"Even then." He cut a piece from the loaf the busboy set on their table and offered it to her. "As a matter of fact, that might have been the only thing that saved you."
Taking the slice, she shook her head. Obviously she’d missed something. "From what?"
His smile was slow, crinkling around his eyes. "From being told what you could do with your prying."
Nicely done, she thought, laughing. She sincerely doubted his virile. misplaced code of ethics allowed him to tell woman where to get off in anything but the broadest euphemistic terms.
Bruce allowed himself a moment to savor the sound. "And there’s that, too."
Her eyes narrowed as she tried to follow him. He wasn’t as readable as she thought. And certainly not as ineloquent as he seemed to believe. " '˜That'?"
"Your laugh. If it were any sexier, it would probably come wrapped in a brown paper bag." As it was, it could make a man’s imagination take flight and at the same time tighten his gut. It was the kind of laugh that understood no boundaries, took no prisoners.
Margo let out a long breath. "And still you resist telling me what I want to know."
"Have it your way." Not that he thought for one moment that she wouldn’t. He’d already figured out that the woman had enormous tenacity. The kind that stemmed tides. moved mountains and eventually made even strong men capitulate. "I never come here except on business."
He was walking right into this, Margo thought, a veritable innocent. She couldn’t remember when she’d enjoyed herself this immensely. "And do I come under the heading of business, or is it just that you mean business with me?"
He almost took her seriously. And then he saw the humor in her eyes. It made her look like a young girl. Which seemed only fair, seeing as how he already felt like a stuttering adolescent in her presence.
To put it in Lance’s vernacular, the lady was a piece of work. "Have you thought of working for the government? They could always use someone who knows how to twist words around into verbal pretzels."
She laughed again just as the waiter arrived with their drinks. It struck Bruce that the sound of her laughter was almost like an opiate, hearing it left him wanting more each time just a little more intently than before.
Did she laugh like that when bathed in pleasure? When she saw desire in a man’s eyes as he reached for her?
He needed this drink more than he thought he did, Bruce decided, wrapping his hands around the chunky, squat glass. The small measure of amber liquid at the bottom hardly looked sufficient to counteract the effect she was having on him.
Margo curled her fingers around the stem of her glass and raised it in a toast, her eyes locking with his. "To the future."
It was, he thought, a safe enough toast. There would always be a future in the absolute sense, come what may. His had looked solid and very predictable, while hers, he was sure, was in a constant state of flux. They were, he judged, as opposite as opposites could be.
"To the future," he echoed. "And to the most beautiful woman in the room."
He had absolutely no idea he was going to say that until the words had come out. Reflecting, Bruce didn’t regret saying it, he was just surprised that he had. lt certainly wasn’t his style, but then, the lady had a style all her own, and she seemed to coax things out of him he hadn’t even guessed were there.
Like the way his mind kept drifting tonight.
Just as it had since he’d met her.
Margo paused, glass almost to her lips. She’d been complimented and toasted before, in far more flowery language than Bruce had just used. But that conservative wording had touched her. He wasn’t trying to impress her, he was being sincere. She wondered if he knew how rare a trait that was.
She smiled into his eyes. "And you said you weren’t good with words."
He felt out of place, as if his jacket had suddenly shrunk two sizes, pinning his arms to his sides. "Must be the restaurant," he muttered, still not sure just what had come over him. "I hold my own during business meetings here." The fact that he had worked his way up from a low level to one of the top positions in the company would have made his statement seem incredibly modest, but he saw no reason to embellish it.
He was still clinging to that business thing, Margo thought. She was beginning to believe that he actually didn’t go out socially. Up until now, she’d thought Melanie was exaggerating.
Margo took a sip of her drink and let the fruity flavor slide slowly down her throat. Held his own during business meetings, did he? "One of us should dictate a letter."
Following her example, Bruce took a healthy swig of his own drink, hoping that the bitter taste would cut through the unsettled state of his nerves. He wasn’t good at this sort of thing, being one on one with a woman. But he had dealt himself in for the evening and he was determined to see it through. Besides, there were worse things than sitting across from a beautiful woman as twilight settled in.
He raised his glass to her. "One of us already knows how to dictate."
She twirled the stem slowly between her thumb and forefinger. her eyes never left his. "You think I’m pushy." It wasn’t a question. Margo already knew what he thought. It was right there in his eyes.
Pushy sounded too much like an insult. Diplomatically he tempered the description. "l think that you always get your way."
Was he just being polite? Did her behavior irritate him? She wasn’t sure. The writing in the large print book had suddenly become small and illegible. "Is that such a bad thing? Most people want their own way." She ran the tip of her tongue along her lips, savoring the taste of her drink. "And I’m harmless enough."
