The Only Man for Maggie

by Leigh Michaels

  Maggie looked down at the legal pad on the desk. It was such a short list; she must have missed something important. "It's ridiculous, but I can't think of anything else. Oh, a couple of skirts would help—I'll have to go into the office sometimes, and I can't show up there in a sweat suit."

  Libby took the list and the empty suitcase and said goodbye. Maggie watched as Brenda finished putting everything away, and finally said, "You know, there's nothing serious about this, really. Between Karr and me, I mean."

  Brenda didn't even pause, and her voice was reassuring. "Of course not, dear."

  Maggie was startled. Then she replayed Brenda's words in her mind, and realized that she'd been hearing things. Brenda hadn't said actually anything at all about a romantic attachment, just that she found her son's behavior amusing. It was Maggie's conscience which had filled in the blanks and assumed that Brenda must be thinking Karr was serious.

  Maggie started to smile. That was a relief, she thought, and wondered if she should tell Karr he'd underestimated his mother by a mile.

  No, she decided. Brenda was right; it was pretty funny to watch him.

  By Tuesday afternoon, Maggie had finished two more of the main stories for the special edition—except for the fact that the opening paragraph of one of them was so dull she thought no one was apt to read past it and get into the good stuff.

  Frustrated, she curled up as best she could on the couch with a printed copy of the story in her lap and started trying out alternative leads. She was just shaping the best one yet when Tripp, who'd been snoozing on the hearth rug, suddenly raised his head, perked his ears inquisitively, and leaped up with a peal of barks.

  "Thanks for ruining my concentration," Maggie muttered.

  It wasn't really Tripp's fault, however, that she'd lost her train of thought. It was what the barks meant that had thrown her off.

  Maggie had learned in the past four days to recognize that peculiarly ecstatic noise.

  She didn't understand precisely how the dog knew that Karr was nearby, but he was never wrong. Since the man showed up at least twice a day, Tripp had had plenty of practice.

  And, therefore, Maggie had, too.

  Thirty seconds later the doorbell rang. Maggie grumbled half-heartedly, put her papers down, and hobbled into the hall to answer it.

  Karr's hair was windblown, his eyes were bright, and he was wearing a deep red sweater that reflected color into his face.

  "You're looking particularly contented with yourself this afternoon," she said.

  "I've had a wonderful day." Before she could dodge away, he swept her into his arms and kissed her soundly.

  Maggie tried to ignore the way her pulse raced. "That was wasted effort," she said crisply. "Your mother's at the supermarket."

  Karr shrugged. "Good quality practice time is never wasted."

  "What are you doing here, anyway? It's the middle of the afternoon."

  "You don't sound enthusiastic about seeing me."

  "I'm not, particularly." Maggie made her voice as blighting as possible. "I certainly don't have time to entertain you. I'm polishing the final draft of a story, and since I've got another progress meeting tomorrow—"

  He grinned. "Then it's just as well it isn't you I came to visit, isn't it? I have half an hour to kill, so I thought I'd take Tripp for a run in the park."

  "Brenda's already walked him twice today."

  "He doesn't look worn out to me, the way he's bouncing around. But of course if all the talk about work is just a bluff and you're trying to convince me to stay with you instead—"

  Maggie heaved a melodramatic sigh. "Of course I am. Now you've discovered my darkest secret—that I'm overpoweringly jealous of a six-pound Yorkie." She raised her voice. "Will you just get out of here and stop annoying me? Both of you?"

  He laughed and gently tweaked her nose, then retrieved Tripp's leash from the closet. The two of them crossed the street and went into the park.

  Maggie picked up her article again. This time she settled down in the window seat at the front of the house. The light was better there, she told herself.

  But her eyes kept straying from the typed page to the park, where a tiny dog and a man in a red sweater were wrestling on the grass. She tapped her fingers impatiently on her cast and wished she could be out there, playing with them. As a matter of fact, she realized, she was a little jealous.

