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There. That ought to be guaranteed to turn him off. She was just a waitress. Not one of those high-falutin’, jet-settin’ fashion models he was surely used to.
She was also the assistant manager and studying for her real estate license, but he didn’t need to know all that. After all, she wasn’t trying to impress him. She was trying to get rid of him.
“Take a day off,” he said bluntly.
“I can’t do that. People are counting on me.”
“And I’m counting on you, too.”
“Yes, but you don’t pay the bills.”
“I could do that,” he said, as though it was a new idea and he rather liked it. “That’s it. I’ll pay you a salary. I’ll hire you.”
“Nonsense.” Her voice was quivering a bit and she bit down on her lip. No! She was not going to give in to that sort of crazy temptation.
“But it would be perfect.”
“For you, not for me.”
“No?”
“No.”
“Consider it, at least.”
“No.” She was firm. And darn proud of herself, too. “You’ll be fine with this nanny person.”
He hesitated, then said skeptically, “I hope you’re right.”
There was another long pause.
“Everything is all right, then?” she prodded. “I mean, everything else?”
“Oh, yes. Going great. I had the baby checked out by a pediatrician first thing, and we’ve put in a request for a DNA test. I’ve arranged for the delivery of the relevant charts from Italy. It will all take time, but everything is moving along.”
“Good.”
Why was he still hanging on? She was torn, wanting him gone, yet enjoying this more than she ought to. “Well, have you gotten in touch with your date from last night yet?” she asked, suddenly remembering there was still that issue to be dealt with.
There was yet another hesitation, then he answered, “Not yet. How about you?”
She sighed. Apologizing to Randy wasn’t something she was looking forward to. “No, not yet. But it’s early. I wouldn’t want to wake him up.”
Something in the pause this time was electric, and finally he said softly, “Did I wake you?”
Warmth flooded her body. How did he manage to make one simple question imply a wealth of intimate contact? Something in his tone, the low, husky quality of his voice, conjured up a picture of the way he might awaken her, his hand sliding down beneath the sheets, his lips leaving a trail of hot kisses. She suppressed a gasp.
This was ridiculous. She wasn’t a schoolgirl. She was a grown woman. She’d been married, for heaven’s sake! She knew what it was like to have a man in her bed.
But not this man. Oh, my!
She wasn’t going to answer his provocative question. She had to think of something else, quick. Something to break the mood and put an end to this.
“I’ve been up for hours,” she lied shamelessly. “I’ve got a life, you know. Things to do. Places to go.”
“And you’d like to get back to it,” he said softly, taking the hint. He sighed. “All right, Cari. I’ll let you go.”
Her fingers were so tight on the receiver, they were beginning to ache. “Thanks.”
“So that’s it, then.”
She blinked, suddenly feeling almost weepy. “It seems to be.”
“It was nice knowing you, Cari.”
“Yes. Same here.” Now her eyes were definitely stinging. Ridiculous! “Goodbye.”
“Ciao.”
She hung up, said a word she hardly ever said, and threw a stuffed animal against the wall.
Cari was just finishing up a bowl of morning cereal when Mara called.
“So,” said Mara brightly. “How was it?”
“How was what?” Cari answered, her mind still stuck on mulling over her conversation with Max.
“The date with Randy.”
“Oh. Uh …” She grimaced, putting her spoon into the bowl and pushing it away across the counter. “Well, actually, we didn’t have it.”
“What do you mean you didn’t have it? Don’t tell me you chickened out?”
Mara’s voice was sharp with what was fast working into a sense of outrage. Cari tried to nip that in the bud.
“No, Mara, I did not chicken out. I was there with bells on. And I waited for quite some time. But then …” She sighed. This really wasn’t all that easy to explain. “Well, I kind of went off with the wrong man.”
“What?” There was still an edge to Mara’s voice. “How did you do that, exactly?”
“Believe me, it was not that hard. Not when he came up carrying a red rose, just like you told me to do for Randy, and he seemed to call me by my name and … and …” She sighed. “It’s kind of hard to explain. Listen, I’ve got the lunch shift. I’ll swing by on my way to work. We’ll talk.”
“I guess. Okay.”
Mara sounded grumpy. Cari knew she was disappointed. She thought she’d planned the perfect date for a good friend and it had all gone wrong. Who wouldn’t be disappointed? And Mara had been so excited. She groaned internally. But she would take care of things when she stopped by her friend’s house. Face-to-face it might actually be possible to give her a better picture of exactly what had happened.
