Love Came Just in Time (43 page)

“He's you, silly. Who did you think he was?”

“I had no idea. Joe told me to look close to home. I figured he was some mountain man, hiding in your woods.”

“No, he's a writer, hiding in my kitchen.”

“Speaking of kitchens, do you want dinner?”

“Only if I don't have to cook it.”

He sighed and rose. “A man's work is never done. If I have to go, you have to come. The least you can do is praise me while I work.”

It seemed a fair trade to her.

WHEN FRIDAY NIGHT arrived, Sam found himself pacing in the living room, waiting for Sydney to come out of the bathroom. He paced for other reasons as well. He'd spent Wednesday night snuggling with her on the couch while she'd slept contentedly in his arms. Yesterday they hadn't spent a moment apart. Sam had the feeling he was going to have to move to a hotel until the wedding.

Assuming, that is, that Sydney wanted to get married.

He stopped his pacing once he caught sight of her standing near the fireplace. His jaw went slack.

“Oh, no,” he said, shaking his head. “You aren't going anywhere dressed like that.”

Her face fell immediately and she turned away. Sam strode across the room and caught her. He turned her around in his arms and tipped her face up.

“You're stunning. Breathtaking. Exquisite. And by the time the evening is over, I'm going to be bruised, bloodied, and broken from fighting off all those wilderness men who'll want you. Where is that gunnysack I found for you?”

She smiled hesitantly. “You like this?”

“Sydney, you look sexy in jeans, but this?” He stepped back and looked her over from head to toe. She was wearing a long navy blue dress and no-nonsense work boots. He was quite certain he'd never seen anything like it in New York. He was even more certain he'd never seen anything sexier. He sighed deeply. “You knock my socks off.”

She didn't look all that convinced. “I don't know how long I can take this whole dance thing. We don't have to stay long, do we?”

“We'll only stay as long as you want to. You say the word and we're out of there.”

 

 

THE TOWN HALL was filled with Flaherty folk of all ages, and the band was already warming up with a few golden oldies. Sam greeted the Clan and his Ladies Aid Society. Sydney greeted the Clan and Joe. And then she and Sam went out to dance and they didn't pay attention to anyone else.

Sydney was asked to dance by plenty of men. She refused each one. Sam avoided being pinched by Ruth Newark and made it plain to hopeful mothers that he was off the market. As if they couldn't have told that by the way he was holding Sydney as they danced. Even the Clan seemed to accept it. Grudgingly, of course. Joe was simply beaming.

Sam couldn't take his eyes off the woman in his arms, and he found that he couldn't let go of her either. But he'd already made up his mind that she deserved a wedding before anything else, so dancing with her in public seemed the safest way to hold her and not get carried away.

He geared himself up on the way home to pop the question. His palms were sweaty. His heart was racing. In fact, his chest hurt so badly he feared he might be having a heart attack. A man didn't make it to the ripe old age of thirty-five without having had a healthy aversion to that “Will you marry me?” question.

He took a deep breath. His chest pains were from something he'd eaten at the dance. His palms were sweating because he didn't want Sydney to say no.

“All right,” he said, with another deep breath. “Sydney, will you marry me?”

There was no answer.

Did she have something stuck in her throat? Had her powers of speech been swiped by aliens? Sam scowled as he looked to his right to find out why in the world she hadn't answered him.

Her mouth was open. Her eyes were closed. Her head was lolling back on the headrest.

Great. He let out the breath he'd been holding and turned his attention back to the road. This probably hadn't been the most romantic way to do it, anyway. He would gird up his loins yet again the next day and see if he couldn't pop the question while the lady in question wasn't drooling.

And he hoped this wasn't a sign.

 

 

THE NEXT MORNING Sam stumbled out into the kitchen to find Sydney standing over the stove, making pancakes. She looked incredibly well rested. Sam felt his eyes narrow, which wasn't all that difficult since he hadn't slept a wink.

Sydney turned and smiled at him. “Sleep well?”

“No.”

“Okay,” she said slowly. “Would breakfast help?”

“I doubt it.”

“What's your problem?”

Sam dug his fists into his eyes and rubbed vigorously. “Lots on my mind. It's nothing that concerns you.”

Sydney's spatula dipped, and she looked as if he'd slapped her. Sam found, to his faint dismay, that he couldn't seem to find anything to say to fix that. He'd spent the night going back and forth, wondering if he'd lost his mind or his heart.

He wanted to marry her.

But would she want him? Or would she just chalk up his devotion to too much cabin fever beginning to prey on his overworked imagination?

The phone rang. Sam had never been more grateful in his life.

“I'll get it,” Sydney said, but he reached it first.

“Hello?” he said.

“Sam, I'm at the airport,” a crisp voice announced with all the diction that six generations of finishing-school attendees could instill in their posterity's genes.

Sam blinked in surprise. “Marjorie?”

The sigh from the other end of the phone almost blew his hair off his scalp. “Who else? I've come to see about the condition of your revisions.”

Revisions? Sam frowned. Marjorie would hardly make a trip all the way to Alaska to check on his revisions. She was obviously on a mission to see what he was up to. But there was no sense in going into that over the phone. “All right,” he said, resigned. “I'll come get you.”

“Hurry,” came the demand. “I'm appalled by the dander floating in the air—inside the building, mind you.”

Sam hung up the phone before he said something he would regret. Marjorie was his agent, after all, and she was reported to be a very good one. She was also his sister, which meant it would be very embarrassing to be dumped as a client.

He looked at Sydney and wondered what she would say when she learned about the life he'd left behind. And then he looked at her and really saw her. And he knew all over again why he loved her.

Because she loved him. Samuel MacLeod, struggling writer, respectable cook, and pitiful handyman.

He took her by the shoulders, hauled her to him, and kissed her smartly on the mouth.

