Even Carrie had made one in her first marriage. That his sister had had enough courage to rally and give the whole marriage thing a second try was to her credit. In the long run, Mac figured Carrie was a lot braver than he was.
"Better man than I, Gunga-din," he said under his breath as he walked out of his office.
His receptionist looked up from her computer. "Excuse me?"
"Nothing, Mavis. See you in the morning."
Her goodbye echoed behind him as he hurried out the door and to where his car was parked. Habit had him glancing at his watch as he got in behind the wheel. There wasn"t all that much time to spare.
He went straight from the office to Jolene"s house, expertly weaving his vehicle in and out of traffic and completing the trip in less than twenty minutes, despite the fact that at this time of evening, the roads were more than a little crowded.
Jolene came to the front door as a third ring pealed through the house. There was a moment there that she"d deliberated grabbing her daughter, escaping through the back door and making her way over an adjoining neighbor"s fence.
Instead she looked into the side mirror to make sure her hair was in place.
As if that mattered.
All the man probably cared about was if the vital organs were in place, and maybe not even that.
Sorry, MacKenzie, no rolls in the hay on the agenda tonight, I"m afraid.
Behind her, Amanda was ordering her to "open it, Mamma, open it." The stray thought came to her that Amanda was going to be the kind of child who was going to open gifts in the morning instead of savoring them and opening them at the end of the day.
Taking a deep breath, feeling suddenly very nervous, Jolene opened the door.
He was there, big as life and, if she were being honest with herself, a great deal handsomer.
"Hi."
"Hi," she echoed stiffly, her mouth as dry as if she"d just plowed seven miles of unirrigated desert with it.
Mac waved at Amanda who was shifting excitedly from foot to foot.
"Didn"t we have a date tonight?" he asked Jolene. "You look disappointed."
"I didn"t think you"d come."
Amus.e.m.e.nt tugged at his mouth. "And you look disappointed because I did, or because you"re wrong?" he wanted to know. "Or did you just receive last month"s electricity bill?"
"Never mind," she murmured, thinking it safest not to select an answer from the multiple choice array he"d just given her. Instead she grabbed her purse from the sofa where she"d left it and slung it over her shoulder before bending down to pick up her daughter. "We"re going to have to move fast if we don"t want to miss the beginning of the movie."
He was right behind her, pulling the door closed. "Moving fast is my specialty."
She shot him a look.
"I just bet it is. We"ll use my car," she told him. She"d left it parked in the driveway. "Saves time not switching Amanda"s car seat."
"Fair enough." Mac look at the little girl she was holding. Nothing appeared to be wrong. "Why aren"t you letting her walk to the car?"
"Because I can still move faster than she does."
Her instincts had told her to leave five minutes ago, before he arrived, and then blame it on a scheduling problem if he asked about it the next day. She should have followed through.
The b.u.t.terflies in her stomach were taking steroids. Reaching into her pocket, she fumbled for her car key.
"Here, let me have her." The little girl fairly glowed as he reached for her. Mac settled her in the crook of his arm. "Hi, Amanda, remember me?"
In response, Amanda nodded, her golden hair bouncing up and down like delicate clouds playing a game of tag with the wind. Her broad smile seemed to travel from one small ear to the other.
"Uh-huh."
Holding her to him with one hand, Mac pretended to shield his eyes with the other.
"Wow, what a killer smile. It"s brighter than the sun." And then he dropped his hand and looked at the little girl he had tucked against him. "Think you can teach your mom how to smile? I think her smile muscles went away from lack of use."
"Mamma smiles," Amanda told him solemnly.
"Ah." His eyes met Jolene"s over Amanda"s head. "Something to live for."
Jolene unlocked the rear pa.s.senger door for Amanda. "I smile when there"s something to smile about."
"Then you"ll be smiling at the movie," he a.s.sumed. She could have sworn there was a twinkle in his eye, but it was probably a trick of the setting sun. "That"s okay, I can experience things by proxy." He winked at Amanda, who giggled. "I"ll just pretend it"s intended for me and not Silly Sandy."
With Amanda safely tucked into her car seat, Mac rounded the rear of the car and went to the front pa.s.senger seat.
When he got in, Jolene looked at him in surprise.
