Starstruck

by Anne McAllister

  “I’ve got something called Stiirkemehl,” Liv called over the noise of the running water. “Is that it?”

  She heard Joe laugh for the first time since the afternoon he had given his speech. “Only if you want a bathtub full of gravy and an instant introduction to a Viennese plumber,” he replied. “That means ‘starch flour,’ like cornstarch.”

  “Oh!” Liv scurried back to the kitchen, wishing she’d had more than two years of high school Spanish and a year of college French.

  “Think bicarbonate,” Joe called after her.

  Liv did, but when she came back finally, she was bearing a green-and-white packet with a picture of a glass and a spoonful of white powder on it. It said Speisesoda and it both looked and sounded promising. She was going to say so. But when she opened the bathroom door all she could say was “Joe!”

  He had shed Uli’s robe and was stepping into the water in all his naked splendor—a splendor that his wickedly sexy grin and bedroom eyes had only hinted at. She felt as if she were dry kindling set to torch. “I… I should have knocked,” she babbled, thrusting the box at him and backing rapidly toward the door, knowing that she should drop her eyes, avoid staring, and also knowing that she was incapable of doing so. Talk about masculine beauty and perfection!

  “You’re staring,” Joe said petulantly as he shook the box over the water and chunks of baking soda fell into the water and foamed.

  And how, Liv thought. “Um, sorry,” she said hastily, about to turn and run.

  “That bad, huh?” Joe glumly surveyed his pox-covered chest and legs.

  Bad? Liv stopped, flustered, in the doorway and realized that they were seeing two different things. Where she saw only a lean, hard body, lithe and tanned, Joe saw chicken pox and nothing but.

  He raked a hand through his spiky hair and looked away from her to inspect the grout between the tiles above the tub.

  “Not bad at all,” Liv assured him, hovering indecisively a moment longer before she mustered sufficient courage to shut the bathroom door and remain on the same side of it as Joe Harrington. She leaned against the sink, luxuriating in her opportunity to study him. Study, ha, she thought. Study implied a dispassionate, objective examination that was completely impossible for her. She was melting where she stood. Joe had stopped examining the grout and was staring at her, his expression unreadable. She licked her lips quickly and asked, “Has the itching stopped?”

  “There are itches and then there are itches,” came the reply. “My chicken pox don’t itch any longer.” He stretched and flexed his muscles as he rose slowly to his feet giving Liv a good look at what still did itch. She closed her eyes and groped for a towel, flinging it in his direction as soon as she found one.

  “Dry me.” It was a challenge, a dare, the first glimpse of the baiting, teasing Joe she’d had since the first blister had appeared.

  “You sound like Theo.”

  “I don’t feel like Theo.” He was holding the towel out to her as he stood and dripped puddles onto Mrs. Carvalho’s shiny tile floor.

  He didn’t look like Theo either, and Liv most definitely did not feel like his mother. There was a world of difference in drying off a small, soapy-clean little boy, and running a towel over the well-muscled back and firm buttocks of Joe Harrington. She sucked her breath in sharply as she drew the soft beige terry towel down his arms, being careful not to rub too hard and break any new blisters. Her hands smoothed the towel across his flat stomach, aching to stray below, to trace the line of damp hair that arrowed below his navel toward his groin. As if she had, she felt him draw in his breath as a shudder ran through him.

  “This is not stopping the itching,” he said shakily and bit down on his lower lip as she dropped to her knees and began to dry his legs.

  “It was your idea,” she said softly even as she delighted in doing it. She had been dying to touch him for so long. She bent her head and concentrated on drying his feet. Her hair brushed against his bare thigh.

  “Liv.” He sounded strangled.

  She ran the towel lightly up the inside of his leg. “Yes.”

  His fingers clenched in her hair. The towel went back down again. And up. “What’re you doing?”

  “Drying you.”

  “Torturing me,” he groaned.

  “Do you want me to stop?”

