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Her T-shirt revealed more of Charlie’s slender and curvaceous figure than it was intended to conceal. Considering the state of their friendship, or the lack of it, it was strange that the idea of her wearing that skimpy outfit for everyone within shouting distance bothered him. Even the idea that he was bothered annoyed him.
The sight of Charlie in her too-tight T-shirt and the wicked smile she exchanged with the male picnickers came close to driving him out of his mind. Considering that their relationship was a hands-off situation, he was forced to chalk up another reason to stay at least ten feet away from the lady. He was jealous!
In his frustration, he ran his hand across his forehead. When had his fascination for her unorthodox behavior turned into a grudging but growing attraction? And where in the hell was it going to get him in the long run, anyway?
He took Jake’s hand and started toward a large, wooded fenced-off area that surely housed Charlie’s zoo. At least the animals would take Jake’s mind off lunch. A meat-and-potato man himself, he wistfully wished for a hamburger. Not the best of choices for Jake, but he doubted anyone would be offering Jake’s current choice of food; peanut butter and jelly sandwiches.
His stomach growled. Thank God he had his mother to help keep an eye on Jake and to feed him during the week. If it had been left up to him, the kid would have lived on fast food hamburgers and French fried potatoes. Unfortunately, his mother, who would have known to bring food to a do-it-yourself picnic, was off visiting a close friend for a few days. Thus the care and feeding of Jake this weekend was up to him. Unfortunately, he didn’t seem to be doing a good job of it.
“Daddy! Daddy!” Jake hollered as he jumped up and down and pointed to the sky. The red balloon Mike had tied to Jake’s wrist had broken loose and was slowly floating away in the breeze. Before he could stop him, Jake ran after the balloon with Mike hard at his heels shouting for him to wait up.
The breeze grew stronger. The balloon picked up speed and sailed straight toward where Charlie was unpacking a picnic basket. To Mike’s surprise, she leapt to her feet and managed to catch the balloon before it sailed over her head.
Jake crowed happily and, before Mike could grab him, made a mad dash for the balloon—and Charlie.
Charlie laughed when a little boy ran into her and grabbed her around her knees. Amused, she handed him the errant balloon and, to her delight, was rewarded by a kiss and a hug.
Her smile faded when Mike Wheeler skidded to a stop in front of her.
“Thanks,” Mike said as he retied the balloon to Jake’s wrist. “I’m afraid I wouldn’t have caught it in time.”
Charlie’s eyes widened as she glanced down at the laughing little boy. To her surprise, he was a miniature duplicate of Mike, complete with golden-brown hair, blue eyes and a child-sized killer smile.
“Yours?”
“Mine. His name is Jake.” He looked down at the little boy. “Jake, this is Miss Charlie Norris. How about thanking her for saving your balloon?”
Wheels began to turn in Charlie’s head. Had Mike ever mentioned he was married? Or that he had a child? For that matter, when had he ever said anything about his private life? Never. So where did the kid come in?
She searched over Mike’s shoulder. “Where’s your wife?”
“She died a year ago,” he answered, his hands on Jake’s shoulders to keep him from darting away again. “There’s just me and Jake.”
“I’m sorry,” she said, itching to know what had happened to the late Mrs. Wheeler but too embarrassed to ask. The tight look around Mike’s eyes would have stopped her, anyway. She’d already guessed he was a man who kept his off-duty life private.
“Thanks again for your help,” Mike repeated. He took his son’s hand in his and started off across the lawn.
Charlie nodded and headed back to her blanket. Regardless of having worked in close proximity to Mike Wheeler at Blair House for the past year, she didn’t know him any better than he knew her.
Looking back over her shoulder, she saw the ever-watchful Mike lounging against an apple tree with his hands across his chest, never taking his eyes off Jake who’d stopped to investigate a rock. The expression on his face and the soft look in his eyes as he gazed at the boy told her how much the boy meant to him. She found herself smiling. Contrary to her earlier impression, maybe Mike was a man with a heart.
Gone were the traditional Secret Service black suit, white shirt and black tie that enabled him to fade into a background. In khaki slacks and jacket, a gray polo shirt and casual leather loafers, he looked like a new and different man. If the old one had attracted her, this new one had her full attention. He certainly didn’t resemble the all-business man he’d appeared to be ever since they’d first met. Today she was seeing a side of him he seldom showed to anyone.
Judging from the way he behaved with his son, Mike Wheeler was strong on the outside yet tender beneath the surface. He could be protective and nurturing, she thought as she gazed at him. But not with her.
To her secret regret, almost every man she met treated her like a sister or a friend. They even laughed at her carefree attitude and the oddball ideas she came up with.
Most of the men she met never saw her as a desirable woman.
