Starstruck (6 page)

“Don’t blame me if it stalls,” Liv said when he’d come around and got in beside her.

It didn’t. Apparently the Harrington charm worked as well on
VW
s as on women, Once convinced that he was really going to drive, Liv felt herself almost unconsciously relax. In fact she rather enjoyed letting him take over. For one thing she had a chance to watch him unobserved. The tiger qualities she had noticed earlier hadn’t completely disappeared, but they didn’t seem so threatening now. The harsh lines of his face had gentled, whether from relief or exhaustion she didn’t know. But as he drove he seemed less of the tense, prowling jungle cat of early evening and more the domesticated variety, ready to curl up on the hearth rug and go to sleep.

Also, driving her bus made him infinitely more approachable somehow. As though in spite of the vast discrepancy in their worlds of experience, here at least they had something in common.

“You missed the turn-off to your hotel,” she said suddenly, noting that they had left the Sheraton far behind.

“I know.”

“But—
”

“I’m taking you home.”

“But—
”

“Relax,” Joe commanded, flashing her a smile that suddenly, despite her better judgment, made her do just that. It was a long time since someone had taken over her life, even for a moment. For a change—not as a habit—it felt rather nice. She leaned back against the seat and closed her eyes.

“Here we are.” Joe pulled into the driveway and cut the engine, turning to look at her again with that knowing glint in his eye. “Safe and sound.”

“Thank you.” She smiled back at him, feeling somewhat giddy and silly, as though she’d had too much wine, when in fact she hadn’t even touched a drop of the watered-down fruit punch at the reception after his speech.

“Now you say, ‘Won’t you come in for some coffee,’ ” Joe prompted.

Liv wet her lips and saw him lean closer. “Won’t you—” Her voice trailed off, breathless.

“Thank you. Don’t mind if I do.” He seemed to jerk himself back and opened the door, going around the bus and helping her out, like a “proper date” her mother would have said. She giggled to herself.

The living room was quiet. Even Noel had gone to bed. His math book lay open on the couch, and a pile of unfolded laundry had made it as far as the overstuffed chair. Liv groaned inwardly, wondering what Joe would make of her “homey” atmosphere. But she needn’t have given it a thought, she realized, for he crossed the
room to the couch, shoved the math book aside and sank down.

“Are you sure you want coffee?” she asked. He had collapsed completely after pulling off his coat, loosening his tie and unbuttoning the top two buttons of his shirt. Now he sat, head flung back, eyes closed, totally spent.

“Mmm?
How about tea? Less caffeine,” Joe mumbled without opening his eyes. “Suit you?”

“Sure. I’ll put the kettle on.” It will give me a chance to collect my wits, she thought, warring with the feelings of warmth and protectiveness that he was evoking in her. She didn’t need that. Why did he have to be
so
…
so
…
so likeable? Liv slipped out of her high heeled shoes and padded into the kitchen in her stockings, relishing the cool feel of the linoleum beneath her feet. It was the one counterpoint to the sultry May evening, and she wriggled her toes gratefully while she puttered about, putting on the kettle, getting the tea out of the cupboard and setting cups and saucers on a tray. She wondered if Joe took milk or sugar and was about to go back into the living room and ask when she decided not to. Being around him was entirely too heady an experience. She could do
with
a few minutes more space. So she went to check on the kids while the water got hot. Jennifer had fallen asleep in Theo’s bed, and Liv hoisted her daughter into her arms, burying her face in Jennifer’s blond hair.
Touch,
she thought,
I’m starved for touch.
But as she lay Jennifer in her own bed, Liv admitted that it wasn’t entirely that. She wanted, perversely, to feel Joe’s touch again, his lips on hers, his arm around her, pressing her close. Stop it, she thought and, hearing the kettle whistle, she hurried back to the kitchen.

“Milk or sugar?” she called now, and getting no answer, she shrugged a
nd put both on the tray and car
ried it back into the living room. The playboy of the western world was fast asleep on the sofa.

“Joe?” She put his cup on the end table beside him, but he didn’t stir. She stood looking at him, a whole
school of feelings swimming like fish in her head. Silently then, she moved the laundry onto the floor and sank into the heavy armchair opposite and sipped her tea as she watched him. It was strangely companionable and relaxing, just sitting there with Joe Harrington asleep across the room. Liv smiled, wondering what Frances would think. Surely she wouldn’t suspect the gentleness and vulnerability that Liv could see now in him. It wasn’t a side he showed to his adoring public. But if millions of women swooned over him wide-awake, she mused with a tiny smile, just think how many would be drooling if they could see him now.

