Starstruck (2 page)

“Interview?” Tim’s brows had lifted skeptically.

Joe had grinned. “And all that that entails.” He shut his eyes now, anticipating it.

The phone shrilled again. Joe’s eyes snapped open. How long had he been lying there? He was probably already late. Fumbling, he grabbed for the receiver. “ ’Lo?” His voice was husky with sleep.

“Napping? Joe Harrington? I don’t believe it,” came a pert, female voice.

“I have to sleep sometime, Ellie.” Joe sat up, raking a hand through his hair and grinning. “How did you
find me?” His sister was a vast improvement over the variety of female he usually found on the other end of the line.

“Bribery, love. Even your Mrs. Thomas—and there a dragon of a housekeeper—isn’t immune to a little bribe under the table.”

“So what’s up? Need help with a plot?”

“I wouldn’t ask
you
if I did,” his sister retorted. “What do you know about happily ever after, for heaven’s sake?” Ellie wrote plays, phenomenally successful comedies about love and romance and the foibles of human nature. On more than one occasion she had borrowed more than a bit of her brother and had blithely married him off at the end. Compensating, he supposed, for his complete lack of cooperation in real life.

“Not a thing,” he replied genially. “Now, what can I do for you?”

“It’s dad’s seventieth birthday tomorrow,” Ellie reminded him. “Mike and I are flying to Omaha tonight and driving up to Sioux City tomorrow. Any messages? You don’t, by chance, want to come?”

“Gripes, I forgot!” Joe’s head dropped back on the pillow. “No, I can’t come. Wouldn’t if I could, and you know it. Until he puts away his blueprint for my life, he’s not going to find me walking through his front door. But yes, give him a message. Tell him happy birthday. Tell
him I love him in spite of
… Tell him I wish…
Oh,
never mind. I’ll call him and tell him myself.” The old man would never waste a phone call arguing. He valued the dollar far too much—even those of his son who had plenty.

“I hoped you would,” Ellie said smugly.

“Very clever,” Joe said. “And what were you going to do if I had said to tell him to go to hell and take his bank vice presidency and his homecoming queen and the 2.5 kids with him?”

“Tell him that you wished him a happy birthday,” Ellie said promptly. “I’m quite at home with fiction. But
in this case, I am glad I don’t have to. Are you mellowing, perhaps?”

“Sure,” Joe said sarcastically. “By this time next year he’ll be welcoming me home as the prodigal son. Only instead of coming back a beggar, I’ll come with a wife and half a dozen kids! Think that’d make him happy?”

“Would it make
you
happy, Joe?” Ellie asked softly. “That’s the question.”

Joe laughed and stood up, sliding his feet into a pair of tattered running shoes, his eye catching the photo of “local reporter” Olivia James, tonight’s entertainment. And tomorrow, who knew? “Would that make me happy, Ellie?” he sounded incredulous. “What do you think?” Still chuckling, he hung up.

J
oe Harrington might be handsome, charming, seductive, intriguing and passionate, Liv thought irritably as she paced the length of the Sheraton’s lobby for the fiftieth time, but he was also late. It was twenty minutes to six, for heaven’s sake! She should have got Jennifer from the baby-sitter’s ten minutes ago. And Tom would be dropping Stephen off at home a little past six, and if she wasn’t there by then she would be treated to Tom’s lecture on her responsibility to the children. She ground her teeth and brushed an errant
l
ock of hair away from her ear, annoyed just thinking about that. Where was
his
responsibility to the children? She had had the very devil of a time getting him to agree to drop Stephen off at his cello lesson in the first place.

“That's your responsibility, Olivia,” he had said when she finally got through his receptionist. “You have custody.”

“Yes. But if you want them to eat this month, you had better take him to cello because I’ll lose my job if
I
don’t get this interview,” she snapped. “Or perhaps you’d like to pay a bit more child support?” He had fought long and hard against paying as much as he did, so she thought she was safe there.

