Starstruck

by Anne McAllister

  “Mmmmm,” he breathed, a half-smile on his face. Liv sighed and brushed a lock of dark hair off his forehead, her hand lingering just for a moment.

  “Good night,” she whispered and put out the light.

  Well, she thought, that’s that. Another distinction to add to her uniqueness—a dubious one at that—I am, she thought as she slipped into her double bed alone, the only woman in the world to make Joe Harrington fall asleep.

  Chapter Three

  In the morning he was gone.

  Liv’s alarm went off at six and she sprang out of bed, throwing on the first suitable skirt and blouse that came to hand and brushing her shoulder length hair back and anchoring it with a headband because she didn’t want to take the time to pin it up. Not, she told herself, because she looked prettier with her hair down.

  It didn’t matter whether she did or not, for when she crept out into the living room, expecting to see his lean muscular body curled up on her sofa, she found instead only a folded up blanket and no sign at all of Joe. The whole previous evening might have been nothing more than the very detailed hallucination of a demented, middle-aged mother but for the freshly perked coffee she found in the kitchen and a note scratched on the back of a shopping list that said simply, “Thanks. Joe.”

  For what? she wondered. Certainly not for what he usually got from the women he spent the night with But then, he hadn’t actually spent the night with her, not really. He had only slept on her couch. She wondered if Frances would believe that if she told her. Not that she was going to tell her. Not after all the carrying-on she had done yesterday about having to do this interview. There was no point in looking a complete fool if she didn’t have to. She poured herself a cup of his coffee and contemplated the note, her eyes drifting from it to the unoccupied couch. It was really better that he was gone, she told herself firmly. She couldn’t imagine explaining his presence to the kids, and later getting wind of what Tom would say when one of them let it drop that Joe Harrington had spent the night. Her mouth turned up in a smile at that. Imagine his having the time for a Tom James reject! Because, even if he hadn’t slept with her, which she didn’t really want anyway, he had seemed to like her all right. And that was a bit of an ego boost right there, unless one harped on the fact that he quite frankly seemed to like every woman.

  She sighed and got up, padding upstairs to the bathroom which was, fortunately, still unoccupied. One bathroom and six people made for hectic mornings. She glanced around the tiny room critically for the first time since she had resigned herself to it when she had bought the house two years ago. It wasn’t much to look at, that was for sure—cracked tile around the shower and toy boats on the floor, towels that looked as though they’d sailed the Mayflower if not the Ark. Not exactly the sunken tubs and silver fixtures that she was sure Joe must be used to.

  Still, he had showered here. Maybe she could charge admission, create a local landmark— Joe Harrington Showered Here—and put the money aside to buy new towels or, better yet, a lock for the bathroom door.

  Ah, another sign that she hadn’t imagined it all. The crumpled gray sweat shirt and the jeans were still in a heap on the floor. Probably he was used to maids, too, she thought. Or a mother. She picked up his things automatically, just as she picked up Stephen’s socks or Noel’s shorts, and began to fold them, carrying them back to her room, absently rubbing the soft fabric of the sweat shirt against her cheek. The faint aroma of Joe’s woodsy after-shave assailed her, and she dropped the shirt hastily onto the bed.

  Shape up, she told herself sternly, you have five kids to bundle off to school and a story to write. This morning is no different than any other.

  It wasn’t, either. Noel couldn’t find his math homework without a full-scale search of the entire house; Ben’s left sneaker had miraculously disappeared; the oatmeal was lumpy and the tooth fairy had completely forgotten about Theo’s latest missing tooth.

  “Probably Joe scared him away,” Jennifer pronounced solemnly between bites of oatmeal, when Theo appeared disgruntled, holding his tooth accusingly in his hand.

  “He left too early, dopey,” Theo argued. “You weren’t even in bed yet.”

  “Huh-uh,” Jennifer denied, swinging her blond mop in an emphatic negative motion. “He came back. I seed him. He was sleepin’ on the couch.”

  “He was?” All eyes looked up from the oatmeal and focused on Jennifer.

  Liv groaned inwardly and said, “Hurry up and eat.” But no one paid any attention.

