She felt like a woman with him, an adult, someone desirable. Not a harried, stressed-out single mother. More than an hour had passed without her thinking about Max. The realization made her feel both liberated and guilty.
The waiters glided around once more, clearing plates and filling cups with coffee. Brett patted her hand, murmured, “I’m on again,” and asked everyone else at the table to excuse him before he rose and returned to the podium once more. He turned on the microphone and his warm, resonant voice filled the room. “I want to introduce Dr. Mark Scheffer so he can tell you about the research he’s been directing at Arlington Memorial Hospital—experimental treatments that have shown great promise, and that have been funded, in part, by your generosity.” More applause, and the fellow seated across the table from her rose and joined Brett at the podium. When he began to speak, Brett stepped back into the shadows, allowing him the spotlight.
Sharon picked at her dessert. She was full—from the food, from the experience, from the delight of being removed from her everyday world for a few precious hours. A part of her wished she could have spent this time alone with Brett, talking to him one on one and getting to know him better. But in a way, she had gotten to know him better this evening. Watching him preside over the room, seeing his confidence in the role of host, as comfortable tonight as he’d been uncomfortable the day she’d taken his photograph, gave her a clearer sense of who he was. She lacked all the details she might have learned if they’d had dinner by themselves: where he’d grown up, what his hobbies were, what kind of music he listened to, all those bits of trivia that, when gathered together, created the mosaic of a personality. But she felt as if she knew him in another, less specific but deeper way.
The doctor finished describing his research. More applause. Brett stepped back up to the microphone and said, “Now that we’ve all stuffed our faces, I think we ought to burn off some calories by dancing. So cram your feet back into your shoes and let’s have some fun.”
Dancing! The only dancing Sharon had done in years had been with Max in her arms. He loved when she spun him around and sang “All She Wants To Do Is Dance,” changing the pronoun to “he” for Max’s sake. Dancing with Brett was going to be quite a different experience.
The band sparked into an up-tempo tune. Brett walked toward the table, grinning at Sharon. “I’m not a great dancer,” he warned, extending his hand to her, “but somebody’s got to set an example here.”
“It’s your responsibility as the host,” Sharon agreed, sliding her hand into his and standing.
“Are you having a good time?” he asked as he walked her toward the clearing at the other end of the room.
“Oh, yes,” she assured him. “I feel like Cinderella.”
“Well, I’m no prince,” he warned, grinning mischievously. He pulled her into a loose embrace and proceeded to prove that he was, in fact, not a bad dancer at all. “You aren’t going to turn into a pumpkin at midnight, are you?”
“Cinderella didn’t turn into a pumpkin. She turned into a working slob with dishpan hands—which I’ll probably turn into tomorrow, but not tonight.”
“Hey, we’ll all turn into working slobs tomorrow. Or maybe Monday. No one should have to be a working slob on a Sunday.”
“All right,” she conceded. “I’ll wait ’til Monday to turn into a slob.”
He let one hand rest at her waist. The other swallowed her much smaller hand. He kept a respectable distance between them, which she appreciated because it enabled her to see his face—and because it was hard not to respond to his nearness, the seductive beauty of his eyes, the sheer male warmth of him. Feeling like an appealing woman after two long years as an overtaxed mommy was as intoxicating as drinking a glass of champagne on an empty stomach. She loved the sensation, but she didn’t trust it.
“Earlier,” she said, “when you were up at the microphone—you said a lot of people in this room have had their lives personally touched by leukemia.”
He leaned back. His smile faded slightly but his gaze remained on her, cool and blue. “I lost my father to the disease.”
“I’m sorry.”
“It was a long time ago.” He pulled her a little closer. The dance floor had gotten pretty crowded.
She wished she didn’t like being in his embrace so much. She wished it didn’t feel so wonderful, so natural to have a man’s arms around her, Brett’s arms. She wished he would draw her even closer.
She reminded herself that she hardly knew him. As attractive as he was, as enchanted as she felt as their bodies brushed and pressed lightly and moved to the rhythm of the music, he was a near stranger to her. His father had died a long time ago. How long? Had the loss scarred him permanently? Could he offer her some insight into how she could help Max come to terms with the loss of his father? Max had never even known his father—did that make the loss easier or harder?
This wasn’t the time to ask. The band segued into a slow, soulful tune, and Brett did draw her closer. She shouldn’t let herself relish his embrace so much, not when she knew so little about him. But she was Cinderella tonight, and his arms were strong and possessive.
She would go back to reality tomorrow, she promised herself. Tonight, she would enjoy the fairy tale.
* * *
As the host, Brett had to be the last to leave. Sharon stood quietly by while he thanked his guests and waved them off. He conferred for a few minutes with the restaurant’s manager, then took her hand and led her from the private room through the main dining room and outside.
“I can’t remember the last time I stayed up this late,” she said as they ventured out into the balmy, quiet night.
“It’s not that late. I was thinking maybe we could go out for a nightcap.” He was actually thinking that they could spend a little time talking, just the two of them. She’d been a good sport about the evening—and maybe one reason he’d invited her to join him tonight was that he’d sensed she would be a good sport. But he owed her a little undivided attention. And he owed himself a few more minutes alone with her, before he put her out of his mind for good.
