Allison wondered if he actually ate at restaurants like this all the time or if he was merely trying to impress her. Not only did the menu display exorbitant prices, but the decor was exquisite to the point of disconcerting her. The high-ceilinged room was eerily quiet. Conversations at the other tables were muted. The footsteps of the waiters were muffled by the thick carpet. Elaborate chandeliers dribbled vague light through the room, and the table linens and place settings reeked of opulence. The clink of a crystal glass was jarring in the subdued atmosphere.
“I’ve never been here before,” she finally said, lowering the menu. “You can order for me.” Grammy would never condone such passivity, but Allison simply couldn’t bring herself to order a forty-dollar entree.
Jamie closed the menu and smiled. “I’ve never eaten here before, either,” he told her. “Maybe we should have Samantha order for both of us.” He peered down at her, then smiled at Allison again. “Would you like to place a bet on when she’ll start screeching?”
“She wouldn’t dare screech. Not in a dining room like this.”
“If that’s your bet,” he warned, “you’re going to lose.”
“We could always go somewhere else,” she suggested.
Jamie shook his head. “Just because the babysitter fell through doesn’t mean I have to rearrange my life. We’re managing, right? We got past the sentry at the door. We’re home free.”
“Maybe it’s just as well you didn’t hire a sitter you knew nothing about,” Allison noted. “Leaving your baby with someone you don’t know can lead to disaster.”
“As opposed to bringing your baby with you,” he countered, his smile expanding. “One thing I’ve learned about Samantha is that everything about her has the potential of turning into a disaster.”
Allison smiled indulgently. “It can’t all be disastrous. I’ll bet you actually enjoy her sometimes, don’t you?”
Jamie was spared from answering by the arrival of the waiter, inquiring if they would care to order drinks. Jamie glanced at her. She could hear Grammy’s voice in her head, urging her to order an obscenely expensive cocktail. But something in the multicolored splendor of Jamie’s eyes—something dangerously seductive, something that reminded her that this was a date and he was an undeniably sexy man—made her opt for safety. “Water would be fine,” she said.
Jamie’s brows dipped in a slight frown. “Water for me, too,” he said, then added, “Also a bottle of the ’88 Medoc. Two glasses.” When the waiter removed the wine list and departed from the table, Jamie smiled with barely a hint of contrition. “No harm in getting an extra glass,” he explained. “You might want a taste.”
She hadn’t looked at the wine list, but she could imagine what a bottle would cost. Allison hoped he wasn’t expecting a reward for spending so much money on her.
With Samantha along, the kind of reward Allison was thinking of was probably out of the question. She ought to be relieved, but for some reason, she wasn’t. Jamie was an incredible catch—or at least he would be if he hadn’t done whatever he’d done to wind up with a daughter. Even if his eyes weren’t so mesmerizing, his physique so lean and strong, his smile so roguish, Allison was a sucker for a man with a sense of humor.
But she was out of her depth with him. She was the working-class daughter of a working-class daughter. She’d grown up on the blue-collar side of Arlington. She didn’t know one wine vintage from another. She didn’t even know if a Medoc was red or white.
Having Jamie’s infant daughter to chaperon them was probably just as well. The baby was sound asleep in her stroller, but her mere presence was enough to ground Allison, to prevent her from losing track of the kind of man Jamie was—and the kind of woman she was. She could admire his impish grin and his cocky self-assurance, safe in the knowledge that the evening wasn’t going to end in a sweaty clinch.
“You still haven’t answered my question,” she prodded him.
“Do I enjoy Samantha?” He glanced at his slumbering daughter and shrugged. “I’m not sure enjoy is the right word. Her communication skills suck, she can’t play tennis or chess, she has no interest in books and she has this gross habit of stuffing her hand in her mouth. Enjoy? I don’t know.”
Allison laughed, then touched her hand to her lips to stifle the sound before the gentleman at the next table glared at her. “You should read to her.”
