Starstruck (8 page)

She camped by the phone all afternoon, and while it rang often enough, none of the callers was Joe. Each time it wasn’t, her hopes fell a little further, and by the time she dragged herself out to the car that night, she was convinced that she would never hear from him again.

After all, who could expect a busy, influential, sexy man like Joe to call and call and call. He was bound to get bored with her and her mundane existence sooner or later. What else could she expect? But it would have been nice, she thought, if he had had the finesse to say, “It’s been nice knowing you,” during their last conversation. Something to let her know that their friendship was over. She stared at the phone during dinner and while she and Noel did the dishes, but it didn’t ring.

Watched phones never do, she told herself. She decided to paint Jennifer’s room that evening and forget him.

She tried. She got Noel to watch the younger kids, and coerced Ben into helping her paint. Between them they had three periwinkle-blue walls by ten o’clock.

“It’s getting late,” Liv told Ben finally. “You go take a shower and get into bed. I’ll finish up.”

There was only the one wall left to paint and she wanted—no, needed—to finish it tonight. The kids went to bed and the phone was silent and Liv continued to paint. The night air cooled surprisingly for mid-June, lifting the curtains and chilling Liv as she stood in her T-shirt and jeans and regarded her handiwork. There was a storm coming; she could feel it in the air. She laid the roller carefully on the tray of paint and trekked down to her room to find a warmer shirt.

“Ring, damn it,” she muttered to the phone on her bedside table. But she knew it wouldn’t. However wonderful it had been having a friend like Joe, she knew it wasn’t destined to last. She saw his sweat shirt lying on top of her dresser and her hand reached out to pick it up and rub it gently against her cheek; she still found in it the faint aroma of Joe.

It’s warm and I’m cold,
she rationalized,
and he’s never coming back.
She slipped it over her head, snuggling into its warmth, pierced by a loneliness she wouldn’t have thought possible, and squared her shoulders and went back to paint.

She finished by eleven o’clock. The last wall wasn’t as neatly done as the first three. She kept jerking the roller every time she thought she heard the phone ring. It never did, though she had run to her bedroom to answer it ten times at least. By the end of the evening all she had to show for her diligence was a bruise on her shin where she had banged against Jennifer’s toy chest and lots of periwinkle-blue spatters on Joe’s shirt and her own jeans.

Exhausted and depressed she dragged herself to bed. Stop it, she commanded. But she didn’t. Her eyes ached, her mind ached and she felt absolutely empty. Flicking
off the overhead light she kicked her jeans into a heap on the floor and fell into bed. It’s a virus, she told herself.
I’m coming down with something.
She didn’t want to think about what.

“
S
hhhhhhh.”

Giggle. Creak. Shuffle.

“Hush.”

Clink.

“Is she
still
asleep?”

“Stuff it, I said.”

Liv squeezed her eyes shut against the sunlight. “Go ’way,” she mumbled.

“See, she is, too, awake.”

“Barely.” The voice was dry, amused, and very masculine.

Liv’s eyes flew open.

Joe stood at the foot of her bed holding a breakfast tray complete with pancakes, bacon and a bouquet of daisies. He was surrounded by a horde of grinning children. Liv dragged the covers up under her chin, stunned and staring. Only the smell of the bacon and the chirp of the flicker in the tree outside the window convinced her that she was really seeing him.

“Wha
…
what?” she croaked.

“Sit up and feast, Sleeping Beauty.” Joe carried the tray around to the side of the bed and stood over her, tall and devastatingly attractive.

What a dream, Liv thought. It must be possible to smell bacon and hear birds in one’s dreams.
Don’t let me wake up,
she prayed, but then, in the same moment, realized with dismay that she had.

“Sit up and eat, Mommy,” Jennifer commanded. “Joe and us made you pancakes and bacon.”

“They were swell. We ate most of ’em,” Stephen piped up.

Liv looked from Joe to the kids and back to Joe, feeling rather like a rabbit caught, in a trap. He had his tiger’s
eyes again. “How long
…
” she began. “Where did you ”

There seemed to be so many questions. Mainly, of course, what was he doing here? He looked tired, despite the grin on his face. He was wearing a pale blue and white striped open-neck sport shirt and a pair of jeans even more faded and disreputable than the ones he’d left on her bathroom floor. And—oh dear, she remembered she was wearing his sweat shirt! She scrunched even further under the covers till only her nose, eyes and tousled blond hair were showing.

