The Women in Joe Sullivan's Life

by Marie Ferrarella

  “Like us.” Jennifer grinned as she pointed to herself, then her sisters.

  Maggie nodded. “Very much like you.” She opened the cabinet beneath the sink and peered in. There was a prohibitive jumble of bottles and boxes under there. None of them looked particularly new. “Any dishwashing liquid?” She turned to look at Joe. “Or do you just let the cat lick them clean?”

  The girls giggled, but Maggie hardly noticed. Joe was suddenly standing much too close to her as he crouched down and looked through the cabinet for the elusive bottle of detergent. His shoulder brushed against her leg, sending a jolt through Maggie that made her oblivious to everything else in the room.

  She drew a small breath and prudently moved aside. Her leg continued to tingle. He looked up at her questioningly.

  “Signal before you make a move next time,” Maggie murmured.

  Joe rose with a clear plastic bottle half filled with an off-yellow liquid that didn’t look overly promising. “I’ll do that.” The words were innocuous. His smile wasn’t. It held a promise.

  He’d felt it, too, she thought. This was much more than she had initially bargained for when she had come here.

  Maggie deliberately turned her back on him, stopped up the sink and began to fill it with water. Suds rose from the overly thick liquid she’d squeezed out.

  Christine stood up on her toes, peering in at the bubbles that were multiplying. “We’re really going to wash them?”

  There was no missing the dismay in Christine’s voice. “No, I’m going to wash them. You’re going to dry them.” She handed out kitchen towels to all three girls.

  “And I get to observe?” Joe thought he knew her better than that already.

  She lifted a brow in his direction. “You get the pots and pans.”

  Joe sighed dramatically for the girls’ benefit, taking a seat at the kitchen table until his turn. “Knew there was a catch.”

  The kitchen sink was soon filled with soap bubbles and chatter. The girls seemed to be enjoying themselves even more than they did when they played video games. Then there was one endless squabble over the control pads. Right now, everything was going as smoothly as he could possibly hope for. The woman was a miracle worker.

  He didn’t even remember Julie, his sister-in-law, getting the girls to behave this well.

  Maybe there was magic in those cookies of hers, the way the label claimed. There certainly was some sort of magic going on here.

  The dishes took an inordinately long time to do, but finally, the last one was dried and put away. The last soap bubble had bitten the dust and dissolved by the time Joe placed one of the pots into the water.

  “Can we go and watch telebision now?”

  Jennifer was asking Maggie for permission instead of him. God, when the woman took over, she certainly left no question that she was in charge.

  Maggie nodded. “You’ve earned it.” She glanced at Joe for corroboration.

  “No argument here.” He looked down at the pot as it sank into the murky water. “Of course, you are deserting me in my time of need.”

  But the girls were already gone.

  “Don’t worry, I’m still here,” Maggie assured him as she picked up a damp towel one of the girls had left behind.

  “I’m counting on it.” Cleaning was not his strong suit. Joe began to scrub the pot halfheartedly.

  Maggie blew out a breath and elbowed him out of the way. “At this rate, you’ll be here all night.” She swiftly made short work of the dirty pot.

  Feeling a lot like Tom Sawyer, Joe grinned as he picked up Maggie’s towel. Maggie handed him the first dripping pot.

  As he dried it, Joe studied her. “You know, this is a side of you that I didn’t expect at all.”

  Curiosity rather than vanity prodded her. Maggie submerged the second pot. “Just what did you expect?”

  He thought for a minute, remembering the short, crisp bio he’d read on her. “Oh, sort of a female Howard Hughes, both before and after.” She looked at him, confused. “You know, high-powered, reclusive.”

  Reclusive? She was always in meetings, always on the grounds, talking to people, finding out firsthand how things were going. She had to be the least reclusive person on the face of the earth.

  Maggie smiled as she looked at her hands, immersed in the water. “My nails aren’t long enough.”

  He took the pot she handed him and wiped mechanically. “The rest of you doesn’t look like old Howard, either.”