“Don’t think I haven’t tried,” he complained. “Yesterday I tried dissecting the contents of the Gazette with her. Not only couldn’t she give me a cogent explanation for what’s going on in Washington D.C., but she kept kicking the paper. She actually tore the sports section. I think she’s got a talent for karate.”
He was enjoying Samantha. If he wasn’t, he wouldn’t be able to describe her with such cheery humor. His eyes wouldn’t take on a special glow when he spoke about her. “You ought to try showing her books with bright, simple pictures in them.”
“Like Playboy? I bet she’d like those pictures. I know I would. Then again, all those naked breasts might make her wish she was getting the real thing instead of all that funny-smelling formula.”
The sommelier chose that moment to return to their table with a dusty bottle of wine, two crystal goblets and his bottle-opening equipment. He wiped the dust off the bottle, uncorked it, splashed a little into a spoon-shaped metal receptacle, and poured a taste for Jamie. Jamie sipped and nodded his approval, and the sommelier filled the goblets.
Allison commanded herself not to drink the entire amount. She was going to need her full complement of wits to get through the evening without succumbing to Jamie’s sense of humor. He tapped his glass gently against hers, said, “To women who understand babies,” and took a sip.
She sipped and realized that Medoc was delicious. Rather than give in to the temptation to sip some more, she decided, for safety’s sake, to change the subject. “What about Samantha’s mother? Have you done anything to track her down?”
“I filed a report with the police,” he told her.
“And what did the police say?”
“They’ll do what they can.” He sighed, glanced down at Samantha and gave Allison a crooked smile. “I really don’t want to spend all evening talking about her. I’m trying very hard to keep a little sliver of myself child-free, if you know what I mean. I’ve been doing the baby routine every minute of every day since Monday. Maybe we could talk about something else.”
“All right.”
“Like you, for instance. You seem to know everything important about me—all the disgraceful, humiliating stuff, anyway. I don’t know anything about you.”
“I have no disgrace or humiliation in my background,” she said demurely.
Jamie chuckled. “Right. And you’ve got a bridge for sale. Why don’t you tell me about all the patients you’ve short-sheeted at the hospital? Or all the drugs you’ve administered wrong? Or how about that little old lady you kidnapped and locked up in your house?”
“She isn’t little,” Allison argued. “She’s almost as tall as I am. She’s my grandmother.”
He knew that already. Allison had made the introductions. “She thinks I’m swine.”
“She’s an interesting judge of character.”
The waiter arrived to take their orders. Allison smiled discreetly and said again, “Why don’t you order for me, Jamie?”
He studied her over the edge of his menu, looking startled. Such humility was apparently the last thing he expected of her. “All right,” he said, turning back to the waiter. “She’ll start with an appetizer of escargot, and then—”
“No, no escargot,” she interrupted, nudging him under the table with her foot. She might not know much about Continental cuisine, but she knew escargot were snails. At the waiter’s questioning look, she explained, “No appetizer. I’m sure the entrée will be more than enough.”
Jamie sent her a small, triumphant grin. “Bring her the cold cucumber soup, then,” he went on, overruling her comment. “I’ll hav
e the lobster-sherry consommé. Mixed greens for both of us. And then she’ll have—” he glanced at her again, searching this time for approval “—shrimp risotto with portobello mushrooms?”
She nodded, grateful that snails weren’t involved.
“And for me, the swordfish with grilled vegetables.”
“Very good, sir,” the waiter said, staring down his patrician nose at the stroller and sniffing in disapproval. He took the menus and moved away from the table, cutting a wide route to avoid accidentally brushing the stroller handle.
“You don’t like snails?” Jamie asked, his gaze mischievous.
She made a face. “I’ve never tasted them. I don’t even like the idea of them.”
“And here I thought you were open-minded.”
“I’m not,” she said, then realized how true that was. She was so eager to dislike Jamie because of the circumstances surrounding his paternity, she wasn’t really giving him a chance.