“Interview with whom?” he asked.

“Joe Harrington.”

“
You’re
interviewing Joe Harrington?” H
e sounded as if his saliva e
jector had just sucked a
l
l the air right out of him. No doubt he thought that the plain, jean-clad, pony-tailed Olivia James whom he had known and left wasn’t fit to interview the sex symbol whom all American women lusted after.

“Yes,” she said. “Little old me. But don’t worry. It’s not by choice.”

“I didn’t suppose it would be,” he said more calmly. “You never were the passionate sort.”

The temptation to slam the receiver in his ear was almost overwhelming. “Will you take Stephen or not?” she bit out.

Evidently s
ensing her contained fury, Tom b
acked off a little. “All right. Tell him to meet me in front of your place. I'll run him home after, too. But he can’t dawdle around. I’m driving to Chicago tonight.” The last was a calculated barb to prove that this negotiation was not going to go all her way. Liv had loved going to Chicago, and when she and Tom were married, they got there twice a year at the most. From what she heard from the kids, he was now busy “finding himself,” with Trudy’s help, in the Windy City almost every weekend.

“Thank you.” She had hung up thinking that Marv had had no idea what he had asked of her when he sent her to do this interview. It wasn’t just Joe Harrington who was involved, it was the kids, it was Tom, it was her whole life. But she had done it, arriving at the Sheraton promptly at five o’clock—and now he wasn’t even showing up.

“Excuse me,” she said to the man at the desk. “Are you sure he didn’t just sneak past?”

“Joe Harrington?” His voice implied that Joe Harrington, like the royal family, couldn’t possibly sneak anywhere.

“Well
…”
She
couldn’t wait much longer. She had
hurried home, popped the casserole in the oven, picked up the cleaning, fetched the rabbit from the vet’s—and it was hopping around the back of her
VW
bus this very moment. It might last an hour or so in there without dying of heat prostration, but it had been there almost that long now. And the casserole would
burn
…
and Jennifer was waiting

“Look!” the desk clerk sounded triumphant. “Here he comes now!”

Liv turned, not knowing exactly what to expect. But whatever it had been, it wasn’t what she got. All the news photos and publicity shots she’d ever seen of Joe Harrington had made him appear suave, debonair, sexy and totally in command. But that hadn’t even begun to capture the sheer magnetism of the man now approaching the desk. Even dressed in the wholly unexpected gray sweat shirt, much-laundered jeans and running shoes without socks, and carrying a suitcase that looked as though it had seen him through ten years at summer camp, Joe Harrington was a force to be reckoned with. His lithe but well-muscled body was apparent despite the disreputable clothes. He looked disgustingly attractive for a man who, by rights, ought to be showing signs of dissipation, Liv thought with annoyance. His brown hair was thick and shiny, the tendency to curl giving him a boyish look at odds with the sense of full-adult masculinity that emanated from him. She could see how he would inspire men like Tom, but they would never achieve the same effect in a million years. She swallowed hard.
Darn
it, Olivia,
she told herself firmly,
shape up. He’s got every woman in the wor
ld falling at his feel He doesn’
t need you, too.

She wiped her hands furtively on the sides of her rust-colored linen skirt and then walked briskly toward him, extending her hand. “Mr. Harrington, I’m Olivia James with the
Madison Times.
Your Mr. Gates said you would speak with me this afternoon.” She focused on the potted palm somewhere just past his left ear. One look at his
green gaze, even diminished by the ho
rn
-rimmed glasses perched on the end of his nose, had unnerved her so badly that her hand shook.

“Miss James,” he drawled. “Yes, Tim mentioned it to me while I was in Milwaukee.” He was holding her hand far longer than it should have taken for a perfunctory handshake. His hand was warm and slightly rough to the touch. Liv tugged hers away, but he hung on, apparently unwilling to let her go. What did he mean, “mentioned it,” for heaven’s sake? It was
his
idea!

