Knocking at Her Heart (Conover Circle #1) (11 page)

Carol looked at her and frowned.
“Are you especially nervous today, or what?”

“I’m not nervous. Why would I be
nervous?” Maddie asked. She shoved her hands under the white tablecloth when
she felt the irresistible urge to pull at the neckline of her sweater.

“I don’t know. Sit back. Enjoy
the view.”  Carol leaned back in her chair, then jerked forward. “Oh,
baby. What a view that is. And I thought he looked good with paint on his
cheek.”

Maddie leaned and saw
him
.
Sam. Who had looked good in a white lab coat and even better in jeans. But
this. He looked, well, pretty darn spectacular in a black tuxedo with a crisp
white shirt. His shoulders were incredibly broad, his stomach flat, his legs
long and muscular.

Maddie bumped her thigh against
the edge of the elegantly-set table-for-eight, making the sparkling water
glasses rock. She pushed around her forks, feeling dull in her matching sweater
and skirt set that had seemed nice enough when she’d pulled it on but resembled
a parochial school uniform in comparison to her mother’s outfit.

She picked up her water glass and
drained it. She set it down with a thud. “Too much salt on my eggs this
morning,” she explained.

Carol rolled her eyes. “Oh,
please. Why can’t you admit it? He’s gorgeous.”

That was so ridiculous. “I guess
he’s okay.”

“When I was single, his K could
have scratched my O most any day,” Carol said, her voice loud.

“Shush,” Maddie warned. The
couple at the table two down from them had scooted back their chairs to stare.

Carol leaned close and whispered.
“You should really see somebody about that denial thing you’ve got—I think they
can prescribe something.”

Maddie wanted to kick her, but
Sam was headed in her direction and, oh, why did it have to be this way… but he
really just about took her breath away. Was he going to mention the kiss? What
the hell was she going to say?

“Morning, ladies,” he said. He
smiled at Carol and nodded at Maddie.

“You clean up well,” Carol said.

“Thanks.” He nodded his head
toward the bar. “Your mother likes red, huh?”

“Just recently,” Maddie answered.
“How did it go with my father?”

“He’s a fascinating conversationalist.
By the way, he’s here.”

“Here?”  Her voice squeaked,
and she could feel the heat flood upwards.

“Yeah. He stepped outside for
just a minute. Said he had to make a couple calls.”

“He can join us,” Carol said.
“We’ve got an extra seat. They asked Travis to help run the lights.”

Her mother and father at the same
table? Oh, jeez. Out of the corner of her eye, she caught a glimpse of her
mother leaning, actually, practically falling out, over the edge of the
bar.   

“Shall we hide the sharp objects?”
Sam asked, his eyes full of understanding. He leaned over her shoulder to grab
a cracker out of the basket in the center of the table.

Lord, he smelled good. She took
another sniff, just to make sure it was as good as the first. It was. So good
she thought she heard bells.

“Dr. Jordonson.”

Sam jerked his body back,
dropping half his cracker on the white tablecloth. Directly behind him stood
Number 10, the blonde that Carol had pointed out earlier. The woman edged
close, as close as her breasts allowed.

Those things could not be real.

“I’m so glad to see you here,”
she said, her voice all husky. She tossed her hair back and the bells in her
ears tinkled. “I was hoping there wouldn’t be an emergency pulling you away.”

“Where is 911 when you need it?”
Sam said. He turned slightly, motioning with his hand. “Chantel, this is Maddie
Sinclair and Carol Muldoon. Ladies, Chantel Anderson. She works for Phycon
Pharmaceuticals.”

“I brought my money, Dr.
Jordonson,” she said.

Maddie could see the muscles work
in Sam’s throat. For a minute, she thought he almost looked alarmed. Then he
flashed Chantel a smile.

 “It all goes to a good
cause,” he said.

Chantel laughed. Then she winked
at Sam and walked away.

Maddie barely had time to catch
her breath before her mother approached.  “Hello, hello.”  Frances
stared at Sam and then deliberately tapped a manicured finger against her
carefully outlined lips. As if she were considering an investment.  

Maddie grabbed for Carol’s
untouched water, took a gulp, and choked on it. Sam, looking grateful for the
diversion, moved to her side, but before he could do anything, her father, who
had approached from behind, gave her a couple of firm thumps between the
shoulder blades.