  Tripp was obviously having the time of his life, darting and rushing and playfully nipping. It seemed, lately, as if he was only fully alive when Karr was around…

  The room seemed to shift and sway and something snapped into place deep in her mind like a key bit of a jigsaw puzzle.

  You know, she told herself, the same thing's true of you. You're most alive when Karr is near.

  She didn't understand how or when it had happened. Perhaps it had been when he'd brought her dog safely back to her. Or maybe it had been even earlier—over a pizza, the night the furnace had gone out.

  Not that it mattered, of course, precisely when she had fallen in love with him. The fact was, she had—and she might as well stop trying to ignore the truth.

  CHAPTER NINE

  Once the pieces of the puzzle had fallen together, the pattern was clear. The breathless pounding of Maggie's blood every time Karr came near her suddenly made sense, and the restlessness she started to feel when an afternoon slid by and he hadn't shown up yet.

  Maggie also understood now why she still hadn't told Karr that his mother was onto his game. She'd kept that secret not because she'd found it amusing to watch his antics and know that Brenda was not deceived, but because she knew if she told the truth, the kisses and touches and hugs would end. And even while she was telling herself that she disliked the attention and the pretense, she'd soaked up the warmth of each moment and hidden it away in her heart.

  This revelation even explained why, in the last few days, she had on occasion found the most appalling remarks popping out of her mouth. She had known even as she said those things to him how sharp and unfriendly she must sound—the same way she had sounded a few minutes ago when he arrived.

  It wouldn't have hurt her to take a fifteen-minute break and offer him a cup of coffee and a chat. Her work was going better than she'd expected, everything considered; there was something to be said for being tied down with a full-leg cast. But instead of being casually friendly she had snapped at him, made it clear she had no time for him, told him to stop annoying her… even though deep inside she had wanted him to stay with her.

  Now she understood why she'd been so defensive. Her sharp words had been a subconscious attempt to protect herself from another hurt.

  She had known how she felt about him, even though she hadn't been able to admit it. And she had known, too, how unlikely it was that Karr could ever feel the same about her; if he had cared in the slightest, he'd have reacted to those cutting remarks with something besides unflagging good humor—a little sarcasm of his own, perhaps, or even anger. But in fact no matter what she said, it seemed that she simply amused him.

  Her sharpness had been a double-edged weapon—first a way to test him, and then a defense mechanism. That way Maggie could tell herself that at least Karr hadn't rejected her as Darien Parker had, so cruelly and so long ago, because she had rejected him first.

  She could accept being alone, even though solitude was no longer the cure-all she had once thought it to be. She could bear being lonely. But she could not endure being rejected again.

  And so she had made her own free choice—subconscious though it was—to drive him away.

  Her head was still spinning with sudden self-knowledge when she saw Karr stoop to snap Tripp's leash back on. The man and the dog paused at the curb to wait for traffic before crossing the street, and Maggie hurried away from the window before Karr could catch a glimpse of her.

  She was back on the couch when he came in, sorting another stack of manuscripts into piles on the coffee table. "This is still a gigantic mess, you know,
and it's all your fault," she muttered. She hardly knew what she was saying herself, but he'd gone on to the kitchen and apparently didn't hear.

  Maggie sank back against the cushions with relief. Maybe he'd just go on about his business. At least then she'd have some time to think…

  A couple of minutes later Tripp bounded in. Karr followed with two tall glasses of lemonade and a plate which held an enormous, thick ham sandwich.

  Maggie was startled by the wave of emotion which washed over her as she looked up at him. It seemed as though she'd pulled the cork out of a bottle when she'd faced her feelings, and now she was suddenly flooded with all the feelings she'd so carefully denied before—or at least attempted to deny.

  Untangling the sensations was trouble enough. There was affection, warmth, and tenderness, and of course good old physical attraction—and plenty of it. Her head was buzzing as it did whenever he kissed her; now, apparently, he didn't even have to touch her to cause the same uproar.

  Karr set a glass at her elbow and offered the plate. "I'll share."

