Heart Stealers

by Patricia McLinn

  Deborah laughed. “Nah, I was already crazy before they came along. Come on in.”

  Sharon stepped into the air-conditioned living room. When she was doing outdoor shooting, she could seal herself off from her environment. Even if the air was heavy with the accumulated heat of a long late-summer day, she wasn’t uncomfortable as long as she was working. Once she was done, though, awareness of the world around her rushed in like a river breaking through a dam. Her conversation with Brett had held the world at bay, but as soon as he’d left her, the early evening heat had flooded her, forcing her back to hot, humid reality. It didn’t help that her car lacked air conditioning.

  She removed her blazer so the cool air could stroke her arms. “You want iced tea, lemonade or beer?” Deborah asked.

  Sharon didn’t have to think long. “Beer. Have you got a minute?”

  “If I didn’t I wouldn’t have offered you a drink.” She strode into the tiny kitchen.

  Sharon veered to the top of the stairway leading to the finished playroom in the basement. “Max? Mommy’s here.”

  “Mommy!”

  She felt her mouth lift in a smile as her son clambered up the stairs, his feet already big enough to clomp and stomp. She couldn’t help smiling when he raced to greet her. It was a reflex, as uncontrollable as the reflex that had made her breasts leak milk when he’d been an infant, crying. Max was her baby, her beloved, the heart of her life.

  He reached the top of the stairs, Olivia close behind. For a moment, Sharon saw only Max, his hair falling in a shiny blond cap around his face, his cheeks still round with baby-fat and his nose a shapeless button above his mouth. “Mommy, Mommy!” he shouted, so loudly people were probably scratching their heads three towns away, wondering what the ruckus drifting in on the evening breeze could be.

  Sharon dropped to her knees and gathered Max into her arms. “How’s my big boy today? Did you have a good day?”

  “I had a good day,” he reported, still at top volume. “We did clay.”

  “We played with clay,” Olivia confirmed. They were in the same class at the Children’s Garden Preschool. In fact, it was through the school that Sharon and Deborah had met. When Deborah and her husband had separated and she’d needed a place to live, Sharon had mentioned that the condo next door to her own was for sale. Standing with Deborah in the school’s parking lot, commiserating with her over her marital woes, Sharon had recruited her as a neighbor.

  Sharon widened her embrace so she could give Olivia a hug, too. Olivia’s hair shaped two puffy pigtails that looked like pompoms on either side of her head. The hairdo and the tiny gold hoops adorning her ears were her only feminine affectations. Her outfit was interchangeable with Max’s: they both wore striped T-shirts, denim shorts and colorful sneakers.

  “We made lots of things with clay,” Max reported.

  “I made a dog,” Olivia boasted.

  “I made a dog and a snake,” Max topped her.

  “I made a dog and a snake, too.”

  “Mine was long!”

  “It sounds like lots of fun,” Sharon cut them off, fearing that if she didn’t, they’d compete over their ceramics projects until one or both of them burst into tears. “You guys can go back downstairs and play some more. I’m going to talk to Olivia’s mommy.”

  “Okay,” they chorused.

  “Does anyone have to use the potty?” she asked.

  They were already halfway down the stairs when they shouted, “No!”

  Sharon grinned. They were both pretty close to potty-ready, but they couldn’t be bothered with sitting on the little plastic seat and waiting for nature to take its course when there were more exciting things to do. She’d get Max onto the potty that evening, when Olivia wasn’t around to distract him.

  She pushed herself to her feet and went into the kitchen, a compact room the mirror image of her own. Deborah had already opened two bottles of beer. She had one next to her on the counter, where she was fixing a salad. The other stood on the tiny breakfast table near the window, waiting for Sharon. Deborah turned at Sharon’s entrance and eyed her quizzically. “Okay, honey—tell me why you needed a beer instead of an iced tea.”

  “All I needed was something cold and wet,” Sharon said as she dropped onto one of the chairs and kicked off her shoes. “But beer has fizz. I guess I was in the mood for fizz.”

  “Uh-huh.” Deborah clearly wasn’t convinced.

