Michael groaned softly.
Char was not going to be coming back in the bedroom. Not only that, but he now had ample evidence that his first impression had been the right one. She wasn’t the type to be interested in a quick roll in the hay. Especially not with two kids in tow.
The boys both blinked at him sleepily. One boy waved. The other frowned and turned his head away, pressing into his mother’s neck. Michael stared at them. He was not a kid person.
“You didn’t tell me you had children,” he said, resignation clear in his voice.
“You didn’t ask.” She turned into her room, looking back at him. His attitude had cooled completely and she wondered why. But she had two children to look after and she didn’t have time to dwell on it.
“Good night,” she called back over her shoulder.
He didn’t answer, but she heard his door close as she put the boys back to bed. Frowning, she closed her own door and leaned against it for a moment, remembering what had happened on the bed. It was crazy, of course. She must have been half out of her mind. She didn’t do things like that, not ever.
But she couldn’t say that anymore, could she? She’d responded to him like a flower to sunshine, as though she’d been waiting for him to awaken something in her that had been sleeping too long. Was she really that lonely? Did her body and soul really hunger so deeply for a man’s love that she was ready to drop down on a bed with the first guy who grabbed her?
Or was it something else? Was it because he looked so much like Danny? Was that what had loosened her inhibitions and made her respond to him the way she had?
“Hah!” she said to herself scornfully. No such luck. She couldn’t claim that as an alibi. Her mind had been on nothing but the touch, the scent and the heat of Michael Greco. Which was why he was more dangerous to her peace of mind than any man she’d known in a long, long time.
“Mama, kiss!” Ronnie demanded from his bed, holding his little arms out to her.
Smiling, she started toward him, loving the way his little fireplug body looked in his Pokémon pajamas.
“Forget about Michael Greco,” she told herself sternly. “Your kids are all that really matter.” And she wiped him from her mind as her children claimed her full attention.
Michael went to bed, but despite his exhaustion, he found himself lying still, staring at the ceiling. Maybe he was too tired to relax. Or maybe he was still trying to get over his encounter with his neighbor.
He could still feel the way her body had pressed against his. Every delicious part of her fulfilled the promise that rich, husky voice laid out. It had been a long time since a woman had turned him on quite so easily and quite so thoroughly. And here he’d thought he was finished with that sort of thing.
It had been four years since his wife, Grace, had given up on him. He’d had his share of women since then, and over time, the nameless, faceless encounters had begun to seem sleazy and pointless. He’d made a decision to forget about women and concentrate on business. He had ambitions. Right now he was on a trajectory toward a vice presidency. That should be enough. And it was, damn it!
He couldn’t have a life like other men because he wasn’t like other men. He accepted that. He could live with it. But it had been bad luck to end up so close to Chareen Wolf and her crew. Something in her had reached right through his defenses and latched onto his soul from the beginning. He hadn’t wanted it to happen. But she reminded him of what life could have been like if only…
“If onlys” didn’t change anything. He was a pragmatic man and reality was all he cared about. And reality dictated that he stay away from women like Char—women who had family in mind.
Poor Grace. Suddenly he had a clear picture of her, of that awful pleading look in her eyes. Even after all these years, that look made him shrivel up inside. All she’d ever wanted was a family. And that was exactly what he couldn’t give her.
Char was nothing like Grace, but she had similar interests. He had to stay away from her. For his own sanity, for her peace of mind. And with that decided, he finally fell asleep.
Michael’s eyes drifted open a crack. Sunlight spilled into his room. He glanced at the clock. Damn. He’d forgotten to set the alarm. He closed his eyes again. No use getting up until he was sure the coast was clear. Might as well get a little more sleep.
This was his third morning in the old Victorian. On the first and second he had very carefully awoken early and cleared out before Char and her children got up, getting breakfast at a local coffee shop and heading for work in time to avoid all contact with the little family across the hall. He’d had to deal with Char a few times at the office, but he’d managed to keep the contact short and sweet—and very reserved. Neither one of them had made any reference to the incident on the bed. Relations between them were strictly professional and they were going to stay that way if he could manage it.
But this morning he’d misjudged. He’d gotten in so late last night, he’d prepared for bed like a robot and fallen asleep instantly. Now he was going to have to spend some more time in his room if he was going to wait them out and emerge after they’d left the house. So he dozed, barely noticing as doors opened and closed up and down the hall, as little feet pattered past, as Char’s heels made a staccato but muffled tattoo on the corridor carpet.