She didn’t know how long she sat watching him, but finally she caught herself yawning too. She supposed she ought to call a taxi and bundle him into it and send him back to his hotel.

Oh yes, sure, Liv thought. And how would her reputation look then? “Local reporter sends Romeo home in midnight taxi ride.’
^?
She could see the headlines now. Well, Marv probably would have mercy, but there were other less scrupulous newspapers around. And it didn’t bear thinking about, anyway. Joe didn’t look as though he was going to move for the rest of the night. It might be wisest just to let sleeping tigers lie.

She sighed and got up, going to her room for a lightweight blanket, which she dropped on the coffee table. She bent over and unlaced his shoes, slipping them off his feet and easing the tie off his neck.

There were advantages to being five times a mother, she thought wryly, not the least of which was being able to undress children for bed without waking them. But Joe Harrington was not a child, she warned herself. What he would think if he woke now to find her in the process of unbuttoning his shirt did not bear thinking about.

Joe groaned and slid sideways onto the sofa and she eased his shirt off, dropping it beside the blanket. There, that was as far as she dared go. Leaving him in his undershirt, dress pants and socks, she draped the blanket over him, and he rolled toward the back of the sofa, clutching the blanket.

“Mmmmm,” he breathed, a half-smile on his face. Liv sighed and brushed a lock of dark hair off his forehead, her hand lingering just for a moment.

“Good night,” she whispered and put out the light.

Well, she thought, that’s that. Another distinction to add to her uniqueness—a dubious one at that—
I
am
,
she thought as she slipped into her double bed alone,
the only woman in the world to make Joe Harrington fall asleep.

Chapter Three

I
n the morning he was gone.

Liv’s alarm went off at six and she sprang out of bed, throwing on the first suitable skirt and blouse that came to hand and brushing her shoulder length hair back and anchoring it with a headband because she didn’t want to take the time to pin it up. Not, she told herself, because she looked prettier with her hair down.

It didn’t matter whether she did or not, for when she crept out into the living room, expecting to see his
l
ean muscular body curled up on her sofa, she found instead only a folded up blanket and no sign at all of Joe. The whole previous evening might have been nothing more than the very detailed hallucination of a demented, middle-aged mother but for the freshly perked coffee she found in the kitchen and a note scratched on the back of a shopping list that said simply, “Thanks. Joe.”

For what? she wondered. Certainly not for what he usually got from the women he spent the night with But then, he hadn’t actually spent the night with her, not really. He had only slept on her couch. She wondered if Frances would believe that if she told her. Not that she was going to tell her. Not after all the carrying-on she had done yesterday about having to do this interview. There was no point in looking a complete fool if she didn’t have to. She poured herself a cup of his coffee and contemplated the note, her eyes drifting from it to the unoccupied couch. It was really better that he was gone,
she told herself firmly. She couldn’t imagine explaining his presence to the kids, and later getting wind of what Tom would say when one of them let it drop that Joe Harrington had spent the night. Her mouth turned up in a smile at that. Imagine his having the time for a Tom James reject! Because, even if he hadn’t slept with her, which she didn’t really want anyway, he had seemed to like her all right. And that was a bit of an ego boost right there, unless one harped on the fact that he quite frankly seemed to like every woman.

She sighed and got up, padding upstairs to the bathroom which was, fortunately, still unoccupied. One bathroom and six people made for hectic mornings. She glanced around the tiny room critically for the first time since she had resigned herself to it when she had bought the house two years ago. It wasn’t much to look at, that was for sure—cracked tile around the shower and toy boats on the floor, towels that looked as though they’d sailed the
Mayflower
if not the Ark. Not exactly the sunken tubs and silver fixtures that she was sure Joe must be used to.

Still, he had showered here. Maybe she could charge admission, create a local landmark—
Joe Harrington Showered Here
—and put the money aside to buy new towels or, better yet, a lock for the bathroom door.

Ah, another sign that she hadn’t imagined it all. The crumpled gray sweat shirt and the jeans were still in a heap on the floor. Probably he was used to maids, too, she thought. Or a mother. She picked up his things automatically, just as she picked up Stephen’s socks or Noel’s shorts, and began to fold them, carrying them back to her room, absently rubbing the soft fabric of the sweat shirt against her cheek. The faint aroma of Joe’s woodsy after-shave assailed her, and she dropped the shirt hastily onto the bed.

