CARLY DODGED BACK into the bathroom and slammed the door, and Mark responded with a laugh.
“Regrets?” he asked.
“Yes!” Carly shouted back. She shoved both hands through her hair. “Go away and leave me alone.”
“Cranky,” he observed in a resigned tone. “Maybe I should have tried the spanking.”
Carly turned the lock, then went to the sink and started the water running full blast. She hummed loudly to let Mark know she wasn’t paying any attention to anything he was saying—if he was saying anything.
Fifteen minutes had passed before she dared peer into the hallway again.
Mark was gone then—the house seemed to echo with his absence—and Carly put his pajama top on over her underthings and stepped out of the bathroom.
On her way to the kitchen, where she hoped to find coffee perking, Carly passed through the living room. Once again the computer caught her eye. Since Mark wasn’t around to see, she ventured over to the desk, sat down in the chair and squinted at the words on the screen.
Excitement brought her to the edge of the chair as she read backward through what was apparently a stage play. The story centered around the painful demise of a marriage, and it was so gripping that Carly forgot her quest for coffee, rummaged through her purse for her glasses and read on.
She didn’t stop until she heard a car door slam in the driveway. The sound brought her back to the present with a jerk, and it suddenly occurred to her that Mark might not want her reading his play. Her heart beating double time, she pressed her finger to the “Page Down” key and held it there until the original material was back on the screen.
She was in the kitchen, pouring coffee into a mug, when Mark came in carrying her garment bag and beauty case. He gave her a curious look, and she had the uncomfortable feeling that he was picking up on her guilt.
It’s a good thing you’re not a spy, Barnett, she thought, reaching out for the things Mark had brought her. “Thanks.”
He gave her a light kiss on the forehead. “You’re welcome,” he answered, and the words had a teasing quality to them.
Carly took another sip of her coffee, then set it aside. If she was going to be at work on time, she’d have to get a move on. “How long have you been up?” she asked idly, remembering that Mark’s computer had been on when they came in the night before.
He’d poured coffee for himself, and he grinned at her over the rim of the mug. “A couple of hours. I do some of my best writing before the birds get up.”
Carly hesitated in the kitchen doorway. She felt strangely at home in Mark’s house and his pajama top, and that was disturbing. “Your piece on the crack-house raid was good,” she conceded. The article had had top billing in the Sunday edition, and Carly had marveled as she’d read it.
Mark opened the refrigerator and took out eggs, bacon and a carton of orange juice. “Thanks, Barnett,” he said briskly. “I’d love to stand here listening to praise all day, but I’ve got things to do, and so do you.”
Carly felt rebuffed. Until he’d spoken, there had been a certain cautious, morning-after closeness between them. Now there was an impassible force field.
Carly turned around and headed back toward the bathroom.
When she came out, ready to leave for the newspaper office, Mark was at his desk. The play was gone from the screen, replaced by some kind of colorful graph, and he was leaning back in his chair, talking on the telephone.
He dismissed Carly with a wave of his hand—the way he might have done the paperboy or a meter reader—and she was stung. Apparently, she thought glumly, I’ve served my purpose.
She gathered up her purse and the clothes she’d worn the night before and went out to get into her car. Her spirits lifted a little when she found a single yellow rosebud lying on the seat.
At the office, another mailbag full of letters awaited her, as well as three frantic messages from Janet.
Sipping the cup of coffee Emmeline had brought to her, Carly dialed her friend’s work number. A secretary put her right through.
“You didn’t come home last night!” Janet said, dispensing with the usual “hello.”
Carly smiled, even though there was a heavy place in her heart because she’d given herself to the wrong man. “Are you moonlighting for the FBI these days, or what?”
Janet let out a sigh. “I was just worried, that’s all. I mean, you’re new in town, and there are some real creeps out there—”
“I’m fine, Janet,” Carly insisted moderately, getting out her glasses with one hand and slipping them onto her face. Judging by the bulges in the mailbag sitting on her desk, it was going to be a long day.
“You were with Mark Holbrook!” Janet cried, obviously excited at having solved the mystery.
Carly was annoyed. “Janet—”
“I don’t mind telling you, I’m impressed.”
“Good. I’d hate to think I wasn’t living up to my image,” Carly said a little stiffly.
Janet made Carly promise that they’d go out for pizza and salad that night after work, then rang off.
Carly immediately set herself to the task of reading and sorting her mail, and her brow crumpled into a frown as she scanned letter after letter berating her for telling “Frazzled in Farleyville” to get a divorce. It was beginning to seem that the public heartily agreed with Mark’s assessment of her advice.