“In the meantime, uh, do you have Randy’s number?”
She was tempted to put it off for a while, but she steeled herself and called the man. Once she had him on the phone and explained who she was, he reacted well. Instead of demanding an explanation, he was apologetic that he’d been a little late.
Which only made her feel more guilty. It was hard to explain why she’d dumped him for some suave Italian guy. There was no good excuse for it, actually. One look into Max’s deep dark eyes had mesmerized her and she’d been ready to follow him anywhere. But how could she tell Randy that?
“Well, it was certainly an interesting evening,” he said. “I haven’t had many like that.”
He sounded just as likable as Mara had said. She was impressed that he didn’t seem at all disgruntled. She had a quick flashback to how her husband, Brian, would have reacted to what had happened, and the memory of his volatile temper made her cringe.
“Did you wait for long?”
“Only for an hour or so.” He chuckled. “Actually, I met the woman who was supposed to be dating the man you ran off with.”
“Ran off with” seemed a bit harsh, but she let it go. After all, the man deserved a little dig here and there, didn’t he? He’d paid his dues.
“Oh. C.J.?”
“Celinia Jade. Do you know her?”
“No, I don’t, but Max told me something about her.”
“Well, she’s somethin’ else.”
His voice conveyed a sense of awe. Cari tensed a bit.
“Is she?”
“Oh, yeah. She’s dynamite.”
For some reason, that didn’t make her smile. She chewed on her lip and wondered if Max was going to be as impressed with the woman once they got together. But what did that matter, anyway? Grimacing, she avoided the impulse to slap herself.
“We were both wandering around with red roses,” Randy went on. “So we started talking. It didn’t take us long to figure out what must have happened. So we hung out for a while, sort of commiserated, so to speak.” He chuckled again. “She had some funny stories to tell. That passed the time for a while. But when y’all didn’t come back, we called it a night and headed home.”
She nodded. It sounded like he’d enjoyed the evening with C.J. as much as he might have with her. Maybe more. She frowned at the trend in her own thoughts.
“So it wasn’t a total waste,” she said quickly.
“Oh, no, not at all.”
“Well, would you like to try it again tonight?” she said, knowing she pretty much had to suggest it. “I sort of promised Mara I would.”
“I guess we both promised Mara, didn’t we?”
“She can be persuasive.”
“Oh, yes.” He chuckled again. He seemed a happy sort. “Let’s do it,” he agreed. “Only this time, why don’t I pick you up at your place? I’m not sure that red rose thing works very well.”
She hesitated. The rationale for meeting at the club had been to avoid letting a strange man know where she lived. She was wary these days. She didn’t want to risk any man getting the upper hand in a relationship. But he seemed so genuinely nice, she decided it wouldn’t hurt to give him her address.
Maybe all would go great. Maybe she and Randy would get along so well, the crazy night with Max would be forgotten, a relic of history, a strange interlude in what she was hoping to turn into a sensible, placid life. Maybe.
Max was restless. He’d spent the afternoon hovering over the nanny, second-guessing everything she did. She’d snapped at him once, and he’d almost fired her. But he’d quickly realized that he had no replacement lined up. If she left, he would be on his own. And what he knew about taking care of babies could be blurted out in one quick epithet.
Tito was no help. Every time the baby cried, he stuffed cotton in his ears and went out on the hotel room balcony, plunked himself down into a plastic chair and tried to sleep. But Max couldn’t sleep. His existence was caught up in this baby for now, and that was all he could think about.
That, and Cari Christensen. She was the one person he knew who could help solve a lot of his problems. But he had to forget about her.
He’d come to Dallas with two clear goals in mind. First, he’d wanted to find Sheila and discover if the baby she claimed she had was really Gino’s. That was pretty much in the works. He had no idea where Sheila was, but when you came right down to it, that didn’t matter. He had the baby. And he would soon know the truth about the baby’s parentage.
He’d never been a baby person, never been around the little things. And he hadn’t expected to feel much of anything for this one. Babies were nothing but potential people—little blobs of flesh and noise. Puppies had more personality.
But the funny thing was, he’d felt something of an instant connection when he’d seen baby Jamie. One look at that little face had torn a hole in his heart. He was as sure of this as anything—this baby was his brother’s.
When word had come that Gino had died in the crash of the plane he was testing out, Max had felt his world tilt on its axis. His big brother had been his guiding star all his life. For a long time, he’d thought he might never feel joy again.