  Jennifer was basking in all her glory. “Yup, he was,” she went on. The head bobbed positively this time. “I got up to go to the bathroom, and I looked downstairs, and there he was!” Her eyes were wide and starry. “Snorin’,” she added.

  “Gosh, Steve Scott on our couch,” Noel breathed after a moment’s silence. He looked at his mother with new respect.

  “Wait’ll the kids at school hear about that,” Stephen marveled. “Why did I have to go to dumb cello yesterday, anyway?”

  “The kids aren’t going to hear,” Liv said firmly. “And cello is not dumb.”

  “Compared to Steve Scott it is,” Stephen said glumly as he dissected another of the oatmeal lumps.

  “Nevertheless, what happens in this house is not for public consumption,” Liv warned them, glaring.

  “What’s that mean?” Theo asked.

  “It means shut up,” Noel explained. “Or else.”

  Theo looked up at Liv, all innocence. “Does it, Mommy?”

  “Yes.” The last thing she wanted was a story going around about Joe Harrington spending the night at her house. The sooner it was forgotten the better By everyone. Especially by herself.

  Typing a matter-of-fact story about Joe was just what she needed, Liv decided when she dropped her purse into her desk drawer and faced the reality of another day’s work. It would put him into proper perspective and eradicate all those fleeting images of boyish grins and tired eyes and, heaven help her, those warm and teasing lips that had plagued her all the way to work. She sat down and prepared to get to work, to exorcise his ghostly presence and reduce him to a neat ten-inch story.

  She had almost succeeded when Frances puffed breathlessly into the office, flung her ever-present knitting onto her desk and demanded, “Tell all, Liv. Is he every bit as gorgeous in person as on the screen?”

  “Oh, definitely,” Liv said coolly, with much more disinterest than she actually felt. “Here.” She ripped the sheet out of the typewriter. “You can be the first on your block to know.”

  Frances snatched the paper and eased her substantial form into her chair, her eyes never leaving the paper in front of her. When she finished it, she looked up and pushed her glasses higher on her nose. “Very cagey,” she said. “Very noncommital. Now, tell me, what’s he really like?”

  “Honestly, Frances,” Liv grinned, pleased that she’d done what she had set out to do, which was to say nothing scandalous or titillating at all, “he’s really like that.” He was, too. She had tried to present his sincerity,, his commitment to the cause of peace, and not just concentrate on his sexual escapades or his fabulous body or even his acting and directing ability. She did, however, pay lip service to his charm.

  “I’m sure he is,” Frances said. ‘“Boyish, charming, sincere,’—oh, definitely. But—” she lowered her voice to a conspiratorial whisper—“did he make a pass at you?”

  “What?” Trust Frances not to beat around the bush. “Of course not!” she lied. She was certainly not going to mention that humiliating shower-and-shave offer.

  “Why not?” Now it was Frances who sounded offended. “You’re young and pretty, and he’s definitely as sexy as they come.”

  He was that, Liv thought. “Perhaps I’m just not his type.”

  Frances looked at her as though she’d forgot her mind when she came to work that morning. “All right,” she said on a note of faked injury, “if that’s the way you want it, don’t tell me, then.”

  Liv grin
ned. “Oh, no you don’t, you old fraud. You’re not going to coerce me into telling you anything that way. You read everything important in my story. Really. We had a nice chat. I drove him to the speech. He spoke. That was that. But I will admit, he was better than I expected.” Further than that she was not prepared to go. There was no telling what Frances’s busily embroidering mind could make out of their dinner and Joe’s night on her couch.

  “If you say so,” Frances said reluctantly, but she still gave Liv the occasional suspicious glance while she busied herself setting up the weekly TV section.

  “I do,” Liv told her flatly, and hoped that that was the end of it. She put her story on Marv’s desk well before ten and gathered up her things so that she could drive over to the university and do a story on the string quartet which had come to give a recital and conduct a workshop. It was routine and yet pleasurable, moving about, talking to interesting people, getting a little sun in the process. Soothing, Liv thought, Just what I need after the tumult of last night's interview.

  “Off again?” Frances queried.