  “No, yes… I don’t know.” He hauled her to her feet abruptly, wrapping his arms around her. The towel slithered to the floor unheeded as she felt the hardness of his arousal through the thin cotton of her slacks. His breathing was a ragged echo of her own as they clung together, and waves of desire coursed through her. “How I want you,” he whispered, and his hands moved to cup her buttocks and press her against him even more tightly. Then, with a shuddering sigh, he dropped his head into the curve of her shoulder and muttered, “We’d better stop.” He lifted his head and gave her a rueful grin. “Famous last words, huh?”

  Liv held on to him, afraid that if she let go she would topple over. Her legs were mush beneath her. “Stop?” she echoed shakily.

  He shrugged helplessly. “I haven’t heard the latest medical opinion of making love with chicken pox. Have you?” His hands slid up her spine and teased their way along the line of her bra strap beneath her navy T-shirt.

  “No,” she allowed. Were there medical opinions on such things?

  “And I don’t relish calling up some unsuspecting Viennese doctor and asking,” Joe went on, still grinning. “Especially not with my command of German!”

  “You speak German very well,” Liv replied.

  “Not that well. Besides, I might not ask that question even in English.”

  “Joe Harrington? Embarrassed?”

  Joe said a rude word, but Liv saw the flush spread across his skin even against his dark tan. He bent and picked up the towel, hastily knotting it around his hips. Liv grinned.

  “You don’t have a tan line,” she remarked.

  “So?” It was a growl, but he hitched the towel up higher on his hips and ignored her, studying with disgust his stubbled cheeks in the moisture-beaded mirror over the sink.

  “Do you sunbathe in the nude?” she pressed.

  “What of it?” But he looked decidedly uncomfortable.

  “Just curious,” Liv said, still smiling. “When you blush, you blush all over. Did you know that?”

  Joe flung the comb he had been using onto the floor. “For heaven’s sake,” he exploded. He yanked the door open and disappeared into the bedroom, leaving Liv in the bathroom giggling softly. “Just wait,” he threatened over his shoulder. “Just you wait.”

  It seemed, Liv thought as she had a bath of her own, as if she had been waiting forever. It had taken every ounce of courage she possessed to throw her strict middle-class upbringing to the winds and come to Vienna with him. She hadn’t expected him to ravish her, of course; but she had made up her mind that fully sharing her love with him was the only course to take. It was the only way to express what she felt for him, what she hoped he might possibly feel for her. Did he? It was hard to say. From the looks he gave her, from his comments, from the protective instinct she sensed emanating from him, she suspected he might. But Joe Harrington was unlike any other man she had ever met. With him, who knew?

  The week was nothing like the one he had planned—the chicken pox had seen to that. And in its way it confused Joe more than ever, for he had hoped that once he and Liv had spent some uninterrupted time together sightseeing and dating, he might better figure out her role in his life. At one time he thought he might possibly, by stretching things a bit, pigeonhole her as he had the other women he had known. Of course she was a friend as well as being physically attractive to him and that made it harder. But after this week he didn’t know what to do with her at all.

  He plucked irritably at the cool sheet and stared at the shaft of sunlight on the empty bed across the room where she had slept each night. She was such an amazing woman—so caring, so giving, so unlike all the women he had s
hared rooms with before. He couldn’t begin to conjure up a vision of Linda Lucas, for example, sponging down his feverish, pox-covered body, bringing him apple juice or cherry juice all through the day and night, and drying his body so skillfully and sensuously that he went almost mad with desire, completely oblivious for a time to the wretched picture he must have made. Linda Lucas would have run a mile. But Liv acted as though he was every bit as attractive as he ever was.

  Liv, he thought, was crazy. She must have been to come to Vienna with him! His mouth curved into a smile as he thought about her. Liv shouting at him when he was late for their first interview, her cheeks aflame with color and her gray eyes a stormy sea. Liv’s voice, soft and musical, weary sometimes, when they’d talked late at night on the phone. Liv cooking supper, Liv running on the lakeshore. Liv tucking a child into bed. Liv’s hand on his knee, her fresh daisy scent, her cool lips on his fevered brow. He felt a shudder of need course through him, amazed at the way she had insinuated herself into so many corners of his life. Even now she had only been out for an hour or so and he was missing her. He rolled onto his stomach and tried to sleep again, but it was no use. He had had more than enough rest the past few days. It wasn’t rest he needed now. Then he heard the front door open and felt a stab of eagerness. He called out.

