The Right Twin For Him (O'Rourke Family 2) (7 page)

“So far so good. I don’t get sick easily. Is Stephen all right?” she asked anxiously.

“He’s fine,” Maddie assured her new friend. “Did you know he calls you Candy now in private? And he won’t touch a drop of anyone else’s coffee.”

Candy turned pink. She’d stopped pulling her hair
back from her face so harshly, and looked quite lovely as a result. There hadn’t been any sign of Stephen asking her out on a date, but Maddie was convinced her handsome supervisor was more than interested.

“I wish you could have shown up twenty years ago,” Candy said wistfully.

“Twenty years ago I wouldn’t have been much help. I was more interested in playing with dolls than anything else.”

“Then I—” Candy fell silent as Patrick appeared at the door. “I’d better get back to my desk.” She walked past Patrick, giving Maddie a wink he couldn’t see.

“Something going on?” he asked.

“Not a thing.” Maddie hurriedly poured herself a cup of coffee from the office pot. She turned, wondering if Patrick would have that same darned polite expression he’d been wearing the past two weeks.

It was so frustrating.

He’d touched her in ways no man had ever touched her, but now he acted as if they were practically strangers.

Which they were, Maddie acknowledged silently. And he’d made it plain things weren’t going to change, either.

Drat it all. She didn’t have any experience with men beyond her relationship with Ted, and he’d hardly been any help in understanding how things were between men and women.

A wry humor made her shake her head.
Ted.
They’d been children playing at being adults, never going past the stage of holding hands and following the rules of “No hands above the waist in the front, and none below the waist.” Healthy rules meant to
protect them both, enforced with a father’s glare and a warning that few boys would ignore.

Maddie sipped her coffee and looked at Patrick from under her lashes. He definitely wasn’t a boy. And she doubted there was a single rule he hadn’t broken.

There hadn’t been many “bad” boys in Slapshot, but she recognized the faint remnants of Patrick’s days as a teenage tough. Maybe it was the hint of a sexy swagger when he walked, or the midafternoon beard shadow that gave him an aura of dark danger. Or a dozen other things that made him so very…interesting.

Maddie, Maddie. Haven’t you learned anything?
chided a voice in her head. If she couldn’t trust the boy she’d grown up with, how could she trust a man like Patrick O’Rourke?

She couldn’t, that’s what.

“Stephen says you’re doing a fantastic job,” he commented, pouring the last of the coffee into a cup and unplugging the pot. “I understand you’re working on a proposal for new billboards to advertise the station. I’ll look forward to seeing it.”

“Uh-huh.”

“Yes, well, I’d better get back to my office.”

She made a face at his retreating back. It wasn’t that she didn’t appreciate Patrick giving her a job, she just wished he wasn’t being so standoffish.
He
was the one who’d decided to kiss her, not the other way around.

Okay, maybe she did want him to kiss her again. Sort of like an experiment, to see if she would still react the same way.

And if
he’d
react.

Maddie blushed furiously at the notion of Patrick getting aroused because of her. She was pretty sure he’d felt that way, but her experience was limited, and doubt was insidious. She’d heard it was easy for women to pretend a response, but could men fake it? Had she been right thinking he’d responded in the first place? Patrick had been pressed against her and he was quite…impressive down there. She could have been misunderstood.

“Boy, are you mixed up,” Maddie told herself.

The station seemed practically deserted with so many people out sick. She’d just stopped to smile at the DJ—best known as the Seattle Kid—when he began frantically waving at her. She tiptoed inside.

The DJ thrust the headset and microphone at her. “Gotta go. The music’s almost done,” he groaned, making a mad dash out the door, one hand clapped over his mouth.

Maddie stared at the headset a full ten seconds.

To her relief the technician walked in at that moment, but he backed away with a horrified expression, shaking his head when she tried to hand him the microphone. He began making motions with his hands, obviously urging action, but she didn’t know anything about the equipment in the booth.

“They’re expecting DJ chatter. Say something,” Jeremy said in a loud stage whisper. “You’re live.”

He pointed to the On Air sign lighted up on the wall, and Maddie started feeling a little nauseous herself. The motto of KLMS was Nothing Is Worse Than Dead Air, but she wasn’t sure it applied to a novice with just two weeks’ experience in the ad department.

