Time Enough for Love (6 page)

She saw a waiter approach Charles and hand him
a cellular phone. He spoke for a moment, then handed the phone back, decidedly displeased. He said something to the waiter, gesturing at the place setting in front of him. The waiter nodded, and removed the extra silverware and glasses. It didn’t take the detective ability of a Sherlock Holmes to figure out that Charles’s lunch date had called to cancel.

As Maggie watched, Charles glanced at a menu and ordered quickly and seemingly without much regard for what he would be eating.

She crossed the street, wanting to get nearer, needing to take a closer look. After all, she’d never seen Chuck and Charles in the same place at the same time. They could well be one and the same.

On a whim, she pulled open the door to Papa John’s and went inside.

Charles was sitting at his table, paying no attention to what was going on around him, writing something in a small notebook.

Waving aside the waiter who was coming toward her, Maggie took a deep breath and headed for Charles, counting on the fact that she’d come up with some real-sounding excuse for being there when the time came to open her mouth.

“Hey, Chuck,” she said, slipping into the chair next to his.

He looked up, startled.

Part of Maggie still hoped that this was one great big practical joke. He would meet her eyes sheepishly and grin and admit that Katy, Maggie’s college roommate, had coerced him into playing this silly trick on her.

But there was absolutely no recognition in his eyes. None at all.

Dear God, he was Chuck—but he wasn’t. His eyes were the same liquid shade of brown, his nose the same perfect shape. His hair was shorter, though, and the lines around his eyes and mouth were less pronounced. He looked younger. About seven years younger, she’d guess.
Exactly
seven years younger …

“I’m sorry,” he said. His voice was the same too—a sexy baritone, resonant with a rich timbre. “I don’t think we’ve … 
Have
we met?”

His scar. The thin line that marked his left cheekbone, directly underneath his eye. It was gone. Or rather, perhaps more accurately, it hadn’t yet appeared.

“Actually, no,” Maggie said.

He was looking at her as if he were afraid she might be insane, and for a moment Maggie felt that could well be true. Sitting here like this, talking to him like this … This wasn’t the way they’d met.
Chuck had told her they’d first met at that party at Data Tech. She was probably messing things up royally, but now that she was here, now that she was face-to-face with Charles, she didn’t want to leave.

She was fascinated. This
was
Chuck she was sitting across from. But he was a younger Chuck. A Chuck without that grim tightness to his mouth, without that tightly clenched jaw, and without that weary desperation in his eyes.

“I was being followed,” she fabricated, praying that God would forgive her for lying, “by this really creepy guy—every time I turned around, he was right behind me. He was talking to himself, saying all kinds of really weird things. I saw you sitting in here all alone, and I thought maybe you wouldn’t mind helping me out by pretending to be, you know, my significant other or something, so this guy will leave me alone once and for all …?”

His gaze shifted and he squinted slightly as he looked out the window into the glaring brightness of the crowded street. “Is he still out there?”

Maggie turned to look. “I … don’t know.” She hated lying like this. She was amazed that she could come up with a story so quickly with those disturbing brown eyes gazing at her. But there was no way she could tell him the truth.

“Well, just in case he’s still watching …” Charles leaned forward and kissed her.

He kissed her.

On the mouth.

His lips were warm and soft and he tasted like lemonade.

Maggie was caught so off guard, she could do nothing but laugh.

He laughed too.

His smile was incredible, and Maggie realized she’d never truly seen Chuck smile. Sure, he’d made an attempt. He’d twisted his lips in a vague imitation, but it had been nothing like this. Something had happened over the past seven years to make him forget how.

“Maybe we better do that again,” he suggested, his grin widening. “Make sure this man—whoever he is—really gets the message.”

Charles started to lean forward again, and whether he was only teasing or not, Maggie would never know, because temporary insanity overcame her and she leaned forward, too, closing the gap between them.

And then he was kissing her again. Not a swift gentle brushing of lips like the last kiss, but a longer, deeper kiss. Maggie felt a jolt of disbelief as his tongue swept into her mouth. Not disbelief that he
would kiss her that way, but that she would welcome such a kiss, that she would kiss him back with such abandon, and most of all, that she wanted that kiss to go on and on and on.