  Their eyes met for a moment, then Maggie looked away, reaching for the last pan on the counter. There was something very unsettling about the way he looked at her. “Thank you, I think.”

  The lady doesn’t take personal compliments well, he observed. Interesting. “You’re really something with the girls.”

  “The girls are really something,” she countered with a smile.

  Nothing but the sound of the television set was coming from the living room. They’d obviously been tired out. Another thing to bless her for. “No question about that.”

  Maggie glanced in Joe’s direction and could almost see what he was thinking. “It just takes a little time, adjusting,” she assured him. “It’s never easy, raising children. And you never really stop worrying about them, even if they’re not exactly your own.”

  He detected the slight wistful note in her voice. “Is that how it is with your brothers?”

  There was something about being here tonight that was disarming. She usually wasn’t this careless. “I was speaking figuratively.”

  “I wasn’t.” He laid the last pan aside and dropped the towel next to it. It slid, unnoticed, to the floor. “Tell me more about yourself, Maggie.” He saw the same hesitation entering her eyes he had seen in her office. “Off the record.”

  She didn’t like being explored like some foreign terrain. There’d been a time that she had been open, honest. And the people she had wanted as friends had ridiculed her. Ridiculed her parents, her clothes, her home. It had left an indelible mark on her and taught her, the hard way, to keep private things private.

  Her eyes narrowed defensively. “Why?”

  She looked as if she was ready for him to verbally attack, he thought. Why? “Because I’d like to know.”

  She shrugged a little too carelessly to satisfy him. “I told you everything of importance yesterday.”

  Then why did you come, Maggie? “No, you told me everything that could fit nicely into a thumbnail bio that could be found in Who’s Who. You didn’t tell me anything about Maggie the woman.”

  Maggie yanked out the rubber stopper from the sink. Water protested loudly as it gurgled down the drain. “Maggie the woman is a very private person.”

  Maggie the woman was a whiz with kids. Warm, friendly, as long as no one pointed it out. He took the stopper from her and set it aside. Joe placed his hands on her shoulders and gently turned her around to face him. “Why?”

  With more dignity than Joe had ever witnessed, Maggie shrugged his hands off. “Because I just am. I led a very un-sensational life before I began the company. No scandals, no lovers, no trading on the black market.”

  He knew she was being sarcastic, but she’d let something slip. “No lovers?”

  Maggie frowned. That wasn’t exactly the truth. “You were supposed to hone in on the other two.”

  He grinned easily, but he was unwilling to let the matter drop. “I’m an independent thinker. Like you.” Because he suddenly had a need to touch her, he slid his hands along her bare arms and watched the pupils of her eyes grow large. “I zero in on what interests me.”

  Her expression hardened. “I thought you weren’t writing for a tabloid.”

  This went beyond his assignment. “I’m not writing at all right now.” He held up his hands to show the absence of a writing implement.

  When he dropped them again, there was a hand on either side of her. And the sink was at her back. Maggie felt trapped.

  There was something in her eyes he coul
dn’t quite understand. Fear? Desire? He had no way to untangle it. “I know this is crazy, but I’m asking for myself.”

  Despite her wariness, her mouth curved. “Crazy?” she echoed. “That’s not very flattering.”

  She’d misunderstood. “No, I mean it’s crazy for me, because my life has never been as tangled up as it is right now.” He combed his fingers through her hair, framing her face. “I don’t have time to explore any new avenues suddenly opening up in front of me.”

  She should be pulling away. Why wasn’t she pulling away? She didn’t even know this man. “Nothing’s opening up in front of you, Sullivan.”

  He would have been surprised if she hadn’t protested. “Your opinion.”

  His words whispered along her lips just a moment before he lowered his mouth to hers.

  The whisper became a shout, surrounding her like the din of a crowd in an uproar. Maggie completely lost all orientation.

  This wasn’t supposed to be happening.

  The single thought telegraphed itself to her, echoing as if it were coming to her from a great distance, filtering through a tunnel. She was supposed to be getting back to the girls.