She was still reading and disconsolately munching on Cheeze Crunchies from the vending machine in the lounge, when Mark popped into her office at one forty-five that afternoon.
By then she was really feeling cranky. She’d been writing her column for less than two weeks, and everybody in Portland hated her. “What do you want?” she snapped.
Mark grinned in a way that reawakened some of the perturbing feelings she’d had the night before, when they’d somehow gotten past their many differences and visited a new part of the universe. “I came to see if you’d like to go out for lunch, then maybe take in a matinee or something.”
Carly took a sip of diet cola and set the can down with a solid thump. “Some of us can’t come and go as we please,” she replied, glaring at him through the big lenses of her reading glasses. “Or take off to a movie in the middle of a workday.”
He drew up a chair and sat down with a philosophical sigh. “My older sister is like you. When she gets overtired, and doesn’t eat right—” he paused and nodded toward the Cheeze Crunchies “—her blood sugar drops and she takes on the personality of a third-world leader. It’s not a pretty sight.”
Carly took off her glasses, tossed them aside and rubbed her eyes wearily. “Don’t you have to work or something?”
“I’m between assignments,” he answered.
The intercom on Carly’s desk buzzed, and she pushed the button and said, “Yes?”
“There’s a lady psychologist on the phone,” Emmeline announced, “and she’s hopping mad because you told ‘Frazzled in Farleyville’—”
“To get a divorce,” Carly finished with a sigh. Her head was pounding. “Put her on,” she added with resignation, pushing another button so Mark wouldn’t be able to overhear the psychologist’s side of the conversation.
He leaned forward to help himself to a Cheeze Crunchy. “It’s gonna be a bloodbath,” he said, and settled back to watch.
Carly narrowed her eyes at him, then spun her chair around so that her back was turned.
The psychologist introduced herself and proceeded to tell Carly off. “In essence, Miss Barnett,” the woman finished, “you should be demoted to a position where you can’t possibly do any more harm!”
Calling on all her poise-under-pressure training, Carly replied that she was sorry if she’d offended anyone and hung up. When she turned her chair around again, Mark was gone, and the discovery gave her an empty feeling.
Half an hour later she was called into the managing editor’s office.
Fully expecting to be fired, to have to go home to her dad in utter disgrace, Carly obeyed the summons, never letting any of her insecurities show.
“We’ve had some complaints about the way you’re handling the advice column,” Mr. Clark said when Carly was seated in a chair facing his imposing desk. His expression was sober, and she resisted an urge to bite her lower lip.
She waited in dignified silence.
A smile broke across the editor’s face. “And that’s good,” he boomed. “Means they’re reading you. You’re shaking them up, jolting them out of their complacency. Which is not to say you couldn’t be a little more careful.”
Carly’s relief was overwhelming. “I’ll be sure to check with an expert on the trickier questions,” she promised.
Mr. Clark was sitting back in his chair now, his fingers steepled under his chin. Carly was clearly not excused from the hot seat. “Liked your work on the cooking contest,” he said. “How would you feel about taking on more varied assignments like that one? We’re thinking of picking up one of the syndicated advice columns instead of running our own, you see.”
Carly could barely keep from leaping over the desk and kissing Mr. Clark. “I would enjoy that,” she said moderately.
“Good, good,” responded the editor as his phone buzzed. As he reached for the receiver, he mused, more to himself than to Carly, “Maybe we’ll put you on the fathers’ rights piece with Holbrook. Get a woman’s side of it.”
Carly nodded. She wasn’t sure how she felt about working with Mark—God knew, he was a genius and she’d kill for the opportunity to learn from him, but he was also the man who had taken her to bed the night before and calmly turned her inside out. If she did get to share the assignment, she would just have to make damn sure she kept her mind on business.
Mr. Clark dismissed her with a kindly gesture, and she rushed out of his office, feeling better than she had all day. When she returned to her desk, she found a turkey sandwich from the corner deli waiting for her, along with a note. “Eat this that others might live. Mark.”
Carly couldn’t help smiling. She sat down at her desk and made short work of the sandwich, then spent the rest of the afternoon conferring with experts over the telephone. She was determined that that week’s column wouldn’t generate a storm of protest like the first one had.
If Mark was still in the building, he didn’t come near Carly again, and she was both relieved and disappointed as she caught the elevator to the parking garage at five-thirty. She scolded herself that she mustn’t fall into the age-old female trap of expecting too much just because she and Mark had been to bed together. He had probably put a check by her name in his book of conquests and moved on to the next prospect.
