Very slowly, like a flower unfolding its petals in the morning sun, the various scenarios came to him. Lance grinned, slipping his arm around his wife’s waist, pulling her toward him. "Yeah, I guess I can think of a few."
Good for you, Lance, thought Margo. Melanie made the right choice after all.
Her last doubt about him laid to rest, Margo began to edge away. It was time for her work to be savored, up close and personal.
"We’ll just leave you to explore those possibilities." She slanted an expectant look toward Bruce, waiting for him to take the hint.
Belatedly, Melanie looked at her mother. "Oh, but you don’t have to leave yet."
Margo laughed. The protest lacked the right note of enthusiasm. "I love you for lying." Cupping her chin in her hand, Margo kissed her daughter’s cheek. "But, yeah, we do."
Coming up behind Melanie, Lance slipped his arms around her shoulders, holding her to him. The magnitude of his happiness amazed him. Just being happy at all was still very new to him.
"Thanks, both of you." He looked at his father, "You’ve been great."
"And we’ll be greater once we’re gone." Margo winked at him. Taking Bruce’s hand in hers, she urged him through the door
.
"It was a great dinner, Mom," Lance raised his voice, calling after her.
"Anytime I’m in town," she promised. Margo closed the door behind her. She grinned at Bruce as they walked toward his car.
It had been a great dinner. Bruce thought. A three-course dinner good enough to have been served at a five-star restaurant. She’d really surprised him. But then, he was beginning to realize that Margo McCloud was actually one big continuous surprise. ‘
As he stopped at his car, he noticed the wide grin on her face. She looked like a teenager bursting with a secret. "What?"
She glanced over her shoulder at the ground-floor apartment they’d just left. "l bet he’s got her clothes off already."
The brash prediction stunned Bruce. And then he laughed, shaking his head. "Tell me, are you always this direct?" He unlocked the passenger side and opened the door for her.
"Usually." Margo got in and closed the door, turning toward him as he slid in behind the steering wheel. "Besides, why shouldn’t they enjoy each other'? They’re married, they’re young and they’re in love." She sighed. It sounded like a script from an old romantic comedy. "For them, life is perfect."
Melanie was everything he ever could have wished for, for his son. He knew Lance would be good to her. Watching them over dinner tonight, he’d seen firsthand just how good they were for each other. His son was a changed man. Less hard, less guarded, more open to laughter. He thought of the redecorating job he’d taken part in yesterday. Maybe
fantasy did have a strong toehold in this world, at that.
"l hope it always stays that way."
Amen to that, she thought.
"I’d toast that wish," Margo told him, "but I seem to be without a drink in my hand."
Pulling his seat belt around him, Bruce stopped short of slipping the metal tongue into the slot on the side of his seat. He looked at her, not quite sure if he was picking up a signal or not. It had been years since he’d thought of picking up any signals at all.
"Is that a hint?"
"No, that was an observation." She paused, wondering. Was that his way 0f asking her out'? "Why, would you like to go somewhere for a drink?"
Maybe it was better if he left well enough alone. Still, he didn’t want to be rude. She’d gone out of her way to be nice to him as well as his son. And he had to admit, he really did like her company, even if it did unsettle him at times.
"No, not unless you do."
They could go around and around like this all night, she thought.
"They did this scene in Marty," she told him, "and it played much better with Ernest Borgnine in the lead." Her eyes narrowed as she looked at Bruce more closely. Maybe things would go better for them if she was blunt about the situation. "Do I make you uncomfortable, Bruce?"
He thought of lying, but figured she’d see right through it. "Yes." It wasn’t so much that she made him uncomfortable, he reasoned, as he was uncomfortable with the feelings she brought to the foreground within him.
Well, he was honest; Margo would give him that. But so was she. "I’m sorry to hear that, because I’ve been trying my damnedest to put you at your ease." She’d already decided that they would be friends. If anything else came of their association, that would just reinforce that friendship. She wouldn’t have it any other way. Lance and Melanie’s happiness was very important to her and he was an integral part of that. She was determined to bring him out.
"Provided this marriage lasts," she continued, "and from what I’ve observed, it gives every indication of doing just that, you and I are going to be running into one another off and on over the course of the next forty years. I’d hate to think that you’d be dreading the encounter, thinking of me as an ordeal you have to face, like a trip to the dentist."
Maybe he shouldn’t have admitted that he was uncomfortable in her presence. After all, he was confident his discomfort would fade once he became used to her. In about a decade or so.
·
"I don’t think of you like a trip to the dentist, Margo--"
Margo grinned. "Keep going, I’m a sucker for flattery."
She made him laugh. Some of the tension left his body and he felt himself beginning to relax again. "l shouldn’t have said you make me uncomfortable. The truth is. I make me uncomfortable."
"You are going to explain that, aren’t you?" she prodded.
He was. To both their satisfaction, he hoped. Cautiously Bruce felt his way around in this unexplored region that he suddenly found himself in. "It’s just that I never expected to even look at another woman."