  Sharon sipped some beer and sighed. It was cold, wet, fizzy and yes, she’d needed it. “The strangest thing happened to me today, Deb,” she said. “I got asked out on a date.”

  “A date!” Deborah pressed a hand to her bosom, as if the shock of Sharon’s words was throwing her into cardiac arrest. “Oh, my God! You can’t be serious!”

  “Don’t make fun of me,” Sharon protested, although she couldn’t help grinning at Deborah’s melodramatic performance.

  “All right, I won’t make fun. Now tell me everything. A date? With a man? Like for Saturday night?”

  Sharon nodded. “Like for Saturday night. And not just a man. A rich executive.”

  “Now you’re talking.” Abandoning her salad, Deborah joined Sharon at the cozy table. “How rich?”

  Sharon poked Deborah’s arm. “You’re married to a rich executive,” she reminded her. “And you’ve been separated from him for a year. Maybe you ought to be warning me about all the pitfalls.”

  “My rich executive is an ass,” Deborah argued. “And if I’m married to him it’s only because we haven’t gotten around to sitting down with the lawyers yet. And rich is a bit of an overstatement. And anyway—” she drank some beer “—we’re not talking about Raymond right now. We’re talking about your date. What’s his name?”

  “Brett Stockton.”

  “Oh, yeah, that sounds rich. Where’s he taking you?”

  “He isn’t taking me anywhere if I don’t line up a baby-sitter.”

  “Don’t you worry about that.” Deborah dismissed Sharon’s concern with a wave of her hand. “If you can’t find someone, I’ll take Max for the night. I’m not going anywhere. So tell me now: what’s the plan? Where’s this executive guy taking you on your big, hot date?”

  “It’s not a big, hot date,” Sharon protested. To be sure, Brett’s invitation chilled her slightly. It seemed so ritzy, so beyond her world. “We’re attending a benefit dinner at Reynaud.”

  “Reynaud? Wow.” Deborah’s eyes grew round. “Raymond took me there on our first anniversary. Dinner for two set us back more than a hundred dollars. What kind of benefit?”

  “For the Leukemia Foundation.”

  “Wow. This is upper-echelon stuff. Am I going to see your photo Sunday morning in the society pages of the Arlington Gazette?”

  “God, I hope not.” Sharon hadn’t even thought of that. “I’m not a society type, Deb. I don’t even know why he asked me.” Or why she’d said yes. Maybe it was because, despite her feeling rather outclassed by Brett Stockton, she’d seen him when he was unsure of himself. She could tell herself he was a hotshot executive, a mover and a shaker, one of Arlington’s elite—but he’d been humbled by her camera, and that made him more accessible to her, more human.

  Or maybe she’d said yes because he had such sexy eyes.

  She hoped he hadn’t asked her out because she’d told him his eyes were sexy. Flattering him that way had only been an attempt to loosen him up, to wrest a smile from him—or at least something better than the I’ve-been-sucking-lemons-all-day-and-my-dog-just-got-hit-by-a-car expression that had taken over his face every time she’d pointed her camera at him. Yes, she’d flirted with him—because flirting worked. Taking a photograph of someone was an intimate act. Flirting was a way to ease through that intimacy. She nearly always flirted with her subjects, whether they were children or high school seniors posing for yearbook photos or CEO’s who needed updated headshots for their company’s annual report.

  Had Brett thought her flirting meant something more? How cou
ld he, when she’d trotted out the belly-dancing doll? And she’d joked about his tie and kept him talking and softened him up a little... What if he’d asked her out because he thought she’d been coming on to him? What if her use of the word “sexy” had given him ideas?

  Well, he did have sexy eyes. She hadn’t been lying when she’d told him that.

  “So,” Deborah asked, “what are you going to wear?”

  “I have no idea. A benefit dinner at Reynaud? I need real clothes for that.”

  “Maybe you should buy something new.”

  “I’ll think about it.” She’d think about her budget, too. “I don’t even know if it’s formal. Do men wear tuxedos to these things?”

  “Like I’m supposed to know?”