He looked at his wife and
frowned.

Her mother sucked in air, making
her breasts practically heave. “Aren’t you supposed to be somewhere? Oh, I
know. Sleeping with a nurse.”

Peter Sinclair’s face turned a
most unflattering shade of purple that clashed horribly with his wife’s hair. He
put both arms on the table and leaned in toward his wife. “You want to have the
conversation here, Frances? Is that what you want?”

Maddie stood up, grabbed the back
of her father’s jacket, and hauled him back so fast that she could practically
hear his vertebrae click together. In the background, like angry bees buzzing,
she heard the announcement that everyone should take their seat and that the
bachelors should come up front. “You need to get going,” she said to Sam.

He chewed on his lip. “Yeah.” He
nodded politely at the table. “Excuse me,” he said.  When he walked past
her chair, he leaned down, and his warm breath tickled her ear. 

“Just remember,” he whispered.
“You can handle the Simmons twins. These two are a piece of cake.”

*

By the time they’d given all the
obligatory speeches, Maddie was hanging on by her last nerve. Her mother and
father hadn’t spoken to each other, apparently only too happy to hunker down
over their respective drinks and offer up an occasional glare for the other.

Her feeble attempts to draw them
into conversation had netted only monosyllabic replies.  Carol had looked
amused at first, but after a couple tries, she’d leaned close and said, “Give
it up, honey. They’re like pigs in shit—happy the way they are.”

The emcee of the event tapped on
his microphone to get the crowd’s attention. “And now, the moment you’ve all
been waiting for. We have twelve very handsome participants this year in our
fourth annual Bid on a Bachelor auction. Ladies, get your wallets and credit
cards ready. One of these great gentlemen can be yours for the night. You don’t
want to disappoint them because I know they don’t have any plans to disappoint
you.”

The crowd responded with the
expected twittering and snickering. Maddie’s stomach started to do somersaults.

“Let’s have one final look at our
bachelors,” the emcee said.

The men, almost all of them
looking uncomfortable, walked across the stage. Sam, his face neutral, had his
shoulders so stiff she thought he might have rammed a board up his tux. He
didn’t look at all like the man with the sunburned nose who’d built a fort in
her backyard.

He hated this.

And that made her like him even
more.

Why couldn’t he be a jerk, eating
up the attention. Why couldn’t he be like Tom Holt, who stood next to Sam, the
one bachelor who looked totally pleased to be on display?

When Tom came up for bid, Frances
Sinclair leaned toward Carol. “I saw that man talking to Sam earlier. Are they
friends?”

“I think so. They’re in the same
group.”

“Oh. He’s a physician, too?”

“Yes.”

Maddie listened to the
conversation with one ear and tried to keep track of the bidding.  Women
that she recognized as nurses from Tom’s office were in front, actively running
up the bid to four hundred dollars in twenty-dollar increments. She realized,
belatedly, that she should have been paying more attention to her mother when
Frances Sinclair suddenly started waving her paddle. “I’ll bid five hundred
dollars,” she said, her voice clear. 

The Emcee beamed. Frances
Sinclair beamed back. Turning her head toward Maddie, she whispered, “I didn’t
see any reason to piss around. Might as well let them know I’m a serious
bidder.”

“That’s five hundred. Do we have
five-fifty? Going once. Going twice.”

Come on. Maddie silently urged
the women at the front. But one by one, they laid their paddles down.

Her father straightened up in his
chair, looking like he wanted to spit nails.

“Sold to the woman in red, Number
Fourteen, for five hundred dollars.”

Her mother looked satisfied, like
she did when she’d just gotten a pair of Chanel shoes on sale.

Maddie wanted to wring her
mother’s neck, but Dante was up next. He looked handsome and sexy, and she
really wished he did it for her since he’d be a great catch. But they’d always
just been friends.

Dante looked across the crowd,
saw her, smiled and made a point of looking at her paddle. She understood. If
no one else bid, she would. That’s what friends were for.

But she needn’t have worried
about her pocketbook because four women went at it fiercely until a gorgeous
redhead, who thankfully wasn’t her mother, won Dante. Maddie thought she
recognized the woman, that she’d seen her at the bar at The Blue Moon. She
didn’t have time to figure it out, however, because Sam was up next.  She
saw Number Ten move to the center aisle.