  She was supposed to be in her kitchen, she insisted silently, experimenting with the new recipe, not in his, experimenting with fire.

  That was what it felt like. Fire. Hot, crackling and overwhelming fire as his mouth slanted over hers. It felt as if she had fallen into one of her own ovens. Like the witch in Hansel and Gretel, Maggie was literally incinerating.

  She couldn’t break free. Worse, she didn’t want to.

  Her hands clutched at his forearms, gripping the hard muscles for balance, for support. For an anchor to reality.

  It was curiosity with an overlay of strong physical attraction that had prompted him to kiss her. Desire had been a very remote third participant in the equation. Until it suddenly burst forward, taking over center stage.

  Without conscious thought, only need, Joe deepened the kiss, not so much leading as being drawn in. Heat radiated from them both, seeking its mate. Joe molded his body to hers as he allowed himself to be abducted by the sensation that had risen so abruptly, swirling around them like a twister, taking them both out of Kansas and into Oz.

  The thought that they were not alone, that he couldn’t attempt to follow this to its natural conclusion, seared through his brain, pulling him back to Kansas. Back to his kitchen. And his life.

  Joe moved away from Maggie, stepping back the way a person would from something he didn’t quite understand and was just the slightest bit leery of. He wasn’t aware that he had murmured the word, “Wow.”

  But she was.

  She also slowly became aware of the fact that she was smiling. It was a reflexive action, brought on by something entirely beyond her own knowledge. Moistening her lips, Maggie ran a hand through her hair and prayed that she didn’t look as shaken as she felt.

  “If I could get that ingredient into my new cookie recipe, I’d say I had a winner on my hands.” She hoped that sounded sufficiently flippant.

  His hands had comfortably dropped to the swell of her hips. Something was definitely going on here, he thought. Something unexpected and compelling. Common sense would have him ignoring it, but he had never been one to pay too much heed to common sense. “We could work a little more on the formula.”

  Something akin to panic flared in her eyes before Maggie managed to harness it. “You have nieces in the other room.”

  When it was quiet like this, it usually meant that they had spent their enormous ration of energy and were settling down for the evening.

  Joe lowered his head to kiss her again. “They don’t fit into the formula.”

  Maggie moved her head to the side. “But they do. Very definitely.”

  As if to reinforce Maggie’s point, Christine appeared in the entrance to the kitchen like a performer hitting her mark.

  “Jennifer’s falling asleep,” she announced loudly. Her eyes moved back and forth from her uncle to Maggie like small blue tennis balls being lobbed over a net. She marched into the room, a miniature inquisitor. “Why are you holding her like that, Uncle Joe? Is Maggie going to fall down?”

  Out of the mouths of babes, Maggie thought. Her knees did feel weak, not that she was about to admit that to anyone.

  “Not at the moment,” Joe answered. He released Maggie and dropped his hands to his sides.

  Like a rabbit that suddenly had a steel trap open up around its leg, Maggie swiftly moved away from Joe, crossing to the sanctuary of the living room.

  He didn’t follow her. He needed a moment to himself, to assess what the hell had just happened.

  The moment didn’t help. He hadn’t a clue. But he knew where to look for the answers.

  When he entered the living room, Maggie was lifting a dozing Jennifer into her arms. Joe stepped around an upended car that belonged to one of Christine’s fashion dolls. He reached for his niece. “Here, I’ll take her.”

  Though this was something she had sworn to herself that she wanted no part of, she couldn’t deny that holding a child in her arms felt very special.

  “No, that’s all right. She doesn’t weigh much and she might wake up if I hand her over to you.” Jennifer curled against Maggie, her breath warming Maggie’s chest. “Where’s her bedroom?”

  “We all sleep together in one room. C’mon, I’ll show you!” Christine volunteered eagerly.

  Maggie laughed, following the little girl out. “I had no doubts.”

  Joe herded up the others, though there seemed to be little reason to. Neither girl looked as if she wanted to be drawn away from Maggie. He could identify with that.