The look in Mike’s eyes when he thought she wasn’t noticing told her that, in spite of himself, he thought she was hot. And, to her growing surprise, his interest made her feel womanly.
The long and the short of it was that, even though she was thirty-five and had successfully established her independence years ago, Mike made her yearn for someone of her own to watch over her.
But Mike by profession was a lawman. She had vowed never to fall for a lawman and, like her own mother, take the chance that someday she would have her heart broken.
“Daddy!” Jake ran back to his father. “I’m still hungry!”
Charlie heard Jake complain. It didn’t look as if Mike had brought lunch with him. She bit her lip, made up her mind to put her musings aside and went to join him. It was only a friendly gesture she had in mind. What could happen? “Can I help?”
“I’m afraid I didn’t think to bring anything for lunch,” Mike said with a helpless shrug. “I guess I thought I’d find a food vendor here. I’ll have to take Jake back into town.”
“But Daddy, there’s the zoo!”
Mike tried to connect a zoo with lunch and came up empty. “What about the zoo?”
“You said there’s a zoo here, Daddy.”
Charlie rushed to explain. “I was planning on taking anyone who’s interested to visit my zoo later this afternoon. The animals aren’t as frisky as they are in the morning.”
Jake’s eyes lit up. “I want to go to the zoo now!”
Mike held Jake by an arm before he could start off by himself again. “You actually have a zoo of your own?”
Charlie looked offended. “You still didn’t believe me?”
Left unsaid was the implication he should have known she was telling the truth. Even if the truth in this case was something most people would never have believed anyway. But then, Charlie wasn’t most people.
“Right,” he answered dryly. “Face it. A zoo isn’t the sort of thing most people have in their backyard.”
Charlie silently gestured to the mutinous expression on Jake’s face. “Now that you’re here, it would be a shame to miss the tour.”
“Guess so,” Mike muttered. “But if there’s a choice between the zoo and Jake’s lunch…”
“How about a hamburger and some veggies?” She pointed to the picnic basket. “I have enough for all of us.”
“Jake?”
“No peanut and jelly sandwiches?”
“No, I’m sorry.” Charlie answered with a proper sad look on her face. “But I do have celery sticks filled with peanut butter.”
“Cool!” Jake grinned happily.
Charlie grinned back. Anything with peanut butter was obviously okay with him.
Mike took the plunge. “If your offer includes me, I’ll take the hamburger.”
Charlie hesitated, debating whether she should tell Mike the truth before he found it out for himself—the hard way. She couldn’t fib—she’d said hamburgers, but the truth was something different.
She rummaged in the picnic basket, found the celery-and-peanut-butter sticks wrapped in a plastic bag and handed them to Jake. With a calculating glance at Mike, she took out two round bundles wrapped in foil and handed him one. “I think I should warn you this is a different kind of hamburger.”
Mike unwrapped the foil bundle and stared at the green and brown contents. “It sure looks different. Is it really a hamburger?”
“It’s made from tofu and vegetables. I love animals too much to eat meat,” she added, looking horrified at the thought.
Mike grimaced. “No meat?”
“No.”
Mike hid his trepidation. Of course, a lover and collector of kangaroos and the Lord knew what else would never eat meat. He was afraid to ask if she had any chickens in that zoo of hers.
Since she was feeding Jake, eating a veggie burger without comment seemed to be the least he could do.
“Sure,” he said bravely. “May I pay you?”
Charlie frowned. “I thought this was a favor between friends!”
Mike hid a smile. Friendly. He was making some progress after all, but knowing Charlie, he wasn’t quite sure how much and in which direction—good or bad. “Er…okay. The next favor is on me.”
Ten minutes later, Charlie caught sight of Mike covertly rolling up the remains of the veggie burger in its foil wrapping. She hid a smile. She was willing to bet that after a visit to her zoo where he’d meet her pets, Mike wouldn’t order meat for a while either.
Mike gazed around the grounds. Women were packing the picnic baskets, younger children were on the verge of falling sleep, older children were playing games and the men were still drinking beer. “You haven’t taken any security precautions, have you?”
“No. Why would I?” Charlie asked. Mike was obviously back to looking at everything as though it were a threat. “This is my home and these people are friends.”
“Maybe so,” he replied. “But the fact remains you’ve invited a hundred people to visit you without a security check. To top it off, you have a zoo full of exotic animals that are probably worth good money. In my book, those are damn good reasons for having some kind of security precautions.”
With Mike reverting to the all-business persona who saw danger everywhere, Charlie’s pleasure cooled. “Don’t you ever let yourself relax?”
For a moment he looked surprised. “Not when it counts.”
“Ridiculous. I told you, most of these people are my friends.”
“Heck,” he answered as he searched the area for Jake, “with everyone wearing the same T-shirts, they all look alike. You’ve given anyone who doesn’t belong here a perfect cover.”