  “Where’ve you been?”

  Liv poked her head into the bedroom and gave him a smile that caused his toes to curl. “Shopping. I went to the bakery and bought rolls, and to the supermarket and got wurst and cheese. Do you know how hard it is not only not to speak German but not to speak grams and kilos either. Do you think Marv would like an article on that?” She plopped down on the bed across from him and stretched her arms above her head, twisting like a cat settling down for a nap. “My stupidity overwhelms me,” she exclaimed.

  It wasn’t her stupidity that was overwhelming Joe. “I think Marv will be delighted with anything you write,” he said, forcing himself out of bed. It was easier to think of other things than putting his arms around her and loving her if he was vertical.

  Liv lifted a quizzical brow. “Anything?” she asked in a speculative voice. “How about ‘I SHARED A ROOM WITH JOE HARRINGTON’?”

  Joe grinned and tossed a pillow at her. “Watch your step, my dear. The week is almost over,” he whispered in his best villainous voice and twirled the end of a fake mustache. “Nothing can save you then.”

  Liv had no desire to be saved and she suspected that he knew it. So she was none too pleased when their self-imposed quarantine was in its last day and the phone rang. It was Uli asking for Joe.

  “They’re not coming back today, are they?” she hissed at him as he listened to Uli.

  Joe shook his head. “No,” he mouthed. Then, “Who?” she heard him ask Uli. He sat up straight on the sofa as if surprised. “Who told her I was here?”

  Her? Liv felt her stomach plummet. “Her” was undoubtedly one of Joe’s beautiful fast-lane friends, whoever she was.

  “Of course I’ll talk to her,” Joe was saying and Liv unabashedly eavesdropped. “But—” he ran a hand through his hair, lifting it in brown spikes all over his head “—what does she want?” he asked, then grinned at Uli’s reply. “Besides that,” he said, flicking a quick teasing glance at Liv. She scowled and looked away immediately, studying a photo of Uli in his soccer uniform, with all the concentration of a research scientist about to isolate a cancer-causing virus. “Okay,” she heard Joe say. “Thanks for the warning.”

  He hung up and she knew he was looking at her, but she couldn’t return his gaze. For several weeks, ever since she had acknowledged to herself that she loved him, she had been living in a dream world—a two-person universe—existing on hopes, dreams and fanciful ideas about an idyllic future for the two of them, all predicated on her love. Now she had to face reality, had to face Joe’s other world, even when it intruded in the form of a phone call.

  “Guess who’s coming to lunch,” Joe said, a forced lightness in his voice. He cocked his head and grinned. “Veronique Moreau,” he answered his own question.

  Liv wanted to stuff the table cloth into his smiling face. “Should I know her?” she asked with a studied artlessness that she knew didn’t fool him for a minute.

  “I imagine you’ve heard of her.” Joe’s tongue was in his cheek.

  Liv had. Everyone but ostriches had. And had seen her, too—all of her. Her face and, more important, her body, had graced the cover of every fashion and glamour magazine in the world over the past two years. She had co-starred with Joe in an adventure film several years earlier, but as far as Liv could remember, her name had never been linked to his romantically. But, she acknowledged bitterly, considering the extent of his conquests, it could have been an oversight.

  “Ah yes,” she said still studying Uli’s patrician profile. “You Tarzan, her Jane. That Veronique?” It was catty, but she couldn’t stop herself, and it was better than clawing the furniture—or Joe’s beaming face—which was what she felt like doing.

  Joe’s grin widened. “The very one. Jealous?”

  “No,” Liv spat.

  “Good, ’cause she’ll be here in an hour, Uli says.”

  “Fine, I’ll take the opportunity to go out and do some shopping.”

  “Don’t you want to meet her?”

  “I imagine she’ll have eyes only for you,” Liv said tartly. “Besides, I’ve seen very little of Vienna and we leave tomorrow. I think I’ll do a bit of sight-seeing.” She had no intention of sitting in Mrs. Carvalho’s living room like a lump of coal while Joe charmed Veronique Moreau. And she didn’t doubt that he would, either. She knew him well enough now to know that he could do it without even trying. The only unsusceptible woman was a dead one, and at last glance, Veronique Moreau was anything but that.

