Home Field Advantage (14 page)

Marian recognized the name of
a famous Arabian stud. She knew enough to ask a few intelligent questions, which
Isaiah willingly answered. She had learned more about the scope of John and
Isaiah's farm by the time he was done. They must have invested a huge chunk of
capital, she realized. A scary amount. She was left feeling mildly envious, and
even more like a poor little girl out of her element.

John McRae was a rich man.
The few dreams she had let herself indulge in seemed even more ludicrous now.
She wasn't the kind of woman he would give his heart to. She remembered the way
he had talked about his wife. Alive, exciting, reckless. Not tired, desperate,
and burdened with children. He would want a woman who could travel with him,
mix with the wealthy people he must know, think nothing of having her picture
in People magazine or Sports Illustrated. So why did he flirt with her? Why had
he kissed her?

She had to wonder if he was
the kind of man who couldn't resist flirting. Maybe he smiled at all moderately
attractive women with that glint in his cool gray eyes.

And maybe she should quit
thinking about it—and him—one way or the other. She should concentrate on
finding a rental and on being a good mother. To Emma, too, as long as she was
here.

*****

The house was too silent.
Marian had barely realized that when she heard the first scream.

"Mommy! Mommy!"

She took the stairs two at a
time, vaguely aware that Emma had popped out of the living room, where she had
been watching a cartoon in the VCR. The sobs escalated and Marian reached the
top of the stairs in a panic.

Oh, Lord. She saw the problem
before she saw her children. Water was running out of the bathroom into the
carpeted hall. She stopped dead in the bathroom door. Inside, Anna and Jesse
stood screaming, wearing their T-shirts and nothing else. Water poured out of
the toilet over their bare feet. Thank heavens, Marian saw no sign they had
actually used the toilet.

She was able to turn the
water off behind the bowl, though the flow was already slowing. A worse
calamity averted, she picked up both almost-naked children. Their bottoms were
slippery on her wet hands.

"Okay, okay, it's all
right. It's just water. It won't hurt you."

The wails slowed. Emma
appeared in the doorway, her face bright and interested. "Wow. You could
go swimming in here!"

Marian rolled her eyes.
"Don't give them ideas." She went on soothing, "Hey, hush. It's
all right. It's just water. Nothing's hurt."

Except the carpet in the hall
and the grout between the elegant gray floor tiles and maybe the toilet. None
of it hers, she thought grimly. What had happened?

Unfortunately, she had an unpleasant
suspicion. The twins had begged to play with Emma's Barbie house for just a few
minutes before bedtime. They always had been attracted to water, but they knew
they weren't supposed to play in the toilet. Which didn't mean that wasn't
exactly what they had been doing.

She finally inserted a
question between sobs. "Were you guys playing in the bathroom?"

Jesse cried harder. Anna's
lower lip stuck out even further and quivered. Neither answered the question.

"Did you put something
down the toilet?"

The sobs rose.

"Guys, answer me,"
Marian said sternly. "What did you stuff down the toilet?"

"Good question,"
said a deep voice.

Marian started and turned
toward the door. Looking over Emma's shoulder was John. He must have come
straight from Seattle, where the game had been played in the Kingdome. He wore
a white shirt and slacks, the narrow silk tie still around his neck but tugged
loose. In one large hand was a gray felt Stetson. He was startlingly handsome
and suave...

Whereas she had water running
over her canvas tennis shoes and a wet, naked child on each hip. Worse yet, it
was his bathroom. Marian was speechless.

His gaze didn't waver, though
one dark brow rose quizzically. The twins' howls rose in response.

"Hello," Marian
said weakly.

"Well, I had a good
weekend," John said. "Looks like it beat yours."

"It was fine, until just
this minute," she said from between clenched teeth. "Let me wade out
of here."

She squelched past John
without looking at him and stalked into the twins' room. She deposited Anna and
Jesse onto the bed and tilted their chins up. "I promise not to get too
mad. But you have to tell me, or we can't fix the toilet.

"It was Rabbit!"
Jesse began to cry again. "He wanted a bath!"

Marian groaned. A double
disaster. John McRae's bathroom, and Jesse's rabbit. He loved that rabbit and
wouldn't go to bed without it. She might never have a decent night's sleep
again. Although that was the least of her worries. She couldn't afford a
plumber and a carpet cleaner. But she had to offer.

Of course, John stood in the
doorway. "Rabbit, huh?"

"It's about this
big." She held up her hands to demonstrate.

"I hope to God I can
reach it." His voice sounded strange. Gruff, as though he were suppressing
anger. Or...laughter?

He went on, in that same odd
voice. "You know, when I turned in the driveway I thought how good it was
to be home. I imagined walking in the door, and the kids all scrubbed in their
pyjamas would come meet me, and you'd offer to heat some leftovers, and maybe
you'd have coffee and a piece of pie with me while we talked over the
weekend."

Marian squeezed her fingers
together and waited.

"Instead, I hear these
wails. Water's pouring out of the bathroom and you're standing in the middle of
it with these dripping kids who are screaming at the top of their lungs.
Fantasy versus reality. But..." He shrugged. "What the hell."

His normally imperturbable
gray eyes were twinkling. He was laughing. Marian didn't know whether to be
offended or grateful. From his point of view, she probably had looked funny.

Something on her face must
have been the straw that broke the camel's back, because suddenly he began to
chuckle, then laugh heartily. The next thing she knew, Marian was laughing,
too. Reluctantly at first, then wholeheartedly. She could just see Emma in the
hall behind her dad, gaping at the two adults with such astonishment, Marian
laughed even harder. Stunned, the twins had quit crying. There was just John
and Marian, howling with laughter.

