Starstruck (19 page)

“I
am
just really writing a screenplay,” Joe said firmly, mopping up the coffee and then reaching for Jennifer who stood by his chair, lifting her onto his lap. She cuddled against his chest, her fair hair nestled beneath his chin, smelling of Liv’s shampoo. His hand came up to stroke her hair absently and he wished Liv were here.

“Ummmm,” Ellie said, her gaze flickering over the kids to the typewriter and its accompanying sea of paper. “So I see,” she said. “But that’s not all, is it?” she probed, her eyes darting back to the children.

“They’re friends,” Joe said flatly.

“Obviously good ones.”

“So why else are you here?” he demanded, wanting her back on a subject of his choosing.

Ellie shrugged. “Curiosity,” she admitted. “Mike said to leave you alone, but when I didn’t hear anything for ages and ages after you left, I began to wonder again what the real attraction to Madison was.” She grinned. “I must admit, I’m more curious than ever, now that I’m here.”

Joe scowled, but she went on blithely.

“The third reason is that I need a place to hole up for a while, so I can work on the plot of my next play. You know I can never do the plotting well at home with Mike and Julie around and all my interruptions and—”

“No,” Joe said. He knew exactly where this conversation was headed now.

“But this place is simply perfect,” Ellie decreed looking around proprietarily.

“No.”

“But you’re not even going to be here!”

“What?” That was news.

“That’s the fourth reason I’m here. You’ve got an invitation to speak on world peace at the symposium at the UNO in Vienna a week from Saturday!”

“Huh?” Surely he hadn’t heard her right. Vienna? As in Austria?

“I’m serious. Tim Gates called me when he knew I was coming here. He said you have received an invitation to speak to the general assembly of delegates from all the nations attending the conference.”

Joe stared, unable to believe what he was hearing.

“That’s a coup, little brother,” Ellie said proudly, smiling at him. “You can’t turn that down.”

He couldn’t, and he knew it. It was exactly the sort of high visibility speech he had been angling for, the sort of thing that would lend credence to all his talks around the country and that might even have some effect internationally. It meant that people were really taking him seriously. But what about Liv, he wondered. He couldn’t leave her. Not now. There would be no getting his foot back in her door if he left her now. “I’ll think about it,” he told Ellie.

“What’s to think?” Ellie was looking at him as though he’d gone right around the bend. “If ever there was a footloose lad, it’s you, my boy. You can pick up and go at a moment’s notice. At least that’s what you’ve always told me, at any rate.”

“Yeah, but…
”

“But?” Ellie’s eyebrows arched speculatively.

But there was no need even to articulate it because at that moment the door opened and Liv came in. She slung her tote bag onto the bench just inside the patio door. “I’m home,” she announced.

“I see,” Ellie said, her words overflowing with meaning.

“No, you don’t see!” Joe snapped, leaping to his feet, depositing an open-mouthed Jennifer on the floor. He moved quickly to Liv’s side and slipped an arm protectively around her, feeling her stiffen as he did so. His arm tightened. “This is my sister, Ellie McPherson,” he
told her. “Ellie, this is Olivia James. You’ve met her kids.”

“All of them?” Ellie asked, her gaze swiveling over the four assembled in front of her.

“No,” Liv said easily, relaxing a bit against him. “There’re really five. The oldest is at camp.”

Ellie looked as if she’d been hit by a beer bottle. “Five?” She turned to Joe. “And where do you fit in? Is this the secret family you’ve been keeping from dad all these years, just to spite him?”

He grinned, a part of him wishing, momentarily at least, that it was true. “No, actually I’m just the lowly baby-sitter. Chicken pox tends to limit the options of the working mother.”

“Well, I’m glad you’re making yourself useful,” Ellie laughed, but she was looking at him with a strange light in her eyes, and Joe found himself avoiding her gaze. “Where do you work, then?” she asked Liv, who was looking suddenly very self-conscious and trying to move away from Joe.

“For the
Madison Times
,
”
she said. “That’s how I met Joe, actually. I interviewed him.”

“Joe doesn’t give interviews.”

Liv grinned suddenly, and Joe saw her glance up at him, a mischievous glint in her eyes that he hadn’t seen recently. “I didn’t think so, either,” she agreed, digging her elbow into his ribs. “But for some reason he wanted to give me one.”

“I wonder why,” Ellie said dryly.

“So did I,” Liv said demurely. “Especially after he met the kids.”

“Hey,” Joe jerked his head up, suddenly aware that, if he allowed it, these two were capable of ganging up on him. The way they were grinning at each other made him decidedly edgy. “I’m just a nice guy, that’s all. A soft touch.”

“I’m glad to hear it,” Ellie said, picking up her suitcase from the floor. “In that case you won’t mind showing me to my room.”

Joe’s eyes narrowed and he opened his mouth to protest again, then reconsidered. Maybe having Ellie there wouldn’t be a bad idea. She could certainly help defuse a potentially combustible situation between Liv and himself. After last night he had doubts about his control lasting where she was concerned; at the same time he was more convinced than ever that, until they had a better idea of what they wanted from a relationship, her treaty was a good idea. “The couch is all yours, my dear,” he drawled, gesturing at the one she had tossed her sweater on in the living room when she passed.

“What about me?” Ben demanded. It had been his bed.

“We can go back to our house,” Liv offered.

“No,” Joe cut in. No way was she going to leave now—not with all these questions she had stirred up in his mind. “You have two choices,” he told Ben. “You can sleep with me or on the floor.”

Ben looked disgusted.