He had a short, seductive dream in which he reached out and touched Char’s shoulder, his hand sliding in between two silky strands of her beautiful blond hair, and she turned, dressed in the cranberry-colored, scoop-necked wool sweater she’d worn to work the day before—a sweater that did for her form what a layer of powdered snow did to the Sierras—and he reached down into the scoop and…
He woke with a start, blinking in the light. Wow. Why did he always wake up right at the good part? Yawning, he turned on his side. And stared right into a bright little face with very sparkling blue eyes peering at him over the side of the bed.
“Aaaa!” he yelled, jerking back.
“Aiiiii!” the little boy yelled back, ducking down out of sight.
“What the hell?” Michael ground out, furious. “Get out of here, kid. How did you get in here?”
“Ronnie!” Char’s voice sounded out in the hallway. “Ronnie, where are you?”
Michael looked over at the edge of his bed. The bright blue eyes were peering over the side of the mattress at him again.
“You’re Ronnie, aren’t you?” he said.
The thatch of red hair bounced as the boy nodded.
Michael considered his options. He had on nothing but pajama bottoms and he didn’t relish leaping from the bed in them in front of all and sundry. That made him something of a prisoner here. Which left him with only one thing to do.
“Ronnie?” Char’s voice said again, closer this time.
“He’s in here,” Michael called out, going up on one elbow. “Come and get him.”
He could sense her hesitating outside his door.
“What?” she called from just outside.
“Come on in. Obviously, the door isn’t locked.” That was probably another thing he’d forgotten to do, besides the alarm.
The door opened. Char’s pretty face peered in, looking suspicious. Her gaze met his, then bounced off and swept around the room. “Ronnie?” she said.
Ronnie giggled and threw himself down to try to wiggle under the bed.
“Ronnie!” She flew into the room and grabbed a leg, pulling him back out. He chortled as she pulled him up into her arms, but she didn’t look as though she thought this was a laughing matter herself.
“Ronnie!” she admonished him crossly. “Don’t you ever go into strange rooms without asking first. You hear?”
Ronnie turned his head so that he could look at Michael. “I got a ‘elphant,”’ he told him brightly. “He goes ‘whoo!”’ He raised his face as he made the elephant call, then grinned from ear to ear.
But his mother ignored this piece of information, turning so that she was the one who could look Michael in the face. “Don’t you lock your door?” she said to him accusingly.
It was a moment of mixed emotion for Michael. On the one hand, he was thoroughly annoyed at having a child sneak into his room. On the other, he couldn’t help but enjoy the picture Char made with the morning sunbeams lighting her silver hair like a spotlight. She was wearing a suit this morning, and the skirt was nice and short, showing off the sort of legs that could make a grown man tremble with longing. A woman interested in family and kids was poison as far as he was concerned, and he wasn’t going to waver on that point. But just as a feast for the eyes, Char had it all. And he wasn’t going to deny himself the enjoyment of looking. Just looking.
But he answered her with just a touch of sarcasm, to remind himself—and her—that they were not destined to be a friendly pair.
“You know,” he said, gazing at her from beneath lowered lids, “I wasn’t expecting an invasion. I’ll be more careful in the future.”
“Good for you,” she muttered, throwing him a piercing glare and turning to march off, her child slung over her shoulder. Ronnie looked back as they left, and gave Michael a gap-toothed grin. The door closed with a crisp snap.
Maybe I can actually put up with having kids around if the bargain includes a good look at a woman like Char every morning, he thought as he rose and went to his closet for a robe so that he could make his way to the second-floor bathroom for a shower.
But he changed his mind soon enough. Back from the shower, he put on slacks and a white shirt and tie, and reached for his suit coat, which he’d draped across the chair by the door when he’d come in the night before. A bright green sucker fell to the floor. A nice sticky sucker. And it had left a trail of green goo all down the front of the suit coat.
Uttering a very obscene word in a soft but vicious tone, he headed for the sink in the bathroom. A few minutes later he was dressed in his other suit and sauntering into the breakfast room where Char and her children were lingering over morning coffee and cereal. He arrived just in time to hear Char scolding one son.
“Ricky, put down that fork. You do not use a fork to eat your cereal. You’re dripping milk all over. Use your spoon.”
