The Women in Joe Sullivan's Life

by Marie Ferrarella

  “Your parents worked?” He glanced toward the liquor cabinet and wondered if she would like a drink. Dinner was going to be unavoidably delayed, thanks to circumstances beyond his control.

  There was a lot of that going on lately, he thought with a surge of helplessness he hated.

  Maggie raised a brow, studying him. Sullivan was dressed very casually for a man she assumed was out to impress her. And there was a scent about him—not cologne, but something sweeter. Like some sort of cooking ingredient. Her curiosity was definitely aroused.

  “You’re not supposed to start asking questions until I’ve at least had a cocktail.”

  A drink it was. Joe opened the door to a small ebony liquor cabinet. His brother had brought the cabinet with him from Japan. Alec had given it to him as a gift last Christmas. Joe tried not to dwell on that. Coping was coming only in tiny increments, but life was to move on with.

  He smiled as he looked at Maggie. “All right, what’s your pleasure?”

  The girls were clustered around her. Maggie had a premonition that they weren’t about to leave any time soon. “Here?”

  Joe nodded, one hand resting on the cabinet. “I’m afraid so.”

  Well, that explained the lack of the jacket and tie. “We’re not going out to eat?” It didn’t faze her. She felt more at ease here, surrounded by the girls, than she would at a restaurant.

  Joe thought of the canceled dinner reservations. And the broken jar he’d just cleaned up from the kitchen floor. The jar that had contained everything that was needed for dinner. The same one that Jennifer had accidentally knocked off the counter five minutes ago.

  “You know that line about the best-laid plans of mice and men?”

  Maggie felt her lips curving in anticipation of his words. “Yes?”

  He saw the amused sympathy in her eyes. “It applies doubly so to uncles.”

  Maggie read between the lines. It was certainly a good thing that he wasn’t attempting to impress her. “No sitter.”

  “No sitter,” he affirmed. “But not for lack of trying. So.” He gestured toward the inside of the liquor cabinet. “What would you like to drink?”

  Little girls or not, she wanted her wits about her. Sullivan was at his most charming when he seemed to be a hapless victim of circumstances, and she had a feeling that he knew it. “A little wine if you have any. Soda if you don’t.”

  “Wine it is.”

  He reached into the cabinet as Jennifer piped up, “How about chocolate milk?”

  That was even better, Maggie decided. She had a weakness for chocolate. “That’s a great idea,” she agreed, pleasing the little girl. Christine looked sulky because she hadn’t suggested it first. Sandy, Maggie noted, said nothing. “I’d love some chocolate milk.” She addressed her words to Sandy. “As a matter of fact, I love anything chocolate.”

  The thought of dipping himself in chocolate came flashing out of nowhere. Joe grinned widely as he poured a small glass of chocolate liqueur.

  It was the kind of grin that put her on the alert. “What?”

  This was neither the time nor the place to elaborate. Especially with his nieces around. Joe shook his head. “Private joke.”

  Maggie accepted the glass he handed her. “I respect that.” She looked at him pointedly, raising the glass to her lips.

  He watched her take a small sip and thought to himself that lips like hers were meant for finer things than merely talking or sipping liqueur. “And I should respect your privacy, right?”

  Maggie raised her glass in a small toast. “You’re very astute for a reporter.”

  He laughed, gleaning exactly what she thought of the press at large.

  “I thought I was supposed to be, being a reporter. Which, by the way, I’m not.” He thought of having a drink as well, then decided against it. He was making enough of a mess in the kitchen without anything fuzzing up his brain. “I’m a free-lance writer. There’s a very large difference.”

  It was all one and the same to her. For the benefit of peace, she allowed him his differentiation. “I stand corrected.”

  “Would you like to sit corrected?” Joe gestured toward the large gray sofa. “Would you believe that only this morning, this was a castle where Princess Christine awaited rescue by her knight errant, otherwise known as Sandy?”