  “I’ll be over at the music department at the university,” Liv said, “if anyone needs me.” The kids, she meant.

  “Like Joe Harrington?”

  Liv rolled her eyes. “Of course,” she said airily because Frances had Joe Harrington on the brain. Then a sudden impish grin crossed her face. “If he calls, tell him he still owes me twenty-six more,” she told Frances, laughing.

  Frances’s jaw dropped. “Twenty-six what?”

  “He’ll know,” Liv replied, breezing past her out the door. She knew full well that Joe Harrington was a once-in-a-lifetime experience, already a thing of the past, an event to tell her grandchildren about. What on earth would he ever call her for? To get his jeans and sweat shirt back? Hardly. He could certainly afford new ones. But it had been worth saying, just to see the expression on Frances’s face.

  Frances could have said the same about her.

  “I told him,” Frances said the minute Liv walked back in the news room door. “And he said to tell you he always paid up. What in heaven’s name does he mean?”

  “Who?” Liv asked, her mind still full of Paganini and a violist with a charming Portuguese accent.

  “Joe Harrington. Who else?”

  “What?” Liv sank into her chair, stunned, the Portuguese violinist abruptly consigned to oblivion. “Joe Harrington called here? Me?” It wasn’t possible.

  “Well, you said—”

  “I was joking,” she replied weakly.

  “Nevertheless, I’d know that voice anywhere.” Frances’s eyes went all dreamy again. “Such vibrance. So sexy.”

  “For God’s sake, what did he say?”

  “Not much,” Frances replied with a shrug. “He wanted to talk to you. I told him you weren’t here, and I gave him your message.”

  Liv went crimson, remembering the message.

  “And he said he’d call back later.” She gave Liv one of her doting-mother smiles. “I knew you’d make an impression.”

  Liv shook her head, confused. This couldn’t be happening, not when she’d spent all morning putting him out of her mind. “He must’ve left something in my car,” she improvised, then thought, maybe he really did want his clothes back!

  “What’s up with the quartet?” Marv asked, materializing beside Liv’s desk, cigar in place in the corner of his mouth.

  “Quartet?” He might as well have been speaking to her in Hungarian.

  “Where’ve you been all morning, then?”

  Liv shook her head blearily again, like a drunk come-to to find herself in an unknown neighborhood, then fumbled through her purse, her mind in as great a disarray as her bag.

  “Don’t mind her,” Frances explained. “She just had a call from Joe Harrington.”

  “No kidding.” Marv looked impressed. “Another story?”

  “No.” Liv was positive about that, then wished she weren’t, for what other reason would Marv think he had for calling her?

  “Oh.” Marv regarded her curiously, chewing on the cigar. “He did want more from you than the interview then.”

  “Marv!” Liv glared at him, mortified. How dare he say such incriminating things in front of Frances?

  He spread his hands, looking sheepish and even had the grace to blush. “Sorry,” he said, turning to beat a hasty retreat to his office. “Let me have that material on the quartet, if you remember who they are, as soon as you can.”

  “Sooooo,” Frances said, eyeing Liv narrowly. “He didn’t make a pass, huh?”

  “Oh, you know Joe Harrington,” Liv mumbled, still mortified. “He says, ‘Pass the peas,’ and it sounds like a pass.”

  “Where in an interview do you say a thing like ‘Pass the peas,’?” Frances wanted to know.

  “That was just an example,” Liv retorted irritably. “Don’t be so literal. You know what I mean—pass the peas, I need a towel—”

  Frances’s eyes grew like mushrooms, almost popping out of her head. “This gets more intriguing by the minute.”

  “Not really,” Liv said, ducking her head to rummage through her bag for the quartet notes and to avoid Frances’s speculative gaze.

  “Well, I think there’s hope,” Frances said. “Especially if he’s calling you.”

  “Dream on,” Liv said. “We’ve seen the last of him. He went to Portland today. Who knows where he’ll be tomorrow. He probably lost his little black book and thinks it might be in my car. He’ll probably ask me to send it on.”

  “We’ll see,” Frances said. “I, for one, don’t think we’ve heard the last of this. After all, he still has twenty-six somethings that he owes you, doesn’t he?”

