Starstruck

by Anne McAllister

  “I haven’t come to the wrong house, have I?” Ellie asked, her eyes taking in the rooms once more before they settled on him in wide-eyed amazement. “You are my brother? You do live here?”

  “Mmmhmm.”

  “Then, pray tell—” she waved an all-encompassing hand.

  “It’s a long story,” he said, not wanting to discuss it.

  “I’ll be here a while.”

  “They’ve all got chicken pox,” he said discouragingly.

  “I’ve had it.”

  “What do you want?”

  “A number of things. Offer me a cup of coffee and I’ll tell you.”

  It was obvious she wasn’t going to be got rid of easily, so Joe motioned her to a chair and escaped into the kitchen in search of coffee. When he returned, she was in the den playing Snap with Stephen, and Ben and Theo had abandoned their checkers game to watch. Even Jennifer, who had been in a fit of sullen itchiness for two days, seemed to have forgotten her own misery enough to leave her blocks and crouch on the floor beside Ellie, giggling at Ellie’s groans and moans as Stephen won time after time.

  “That’s all,” Ellie said when Joe handed her the mug of steaming coffee. “I quit. You’re too good for me,” she told Stephen who beamed from ear to ear.

  “Did you let him win?” Ben asked suspiciously.

  “Me?” Ellie feigned horror. “Never! I always play to win. Ask Joe.”

  “She plays to win,” Joe told him with the voice of years of experience. “She never let me beat her once. She picked on me constantly. Still does.”

  “Absolutely,” Ellie agreed complacently. She stirred milk into her coffee and settled on the corduroy-covered sofa, regarding Joe silently over the rim of her cup. Then she smiled and said, “And I’m going to start again now. Picking on you.” She took a sip of the coffee and grimaced, waving a hand in front of her mouth to cool it. “My word, that’s hot. Are you trying to burn me alive?”

  “We’ll see,” Joe said equably, taking the chair across from her. “I won’t decide till I know why you’re here.”

  “Well, Luther sent me to—”

  “Luther! I told him no Steve Scott!” Joe sat bolt upright in fury, slopping his own coffee onto his pants.

  “Luther sent me to see what you were up to. He couldn’t believe that you were just really writing a screenplay.”

  “I am just really writing a screenplay,” Joe said firmly, mopping up the coffee and then reaching for Jennifer who stood by his chair, lifting her onto his lap. She cuddled against his chest, her fair hair nestled beneath his chin, smelling of Liv’s shampoo. His hand came up to stroke her hair absently and he wished Liv were here.

  “Ummmm,” Ellie said, her gaze flickering over the kids to the typewriter and its accompanying sea of paper. “So I see,” she said. “But that’s not all, is it?” she probed, her eyes darting back to the children.

  “They’re friends,” Joe said flatly.

  “Obviously good ones.”

  “So why else are you here?” he demanded, wanting her back on a subject of his choosing.

  Ellie shrugged. “Curiosity,” she admitted. “Mike said to leave you alone, but when I didn’t hear anything for ages and ages after you left, I began to wonder again what the real attraction to Madison was.” She grinned. “I must admit, I’m more curious than ever, now that I’m here.”

  Joe scowled, but she went on blithely.

  “The third reason is that I need a place to hole up for a while, so I can work on the plot of my next play. You know I can never do the plotting well at home with Mike and Julie around and all my interruptions and—”

  “No,” Joe said. He knew exactly where this conversation was headed now.

  “But this place is simply perfect,” Ellie decreed looking around proprietarily.

  “No.”

  “But you’re not even going to be here!”

  “What?” That was news.

  “That’s the fourth reason I’m here. You’ve got an invitation to speak on world peace at the symposium at the UNO in Vienna a week from Saturday!”

  “Huh?” Surely he hadn’t heard her right. Vienna? As in Austria?

  “I’m serious. Tim Gates called me when he knew I was coming here. He said you have received an invitation to speak to the general assembly of delegates from all the nations attending the conference.”

  Joe stared, unable to believe what he was hearing.

  “That’s a coup, little brother,” Ellie said proudly, smiling at him. “You can’t turn that down.”