The thought made Carly sad, and she was feeling moody again when she got home. There, she dumped her garment bag, kicked off her shoes and exchanged the clothes she’d worn to the office for a pair of stretchy exercise pants and a T-shirt. What she needed, she decided, was a good workout.
After fetching a clean towel from the linen closet, she went downstairs to the building’s small but well-equipped gym and began going through the program she’d outlined for herself. When she was finished, she felt better.
She encountered Janet in the upstairs hallway. “You’re the first woman I’ve ever known who looked good in sweat,” her friend commented with a shake of her head.
Carly blushed, thinking of the last time she’d been worked up enough to perspire, and opened the door of her apartment. “Gee, thanks,” she said with a grin. “And here I thought I didn’t have anything going for me.”
Janet laughed and set her briefcase and purse down on Carly’s table. “Right. You were Miss United States and now you’re dating a famous journalist. You’re a pathetic case if I’ve ever seen one.”
Opening her refrigerator door, Carly took out two diet colas and set them on the table. “I’m not ‘dating’ Mark Holbrook,” she said.
Janet’s lips twitched a little; she was obviously fighting back a smile. “I can’t understand why you’re so touchy about this, Carly—most women would shout it from the rooftops. After all, the guy is merely sensational.”
Carly filled two glasses with ice and brought them to the table, sitting down with a sigh. She shrugged, averting her eyes. “He has this affectionate contempt for me, Janet—I know he sees me as a brainless little beauty queen in way over her head—”
“But,” Janet pointed out moderately, “you spent the night with him.”
“I don’t know how to explain that,” Carly said with a weary sigh.
“You don’t have to explain it,” Janet reasoned. “You’re a grown woman, after all.”
Carly bit her lower lip for a moment. Janet was right, of course, but she still felt a need to confide her feelings to someone, and she couldn’t think of a better candidate than her best friend. “I never had any trouble turning guys down when they came on to me,” she said quietly. “Even with Reggie—well, it was just easy to say no. But all Mark has to do is kiss me and I turn into this—this red-hot mama.”
Janet let out a peal of laughter. “Red-hot mama? God, I didn’t think anybody said that anymore!”
Carly flushed. “Janet, this is serious!” she hissed. “That man can try to get me fired, he can make remarks about my title, he can as much as tell me I’m incompetent. And then he just turns right around and takes me to bed! Doesn’t that make me a woman-who-loves-too-much or something?”
Her friend was kindly amused. “Maybe it just makes you a woman-who-loves, period. Give yourself a break, Carly, and stop analyzing everything to death.” She paused and glanced at her watch. “Are we still going out for salad and pizza?”
Carly nodded. “It’ll have to be an early night, though. I’ve got a lot of work to do.”
With that, Janet went to her own apartment to change clothes and Carly headed for the shower. Twenty minutes later she was dressed in gray cords and a soft matching sweater, and the doorbell rang. Tossing her makeup bag into a drawer, she made her way through the living room and pulled open the door, expecting to see Janet standing in the hall.
Instead she found Mark, and he didn’t look well.
“What’s the matter?” Carly asked, stepping back to admit him.
He moved his eyes over her with weary admiration. “It’s a personal problem—nothing you need to worry about.”
Carly closed the door. “Then why are you here?”
He shoved one hand through his rumpled brown hair. “I’m not sure. I guess—after last night—I thought I could talk to you.”
She came to stand in front of him and looked up into his eyes. “You were right—you can.”
“You’re on your way out.” There was no note of accusation in his voice, only a quiet statement of fact.
“Janet and I are going to a pizza place, that’s all. You’re welcome to come along.”
He grinned in a way that tugged at her heart. “Thanks, Barnett, but I don’t think I’m up to snappy repartee.”
She laid her hands on his upper arms. “Talk to me,” she said softly.
He sighed again. “My mother called me an hour ago. Jeanine—that’s my ex-wife—was in an accident on the freeway. Nathan was with her, and he’s in the hospital with a broken arm.”
Carly’s eyes went wide with sympathy and alarm. “Then you’ve got to go down there.”
“It isn’t that simple.”
“Why not? Nathan is your son—he’s a little boy, and he’s hurt—”
“And his mother has a restraining order against me.”
Carly was quiet for a long time, absorbing the implications. “You were violent?” she asked in a whisper, and even as she uttered the words, she couldn’t imagine Mark doing any of the things that usually prompted ex-wives to take legal measures to protect themselves and their children.