Finally they subsided. His
chest still rumbling with laughter, John said, "Come on, let's get the
kids to bed. Emma, have you had your bath?" That struck him as so funny,
he started to laugh again. Emma was beginning to look annoyed. She hated being
left out of anything.

"I didn't play in the
toilet!"

"And you did take a
bath," Marian reminded her. Then she sighed and turned to Anna and Jesse.
"You know you shouldn't have played in the toilet."

Jesse nodded; Anna sulked.

"It's bedtime now. We'll
do our best to rescue Rabbit, but you'll have to do without him tonight. I'll
bet Anna will share her flower blanket."

Anna frowned, and Jesse began
to cry again.

It was a long half hour later
before Marian tiptoed out of their room to find John in the bathroom, sloshing
up the mess with a mop. At least he had changed to jeans.

Horrified, she said,
"I'm sorry! Please, let me do that."

"I'm not hearing another
apology, am I?"

"I owe you one,"
she said resolutely.

He gave a dismissive gesture
with one hand, then began squeezing the mop out into a bucket. "Emma did
the same thing once. Caused a mess you wouldn't believe. This is nothing."

Marian picked up the bucket.
"At least let me go empty the water. We sure can't pour it down the
toilet."

He frowned. "It's
heavy."

"And I'm capable,"
she said firmly.

Their eyes met and there was
an instant charge in the air. "I know you are," he said. "I've
never doubted it."

She had to wrench herself
away, as though he were a magnet and she a tiny sliver of metal inexorably
attracted. Marian didn't like the feeling. She had survived the last man in her
life by being strong. John had such charisma and strength of his own, she felt
powerless in comparison.

They got the bathroom floor
dry, and John produced a metal snake to probe down the toilet. Rabbit was
stuck just out of sight, thank heavens, and at last John pulled the stuffed
animal out to hold him dubiously up by one ear.

"Is he beyond
salvation?"

"He was pretty pitiful
to start with," Marian said, lifting up the bucket for the soggy, faded
white rabbit with drooping ears. "I'll toss him in the washing machine. A
bath won't hurt him."

"Good." John
dropped the lid of the toilet and said, "Well, how about that piece of pie
and coffee?"

"I..." Marian
stopped, feeling hopelessly inadequate. "Thank you."

"Kids do things like
that. No harm's done."

"Except the
carpet."

"I'll call a cleaning
service. No big deal."

"Maybe not," she
said, "but we're not exactly the perfect housemates."

"Damn it, Marian, if you
don't quit apologizing..."

Her stomach clenched.
"What? Are you going to throw us out if I say I'm sorry too often?"
Oh, God, why had she said that? Marian wished desperately to call the words
back.

His eyes were no longer clear
at all, but a dark, smoky gray. "You know better than that."

She turned jerkily away,
scarcely realizing that she stared at herself in the mirror. "I have to
thank you! It's all I have to give!"

John took one long stride and
his reflected image towered over hers. "I don't want your gratitude."

"Then what do you
want?" She turned her head to stare up at him, feeling as though she were
begging, but unable to prevent herself. "Why are you doing so much for
us?"

"Because I like
you," he said roughly. "Is that so hard to believe? Because you're
good for Emma. Because I'd be asking you out to dinner in any other
circumstances. Because I'm attracted to you."

Marian was stunned into
silence. She had expected either platitudes or bluntness that would kill her
dreams. Not a kind of honesty that scared her instead. "But you
haven't..." she whispered.

His voice had become raw.
"Because it would be blackmail. You said yourself you couldn't say no,
didn't you? There's a time and a place, and this isn't it."

There was no answer. Could
she have said no? Had she hoped she wouldn't be able to?

"I'm sor—" The
words weren't all the way out before she saw his violent response. His eyes
blazed and he slapped one hand on the tiled counter.

"God damn it, Marian!
Are you trying to provoke me?"

"No! I'm sor—" and
she covered her mouth with her hand. When he glowered at her, she glared back
and let her hand drop to her side. "If I can't thank you and I can't say
I'm sorry, what am I supposed to say?"

A muscle at the corner of his
mouth twitched and then he closed his eyes. "What if I apologize?"

"Please don't!" she
said, appalled.

When he looked at her again,
the fire in his eyes was damped, though it still smoldered. "Then how
about if we start over? I'll pretend I just walked in the door. Is there
anything I could warm up for dinner?"

"I'll do it," she
said quickly, then realized he might prefer to be alone so that he could
pretend he wasn't stuck with her and the horrible twosome. She tacked on a
belated, "Unless you'd rather..."

"I'd like to have
company." He actually smiled, but ruefully. "Just so you don't want
to talk about football."

"No." She took a
deep breath. "We watched you yesterday."

"And?"

"I hardly understood a
word you said."

"Then I'll have to
conduct a workshop one of these days. You might find some of the terminology
useful."

Without thinking, she said,
"Like home field advantage?"

He grinned, his face lighting
with that wicked, dangerously masculine charm. "Exactly. Speaking of
which...what do you say we move this game to someplace besides the
bathroom?"

"I..." Marian
glanced around, startled to realize that they were still squeezed in the relatively
tiny room, then felt herself smiling back at him. "The kitchen," she
agreed. "And maybe we should call a time out."

He made the referee's signal,
a T, with both hands. "See? Your vocabulary isn't as limited as you think.
There's hope for you."

"Thanks," she
retorted, and gingerly stepped across the wet carpet to head down the hall.
"But don't forget who's going to cook your dinner."

From uncomfortably close
behind her, John said, "I don't have a worry in the world. You have to
express all that gratitude somehow, right?"