“Just let me get dressed and I’ll come into the kitchen to eat,” she mumbled beneath the blanket.

Joe shook his head. “Humor us. We shouldn’t have to go to all this trouble to give you breakfast in bed for nothing. I mean how often do you have breakfast in bed?” His eyes were mesmerizing her, drowning her in the deep-green sea of his gaze. It terrified her. Joe Harrington at two or five thousand miles was a wonderful friend—at two feet he was capable of inspiring only panic. But he wasn’t going away, and neither were the five other pairs of eyes that were fastened on her, waiting for her to sit up and eat her breakfast. Slowly, nervously, feeling as if she were disrobing in front of him, she did.

“Very good,” she mumbled around her first mouthful of pancake, awash in syrup, and six smiles beamed back at her. Then five of them vanished in a flurry because it was really rather boring to sit there and watch their mother eat. The sixth, unfortunately, didn’t move an inch.

“What a surprise,” she said stiltedly into the silence that enveloped them. “Thank you.” She could have been eating file cards for all she knew.

“You’re welcome.” He looked excessively pleased with himself, and Liv recalled the misery she’d felt when he hadn’t phoned last night.

“What
are
you doing here?” She demanded. “Really?”

“Would you believe that I came for my jeans and
sweatshirt?”

Liv’s hand went to her breast
, her face flamed.

“But I’ve changed my mind.” He grinned. “The shirt
looks far better
on you than it ever did on me.”

“Anyhow, that’s not really why I came.” He stuffed his hands into his back pockets and wandered over to stare out the window, away from her. His back was to her and she traced the line of his shoulders, then let her eyes drop lower to the elbows jutting out behind him and the narrow line of his hips. “I came to find me a house,” he said.

Chapter Four

“
T
o do what? What did you say?” Liv looked stunned.

“A house.” Joe wiped damp palms on the sides of his jeans and continued to gaze blankly out the window, hoping that the famous Harrington acting ability wouldn’t desert him now. He hadn’t felt like such a nervous, fumbling, moonstruck schoolboy in years.

“Why on earth are you looking for a house?” Liv sat up and set the tray aside on the table, wrapping her arms around her knees like a young girl. He darted a glance at her, taking in the rumpled, defenseless gentleness, and the ache in his insides sharpened perceptibly. He couldn’t even look at her without wanting her. And on that bed! In
his
sweat shirt! It didn’t bear thinking about.

He flung himself across the room to the other window and stood leaning against the frame, looking out into the garden, taking deep, slow breaths that some drama coach had once told him would calm him. He hoped so. He needed a bit of calm now. He’d been strung up since he’d met her.

“I like it here,” he said to the garden. “I want some peace and quiet to work on a screenplay that I’m interested in. I’m fed up with emphasizing acting.” Not bad, he thought. His tone was carefully nonchalant, controlled. He managed a slight, self-mocking smile and turned so that she could see his profile. “And there are other advantages in the immediate neighborhood.” He allowed himself a quick, leering glance in her direction,
the sort that Steve Scott would have sent his leading lady to let her know she interested him. He only wished he felt as confident of Liv as Steve Scott felt of his ladyloves.

You’d have thought he was trying to get up the courage to ask a girl out for the first time, he thought. He almost snorted with impatience at his own ineptitude. Liv was looking at him, obviously flustered, the color high in her cheeks. At least he seemed to have put her of
f
balance with his statement as badly as he was off balance himself. Quite likely she didn’t know what to make of him, either. Superstar playboys must be as foreign to her as lovely, normal, sane women were to him. Neither one of them seemed to know how to act.

“Well,” she said, with the spunk that he had found so appealing the first time he was here, “you had better clear out of my room, then. I’m certainly not getting up and dressing while you’re here.”

“Why not?” Joe smiled, feeling immediately more confident. This kind of light, sexual bantering came all too easy.

“I need to think of my children,” she said softly, not bantering at all.

Joe felt as though she had knocked the breath right out of him. He felt certain she must see the dull red he knew was creeping above his collar. But if she did, at least she was kind enough not to comment on it. It was bad enough that he felt his remark was cheap.