˜
It took effort to draw his eyes away from her mouth and the slight damp sheen there. And more effort to draw his mind away from the thoughts that were springing up because of it.
"l doubt that you were ever considered harmless. Margo. Not even five minutes after you were born," When he raised his eyes to hers. he saw that they had clouded. "Did I say something wrong?"
She shook her head. "No."
But he had. Bruce thought. He’d somehow unwittingly stumbled onto something that upset her. For one fleeting instant, something he’d said had struck a wound, an old scar, making it bleed again.
At a loss, wishing he had some of the verbal skills that came so easily to Margo. Bruce reached for his menu. In an effort to smooth things over, he changed the conversation to something banal.
He pretended to peruse the main-course items embossed in dark script on the menu. "See anything here you like?"
"Yes."
When he raised his eyes to ask her what, he saw that she was looking at him. The smile on her lips was enigmatic. Nevertheless, he felt his pulse speed up just a shade over what the medical profession agreed was acceptable.
Maybe it was a good thing his tongue had gotten too large for his mouth. Otherwise, he would have swallowed it.
Bruce reached for his water glass and took a long sip. His throat was parched. He couldn’t remember when he’d done so much talking, not even when he’d chaired the meeting that brought about the eventual merger of Phillips Inc. with his own Weston Data Corp., forming Weston Phillips. From the salad to the main course and then dessert, Margo had plied him with question after question, looking so taken, so absorbed by his answers that he had just kept on talking.
Like that damn windup toy that ran on eternal batteries. Him, who’d hardly strung together ten words a day that didn’t have to do with his job.
She would have made an excellent interrogator, he decided, placing his glass back on the table. She drew information out of him as if she were merely turning on a tap. Over the course of the past hour, he’d heard himself telling her all about Ellen, about their life together until hers had abruptly been cut short. Comforted by the surprising depth of Margo’s sympathy, he’d gone on to confide about the pain he’d gone through, living without someone he’d been certain he was destined to grow old with.
And he’d made no ef
fort to absolve himself of blame when he told her how the schism between Lance and him had come about. He’d never blamed Lance for any of that.
"But, Lance," she observed tactfully, making swirls in the remainder of the whipped cream on her plate with her fork, "was to blame for perpetuating it after you tried to apologize and make amends."
Over the years he’d had ample opportunity to examine the situation from Lance’s point of view. "Under the circumstances, you can see why he didn’t choose to run back to me with open arms just because I wanted to pretend it never happened." Problems didn’t go away because you denied their existence, they went away because you faced them. "Just because I wanted to pretend that l hadn’t disappeared from his life and left him to be raised by Bess for an entire decade, didn’t mean he did."
He’d lost himself in his work after Ellen had died, work that had absolutely no meaning for him anymore, except that it allowed him to send regular checks for his son’s keep and somehow pay his sister back for taking on the responsibility he couldn’t bring himself to shoulder.
Margo sighed over what had been, just a few minutes ago, a plate with a thin slice of Boston cream pie on it. She could have eaten six and asked for more, only to watch them all adhere themselves directly to her hips. It was safer to concentrate on what Bruce was saying to her.
"You wouldn’t have been in the running for Father of the Year," she conceded, "but since you made the effort to apologize, you could be forgiven your reaction. It only happened because you loved too much, cared too much. Sometimes," Margo added gently, "that throws you off kilter."
She seemed so clearly in possession of herself, he couldn’t help but wonder out loud, "Have you ever loved too much?"
"Every time," she laughed lightly. Bringing the fork to her lips, she removed the last bit of whipped cream on it by touching her tongue to the tip of the prongs. Bruce would have sworn he’d never seen anything more sensual in his life.
"l mean really," he insisted, not completely sure why getting an answer was so important to him. Maybe he was just paying her back for drawing him out the way she had. Or maybe he was trying to ignore the fact that watching her was creating a very unsettling sensation within him. "‘After all, you grilled me, the least you can do is answer a few of my questions."
She’d be the first to admit that it was only fair. "I’ll answer any question you ask."
She was being evasive, he thought. She did that well. "I already asked one."
"So you did." She set her fork down and began, perhaps little too breezily. "All right, I probably did love Melanie’s father too much. At least enough to cloud my judgment. I actually thought he’d be happy about the baby. I should have realized that no eighteen-year-old boy in his right mind was going to be happy about becoming a father."
He took exception. "I was." Once the news had settled in, once he’d had time to become accustomed to the idea, he’d been overjoyed. The baby was physical evidence of the love he bore for Ellen.
Margo believed him. That made him one in a million. But he hadn’t been her one, so it didn’t count.
"You are a very rare individual, Bruce. There aren’t many men like you. Believe me, I know." She touched his hand as she spoke, giving it a confidential squeeze. "As I told you at the reception, your wife was a very lucky woman."