  “Very easily.” Maggie didn’t blink an eye. “Gray is the right color for castles.” Her answer instantly endeared her to the girls.

  Maggie sat down, but when Joe tried to join her, he was unceremoniously elbowed out of the way by Jennifer and Christine. Like uneven bookends, they surrounded Maggie on two sides, sitting down beside her. Resigned, Joe sat down on the love seat. Sandy perched on one side of him.

  There was a coffee table and three children between them, and yet, somehow it felt more intimate than she could have ever anticipated.

  “I fully intend to respect your privacy, Maggie, but I do need to ask you for more than you’ve given me.”

  She raised her eyes to his as the liqueur wound through her stomach, moving slowly like a velvet stream. “All right.”

  He felt as if they weren’t discussing the interview any longer. He realized at that moment that he wanted to get to know her better, not just for the sake of the article, but for his own sake, as well.

  Except that he didn’t have the luxury to explore that path right now. He had three small charges placed in his care and he owed them some sort of order and stability to make up for what they had gone through. This was definitely not the time to revert back to his carefree bachelor instincts.

  He couldn’t help wishing that Maggie McGuire had happened into his life at some different point in time.

  Any other point in time.

  Jennifer was rocking to and fro next to her, anxious to put her own two cents into the conversation. Maggie wondered if it was Sullivan’s intention to conduct the rest of the interview here, over chocolate liqueur and fading gray castles.

  “So we’re not having dinner?” she guessed.

  “Yes, we are,” Christine told her. He was getting accustomed to the girls beating him to answers. “Uncle Joe is cooking.”

  Maggie looked at him dubiously. She could picture him in a kitchen even less than she could caring for three little girls. “You cook?”

  He decided that she wasn’t trying to be insulting, it just sounded that way. “I can turn on the oven. How hard can it be?”

  She wondered if there was someone in his life who did the cooking for him, then told herself it was none of her business. “You’re putting that in the present tense. Does that mean that you’ve never done it before?”

  He lifted a shoulder vaguely. “I’ve warmed things up in the microwave.”

  And he was planning on making dinner? “That doesn’t count.”

  “We have pizza a lot,” Sandy confided loyally.

  It was the first thing Maggie had heard the girl say since she’d arrived. She looked at Sandy, hoping to coax her out a little more. “And do you eat other take-out food a lot, too?”

  The girl nodded her head.

  Maggie turned toward Joe. “So what are we having tonight? Pizza?”

  It was beginning to look that way. Most of what he had planned for dinner after a hurried trip to the grocery store with the girls was now residing on the bottom of his garbage pail. “Actually, I was making sweet and sour chicken.”

  “From a jar,” Maggie guessed.

  Again, he lifted his shoulders, hating the inept feeling he was experiencing. “Yes, until the jar had a sudden meeting with the floor.”

  She wondered if the girls had abruptly decided to play catch with it, but she didn’t ask. The man was in need of rescuing, as, most likely, was her stomach if she let him continue with this charade. “If you let me rummage around your kitchen, I might be able to make the meal from scratch.”

  Joe’s eyes narrowed. “You’re kidding.”

  His reaction tickled her. She didn’t know what came over h
er, but she winked at him. “Never about food.”

  God, but she had a sexy wink. “I always thought that when they said from scratch, it meant that you stood staring at the ingredients, scratching your head.”

  “You do if you never learned how to cook.” Maggie rose. “So, take me to your kitchen.”

  The girls were more than happy to take her in hand and accommodate her. Maggie began to set her glass down, then thought better of it. The girls were far too inquisitive for her to chance leaving temptation in their path. She took the glass with her.

  When she entered the kitchen, the first thing Maggie was aware of was that Sullivan obviously thought that every single pot had to be employed in order to be officially “cooking.” The next thing she was aware of was the smell. Something was just about to burn.

  “Smoke!” Jennifer cried, pointing.