“No, but I was angry—damn angry. And that was all Jeanine needed. She went to a lawyer and told him I was dangerous.”
Carly let her forehead rest against Mark’s shoulder for a moment, breathing in concert with him, feeling his frustration and pain in a strange, fundamental way. Finally she looked up at him with tears in her eyes. “Do you want me to go with you?”
He smiled, pulled her close and kissed the top of her head. “No,” he said. “I just need to know you’re thinking about me, and that you’ll be here when I get back.”
“Mark—”
He tilted her chin up and gave her a soft, hungry kiss, and all the reactions Carly feared so much immediately set in. If he’d wanted her then and there, she would have given herself to him, and the idea frightened her.
“I’ll call,” he said.
Carly only nodded and followed Mark to the door, watching him as he left. Janet came in almost unobserved, dressed in designer jeans and a sweatshirt.
“Looks serious,” she remarked.
“Let’s go get some pizza,” Carly replied.
Although Carly tried to have fun with her friend, she was essentially preoccupied. She and Janet came home early.
When she arrived at work the next morning, she stopped by Mark’s office, being as subtle as possible, and peeked in. The place was spacious and cluttered, and it smelled of Mark’s cologne. And it was empty.
She stepped out, closing the door and wondering how this man had made her care so deeply in such a short time. She had too much of herself invested in Mark, and she had no idea how to back away.
There were flowers waiting on her desk—pink daisies exploding from a pretty cut-glass vase. It’s too soon to talk about love, the card read, but I think I’m seriously in like. With you, of course. I left the key to my front door with your assistant, just in case you might want to be there when I get home. Soon, Mark.
A rush of feeling swept over Carly. She put it down to “like” and switched on her computer.
When Emmeline came in with the customary cup of coffee, she brought the key to Mark’s house. To her credit, the woman neither asked questions nor made a comment.
Carly spent a busy day reading letters and talking with various authorities, and when her deadline arrived, she had a solid column to turn in.
She went to Mark’s that first night, which was silly because she knew he wouldn’t be there. She walked through the house, checking to make sure all the doors and windows were locked, then sat down at his desk.
One of the drawers was sticking out, and Carly tried to close it.
It promptly jammed, and she reached inside.
She hadn’t actually meant to snoop. Still, when Carly drew her hand out of the drawer, there was a manuscript in it.
Carly realized she’d found a printout of the play he’d been writing, and she couldn’t resist flipping to the opening scene. She would just read a line or two, then put it away.
Moments later, however, Carly was in another dimension. She wasn’t aware of time passing, or of the dying light at the windows, or the view of the Columbia River. She read, filled with awe and a singular heartbreak, to the very last page.
Tears brimmed in her eyes as she put the play back in its drawer, and just then the phone rang. Feeling like a prowler, but nonetheless a responsible one, Carly groped for the receiver and sniffled, “Hello?”
“Hi.” The voice was Mark’s.
Carly gave a guilty start and dashed away her tears with the back of one hand, trying to cover her discomfort with a joke. “Your burglar alarm doesn’t work,” she said.
He chuckled. “I didn’t turn it on. I’m glad you’re there, Carly—it’s almost as good as having you here would be.”
“How’s Nathan? Did you get to see him?”
“One question at a time, Scoop. Nathan’s going to be fine—I think I’m in worse shape than he is.”
“And Jeanine?”
Mark hesitated for a long moment. “She’s as difficult as ever.”
“But she wasn’t hurt in the accident?”
“No.”
“What about the restraining order? Was there any trouble?”
“I called my parents’ attorney when I got here and had it lifted. I’ll tell you all about it when I get home tomorrow night.”
Carly felt a wifely warmth at the idea. “Maybe I’ll stop by after work, then,” she said.
Mark’s voice was a slow, sensual caress. “Bring your toothbrush.”
She squirmed slightly and let the remark pass. “Thanks for the flowers—they’re lovely.”
They talked for a few minutes longer, then said reluctant good-nights.
During the drive back to her apartment, Carly thought about Mark’s play. His talent was truly formidable, and his words had moved her on a very deep level. She should have told him that she’d read his work, she knew, but the truth was she hadn’t dared. The play was about a man and a woman and a child, and in it the dissolution of the family had been portrayed with painful clarity.
It didn’t take a genius to figure out that Mark had written about his own divorce, or that he felt a tragic sense of loss where his young son was concerned.