  “Raymond would know,” Sharon pointed out. Deborah’s estranged husband was a rising executive with an insurance company. He might not attend many benefit dinners now, but he was being groomed for what Deborah disdainfully referred to as “better things.” In fact, he was so busy scaling the corporate mountain that he’d neglected his wife and baby, which was why Deborah was currently living with her daughter in the Village Green condominium complex instead of with him.

  “I’m not going to call him to discuss formal wear. If you want to, be my guest.” Deborah’s nostrils narrowed, a sign of irritation, and she sipped some beer.

  “I’ll figure it out without his input,” Sharon said. “When Brett phones me—assuming I find a baby-sitter—”

  “You’ve got one,” Deborah reminded her, tapping her chest with her index finger.

  “I’m going to try to find someone. Nothing personal, but Max will sleep better if he’s in his own room. And when Brett phones, I’ll ask him just how fancy this thing is.”

  “I think you should buy something new,” Deborah insisted. “Just for the thrill of it. It’s not like you go out on a date every day.”

  “It’s not like I go out on a date every year,” Sharon said with a laugh.

  A sudden shriek from downstairs jolted both women out of their chairs. They raced down the steps to find Olivia and Max both sobbing. “I want the truck!” Max howled, clutching a plastic dump truck. “I want it! It’s mine!”

  “It’s mine!” Olivia insisted, tears streaking down her cheeks. She raced to her mother, arms outstretched, reaching for comfort.

  “Mine!” Max shouted. For the past six months, that had been his favorite word, or perhaps his second favorite, after “no.”

  “Put down the truck, Max,” Sharon ordered him, sounding to herself like a police officer trying to get a criminal to lay down his weapon and surrender peacefully.

  “Mine,” he whimpered, then hurled the truck onto the carpeted floor.

  Sharon considered scolding him for throwing the toy and decided not to. He’d relinquished it; that was victory enough. She also decided not to make him apologize to Olivia. She believed that forcing a child to apologize when he wasn’t sorry only taught him to be a hypocrite.

  Of course, she could be wrong about that. She was winging it, doing her best to be a good mother yet never quite convinced she had the job mastered. If Steve were alive, she could ask him: Do you think I’m doing this right? Should I listen to Expert A or Expert B? Is it time to potty-train Max, or should I leave him in diapers a few more months? Should I make him tell Olivia he’s sorry when I know he really isn’t?

  But Steve was gone and she was on her own. Deborah offered guidance, but she was on her own, too. The director of Max’s preschool was a wonderful source of ideas and suggestions, as was Max’s pediatrician, and Sharon read books on parenting. She hoped that she wasn’t destroying her little boy’s life with her ineptitude.

  What she needed in her life was a grown-up. She was tired of being the family’s only adult. Her parents weren’t much help; they’d raised her with a hands-off attitude, loving but never quite dependable, and the fact that she’d somehow managed to stumble into a state of relative maturity was something of a miracle. She was determined to do better by her son.

  But she really wished there was another adult she could count on, someone solid and dependable. The kind of person who worked at a desk and earned a steady, comfortable income, who understood the ways of the universe and took life seriously.

  Maybe that was what had appealed to her about Brett Stockton: he was a grown-up. Not a show-off, not a lovable six-foot-tall boy like Steve, but someone with gravity. Someone who looked good in a suit and tie—even if the tie was just a bit too somber.

  Maybe the reason she’d agreed to this date with him was because he seemed mature and responsible, because he would never fling a toy truck to the floor and wail, “Mine!”

  But his sexy eyes had something to do with it, too.

  Chapter Three

  On the rare occasions when Brett was impulsive, he usually wound up regretting it. The time he’d decided on a whim to drive with two college buddies to Ft. Lauderdale for spring break had been a disaster: the car’s radiator had broken somewhere in South Carolina, the repair had devoured two days and most of their money, forcing them to subsist on peanut-butter and raisin-bread sandwiches, and when they’d finally reached Florida, the skies had opened up, releasing torrents of non-stop rain the entire time they were there.

  Or right after he’d finished business school, when he’d asked Michelle to marry him. He’d loved her, and he’d loved sleeping with her, and one night after some truly phenomenal sex, he’d recklessly proposed to her. She’d said yes—and he’d immediately suffered misgivings. Those misgivings had deepened over the next few weeks, when she’d refused to stop babbling about how many babies they would have.