  He couldn’t, and he knew it. It was exactly the sort of high visibility speech he had been angling for, the sort of thing that would lend credence to all his talks around the country and that might even have some effect internationally. It meant that people were really taking him seriously. But what about Liv, he wondered. He couldn’t leave her. Not now. There would be no getting his foot back in her door if he left her now. “I’ll think about it,” he told Ellie.

  “What’s to think?” Ellie was looking at him as though he’d gone right around the bend. “If ever there was a footloose lad, it’s you, my boy. You can pick up and go at a moment’s notice. At least that’s what you’ve always told me, at any rate.”

  “Yeah, but…”

  “But?” Ellie’s eyebrows arched speculatively.

  But there was no need even to articulate it because at that moment the door opened and Liv came in. She slung her tote bag onto the bench just inside the patio door. “I’m home,” she announced.

  “I see,” Ellie said, her words overflowing with meaning.

  “No, you don’t see!” Joe snapped, leaping to his feet, depositing an open-mouthed Jennifer on the floor. He moved quickly to Liv’s side and slipped an arm protectively around her, feeling her stiffen as he did so. His arm tightened. “This is my sister, Ellie McPherson,” he told her. “Ellie, this is Olivia James. You’ve met her kids.”

  “All of them?” Ellie asked, her gaze swiveling over the four assembled in front of her.

  “No,” Liv said easily, relaxing a bit against him. “There’re really five. The oldest is at camp.”

  Ellie looked as if she’d been hit by a beer bottle. “Five?” She turned to Joe. “And where do you fit in? Is this the secret family you’ve been keeping from dad all these years, just to spite him?”

  He grinned, a part of him wishing, momentarily at least, that it was true. “No, actually I’m just the lowly baby-sitter. Chicken pox tends to limit the options of the working mother.”

  “Well, I’m glad you’re making yourself useful,” Ellie laughed, but she was looking at him with a strange light in her eyes, and Joe found himself avoiding her gaze. “Where do you work, then?” she asked Liv, who was looking suddenly very self-conscious and trying to move away from Joe.

  “For the Madison Times,” she said. “That’s how I met Joe, actually. I interviewed him.”

  “Joe doesn’t give interviews.”

  Liv grinned suddenly, and Joe saw her glance up at him, a mischievous glint in her eyes that he hadn’t seen recently. “I didn’t think so, either,” she agreed, digging her elbow into his ribs. “But for some reason he wanted to give me one.”

  “I wonder why,” Ellie said dryly.

  “So did I,” Liv said demurely. “Especially after he met the kids.”

  “Hey,” Joe jerked his head up, suddenly aware that, if he allowed it, these two were capable of ganging up on him. The way they were grinning at each other made him decidedly edgy. “I’m just a nice guy, that’s all. A soft touch.”

  “I’m glad to hear it,” Ellie said, picking up her suitcase from the floor. “In that case you won’t mind showing me to my room.”

  Joe’s eyes narrowed and he opened his mouth to protest again, then reconsidered. Maybe having Ellie there wouldn’t be a bad idea. She could certainly help defuse a potentially combustible situation between Liv and himself. After last night he had doubts about his control lasting where she wa
s concerned; at the same time he was more convinced than ever that, until they had a better idea of what they wanted from a relationship, her treaty was a good idea. “The couch is all yours, my dear,” he drawled, gesturing at the one she had tossed her sweater on in the living room when she passed.

  “What about me?” Ben demanded. It had been his bed.

  “We can go back to our house,” Liv offered.

  “No,” Joe cut in. No way was she going to leave now—not with all these questions she had stirred up in his mind. “You have two choices,” he told Ben. “You can sleep with me or on the floor.”

  Ben looked disgusted.

  Well, I don't want to sleep with you much, either, fella, Joe thought glumly, but I don’t reckon your Mom would have me at the moment. One look at Liv told him she knew what he was thinking and that he was right. “Put your suitcase in the hall closet,” he told Ellie. “Since you won’t be staying long…”

  “A month or so, I thought,” Ellie replied, still looking from him to Liv and back, as if weighing the possibilities. He could almost see her mind ticking over, putting things together and coming up with—Joe grimaced— coming up with God knew what!

