “I’ll just play the music and ad tapes until someone else gets here.”
“But they’re usually announced,” Maddie argued. “The songs and all.”
“At the beginning of the sets, yes, but…” Defeated, Patrick pushed her down in the chair. “All right, I’ll work the console, you announce the upcoming song sets. Just the sets,” he added hastily. Giving Maddie a forum for her runaway tongue was the last thing he wanted.
Just then Jeremy stuck his head inside the booth and Patrick glared. “Why didn’t you stop her?” he demanded. “Why didn’t you start the music or run an ad or something?”
“Hey, boss, I’m just a lowly little technician. Mack gave Maddie the headphones and you know how I freeze on the air. I just wanted you to know the phone bank is lighting up—folks want to give Maddie some advice about that great kisser she knows.” He grinned.
Patrick gave him a stern look, but Jeremy was irrepressible. He probably thought Maddie talking her head off was a grand joke. A twenty-year-old former juvenile delinquent and electronic genius, Jeremy was working at the station while getting his degree in communication. He’d probably end up as the next Ted Turner, but in the meantime he was a pain in the butt. Of course, having been a juvenile delinquent once himself, Patrick understood the kid.
“No phones,” he ordered.
“But, boss, we like phone calls at KLMS,” Jeremy said with a perfectly straight face. “You always say—”
“Never mind what I always say,” Patrick said. “Get back out there and tell the callers that you’re sorry, but Maddie doesn’t know how to work the phones any better than she knows how to play music.”
Jeremy walked out, shaking his head in a sorrowful display of disappointment. His lanky body settled in the producer’s chair, a position he’d been coveting for the simple reason it gave him power. Patrick sent him a warning glance as he eyed the blinking phone bank. Jeremy might be destined for greatness, but he was dead meat if he tried to send one of those calls through to the booth.
“All right,” Patrick growled to Maddie. “I’ll put on some commercials, then after that you announce we’re doing a long music set, starting out with Lee Greenwood’s, ‘God Bless the U.S.A.”’
“Oh, I like that song.”
“No editorials,” Patrick said instantly. If Maddie strayed from the script, she would really stray. God knew he was taking a chance letting her remain in the broadcast booth, but either he got on the radio himself—something he’d sworn never to do—or he took a chance.
She wouldn’t break any of those FCC rules that everyone else worried about, she’d just spill her life story, along with his and everyone else’s she knew. He’d keep his hand on the switch to cut her off, just in case.
Her look called into question his intelligence, but he didn’t relent. There were some things a man had to do to stay sane. He reminded himself that her sweet, artless revelations were a far cry from the polished DJ patter radio audiences had come to expect. So his decision was the best for the station and didn’t have much to do with him.
Really.
Honestly, Maddie couldn’t understand why Patrick was so upset. He drove the Blazer away from the station with a grim twist to his mouth that hadn’t changed since he’d charged into the broadcast booth.
The DJ for the next show had arrived early, so they’d only needed to do the Seattle Kid’s show for another seventeen minutes. But she didn’t know what Patrick was planning to do. Now that they were alone, he was being awfully quiet.
Maybe he was going to fire her and wanted to tell her away from the station so she wouldn’t make a fuss in front of everyone. The thought made Maddie slump down in the passenger seat, thoroughly depressed.
It was hard enough being so confused about men, but now she might get fired?
“Aren’t you going to say something?” she asked.
Patrick swung into the busy parking lot of a chain restaurant out by the highway, then sat for a long minute with his hands on the steering wheel.
&n
bsp; “I’m sorry, but I thought I was helping,” Maddie added rebelliously.
She had been doing a good job for the station. It was one thing to get fired because she couldn’t do the work, but going on the radio hadn’t been her fault, it was because everyone was sick and she’d been in the right place at the wrong time. Patrick was being completely unreasonable.
He sighed. “I know. You were doing exactly what anyone else would have done, and I apologize for overreacting.”
Maddie crossed her arms over her stomach and stared out the window. Rain was streaming over the windshield, and their breath was clouding the glass. The damp cold was alien to her, and for the first time since coming to Washington she felt a twinge of homesickness that had nothing to do with missing her parents.