“Uh…hello,” she said into the mike, to Jeremy’s obvious relief, who continued to make encouraging
motions. “This is Maddie Jackson, and I’m…uh, filling in for the Seattle Kid, who seems to have suddenly come down with the stomach flu like most everyone else who works here.”

She cleared her throat, put her coffee down and sat in the recently vacated chair. The electronic board in front of her looked like something out of
Star Trek
with its blinking lights and dials. There was no way she could figure out how to play something without help.

“And for those of you uttering a sympathetic murmur of support, I’m sure he appreciates it. I have to confess this whole radio thing is new to me. I’m from a little town in New Mexico called Slapshot and haven’t been in the Seattle area for very long. We’ll figure out how to play some music for you in a minute, but in the meantime…” She paused, desperately trying to remember what sort of things DJs talked about on the radio.

Jeremy kept up his hand signals and Maddie took so many fast breaths she was in danger of hyperventilating. She was petrified. There were literally thousands of people listening to her, and for once in her life she couldn’t think of anything to say.

“I’d like to talk about…kissing. And men,” she blurted out, only to see Jeremy abandon his signaling and clamp his hands over his head.

Okay, maybe kissing wasn’t the best subject. But at least there wasn’t any dead air to worry about.

P
atrick stared at the container of aspirin on his desk. Since Maddie had come to work at KLMS he’d practically emptied the economy-size bottle; pretty soon it would eat an economy-size hole in his tummy. Maddie was making him crazy—even crazier than having sixty percent of his employees out sick because they’d gotten a twenty-four-hour virus that was turning into a week-long siege in the bathroom.

Kissing her had been a huge mistake, no matter how good it felt at the time. He could see the confusion in her face every time she looked at him now. And why shouldn’t she? She came from a world where intimate kisses meant something.

It
did
mean something,
said the internal voice that reminded him of his father.

The voice was constantly with him these days, no matter how hard he tried not to hear it. If he
had
acknowledged the voice, he would have reminded it that he’d only just met Maddie, they were little more
than strangers, so how much could a kiss between them mean?

The memory of Maddie’s kiss-swollen lips, dazed eyes and the tantalizing rise and fall of her breasts filled his head, and he groaned.

More than anything he was furious with himself. How could he have kissed Maddie in the first place? It was bad enough that he’d lost control with a complete innocent, but Maddie was recovering from a broken heart. It smacked of taking advantage, and the O’Rourkes had a code about women that was as old as Ireland. Never, in all the outrageous things he’d done as a kid, had he done something he thought would hurt a girl.

Then he’d gone and stuffed his foot in his mouth, trying to tell Maddie not to get any ideas about marriage. That had been arrogant of him. No wonder she was so offended.

“Boy, do I have a problem,” he muttered, tossing down a couple more aspirin tablets.

The radio was playing on his desk, set to a low volume, and for some reason it sounded like Maddie—probably because he couldn’t stop thinking about her. With a sigh he turned up the dial to hear what was going on in the broadcast booth.

“…he’s a little old-fashioned, but that isn’t the problem. I mean, my dad is old-fashioned, and he’s wonderful,” said the voice.

It
was
Maddie.

Patrick shook his head to clear it, unable to believe what he was hearing. How could a scatterbrain like Maddie get herself on his radio station?

“And he’s a great kisser, but now he acts like I’m kryptonite or something. I could swear he was interested
…you know, physically, but maybe I was wrong. Can a man fake that kind of thing?”

Oh…
no.

Patrick lunged from his chair, only to fall flat on his face when his feet tangled with the trash can.

“Does anyone out there know why men are so confusing?” Maddie continued. “Maybe a man could explain it, though we probably confuse you, too. It must be all that ‘men are from Mars’ stuff I’ve heard about. I have to admit we
do
seem to be from different planets. And I told you how he feels about marriage. To tell the truth, I’m not sure why he’s so much against it, but you’d think it was worse than being boiled in oil.”

Muttering curses, Patrick limped as quickly as possible to the broadcast booth. Maddie was perched on the corner of the console, still chattering away about marriage and kissing and men, and asking one and all for their opinion. Jeremy Hollings seemed to be in shock, but when he saw Patrick’s face, he dissolved into laughter.

Patrick made a slashing motion across his throat, but Maddie just returned with a helpless gesture and pointed to the microphone as if it explained everything.

He pushed inside the booth.

“Announce a song,” he snarled.