By looking, she knew he meant taking an interest in. The unintentional admission made something stir within her. She told herself that the little thrill she felt was only because she felt physically attracted to him. What woman wouldn’t be?
There was a tiny spider trying to make its way across the dashboard. Margo leaned forward and cupped her hand around it, then gently deposited it outside the car. When she looked back at Bruce, she saw he’d been watching her, bemused.
"No one was ever convicted for just looking." she said.
Another woman would have squashed the spider, or asked him to. He liked the fact that she was compassionate, even toward something so insignificant as a tiny spider. His eyes held hers. "We did more than look last night."
Some would have called what happened last night next to nothing, Margo knew. But they hadn’t been on the receiving end of his kiss, and she had. She had to admit it had unnerved her a little.
How much more had it unnerved a man who’d thought he’d permanently buried his heart along with his wife?
"Yes, we did." A tension rippled through her just then. She rolled down the window on her side. There wasn’t enough air in the car. Keeping her voice light, she downplayed the incident. "We enjoyed each other’s company. That isn’t a crime, either, especially since we are both single adults." She’d almost added consenting, but that wouldn’t have been entirely accurate just yet. He wasn’t altogether consenting, which, in a way, made the situation much more exciting to her.
She made it sound so reasonable. He supposed that to someone else it was. "I must sound like a fool to you."
Margo was quick to vehemently deny that, because he was anything but a fool. "No, you don’t. You sound like a warm, sensitive man, and I sincerely pray that your genes are alive and well in Lance because then I know my daughter is going to have a wonderful life ahead of her."
She blew out a breath. Very close to her door, one determined cricket was sending out a signal for a mate. That wasn’t Bruce’s problem, she thought wryly.
"As for the rest of it, if you’re worried about entanglements, don’t. I’m only here temporarily." The streetlight almost directly behind them il
luminated the inside of the car and she could see the way his brow furrowed quizzically. "The firm that sent me to Greece closed their foreign office, which means that at the moment, I’m out of a job. But another one will come up soon and I’ll be off again, teaching some other group of lost American souls the language of the country they’re working in," she added quickly, in case he thought she was down on her luck. "There’s a great calling for what I do. Until then, why don't we just let things go along at their own pace?"
Up to a few minutes ago, that was exactly what he’d been afraid of. But now he wasn’t exactly sure. "Sounds good to me."
No more than to her. With that settled and out of the way Margo glanced at her watch, angling it to make out the face. They’d been sitting there almost ten minutes. "Fine, now I suggest that we either start the engine or start necking, because this is the longest I’ve ever sat in a parked car without one of those two things happening."
He’d been holding on to the key the entire time. As he put it into the ignition, he heard her snap her fingers. "Damn, I had a feeling you were going to do that."
He looked at her, then jerked a thumb at two older women who were very obviously watching them from their window just to the left of the carport. "If I neck with you, it damn well isn’t going to be in front of an audience."
Margo only sighed. "You would never have made a very good actor with that kind of an attitude, Bruce."
He made a noise that sounded suspiciously like a grunt. "I guess I’ll just have to give back my Screen Actors Guild union card."
Maybe she was beginning to rub off on him, just a little. She couldn’t have explained exactly why that pleased her as much as it did, she only enjoyed the feeling. "I guess so."
The sound of her laughter wafted through the still night air as he pulled out of the carport and turned down the street to drive her home. It made for good company.
CHAPTER SIX
"Bruce, old buddy, how good’s your Italian these days?"
Bruce looked up from the progress report on his desk to Paul Giordano. The project had been his baby once, but was now in the hands of a design and development team. Fifteen people tweaking and fine-tuning a program that once would have taken Paul and him a month of burning midnight oil to complete. He missed being able to be in on the hands-on stage. Peering over someone else’s shoulder to get a glimpse of what was going on just wasn’t the same thing, he thought. The money had been less in those days, but the rewards, the intrinsic ones, had been far greater than what he experienced now.
With a sigh he closed the report, giving his best friend his attention. As much attention as he could give anyone these days. Lately it seemed as if he was perpetually preoccupied. And he didn’t want to be.
Italian. What had brought this on? "As good as it’s always been. I can say hello and goodbye and, thanks to a movie with Gina Lollobrigida I saw as a kid, I can also say good evening." He studied Paul’s thin face. He knew something was up. "Why?"
Though they were both in the loop. only Paul paid attention to what was going on. Bruce, he’d noted out loud, more than once, seemed satisfied getting information third-hand. He wasn’t into office gossip. Except this time the gossip concerned him directly.
Pleased to be the one to tell him. Paul doled the information out slowly, seeing how long it would take to get Bruce really interested. "You’re going to need a lot more
than that."
Bruce arched a brow. Paul was into games. Since he liked Paul a great deal, he tolerated the games. "l repeat--why?"