The bidding started at twenty and
quickly grew. Number Ten wasn’t making it any secret that she intended to win.
She had her arm so high in the air that it looked like somebody up above had a
string tied onto it and was yanking the hell out of it.

Once it got to five hundred, the
increments were in fifty dollars. At a thousand, the auctioneer changed it to a
hundred. At fourteen hundred dollars, the rest of the bidders dropped out. “Do
we have fifteen hundred?” the Emcee asked.

Nobody moved in the
gymnasium. 

“All right. Then that’s fourteen
hundred. Going once. Going twice.”

The Emcee raised his arm. 
“We have a—”

Frances Sinclair stuck up her
paddle. “Seventeen hundred.” The audience buzzed.

The Emcee recovered. “Seventeen hundred,”
he repeated. “Do we have eighteen?”

Number Ten turned around and
stared. Her mother winked at her.

“You have a date,” Maddie said,
under her breath.

Her mother didn’t answer. Carol,
however, leaned over, looking amused. “This is a very bad ménage-à-trois in the
making.”       
            

Maddie thought she might be
having an aneurysm. 

“We have a bid of seventeen
hundred. Going once. Going twice.”

You could have heard a pin drop.

“Sold to Number Twenty-three.”

Twenty-three
? Maddie looked at her mother’s
paddle. “You’re Number Fourteen.”
 

“I know, darling,” her mother
said, patting her hand. Frances Sinclair held up two paddles. “You’re Number
Twenty-three. I bought him for you.”

 “So?” Maddie said.

“Yeah. So.” Sam scratched his
head. He’d already loosened his necktie, like he desperately needed air.

Maddie looked around the now
almost-deserted gymnasium. The bidders and their bachelors had paired off and
left. The casual observers had gone home, too. All that remained were the
cleanup crew, Sam and Maddie, and Maddie’s father, who had had the same scowl
on his face for the last half hour. It had settled and taken root at about the
same time Frances Sinclair had linked her arm with Tom Holt’s and announced to
the world in general, “How wonderful. You’re mine until midnight.”

Maddie had thought about trying
to reassure her father that there was nothing to worry about. She didn’t. In
the first place, she’d seen the box of condoms, and in the second place, she
thought he maybe deserved to worry. He’d started this. Now he was just going to
have to see how Frances Sinclair decided to finish it.

“What time is your flight back to
D.C.?” she asked her father.

“Eight o’clock out of Milwaukee.”
Her father had his head down, staring at his hands.

“You should probably be going,”
she said.

Her father looked up. “Take care
of your mother,” he said.

He sounded really miserable.
“Dad, I…”

“Go on your date,” her father said,
interrupting her. He sounded tired. “That’s what your mother wanted.” He stood
up and pushed his chair hard into the table. 

“We’ll tell Mom you left,” Maddie
said.

He nodded. “Would you tell her
something else for me?” he asked, sounding very earnest.

This had to be the apology her
mother was waiting for. “Absolutely, Dad.”

“Tell her,” he said, starting for
the door, “not to push me too far.”

As far as apologies went, it
seemed to be lacking. She didn’t say anything until he’d disappeared out the door.
Finally, she turned to Sam. “Well, now that you’ve met my family, I guess you
can see why I’m so well adjusted.”

He shrugged. “You get to pick
your friends. You’re stuck with family.”

“At least your sister is normal.”

Sam nodded. “She’s great. She
was…uh…hoping I’d get a really great date.”

“I’m sorry. My mother—”

“Jean will be happy for me,” he
said.

She stood up, so fast that she
sent her folding chair skidding backwards. “Sorry,” she said. “Look, Sam,
before this goes any further, we need to talk about last night.”

“Okay.”

His K could scratch my O any
time.
She
gripped her head with her hands.

“Headache?” he asked.

“No. I…I just want to clear the
air. I’d like to blame it on the alcohol but I knew what I was doing last
night. I should not have kissed you.”

“Okay.”

“Stop saying that.”

He nodded, likely thinking that
his date was going to involve a quick visit to the psych unit. “It was a kiss,
Maddie. Don’t get me wrong. A very nice kiss but in the grand scheme of things,
nothing to worry about.”