“I don’t know how to play one,” she said, then sighed. “Oops, everyone, I was talking to the owner. Mr. O’Rourke wants me to play something, which I guess is the point since this
is
a country music station. We’ll get some Garth Brooks going as soon as I figure out how to work these dials. Honestly, the equipment
in here is so complicated you’d think it was designed for the space program.”

Patrick snatched a CD from the rack, stuffed it into the right slot and started the music. Just to be safe he disconnected Maddie’s microphone and headset, then scowled.

“What in hell are you doing?”

“Mack got sick and you said there’s nothing worse than dead air on the radio. So I just talked.”

“You…” Patrick kicked the door shut so Jeremy wouldn’t be able to hear them. “That isn’t what I meant.”

The hurt expression he dreaded filled her eyes.

“But I talked about how great the Crockett Café is, and told everyone that the Liberty Market is now open twenty-four hours a day. They’re two of KLMS advertisers. I didn’t break any of the FCC rules. I’m sure I didn’t, so what’s the big deal?”

“You were talking about me! That’s the big deal.”

“Not by name. How could anyone know it was you?”

She didn’t get it.

She just didn’t have a clue.

Anybody who knew them would put two and two together and come up with 250.

“You shouldn’t have said anything about me, period.”

“Why not? You
are
a good kisser.”

“How would you know? You don’t have anything worth comparing it against. You wouldn’t know a good kiss from a bad one.”

“Are you saying you
aren’t
a good kisser?”

“Yes.
No!
That isn’t what I…” He ground his teeth together. Maddie was doing it to him again, and
he had only himself to blame. “All right. I’ll figure out a way to clean up this mess later. In the meantime, let’s get out of here. We have to talk.”

“But Mack is too sick to finish, and there’s nobody to handle his show.”

Patrick looked at the clock on the wall and realized it would be at least an hour before his next DJ and her producer arrived.
If
they arrived and hadn’t been caught by the flu along with everyone else.

The week was just getting better all the time.

“Go back to your desk. I’ll take care of the booth until Lindsay Markoff arrives.” He crossed his fingers, hoping that Lindsay would arrive early. Maybe he could call and make sure she was coming. She was always wanting more airtime, anyway, and he’d make it up in her paycheck.

Maddie seemed doubtful. “I thought you hated talking on the radio.”

“I’m not going to talk,” Patrick snarled. He knew he wasn’t being fair. Maddie had done her best to help out, and now he was taking out his frustration on her. He tried to calm down. “I’ll just play the music and ad tapes until someone else gets here.”

“But they’re usually announced,” Maddie argued. “The songs and all.”

“At the beginning of the sets, yes, but…” Defeated, Patrick pushed her down in the chair. “All right, I’ll work the console, you announce the upcoming song sets.
Just
the sets,” he added hastily. Giving Maddie a forum for her runaway tongue was the last thing he wanted.

Just then Jeremy stuck his head inside the booth and Patrick glared. “Why didn’t you stop her?” he
demanded. “Why didn’t you start the music or run an ad or something?”

“Hey, boss, I’m just a lowly little technician. Mack gave Maddie the headphones and you know how I freeze on the air. I just wanted you to know the phone bank is lighting up—folks want to give Maddie some advice about that great kisser she knows.” He grinned.

Patrick gave him a stern look, but Jeremy was irrepressible. He probably thought Maddie talking her head off was a grand joke. A twenty-year-old former juvenile delinquent and electronic genius, Jeremy was working at the station while getting his degree in communication. He’d probably end up as the next Ted Turner, but in the meantime he was a pain in the butt. Of course, having been a juvenile delinquent once himself, Patrick understood the kid.

“No phones,” he ordered.

“But, boss, we
like
phone calls at KLMS,” Jeremy said with a perfectly straight face. “You always say—”

“Never mind what I always say,” Patrick said. “Get back out there and tell the callers that you’re sorry, but Maddie doesn’t know how to work the phones any better than she knows how to play music.”

Jeremy walked out, shaking his head in a sorrowful display of disappointment. His lanky body settled in the producer’s chair, a position he’d been coveting for the simple reason it gave him power. Patrick sent him a warning glance as he eyed the blinking phone bank. Jeremy might be destined for greatness, but he was dead meat if he tried to send one of those calls through to the booth.

“All right,” Patrick growled to Maddie. “I’ll put on some commercials, then after that you announce we’re doing a long music set, starting out with Lee Greenwood’s, ‘God Bless the U.S.A.”’

“Oh, I like that song.”