  “It’s past all your bedtimes,” he reminded the two girls as they walked into the room that had, until recently, been his den.

  The room was crammed, with bunk beds lined up against one wall and a third bed catercornered beside it. A bureau and an overflowing toy box took up the rest of the space. As crowded as it was, the room was still larger than anything Maggie and her brothers had slept in when they were growing up.

  Christine whirled around and hung on to her uncle’s arm with both hands, trying to coax him into changing his mind. “Aw, Uncle Joe, can’t we stay up a little longer? We don’t want to go to bed like babies, do we?” She looked toward Sandy for backup.

  Sandy said nothing, but her expression was hopeful as she looked up at her uncle.

  It was nine o’clock and Maggie had to be getting home. But she didn’t want to leave Joe in the lurch. It wasn’t her style. She laid Jennifer on her bed. “You heard your uncle, girls. It’s bedtime.”

  Christine was silent for a moment, her eyes shrewd as she mulled over the situation. “Okay, if you put us to bed.” Her expression was almost coy. “Will you?”

  This was going a little too far. All Maggie wanted to do was to beat a hasty retreat home, especially after what had happened in the kitchen. She didn’t want to hang around for something else to go wrong. She glanced at Joe’s face. Really wrong.

  It was time to go. “I don’t think—”

  “Please,” Sandy murmured behind her.

  Maggie turned around to look at the girl. There was a mute entreaty in the girl’s eyes. Maggie surrendered. “All right.”

  “And a story!” Christine hurried to the toy box.

  There were several piles of books scattered around its perimeter. Joe meant to build shelves for the girls when he found the time.

  She was getting in deeper and deeper. Maggie began to think that she should have just turned around and gone home when Christine had answered the door. “A story?”

  “Yeah. A long one.” Christine returned and presented Maggie with the biggest book she owned.

  Maggie glanced down at it. The book looked to be the size of a large picture dictionary.

  Maggie walked over to the pile and picked up another book. It was a book of fairy tales. Maggie made her a counter offer. “A short one.”

  Christin
e rocked back and forth on her toes. “The whole book?”

  Maggie glanced at Joe. He seemed to be enjoying this exchange. “She gets this from you, doesn’t she.”

  He shrugged innocently, the corners of his eyes crinkling. “I haven’t got the faintest idea what you mean.”

  Maggie held up her index finger. “One story,” she told Christine firmly.

  Christine looked as if she were about to be sent off to bed before supper without a crumb to eat. “Aw—”

  This time, Maggie was not about to be roped in. She knew how this game went even without having played it out. “One story, after you brush your teeth and put on your pajamas.” Christine opened her mouth to protest, but Maggie was faster. “Or I leave now. That’s my final offer.”

  Christine knew when someone meant business. She darted to the drawer that Joe had cleared out as hers. “Where’re my pj’s?” She began rummaging through the drawer.

  Sandy came up behind her. “Right here.” She took the pajamas out and then picked out her own. Christine ran to the bathroom, claiming it first. Sandy sighed, turning toward the hall and the other bathroom.

  “Jenny’s are under her pillow.” Sandy pointed to it for Maggie’s benefit. “She likes to keep them there.”

  “Thank you,” Maggie called after the girl.

  Sandy left the room as Maggie lifted Jennifer’s head and slowly pulled out the girl’s nightgown. Laying it on the side, Maggie started to remove one of Jennifer’s sneakers.

  Joe joined her, taking off the other one. “You’re pretty good at this,” he commented softly.

  She shrugged, peeling off Jennifer’s socks. They felt damp and there was a dried smear of sweet and sour sauce on them. “Practice.”

  As Joe held Jennifer on the bed, Maggie took her dress off. “Your brothers again?”

  She nodded. Working quickly, she slipped Jennifer’s nightgown on.

  Joe gently laid Jennifer down again, his eyes on Maggie. “I’d say that they had it pretty good, growing up with you.”

  There were times she doubted that her brothers thought that. Maggie tried to distance herself from the past as she folded the little girl’s dress. “I had a lot to make up for.”