“You’re sure. You’re not
uncomfortable around me?”

“Absolutely not.”

She felt so much better. Maybe it
was possible that she and Sam could actually be friends, like her and
Dante.  

“So, we’re good to go?” he asked.

“Yes, definitely.” She walked
toward the door, very aware that Sam trailed her. When they walked outside, the
afternoon sun warmed her face.

“Nice day,” Sam said.

“Yes.” She took four more steps.
“What would you have been doing if you hadn’t had to come to this event?”

Sam shrugged. “Kelsie and Jean
went to my other sister’s farm. Amy and her husband have a place about an hour
west of here. I’d have probably tagged along.”

“If you hurry,” she said, “you
could still get there by dinner.”

“What about our date?”

She stopped. “Oh, for goodness sakes.
I’m not going to hold you to it. Think of it as a really great charitable
donation from my mother. You’re under no obligation to me.”

“Maybe I want to be.”

Oh, baby. Just how many ways
could that obligation be fulfilled? “What do you mean?” she asked, pushing past
her very, very, naughty thoughts.

“I mean I don’t want to look like
I was a pity bid.”

“Sam, you garnered the highest
bid. Nobody in his right mind would think you were a pity bid. If you didn’t
notice, there were women climbing all over themselves to win a night with you.”

“But you won it.”

“My mother won it.”

“Doesn’t matter. It’s five
o’clock. That means I’m yours for the next seven hours.”

How nice if it were true. Nice
and crazy. “Go to your sister’s farm, Sam. No one will ever know. If they ask
me, I’ll tell them we went to dinner, saw a movie, and had a great time. Your
reputation will remain intact.”

He shook his head. “No way.
There’ll be some kind of slip up. You’ll say we saw an action movie and I’ll be
telling people it was a romance. Then it will be even worse. I’ll not only be
non-date-worthy but also desperate enough to lie about it.”

He looked so serious. 

“Come with me to the farm,” he
said.

“What?”

“Come with me. That will be our
date.”

“I couldn’t,” Maddie protested.

“Why not?” Sam asked.

“For one thing, your sister
didn’t invite me.”

“She doesn’t know about you. If
she did, she’d be more than happy to extend an invitation. She’s every bit as
normal as Jean. Trust me.”

“I’m sure she is. But it would be
an inconvenience to have another person.”

“Amy and John have a huge
farmhouse,” Sam said.

“Oh. Well, what about food?”

“She always cooks for an army. I
come home with a trunk full of leftovers.”

Now what? There had to be
something he couldn’t control. “I’m still hung-over from last night.”

“I imagine you are.”  He
smiled at her.  “You can sleep in the car.  I promise.”

“This is crazy,” she said.

He shook his head.  “You
mean, C.R.A.Z.Y? No, it’s not. Come on. Where’s your sense of adventure?”

Trampled down by some taupe shoes
with sensible one-inch heels. “Are you sure?”

“Positive. I’ll call Amy from the
car and let her know we’re coming. Here’s the deal, though. I usually spend the
night. Would that be a huge problem for you?”

“You want me to spend the night?”
she asked.

“That would make it a really
great date.”

It took her six thuds of her
heart to realize that he was kidding. It took her another three before she
trusted herself to speak. “I’m not sure that’s what my mother thought she was
buying.”

He laughed. “Oh, fine. You can
sleep in the barn.”  He reached for her hand, like it was the most natural
thing in the world.

"Tell me about your sister,
Amy,” Maddie said, trying desperately not to read too much into five fingers
and a warm palm.

“She’s great. Really smart. Has a
master’s degree in Art History. She used to work for the Art Institute of
Chicago.”

They’d reached Sam’s car. He
opened the passenger side door for her. When she sat down, her knit skirt slid
up. She yanked it down and then looked up.

Sam wasn’t even looking.

She relaxed for the first time
since the event had started. She and Sam could be friends. “So how’d your
sister end up on a farm, anyway?” she asked once he got settled in the driver’s
seat.

“Well,” he said, starting the car
and pulling out of the lot, “it’s kind of a funny story.” 

“I could use a good laugh,” she
said.