Dancing with her had been more fun than he would have liked. He hadn’t forgotten what—who—was waiting for her at home. But he would have liked pretending, for a little while longer, that this spectacular woman who moved so well with him, whose hand felt so soft and delicate in his and whose eyes radiated such honesty, was someone he could really relate to.
“I’d love a nightcap,” she said, “but I’m afraid I’d fall asleep and embarrass you with my snoring.”
“Do you snore?”
She peered up at him, her eyes glinting wickedly. He could guess what she was thinking: that there was an easy way for him to find out if she snored. But it was one thing to flirt when they were safely in his office and she was wielding a camera, and quite another to flirt when the night lay still and mysterious around them and they’d just spent the last hour holding each other on the dance floor.
“No,” she finally answered. “I don’t snore.” They reached his car and he unlocked it. He opened her door, but she hesitated before getting in. “Brett—what would you have done if I hadn’t been able to come tonight? Who would you have danced with?”
“Everybody. I would have danced with all the women, taken turns, been a charming host.”
“You were a charming host.”
“Not once I started dancing with you. If everyone else had disappeared at that point, I wouldn’t have even noticed.”
He was standing close enough to smell her, a faint scent of vanilla and mint and wine. The half-moon spilled light down on them, turning her hair silvery-white. He had promised himself not to let this get personal, because she had a child.
But she’d been beautiful all night. More than beautiful—alluring. Enticing. That buzz he’d felt the moment he’d seen her had only grown more intense as the night progressed.
Against his better judgment, he stroked the edge of her chin with his index finger. Jus
t to feel her skin, to see if it was as silky as it looked. He wanted to trace her lips with his finger, and then with his tongue. But a kiss would only make him long for more than kisses. And she wasn’t the sort of woman a man could kiss, let alone do more with, not without getting involved.
She was a mother, he reminded himself. She had a life he wanted no part of. If he had half a brain in his head, he would take her home and forget about her.
He gazed at her for a minute longer, then stepped back. Once she was settled in her seat, he closed the door behind her.
And cursed, because Sharon Bartell was one hell of a woman—and she was the wrong woman for him.
Chapter Four
“I don’t know what went wrong,” Sharon said, then sighed and leaned back against the wood-slat bench on the edge of the Village Green playground. Max and Olivia were a shout’s distance from the bench, conquering a complex climbing apparatus that incorporated ladders, slides, passageways and crossbars. They scampered from platform to platform, raced along a wobbly suspension bridge and slid down a curving plastic chute, giggling and bellowing. Sharon sat with Deborah, her vision fixed on the children while her mind wandered back to last night.
“Why do you think something went wrong?” Deborah asked.
“He was going to kiss me,” Sharon said, genuinely bewildered. She and Brett had stood beside his car, surrounded by the night’s stillness, and he’d stroked her face with his fingertips—and she’d been certain he would kiss her. It might have been her first date in years, and Brett Stockton might have been a man unlike any she’d ever spent time with before, but she wasn’t an idiot. She knew that when a man touched a woman a certain way, when he looked at her a certain way, when he danced with her a certain way, and words became extraneous because so much was said with their movements, their eyes, their smiles... It meant he desired her.
But Brett had backed off. He’d driven her home, stood with her on the front porch so they could watch Tracy cross the street and let herself safely into her townhouse, and then he’d said good night and left. As if that moment by his car outside the restaurant, his gentle caress and his longing gaze had never occurred.
“Maybe he was being a gentleman,” Deborah suggested. “I know that’s a rare breed, but maybe he thought kissing you on your first date would be pushing things.”
Maybe it would have been, but last night Sharon wouldn’t have cared if he’d pushed. She’d wanted his kiss.
“I don’t think it was that,” she argued. “Nothing about him indicated that he was a gentleman.” She laughed sadly, then slapped a mosquito off her thigh and shifted on the bench, edging into the patch of shade cast by a leafy oak tree. “I mean, he was certainly very polite and all” —he knew which fork to use with the salad, didn’t he?— “but he didn’t seem prudish.” He’d enjoyed her flirting at his office, even if her ulterior motive then hadn’t been romantic. And he’d touched her last night, more than once, deliberately. He’d patted her shoulder whenever he’d had to leave the table. He’d held her hand on the dance floor, and wrapped his arm around her, not forcefully but with a definite purpose. “I was so sure... There was this one moment when I was positive he was going to kiss me. I must have misread the whole thing. It’s been such a long time, I don’t even know how to interpret a man’s signals anymore.”
“You interpret signals all the time,” Deborah reminded her. “Body language is practically your profession.”
“I hardly think taking photos of high school seniors qualifies me as an expert on body language.”
“High school seniors and company presidents. Honey, he was sending you mixed messages. He was playing head games with you. You don’t need that.”