“I’ll wait in the kitchen,” he mumbled, backing toward the door. “There’re plenty of dishes to do.” He couldn’t get out of the room fast enough, not even when a part of him truly wanted to stay.
Scruples?
he chided himself.
At your age?
He shook his head in disbelief and started clearing the dishes off the kitchen table, scraping the plates and stacking them in the sink. But he couldn’t deny it. Something about her made him want to clean up his act. He hadn’t wanted to be caught leaving her house early that morning when he had spent the night, and he
didn’t want to embarrass her in front of her kids. He wanted their friendship to be aboveboard, clean, not a gossip monger’s delight. He turned on the water and stared out the window above the sink at Theo and Jennifer, who were playing in the yard. Nice kids. He liked them. He didn’t want to fe
el
embarrassed or awkward in front of them, either, he realized. And that was an alien feeling, too.

Joe hadn’t cared what anyone else said about his sexual escapades or relationships in years. And now he was worrying about the reputation of a thirty-two year old divorcee and her near half-dozen kids! What a switch, he thought with a savage humor, attacking with unnecessary vigor some dried egg yolk in a mixing bowl.

What was he doing here, anyway? He should be in Vic Truro’s hot tub in L.A. musing over Vic’s new screenplay, or swimming laps in his own pool, or—he glanced at his watch—still sleeping in his water bed, one arm slung over Linda Lucas or
Paulette or Candi or Sherry…

“Hell!” The knife skidded down the side of the bowl and sliced into his thumb. He dropped the bowl and sucked on his thumb, the warm, metallic taste of the blood touching his tongue.

“What have you done?” Liv’s voice came from behind him, and he spun around to see her come briskly into the room, all her earlier comfortable dishevelment gone. In formfitting, wheat-colored jeans and a bright orange halter, her hair pulled up into a tight knot on the back of her head, she looked every bit as brisk and efficient as the reporter he had first encountered. He knew very well, then, what he was doing here. His heart began racing again in his chest.

“I cut it,” he mumbled, his words garbled because his thumb was still in his mouth. Steve Scott never did things like this, he knew with unerring certainty, annoyed that she should see him do something so dumb.

“Let me see it.” She reached for his hand, and he
took one last lick, hoping that that would stem the flow of blood, but it didn't. The blood ran down his hand and dripped on her jeans.

“Put it under the water,” she commanded, thrusting his hand into the sink and filling a bowl with cold water.
“It’s pretty deep. How did you—
”

“The knife slipped,” Joe said, looking away. The water was turning red and his stomach lurched. Liv flung open a cabinet door and rummaged around while he waited, then returned before he could worry about how long it would take for him to bleed to death on her kitchen floor. She removed his hand from the water and probed the cut, then deftly bandaged it.

“I think it’ll be okay without stitches,” she offered. “But I’ll take you to the hospital if you want.”

“No.” Not only did he not want stitches, he did not want the publicity that would come with it. And, he thought, neither would she. Some gossipy person would report that Joe Harrington was seen arriving in the early morning with reporter Olivia James, with whom he had obviously spent the night. No, Liv definitely did not need that!

What she needed, he had decided over the past two weeks, was somebody to be there for her, to make her life a bit easier, a bit more enjoyable, not someone complicating it or making it worse. And ever since he had met her, ever since she had flung his pass back in his face and had fed him birthday cake and chicken and rice, he had wanted to be that person. He wanted to share things with her—hence, the phone calls, and when they weren’t enough any more, he had had to come in person.

Now he stood silently watching her as she gently continued to wipe the blood from his hand. The cut didn’t hurt, yet, but her careful ministrations touched him to the core.

It was, he realized, the first time she had touched him that he could remember. When she had practically undressed him, he hadn’t known a thing—damn it. But his imagination had worked overtime since, picturing her touching him. He may have taken Linda to his bed in L.A., but it wasn’t Linda he saw in his mind, nor Linda’s hands moving over him, caressing, teasing, exciting. His hand lurched violently.

“Does it hurt a lot?” Liv asked sympathetically.

It wasn’t his hand that hurt. “No, not very much,” he managed, trying in vain to steady his voice. The flames in his loins were consuming him; surely she could tell. But he didn’t dare glance at her to know. Instead he forced his mind away from her, looking intently out past the curtains toward the sandbox where Theo and Jennifer and a neighbor boy were playing with some Matchbox cars and trucks. They were arguing about some road construction they had embarked upon, and if he strained he could make out what they were saying. So he strained, and didn’t look at Liv again until she released his hand and said, “I think you’ll live.”

“Thanks.”

“Don’t mention it. It’s all part of the job description.”

“As?”

“Mother.”

“Not mine.” He laughed, and was gratified when she blushed. But then, just as quickly, she was all business again.

“Tell me about this house you want and why.”

