by Carole Buck
“The boy with the exploded appendix?”
Andy paused in mid-wriggle, the jacket half-on, half-off. He blinked several times. “You know Bryan?”
“Not personally. You told me about him when we were at the clinic.”
“Oh. Yeah. Right.”
The struggle to shed the snow jacket resumed. John considered offering some help but decided it would be better to keep hands off unless his assistance was specifically requested. The sigh of satisfaction Andy heaved once he’d fought his way free told him that this had been the correct course of action.
“Anyways,” the little boy continued determinedly. “About why I know you have to be careful of germs. My friend Bryan fell down when he was trick-or-treatin’ at Halloween and got a really wicked cut on his leg. It was all bloody and everything. But after a while—I don’t know how long—a scab growed on it. Only Bryan didn’t leave it alone. The scab, I mean. He picked at it. And itched it, too. And then his cut got in-fex-ted. It swelled up with that, uh, whaddya-call-it—uh—Oh, yeah. Pus. It swelled up with pus. And Bryan had to go to the doctor’s and get a giant needle stuck in him to suck out all the yucky stuff. Because if he didn’t, maybe his whole leg would’ve gotten in-fex-ted. And then he prob’ly would’ve had to get it chopped off. Cuz they do that, you know. Chop pieces off people when they get in-fex-ted. So just ‘magine what would happen if I scratched at my owwie and my head got in-fex-ted!”
“Uh-”
The arrival of a stocky, middle-aged woman spared John the necessity of contemplating the grotesque scenario his “exceptional” son had just suggested.
“You shouldn’t bother your mother’s customers, Andy,” she chided in a firm but gentle voice as John rose from his squatting position.
“He’s not a customer, Nonna P.,” Andy protested, turning to face the newcomer. “This is John. John Gul’ver. The man who saved me when I almost got that con-cushing. ‘Member? Mommy telled you ‘bout him. And I showed you the cool tommy-hawk he gived me.” He shifted his gaze back toward John, gesturing expansively. “John, this is Nonna P. She’s takin’ care of me today. She bringed ‘freshments for story hour, too.”
“Glad to meet you.” John extended his right hand, studying the older woman with interest. He liked what he saw. Appearance-wise, Nonna P. was rather plain—her eyes were a bit too small, her nose was a bit too large and her shape bordered on the rotund. But she exuded an aura of rock-solid competence. The expression on her face when she looked at her young charge was deeply affectionate.
“Mr. Gulliver.” Nonna P. clasped his hand and shook it, scrutinizing him as thoroughly as he was scrutinizing her. Although her gaze lingered on his scars, she did not seem put off by them. After a moment, she inclined her silver-haired head, apparently granting him her provisional stamp of approval. “It was a very good thing you did for Andy.”
“I’m just glad I was there.”
There was a pause. John looked toward the rear of the shop again, then glanced around. The story-hour crowd appeared to have doubled during the past few minutes. Deirdre Bleeker had returned and was trying—none too successfully—to get everyone to sit down and be quiet.
“John likes your cookies, Nonna P.,” Andy piped up, compelling John’s attention once again.
“He’s had my pastries?” The older woman seemed surprised.
“Uh-huh.” Andy nodded vigorously, not giving John a chance to respond. His eagerness to promote a friendship between his longtime sitter and his new, grown-up pal was endearing. “When he corned and visited me. It was on the same day you did, only after. Mommy said I should give him ‘freshments from your goody basket cuz he was our guest, so I did.” Wide blue-gray eyes peered up at John. “Today Nonna P. maked chocolate brownies. And cookies with raisins and sinny-min. I helped her put in the—” He broke off suddenly, his mouth curving into a smile.
John turned. His breath quickened as his gaze locked with Leigh’s across the distance of several yards and the heads of about a half-dozen little children. A host of images—intimate, erotic, irresistible—flickered through his mind’s eye. His pulse accelerated into overdrive.
“Come on, John,” he heard Andy say. The words were partially muffled by the thunder of his blood. A moment later, he felt his son’s small left hand slip trustingly into his disfigured right one. “You can sit by me.”