Michael stopped in the doorway and surveyed the room. The large circular table had evidence that other diners had come and gone, but for now, only Char and her brood occupied the far end. A couple of slices of toast, a few splinters of bacon and the remnants of scrambled eggs sat in chafing dishes on a sideboard. Three sets of eyes turned toward him and stared.
“Here come the man, Mama!” Ronnie cried, face alight.
At the same time, his twin brother Ricky looked right through the newcomer, as though he wasn’t even there.
Char didn’t say a thing, but her gaze was plainly cool.
Michael nodded to them all, then walked over and held the sticky sucker out to Char. “I think this must be yours,” he said accusingly.
Char recoiled, but Ronnie gasped. “My ‘pop’!” he cried, and he began to kick his feet as he reached out for it.
“Oh, is it yours?” Michael said dryly, handing it to the boy. After all, he knew very well Ronnie had to be the one who’d left it in his room.
But Char cried out, “No, you can’t give it to him like that.” She grabbed it away from her son. “Look. It’s got fuzz all over it.” She waved it at him accusingly. “What have you done to it?”
It took him a couple of beats to realize she was actually blaming him for the condition of the sucker. “What have I done to it?” He stared at her, outraged. How had she managed to make her child the aggrieved party here?
“You’re a grown man, aren’t you?” She favored him with a scathing look up and down before rising, marching into the adjoining kitchen and turning on the faucet to wash off the candy. “You should be able to handle carrying a lollipop around without getting lint all over it,” she called back to him.
“That lint happens to be what is left of my suit coat,” he told her. “The rest of it has dissolved into green goo.”
She looked at him and started to say something, but Ricky chose that moment to stick the fork into his tongue. He let out a shriek and Char was immediately immersed in comforting him.
Michael looked at Ronnie. Ronnie grinned at him, but there was something in the mischievous glint in his eyes that made Michael think he knew more than he was saying.
His instinct had been to keep his distance from these children, and now his instincts had been vindicated. Turning on his heel, he grabbed his briefcase from where he’d left it in the hall and started for the front door.
“Oh, Mr. Greco!” Hannah Shubert, a short, plump, gray-haired lady, was hurrying after him. “Oh, you can’t go yet. You haven’t eaten one meal here in three days. I’d like to make you a special omelet. Please come back to the breakfast room.”
He turned and managed a pleasant smile. The woman seemed very earnest in her zeal to please, and he hated to discourage that sort of thing. “I’m sorry. I missed my alarm and slept late. I’ve got to get to the office.”
She put a hand on his arm and gave him a motherly smile. “I’ll forgive you this time,” she said. “But promise me you’ll let me make you something for breakfast tomorrow.”
He hesitated, knowing he was going to regret this. “Well…”
“Please. Whatever you like best, that’s what I’ll prepare.” She coaxed him with a sweet smile. “Come on. What do you like?”
“Well…” He swallowed, then let memory take over. “What I really like is fresh-squeezed orange juice and sausages and crisp hash browns and really fat pieces of French toast dripping with butter and maple syrup.”
“Done,” she said with satisfaction. “Tomorrow, then.”
“Tomorrow,” he agreed, then gave her a smile and turned to head out the door toward his rented car. When he got in tonight, he’d have to tell her he would need to eat very, very early. Breakfast with Char’s twins was not an option. Not if he wanted to stay sane, at any rate.
“Well, isn’t that nice?” Hannah commented as she bustled around the table, picking up after some of the earlier diners. “Mr. Greco promised he’d let me fix him a good breakfast tomorrow.”
“What a sweetheart,” Char said in return, not bothering to hide the sarcasm. “If you’re really nice, maybe he’ll let you iron his shirts.”
“Now, now, my dear,” Hannah said reprovingly. “You shouldn’t take that attitude. I swear, women today.” She shook her head, but her face was still wreathed in good-natured happiness. “He is such a handsome one, isn’t he? And I hear he is on the fast track to the top. Prime executive material.”
Char nodded. “No doubt about it,” she murmured as she wiped up Ronnie’s latest milk spill.
“You could do worse than setting your sights on that one,” Hannah counseled.
Char rolled her eyes, but she made sure she was turned away so that Hannah couldn’t see her do it. The woman meant well. But the thought of “setting her sights” on Michael Greco was too grotesque to tolerate.