“I've got to go get my agent. But I'll be back as soon as I can. I have something to ask you.”

She blinked. “Okay.”

“I'll find her a hotel, then come home.”

“Oh, she can stay here,” Sydney offered. “If you want.”

Sam paused. He wasn't sure he wanted them in the same enclosed space before he had a chance to explain a few things to Sydney, but maybe it was best to get all his cards on the table before he asked her to marry him. He smiled weakly.

“She won't stay long. I promise.”

“It's fine. Really.”

“I'll kick her out in thirty-six hours, forty-eight max. Can you put up with her that long?”

“Of course.”

“I'll be back late,” he said.

“It's supposed to snow. Maybe you should stay overnight.”

An evening alone with his sister? The thought was terrifying, but even more terrifying was the thought of getting stuck in a snowdrift with her.

“All right, tomorrow,” he agreed. “I'll miss you.”

She nodded and held him tightly. “Can Marjorie cook?”

“She studied cooking with some of France's finest chefs.” Why that was okay for Marjorie but not him was something he'd never understood, but getting all riled over the sexism of it wouldn't do him any good at the moment. “She can make a soufflé that'll just knock your socks off.”

He hurried and packed an overnight bag, gave Sydney one last kiss, and headed off toward Anchorage. This was a good thing. He'd get some input from his agent, get his life out on the table with his future wife, then get on with things.

 

SYDNEY WATCHED SAM drive away, and her heart sank. She had no idea who Marjorie truly was. Sam said she was his agent. Was she also an old girlfriend? Sydney couldn't bear to think about it. All she knew was that Marjorie used to be a chef. She was probably beautiful and she was from New York.

Sydney began to pace. Marjorie and Sam had probably been lovers. He probably had plans to go back to New York and sleep with her some more.

Sydney almost cried.

Then she stiffened her spine and marched herself into the kitchen. A soufflé, was it? She pulled out a cookbook and looked up the recipe. And she frowned.

Eggs. Her old nemeses.

Well, they wouldn't get the best of her this time. She'd make a damn soufflé if it took her the next twenty-four hours to do so. Then Sam would see Marjorie had nothing on her.

And then he would stay.

SAM DROVE BACK to Flaherty, skillfully avoiding the potholes. He'd managed to do the same with the verbal land mines that his sister had scattered in front of him—up till now. But he sensed his luck was about to run out.

“Just what are you so mysterious about?” Marjorie asked tersely.

There was no sense in postponing the inevitable any longer. Sam took a deep breath. “I'm in love.”

“Oh, please, Sam,” Marjorie said, rolling her eyes with enough force to stick them up in her head permanently. “Please be serious.”

“I am serious, Marj. She's the best thing that ever happened to me—”

“She runs a trail guide service, Sam. She's out alone in the wilderness with horny executives for months at a time.”

Sam fixed his blond companion with a steely look. “Watch it, Marjorie. I have no qualms about letting you out right here and watching you hoof it back to Anchorage. Now, if you can't exert yourself to be civil, let me know so I can pull over.”

“Now, Sam, don't get testy. All this country living has certainly put you in a foul humor.” Marjorie looked at her long, manicured nails. “You really should come back to the city.”

“I'm moving here. Get used to it.”

“Mother will have a fit.”

“I couldn't care less.”

“She'll cut off your trust fund.”

“Marj, the trust fund is under my control. I never use it, anyway. Keep up with the times.”

“Of course not. You bake those ridiculous cakes.”

“I'm very good.”

Marjorie gave a very unladylike snort. “I don't understand this compulsion you have about working. You've got gobs of perfectly good money sitting in accounts all over the world. Why dirty your hands?”

“You work,” Sam said pointedly.

“I represent the current century's literary geniuses,” Marjorie said haughtily. “It's a service to mankind.”

Sam snorted. He knew Marjorie's true reasoning. If publishing had been good enough for Jackie O. and John Jr., then it was good enough for her. Unfortunately, her attention span was short, and she couldn't spell to save her life, so editing was out of the question. Fortunately for Marjorie, the rest of her mind—the part not in charge of putting letters in the right order—was like a steel trap, and the survival instinct flowing through generations of Scottish Highlanders had been honed to a fine killing point in her. In short, she was a barracuda in half-a-year's-salary skirts who could dissect a contract faster than an eighth-grade boy could dispatch a frog. Her clients loved her, editors feared her, and other agents envied her.

Sam was, of course, her pity case.

But he was realist enough to know that it wasn't easy to get published and that maybe being a good writer might not be sufficient. If his sister could get him a read or two that he might not get on his own, she would be worth her fee.

“She's probably not a virgin, you know.”

Then again, maybe throttling her would be more rewarding than being the recipient of any of her called-in markers. Sam slammed on the brakes and the Range Rover skidded to a halt.

“That's it,” he snarled. “Get out.”

“Now, Sam . . .”

“Don't you now-Sam me, you cynical socialite. You're dead wrong about Sydney—”

Marjorie gasped. “You slept with her?”

Sam gritted his teeth. “No. But I know her.”

“Thank heavens,” Majorie said, sounding vastly relieved. “To propagate the species this way . . .”

“Have you ever considered the fact that I might want to have children?”

“And pass on your father's gene pool? Definitely not.”

“He's your father, too. And just because he considered selling his seat on the Exchange—”

“Oh, Sam,” Marjorie gasped, “please don't bring up that painful memory!”

“That doesn't make him a bad person,” Sam finished. “You're a snob.”

“And you're an incurable romantic.” She turned the full force of her pale blue eyes on him. Sam was almost certain his head had begun to smoke from the laser-beam intensity of her stare.

“Come home to New York,” Marjorie said with a compelling tone of voice that any vampire would have been proud to call his own.