“No editorials,” Patrick said instantly. If Maddie strayed from the script, she would
really
stray. God knew he was taking a chance letting her remain in the broadcast booth, but either he got on the radio himself—something he’d sworn never to do—or he took a chance.

She wouldn’t break any of those FCC rules that everyone else worried about, she’d just spill her life story, along with his and everyone else’s she knew. He’d keep his hand on the switch to cut her off, just in case.

Her look called into question his intelligence, but he didn’t relent. There were some things a man had to do to stay sane. He reminded himself that her sweet, artless revelations were a far cry from the polished DJ patter radio audiences had come to expect. So his decision was the best for the station and didn’t have much to do with him.

Really.

Honestly, Maddie couldn’t understand why Patrick was so upset. He drove the Blazer away from the station with a grim twist to his mouth that hadn’t changed since he’d charged into the broadcast booth.

The DJ for the next show had arrived early, so they’d only needed to do the Seattle Kid’s show for another seventeen minutes. But she didn’t know what Patrick was planning to do. Now that they were alone, he was being awfully quiet.

Maybe he was going to fire her and wanted to tell her away from the station so she wouldn’t make a fuss in front of everyone. The thought made Maddie slump down in the passenger seat, thoroughly depressed.

It was hard enough being so confused about men, but now she might get fired?

“Aren’t you going to say something?” she asked.

Patrick swung into the busy parking lot of a chain restaurant out by the highway, then sat for a long minute with his hands on the steering wheel.

“I’m sorry, but I thought I was helping,” Maddie added rebelliously.

She
had
been doing a good job for the station. It was one thing to get fired because she couldn’t do the work, but going on the radio hadn’t been her fault, it was because everyone was sick and she’d been in the right place at the wrong time. Patrick was being completely unreasonable.

He sighed. “I know. You were doing exactly what anyone else would have done, and I apologize for overreacting.”

Maddie crossed her arms over her stomach and stared out the window. Rain was streaming over the windshield, and their breath was clouding the glass. The damp cold was alien to her, and for the first time since coming to Washington she felt a twinge of homesickness that had nothing to do with missing her parents.

New Mexico was a dry land, painted by red rock and the gold of grass that died swiftly in the parched heat of summer. She missed the
ristras
that decorated the houses with their brilliant dried peppers, and the limitless sky rising over the Magdalenas. The smell
of sage and piñon pine had been replaced by the scent of evergreen, and even if it struck a chord deep inside her, this place wasn’t home.

“I don’t belong here,” she whispered.

“God, Maddie, don’t say that. I feel awful enough for yelling at you.” Patrick rubbed his hand over his face, shaking his head at the same time. “You belong.”

“All right, I don’t belong
to
anyone here.”

“You have Beth and Kane and the rest of us.”

“You keep warning me that I
don’t
have you, Patrick. It can’t be both ways.”

She sensed, rather than saw him reach out in the gray light inside the cab. He lifted her hand and squeezed it, then laced their fingers together.

“I’m lousy with this kind of thing,” he admitted after a moment. “I don’t want to hurt or disappoint anyone. I just want to keep things nice and simple. I messed up bad as a kid, Maddie. Something happened to me when my father died. I don’t ever want to feel that way again. It’s better to keep things uncomplicated.”

“That’s convenient.”

He released her hand and drew back. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

“Nothing. Everything.”

Maddie shivered and gathered her jacket closer around her throat. With a low apology Patrick turned the engine back on and notched the heat up. For a minute the air blowing from the vents was cold, then welcome warmth spread across her feet.

“What do you mean?” he asked again.

“It seems to me you keep everyone at arm’s length. Even your family.”

“Don’t be ridiculous. I might be spending a lot of time at the station lately, but normally I eat dinner with the family a couple times a month.”

“There’s a difference between being
with
them and just being there.”

He snorted.

Maddie stuck her feet more fully under the flow of warmth from the vent and tried to find a way to explain. Maybe she was wrong, but she’d seen Patrick with the O’Rourkes and it bothered her. In some ways he was so alone. She couldn’t imagine him talking to his mother the way she’d been pouring her heart out every night with her parents. She might have run away from Slapshot, but she hadn’t run away from them.

“You smile and joke around,” she said. “You kiss your mother and play with your nieces, but there’s a barrier between you and the rest of the world. It’s as if you don’t want anyone to get too close, so you keep them away with your smiles and laid-back attitude.”