Something About Joe (7 page)

“Aren’t some of them fathers?”

“Of course. But it’s different for them.
Every one of the guys in my team has a stay-at-home wife to look
after the kids.”

“So why do you stay in this job?”

“
When I
started out, I loved it. It was such a buzz to make the figures
work, to set up deals worth millions of dollars. Every day was fun,
exciting. It didn’t matter that I was a woman because I wasn’t at
the same level of management—and I didn’t have Mitchell. I still
love the work, but it’s different now.”

Corporate
environments at the executive level were not kind to women who
wanted to spend time with their children. She thought about the
current deal and how, if she made it happen, she might have more
choice about how she lived her life.

She’d talked enough about her. “What about
you? Why did you leave your job? Teaching, I mean? You’ve obviously
got a gift for dealing with children.”

Joe was silent. All she could hear was the
sound of Mitchell’s stroller wheeling rapidly along the sidewalk.
One wheel had squeaked from the get-go, but she’d never gotten
around to oiling it. Mitchell had gone to sleep almost as soon as
they’d started walking.

“
Yeah. I
guess I do,” said Joe. “I love kids and I think I understand them.
But I didn’t like the way the state education system was going.
Bureaucracies and I don’t mix.”

Somehow that didn’t surprise her. Joe didn’t
seem the kind of guy who’d easily kow-tow to an authority he didn’t
respect.

Not like
her. She’d had her path in life dictated for her by her father.
Work hard at school, harder at college, get a good job as soon as
you can and stick with it. Her own need for security had seen her
follow that path without veering. With men, too, she’d only dated
the safe and predictable. Marrying Peter and moving to Australia
had been an aberration. And look where that had gotten
her.

“Couldn’t you have found a school that
suited you? A private school maybe?”

“Heck no.” Joe grinned at her. He was
impossibly handsome. Those amazing navy blue eyes, those marvelous
teeth, so white against his tan. No wonder every woman who had
walked past them since they left the park had covertly checked him
out. “I won’t knuckle under to any boss ever again. I just want to
play music.”

“Play music?” Somehow, she knew he didn’t
mean in a symphony orchestra.

“Sure. All I want to do is play in my band.
My band is going to get me where I want to go. And that’s why I
nanny. It doesn’t tie me down.”

“Great,” she said. “That’s great for
you.”

She tried to feign enthusiasm. Chasing a
dream of being a rock star was hardly her definition of an ideal
career. The musicians she’d known at college had scarcely earned
more than what had been thrown into their busking hats. What a
waste of Joe’s education and abilities.

He laughed. “You like to see guys all
trussed up in suits and ties and counting beans at a bank.”

“
N
ot true,” she
protested.

“I hate suits,” he said, pulling at the neck
of his T-shirt as if being strangled by an imaginary necktie.
“You’ll never catch me in one again.”

She laughed. “I guess not.” She was the one
wearing the suit—and all that went with it. Her smile died.

He was way too perceptive. “You’re thinking
of what’s happening back there, aren’t you?” he said.

She nodded, feeling nauseous at the thought
of the visiting bankers she’d left sitting in the restaurant. “I
don’t know how I can face them.”

Joe stopped
the stroller, put on the brake, and turned so she was forced to
stop and look up at him.

“I meant what I said before. Don’t take any
crap. You’re a parent. Who would think less of you for going to
your child when you thought he was in danger?”

“But they—”

“
Just march
in there and take over your meeting again. Don’t apologize, don’t
explain. Just say the danger is over, your child is okay, and take
up from where you left.”

He was right. Of course he was right. That’s
exactly what she would do, quaking inside as she did it.

She’d had a
nightmare of a day—imagining Mitchell in danger, finding out Peter
had lied about her to his parents, maybe blowing the deal at the
bank—yet she felt amazingly calm. She was sure it had something to
do with Joe and his attitude.

As unsettling as being around him could be,
he also made her feel like her personal life wasn’t the constant
crisis she sometimes felt it was.