  She shook her head. "I had lunch. I wouldn't want to steal yours." Her voice was a little rough, and he looked at her oddly.

  Maggie almost panicked. She'd be all right, she told herself, once she had some time to adjust to the shock she'd had, to think it all the way through. But what if he could sense what was going on in her head right now?

  She looked down at the papers in her lap and said, almost automatically, "You might as well have run everything through a shredder, you know."

  He put down the half-sandwich he held, and said quietly, "I'm sorry I lost my temper and messed up your work, Maggie."

  She couldn't look at him. "It's okay. I sort of pushed you into it."

  "Sort of? Now there's the understatement of the century." The wry note was back in his voice, and Maggie relaxed a little, knowing that he'd been safely distracted for the moment at least.

  She tried not to watch him, but she couldn't quite keep her gaze from sliding away from the manuscripts she was trying to sort and focusing on him instead.

  He had sprawled in a big wing-backed chair across the coffee table from her, and he was obviously savoring every bite of the massive sandwich. There was something sensual about his very enjoyment, she thought. But then, Karr seemed to relish everything he did, from petting the dog to kissing her…

  He gave Tripp the last couple of bites and told Maggie, "You're watching me as if you're about to give me a lecture on being a freeloader who cleans out my mother's refrigerator the moment her back is turned."

  Relieved, Maggie shook her head. "I wouldn't dare. I'm consuming more than my share of Brenda's food budget these days, too." Her hip cramped a little, and she shifted her weight till her cast was stretched out straighter on the couch and her other foot was tucked up under her. "And she won't even discuss how I'm ever supposed to pay her back."

  "I suspect that's because she plans to let you off the hook and bill me."

  "Well, since you're the one who set this arrangement up, and also the one who caused me to fall in the first place—"

  "Are you still harping on that? I expect it's going to cost me a packet, too, since she tells me you're an extremely difficult patient."

  Maggie was stunned. A difficult patient? But she'd done her best to be cheerful and cooperative, to take care of her own needs and not trouble Brenda with every whim.

  She'd thought she was succeeding admirably. She'd thought Brenda liked her—

  Maggie felt tears sting her eyes, and tried to blink them away. Maybe she'd just lived alone so long that she'd forgotten how to act when in close contact with other people. If Brenda thought she was a nuisance-

  Her toes were aching, and absentmindedly she tried to rub them. She had to stretch her arm to the limit, and even then it wasn't easy. "Damn," she said vehemently, but she was reacting more to Karr's comment than to the discomfort in her toes.

  "You look terribly uncomfortable." He came to sit next to her, picking up her cast and setting it across his lap. The way he positioned the rigid plaster forced her to turn to face him directly.

  But Maggie couldn't look him in the eyes. "It's not so awfully bad."

  "And I'd say that's a whopper—the very kind of thing Mom was talking about." His fingers curved around her toes, warm and strong and firm as he started to gently rub each one in turn. "She says you're trying to do too much—that you won't let her help you, and you won't even admit when you're in pain."

  "Is that her definition of a difficult patient?" Maggie asked hesitantly. "Not that I'm a pest to have around?"

  "That's it." Gently, but firmly, he began to tug on each toe, massaging the joints.

  The warmth of his fingers crept through her skin and into the depths of each tiny muscle.

  The ache was gone, but the sensation he was creating in its place was every bit as difficult to stand. It was more like slowly-creeping fire, nudging its way up through her leg.

  Karr went on, casually, "You've certainly got her fooled."

  But not me, he seemed to be saying. I know what a pain you really are.

  Of course, Maggie thought steadily, she'd never expected him to feel any other way. The fact that she'd had that sudden, blinding revelation didn't mean he'd felt one too-or ever would. She'd made her reputation with him by being an irritation from the very beginning; she could hardly expect that he'd see her any differently now.

  "You can stop," Maggie said. "The ache is gone."

  "Am I tickling you?"

  "Not exactly, but—"

  He didn't stop rubbing, and the way he was looking at her made Maggie nervous.

