Starstruck

by Anne McAllister

  “I’ll do the dishes,” she offered afterward, but he shook his head.

  “My mommy taught me to do dishes, too. If we do them together we’ll have more time for other things later on.”

  Liv didn’t ask what the other things were. She thought she would find out soon enough, so she ferreted out the dishwashing liquid and squirted some into the sinkful of water, washing up while Joe got a dish towel and dried. It ought to have been that simple, Liv thought. She must have washed dishes several thousand times in her adult life, but she had never felt so aware of the man helping her. She found herself watching as his strong hands smoothed the towel around the curve of a wine glass or whisked droplets of water off a plate. And she couldn’t think of a thing to say to save her life. She was submerged in an awareness growing between them so powerfully that it was almost tangible. And yet it was odd, too—they were doing dishes together, just like people who had been married for years and years.

  “Just like an old married couple,” Joe’s voice broke into her thoughts and she looked up at him, astonished. How had he read her mind? Her look of astonishment must have unnerved him, she thought, or maybe he didn’t really realize what he had said, for suddenly an uncharacteristic tide of red crossed his neck and face and he said, “Tell me about your work.”

  And Liv did, gladly, allowing him to lead their conversation into an avenue where they would both feel safer.

  “Let’s go for a walk,” Joe suggested when the last dish was put away.

  That sounded safe, Liv thought. Safer than staying inside, anyway. When you walked, you had your feet on the ground at least. And the way she felt the sexual tension building between them, on the ground was just the place her feet needed to be. It was a lucky thing, she reflected, that her wine had gone down the drain. Tonight was turning out to be a heady enough experience even when she was sober.

  “Want a sweater?” he asked, leading her out the door.

  It wasn’t really that cool, but she was tempted, just to feel Joe’s sweater around her shoulders. Resist it, she told herself. “I’m fine,” she said.

  Joe shrugged but pulled a nylon, fleece lined windbreaker off the hook by the door and tied the sleeves around his neck. “Just in case,” he said. “We can share it.”

  She should have accepted the sweater. It would have been less dangerous after all. Ah, well. She giggled a little; the thought of sharing his jacket wasn’t bad either. Control yourself, Olivia, she admonished herself sternly. But just then his warm hand closed over hers and all resolution failed. A giddy warmth filled her as she curved her fingers willingly around his.

  Had they stayed to eat at her house they would have been able to walk down the street past other equally unimaginative houses until they reached the neighborhood convenience store. And if they had gone a block further they could have passed the chain-link-fenced playground of the kids’ elementary school. But here they had an enchanted woodsy park, a moon peeking through pine trees, the smell of pine resin and damp leaves and the sound of the lake lapping on the shore.

  “I love to go to sleep hearing the sound of water,” Liv said as they skirted the edge of the lake.

  “Me, too.”

  “You’ll sleep well tonight, then.” She sat down on a rock outcropping and Joe settled himself next to her, pulling her between his legs so that her back rested against his hard chest.

  “Not likely,” he growled in her ear.

  “But—”

  “How in hell do you expect that I’ll sleep well, knowing that you’re a mile and a half away with five little lads?” His arms came around her, and she turned her head so that his lips, warm and demanding, brushed her cheek, before he shifted and found her mouth in a long, shattering kiss. She shuddered under the impact of it.

  “Cold?” he murmured, arms tightening, his cheek scraping hers.

  “N-no.” She was burning. A heat like molten lava coursed through her veins and, unthinking, she shifted onto her knees facing him, putting her arms around his neck, winding her fingers through his thick, dark hair.

  “Let’s go in,” Joe whispered, his mouth moving against her cheek. His eyes were closed and she could hear his heart thudding as loudly as her own. Wordlessly she allowed him to draw her to her feet and slip the jacket around both of them before they walked as one person back along the lakeshore to the house.

  “Our architect was a romantic, too,” Joe said softly as he moved ahead of her into the living room and lighted the bank of candles on the mantel. The room took on a golden glow, looking as seductive and unreal as Liv was feeling. She stood just inside the doorway and watched Joe as he padded across the room in his jogging shoes, his hair mussed, the planes and angles of his features softened by the shadows of the candlelight.