Shape up,
she told herself sternly,
you have
f
ive kids to bundle off to school and a story to write. This morning is no different than any other.

It wasn’t, either. Noel couldn’t find his math homework without a full-scale search of the entire house; Ben’s left sneaker had miraculously disappeared; the oatmeal was lumpy and the tooth fairy had completely forgotten about Theo’s latest missing tooth.

“Probably Joe scared him away,” Jennifer pronounced solemnly be
tween bites of oatmeal, when Th
eo appeared disgruntled, holding his tooth accusingly in his hand.

“He left too early, dopey,” Theo argued. “You weren’t even in bed yet.”

“Huh-uh,” Jennifer denied, swinging her blond mop in an emphatic negative motion. “He came back. I seed him. He was sleepin’ on the couch.”

“He was?” All eyes looked up from the oatmeal and focused on Jennifer.

Liv groaned inwardly and said, “Hurry up and eat.” But no one paid any attention.

Jennifer was basking in all her glory. “Yup, he was,” she went on. The head bobbed positively this time. “I got up to go to the bathroom, and I looked downstairs, and there he was!” Her eyes were wide and starry. “Snorin’,” she added.

“Gosh, Steve Scott on our couch,” Noel breathed after a moment’s silence. He looked at his mother with new respect.

“Wait’ll the kids at school hear about that,” Stephen marveled. “Why did I have to go to dumb cello yesterday, anyway?”

“The kids aren’t going to hear,” Liv said firmly. “And cello is not dumb.”

“Compared to Steve Scott it is,” Stephen said glumly as he dissected another of the oatmeal lumps.

“Nevertheless, what happens in this house is not for public consumption,” Liv warned them, glaring.

“What’s that mean?” Theo asked.

“It means shut up,” Noel explained. “Or else.”

Theo looked up at Liv, all innocence. “Does it, Mommy?”

“Yes.” The last thing she wanted was a story going around abo
ut Joe Harrington spending the ni
ght at her house. The sooner it was forgotten the better By everyone. Especially by herself.

T
yping a matter-of-fact story about Joe was just what she needed, Liv decided when she dropped her purse into her desk drawer and faced the reality of another day’s work. It would put him into proper perspective and eradicate all those fleeting images of boyish grins and tired eyes and, heaven help her, those warm and teasing lips that had plagued her all the way to work. She sat down and prepared to get to work, to exorcise his ghostly presence and reduce him to a neat ten-inch story.

She had almost succeeded when Frances puffed breathlessly into the office, flung her ever-present knitting onto her desk and demanded, “Tell all, Liv. Is he every bit as gorgeous in person as on the screen?”

“Oh, definitely,” Liv said coolly, with much more disinterest than she actually felt. “Here.” She ripped the sheet out of the typewriter. “You can be the first on your block to know.”

Frances snatched the paper and eased her substantial form into her chair, her eyes never leaving the paper in front of her. When she finished it, she looked up and pushed her glasses higher on her nose. “Ve
r
y cagey,” she said. “Very noncommital. Now, tell me, what’s he
reall
y
like?”

“Honestly, Frances,” Liv grinned, pleased that she’d done what she had set out to do, which was to say nothing scandalous or titillating at all, “he’s really like that.” He was, too. She had tried to present his sincerity,, his commitment to the cause of peace, and not just concentrate on his sexual escapades or his fabulous body or even his acting and directing ability. She did, however, pay lip service to his charm.

“I’m sure he is,” Frances said. ‘“Boyish, charmin
g, sincere,’—oh, definitely. But
—” she lowered her voice
to a conspiratorial whisper—“did he make a pass at
you?”

“What?” Trust Frances not to beat around the bush. “Of course not!” she lied. She was certainly not going to mention that humiliating shower-and-shave offer.

“Why not?” Now it was Frances who sounded offended. “You’re young and pretty, and he’s definitely as sexy as they come.”

He was that, Liv thought. “Perhaps I’m just not his type.”

Frances looked at her as though she’d forgot her mind when she came to work that morning. “All right,” she said on a note of faked injury, “if that’s the way you want it, don’t tell me, then.”

Liv grinned. “Oh, no you don’t, you old fraud. You’re not going to coerce me into telling you anything that way. You read everything important in my story. Really. We had a nice chat. I drove him to the speech. He spoke. That was that. But I will admit, he was better than I expected.” Further than that she was not prepared to go. There was no telling what Frances’s busily embroidering mind could make out of their dinner and Joe’s night on her couch.