How she accomplished it, he never knew. Perhaps she drew on some special sort of maternal magic. But with a quick clap of her palms and a cheerful cry—”Story Hour!”—Leigh McKay brought order out of chaos.
How she held a group of more than two dozen itchy-twitchy youngsters mesmerized for sixty minutes was easier to puzzle out. Her mellifluous voice was pure enchantment, full of lively humor one moment, dropping into a thrilling whisper the next. She didn’t simply read from a printed page. She brought it to life.
John ached as he watched and listened. She was so beautiful, he thought. So vibrant. And he wanted her so badly he hurt with it.
Five and a half years, a voice inside him kept saying. You’ve lost five and a half years you should have had with this woman. Don’t lose any more!
Several times during the session, Leigh’s eyes strayed in his direction. Once her gaze flicked back and forth between him and Andy, who was sitting to his right. She seemed to falter for an instant, but regained control so quickly he couldn’t be certain whether the break had really occurred. A quick glance around did nothing to clarify the matter. If others had noticed the fractional pause, they gave no sign of it.
Story hour concluded with laughter, applause and the presentation of Nonna P.’s brownies and cinnamon-raisin cookies. The throng thinned out slowly. John noticed that nearly all of the adults who had attended purchased a book or two be fore leaving the shop.
He took his time in approaching Leigh. He picked a moment when she was kneeling down, apparently engrossed in a conversation with a pixie-pretty little brunette who was clutching a gingham-clad rag doll. The tiny girl scampered away to the refreshment setup as he drew near. Leigh started to get to her feet.
She overbalanced as she rose. He reached out reflexively, catching her arm and steadying her. He felt a tremor of reaction run through her at the contact. The muscles of his belly tightened.
“John!” she exclaimed, pivoting to face him. A tinge of color entered her cheeks. She edged back a half step as she’d done in her foyer two days ago, but remained within touching distance. “Hello.”
“Hello, Leigh.” The fresh scent of her skin, more provocative than any perfume, tantalized his nostrils.
“I…I didn’t expect to see you here today.”
“What can I say?” he responded with what he hoped looked like a casual shrug. “I’m a sucker for a good story.”
An emotion he couldn’t put a name to shimmered through the depths of his former lover’s sky-colored eyes. “I see.”
“You don’t mind, do you?”
“Your coming to story hour, you mean?”
“Mmm.”
“Of course not.” She shook her head, her pale hair feathering around her fine-boned face. The tips of his fingers tingled with a desire to feel the silken strands. “Andy was obviously thrilled you dropped by.”
John glanced toward the refreshment table. Andy was standing next to it, a brownie in one hand and a “sinny-min” cookie in the other. He was chatting animatedly with another young boy. “He looks even better than he did Tuesday.”
“Oh, he is.” Leigh’s voice was rich with relief. She smiled at John as he returned his gaze to her. “I was ready to let him stay home another day, but he insisted on going back to preschool this morning.”
“Got tired of lolling around on the sofa, hmm?”
“That probably had something to do with it. Plus the fact that Thursday is show-and-tell day.”
“Andy brought in the tomahawk?”
“Of course, he brought in the tomahawk. I don’t think he’s let it out of his sight since you gave it to
him.”
John was assailed by a complex combination of emotions. “Look, uh, Leigh,” he began. “I know that probably wasn’t the kind of get-well present you would have wanted—”
“No, it wasn’t. But then, I’m not the one you picked it out for, was I?”
“Well…no.” Leigh’s candor startled him. For all Suzanne Whitney’s transparent-as-glass honesty, she’d had a tendency to sugarcoat unpalatable truths. “Still, I hope you didn’t find it-uh-”
“Tacky?”
John had to laugh. He also had to concede that the tomahawk was something of an eyesore. “I was thinking more along the lines of politically incorrect, actually.”
Leigh fluffed her hair, her gaze shifting toward Andy, then back to John’s face. While the look she gave him wasn’t flirtatious, it held a provocative hint of complicity. Whether or not this was intentional was impossible to say. John sensed a curious disconnection between her instinctive actions and her conscious behavior.