  “Come here.” His voice was husky, slightly unsteady, and he moved toward the sofa and sat down, patting the space beside him.

  Liv went, drawn like a moth to a flame. “I must be crazy,” she mumbled in a voice as unsteady as his. But she curled up beside him, snuggling against his hard chest, feeling in spite of all her common sense that what was happening was right, that this was where she belonged.

  “Liv,” Joe groaned, his hands slipping under her halter, caressing, seeking, finding. “You don’t know what it’s been like these past two weeks.”

  “Mmmm? Don’t I?” She knew what they’d been like for her. Two years. His fingers sought the curve of her breast. There was no bra to stop him and Liv didn’t pull away. On the contrary she felt as though something had finally happened to thaw her out. The block of ice that she had been since Tom’s defection had protected her from other men, had been her shield against all intrusions into her life. Nobody had come close to penetrating it until now. But Joe was like a forest fire, relentless, uncontrollable, melting her in his arms. And she knew that, at the moment anyway, she had no desire to control him. Her hands were as restless as his. Chains of restraint loosened; she tugged his shirt out of his jeans and slid her hands up across the smooth muscles of his back, kneading his shoulders, stroking his neck, skipping down his spine.

  “Yes,” he muttered, “Oh, yes.” And he slid sideways, pulling her down on top of him and removing her halter top in one easy movement. Very clever, she thought. Years of practice. But suddenly it didn’t matter. Nothing mattered but Joe, the feel of him, the taste of him. She nibbled an earlobe and felt a tremor rock through him. The candlelight flickered, making his expression almost unreadable. But Liv could see enough in the heavy-lidded eyes to know how much he wanted her. As much as she wanted him. She tried to pull back a bit to see better this man who was making her forget every resolution she’d made in the past two years, but his hands drew her back down to him, his mouth seeking her breast, suckling gently and causing her the same torment she knew she caused him. Her hand moved down his chest and sides, stroking, learning the shape of him, the bony ribs, the haired chest, the flat, hard stomach. Her hand trailed lightly across the skin above the waistband of his jeans. He sucked in his breath sharply, his mouth drawing, tugging on her, reaching the center of her being. Then he nuzzled against her, murmuring, “Go on, Liv. Please.” His own hands were fumbling with the snap on her jeans.

  “I hear a car,” Liv said, staying his hand in its quest, though she ached for him to go on.

  “Naw. It’s probably just the creek where it goes over the rocks to the lake.” His hand continued. The snap was undone, the zipper partway down. He was probably right, she thought fuzzily. No one else lived nearby; no one would be coming to see them. Anyway, her hands were not moved by reason tonight; they only wanted to know him, to touch him. His jeans unsnapped even more easily than hers. She traced the narrow line of hair down below his navel even further.

  “The car’s still here, so she must be,” a childish voice announced on the porch, breaking the sounds of quickened breathing and the dull rush of water over rocks.

  “That’s Ben!” Liv hissed, sitting bolt upright on Joe’s thighs. “Oh, my God!
” She scrambled off him, frantically searching for her top, finding it behind the sofa and pulling it on—wrong. “Cripes,” she muttered and tugged it off and on again.

  Joe cursed and sat up slowly, staring dumbly, as if he’d been asleep and had only just come around. His were not, she reflected with the barest hint of humor, the reactions of a man used to making love in a house full of children.

  The knock on the door made her jump. She ran a hand through her hair helplessly, knowing that it was only too obvious what she’d been doing. But none of that mattered. Something was wrong at home. Otherwise Ben wouldn’t be here. What was wrong? How had he got here? Who brought him? A neighbor? Frances?

  “Would you answer the door?” she said to Joe, who was still dazedly fumbling around. She wanted to shout, or at least zip up your jeans before I open the door, but she didn’t. He looked very uncomfortable and she supposed he was. Ben’s voice had had the effect of a cold shower on her, and she didn’t imagine it was any more pleasant for Joe. He ran a pocket comb through his hair to no effect whatsoever and, shrugging wryly at the sight they presented, opened the door.