But he’d had to suppress any overt mourning, because his mother’s despair had been so deep and so complete it had taken all his effort to pull her out of what he was afraid could have developed into a suicidal impulse at any moment. And now, to think he might be able to bring her Gino’s baby—the thought took his breath away. He couldn’t allow himself to get too invested in this until the tests proved the connection. But he was pretty sure what the results would be.
His other goal had been to find a way to wrest the Triple M Ranch from the daughter of his mother’s old rival. That wasn’t going so well. But he hadn’t really concentrated on it as yet, so there was plenty of time to figure out ways to succeed there, too. He’d contacted Celinia Jade, or C.J. as he preferred to call her—and she didn’t seem to mind—who came across as something of an airhead at first. But in no time at all, he’d noticed a sharp turn of mind that sent up warning flags. The woman might talk like she had nothing in her mind but fluff, but underneath there was a steely sense of purpose. She knew what she wanted, and she wasn’t going to be easy to snow. He might have more trouble there than he’d anticipated.
They had made plans to try to meet again tonight, same time, same place. This time he was going to make damn sure he had the right woman. No more screwups. He was going to be pure Mediterranean charm and solicitude. The woman wouldn’t know what hit her.
He knew what he was doing. His life for the past ten years had been immersed in real estate—big real estate, big deals. This was nothing. It should be a piece of cake. C.J. was in financial trouble and he planned to make a very nice offer for the ranch. He was prepared to be fair, generous, even. He wasn’t out to cheat anyone. His mother seemed to think emotional ties would make it hard for her to sell, but he had his doubts. When faced with the facts, he was pretty sure he would be able to make her see the light.
If he could return to Italy with the deed to the ranch in one hand and Gino’s baby in the other, some of the heartbreak that shadowed his mother’s eyes might fade a bit. That was his hope.
The baby was crying again. He paced the floor for a few minutes, then gave in to the urge to go into the nursery they had rigged up in the smallest bedroom of this lavish hotel suite and see what was going on. Mrs. Turner, the nanny, was sitting in the rocking chair, reading a mystery novel. Meanwhile, Jamie was turning bright red as he cried his little heart out.
“The baby’s crying,” he pointed out sharply.
Mrs. Turner looked up and nodded, glaring at him. “It’s good for him to cry. It develops his lungs.”
He was nothing if not skeptical, but he hesitated. “Really?”
“Absolutely.” She gave him the supercilious smirk he was growing to hate. “Why else would they have that ability?”
He gritted his teeth. “I thought it was so they could let people know they needed help.”
She smiled as though he were a poor fool who knew nothing about children. “That’s only part of it. You can’t baby them, you know. You mustn’t spoil them, even at the infant stage. It’s best to encourage them to grow and stretch themselves. You wouldn’t want the poor dear to fall behind in development, now would you?”
He wanted to argue, but he had no ammunition. What did he know about this, anyway?
“I suppose you know best,” he grumbled, turning away. But the picture of Jamie’s little tragic face, all twisted with grief, staying in his mind.
Back out in the living room, he went to the folder where he was keeping his papers and pulled out the certificate that was meant to guarantee the expertise of the nanny. Maybe he should give the school that issued it a call. He frowned. Or maybe he should just call Cari and see what she thought.
His hand was already on the telephone receiver when he stopped himself. No, he couldn’t do that. He had to break all ties with the woman. That was the only way he would ever get her out of his head. He couldn’t let himself think about Cari and her sweet, pretty face. He’d set his sights on charming C.J. and that was where they had to stay. Swearing, he reached for the cotton to put in his ear and started out to join Tito on the balcony.
The Copper Penny where Cari worked was just off the interstate. A mix of locals and tourists patronized the trim little café. She liked the early afternoon when the hectic lunch crowd had dwindled down to a few housewives lingering over coffee and the assorted cowboys who came in from riding fences at some of the nearby ranches. The easy camaraderie was what she liked best about her job. It was pretty much the same group of cowhands that came in every day. One by one, most had tried to hit on her, but in a relaxed, friendly way that never got serious. She could swat their propositions aside like a mama dog controlling her puppies. Few took offense, and those that did were easily joked out of it.
Today Cari wasn’t doing any joking. Her mind was on other things and she poured coffee and took orders with a distracted air. The men she served were a blur to her. Her thoughts were full of Max.
“I’ve just got to think about him as much as I can now, so I can be done with him and get him out of my head,” she told herself impatiently. It was a plan, but she wasn’t at all sure it was a plan that was going to work.