  “Steam,” Maggie corrected her as she hurriedly crossed to the stove. She lifted the lid from the pot and a puff rose to meet her. It was the last of the water making a heated exit. Beneath the lid was a mass of rice, the grains glued tightly together like survivors clutching onto one another in a life raft.

  She glanced at Joe suspiciously. “How much water did you put in?”

  This was definitely not going well. “Enough, I thought.”

  “The rice obviously had a different opinion.” Maggie lifted the pot from the burner and set it on the side of the stove. She turned the heat off and looked around.” Where’s your apron?”

  “Apron?” he repeated. Joe thought he was doing well just having pot holders.

  Maggie shook her head. “Never mind. Where’s the chicken?”

  “I was just taking it out of the refrigerator.” He opened the side-by-side appliance and took out a package of chicken cutlets.

  At least they were defrosted. Maggie glanced at her watch. “Dinner was for seven, wasn’t it?”

  Christine spared him the embarrassment of a reply. “He got started late. We had to find Buffy.”

  Maggie nodded. “Of course you did.” She looked at Sandy. “Buffy?”

  “My cat,” Jennifer proclaimed, wanting some attention. “She ran away.”

  Maggie glanced toward Joe and he nodded. He had spent the better part of two hours combing the neighborhood and knocking on people’s door. Buffy was finally found curled up beneath his car in the garage, sound asleep. Reuniting a tearful Jennifer with her cat, Joe had hurried into the kitchen to begin preparations, only to have Jennifer climb up onto the counter and knock down the jar with the main ingredients.

  The expression on Christine’s face was smug and knowing. “That’s ‘cause you carry Buffy around all over the place and she doesn’t like it.”

  Jennifer went toe to toe with her sister. “She does too.”

  Maggie moved between the two girls. “Why don’t you let Buffy decide?” She looked from one girl to the other. “The next time she comes to you and nudges your arm, pick her up. If she doesn’t do that, she’s trying to tell you that she wants to be by herself. Cats are like that.”

  Sandy moved a little closer to Maggie, interested. “You have cats?”

  As a child, Maggie had always wanted one. She would have loved any pet, but there was never any money to buy one. As she grew older, there had never been any time to devote to an animal.

  “No, but I know some.” Getting down to business, Maggie washed her hands and then began looking through Joe’s cupboard. There had to be something she could do with that chicken.

  “Really?” Christine’s eyes grew large. “Do you talk to them?”

  “Sometimes.” Maggie frowned at the rice. There was no use in attempting to salvage it. It would only taste like burned rice. She glanced over her shoulder at Joe. “Never make the rice first.”

  He leaned a hip against the counter, content to watch as Maggie made herself at home and took over. “Why?”

  “Because it’ll be done faster than the chicken. You want it all prepared at the same time.”

  “I’d settle for it all being prepared in the same day.” He gestured toward the counter and the banished pot of rice. “This is why I eat out a lot.”

  She took out the salt and the container of parmesan cheese. He probably used that on his pizza, she thought. Ingredients began lining the counter.

  “Eating out a lot isn’t healthy.”

  He handed her the skillet, wondering what she was going to make. “Maybe, but it’s less irritating.”

  Maggie poured a little oil into the skillet. If he had an egg or some milk, they were in business.

  He had both.

  “Cooking doesn’t have to be irritating. Or complicated.”

  The girls were arguing over who was going to help Maggie cook. Joe sighed as he looked in their direction. “Why not? Everything else is,” he murmured.

  Maggie took out a small bowl and poured the milk into it. “Got your hands full, don’t you?”

  “I’ll say.” The argument grew louder. “Girls, why don’t you go to the family room and—”

  Two out of three looked at him stubbornly. Only Sandy took a step out of the room.

  “We don’t want to watch telebision,” Jennifer pouted. “We wanna stay here and watch you.”

  Maggie grinned. “I guess they know entertainment when they see it.”

  His eyes moved over her slowly. Yes, he thought, and so did he.