  “I don’t think we’ve met,” said a cold, formal voice that sent Liv’s stomach plummeting to even greater depths. “But I’ve come to deliver an urgent phone message for you, Mr. Harrington.”

  It was Tom.

  Chapter Five

  What could he have said?

  The question had been plaguing Joe for hours. The whole scene had been compressed into a kaleidoscope of nightmarish impressions—Tom, overbearing and judgmental; Ben, dazed and disoriented; himself, aching and fumbling, stammering responses; and Liv. Yes, Liv! He would see her white, strained expression forever. Guilt. Anger. More guilt. All there on her face. Liv, who had held and caressed him moments before, wouldn’t even look at him. Except, he recalled angrily, when Tom had said the message that was so urgent came from Linda Lucas. Then she had looked at him! The hurt and loathing in her expression had twisted his stomach.

  He shifted uncomfortably in the narrow seat of the L.A. bound plane, but he couldn’t escape the image of her face. He had wanted to shout, no! Nothing Linda Lucas had to say mattered to him at all! But he knew it wouldn’t do any good. She had only had to hear Linda Lucas’s name, to believe, however erroneously, that Linda had some claim on him, and the evening was over. They would never be able to recapture the moments they had shared before she’d heard Ben’s voice on the porch. And not even the great Joe Harrington could convince a self-righteous ex-husband to leave so that he could continue making love to his former wife. No, he had lost the opportunity forever. And, he reflected grimly, he had probably lost Liv too.

  There had been no point in arguing that the message wasn’t important. She would never believe it. Why should she? There was his wonderful reputation, for one thing. And he hadn’t denied that Linda meant anything to him when Liv had mentioned the pictures she had seen. Maybe if he had— Damn! His fist slammed down on the arm rest, and the old man sitting next to him sat up with a jerk.

  “Sorry,” Joe muttered, and the old man subsided into gentle snores.

  Sorry. Was he ever! He had tried to say it to Liv on the way to the airport, but the word wasn’t adequate. Words that covered things like inadvertently waking strangers on airplanes couldn’t begin to cover what he felt about the disaster they had just been through.

  Anyway, he acknowledged, she wasn’t having any of it. She had, once the immediate shock of Tom and Ben had been absorbed, become brisk and matter-of-fact, practically pushing Joe out the door. She was again the Olivia who emerged whenever she had to cope with something distasteful and nearly beyond her depth. The Olivia he had first met at the Sheraton.

  “I’ll take you to the airport,” she had said, thrusting his jacket at him and blowing out the bank of candles as effectively as the north wind. “You drive Ben home,” she told Tom, “and I’ll be right there.”

  “Can’t,” Tom said with a falsely apologetic smile. “I’m expected elsewhere. You’ll have to take Ben with you.”

  It was very neat, Joe thought. You couldn’t find a better chaperon than a ten year-old boy, especially one who never blinked. So Liv had driven Joe to the airport, ignoring him all the way with her tight lips and angry eyes, only bothering to answer Ben’s mundane questions and to laugh once when he told her something Jennifer had said at dinner. She never once looked at Joe or spoke to him directly again until she drove up into the glare of lights outside the air terminal.

  “Thank you for the dinner,” she said in her best well-brought-up tone, staring straight ahead. The engine was idling and he knew she wasn’t going to park and come in with him.

  “Can’t we see him take off?” Ben implored, hanging out the window to peer at the jet just landing.

  “We don’t know when the next flight will be,” Liv said, and Joe knew she couldn’t wait to be rid of him.

  “I might not even get a seat on it,” Joe said with an attempt at lightness he didn’t feel.

  “You will,” Liv said bitterly. “I imagine they’d bounce the pope to give Joe Harrington a seat.”

  “Damn!” he muttered. Why did it have to end like this? She was the one woman he’d ever really liked as a person. He flung open the door and dragged his suitcase out after him. “I’m sorry,” he grated. “I know you don’t believe it, and heaven knows why you should, but I am. Linda Lucas doesn’t—”

  “If you say, ‘Linda Lucas doesn’t mean a thing to me’ I’ll scream,” Liv said tightly and revved the engine. Joe bent down, staring at her hard for a long minute, willing her to turn her head. She didn’t.