“Why did you bring me here?” she asked. “You don’t have to spend a fortune to impress me.”
“Oh, I didn’t bring you here to impress you,” he assured her. “I brought Samantha here to impress her, and I brought Samantha to impress you—or maybe I brought you to impress her. But tell me more about you,” he said before she could retreat to the safe topic of Samantha. “You actually live with your grandmother?”
“I actually do.”
“Doesn’t that put a crimp in things?”
What things? she wondered. Her sex life?
Why did that have to be the first thought that entered her mind?
“I like living with my grandmother,” she answered. “She has some health problems, and I don’t like the thought of her living alone. I’m able to stay out of her way enough that she doesn’t realize I’m keeping an eye on her. And she’s fun.”
“I’ll bet,” he said, grinning crookedly. “It must be fun having her cut down your friends to their faces. Does she give all your gentleman callers a hard time?”
Allison should have guessed that he had a specific destination in mind for this conversation. He wanted to know about her “gentleman callers.”
There simply wasn’t much to tell. She’d had one big love in her life, and she’d tried to make it work, but after two years of trying, she’d concluded that she was trying a heck of a lot harder than Frank was, so she’d told him to take a hike. Since then, she’d kept herself too busy to be available for another heartbreak, another occasion where she did all the giving and got too little in return.
“Grammy gives everyone a hard time,” she said tactfully.
Samantha made a peeping noise. Jamie glanced nervously at the stroller, but the baby fell silent and he looked up again. “See? This is why men don’t understand women. They never say what they mean.”
“Me or Samantha?”
“Both.”
“She said what she meant,” Allison countered. “So did I. For that matter, so did my grandmother.”
The waiter approached the table with bowls of soup. Allison knew Jamie had ordered too much food, but the soup looked delicious. She took a small sip and sighed. It tasted even better than it looked.
“Good, isn’t it,” Jamie confirmed. “Here, try some of mine.” He dipped his spoon into his consommé and extended it across the table. She parted her lips and he slid the spoon between them.
The gesture brought him close to her, and the intimacy of the moment unnerved her.
The soup tasted heavenly, warm and piquant, subtly rich with flavors she couldn’t name but responded to with a shiver of pleasure. Jamie’s gaze locked with hers, burned into her, made her drunk on the sherry in the broth. Suddenly she was ravenous—but not for soup or shrimp risotto or anything else on the overpriced menu. She was hungry for…things. Acts. Human contact.
Jamie McCoy.
An ear-splitting screech shattered the moment.
Throughout the elegant room, diners turned to gape. For a crazed instant, Allison believed they were staring at her, shocked by the passion she knew was shimmering in her eyes and darkening her cheeks. But then she realized they were staring at the source of the screams.
Samantha howled. She hooted. She hollered. Inside that small, soft infant lurked a sound system to rival the concert amps of a heavy-metal rock band. Allison glanced up toward one of the shimmering chandeliers, afraid the crystal would shatter from Samantha’s shrill wails.
Cursing under his breath, Jamie dropped his spoon and dove for the stroller. He lifted his red-faced daughter into his arms awkwardly, trying to contain her squirming. She pawed at his face, grabbed at his collar, opened her toothless little mouth and bellowed.
Waiters from all over the room amassed into a tuxedo-clad army to descend upon the noisy invader. “Take her,” Jamie whispered, rising from his chair and all but tossing Samantha into Allison’s arms. She’d barely caught the child when he was on his knees, rummaging through his knapsack.
“Shh,” she murmured, struggling to arrange her linen napkin around the baby to protect her dress. “Shh.”
Samantha flailed. She sweated. Her scant eyelashes spiked into tiny points from her tears. Her hands groped Allison’s hair, quickly becoming ensnared in the tangled locks.
“Here,” Jamie said, stalking behind Allison’s chair and trying to poke the nipple of a bottle into Samantha’s pulsing mouth. “Maybe she’s hungry.”