"Don"t you want to drive?" Not that she would let him, of course, but she thought it unusual that he didn"t just automatically come over to the driver"s side and hold his hand out for her keys. The men she knew all liked being in control.
He slipped on the seat belt. "Not particularly. It"s your car."
Jolene got in behind the wheel. "Most men want to drive."
The look he gave her penetrated through her aqua sweater and went clear through to her spine. She discovered that she was having a little trouble breathing and searched for the b.u.t.ton on the armrest"s control panel to open the window.
"I"m not like most men, Jolene," Mac reminded her quietly. "Besides, you know where the theater is, I don"t."
All very logical. So why wasn"t there any air coming through the open window.
Behind her, Amanda began to rock in her seat. "Silly Sandy, Mommy, Silly Sandy."
Mac grinned. "Yes, "Mommy," you"re wasting time." He tapped his watch. "Silly Sandy is about to start."
She ignored him. It was easier that way than acknowledging what was going on just under the surface. Things she definitely wasn"t happy about. "You"re absolutely right, Amanda. What was Mommy thinking?" Squaring her shoulders, she put the car in gear and backed out of the driveway.
She couldn"t wait to get into a dark movie theater so that she could ignore this man.
The theater at that time of evening was jam-packed and resonating with noise. It was the cartoon feature"s opening day and word-of-mouth had spread like wildfire among the under-six set. Everywhere Jolene looked, there were handfuls of harried adults attempting to keep track of gaggles of children.
Holding Amanda firmly by the hand and ushering Jolene in before him, Mac remarked, "Looks like we"re the only ones who aren"t outnumbered."
She turned to look at him. Big mistake. If she"d been any closer to him, there wouldn"t have been enough room to slip a dime in between them.
She suddenly had firsthand knowledge of what the term "steal your breath away" meant.
Still, she managed to force out the question, "Outnumbered?"
He nodded, urging her on. "There"s two of us to one of her. From the looks of it, there"s just one adult for every five or six short people."
Outnumbered was the term for it. And children had nothing to do with the feeling. She felt outnumbered just being this close to him.
Maybe this was not such a good idea. She"d thought that confronted with a kiddie movie, he"d run for the hills, not embrace the idea. If she hadn"t gone through what she had and he wasn"t what he was, he would have been looking pretty good to her by now.
But she had gone through h.e.l.l with her husband and MacKenzie was Blair Memorial"s most desired hunk-and he knew it. Under no circ.u.mstances could she allow herself to forget that. Because if she did, if through some freakish act of nature, she temporarily lost her mind and allowed her guard to go down long enough to fall under this drop-dead gorgeous man"s spell, it would be all over for her.
The fall wouldn"t just hurt her this time, it would probably kill her.
The trick here, Jolene reminded herself, was not to go up on that high beam to begin with. That meant keeping both feet firmly planted on the ground.
Putting on a pair of blinders wouldn"t exactly hurt, either.
Once inside the movie theater lobby, the crowd began to disperse a little. One wall was lined with arcade games that instantly attracted an array of children.
Mac looked down at Amanda. "C"mon, princess, let"s go see ourselves a dog."
Amanda, in Jolene"s estimation, looked prepared to follow him to the ends of the earth.
He turned and peered at Jolene over his shoulder. "Coming, "Mommy?""
Her eyes narrowed. There was something irksome about his referring to her that way. And far too familiar. "Don"t call me that, Harrison."
Making his way past a mother with triplets, all of whom were trying to outyell each other, Mac nodded. "I think I can foresee a fair exchange in the making, Nurse DeLuca."
Why was it when he called her that, she felt as if he was teasing her? As if he found what she did amusing in some way?
Just her insecurity raising its ugly head, Jolene told herself. Matt had always found ways to undermine her, to make her feel that she was something only a little more capable than an orderly, and maybe just a shade more intelligent than a doorstop.
Mac saw the lines forming at the candy counter. Three teenagers in less than attractive brown uniforms were trying to fill the orders coming their way.
"Popcorn?" he asked Jolene.
She had a tendency to pig-out on popcorn. Another personal thing she didn"t want him to know about her. "We"re having dinner, remember?"
His smile was getting to be more and more disarming. There had to be somewhere she could go to get shots against it. And him.
"How can I forget? I"ve been looking forward to it all day."