“John had taken his parents to
the museum. Amy was the tour guide. Some jerk was there, giving Amy a rough
time. John had enough and when they went between rooms, John pulled the guy
aside and had a little heart to heart with him. The guy shut up and didn’t say
another word the rest of the tour. It turned out to be an old boyfriend of
Amy’s.”

“That is a great story,” Maddie
said.

“It gets better. John and Amy got
married six weeks later. Amy’s been on the farm since.”

“She gave up her career?”

“I don’t think she looks at it
that way. She changed careers. She’s a dairy farmer now.  She probably
knows the finances better than John does. The only drawback to the farm is that
it can be lonely sometimes. And because John swept her off her feet, she’s
turned into an incurable romantic. If she starts talking about wedding cakes
and bridal gowns, just ignore her.”

“Oh." Hot kisses were
one thing to push aside. Assuming sisters were another.   

“Ever spent much time on a farm?”
Sam asked.

Not really. She hadn’t ever been
on a farm until coming to live in Conover. Prior to that, her agricultural
experience had been limited to looking for four-leaf clovers in the grassy area
near the Washington Monument. Now she couldn’t stop at the grocery store, buy a
newspaper at the gas station, or get a cone at the local Dairy Dream without
being included in a conversation about the weather, the price of corn, or about
how the weather was going to affect the price of corn. “For the last couple of
years, I’ve taken the kids on a field trip to one of the local farms. There’s
one place that’s really great. They have cows and chickens and about twenty
goats. The kids get to feed the animals and there are some horses that they get
to groom.”

“I’d have loved doing something
like that,” he said.

 “So, how much time have you
spent at the farm?”

“Not as much as I would like to,”
he said. “Kelsie and I drove out a couple of months ago, just for the day. It couldn’t
have been above zero and the wind whipped across the fields. We spent the whole
time inside. Kelsie and Amy baked cookies, and John and I ate them.”

“What about the chores. Do the
cows feed themselves?”

“Just about. My brother-in-law is
really a bright guy and has automated much of the process. However, there's
just no way around it, you've got to milk those cows both morning and night.”

“That is such a commitment. I
couldn't imagine going outside in that kind of weather to milk cows.”

“We all have commitments of one
kind or another.”

Maddie nodded. She hadn’t really
ever considered that farming and raising livestock edged out medicine in terms
of a time commitment. At least most doctors took a couple weeks of vacation a
year. That would be hard for a dairy farmer to do.

“You seem to spend a lot of time
with Kelsie.” 

“As much as I can. My sisters and
Kelsie are the reason I came back to Wisconsin.  My mom is in Chicago, so she’s
pretty close, too. It’s hard to start over at a new hospital, but being close
to all of them more than makes up for any of that.”

“I suppose it’s tough with your
schedule.”

“Sure. My days are long. I do
rounds first and then I generally do scheduled surgeries a couple days of the
week and consultations on the other days. But I try to get out for a couple
hours late in the afternoons so that I can get Kelsie picked up. Jean really
appreciates that.”

“When Jean enrolled Kelsie, she
indicated there was no father in the picture.”

“They were married less than a
year. When he found out that Jean has MS, he took off.”

“That must have been so hurtful
to your sister. I didn’t know that she had MS. She wouldn’t have had any reason
to mention it.”

“Even when she has a reason, it
is tough for her to talk about. I think she’s afraid.”

“Afraid of what?”

“That others might run away too.
More importantly, that people will assume that she’s somehow not able to be a
good parent to Kelsie.”

“That is so ridiculous. All anyone
has to do is spend a couple of hours with Kelsie, and you know immediately that
she’s a well-adjusted kid.”

Sam turned his head and smiled at
her. “She’s four going on eighteen. The kid knows how to take charge. I do some
volunteer work with kids. You know, coaching basketball and things like that.
She’s my assistant. Makes it to every game.” 

He pulled into her driveway. She
sat for a minute. He coached kids. “Where do you find the time to do that?” she
asked.

“You find the time to do the
things that are important to you.” He put the car in reverse. “I’m going home
to throw on some jeans. If I’m back here in twenty minutes, will that give you
enough time?”

No. It would take much longer to
forget about sexy Sam Jordonson and his kisses. Sam, who built forts out of
boxes and had left sunny California to help out his sick sister. Sam, who let a
four-year-old think she was really helping him coach. “Sure. I just need to
leave a note for my mother.”