The Right Twin For Him (O'Rourke Family 2) (4 page)

“I’ll…um, see you tomorrow,” she murmured, stuffing the envelope back in her purse.

Maddie headed for her car, still thinking about Patrick O’Rourke’s charming smile. She didn’t have good sense, that much was obvious. Maybe if she really had a broken heart she’d be immune to the man.

“Drat,” she muttered, fumbling with her car key.

“Drat what?”

The voice, so similar to her own, made Maddie’s head pop up. “Drat men,” she said honestly. “They’re nothing but dirty, rotten, cheating trouble.”

Beth stepped down from the doorway of her store. Maddie knew her smile was meant to be sympathetic, but the other woman was obviously too happy with
her husband to think men were anything but wonderful.

“Want to talk about it?” she asked.

“Not
again.
I…I already spilled the beans with Patrick,” Maddie admitted, chagrinned. She didn’t know quite how it had happened, but she’d basically told him everything. Except the part about not being completely in love with Ted.

Criminy, she must have sounded pathetic.

She hadn’t planned to say those things, but she’d opened up like a chili pepper roasting over a fire. And it was inevitable that Patrick would tell Beth and Kane, so why go over it again? Her and her big mouth.

“Was it so bad talking about it?” Beth murmured. “Sometimes talking helps.”

Maddie shrugged. Talking wasn’t the problem, embarrassment was the hard part. “Romance is the pits,” she muttered.

Beth gathered the lapels of her coat around her throat. “I know it can hurt like nothing else. Several years ago I was engaged to my high school sweetheart. He died in an accident, and I thought I’d never get over it. But I did, then Kane came along and everything changed. I know it doesn’t seem like it now, but things get better.”

Swell. Not only did Beth have an adoring husband, but another man had been in love with her. Whereas Maddie wasn’t sure she’d ever had
one
man love her.

It was worse to lose a fiancé because he died than because he cheated, but if Beth didn’t stop trying to comfort her, she might have to scream.

Patrick’s Blazer was parked near Maddie’s rental, but when he saw Maddie and Beth talking nearby, he veered into a small café.

He barely noticed the steaming cup of coffee set in front of him. What was he doing, trying to rescue Maddie? It wasn’t that he minded helping her, but he was lousy at the white knight business. Sooner or later he’d mess things up, and that wouldn’t help Maddie in the slightest. If she just hadn’t looked at him with those big golden-brown eyes, all sweet and hurt, he would have been all right.

When it got right down to it, a man couldn’t be responsible for good sense when a woman had eyes like that.

B
ased on her mother’s advice, Maddie showed up at the KLMS radio station wearing simple gold earrings rather than the more colorful Southwest jewelry she preferred. She’d mostly brought casual clothing to Washington, but she had gotten a black blazer to wear over her dress printed with bright red, green and yellow chili peppers.

“Ms. Jackson?” asked the receptionist. She was a cool brunette with the square jaw of a police sergeant. Still, there was something Maddie liked about her. It was hard
not
to like someone wearing a whimsical, cat-shaped lapel pin with bright green eyes.

“Yes, I’m supposed to start working here today.”

The woman nodded, her eyes narrow with disapproval. “You’re late. Mr. O’Rourke expected you five minutes ago.”

“That’s not true,” Maddie replied with cheerful honesty. “I’m at least fifteen minutes late. What’s your name?”

“Er…Candace Finney.”

“Happy to meet you, Candace. I’m Maddie.” Maddie stuck out her hand and received a tentative shake. “Has anyone ever called you Candy? You look like a Candy to me.”

The beginnings of a shy smile brightened the receptionist’s stern face. “My mother used to call me Candy, but no one else.”

“Mind if I do?”

“Please. That is, I’d like it. I’ll let Mr. O’Rourke know you’ve arrived,” Candy said. She picked up the phone and dialed a number. “Mr. O’Rourke? Yes, Ms. Jackson is here.”

A few minutes later Patrick strode out to find Maddie and his receptionist deep in conversation.

Patrick stopped and stared.

Miss Finney—the Formidable Finn as she was called by one and all—was giggling. In all the years Patrick had worked at the station he’d never once seen the Formidable Finn even crack a smile. But Maddie had gotten giggles in under an hour.

Hell, Maddie might actually
be
able to sell advertising, if she could succeed where so many others had failed.

“Mr. O’Rourke, I’m sorry about the time,” Miss Finney said when she spotted him. “But Maddie and I have been talking.”

Maddie wrinkled her nose and shook her head. “Candy is being nice, but I was late. Are you going to fire me, Patrick?”

He was insane to hire her in the first place, but firing was out of the question. It wasn’t just a matter of helping Maddie, it was being there for his brother and Beth, the way Kane had always been there for
the rest of the family. Kane deserved to have someone else step up to the plate and take responsibility. There hadn’t been many opportunities, and Patrick couldn’t miss this one.

“No.” Patrick forced a smile. “You’re not fired. Come along, and I’ll show you the station. Then you can talk to Stephen Traver. He’s the head of the advertising and promotions department. He’ll be your supervisor.”