  Liv had forgotten that. Oh Lord, she groaned, me and my big mouth.

  Still, she wasn’t completely prepared when she picked up the phone that evening to hear a gruff, sexy voice say, “Hi.”

  “Who is this?” She knew damned well who it was. There wasn’t another voice like his anywhere. But why was he calling her?

  “I see you’re just as determined to deflate my ego now as you were last night,” he said, laughing softly. His laughter sent prickles all the way down to her toes, and she sat down abruptly on the wooden kitchen chair.

  “Oh, Mr. Harrington, what can I do for you?”

  “Come on, Liv,” the voice cajoled. “I thought we were friends. You can’t call a guy by his last name after you’ve undressed him and put him to bed, can you?”

  “I did not undress you!”

  “Well, not entirely, maybe,” he allowed. “Made me more comfortable, let’s say.”

  “Let’s not say anything, Mr. Harrington!”

  “Sorry, I’m just teasing.” She could tell he was grinning. She could see him now in her mind’s eye, the quirk of his mouth, the mischievous glint in his tiger’s eyes. “I’m just really calling to say thanks. I appreciated the blanket. And your letting me stay.”

  “I… you… you’re welcome,” she stammered, disconcerted by hi sudden sincerity.

  “Did it make things awkward for you?”

  She sat up straighter. He cared? “Well, um, no… but—”

  “I tried to get out before the kids woke up,” he went on. “And none of the neighbors saw me leave. I walked down to a supermarket parking lot and called a taxi from there.” He sounded breathless, a bit hesitant and worried. Nothing like the devil-may-care Joe Harrington immortalized in print everywhere. Imagine, a Joe Harrington concerned about the proprieties of a situation. Liv smiled.

  “No, it was, um, all right,” she told him. No sense in bringing up Frances’s thoughts. Those were entirely her own fault after her reference to the twenty-six somethings he owed her. “Well, good-bye.”

  “Hey, hang on,” he said quickly, the diffident, nervous Joe suddenly vanishing. “There’s a little matter of the twenty-six kisses I still owe you!”

  Liv felt the heat leap to her cheeks. Why had she ever said that to Frances? She would never liv
e it down! “Don’t be ridiculous,” she blurted. “Frances just made some silly remark about you calling me while I was out of the office, and so I said… Frances thinks you’re just too… too—” Couldn’t she say anything without sticking her foot in her mouth?

  “Marvelous for words? Sexy for my own good?” Joe filled in, laughter rich in his voice.

  “That’s the general idea,” Liv agreed dryly. “Anyway, forget it.”

  “I don’t want to forget it,” he murmured, his voice velvety in her ear. Goose bumps broke out on her arms. “But,” he went on in a more normal tone, “there’s nothing much I can do about it right now. Tomorrow I’m flying to Hawaii for two days, and then I have to give a series of talks in Texas and Oklahoma or thereabouts. Then, I think, it’s on to the East Coast to sway the Bostonians and New Yorkers with my words of wisdom.”

  Liv felt a momentary stab of disappointment, which she just as quickly banished, as he outlined his itinerary. Life was complicated enough without wishing she had a man like Joe Harrington in it, even briefly. “Sounds like fun,” she said brightly. A change from early Madison eclectic, which was the only thing on her horizon, anyway.

  “Oh sure.” Joe’s tone was ironic. “Once you’ve seen one airplane, you’ve seen them all. And one hotel room is pretty much like another.” He sighed. “But it’s something that I promised myself I would do.”

  “I’m impressed,” Liv told him sincerely, and she was. She had thought he was just a handsome face and a little talent, but there was clearly more to him than that. His commitment to the cause he espoused was very obvious the night he gave his speech in Madison, and he seemed quite willing to put his body where his mouth was for a long while.

  “Are you?” he sounded doubtful.

  “Yes,” she told him, and was prodded by the feeling that she said it as much because she was sure he needed to hear it as because it was, in fact, true. He sounded bone-weary, and she remembered how exhausted he had looked the night before. It was past ten here, which meant it was only eight on the West Coast, but already he sounded equally tired tonight. “Don’t you have to give a speech this evening?”