Bruce had always thought of himself as the lucky one, not Ellen. She’d had to put up with his faults, with a lifestyle that had been far below the one she’d been raised in. Her parents, appalled by what she’d done and her subsequent refusal to have an abortion, had disowned her. They were married with exactly thirty dollars between them. It was Bess who had come to their rescue, giving them a place to stay until they got on their feet. It took him a long time to work his way up to where he could afford to give Ellen the things she’d deserved.
And that had lasted all too short a time.
The waiter arrived with the check, saving Bruce from having to answer Margo’s comment. Bruce silently blessed him.
The man discreetly placed the small tray beside Bruce's elbow. Margo reached for it, but she was too slow. Bruce was already taking out his charge card. He placed it over the bill.
Margo withdrew her hand, pinning him with a reproving look. "I thought we agreed that I was going to pay for dinner."
"You agreed, and voted for me." he pointed out. "Besides," he handed the tray over to the waiter, "possession is nine-tenths of the law, and the tray with the check was on my side of the table."
She should have realized that he wasn’t about to let her pay. He was too old-fashioned to allow that. Though she considered herself the epitome of a liberated woman and had for a long time, she had to admit that it was rather nice to be treated as if she belonged on a pedestal. At least for a little while.
"I’m beginning to think that you don’t always play as fair as I thought you did."
"I play fair, Margo," he said honestly, "but I play by my rules. One of the prime rules is that you always pay for the lady." He expected more of a debate, something along the lines of this being the nineties and his being a dinosaur. Instead, she merely shook her head. "What’s the matter?"
She didn’t think men like Bruce existed, except in caves. She certainly hadn’t expected to think that old-fashioned was charming. Margo was surprised on both counts. "I just can’t understand why some woman hasn’t snapped you up and placed you on her mantelpiece."
Bruce hardly thought of himself as a trophy. "Possibly because I’m a lot heavier than I look." The waiter returned, silently offering him a pen and a charge slip to use it on.
He had a bold hand, Margo thought, observing the way Bruce wrote his signature. The sign of a man who was in charge and comfortable with himself.
"Chivalrous with a sense of humor, you’re almost too good to be true."
He certainly wasn’t going to comment on that. Tucking the slip around his card, he pocketed both as the waiter withdrew, smiling broadly at the tip he’d just gotten. "Ready to go?"
Margo reached for her purse. "I was born ready."
He didn’t doubt it for a moment.
"Would you like to come up for a nightcap'?" Margo lingered at her door, reluctant to call an end to the evening. It had been one of the most enjoyable ones she’d had in a
very long time.
He was tempted, but he shook his head. "I’d better not. The police in Bedford run a very strict show. I’d rather not inc to spend the night in one of their jail cells."
She didn’t push it. She’d done enough pushing for one night, she thought. Still, part of her was fascinated by a man who hadn’t put any moves on her the entire evening. Technically, this counted as their second date no matter which way she looked at it. There had been the wedding reception. and they had just spent the entire afternoon together, rearranging Melanie and Lance’s apartment. And in that time, he’d been nothing but polite.
It was sweet, but at the same time it did make her wonder she was slipping.
Wasn’t he interested'?
‘I’d bail you out," she promised.
He was serious, although one more drink, especially if it wine or beer, would hardly qualify him as drunk. He’d had the one drink at the beginning of dinner.
If anything, Margo had been far more intoxicating than the alcohol in his glass.
"There’d be no bail set until morning. An overnight stay is mandatory." He had a few friends on the force and knew the rules. "Like I said, they take a very dim view of driving under the influence. At least alcoholic influence," he amended, unable to draw his eyes away from her. From the way the moonlight was reverently touching her skin. With or without that nightcap, he was going to be guilty of driving under the influence when he went home. "'Well, good night, Margo, I had a very nice time."
He couldn’t seem to get his feet to move, to create distance between them.
"Yeah, me, too." She looked up at him, wishing he would kiss her. It seemed strangely ironic. She thought nothing of kissing p
eople, of pressing her lips fleetingly or passionately against another pair, whether in fun or in earnest. But this time she wanted the first move to be his.
So that it counted.
Margo couldn’t remember when she’d been this silly. Or when she’d wanted to be kissed so much.
Bruce was still standing there. unable to force himself to walk away. It was almost as if something else, something that was very much out of practice, insisted on taking over. The distant ache that had been slowly evolving ever since dinner felt vaguely familiar.
"Help me out here," he said quietly.
"If I can." She should have remained amused. Why she suddenly felt nervous was beyond her.
But she did.
He touched her cheek with the tips of his fingers an watched in fascination as her eyes fluttered ever so slightly in response. "I don’t remember. Is this the part where the
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