Actually,
department
was a grand name for two employees who sold radio ads and managed the radio prize giveaways. The business was doing much better since a successful promotion that summer. Patrick had thought of offering a “date with a billionaire” as a prize, with his brother as the billionaire in question. The whole thing ended with Kane marrying the prize-winner—Beth—and the radio station benefiting from the excitement and publicity generated by their romance.

Now Patrick had to keep things moving. People were listening to the station, but it was mostly a fad, and they could stop as quickly as they’d started. It wasn’t that he was in competition with Kane, he just wanted to make it on his own. There were too many people who assumed he was sliding through life on his wealthy brother’s coattails, and the messes he’d gotten into as a teenager didn’t help that image.

“What kind of music do you play here?” Maddie asked as they walked down the hall.

“What kind of…” Patrick stared. “Are you serious?”

She gave him an innocent look. “You never mentioned it when we talked about a job. But I don’t
suppose it matters. Selling advertising is mostly talking so fast they don’t have time to say no.”

Well, if anyone could talk fast and bewilder a reluctant businessman, it would be Maddie. “We’re a country music station,” he said as severely as possible. “Do you know anything about country?”

“I’m from Slapshot, New Mexico, what do you think?”

Patrick didn’t have a clue about Slapshot. He had never even heard of the place before meeting Maddie. “Do you know anything about country
music?
” he repeated with a patience he didn’t feel.

Her eyes rolled. “Slapshot is in the Magdalena Mountains, over two hours from Albuquerque, and generally considered to be in the middle of nowhere. The only radio station we get is so ‘country’ they won’t even play songs with steel guitars in them.”

Somehow, that didn’t reassure Patrick. “Sounds great,” he lied. “You know all about it, then.”

“Enough. Besides, how much do you have to know to sell air on the radio? I mean, it’s
air.
”

He opened his mouth an instant before he saw the laughter lurking in Maddie’s golden-brown eyes. Apparently, she wasn’t quite as dizzy as her runaway mouth made her sound.

“Has anyone told you what a pill you are?” Patrick asked, both amused and irritated. He had as good a sense of humor as anyone, but the station was important to him. Every penny he owned was invested in the place.

“Everyone from my parents to my fourth-grade teacher.”

“
That
I can believe.”

She wrinkled her nose and grinned up at him. Most
people were intimidated by “the boss,” but he supposed she didn’t have experience with intimidation since she’d worked for her mother back in Slapshot. Actually, Maddie probably wasn’t intimidated by anything except a slimeball fiancé who thought her breasts weren’t big enough for him. It must have been an awful blow to her self-confidence, especially for such an innocent baby.

Patrick grimaced.

He needed to remember
he
wasn’t guilty of hurting Maddie, it was her scuzzy-almost-a-husband fiancé.

“That’s the broadcast booth,” he murmured as they walked into the heart of the station. “We transmit a full twenty-four hours a day, and someone is always supposed to be in the booth. When you work for a radio station the most important thing to remember is that there’s nothing worse than dead air.”

The producer of the morning show was inside with the DJ, so Patrick waved and continued walking.

“How did you end up with a radio station?” Maddie asked. “Did you start out as a disc jockey?”

“No.”
Patrick shuddered at the thought. “I was working here, plus two other jobs and saving every nickel, figuring I’d invest it at the right time. Then I realized I already knew a lot about radio and liked the business, so I made a deal with old C. D. Dugan to buy the station when he retired.”

Patrick didn’t add that it was C. D. Dugan who’d caught him trying to hotwire a truck when he was fifteen. C.D. had hauled him out by the collar and shaken him like a naughty puppy. Then he’d made Patrick work at the station after school in exchange for not being arrested. It had taken some time, but in the end C.D. had straightened him out, becoming a
cross between surrogate grandfather and hard-nosed parole officer.

“It looks like you’ve done a good job here.” Maddie’s expression seemed wistful, and Patrick sighed.

“What is it?” he asked.

“Nothing.”

Yeah, he believed that.

Maddie’s face had the look a kid gets with his or her face pressed to a candy shop window.

He stopped and lifted an eyebrow. “Well?”

She sighed. “It’s just that I’ve never figured out what to do with my life. I think that’s why it shook me up so much when I found out about Ted and…and broke things off.”

Ted.

Patrick scowled at the reminder of Maddie’s near-miss disaster of a wedding. The woman was a babe in the woods, and she’d get him into all kinds of problems if he wasn’t careful.

“You’re better off without him,” Patrick declared. “You should be glad you caught him with the punch girl. Staying single is the right idea. I’m all for staying single.”

Maddie looked at him curiously. “Marriage isn’t that bad. My parents have been happily married for twenty-eight years.”

“I thought Ted soured you on the idea of marriage.”

“Not altogether, just for me. Of course, I feel sorry for Mom and Dad,” she said reflectively. “They really wanted grandkids. And I’d like to have a baby. I love babies.”