New Mexico was a dry land, painted by red rock and the gold of grass that died swiftly in the parched heat of summer. She missed the ristras that decorated the houses with their brilliant dried peppers, and the limitless sky rising over the Magdalenas. The smell of sage and piñon pine had been replaced by the scent of evergreen, and even if it struck a chord deep inside her, this place wasn’t home.
“I don’t belong here,” she whispered.
“God, Maddie, don’t say that. I feel awful enough for yelling at you.” Patrick rubbed his hand over his face, shaking his head at the same time. “You belong.”
“All right, I don’t belong to anyone here.”
“You have Beth and Kane and the rest of us.”
“You keep warning me that I don’t have you, Patrick. It can’t be both ways.”
She sensed, rather than saw him reach out in the gray light inside the cab. He lifted her hand and squeezed it, then laced their fingers together.
“I’m lousy with this kind of thing,” he admitted after a moment. “I don’t want to hurt or disappoint anyone. I just want to keep things nice and simple. I messed up bad as a kid, Maddie. Something happened to me when my father died. I don’t ever want to feel that way again. It’s better to keep things uncomplicated.”
“That’s convenient.”
He released her hand and drew back. “What’s that supposed to mean?”
“Nothing. Everything.”
Maddie shivered and gathered her jacket closer around her throat. With a low apology Patrick turned the engine back on and notched the heat up. For a minute the air blowing from the vents was cold, then welcome warmth spread across her feet.
“What do you mean?” he asked again.
“It seems to me you keep everyone at arm’s length. Even your family.”
“Don’t be ridiculous. I might be spending a lot of time at the station lately, but normally I eat dinner with the family a couple times a month.”
“There’s a difference between being with them and just being there.”
He snorted.
Maddie stuck her feet more fully under the flow of warmth from the vent and tried to find a way to explain. Maybe she was wrong, but she’d seen Patrick with the O’Rourkes and it bothered her. In some ways he was so alone. She couldn’t imagine him talking to his mother the way she’d been pouring her heart out every night with her parents. She might have run away from Slapshot, but she hadn’t run away from them.
“You smile and joke around,” she said. “You kiss your mother and play with your nieces, but there’s a barrier between you and the rest of the world. It’s as if you don’t want anyone to get too close, so you keep them away with your smiles and laid-back attitude.”
“You’re full of it.”
“Pegeen is worried,” Maddie added softly. “She thinks Kane getting married has something to do with you not coming around so much.”
Patrick’s jaw was rigid as he shook his head. “That’s a bunch of nonsense. I took a risk when I switched KLMS to country music, and then Kane’s romance with Beth helped put the station on the map. I’ve been busy, that’s all. There’s no mystery or deep psychological stuff going on, it’s plain-and-simple economics.”
“But—”
“No.” He seemed ready to explode, a far cry from the smiling, nonchalant guy she’d first met. “Not wanting things to be complicated means just that, not complicated.”
Maddie blinked, trying not to cry. Patrick had a wonderful family, but he didn’t want to get too close, or admit he cared that much, because something might happen. The way something had happened to his father. She hadn’t needed Kane’s explanation that the death of Keenan O’Rourke had come at a terrible time for Patrick—a time when he was too young to be a child and not old enough to be a man.
She didn’t want to be like that, did she?
Alone?
It was something to think about. Because no matter how much it could hurt to love someone, the alternative might be worse.
“Jeez,” Patrick muttered. “I apologize, and then blow up again. It’s just that I feel so guilty.”
It was the last thing Maddie expected to hear. “About what? If you’re going to apologize for being in a bad mood you’d better apologize to everyone at the station. Stephen says he’s never seen you so surly.”
“He’s seen me plenty surly.”
“Since when?”
“Since I was a dumb kid doing my best to get arrested or killed. All right?”
Her breath seemed frozen in her lungs. She didn’t know Patrick that well, but the dark glitter of his eyes and intensity of his voice was…surprising. Or maybe it wasn’t, because she’d known all along that Patrick wasn’t quite as comfortable as he wanted the world to think.