This disconnection was different from the shyness that had inhibited so many of Suzanne Whitney’s responses when she’d been with Nicholas Marchand. He wondered what could have caused it. The burden of single motherhood, perhaps? For all that she obviously adored her son, was Leigh ashamed of having borne a child out of wedlock?
“I’m afraid I have trouble keeping up in that area,” she confessed with a wry laugh. “Every time I think I have the rules figured out, somebody changes them.”
“I know the feeling.”
There was a pause. Then, “Leigh—”
“John—”
They spoke simultaneously. They stopped the same way.
“Ladies before gentlemen,” John quickly said. He caught a glimpse of Deirdre Bleeker. She was watching them. She didn’t seem happy. He’d noticed her looking at him twice during story hour. The first time, she’d averted her gaze the moment he’d glanced her way. The second time, her pale face had hardened and she’d done her damnedest to stare him down. Although she’d lost the battle of wills, her attitude had exacerbated his determination to find out exactly what she was up to.
Leigh hesitated, nibbling on her lower lip. It was a mannerism he remembered from the past. “I’ve been thinking about the way I acted Tuesday when you came to visit,” she admitted after a few moments, seeming to measure out each syllable before speaking it. “I hope I didn’t—I mean, if I seemed, uh, defensive—”
“You were totally within your rights to be upset, Leigh,” he interrupted, meaning it. “You and Andy, living alone—it’s not just a matter of protecting your privacy. Unpleasant as it is to contemplate, we live in an uncertain world populated with some very scary people. Anyone with a grain of common sense is concerned about their personal security. I was wrong to ask Thalia Jenkins for your address. And she was wrong to give it to me, even though I’m sure she intended no harm. I meant it when I apologized to you Tuesday. I shouldn’t have just shown up on your doorstep.”
Again Leigh hesitated, her eyes searching his. John held his breath, hoping that whatever she saw there would reassure her. He wanted—needed—her to trust him. To feel safe with him.
“I just didn’t want you to get the impression that I’m paranoid or anything like that,” she finally said.
“I didn’t.”
“Good.” She nodded, her posture relaxing. “I’m glad. Now…what were you going to say?”
“Not say. Ask.” He paused, warning himself to keep his tone casual. “Will you have dinner with me?”
“Dinner?”
“Yes. You and Andy. Say, Saturday night?”
“Well-”
“I owe you two a meal.”
“You owe us? After what you did—”
“You gave me lunch on Tuesday, remember?”
“Frozen pizza!”
“With pepperoni,” John emphasized, smiling. “A veritable gourmet feast.”
For a moment, Leigh seemed thoroughly nonplused. Then her eyes sparked sapphire. “You sound like Andy,” she said with a musical laugh. “Although I’m not sure how he’d pronounce ‘veritable.”‘
Something inside him went very still at the first part of her comment. His son. She thought he sounded like his son!
Tell her, his heart urged. Tell her…now.
You have to wait, his head countered. She needs to get to know John Gulliver. And John Gulliver needs to get to know Leigh McKay.
“Dinner on Saturday?” he prompted. “You, me…and Andy?”
Her expression grew serious. She lifted her chin slightly, her cheeks pinkening. Then, softly, she gave him the answer he’d hoped to hear.
Chapter 5
She’d been right to say yes, Leigh told herself a little more than forty-eight hours later. She took a final bite of the braised duckling she’d ordered as her entrée, savoring the subtle richness of its fruited sauce. It was good for her to start getting out. And good for her son, too. He needed to see her having a normal social life.
“You can do your work anyplace you want, right?” Andy was asking, studying the man sitting to his right with great interest. “Like, you could be sittin’ on the beach. Or stayin’ at home in your jammies.”
The notion of John Gulliver wearing “jammies” triggered a heated quivering in the pit of Leigh’s stomach. She would be willing to bet that pajamas were not a part of his wardrobe. He’d probably been sleeping in briefs or less, since adolescence.