He hadn"t been at the hospital at the same time she was on duty. At least, she hadn"t run into him. Part of her had taken that to mean that perhaps he"d thought better of their so-called date and had chosen to face the matter in typical male fashion: by avoiding her. Even though he was here now, she sincerely doubted that he had spent his day looking forward to this.
"Still," he looked at the shorter of his two dates, "What"s a movie without popcorn, if only to leave behind?" He temporarily cut Jolene out of the conversation, centering the universe around Amanda. "How about it, Amanda? Want some popcorn?"
The little girl nodded her head vigorously. Jolene had the impression that her daughter would have agreed to almost anything Mac suggested. The man"s charm was deadly, leaving no one from two to two hundred safe.
"How about you?" His eyes shifted to her.
"I"ll pa.s.s." Jolene inclined her head, lowering her voice so that only he could hear her. "You know, you don"t have to be nice to Amanda to get to me."
Her breath was warm against his neck, sending a shiver down his spine. Mac felt his gut tighten. Drawing his head back, he grinned at her.
"And here I thought you were leaning over to nibble on my ear." His eyes grew serious, his voice as low as hers. "I"m being nice to Amanda because I like Amanda. I like all kids. They"re what we all were before the world hit us with its garbage."
He definitely unnerved her when he looked at her like that. Jolene changed the subject, nodded toward the counter. "There"s too large a line. We"ll be late getting into the movie."
Mac didn"t answer her. Instead he made eye contact with a woman at the far end of the counter who was clearly in charge. Brightening visibly, the woman looked at him quizzically. Mac motioned her to the side and met her there.
He picked Amanda up into his arms. "My little friend here would like some popcorn, but we"re afraid we might miss the movie."
"No problem." The words were directed at him rather than the child they involved. The woman seemed only too happy to take this small obstacle out of Mac"s life. "Small, medium, large?"
"Large. We"re going to teach her about sharing today. No b.u.t.ter," he added as the woman took a large container and plunged it into the sea of popcorn. "We don"t want her to pick up any bad habits this early."
The woman nodded. "Very smart." Jolene had the feeling the woman would have made the same p.r.o.nouncement had MacKenzie said he was thinking of hang gliding off the theater complex roof.
"Five-ninety, right?" Mac handed the woman the proper change. She just closed her fingers over the amount without checking.
"I don"t believe it," Jolene declared as they walked away from the counter. The woman went back to tallying containers and ignoring the people lining up along the counter.
Stopping before theater number three, Mac looked at her innocently. "Don"t believe what?"
"You just flirted with another woman while you were on a-a-" She couldn"t bring herself to call it a date. "On an excursion with me."
An excursion, so that"s what she called it. His mouth curved with amus.e.m.e.nt. "That"s not flirting, Jolene, that"s just interacting." Holding Amanda"s hand, he momentarily set the large tub of popcorn down on the floor. "This-" he slowly ran his thumb along Jolene"s lower lip as he looked into her eyes "-is flirting."
She"s been around the block more than once, in a souped-up car at that. She"d been married, divorced and experienced all the shades that existed in between the two states. Why then did the entire area suddenly go dark for the s.p.a.ce of an eternal moment, as if they"d been thrown bodily into the eye of an electrical power grid failure? And why did her heart suddenly begin beating like a world renowned drummer wired with espresso coffee and a pound of dark chocolate?
She had no answer. None that she wanted to even mildly consider.
"Oh," was all she managed. The lights slowly seeped back into existence and her bearing returned, slightly tilted but there. "The movie." Somewhat shaky, Jolene pointed at the opened theater door behind him. The music had stopped playing, a sure sign that coming attractions were about to begin.
"Right, the movie."
Mac turned toward the theater, his body locked in slow motion. For a moment there, something had happened, had sparked within him, and he"d be dammed if he understood what.
Had to be because the woman was resisting him so much. The last time he"d met up with resistance outside of a high school physics experiment, he"d found himself just entering p.u.b.erty. And Sheila Royce hadn"t resisted for long. She"d kissed him under the bleachers at halftime less than a day after she"d played hard-to-get.
This woman was doing a much better job than Sheila Royce at getting under his skin.
"We"d better get inside," he added needlessly, then turned to lead the way.