“I said I was a teenage tough, but you can’t imagine what that really means, can you?” he asked furiously. “I drank, smoked, slept with every skirt I could catch and fought dirty. I even tried to steal a truck. It’s a miracle I didn’t end up in prison or juvie, and even more of a miracle that my family didn’t have to see me lying on a table in the morgue. What a treat that would have been after burying my father.”
“You were angry because you missed him.”
“Damned straight. So I became the toughest, meanest kid you ever met. I’ll demonstrate.” He reached out and deliberately, crudely, put his hand over her breast. “I’m not the kind of guy who would have waited for a wedding band to get you under me. And I wouldn’t have cared if it happened in a bed. A car seat would have been just fine.”
She wanted to be furious, to slap his hand away, but a rebellious heat spread out from the fingers moving over her nipple, shimmering into the deepest recesses of her abdomen. And some instinct she hadn’t known she possessed told her that Patrick was hurting himself far worse than he could hurt her.
“Do you hear me?” he demanded in the silence.
“I hear you.”
“Good. Then you understand.”
Instead of shrinking farther away, Maddie unsnapped her seat belt and leaned into his hand. Her tummy was turning to shivering jelly, especially when his touch gentled, his thumb brushing over the sensitive peak.
His heavy-lidded gaze dropped to her breasts. He couldn’t help but see and feel the responsive hardness of her nipples. The shivering turned into an internal earthquake.
She still wasn’t confident of her feminine appeal, but she did know there was more to life than watching it go by. And she knew Patrick had elected to sit on the sidelines. He kept trying to scare her away and she didn’t know why. It wasn’t a secret how he felt about marriage and children; he’d made it abundantly clear he planned to spend his life as a bachelor. If anything happened between them, it wouldn’t be without her knowing the score.
“Actually, I don’t understand,” Maddie whispered.
“Then I should explain it better.” With a muttered curse he pulled her across the transmission. He tugged her astride his hips, and for the second time in her life his arousal was pressed hard and intimately against Maddie. Only this time it touched a place that turned to fire at the contact. A low moan escaped, and her fingers dug into his shoulders.
“Oh, for pity’s sake, why ar
en’t you stopping me?” Patrick bellowed. “After what happened with your wedding you’re supposed to hate men.”
“Just men who cheat. My problem is not being able to tell the difference.”
He was trying to shock her enough to say “No,” but it wasn’t going to work since she knew saying “no” would end the conversation. And she was perfectly safe because Patrick was too scrupulous about the O’Rourke “code” to force a woman. She’d heard all about that code from Beth.
Maddie squirmed on Patrick’s lap, adjusting her legs into a less-strained position, only to hear him groan.
“Is something wrong?” she asked.
“Nobody’s that innocent,” he growled.
“So, can you fake that?” she asked brightly. There wasn’t any question of what “that” was, not with it snuggled into her feminine heat, separated by only a few layers of clothing.
Patrick hit his head against the window in frustration. He had his hands full of a sexy lady who was rapidly turning the tables on him. Maddie was understandably curious about sex and men and her inhibitions were dissolving at the speed of light. What she lacked in experience she made up for in sheer instinctive guile. It ought to make him furious, but instead he wanted to kiss her.
“No, I can’t fake it.” He wished to heaven he had been faking his arousal, because it wouldn’t hurt so much. “And I can’t believe you asked that on the radio. We’re a country music station, not true confessions.”
“I didn’t come right out and say it.”
Patrick swallowed the chuckle rising in his chest. “Close enough. You’re a hazard, you know that? Someone ought to declare you off-limits.”
“I thought you already did.”
“To who?”
“To you, of course. Two weeks and you’ve barely said good morning to me.”
She’d melted bonelessly over him, the way only a woman could manage, and he was having trouble keeping his hands away from the obvious battlegrounds of sexual conquest. Actually, he found all parts of a woman’s body sexy, from the arches of the foot to the sensitive place behind her ears. He finally settled for Maddie’s waist. It seemed like a compromise, but it also reminded him of the sweet curves above, and the tempting warmth below.
The Right Twin For Him (O'Rourke Family 2) Page 9