“I just don’t like living in L.A. all year,” he said, finding it easier to talk to her now that she wasn’t halfdressed and in bed. “And I like my privacy, as I’m sure you’ve heard. So I thought that Madison would be a good place to get away to for a while. All the Hollywood hype can get to a guy, you know?” He grimaced at the eyebrow she arched at him. “I know I ask for a lot of it, but just the same, I do like a respite,” he admitted, and was glad when she offered him a small smile.

“So you decided that this was as far into the back of the beyond as you could get?” Liv questioned, cocking
her head and looking at him with a certain tolerant amusement.

“Partly. And I like being around water. Madison’s got a lot of that. I’d like to find a place on the water if I can. Isolated, if at all possible.”

“Ah, Joe Harrington, hermit,” she teased.

“No. Just Joe Harrington, exhausted. Joe Harrington in need of some space.”

“I’d like some of that too,” she said suddenly, and then stopped abruptly, as though the words had popped out unbidden, which, in fact, he guessed they had.

“I bet you would,” he said softly. “It must get to be a lot, five kids on your own.”

“I’m not complaining,” she said fiercely, looking like a mother tiger defending her cubs.

“I wasn’t implying that,” Joe said mildly, knowing instinctively that it was a sore point. “I just think you’ve got a hard job. You do it very well.”

“Thanks.” She smiled at him nervously, brushing a hand against her hair as though trying to make sure her mask was in place. “I—I guess I’m a bit defensive about it. Single parent and all that.”

Liv was looking at him with wide, gray eyes, like a stormy sea capped with a sunburst of blond hair. “Not defensive,” he said, scarcely above a whisper, drowning in her eyes. Her lips were soft, inviting, trembling slightly just inches below his own. Joe Harrington, super-star stud, wouldn’t have hesitated an instant, but Joe Harrington, scrupulous schoolboy with sweating palms, didn’t know if he dared.

She didn’t move, just stood immobile under his gaze until he could stand the temptation of her parted lips no longer, and bent his head, capturing her mouth with his own.

It was like riding a bicycle without brakes—helpless, frantic, out of control. How on earth could he stop, he wondered desperately. Every fiber of his being wanted to
crush her against him, moulding her body to his and never letting her go. Reluctantly, gasping for breath, he tore his mouth away, clenching his fists against his sides and praying for self-control. He knew the kiss wasn’t going to be enough to satisfy. He knew, too, that if he wanted to see her again, there wasn’t going to be what he considered “enough” for a long time. The ache in him was definitely going to get worse before it got better.

Like a diver come to the surface after a long and arduous dive, he slowly reoriented himself, steadying his breathing and his heart, and opening his eyes. Wide gray eyes stared into his. My God, had she watched his whole struggle? Likely. She didn’t look flustered at all. Just indifferent. Or stunned.

But he doubted the latter, especially when she straightened up and said matter-of-factly, “Only twenty-five more. I’ll call George Slade about a house for you.”

Joe hardly heard the second part of the statement; he was still reeling from the first. Was that all she thought it was? One of those birthday kisses he’d purloined from her children? He stared at her, unable to disguise the hurt. Not even
he
was that good an a
c
tor. She looked back at him from where she was dialing the telephone and suddenly set it back on the hook.

“I’m sorry,” she said awkwardly, a wistful smile touching her lips. “That wasn’t a nice thing to say.”

She looked genuinely sorry, which surprised him. None of the other women in his life, other than his mother and sisters, had ever cared much one way or another how he felt beyond how it affected what he could do for them. And they certainly never bothered to apologize, either, unless it was in their own best interests. But Liv seemed genuinely concerned that she had hurt him. And he wasn’t above agreeing with her. “No,” he said, “it wasn’t.”

She looked away in apparent confusion.

“Did you mean it?”

“What?” She looked really confused now.

“Is that all you really thought it was,” he persisted, needing to know. “Number twenty-five?”

“I don’t know what to think,” she snapped, like a kitten trapped in a corner. “I don’t know what you’re doing in my life, anyway!” It was almost a wail, and he could commiserate completely.

I could say the same thing about you,
Joe thought ruefully. “I don’t know, either,” he said softly. “I don’t know.” He reached out and touched her cheek tentatively, needing some sort of contact and hoping that she wouldn’t draw away. He almost collapsed with relief when, instead, she turned her lips to caress his palm. “I want to find out, don’t you?” he asked.

Her lips moved against his hand. “Yes,” they said. “Heaven help me, yes.”