Patrick drew a deep breath. He’d never gone skydiving, but he was certain the sensation was identical
to what Maddie did to his equilibrium. “I don’t want kids,” he said hastily.

She gave him an exasperated look. “I know that. And since nobody’s asked you to have any, you don’t have to keep reminding me about it.”

Heat rose under his collar. “Right.”

“What is it with you and children, anyway?” she demanded.

“They’re okay, it’s just that I took care of my younger brothers and sisters often enough to hope I’ll never have to change another dirty diaper or read
Mother Goose
again.”

“Are you sure that’s it?”

“Absolutely.”

Maddie’s eyes were doubtful, and Patrick shifted uncomfortably. Okay, maybe there was more to it, but it was his business. The truth was, he couldn’t be like his dad, not after all the trouble he’d gotten into. His father had been a terrific role model, the most Patrick could ever be was an example of how kids
shouldn’t
act. He’d come close to making the kind of mistakes that ruin lives…or end them.

The idea of messing up his own children was more than he could take.

He opened the door of the advertising office, grateful for the distraction. “You’ll be working in here. It’s small, but it’s the best we can do until we expand.”

The office really
was
small. There wasn’t enough room in any part of the station, but he was building capital so they could expand into a larger market audience. Most of his employees were an understanding group, and the rest didn’t say anything for fear of
upsetting the Formidable Finn—Candace Finney was the loyal type, even if she did scare people.

Most
people, Patrick thought, looking at Maddie from the corner of his eye. Somehow she’d cracked the Formidable Finn’s shell as if it were no harder than cracking an egg. Alarming thought, considering the way he felt around Maddie. Of course, he was
much
tougher than Miss Finney.

“Your desk is in here,” he said, motioning to a workstation in the corner. The head of the department was just finishing a phone call, and Patrick waited until he’d replaced the receiver. “Stephen, this is Ms. Jackson. She’ll be working for you while Jeff is recovering from his surgery.”

Maddie smiled and stuck out her hand—back home in Slapshot anyone who didn’t shake hands was being plain unfriendly. “Hi, call me Maddie,” she said.

She liked Stephen at first sight. He was a handsome man in his early fifties, with strong shoulders and little laugh crinkles at the corners of his eyes. And since Candy had told her—a little longingly—what a nice man he was, Maddie already had ideas about getting them together. Just because she didn’t plan to get married herself it didn’t mean she couldn’t do some matchmaking for other people.

Stephen leaned forward in his wheelchair and clasped her fingers. “You’re more than welcome, Maddie. We have plenty to keep you busy.”

“I’m looking forward to it,” she said, hoping she sounded confident. It was one thing to talk about selling advertising, another to actually do it. Worst of all, she suspected Patrick had only offered her the job because he felt sorry for her. She wrinkled her nose.
Pity was something she could survive very nicely with
out.

A sudden, unpalatable thought occurred to her and she turned to Patrick. “I need to talk to you for a minute,” she announced, grabbing his hand and dragging him from the office.

“Don’t tell me—you already want a raise,” he said, a smile pulling at his mouth.

“Of course not. I just…you didn’t tell anyone about my wedding getting called off, did you? I can’t believe I just blurted it out to you, especially after we’d barely met.”

Bemused by Maddie’s lightning-fast change of mood, Patrick shook his head. “I’m the only one who knows about it here at the station.”

“Well, okay.”

The vulnerable uncertainty in her eyes made him sigh. He wasn’t good with hurt egos or wounded feelings. His sisters likened him to a human steamroller. Of course, they said the same thing about all the O’Rourke men, so maybe the accusation didn’t mean that much.

The office door opened and Stephen came out, a thoughtful look on his face. “I hate to interrupt, but I wondered if this—” he tapped the arm of his wheelchair “—was the problem? Some people are uncomfortable about it. I can assure you I manage very well.”

Maddie’s eyes widened, horrified. It had never occurred to her that her hasty retreat might have been misunderstood. “No. Heck, my uncle has one of those things, and he’s the most active guy in Slapshot.”

The laugh lines around Stephen’s eyes deepened. “Slapshot?”

“It’s my hometown in New Mexico. It used to be called Las Damas, but we had a famous hometown hockey player who willed all his money to the town in exchange for changing the name to Slapshot. It’s officially called Slapshot Irvine, but we shorten it most of the time. I mean, who wants to live in a town named Slapshot Irvine?”

Patrick made a choking sound, but she ignored him.

“Actually, I was worried Patrick might have told everyone about my wedding-from-hell,” she confided. “It was supposed to be a few days ago, but then I found my fiancé in a clinch with the punch girl. It kind of put a damper on the festivities.”

“I would think so,” Stephen agreed, the corners of his mouth twitching.

“Maddie, I thought you didn’t want everyone to know about that,” Patrick exclaimed.

“I didn’t want
you
to tell them, but it’s okay if I decide to,” she explained reasonably. “It’s not a big secret, just embarrassing.”

“I don’t think you could keep a secret if your life depended on it,” he muttered.