Forever.

It had to be insanity—she’d never do something like kiss a total stranger without having first lost her mind. Except he wasn’t a total stranger. He was so much like Chuck. A Chuck who still remembered how to smile and laugh.

“Well,” Charles breathed as he pulled back to look into her eyes. “Yeah. That was pretty damn territorial. I think if the man who was following you was watching that, he’s probably convinced that you’re not single and … are you, by any chance, single?”

His eyes were filled with a molten heat. Maggie had seen traces of the same fire in Chuck’s eyes, but Chuck was quick to try to hide it, while Charles had no qualms against letting her see his attraction.

She cleared her throat as she straightened up, gently freeing herself from his grasp. “Yeah,” she said, having some trouble catching her breath. “Yes, I sort of am. Single.”

Chuck had told her that the physical attraction between them had been instant when they met. He hadn’t been kidding.

Charles picked up on her evasive wording. “Sort of?”

There was no way she could explain that over the past day or so she had been fighting the totally insane urge to have a love affair with the man he would become in seven years. Fortunately, he let it go.

“Do you have a name?” he asked.

“Maggie,” she told him.

“Maggie,” he repeated. The way he said it, it sounded like a caress.

“Winthrop,” she said, moistening her suddenly dry lips with the tip of her tongue. “Maggie Winthrop.”

Charles held out his hand. “Pleased to meet you, Maggie Winthrop.”

His hand was big and warm, with long, graceful fingers. Instead of shaking her hand as she expected, he lifted her fingers to his lips and kissed the back of her hand.

Maggie had to laugh again. Again, from knowing the grim and seemingly dangerous man he would become, she never would have dreamed he could be so utterly flirtatious. And smooth. He was
very
smooth, as if he’d had a great amount of practice using his considerable charms to seduce. And his charms were considerable, as he darn well knew. He didn’t let go of her hand as he smiled at her again.

“I’m Charles—”

“Della Croce,” she finished for him. “I know.”

He froze for just a fraction of a second. “You do?”

“You work over at Data Tech,” she explained. “I do too. Sort of.”

He released her hand. “There’s that ‘sort of’ again.”

“I’m a freelance writer. I just signed a contract with Data Tech to do a couple of projects including the annual report. I’ll be in and out over the next few months until all the jobs are complete.”

He shifted in his seat, his gaze intense, sharp with curiosity and a hint of wariness. “As far as I know, I’ve got nothing to do with the annual report. What made you recognize me?”

“I’ve seen you around. That, combined with gossip heard at the coffee machine …” Maggie lied again. Still, this one wasn’t a very big lie. She had no doubt that this man was talked about frequently as the women in the office took their morning coffee break.

He laughed. “If it’s gossip, it’s probably not true.”

He was still gazing at her, and despite the warmth in his eyes, she was struck by his coolness, his reserve. It was odd, really. There was heat in his
eyes—heat from desire and attraction. But at the same time he held himself aloof, keeping himself emotionally distanced.

Maggie had seen that same distance in Chuck, she realized, but it wasn’t as glaringly obvious. With Chuck, it was hidden beneath his burning anger. It was dwarfed by his desperate need to set things right.

In a burst of nervous energy so much like Chuck’s, Charles drummed his fingers on the table for the briefest of moments before forcing himself to stop. It was a gesture so like Chuck’s because Charles
was
Chuck. Or rather, at one time, Chuck had been Charles.

“You called me Chuck,” he remembered suddenly. “When you first sat down.”

“I knew your name was Charles, I assumed Chuck was a nickname.”

“I don’t have a nickname. I’ve just always been Charles.”

“Even when you were a child?”

Something shifted in his eyes, and Maggie got the impression of a drawbridge being raised and clanging shut with a metallic thud against the very private outer defenses of an impenetrable castle. “No,” he said. “Not even when I was a child.”

“No nicknames, huh? None at all?” she asked.
“Come on. There must be something.” She wanted to rock the foundations of that castle. “What do women call you when you take them to bed?”