  He didn’t want babies. He didn’t like babies.

  Which was one reason he was entertaining serious doubts about his impulsive decision to ask Sharon Bartell to accompany him to the dinner at Reynaud tonight.

  He’d phoned her a few days ago, as promised, and she’d happily reported that she’d been able to line up a baby-sitter. He’d actually contemplated calling the whole thing off when she’d said that. He could have been honest and told her it was his personal policy to avoid social entanglements with mothers. But he couldn’t justify canceling the date once she’d gone to all the effort of hiring someone to watch her kid.

  He would just have to get through it. The bottom line tonight was raising money for the Leukemia Foundation. Whatever happened between him and Sharon was irrelevant.

  She’d given him her address—a townhouse in the Village Green condominium complex—and he drove in circles around the winding, artfully picturesque roads for a while before he found her unit, nestled among a row of identical units. A tricycle sat on the sidewalk outside one townhouse, and a small swarm of kids on scooters zoomed up and down the street. A child-friendly neighborhood, he thought, wondering how old Sharon’s child was. Young enough to need a baby-sitter, obviously.

  Sighing, he parked, strolled up the walk to her front door, rang the bell and tried to ward off his sense of impending dread. After a long minute, Sharon swung the door open. But her back was to him; she was busy addressing someone behind her. “Max, it’s okay. You can watch the sing-along video.”

  “No!” a shrill voice resonated. “Wanna watch the video!”

  “Then go watch the video,” Sharon said.

  “No!”

  “You don’t want to watch it?”

  “Wanna watch it!”

  “Then go ahead and watch it.”

  “No!”

  Throughout this futile exchange, Brett had a view of Sharon’s back—and that view made him wish she didn’t have a child. She was wearing a simple, slim-fitting black dress, the neckline of which draped low to reveal the smooth, golden skin of her upper back, the shadowed contours of her spine and shoulder blades barely visible but exceptionally tempting. Her arms were bare, as long and slender as a ballerina’s, and the dress ended at her knees, revealing long, slender ballerina legs. Her dress sandals added a couple of inches to her h
eight. Her hips were curvy yet compact.

  Then she turned to acknowledge him, and the view got even better. The dress was simpler in front than in back, but its plainness only emphasized the surprising beauty of the woman wearing it.

  Yes, surprising. He’d thought she was a pleasant-looking woman when he’d met her, and she’d gone from pleasant-looking to pretty once she’d stopped aiming her camera at him and aimed it at a building, instead. But tonight she had her hair smoothed back from her face and held in place by a black satin headband. She’d applied her make-up with a light touch so it was barely visible, but somehow it enhanced the elegant hollows of her cheeks and the width of her lips. Pearl studs dotted her ears and a gold chain holding a pearl pendant circled her throat. “Hi,” she said, giving him such a sweet, hesitant smile he almost forgot about the kid bellowing, “No! No! No!” behind her.

  “Hi,” he said.

  “Let me get my son settled down, and then we’ll go.” She beckoned him into the living room, a snug square of space furnished with a sturdy brown couch, matching chairs, and rugged tables. The walls held a gallery of photographs—taken by her? he wondered—and he would have liked to study them. A few brightly colored plastic toys lay scattered across the rust-colored carpet.

  When Sharon stepped aside he saw the kid hovering on the top step of a stairway leading down. About three feet tall, he had whitish-blond hair cut a la Moe Howard in the Three Stooges. His cheeks were ruddy and he wore pajamas with pictures of steam shovels and dump trucks printed on the fabric. He glared at Brett, then scampered to his mother’s side and wrapped himself around her leg. “I wanna watch the video with you!” he shouted.

  Sharon tried to bend down, but apparently such a maneuver was difficult with the twerp clinging to her leg. “You’ll watch the video with Tracy,” she told him, then gestured toward the stairs, where a teenage girl hovered, smiling eagerly, as if her enthusiasm would be enough to lure the kid away from his mother’s ankle.

  “Come on, Max—let’s watch the video,” the girl said, extending a hand.