He covered his eyes with a hand and squinted into the sun.
“Looking for suspects?” Charlie covered the picnic basket with a small cotton towel and got to her feet.
“No. At the moment, I’m looking for Jake. See the green balloon moving over there? That’s Jake. I tied the balloon to his overalls. Best security idea I ever thought of,” he added with a satisfied grin.
Charlie swallowed a tart remark. Maybe Mike was human, after all.
“When does this tour of yours begin?” Mike asked. “I’d like to get Jake home before he falls asleep on his feet.”
“I was going to do the tour first,” Charlie said after a thoughtful glance around. “But maybe I’ll wait until after we have a few games.”
“That’ll wake everyone up, for sure,” he said dryly. “Are you really the only hostess of this shindig?”
“Mostly.” She took a whistle out of her pocket. “Kids’ games first, then it will be the grown-ups’ chance.”
“To make fools out of ourselves?”
“Don’t knock it, Mr. Wheeler,” she said with a sassy smile. “If you lightened up a little, you might even have some fun like a normal human being.”
Mike gazed after Charlie as she walked to the middle of the grassy area. He couldn’t help admiring her swaying hips, the inviting smile that lit up her face when she glanced back at him over her shoulder and the way her silken hair blew across her shoulders in the afternoon breeze.
Charlie was wrong about him, he thought as he smothered a smile. He was not only human, he was beginning to feel more normal by the minute.
Charlie was a handful, but it was her innate sensuality and the way that damned T-shirt strained against her breasts that made his body warm and his thoughts turn to subjects best left unexplored.
The attraction wasn’t only physical, he admitted wryly. To give the lady credit, there was her intelligence, her wry sense of humor and the unlikely way she managed to march to her own private drummer and still come up smelling like a rose that made him want to get closer to her.
What he didn’t approve of was the side of her personality that put her squarely in the middle of any trouble that came along. And he hated the way she managed to get him mixed up with her in her latest disaster.
Whoever the real Charlie Norris was, she was an intriguing bundle of womanhood that any red-blooded man could appreciate. Except that he had no room in his life right now for anyone but Jake.
Becoming involved with a woman, Charlie Norris in particular, would definitely be a mistake.
A voice came over a loudspeaker. “Attention, everyone! Attention! We’re about to start the mother-and-son relay races. Mothers, get ready!”
Mike watched as the balloon attached to Jake floated back over in Charlie’s direction. He smiled fondly and started to follow his son. It wasn’t strange the kid was attracted to Charlie. She had the kind of warmth and vitality that kids instinctively were drawn to.
He reached Charlie just as Jake slid to a halt in front of her. And was just in time to hear the words that made his head spin and the bottom drop out of his world.
“Miss Charlie, everybody here gots a mommy except me. Would you please be my mommy so I can race, too?”
Chapter Four
Mike’s smile faded. Of all the words his mind and certainly his heart weren’t ready for, it was mommy. Charlie Norris, of all people! The last woman who would fit the bill!
That was going too far and too fast, he thought as he ran his fingers through his hair and tried to put the smile back on his face. Oh, Charlie was attractive enough, he’d give her that. Smart, too. Maybe too smart for her own good. But maternal? Hell, he thought as he gazed at her over Jake’s head, of all the words that he could have used to describe Charlie, maternal wasn’t on the list. She was too flighty to be a responsible parent.
Except maybe when it came to that kangaroo she’d treated like a baby. As far as he was concerned, mothering an animal, no matter how admirable, didn’t count.
“Sorry about that,” he muttered. “I don’t have the slightest notion where that came from.” He put his hands on Jake’s shoulders.
With a quick shake of her head, she put out a hand to stay him. “Don’t worry, Mike. I understand. He’s only a little boy. Kids usually say what they think one minute and forget it the next. Besides,” she added with a grin, “I’ll only be his mother just long enough for the race.”
Charlie tried to hide her reaction to the look of panic that passed over Mike’s eyes. The way his clear blue eyes turned a deep gray spoke louder than anything he could have said. He obviously regarded her as the last woman he would care to have for Jake’s substitute mother.
She decided to let the incident pass. Being asked to play mommy may have given her a twinge or two, but she had the picnic to see to and a life of her own afterwards to enjoy.
She smoothed the little boy’s unruly hair away from his face. “You’re on, Jake, if it’s okay with your father,” she said, gazing at the virile man who often occupied her thoughts. Of all people to be Jake’s father! Why was the man she was attracted to so clearly not the man for her?
“I wanna go with Miss Charlie now,” Jake said stubbornly. He grabbed Charlie’s hand and tried to pull her along with him. “Bye, Daddy.”
Mike knew when he was licked. He let go of Jake’s shoulders. “Come right back when the race is over.” Too late. Jake and his temporary mother were already on their way.