She could envision him wrapped in a dressing gown, though. Dark, heavyweight silk, a potent complement to his harsh masculine appeal. He would probably wear the garment casually, its belt knotted loosely around his narrow waist. And when he moved his arms, the upper half of the robe would gape apart, revealing a triangle of hair-whorled, sleekly muscled—
She wondered whether she’d made a sound. A sigh, perhaps. Or a moan. Because something caused John to glance at her. She saw his eyes narrow. His nostrils flared on a sharply expelled breath.
Setting down her fork, Leigh reached for the glass of mineral water sitting to her right and took a quick sip. She was trembling. That she would succumb to sexual fantasizing was disturbing enough. That the object of the fantasy would realize…
“Pretty much,” John replied with enviable aplomb, shifting his gaze back to his preschool interrogator. “As long as I have access to a phone and a place to plug in my computer, I can work.”
“And your job is makin’ people go places, huh.” Andy plucked a shoestring potato from his almost-emptied plate and munched it down. He’d never eaten in what he called a “grownup” restaurant before and Leigh knew that he’d been a little wary about the food served by this establishment. Discovering that one of the specials of the day was venison—”It’s from a deer?” he’d demanded of their waiter, his eyes round with horror. “You mean, like…Bambi?”—had done nothing to allay his anxieties. He’d been relieved when John had pointed out that the regular menu included “normal stuff” like chopped beefsteak—sans the proffered wild mushroom sauce, of course—and french fries.
“Not exactly.”
“But you said your company in ‘Lanta is a travel company. Doesn’t that mean tellin’ people how they should take trips and stuff?”
“Ah—”
“John owns a travel agency, honey,” Leigh interpolated, surprised by the steadiness of her voice. “A travel agency doesn’t tell people what to do. Customers come to one, explain where they want to go and how much they want to spend, and the agents who work there help them make their plans.”
Andy considered this information for a few moments before transferring his attention back to John. “So, like, if I came to Gul’ver’s Travels and said I wanted to have a really cool vacation in Disneyland for almost free, you could fix it up for me, right?”
“I’d certainly try.” John answered. “But to tell you the truth, Andy, I don’t do the kinds of things your mother was just talking about. Even though Gulliver’s Travels belongs to me, I’m not a travel agent.”
�
��Then what are you?”
“It’s a little hard to explain. I own a lot of businesses, but I don’t run them day-to-day. I hire other people to do that. A woman named Lucy Falco manages Gulliver’s Travels for me. I’m basically an investor.”
Leigh fingered the stem of her water goblet, conscious of the sudden jab of a singularly nasty emotion. Marcy-Anne Gregg had mentioned Lucy Falco several times. She’d described her as a “darlin”‘ girl. Ditto, an unmarried one. What if John Gulliver and his “darlingly” eligible employee—
“But what does a ‘vestor do?” Andy pressed, disrupting her troubled speculations.
John smiled wryly. “Smart question, buddy. If I had to boil it down…well, I guess I’d say that what I do is go around looking for good businesses that need a little extra boost. And when I find one, I put my money in it. If things work out right, the good business gets better and I make a profit.”
“Oh.” Andy picked up the glass of milk he’d ordered to go with his meat-and-potato meal and drank deeply. He emerged with a damp, dairy mustache on his upper lip. Plunking down the glass he announced, “I put my money in a jar at home. I have maybe a million pennies. And some nickels and dimes and quarters. Dollars, too. Mommy puts’her money in a bank. Only sometimes it’s not very much.”
“Andy!” Leigh gasped, genuinely shocked. She’d had no idea that her son was aware how tight their finances were. And even if she had, she never would have dreamed that he would discuss the situation in public!
Andy looked at her with innocent eyes. “What?”
John was watching her closely. She could feel it. She could also feel herself starting to blush. Maybe this night out hadn’t been such a good idea, after all.
“We don’t talk about our money in front of other people,” she said after a moment, striving for an even, reasonable tone. What she achieved bordered on prissiness.
“John talked about his in front of us.”
“That’s—” oh, Lord, was she really going to take refuge behind what had to be one of the lamest responses in her parental repertoire? “—different.”