For one short moment Charles dropped his guard, and Maggie could see honest emotion in his eyes. Surprise, and genuine amusement. But then heat sparked, drowning out all else. “I don’t know,” he murmured. “Want to try it and see?”

She was treading upon extremely dangerous territory.

Still she couldn’t forget what Chuck had told her. She’d dated this deliciously sexy man, and because he wouldn’t share more than the physical with her, she’d kept their relationship from becoming intimate.

She still wanted more from him.

“Can I talk you into having lunch with me?” he asked.

Maggie shook her head no, glancing at her watch. “I have to go. I have a one o’clock meeting.” But instead of standing up, she leaned forward. “Charles, tell me something. Tell me just one thing about yourself that you’ve never told anyone before.”

He hesitated just long enough so that for a moment Maggie thought he might actually do it.

But he didn’t. “I hate carrot cake,” he said.

She laughed to cover her disappointment. “The fact that you hate carrot cake is a deeply personal secret?”

“Actually, yes, it is.”

Maggie shook her head in despair as she stood up. “Thanks for … helping me.”

He rose to his feet, and once again she was struck by his height. “Wait—”

She started for the door. “I really have to go.”

“Without giving me your phone number? I’d like to see you again, Maggie.”

She turned and looked up at Charles Della Croce. “Oh, you’ll see me again,” she told him. “You can count on it.”

M
AGGIE GOT TO
the mall at seven-thirty.

Chuck had left a message on her answering machine, asking her to meet him there at six, but she’d had a dinner meeting scheduled with a client. It was a meeting that she couldn’t get out of. Or maybe she simply didn’t
want
to get out of it. Maybe she was intentionally trying to keep her distance from this man.

Lord knows she’d let herself get a little too close to Charles this afternoon.

As Maggie hurried into the air-conditioned coolness of the shopping mall, she wondered if Chuck would still be waiting for her. She hadn’t had any
way to contact him to tell him about her meeting, and he hadn’t called back.

He was sitting on one of the benches near the movie theater, reading a book, just the way he’d said he’d be. Maggie felt a surge of emotion at the sight of him. It may have been relief. Or it may have been something else entirely.

He stood up as she approached.

“Sorry I’m so late,” she told him. “I had a meeting that couldn’t be rescheduled.”

“I figured it was something like that,” he said. “Did you eat?”

“Yeah. Did you?” Why was she so nervous? Just standing here talking to him, saying nothing of any importance whatsoever, was making her feel totally on edge.

“I grabbed something from the food court about a half hour ago.”

Maybe it was the way he was looking at her, with his usual high-powered intensity. It was as if he were memorizing every detail of her—face, clothes, hair, everything. And all
she
could think about was that he was surely noticing every wrinkle in her denim skirt, every chip in the polish on her toenails, every scuff mark in the leather of her sandals.

“Come on,” he said, slipping his book into the
back pocket of his jeans. “There’s something I want you to try on.”

Maggie had to laugh. “Are you kidding? We’re here to go
shopping
?”

One side of his mouth turned up in wry half smile. “You don’t think I asked you to meet me at the mall simply for the atmosphere, do you?”

“Actually, I didn’t think about it,” Maggie admitted, hurrying to keep up.

“We’re here to buy you a dress to wear to the Data Tech party.”

Maggie stopped short. “I don’t need a dress. I’ve already figured out what I’m going to wear—”

“Black pants with a tuxedo-style jacket,” Chuck told her, “over a shirt made of some kind of shimmery material.”

“Yeah,” she said slowly. “That’s what I’m going to wear. It’s formal without being too feminine. It’s businesslike. It’s not too …”

“Sexy?” he supplied.

Maggie lifted her chin. “That’s right. In order to compete in the male-dominated world of business, women have to be careful not to—”

“I happen to think it made you look incredibly sexy.”

Maggie started walking again, trying to hide the
way his softly spoken words affected her. “Then why are we buying me a new dress?”

Chuck glanced at her. “Because over the past seven years there’s been a time or two when you went all out and got really dressed up and wore a … I don’t know, maybe you’d call it a gown. It was some kind of really fancy dress and you wore your hair up and …” And each time he had seen her dressed like that, it had damn near stopped his heart.