“You’re right, I don’t.” But saying so didn’t make Sharon feel better. Her inability to judge Brett’s intentions was puzzling, but what really troubled her was how much she’d wanted him. Their first date, an almost fantasy-like outing for her, nothing to build a relationship on... But she’d ached for him to kiss her, yearned for it so much she’d spent the rest of the night thinking about it, worrying about it, and was still thinking and worrying about it Sunday afternoon.
“I don’t know, Sharon,” Deborah said after taking a swig from her bottle of iced tea. “Maybe I’m jaded or something, down on men and all that. But it pisses me off when they send you mixed messages. They want one thing until you think you know what they want, and then they change their minds and want something else. And all you can do is make guesses, because they can’t bring themselves to open their damned mouths and tell you what’s on their mind. Passive-aggressive crap, that’s what it is.”
“You’re an expert,” Sharon muttered, her tone heavy with sarcasm.
“I am,” Deborah retorted. “I was married to Raymond for four years. That makes me an expert in all kinds of male stupidity.”
Sharon smiled and sipped her own iced tea. It had lost its chill but it was still sweet and wet and welcome.
The few times she’d met Raymond, he’d seemed much nicer than Deborah had led her to expect. Of course she could sympathize with Deborah’s anger when Raymond missed appointments with their marriage counselor because of his business obligations. He could be a bonehead. But Sharon sensed a melancholy about him, a regret that made her feel a little sorry for him, even if he was mostly to blame for his current plight.
She’d already gotten an earful from Deborah about his failure to stop by that morning to pick Olivia up for their weekly outing. He’d phoned ten minutes after he’d been supposed to arrive and explained that he’d arrived home late from a business trip and had overslept. “What kind of business trip gets you home late Saturday night?” Deborah had asked when she’d called Sharon and suggested they take their kids to the playground. “I don’t want to be here if he stops by later. Let’s go somewhere.”
Sharon had been happy to get out of the house, too—and even happier to have the chance to tell Deborah about last night: the magic of the party, the elegance, the satisfaction of raising money for a good cause—and the kiss that should have been but never was.
“Mommy! Look!” Max hollered. Sharon smiled and waved as he climbed to the top of a rope mesh. “Look, Mommy! I’m big!”
“You’re very high up,” she agreed.
“Me, too!” Olivia shouted, scampering up the ropes next to him. “Look at me!”
“You’re doing great, baby!” Deborah encouraged her, then turned to Sharon. “Promise me that when they get married, Max won’t play any head games with her.”
“He’s a boy,” Sharon pointed out. “I don’t think most men realize when they’re doing something that drives us crazy. They’re just being guys. They can’t help themselves.”
“Maybe.” Deborah sighed. “So is it better to be an unintentional ass than an intentional one?”
“Hard to say. It’s like the difference between manslaughter and first-degree murder. Either way, the victim winds up dead.”
Deborah grunted in agreement. “Do you think your ass was intentional or unintentional last night?”
Sharon had no idea. “It doesn’t matter,” she said grimly. “I’m never going to hear from him again.”
“You know that for a fact?”
She reviewed once more her evening with Brett, from his joke about finding out if she snored to his tentative smile and his final, wistful good-bye. Somehow they had journeyed from bashful hesitancy to close dancing, to that intense moment beside his car, to his departure while she’d stood on the porch, watching his car vanish down the street and feeling painfully alone.
“Yeah,” she said with a sigh. “I know it for a fact.”
“Hey,” a soft male voice interrupted them.
They both spun on the bench to see Deborah’s husband Raymond approaching. Tall and polished, he might have been on his way to a golf course or a prep school reunion, clad in khaki trousers, boat shoes and a lime-green polo shirt with a tiny insignia stitched onto the breast pocket. He stared at Deb
orah, seeming to devour her with his eyes—until a shriek from the playground distracted him. “Daddy! Daddy!”
“Hey, Livie!” Bypassing the bench, he hunkered down and opened his arms to Olivia, who charged across the grass and hurled herself at him. “How’s my baby? How’s my little sweetheart?”
Deborah pursed her lips, obviously displeased.
“At least he showed up,” Sharon whispered.
“Three hours late,” Deborah whispered back.
“Better late than never.”
“I can out-cliché you, so don’t even try.” Deborah took a long drink of iced tea and capped the bottle. “He thinks he can show up whenever it’s convenient for him, and Olivia’s just so happy to see him it makes his irresponsibility all right. Well, in my book it’s not all right.”
“You go on and play with your friend,” Raymond was saying to his daughter. “I’ve got to talk to your mama a bit, and then we’ll do something together, okay?”
“No! I wanna be with you, Daddy!”
“Okay. Then we’ll talk to your mama together,” Raymond suggested, straightening up and lifting Olivia as he stood. He reminded Sharon of a young Denzel Washington, handsome and charismatic. She could understand why Deborah had fallen for him—even if he wasn’t always as responsible as she would like.
Sharon screwed the top onto her iced tea bottle and stood. “Don’t go,” Deborah murmured, but Sharon had no intention of remaining on the bench, trapped in the no-man’s-land between an estranged husband and wife. If Deborah needed her later, she’d be available. But right now, what Deborah needed was to talk to Raymond.
Heart Stealers Page 51