At work she could be as calm and
professional and tough as any of them, but outside work she
sometimes felt like the wheels had fallen off. In just a couple of
days, Joe had made her see it didn’t need to be like that. It was
an attitude thing.

“Thank you,” she said.

Their gazes
held for a heartbeat too long. He was beautiful. It wasn’t a word
she would usually choose to describe a man. But Joe was beyond
handsome
, in an entirely masculine way.
She ached to trace with her fingers the laugh lines around his
eyes, the crooked bridge of his nose, the firm strength of his
mouth. Especially the firm, sensual strength of his generous mouth.
Then follow her fingers with her lips, her tongue.

This was crazy. Her heartbeat accelerated
with a leap. Her lips parted in a gasp. She moistened them with the
tip of her tongue. She should walk away.

A pulse
throbbed in Joe’s temple, clearly visible. His eyes deepened,
shadowed, became unreadable as he searched her face. She swayed
toward him, scarcely aware she was doing so. He took both her hands
in his and pulled her close.

His breath
fanned warm on her skin. Now was the time to shake off his hands,
pull back.
But she edged closer. Then his
mouth met hers in a kiss—a kiss as delicious as it was unexpected.
Warmth spread through her body as his lips moved on hers. A little
moan of delight escaped from her throat.
Bliss.

Then
th
e kiss was over. Joe pulled away,
abruptly ended the contact. He held her gaze for a long, stunned
moment and she thought he was going to say something. But, without
a word, he turned, released the brake, and wheeled the stroller
forward again, its squeaking wheel the only sound.

Allison
stood on the sidewalk watching him walk away,
her heart pounding a million miles an hour, her knees so
shaky she could scarcely stand. “Joe!” She managed to force out his
name.

But he didn’t turn around. “We’d better get
a move on or you’ll be late back to work,” he said, the only sign
anything out of the ordinary had happened was an even deeper tone
to his husky voice.

Disjointed thoughts spun in Allison’s head
wiping out the bank, her parents-in-law, Peter.

For that
crazy, inexplicable moment she’d wanted to kiss Joe Martin back
with hungry passion. Wanted it badly. Wanted it so badly she nearly
forgot she was a city banker five years older than him—and that he
was her child’s nanny.

CHAPTER FOUR

All
next day, Allison couldn’t
stop thinking about the kiss. Blissful memories of Joe’s mouth on
hers, her hands in his, flitted in and out of her mind, even when
she was nailing down the final numbers of a deal worth multiple
millions. He had wanted her as much as she’d wanted him. She was
sure of that. But he’d ended the kiss so abruptly, said nothing
about it afterward, and she could hardly call him on it. There’d
been no opportunity since to explore what had happened. Or to
repeat it.

Now she
found herself anxiously fixing her makeup in the mirror of her car
before she locked it and headed into the house. All she was doing,
she convinced herself, was repairing the ravages of a frantic day
at the office. An even more frantic day than usual, with the deal
finally struck with the Hong Kong bankers. She paused, the lipstick
halfway to her mouth. Who was she kidding? Mitchell was hardly
likely to notice the state of Mommy’s makeup.

But was Joe?

She hesitated for a long moment, then
carefully slicked on her lipstick. She smoothed back her hair.
Considered it, then decided another spray of perfume would be going
over the top.

An
involuntary little shiver of excitement ran down her spine as she
remembered a piece of advice she’d read in a magazine—apply your
perfume wherever you expected to be kissed.

She shook her head to clear her thoughts.
She had kissing on the brain. And she’d better forget it if she was
going to act in a coherent, sensible manner when she saw Joe.

She could
hear music playing in the house as she climbed the three steps to
her front veranda, and she found herself jangling her keys in time
to it. She wasn’t familiar with this particular kid’s song. It was
a catchy one. Joe must have chosen it from among the CDs she’d
recently bought Mitchell and hadn’t had time to play.