  “A month,” he groaned. “Hardly.”

  “But I have a whole play to plot.”

  “Rent a cottage.”

  “Too expensive.”

  “You could buy and sell me,” he protested. “You’re one of the richest playwrights in America.”

  Liv’s jaw dropped. “You’re that Eleanor McPherson?”

  Joe’s nose wrinkled in distaste. “You didn’t know I had such a famous sister?”

  “I never would have guessed,” Liv admitted. She was looking stunned, and he hoped it wasn’t yet another strike against him. Then she smiled and he felt relieved, although he wished she’d smile at him. “I love your plays,” she told his sister.

  “Thanks. Joe doesn’t brag about me, that’s for sure,” Ellie said as she deposited her suitcase in the closet. “It doesn’t go with his image. I keep trying to marry him off in them.”

  “Life doesn’t always imitate art,” Joe said gruffly, wishing she’d shut up.

  “More’s the pity. But”—and here Ellie gave him an arch look that spoke volumes—“I never give up hoping.”

  “More’s the pity,” Joe countered in turn and left the room.

  Liv didn’t know how Joe felt about his sister’s arrival, but she was delighted that Ellie had come. Another day or, worse, another unchaperoned night in the same house with him—and four children sleeping were not chaperones—and she wouldn’t be able to answer for what she would do. The temptation to let go of her scruples, her sanity, her judgment, was almost overwhelming. Why not have a fling, she asked herself almost hourly. Lots of people had them—Tom, for heaven’s sake, had had dozens of them—and everyone she knew had lived to tell about it. Most people even appeared to emerge from such affairs relatively unscathed. Why not Olivia James?

  He was driving her insane. He had only to look at her and she burned with wanting him. Never again would she smirk over all those starry-eyed girls who drooled over the men they saw in magazines. They, at least, had the excuse of youth and naiveté. She had no excuse at all. All she had was willpower and the Chicken Pox Treaty, and the first was fading fast and the second would end in four days.

  So, thank goodness for Eleanor McPherson, Liv thought as she set the table for dinner the following night. There must indeed be a God, and Ellie had been sent as his instrument for her salvation from Joe Harrington! Or so she believed until she sat down to dinner.

  “I’ve just come up with a marvelous plot for my next play after this,” Ellie announced with an enthusiastic grin. She swallowed her mouthful of mashed potatoes and continued, “I’ve been watching you two cope with this three-ring circus for three days, and I’ve decided that—”

  “No!” Joe cut in, his fork arrested halfway to his mouth. He glared at Ellie with fire in his green eyes. Liv was glad she wasn’t on the receiving end of that look.

  Ellie just giggled, fairly bouncing with enthusiasm, and Liv wondered how Joe could bear to squelch that until she heard the next words. “Movie star falls for lovely divorcée with five kids! I’ll make it six in the play. Will he win her? Will he succeed in breaking down her reserve? How juicy!”

  “Damn it!” Joe spat.

  “You wouldn’t!” Liv’s fork clattered to her plate, and she stared at Ellie in crimson-faced horror.

  Ellie was overcome with amusement. “Touchy, aren’t we?” she teased.

  “I’ll sue you for invasion of privacy,” Joe snapped, and looking at him, Liv thought he very well might.

  “Well,” Ellie shrugged with good-natured indifference, “it’s not even necessarily true, is it? I mean, unless you’ve really fallen for Liv—” she baited, letting her voice trail off into nothing.

  Liv’s eyes dropped to the piece of gristle left from the roast on her plate, not daring to look at Joe or the kids. She couldn’t imagine what his face looked like. The kids, she knew, would have eyes like one-hundred watt bulbs. The silence went on for eons.

  “Pass the peas,” Joe said to Stephen, and practically snatched them from him, shoveling a huge amount onto his plate.

  “I thought you hated them,” Jennifer piped up.

  “Don’t be impertinent,” Joe warned through a mouthful. He stared across the table at his sister who was watching him in open-mouthed wonder. “Have some peas,” he commanded. “And if you behave yourself, after dinner I’ll let you plot a love affair between Pio and Elena for my screenplay. Maybe it will help you stick to fiction.”

