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Before she could say a word, he was talking. “Sorry about that, but I can’t stand the sight of those things. My son was caught smoking in my brother’s abandoned house, and every time I see someone about to light up I go ballistic.”
Jinni settled in her chair, nodding, interested to see when he would recognize her. In the meantime, she’d get a little flirting in.
Max continued, running a hand through his hair. “Damn. Michael, he’s my son, you know, has been driving me to distraction lately. We can’t talk without butting heads. It might help if he were a normal teenager, but he’s smart. Incredibly smart. And it carries over to his mouth. I’ve been thinking he’s from another planet, we’re so different. Planet Attitude. Yeah, that’s where he’s from. And I don’t speak the language or understand the customs.”
Resting her chin in the palm of a hand, Jinni continued taking it all in. This guy really needed a shoulder to cry on, and that’s what she was best at. Maybe there was a biography in this, a Horatio Alger rags-to-riches story coupled with the struggles of an all-American father.
Gulp. If he was a father, then…
She looked. No wedding ring. Curious.
“Doesn’t your wife help you out?” she asked.
Max narrowed his eyes. “Ex-wife.”
“Hmm.” Score one for Jinni.
“What do you think?” He leaned on the bar, his ruffled hair making her want to cuddle him, press him to her shoulder, her chest….
Oh, baby. Come to Mama.
Jinni tilted her head, widened her eyes. “What do I think about your son?”
“Yeah. No. I shouldn’t be mouthing off like this. You’re a total stranger, but—”
“Sometimes strangers can offer the best perspective.”
He nodded. Max Cantrell really had no idea who she was. She’d lost her je ne sais quoi for certain.
Sighing, she said, “I’m not exactly an expert on boys. Never even baby-sat a day in my life.”
Scratch that. She was a master if there ever was one. Jinni Fairchild had a great deal of experience with teenage boys. Just not recently.
“Actually,” she said. “I do know a lot about males.”
He looked her up and down again. “I’m sure.”
Flirt away, big boy, she thought.
Responding by instinct, she wound a lock of her platinum hair around a finger, toying with him. “I’ve always had an innate curiosity about guys. I mean, let’s face it, every girl wants to know what goes on in the locker rooms.”
He watched her work the hair. “Michael’s not into sports.”
“Good thing, because jocks are plain wacky, let me tell you. When I was in high school—I went to this very conservative prep school, but we had a highly esteemed football team, you see—I was puttering around the halls one day after classes when a lineman asked what I was up to. Well, before I could open my mouth, he’d tossed me over his beefy shoulder and was carrying me toward the locker room.”
She couldn’t stop herself, even if Max was staring at her with that disbelieving expression from the parking lot again.
“I gave a few token ‘put me downs’ but it was too late. He’d set me on my feet right in the middle of the showers. Now, I wasn’t sure what to think, and neither did those poor, jock-strapped boys. We just gaped at each other for a minute, gulping air and wondering how to communicate, almost like one of those science fiction movies where two alien civilizations meet and they don’t know what to do with each other. But finally I just sat myself down on a bench and said, ‘Continue,’ and they all laughed, going about their business.”
Max was, by now, shaking his head.
Jinni smiled, unsure of herself now that the story had unspooled from her mouth in such a fantastic manner.
She added, “They let me sneak in a few more times, so, really, I know my boys.”
“Incredible,” said Max, echoing his sentiment from today’s confrontation. He stared at her as if she’d ridden down from the ceiling on the curve of a showgirl’s moon, a combination of disbelief and disdain in his gaze. With a shake of his head, he belted down his tequila.
That’s when Jinni knew that he recognized her.
And she wasn’t sure it was a good thing.
Chapter Three
He’d bellied up to the wrong seat at the bar and poured out his soul to a weirdo.
Sure, she was beautiful in her body-hugging black dress while her hair—as fluid as fine, pale wine—tumbled over her shoulders, and her blue eyes bored into him, fringed by those sooty, batting lashes.