She liked
it. It reflected her happy mood. Happy in anticipation of seeing
Mitchell. Happy in anticipation of seeing Joe again. Happy in
anticipation of the possibility of kissing Joe again. And exultant
that the deal with the visiting bankers had gone through. Maybe,
just maybe, things were beginning to go her way.

When she
pushed open the door she saw Joe wasn’t playing a CD. He was
singing and playing guitar, his black-booted foot banging out the
rhythm on her carpet. Neither he nor Mitchell had heard
her.

Mitchell was dancing; an adorable, unsteady
toddler’s dance, dissolving into delightful peals of laughter as he
acted out the motions Joe was directing in the rocking, rhythmic
song about a dancing teddy bear.

Her son
looked so cute as he wobbled and wavered on his chubby little legs,
her heart nearly burst with love.

Her heart
had an altogether different reaction to Joe. His dark head leaned
intently over his guitar as his long, tanned fingers coaxed magic
from its strings. Some of his hair had worked away from the leather
string that held it back and it curled wildly around his
face.

The men in her life had had conservative
short back and sides—to go with their suits. How could she possibly
find long hair attractive on a man?

But she did. Oh yes, she did.

There wasn’t anything about Joe she didn’t
find attractive. Even the earring was growing on her.

His voice was the ultimate turn on. That
husky, gravelly voice sounded even better singing than it did
speaking. Her heart started an insane pounding and she felt her
knees go weak and her mouth go dry.

He sang
well. Really well. And he sure knew how to play that guitar. His
music was surprisingly, amazingly good. It vibrated through her
body and made her want to tap her feet and sway her hips, the beat
throbbing through her body, pulsing, arousing.

Joe was truly talented, an accomplished
musician. For the second time in as many days, she felt ashamed of
the way she’d misjudged him.

She’d disparaged his ambitions to play
music, just because he’d chosen not to tread the same ulcer-ridden
path to success as other men she knew. As, indeed, she trod
herself.

He’d had the
courage to strike out on his own path. And, with talent like this,
he might very well succeed.

She pushed
away unwelcome thoughts of how that sexy, husky voice would sound
crooning a love song...or murmuring erotic suggestions in her
ear.

Or how he would look on stage, dressed in
tight black leather, belting out hard, driving rock and roll to a
one-woman audience—herself, reclining on the front row, dressed in
something slinky and revealing, waiting for him to step from the
stage and come to her.

She shook
her head to clear her thoughts. This was crazy. Her imagination was
really running away with her.

Mitchell
spotted her. “Momma!” he squealed and toddled toward her, throwing
his little arms around her legs. She dropped her briefcase and
reached down to sweep him into her arms.

“
Dance,
Momma, dance,” Mitchell ordered excitedly, struggling to get back
down.

Joe looked up from his guitar, shaking the
stray piece of hair back as he did so. “You’re home,” he said as he
continued to strum his guitar.

That was all.

There was nothing in his eyes but friendly
courtesy. Nothing hot. Nothing passionate. Nothing to make her
believe he wanted to kiss her again.

Nothing.

Allison
fought back the disappointment that threatened to drown her happy
mood. She wouldn’t let it. She took a deep breath and she met his
cool gaze. “Looks like you have everything under
control.”

She had never let her father know just how
much his indifference had wounded her. As a confused ten-year-old,
she had wondered what it was about her that had earned her father’s
dislike. Then acted as if she wasn’t hurting inside. She’d do the
same now.

Mitchell
tugged so hard on her legs she nearly toppled over.

“He’s a determined little guy,” Joe said,
still strumming his guitar.

“Yes, he is,” said Allison. She felt
nauseous at the way she’d primped and preened herself just minutes
ago in the car.

“Come on,” Joe said. “Why not join in?”

She was
Mitchell’s mommy; Joe was Mitchell’s nanny. That was the extent of
their relationship. “I will,” she said. She kicked off her shoes
and started to dance with Mitchell. The tune was so infectious
that, after a few repetitions, she was singing along and miming the
actions. She spun and twirled and gyrated, losing herself in the
rhythm, laughing out loud with exhilaration.