“Jamie, I—” A dribble of moisture seeped through the fabric of her dress to her shoulder. She didn’t know if it was formula or Samantha’s tears. She tried to wrestle the baby down into her lap, but Samantha’s hands were shackled by Allison’s dense tresses.
Jamie dug his hands into her hair, laboring to extricate the baby’s sticky fingers. She clamped her mouth shut to keep from yelping in pain as he tugged at the locks. Under other circumstances, she might love having him weave his fingers through her hair, but not with a baby shrieking into her ear and yanking fistfuls from her scalp.
She poked the bottle into Samantha’s mouth. After a minute, Samantha began to suckle and the room fell silent. Sighing, Allison glanced up to see the maître d’, three waiters, a bus boy and the sommelier gathered around the table, looking distinctly peeved.
“She was hungry,” Jamie explained, smoothing Allison’s hair down along her shoulders.
“That sort of outbreak disturbs the other diners,” the maître d’ chided in his expensive nasal voice.
“Well, having you guys all hovering over our table disturbs me,” Jamie said mildly. “Why don’t you all go back to whatever you were doing? Everything’s under control here.”
The maître d’ dismissed his staff with a crisp nod, then glowered a moment longer at Jamie, Allison and the baby. He rotated on the heel of his patent leather loafer and stalked off.
“Pompous ass,” Jamie muttered.
“It’s his job to be a pompous ass,” Allison commented. “And frankly, I think your claim that we have everything under control was a bit optimistic.”
“She’s eating,” he argued. “Look at her. She’s as happy as a clam. As quiet as a clam, too.”
“She’ll be as wet as a clam by the time she’s done with this bottle.”
“She’ll calm down. She was just jealous because we’re eating this incredible soup and she’s stuck with the all-purpose neonatal cocktail. If I had to drink soya-protein deluxe day in and day out, I’d be screaming, too.”
Allison lowered her gaze to the baby in her arms. She really didn’t want to be feeding Samantha. She wanted to turn the clock back five minutes, to be drawn into Jamie’s charismatic gaze, to be running her tongue over the spoon where his tongue had just been.
Her pulse gradually slowed. Her cheeks cooled and reason returned. No, she didn’t want to be thinking erotic thoughts about Jamie. She wanted to hang on to her sanity.
Samantha began to relent, her mouth working the latex nipple in a slower rhythm. Her hands relaxed and curled, and Allison was able to pull from them the
strands of hair caught between the tiny fingers. Samantha’s eyes closed and her respiration grew deeper. “I think she’s falling asleep,” Allison murmured.
“Don’t forget to burp her.”
“You don’t have to burp a baby after every feeding,” Allison said. “If she’s asleep, there’s no need to wake her just to burp her.”
“Really? I didn’t know that.”
Samantha let out a faint snore. Her lips stopped moving on the bottle. Allison left the nipple in her mouth, just for the tranquility it provided. With the baby held securely on her lap with her left hand, she reached for her spoon with her right and took another taste of her soup.
“You don’t have to eat with her on your lap,” Jamie said.
“She might wake up if we move her.”
“We’ll do it carefully.” He wheeled the stroller over to Allison’s chair, then plucked the bottle from Samantha’s mouth. The baby started slightly, and he set the bottle back against her lips. But then she sighed and turned her face from the nipple.
“Okay,” he mouthed, lifting the bottle again and placing it into the stroller. “I’m going to lift her very slowly.” He reached his large, strong hands around Samantha’s torso while Allison supported Samantha’s head. His fingers wedged under the baby, brushing Allison’s thighs. She tried to ignore the tingle generated by his touch. It meant nothing, she reminded herself. He was only trying to pick up his baby. It had nothing to do with her.
He lifted Samantha a fraction of an inch. His pinkie was caught on Allison’s napkin, and she tried to ease it out of his clasp. The baby’s head moved slightly, but Allison kept it propped up with her hand. With excruciating caution, Jamie raised Samantha another inch, and another, closer and closer to the stroller.
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