If he’d thought she was gorgeous this afternoon, when he’d wanted to rear-end her car out of pure frustration, he was wrong. Jinni Fairchild was exceptional, statuesque as a goddess.
Goddess? Man, he’d had too much tequila.
“I think it’s time for me to go,” he said, moving to get off the stool.
“Wonderful idea,” she said, latching on to his arm. “That pool room is quiet, I’ll bet.”
Her touch sizzled into his skin, even through his button-down shirt. He hadn’t been this attracted to a woman in… Damn. Forever.
Suddenly, sitting in an area where they didn’t have to yell at each other over music didn’t seem like such a bad notion. He led her over there, to the room where he’d been playing darts before deciding to get something stronger than beer at the bar, a place he could camp out and not talk to anyone.
But then he’d had the luck—good or bad, he didn’t know—to sit next to Jinni, the locker-room groupie.
He loosened his tie with his free hand, threading through the line dancers and leading her to the pool room. The music faded slightly as they sat at a table in the corner, under an old-fashioned scotch advertisement.
“Cantrell,” she said, leaning her elbows on the surface and cupping her chin in a palm. “Why does that name ring a few bells?”
Great. She wanted him to fire off more information. Hadn’t he talked too much already?
Yet somehow he found himself speaking. “Cantrell Enterprises. Or maybe you’ve put two and two together and realized my brother, Guy, is the so-called invisible man.”
Jinni coolly lifted an eyebrow, surprising Max with her lack of response toward Guy’s rumored situation.
“Don’t tell me,” she said. “You’re the same wunderkind Max Cantrell who keeps the state financially afloat with your business? I read an article about you in Forbes magazine last year. They said that you refused to be interviewed, that you’re somewhat of a recluse.”
Thank goodness she hadn’t pursued the subject of Guy. “I’m one and the same. And, yes, I like my privacy.”
“Pleased to make your acquaintance.”
She slid a hand across the table, laying her fingers over his own. His skin heated from the contact.
Excellent. He was forty-three years old. Hadn’t he progressed beyond the fascinated giddiness of a teenager and his whacked-out hormones? Wasn’t he too mature to be getting excited over hand holding?
Evidently not.
He shifted in his chair when she started stroking his thumb. “See here, Jinni, I—”
“Relax, Max. I don’t bite.” Jinni smiled, brilliant white teeth making her seem as glamorous as a fifties movie star. “Not unless you want me to.”
The image of her moving down his body, her hair streaking over his chest as she nipped his skin, sent his brain into a tailspin.
She laughed. “I’m joking, of course. I didn’t mean to fry your circuits.”
Removing his hand from hers, Max tugged on his tie again. Hell, it was already looped halfway down to his belly. “You’re a real piece of work.”
“You say that as if you’re almost amused.”
Maybe he was. Maybe this vibrant, melting ice sculpture of a woman got to him in a way that wasn’t altogether unpleasant.
“I wasn’t so tickled today in the parking lot,” he said.
“I beat you to the spot, and that’s all she wrote.”
“And I told you earlier that we don’t drive like that here. Your style is too aggressive.”
Jinni leaned back in her chair, considering him with what seemed like a hungry grin. “It seems to me, Max Cantrell, that a lady doesn’t succeed with you unless she’s a bit…hmm, let’s think of a better word…assertive.”
He chuckled. Either Jinni Fairchild was a wishful thinker or she was a mind reader. Either way, she was right. The only time Max interacted with females was if they came to him, even if the scenario involved a near car crash.
He couldn’t bother with women, especially with Michael on the warpath. Especially with the way his ex-wife, Eloise, had played kick the can with his heart.
Jinni was watching him, her eyes sparkling like a wink of blue light in a diamond engagement ring. “Why don’t you tell me about your business?”
Phew. At least she knew when to back off.
But did he necessarily want her to?
“Are you intrigued by software?” he asked, realizing he’d left himself open to more insinuations with the whole “software” topic.
She pursed her lips, as if holding back the temptation to come back with a flirtatious pun. “I’m a collector of information. Tell me all about it.”