Five inches shorter and somewhat slighter than Bruce, Paul plopped himself on top of his friend’s desk, making himself comfortable. "Because otherwise your associations are going to be very limited, and you’ll starve to death inside two weeks."
Bruce pinned him with a look that wasn’t altogether the font of unending patience it usually was. He found himself growing edgy these days, something that was completely out of character for him. He strove to keep his voice even. "I’ve got a meeting with Jessop in half an hour about a new program they’re working on. Am I going to have tobeat this out of you?"
Thoroughly enjoying himself, Paul decided to surrender the news. "All right, all right." Small brown eyes keenly watched Bruce’s face as he spoke, "Word’s come down that the powers that be, meaning Weston," Paul said in a totally unnecessary aside. Tom Weston being the VP in charge of their division. "have chosen the location for our first international conquest, and guess who’s going to lead the charge?"
He hadn’t even seen this coming. Bruce rocked back in his chair, stunned by the information. "They’re sending me to Italy?"
"That’s the plan. If certain details get ironed out, you’re the man the company wants to head the office in Florence, Italy." Unable to remain anyplace for long, Paul hopped the off the desk and began to prowl around the office he spent more time inhabiting than his own. "Man, I envy you. All those beautiful Italian women..."
As his voice trailed off, Paul scrutinized the man who’d been his best friend for the past twelve years. A trace of wistfulness slipped in, just as it always did. If he were that tall and that good-looking, what he could do ....
"On second thought, it’d probably be wasted on a guy like you." Paul shook his head mournfully. You’d think, after a twelve-year association, he would have rubbed off on the guy, at least a little. "You wouldn’t notice a beautiful woman if you tripped over her and she had her foot on your Adam's apple."
Bruce laughed at the ludicrous image. "Oh, I think I’d notice then."
Paul was unconvinced as he shoved his fisted hands into his pockets. "I wouldn’t take any bets on it. You have got to be the most self-contained man I’ve ever met." The very thought of Bruce’s life-style depressed the hell out of him. Bruce was as celibate as a monk. Probably more. "Don’t you sometimes just want to--you know, be with a woman?"
It seemed that everywhere Bruce turned, he was hearing the same song and dance. Bess wanted him socializing and Paul wanted him racking up conquests from one end of Orange County to the other. Why wasn’t anyone happy just to leave him as he was? And why did he feel so damn restless lately, like he was no longer sure just where he did belong?
"I’m with women all the time, Paul," he pointed out mildly. The company employed a host of women, from management on down. He interacted with them frequent for hundreds of reasons.
Paul sighed, exasperated. Bruce knew what he meant. "A naked woman."
"No, don’t run into many of those," Bruce agreed after giving the matter some thought. Humor touched his eyes as he looked at Paul. "l think there’s a law against running around like that, isn’t there?"
Maybe it was the thought of being passed over for the Florence office. Or maybe, more on target, it was that Paul was going to miss Bruce once his friend was gone. Whatever the case, Paul found himself residing just this side irritable. "I worry about you." He leaned over the desk his hands splayed out, his face low, meeting Bruce’s. "A guy with your looks, it’s just not natural. Every man needs a little female companionship once in a while." He could see he wasn’t getting through. "Hell, even camels have refuel once in a while. You know, you keep all that pent up, one day there’s going to be a major explosion." Paul paused dramatically, letting his prediction sink in. "First Mount Saint Helens, then you."
Bruce wrote his initials beside his name on the report cover sheet and placed it in his out-box. "When it’s about to happen, I’ll give you enough time to alert the news media."
The man wasn’t getting the point. "Bruce--"
Because he detected a genuine note of concern, Bruce turned in his chair and looked at his friend. "Would it make you feel better if l told you I went out with a woman just last week?"
Paul rolled his eyes. "Bess." It wasn’t a guess. Bruce was always taking Bess out to a restaurant or to a concert. He couldn’t think of anything more depressing than having to go out with your own sister if you wanted female companionship.
Marg
o’s wide mouth, curved in a sensual smile, streaks across his mind like a fire engine called to a five-alarm blaze. "No, it wasn’t Bess."
"Who, then?" Suspicion warred with curiosity across Paul’s face.
Bruce looked at the other man, knowing exactly how this was going to go over at first mention. "My son’s mother-in-law."
The expression on Paul’s face was by turns incredulous, then disgusted. "Oh, terrific, some geriatric woman with corns and an overbearing attitude." He blew out a breath that was pure frustration, as if he was out of ways to get to Bruce. "That’s not what I meant."
Instead of saying anything in his defense, Bruce reached into his inside pocket and took out the photograph Lance had given him the other day, showing him dancing with Margo at the reception. Lance had passed it on, along with the comment that they looked good together. Bruce wasn’t sure why he hadn’t taken it out of his breast pocket when he’d arrived home, but now he was glad he hadn’t. Without saying a word in either his or Margo’s defense, he merely held up the photograph for Paul’s perusal.
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