“If you say so,” Frances said reluctantly, but she still gave Liv the occasional suspicious glance while she b
u
sied herself setting up the weekly
TV
section.

“I do,” Liv told her flatly, and hoped that that was the end of it. She put her story on Marv’s desk well before ten and gathered up her things so that she could drive over to the university and do a story on the string quartet which had come to give a recital and conduct a workshop. It was routine and yet pleasurable, moving about, talking to interesting people, getting a little sun in the process.
Soothing,
Liv thought,
Just what I need after the tumult of last night's interview.

“Off again?” Frances queried.

“I’ll be over at the music department at the university,” Liv said, “if anyone needs me.” The kids, she meant.

“Like Joe Harrington?”

Liv rolled her eyes. “Of course,” she said airily because Frances had Joe Harrington on the brain. Then
a
sudden impish grin crossed her face. “If he calls, tell him he still owes me twenty-six more,” she told Frances, laughing.

Frances’s jaw dropped. “Twenty-six what?”

“He’ll know,” Liv replied, breezing past her out the door. She knew full well that Joe Harrington was a once-in-a-lifetime experience, already a thing of the past, an event to tell her grandchildren about. What on earth would he ever call her for? To get his jeans and sweat shirt back? Hardly. He could certainly afford new ones. But it had been worth saying, just to see the expression on Frances’s face.

F
rances could have said the same about her.

“I told him,” Frances said the minute Liv walked back in the news room door. “And he said to tell you he always paid up. What in heaven’s name does he mean?”

“Who?” Liv asked, her mind still full of Paganini and a violist with a charming Portuguese accent.

“Joe Harrington. Who else?”

“What?” Liv sank into her chair, stunned, the Portuguese violinist abruptly consigned to oblivion. “Joe Harrington called here? Me?” It wasn’t possible.

“Well, you said—”

“I was joking,” she replied weakly.

“Nevertheless, I’d know that voice anywhere.” Frances’s eyes went all dreamy again. “Such vibrance. S
o
sexy.”

“For God’s sake, what did he say?”

“Not much,” Frances replied with a shrug. “He wanted to talk to you. I told him you weren’t here, and I gave him your message.”

Liv went crimson, remembering the message.

“And he said he’d call back later.” She gave Liv one of her doting-mother smiles. “
I
knew you’d make an impression.”

Liv shook her head, confused. This couldn’t be happening, not when she’d spent all morning putting him out of her mind. “He must’ve left something in my car,” she improvised, then thought, maybe he really did want his clothes back!

“What’s up with the quartet?” Marv asked, materializing beside Liv’s desk, cigar in place in the corner of his mouth.

“Quartet?” He might as well have been speaking to her in Hungarian.

“Where’ve you been all morning, then?”

Liv shook her head blearily again, like a drunk come-to to find herself in an unknown neighborhood, then fumbled through her purse, her mind in as great a disarray as her bag.

“Don’t mind her,” Frances explained. “She just had a call from Joe Harrington.”

“No kidding.” Marv looked impressed. “Another story?”

“No.” Liv was positive about that, then wished she weren’t, for what other reason would Marv think he had for calling her?

“Oh.” Marv regarded her curiously, chewing on the cigar. “He
did
want more from you than the interview then.”

“Marv!” Liv glared at him, mortified. How dare he say such incriminating things in front of Frances?

He spread his hands, looking sheepish and even had the grace to blush. “Sorry,” he said, turning to beat a hasty retreat to his office. “Let me have that material on the quartet, if you remember who they are, as soon as you can.”

“Sooooo,” Frances said, eyeing Liv narrowly. “He didn’t make a pass, huh?”

“Oh, you know Joe Harrington,” Liv mumbled, still mortified. “He says, ‘Pass the p
eas,’ and it sounds like a pass.
”

“Where in an interview do you say a thing like ‘Pass the peas,’?” Frances wanted to know.

“That was just an example,” Liv retorted irritably. “Don’t be so literal. You know what I mean—pass the peas, I need a towel—”

Frances’s eyes grew like mushrooms, almost popping out of her head. “This gets more intriguing by the minute.”

“Not really,” Liv said, ducking her head to rummage through her bag for the quartet notes and to avoid Frances’s speculative gaze.

“Well, I think there’s hope,” Frances said. “Especially if he’s calling you.”