Disappointment settled in his gut. He’d been half looking forward to bantering the night away.
“Cantrell Enterprises got its start with software—business and some gaming—and we’re developing more. But I want to take it in another direction. We’re exploring virtual reality.” This time he was the one leaning on the table, spurred on by his subject. “You know, it never took off like it was supposed to when it was first introduced. The first VRs were uncomfortable, cumbersome. The sound resembled two tin cans tied together with string. Viewing quality left much to be desired. And there was a total lack of software. All in all, virtual reality was expensive and inaccessible, with no basics to support its success.”
He checked to see if Jinni had nodded off yet. Usually, people would tune out his intellectual computer-nerd talk after the first three seconds.
But Jinni’s head tilted, her eyes connected with his. “And that led to the downfall of virtual reality’s possibilities?”
“Yeah. That’s where we come in. I’m looking at ways to make VR more available to the average user. In fact,” he could feel a smile dominate his mouth, “my passion is to develop the female market.”
She angled her chin down, peeking at him from beneath her eyelashes. “I’d say, with a little more effort, you’ll corner it.”
He could live with a woman glancing at him like that.
No. Actually, he couldn’t. Michael would tear her apart before she could step both feet into their mansion.
Get the conversation back to comfortable ground, he thought. She’s way out of your league and you don’t want her to venture into yours.
“At any rate,” he continued, watching two ranch hands playing pool at the nearby threadbare table, “Cantrell Enterprises is working on virtual reality for the training arena: medical, industrial, cultural. And, of course, entertainment.”
He thought for certain that she was dying to say something about joysticks, but Jinni kept her silence, simply watching him.
During the ensuing pause, the men at the pool table started to argue, trading barbed words.
Jinni didn’t seem to mind them. “You fascinate me, Max,” she said, her voice low, smooth as the cream in a chocolate truffle.
His belly tightened. Someone found him interesting. And that someone was a woman whose legs stretched from here to China, whose bearing reminded him of Grace Kelly on acid. She was a potent combination of class and sex—and Max had never seen her equal.
No way she should be interested in a guy like him. A brain. A whiz kid who’d never really socialized with other people while growing up. No one had ever understood him. Not intellectually, at least.
Eloise had tried, for about an hour, and that’s how Michael had been conceived. But after she’d decided she needed to “find herself” in Tibet, she’d left him a single father, trying to figure out what he’d done wrong.
The arguing ranch hands were getting feistier, bumping chests like primates. Max protectively reached across the table toward Jinni out of instinct, and started to rise from his chair.
Ignoring the developing fight, Jinni followed suit, slipping her arm through his, fitting herself right against his side.
Damn, he shouldn’t want this. Shouldn’t need to be with a woman like Jinni. It wouldn’t work out, so why get into it?
“Let me see you home,” he said, guiding her away from the sound of a shattering beer bottle and toward the main bar, the hat and coatrack. He glanced over his shoulder to see the two ranch hands going at each other, while other cowboys herded into the pool room.
“Home?” Her voice rose over the loud music and shouts. “It’s early!”
She retrieved an item of clothing that resembled a cape. Typical. Dramatic, sophisticated.
And here he was, wearing a tie as a hangman’s noose.
“I thought…” he began.
“Don’t think,” she said as he helped her wrap the cape around herself. “Live.”
Live. He hadn’t really been doing that for years. Had he?
Maybe he could enjoy a lovely woman’s company, just for tonight. It’s not like Michael had to know.
He donned his own coat, then followed her out the door, hardly believing he was doing it.
Ha-ha, yes! Jinni Fairchild hadn’t lost her appeal. That’s right. She had Max Cantrell wrapped around her ring finger, and the night was young.
They hadn’t walked far in the cool air, only to a grass field where Max had laid down his coat, inviting her to sit on it. After they chatted about the spell of unseasonable weather and made calls home on his cell phone— Jinni wanted Val to know she’d be out late—he’d sat next to her, arms resting on his knees as he stared at the sky, stars spangling the clear blue like lost fairy dust.