  Liv stepped past him and went through to the bedroom, opening the closet to find the dress she had hung there. “Excuse me,” she said sharply when she turned, dress in hand, to bump right into his chest, “but I am dressing in here. Will you kindly wait outside?”

  Joe’s eyebrows lifted speculatively, but he didn’t comment, just smirked, while Liv herded him backwards through the door and shut it firmly in his face. He might want to entertain his French floozy in nothing more than Uli’s well-worn bathrobe, but she had no intention of meeting Veronique Moreau, however briefly, in nothing better than cotton slacks and her navy T-shirt. She took a quick bath and slipped into the bright blue-and-green dress she had brought with her. It was a vibrant print, a sort of gauzy, East-Indian creation, which she bad bought last spring in Chicago and which contrasted nicely with the fairness of her hair and brought out the delicacy of her features and the blue highlights in her gray eyes. Not bad, she decided, as she took one last glance in the steamy mirror. But definitely not Veronique Moreau.

  When she opened the door to the bedroom she heard Joe’s voice in the living room, followed by what could only be described as low, sexy feminine laughter. She even laughs in French, Liv thought, and grabbing her purse, she lifted her head with more self-confidence than she felt, and marched into the living room.

  “This is Olivia,” Joe was saying to the most gorgeous woman Liv had ever seen. She wished she had stayed in slacks and a T-shirt Then it wouldn’t have looked as though she’d tried—and failed. But she managed a tight smile, which was returned in blinding kilowatts by the striking brunette seated on the sofa next to Joe.

  “Hello, dear,” the actress said, her eyes skating over Liv with a wariness and curiosity that made Liv think that Veronique was sizing her up, rather like a skater would probe a pond for thin ice. “Joe has been telling me of your sterling devotion. You must have been frightfully bored.”

  Liv bit her tongue before she could retort, “Bored? With Joe Harrington?” Instead she nodded a bit lamely. “Not really,” she allowed as soon as she found her voice. “But I will be glad to get a little sight-seeing in before we leave. So if you’ll excuse me—” She shrugged into her raincoat and opened th
e front door. “Nice to have met you, Miss Moreau.”

  “And you, dear.” But Veronique was already looking back at Joe, Olivia and her sterling devotion already banished from her mind.

  “When will you be back?” Joe demanded, following her to the door.

  Liv shrugged. “Who knows? I’m sure you and Miss Moreau will have plenty to keep you occupied,” she said, wishing she felt more satisfaction as she shut the door firmly in his face.

  She wished she could have shut him as easily out of her mind. But he shadowed her the whole day. She could feel him peering over her shoulder in the toy store on Mariahilferstrasse, making suggestions about presents for the boys and Jennifer as effectively as if he’d been with her. He seemed to share her Sachertorte at the small sidewalk caffe, and he dogged her footsteps through an art exhibit in a side gallery at the Opera House, until finally she knew that, try as she might, she was not going to succeed in escaping him.

  But knowing it didn’t stop her from trying. Liv trudged up and down endless streets in the drizzle, lurked in the underground Opernpassage until she was sure someone would have her arrested for loitering, and stood on the street corner at the end of Uli’s block absorbing the rain for so long that she thought it possible that the neighbors might come to think of her as just another bit of local sculpture. But finally, shortly past ten that night, she could wait no longer. At last there was no light on in the living room of the flat, so she thought Joe might have gone to bed. She hoped so. She had no desire to see him, to hear about his lovely afternoon with Veronique or, worse, not to hear about it but be met by awkward, embarrassed silences instead.

  She let herself into the downstairs hallway and, shutting the main door heavily, sprinted for the steps, remembering that Uli told her there would be light for two minutes after she opened the door. If she didn’t make it to her flat by then, she would have to creep along, feeling her way up the walls to find another button and get another two minutes. So she raced as fast as she could, her feet slipping in her damp shoes. Out of breath, she had just inserted the key in Mrs. Carvalho’s door when the lights went out.