  She'd been on edge ever since he'd come in—ill at ease with her new self-knowledge, unsure of where it would lead, half-afraid even to think it through—and at the same time anxious to be alone, so she couldn't slip up and say something that would give her away.

  If she'd only had a little time to assimilate that new understanding before her self-control had been put to the test…

  Karr slid his fingertips under the very edge of the cast to rub the ball of her foot.

  "How are you getting downtown tomorrow?"

  Maggie frowned for a moment before she remembered mentioning her progress meeting. "Brenda said she'd take me."

  "Good. I won't have nightmares about you trying to climb the steps at the train platform to take the El."

  Sudden warmth welled up in her, and it took effort to keep the tart edge on her voice so he wouldn't suspect how touched she was. "You're afraid I'd fall again?"

  "No. I'm afraid you wouldn't fall, and then you'd think you were invincible and I'd have you back at Eagle's Landing supervising. Oh, that reminds me." He stopped rubbing long enough to pull an envelope from his hip pocket and hand it to her.

  The paper was warm from his body, and Maggie found herself holding it gently, as if it were Karr himself.

  "I think it must be the plumber's bill," he said helpfully. "For the time he wasted on your prank call."

  Maggie wasn't about to give him the satisfaction of opening it, just in case the balance was shockingly high. She'd worry about that little problem later.

  She leaned over the edge of the couch and tucked the envelope into her briefcase.

  "Are you still going to call it Eagle's Landing?"

  "Sure. It's a great name for an upscale commuter complex."

  "Libby tells me it's to be condos."

  "Did she, now?" Karr's voice was lazy.

  Too late, Maggie bit her lip. She'd made the comment absently, without considering that she might be endangering Libby's job before she'd even gotten a fair start. It wasn't exactly a fast track to success to go around talking about the boss's plans.

  "I'm sorry if she told me something she shouldn't," Maggie said crisply. "And I assure you I won't pass it on. I was only making conversation, anyway—you're destroying the only thing I have any interest in at Eagle's Landing." It wasn't quite the truth, of course, for anything he did woul
d interest her. But it was the best she could do at the moment to patch up the damage she'd done Libby.

  "Oh, I don't blame her for talking. I suspect lots of people say things they don't intend to when they're around you." He glanced at his watch, gave her toes a final rub, and stood up, carefully shifting her cast back into place on the couch. "Would you like some more lemonade before I go?"

  I'm glad he's going, Maggie told herself. She'd wanted him to go, so she'd have a chance to think. Still, now that the moment had come, she didn't feel pleased at all. Part of her wanted to reach up and grab his hand and pull him down to her— but that was ridiculous, of course.

  "No, thanks," she said.

  Had the fact that she knew about the condos offended him, sending him away earlier than he'd intended? Or had he simply been killing some time—as he'd said he was, she reminded herself—before keeping an appointment?

  Both possibilities—that he was irritated with her or saw her as half an hour's worth of distraction—made her feel a little ill.

  Karr gathered up his plate and the lemonade glasses and took them to the kitchen.

  When he returned, he didn't even come into the living room, just leaned against the doorway to say, "I gave Tripp a rawhide chew. That should keep him too occupied for a while to notice I'm gone."

  Maggie nodded. She'd picked up her almost-finished story, so she had an excuse not to look at him, and she was making small meaningless marks all over it.

  The front door closed behind him, and a sudden stillness settled over the house.

  Maggie stopped tracing circles on her paper and told herself firmly that it was idiotic to wonder why he hadn't bothered to kiss her goodbye. The answer was self-evident—his mother wasn't there to see.

  And there was absolutely no reason why she should feel like crying.

  Maggie hadn't worn a skirt in almost a week, and the long, flowing plaid jersey that Libby had brought felt strange. It wasn't long enough to interfere with her crutches, but the unfamiliar sensation of soft fabric swishing around one leg, while the other felt nothing at all, distracted her. Suddenly she was less certain of her balance than she'd been all week, and she wasn't looking forward to negotiating the elevators and the hallways to get to the magazine office.