Her gaze flickered back to meet his. “If you’
ll
let go, Mr. Harrington,” she said, grateful that her usual asperity hadn’t entirely deserted her, “we could sit down over there and get this over with.”

His eyes widened momentarily at her words and tone, but then a slow grin appeared on his face. A seductive grin, Liv decided, wishing she had a suit of armor. “Joe,” he corrected easily. “Call me Joe. And you’re Olivia?”

Ms. James, she wanted to say. Or
Mrs.—
which would be more to the point. But she nodded, trapped, managing only a croaking, “People call me Liv.” What was wrong with her? Surely she’d seen a handsome man before!

“Well, Liv,” he said, still not relinquishing her hand, “I’m delighted to talk to you. But
we’re running a little late and—
”

No kidding, Liv thought. “I won’t take much of your time, Mr. Harr—Joe,” she amended quickly, seeing his frown.

“I have an idea,” he said, the slow smile beginning again at the comers of his mouth, spreading to reveal the famous boyish grin tooth by tooth. How does he do that, Liv wondered. “I’ve got to get cleaned up before this speech tonight. You come on up to my room with me and we’ll talk while I shower and shave.”

Liv’s mouth flew open. No wonder he went
to bed with half the women in th
e world. He certainly didn’t
waste any time on preliminaries! “I think not, Mr. Harrington,” she said, ice dripping from her voice. “I conduct interviews in lobbies, not hotel bedrooms. Or bathrooms. And this interview isn’t likely to be conducted at all!” The nerve of the man!

“Hold on…
”

“No, you hold on, Mr. Harrington. I didn’t want to do this interview with you in the first place! I had enough complications in my life today without adding God’s gift to women—”

“Miss James—”

“Don’t Miss James me, Mr. Harrington,” she exploded. “I have a ca
sserole in the oven about to burn
, a child at the baby-sitter’s whom I should have picked up twenty minutes ago and a rabbit about to die of heat prostration in the back of my bus! I can damned well do without you! Now, if you’ll excuse me, I’m sure your speech tonight will tell me everything I want to know.” And if Marv didn’t like it, she thought, he could have her job—and the shower-and-shave interview that went with it, too! She spun on her heel and strode toward the main entrance of the lobby. She had almost reached it when a hand shot out and grabbed her arm.

“What kind of casserole?”

Liv stared at him. “Chicken and rice,” she said finally.

“Room for one more?”

“What?”

He looked slightly sheepish. “You’ve got the wrong id
ea,” he said. “I didn’t mean…
Oh well, maybe I did, I don’t know. But a chicken-and-rice casserole sounds better right now. Is there enough?”

“Yes, but…
”

The grin nearly split his face. “I’ll pick up my key later,” he said to the stunned desk clerk who had watched the whole exchange. “Let’s go. I want no burned casseroles, mad baby-sitters or dead rabbits on my conscience.”

“You aren’t serious,” Liv protested. But evidently he
was, for he was propelling her out the door so quickly that she nearly lost her footing.

“Of course
I
am. Do you know the last time I had a real, home-cooked meal?”

“No,” she faltered. This couldn’t be happening.

“Neither do I. But I’ll trade you. An interview for some chicken-and-rice casserole. Sound fair?” He flashed her a disarming grin. “And safer?” he added, and she saw a teasing light in his eyes.

She wasn’t so sure about that. “I guess,
but—”

“Which car?”

“The green
VW
bus.” She pointed to it and then had to scurry to keep up with his long strides. “But what about your shower and shave?” she remembered.

“You have running water at your house, I presume?” he drawled, and she thought that
safe
wasn’t a word she’d have used at all.

Lord save me, Liv thought and unlocked the door. “Throw your suitcase in the back, then,” she told him, momentarily resigned to the fate that had sent her life spinning out of control. “And be careful not to hit the rabbit.”