  “Thank you for the ride,” he said finally with icy politeness and, slamming the door, he walked into the brightly lit terminal and didn’t look back.

  In his mind he couldn’t stop looking back. Playing it over. Rehashing it. Too bad you couldn’t have a second take in life instead of having to muddle through with the mess you made of the first one. He leaned his head against the coolness of the window, feeling the throb of engines through the painful pounding in his temple.

  “Something to drink, Mr. Harrington?” the flight attendant asked, smiling at him as though it wasn’t just a drink she was offering. Another night he might have smiled back, chatted with her and waited for her after the plane got in. It had happened before.

  “No, thanks.” His voice was colorless. He put his hand over his eyes. The only smile he wanted tonight was Liv’s—one of her wide, happy grins, or the smile she had given him when he was chopping the potatoes, or the tiny, wistful smiles he sometimes caught on her face when she thought he wasn’t looking. If he couldn’t have that, he didn’t want anything. He only wanted to be left alone. Completely alone.

  “Leave me alone!” Liv could hear the high edge of hysteria in her own voice. Sly remarks and innuendo from Tom were generally unwelcome, but never more so than this morning. She hadn’t slept at all last night. She had chivied the kids outside after a quick breakfast so she could nurse her headache—and heartache—without interruption. And she didn’t need a phone call from Tom now—or ever.

  “You should have more sense,” he went on, undeterred. “All he wanted was to get you in the sack.”

  “What does it matter to you?” she nearly screamed at him. Of course he was right—she was nothing more than an interlude, a small tidbit to tide him over until he could go back to Linda Lucas—but she didn’t need Tom to tell her that!

  “I’m concerned about your welfare, that’s why it matters,” Tom said with pompous self-assurance that made her want to strangle him.

  “Garbage,” she raged, the sunlight blurring in her tears. “If you were so concerned about my welfare, why did you go off with Trudy? Or any of those other women?”

  “I, well, I…”

  “So don’t preach at me, Tom James. Good-bye!” There would have been more satisfaction in slamming the receiver in his ear if she hadn’t been crying so hard. Damn him anyway! And damn Joe Harrington! A
nd damn me for letting them matter! She rubbed a fist across her eyes and blew her nose on a paper towel.

  “How about an aspirin, Mom?” Noel appeared in the doorway, a concerned expression on his face.

  Liv managed a wan smile. “No, thanks, dear. I’ll be all right.”

  “You don’t look all right.” Noel ambled into the room and perched on the edge of the kitchen table. “Did dad make you cry? Or was it Joe?”

  “Both of them. Or maybe it’s just me. I don’t know.” She couldn’t have said even that much to anyone else, but Noel had seen enough to understand.

  “I’ll tell dad to lay off.”

  “You don’t have to do that, Noel. I already did.”

  “Well, Joe, then.”

  “I don’t think he’ll be back.” She forced herself to say the words.

  “But Theo said he rented a place nearby.”

  “I think that was a spur-of-the-moment thing. I doubt if he’ll be around again.” She was virtually certain he wouldn’t be. Why would he willingly come back and face her? As far as she could see, she would be nothing more than a source of annoyance and embarrassment to him—not to mention what he would be to her.

  Noel looked unhappy. “That’s too bad,” he intoned. “I thought he seemed like a pretty nice guy. But if he hurt you—”

  “He didn’t hurt me.” Not the way you mean, anyway, Liv thought. Her hurting was from wanting too badly what she had no business wanting. Was it possible to tell yourself, I told you so?

  “You’re sure?” Noel still looked as though he’d willingly punch someone in the nose.

  “I’m sure. But thanks. I’ll survive.” She reached over and ruffled his hair, feeling uncommonly good that he cared. She could make it, she thought, with just the boys and Jennifer. She didn’t need Tom. She didn’t need Joe. Without him life would be quite nice enough.

  “Nice,” Liv reflected for perhaps the thousandth time several days later, being the operative word. Not “exciting” or “sparkling” or “vibrant,” in fact, none of the things she had experienced when Joe Harrington had so briefly been a part of her existence. But safe, she thought, and relatively comfortable.