Well, I don't want to sleep with you much, either, fella,
Joe thought glumly,
but
I
don
’t
reckon your Mom would have me at the moment.
One look at Liv told him she knew what he was thinking and that he was right. “Put your suitcase in the hall closet,” he told Ellie. “Si
nce you won’t be staying long…”

“A month or so, I thought,” Ellie replied, still looking from him to Liv and back, as if weighing the possibilities. He could almost see her mind ticking over, putting things together and coming up with—Joe grimaced— coming up with God knew what!

“A month,” he groaned. “Hardly.”

“But I have a whole play to plot.”

“Rent a cottage.”

“Too expensive.”

“You could buy and sell me,” he protested. “You’re one of the richest playwrights in America.”

Liv’s jaw dropped
.
“You’re
that
Eleanor McPherson?”

Joe’s nose wrinkled in distaste. “You didn’t know I had such a famous sister?”

“I never would have guessed,” Liv admitted. She was looking stunned, and he hoped it wasn’t yet another strike against him. Then she smiled and he felt relieved, although he wished she’d smile at him. “I love your plays,” she told his sister.

“Thanks. Joe doesn’t brag about me, that’s for sure,” Ellie said as she deposited her suitcase in the closet. “It doesn’t go with his image. I keep trying to marry him off in them.”

“Life doesn’t always imitate art,” Joe said gruffly, wishing she’d shut up.

“More’s the pity. But”—and here Ellie gave him an arch look that spoke volumes—“I never giv
e up hopin
g.
”

“More’s the pity,” Joe countered in turn and left the room.

L
iv didn’t know how Joe felt about his sister’s arrival, but she was delighted that Ellie had come. Another day or, worse, another unchaperoned night in the same house with him—and four children sleeping were
not
chaperones—and she wouldn’t be able to answer for what she would do. The temptation to let go of her scruples, her sanity, her judgment, was almost overwhelming. Why not have a fling, she asked herself almost hourly. Lots of people had them—Tom, for heaven’s sake, had had dozens of them—and everyone she knew had lived to tell about it. Most people even appeared to emerge from such affairs relatively unscathed. Why not Olivia James?

He was driving her insane. He had only to look at her and she burned with wanting him. Never again would she smirk over all those starry-eyed girls who drooled over the men they saw in magazines. They, at least, had
the excuse of youth and
naivet
é
. She had no excuse at all. All she had was willpower and the Chicken Pox Treaty, and the first was fading fast and the second would end in four days.

So, thank goodness for Eleanor McPherson, Liv thought as she set the table for dinner the following night. There must indeed be a God, and Ellie had been sent as his instrument for her salvation from Joe Harrington! Or so she believed until she sat down to dinner.

“I’ve just come up with a marvelous plot for my next play after this,” Ellie announced with an enthusiastic grin. She swallowed her mouthful of mashed potatoes and continued, “I’ve been watching you two cope with this three-ring circus for th
ree days, and I’ve decided that—
”

“No!” Joe cut in, his fork arrested halfway to his mouth. He glared at Ellie with fire in his green eyes. Liv was glad she wasn’t on the receiving end of that look.

Ellie just giggled, fairly bouncing with enthusiasm, and Liv wondered how Joe could bear to squelch that until she heard the next words. “Mov
ie star falls for lovely divorcé
e with five kids! I’ll make it six in the play. Will he win her? Will he succeed in breaking down her reserve? How juicy!”

“Damn it!” Joe spat.

“You wouldn’t!” Liv’s fork clattered to
her plate, and she stared at Ell
ie in crimson-faced horror.

Ellie was overcome with amusement. “Touchy, aren’t we?” she teased.

“I’ll sue you for invasion of privacy,” Joe snapped, and looking at him, Liv thought he very well might.

“We
l
l,” Ellie shrugged with good-natured indifference, “it’s not even necessarily true, is it? I mean, unless you’ve really fallen for Liv
—
” she baited, letting
her voice trail off into nothing.

Liv’s eyes dropped to the piece of gristle left from the roast on her plate, not daring to look at Joe or the kids. She couldn’t imagine what his face looked like. The kids,
she knew, would have eyes like one-hundred watt bulbs. The silence went on for eons.

“Pass the peas,” Joe said to Stephen, and practically snatched them from him, shoveling a huge amount onto his plate.

“I thought you hated them,” Jennifer piped up.

“Don’t be impertinent,” Joe warned through a mouthful. He stared across the table at his sister who was watching him in open-mouthed wonder. “Have some peas,
”
he commanded. “And if you behave yourself, after dinner I’ll let you plot a love affair between Pio and Elena for
my
screenplay. Maybe it will help you stick to fiction.”

Liv hoped so. Things between Joe and herself were strained enough without Ellie threatening to make them characters in one of her plays. It was sufficient that she saw herself in Elena without that. She didn’t say anything, though, trusting from Joe’s quick intervention that Ellie would back off. Too much protest might give his sister the idea that more existed between them than really, in fact, did. So she quietly helped Ben with the dishes, then sent him out to frolic with Joe while she read the paper in the den. But the paper was hard to concentrate on. Her mind drifted to Joe and to the shouts and splashes just beyond the yard. Giving up on the news, she got up and went outside, sitting down on the grass.

She was watching the sun go down, admiring the lake in all its golden, sun-streaked beauty and trying to forget the dinner-table conversation when Ellie came and sat down beside her.

“I always tease Joe about being the hero in my plays,” Ellie said, settling herself on a beach towel. “Ordinarily he just ignores me. Obviously he has more at stake here. I didn’t mean to embarrass you.”

Liv wrapped her arms around her knees and wondered what she could say to that. “You didn’t,” would hardly be honest because she had rarely been more embarrassed in her life. But, somehow, admitting it to Ellie
made her dreams seem possible, made it seem as though something might really be happening between herself and Joe, made it seem that all her crazy, unbelievable fantasies weren’t so crazy and unbelievable after all. It was rather like being in junior high school and hearing that the boy you had a crush on also had a crush on you.