She was thoroughly annoyed with him now. She’d thought he was a bit touchy the first day when he’d arrived, but ever since, he’d only gotten worse. Life at work was a constant hide-and-seek game, trying to find where he’d gone to get away from her this time.
“It’s all in your mind,” Lena Harold, who’d been assigned as his temporary secretary and had always been a good friend, had told her. “He’s bouncing all over the place because he needs to get input from so many departments. It has nothing to do with hating you.” And she threw back her dark, sleek head and laughed at the entire concept, gold earrings jangling.
But Chareen hadn’t laughed back. She knew a job of evasion when she ran smack into one.
“Ronnie?” she said, turning from her mop-up task to find only Ricky still with her in the breakfast room. “Where is that scamp?”
She found him out in the front room. He’d climbed up in the window seat and was watching through the glass as Michael drove away.
“The man is in the car,” he informed his mother as she scooped him up and carried him back to the breakfast room. “There he goes!”
“And we’re going, too,” she told him cheerfully, hugging him close. “As soon as we clean up and get our sweaters on.” But her heart was breaking for her baby. It was becoming more and more obvious that he was fascinated with Michael’s every move. But all the fascination in the world wasn’t going to get him anywhere with that man.
She knew both of her boys were starved for adult male attention in their lives. They desperately needed a real man they could look up to and pattern their behavior on. But real men, like cowboys, were hard to find these days. And Michael Greco had made it quite clear that he wasn’t going to put himself up as a candidate.
Which was his right, of course. But for some reason, his manner made her angry. Very angry. It was obvious his attitude toward her had turned around the minute he’d realized she had children. So he hated kids. No problem. She would keep her kids away from him as much as humanly possible. It was really none of her business, after all.
But only a true jerk of a man would be able to dislike her boys! It made her furious.
She thought of her own father for a moment. He had always been wonderful to her, the perfect dad. Her parents had moved to Texas years ago and she saw them much too rarely now. Adopted as a baby by the older couple, she’d probably been showered with twice the love the average child had. She just couldn’t understand a man like Michael not responding to children. Good thing she’d resolved after that first night to give him as wide a berth as possible.
The good thing was, with her avoiding him and him avoiding her, they didn’t have to deal much with each other. She could go to work with the confidence that she wasn’t going to have to be nice to him if she didn’t want to. And that was something, after all.
Only an hour and a half later, she was eating her words. And acting very nice indeed. She looked across the wide polished desk to where Michael Greco was sitting back and gazing at her like the lord of the manor, and she gave him her very best smile.
“I’m sure you understand that the last thing in the world I want is to have to ask you for a favor,” she said brightly. “But the fact is, I do have to.”
He was looking very bored with it all and she wanted to tell him exactly what she thought. But Leonard Trask had warned her to be nice to him. “He can break up this department if he wants to,” he’d told her that very morning when she’d accidentally said something scathing about the man. “You just be careful how you act around him. He’s got the ear of the big guys. We want him on our side.”
“What do you need?” Michael was asking her now.
“A ride.” She smiled again, though she knew her eyes weren’t joining in. “My car isn’t acting very reliable today. I had to take it in for repairs.”
He nodded, gazing at her with what she interpreted as a speculative gleam. “Where to?”
The smile was evaporating and she was going to let it go. She just couldn’t pretend. “I’ve been told you are going up to the site today,” she said quickly. “And I need to do some research at Trivolo City Hall. So if you could just drop me—”
“You could rent a car.” He was leaning back in his chair and looking as though he was enjoying this.
She clenched her fists at her sides and wondered if he noticed. “Funny you should say that,” she told him, head high. “I said exactly the same thing. I sure didn’t want to…bother you with this. Only Mr. Jackson in Finance shot that down in a hurry and told me to come ask you for a ride.”
His eyes were sparkling with something that just might have been humor, but she couldn’t be sure. Maybe it was malice, instead.
“He didn’t want to pay for it, huh?” he said, leaning forward and flattening his hands on the desk surface.
“He called it a reckless disregard for prioritized resources, or something like that.”
He nodded. “And he’s right, of course.” He glanced at his watch. “What the hell. Why don’t we go ahead and leave right now?”
She hesitated. “Well, sure. Why not?”
Their gazes met for a long moment, communicating exactly why this was a very bad idea. But there was really nothing either one of them could do about it at this point. They were going to be spending some extended time together. There was no use trying to resist.