  Liv hoped so. Things between Joe and herself were strained enough without Ellie threatening to make them characters in one of her plays. It was sufficient that she saw herself in Elena without that. She didn’t say anything, though, trusting from Joe’s quick intervention that Ellie would back off. Too much protest might give his sister the idea that more existed between them than really, in fact, did. So she quietly helped Ben with the dishes, then sent him out to frolic with Joe while she read the paper in the den. But the paper was hard to concentrate on. Her mind drifted to Joe and to the shouts and splashes just beyond the yard. Giving up on the news, she got up and went outside, sitting down on the grass.

  She was watching the sun go down, admiring the lake in all its golden, sun-streaked beauty and trying to forget the dinner-table conversation when Ellie came and sat down beside her.

  “I always tease Joe about being the hero in my plays,” Ellie said, settling herself on a beach towel. “Ordinarily he just ignores me. Obviously he has more at stake here. I didn’t mean to embarrass you.”

  Liv wrapped her arms around her knees and wondered what she could say to that. “You didn’t,” would hardly be honest because she had rarely been more embarrassed in her life. But, somehow, admitting it to Ellie made her dreams seem possible, made it seem as though something might really be happening between herself and Joe, made it seem that all her crazy, unbelievable fantasies weren’t so crazy and unbelievable after all. It was rather like being in junior high school and hearing that the boy you had a crush on also had a crush on you.

  “Um,” she mumbled, unable to come up with a sensible response. Her eyes were fixed on Joe and Ben cavorting in the water. They followed Joe’s lithe, muscular form wherever he went, wanting him, needing him.

  “You’re exactly what he needs,” Ellie went on in her no-nonsense fashion.

  Liv felt the color rise in her cheeks. “Hardly,” she snorted. “I’m not quite his type—except as a momentary diversion.” She had to keep telling herself that or she would be heartbroken when he was gone.

  “No.” Ellie tucked her knees under her chin and rested her elbows on them. “Joe’s quite good at finding momentary diversions all over the place. That’s what his life has been for the last eighteen years—one momentary diversion after another. You’re something else.”

  “I certainly am,” Liv agreed dry
ly. It was folly even to let herself think that what Ellie was so broadly hinting might actually be true. “I’m a middle-aged damsel in distress,” she went on. “And I think he sees me as his good will project of the month. His cause. Like world peace.”

  Ellie clicked her tongue against her teeth, shaking her head in dismay. “And you looked like such a bright girl,” she chided.

  Liv laughed. “Not really. Just sensible, Joe’s a good friend,” she said sincerely. And sexual attraction or not, she reminded herself, that was very likely all he would ever be. She gave Ellie a small smile and the other woman cocked her head as though considering what Liv had said. Then she turned and watched her brother give Ben a piggyback ride through waist-deep water.

  “You know,” Ellie said finally, “I don’t think I’ve ever heard a woman tell me yet that Joe was a good friend and mean it.” Liv looked at her curiously, but Ellie was staring out over the water, talking softly, the breeze ruffling her brown hair. “I mean, she might have said, ‘Oh, he’s just a good friend,’ to cover up an affair she was having with him or something, but never because she meant she really liked him, thought of him as a valuable person to have around, to be with, to share with.” She sighed. “He’s been used, one way or another, by nearly everyone in the industry. He has acquaintances by the score, and he’s on everybody’s party list. For a while, of course, that’s fine. He even wanted it like that.”

  “What do you mean?” Liv couldn’t contain her curiosity any longer. She couldn’t imagine that sort of existence appealing to anyone, much less to a sensitive man like Joe.

  “I mean that momentary diversions were all he wanted for years. You have to understand that my father is a bit of a steamroller.”

  “Like someone else I could mention,” Liv said.

  “Very much,” Ellie agreed. “But what my father wanted out of life for Joe and what Joe wanted for himself were two very different things. They clashed from day one—over classes in school, activities, careers, places to live, universities, the girl Joe was supposed to marry.”