The subject of Mark’s previous marriage seemed to be sacred ground; Carly didn’t know how to broach it. She felt almost as though she’d read his diary, tapped his phone or opened his mail. And yet there was a certain exaltation in her, too, because the play had such a poignant beauty.
Arriving at her own building, Carly carried in her purse, briefcase and mail. There was a wedding invitation from Reggie and the nurse from Topeka, and she rolled her eyes as she tossed it onto the desk with the other things.
After changing her clothes, Carly again went to the small gym to work out. When she returned, she showered, made herself a light supper and started reading the briefcase full of misery she’d brought home from the office.
Although she tried, Carly was unable to keep her mind on the letters from readers of her column. Her thoughts kept straying to Mark, and his play. She wanted so much to tell him she’d read it, and that it was wonderful.
But she was afraid.
The next day was hectic, as usual, and Carly didn’t have time to think about anything but her work. At six-thirty she got into her car, where a small suitcase was waiting, and drove to Mark’s place, stopping off at a supermarket on the way.
When she reached his isolated house, there was no sign of his car, though the compact pickup was parked in its usual place.
She unlocked the door and went inside. “Mark?” she called out in a hopeful tone of voice, but there was no answer.
Carly carried her luggage into Mark’s room, changed into jeans and a T-shirt, then went back to the living room. With considerable effort, she managed to start a blaze in the fireplace, and she put some music on—Mozart.
She was in the kitchen, chopping vegetables for a salad, when she saw his car swing into the driveway. Her heart leaped with an excitement it wasn’t entitled to, and she hurried out to meet him.
He needed a shave, and he looked haggard, but his grin transformed his face. “Hi, Scoop,” he said hoarsely when she slipped her arms around his waist.
Carly reached up to touch his cheek. “Aren’t you going to kiss me?”
He laughed and gathered her against him, and when his mouth touched Carly’s, it was as though someone had draped a wet towel over an electric fence. The charge was lethal.
She was breathless when he finally released her. “I hope you didn’t eat on the plane,” she managed to say, “because I want to cook for you tonight.”
Mark reached into the car for his suitcase and assumed a look of comical surprise. “You cook, as well as twirl the baton and tell total strangers to get divorced?” he teased. “My God, Barnett—is there no end to your talents?”
She gave him a saucy look over one shoulder as she led the way toward the gaping front door. “I’ve got talents galore.”
He laughed and followed her into the house.
While Carly broiled the steaks she’d bought, and baked the potatoes, Mark showered and changed clothes. When he joined her on the little patio off the kitchen, he was wearing jeans and a football jersey, and his rich brown hair was still damp.
“I could get used to this,” he said, standing behind Carly and slipping his arms around her waist. His lips were warm and tantalizing against her neck.
Carly pretended to bristle, though the fact was that she wouldn’t have protested if Mark had hauled her off to bed right then. “You’re a chauvinist, Mr. Holbrook.”
“I know,” he said, lifting her hair to kiss her lightly on the nape.
She was trembling when she turned in his arms and gazed into his eyes. She had to tell him she’d read his play now, while things were so good between them. “Mark, I—”
He silenced her by laying an index finger to her lips. “Later,” he told her. “Whatever it is, please save it until after the food, and the loving.”
During the meal Carly and Mark didn’t talk about Nathan, or Mark’s trip. Instead they discussed some of the funnier letters Carly had received and the answers she’d been tempted to give.
They laughed, and the sound of it healed injured places deep inside Carly. Once, tears came to her eyes because it felt so good just to be sitting across the picnic table from Mark, watching the changes in his face as he talked or listened.
He was rinsing their dishes and putting them into the machine when Carly told him the advice column might be discontinued. She watched closely for his reaction, then felt relief when he grinned and said, “They’ll probably find a place for you.”
Carly drew a deep breath and leaned against the breakfast bar. “Actually,” she said, “they already have, sort of.”
Mark looked at her curiously. “Don’t keep me in suspense, Scoop—are they sending you on assignment to the White House or what?”
She ran the tip of her tongue over her lips. “I’m probably going to be working with you,” she answered, “on a piece about fathers’ rights. Mr. Clark wanted a woman’s view on the subject.”
He sighed, slammed the dishwasher door closed and shoved one hand through his hair. “Great.”
Carly went to him and laid her hand gently on his arm. “Mark, I’m not Jeanine,” she said in a quiet voice. “I don’t have any axes to grind.”
He drew her close and buried his face in her hair. “I missed you so much,” he said hoarsely.