  Chapter Five

  To Joe’s surprise, dinner was wonderful. Maggie had managed to create a meal out of things coexisting in his refrigerator that he would never have thought of mixing together. For once the girls had eaten without fussing over anything. The relatively tranquil atmosphere had allowed Joe to indulge in a second helping himself.

  Maggie, he noticed, hardly ate at all. She seemed to derive pleasure out of watching the rest of them enjoy themselves. He wondered if this was how she approached life. Was she accustomed to remaining on the sidelines when it came to pleasure?

  Joe placed his napkin on top of his empty plate. “You know, I really do feel guilty about this.”

  For little girls, they could certainly pack it away when they wanted to. It reminded Maggie of the way her brothers had always plowed through food, like a swarm of hungry red ants. In those days, it seemed as if there was never enough to eat.

  Maggie stacked the empty vegetable bowl on top of the denuded chicken platter. “Then don’t ask me any more questions.”

  He should have known she’d interpret his comment that way. He’d been too ambiguous. “No, I meant the dinner. I have to ask you questions.” He moved his chair back, ready to take the plates to the kitchen where they would languish until he found the time to stack them in the dishwasher. Or until he ran out of dishes, whichever came first. “But I did invite you out for dinner and instead we wound up having it in, with you doing all the work.”

  “Not all.” Maggie looked at the three girls sitting opposite her at the table. “I had help.”

  If they had beamed any harder, she would have had to put on her sunglasses.

  That was another thing that had astonished Joe. Maggie had managed to get the girls coordinated to the point that not only weren’t they a hindrance while she worked her subtle magic in his kitchen, but they were actually a help.

  Granted, preparation had taken longer that way, but considering that the girls didn’t argue nearly as much as they normally did, he thought of it as a more than adequate trade-off.

  And the meal had been well worth waiting for.

  Christine milked the moment. “Can we help you some more, Maggie?”

  Maggie looked at the stack of dishes. The girls had to learn sometime, and she had the distinct feeling that no one had bothered to try to teach them before.

  “That’s just what I was thinking.” Maggie looked from one eager face to the next. “Do you want to help me clear the table?”

  Christine’s face puckered up as she mulled the words over. “Clear it how? You mean pushing things off?”

 
Joe could readily visualize that happening. He’d had enough breakage for one day. He half rose in his seat, his hand over Maggie’s. “You don’t have to—”

  There was something vaguely disquieting about his touch. Something she didn’t have the time to explore. She waved his protest aside. Her eyes shifted to his nieces.

  “No, I mean we’re going to take the dishes off the table and carry them to the sink.” Maggie rose, taking a dish in each hand. One apiece should do nicely for the girls now, she judged.

  “I’m not primitive,” Joe interjected. “We have a dishwasher.”

  She could remember dreaming about owning a dishwasher. It had been her most ardent wish each time she’d been elbow-deep in suds. Looking back now, Maggie realized that washing dishes by hand had had its moments. She and her brothers had spent a great deal of time talking around the sink.

  Maggie shook her head, dismissing his implied suggestion. “Too impersonal.”

  She handed a plate to Christine and one to Jennifer. Sandy, following her lead, picked up her own. Maggie scooped up the two dishes she had stacked and, depositing her own plate and utensils on top, led the way into the kitchen.

  “Some of the best memories I have,” she related over her shoulder to Joe, “are of standing in the kitchen, washing dishes and drying them with my brothers. Gives you a chance to talk.”

  “Did you really dry a dish with your brother?” Jennifer looked up at her, obviously bewildered.

  “Yes.” Maggie placed her dishes in the sink, then took the ones the girls were holding.

  Jennifer frowned. “Didn’t it hurt him?”

  Maggie bit her lower lip to keep from laughing. She was going to have to be careful how she constructed her sentences. Her mind tended to race ahead of her tongue, and while adults might be able to sort things out, children were very literal.

  “No, I used a towel. I meant he was there to help me. They all were.”

  “How many brothers did you have?” Sandy asked her shyly.

  Maggie made room for glasses, setting two aside on the counter. “Three.”