“What happened to his wife?”
The social worker, Mrs. Fletcher, shifted in her cushioned swivel chair as she stared across her cluttered desk at Maggie Wells. She looked unsure of the answer she should give. The busy shuffle of activity in the community center filtered in through the open door of her cramped office.
“Does she live around here?” Maggie continued, her curiosity piqued. She watched as Mrs. Fletcher ran thick fingers through her short metallic-gray hair and sighed heavily.
“Actually,” Mrs. Fletcher began in a tired tone, “we don’t know that much about Mr. Conner’s former wife. He’s a very private person.”
“Oh.” Maggie thought for a moment. “But you got so much information about my background before allowing me to enter the outreach program. I guess I just assumed you knew as much about the children and their families.”
The women’s outreach program, organized by the Charleston community center, matched adult volunteers with young girls to provide friendship and role modeling. It was especially geared toward girls who’d lost their mothers, through death or divorce.
“I don’t mean to be nosy,” Maggie said hurriedly when Mrs. Fletcher didn’t respond. “I just wondered. I mean, to help Brandy as much as possible, I thought it would be best if I knew something about her besides the fact that she likes dolls and roller skating.”
“Yes,” the social worker agreed. “I understand your interest, of course.” She sat silently for a few seconds. Maggie leaned forward encouragingly and Mrs. Fletcher began to speak again. “It’s simply not necessary for us to make such inquiries into personal affairs. The facts behind Mr. Conner’s divorce are not our business. All we need to know is that he wishes to place his daughter in the program.”
“Of course,” Maggie said, straightening up in her chair, suddenly feeling as if she’d been caught trying to peep into someone’s back window. “I understand entirely.”
“Well, he’ll be here any minute and you can meet him for yourself,” Mrs. Fletcher said, breaking off and staring at the doorway of her office. Maggie turned quickly, following the social worker’s gaze.
A young girl scampered eagerly into the office, a large doll clutched to her chest. But Maggie’s attention was seized immediately by the dark presence that followed her, overpowering the small office with his height and brooding appearance. Her eyes moved up his torso to broad shoulders topped by a strongly angular face that held, even in January, the hint of summer’s heat. Carelessly combed chestnut waves contrasted with his stern visage.
The rich luster of his hair and the smoothness of his skin, only lightly crinkled around brilliant sapphire eyes, suggested a man of no more than thirty years. But the cool glint in those blue depths intimated at a hardness inside that his age belied.
Maggie opened her mouth to greet him, but found nothing coming out.
This is so embarrassing, she thought quickly. He’ll think I’m a fool.
Piercing blue eyes met hers for a long second, then dismissed her and passed on to Mrs. Fletcher.
Mrs. Fletcher rose and reached across her desk to extend a pudgy hand to the man who strode with an effortless assurance across the small office. Maggie, pulling herself together at last, rose also. She was graced with a cursory handshake that, despite its lack of warmth, left her hand feeling weak and crushed.
“Ryan Conner, Brandy, this is Maggie Wells,” Mrs. Fletcher introduced in a businesslike monotone. Ryan Conner sat down in the chair across from Maggie, as directed by Mrs. Fletcher. His daughter perched on his knee and smiled.brightly at Maggie.
“We here at the center are hoping Maggie and Brandy will be an excellent match,” Mrs. Fletcher said. “You’ve read the materials I sent you, I assume.” She looked narrowly at Ryan Conner, then went on without waiting for a response. “So you know all about Ms. Wells. She has agreed to commit to the program for at least a year, spending time with Brandy at least twice a month.”
Maggie looked at Ryan, noting that he seemed impatient with the social worker’s explanations. She caught his eye and smiled sympathetically, then frowned as he looked quickly away.
Mrs. Fletcher stopped, and Maggie turned her attention gladly to the child on Ryan’s lap.
“Hi, Brandy,” Maggie said. The six-year-old was an elflike miniature of her father in girlish form. Brown braids in the same shade as her father’s hair swung against her blue woolen coat. Loose white lace tights wrinkled about her ankles as she kicked her feet against the legs of the chair.
“Hi,” Brandy returned. She fidgeted on her father’s knee. He put a restraining arm around her, but she pushed him back and jumped down instead. She walked over to Maggie and reached a hesitant finger out to touch an auburn curl that nestled softly against Maggie’s shoulder.
“You have red hair!” she said, and giggled. Maggie laughed with her, enchanted with the little girl’s honest spontaneity.
She glanced at the child’s father and found him watching with a disapproving frown.
“Don’t be rude, Brandy,” he scolded, his voice softly Southern yet still commanding. Brandy backed away from Maggie, grinning mischievously.
“Oh, that’s okay. But I do prefer to call it auburn,” Maggie said to Brandy, ignoring Ryan Conner’s cool expression.
But she couldn’t resist looking at him again a moment later and smiling. His face remained impassive.
Really, Maggie thought, what is his problem? We’ve just met! He can’t dislike me already.
“Mr. Conner—” she began.
“Ryan,” he corrected. “Only my students call me Mr. Conner.”
“Okay, if you’ll call me Maggie,” she agreed cheerfully. “You’re a teacher?” she prompted, smiling at him encouragingly.
“High school English,” he responded briefly.
Maggie raised an expectant brow, hoping he would elaborate yet knowing somehow that he wouldn’t.
The ice has to break soon, she told herself, or this match will never work.
It was almost as if he had placed a wall between them before they had even met, she suddenly thought. She eyed him stubbornly.
“I’m very happy to meet you and your daughter, Mr.—Ryan, I mean,” she said.
“Yes,” he replied.
Yes, what? Maggie wondered, her silly streak rising to the challenge of the conversation. Yes, it’s nice for anyone to get to meet you? Yes, it’s nice to meet me, too? No, no, she decided, he doesn’t think it’s nice to meet me. He looks like he wants to throw me off a cliff. Forget that I’m offering to do him a favor.
She turned away from his uneasy survey and looked to Mrs. Fletcher for help in the silence that lay heavy in its suddenness.
The social worker took a satisfied breath and rose.
“Well,” Mrs. Fletcher said, “now that everybody’s introduced themselves, I’ll give you a few moments to get acquainted.”
She lumbered out from behind her desk and disappeared into the outer office.
Maggie felt sure she didn’t breathe for at least thirty seconds. She looked across at Ryan Conner and smiled with soldierly resolve, her inner tirade forgotten in her panic at the social worker’s unexpected departure. He stared back at her, head cocked slightly to the side, as if waiting for her to make the first move.
She took the easy way out and turned to Brandy.
“Brandy,” Maggie began uncomfortably, “tell me about your doll. She’s beautiful.”
Brandy proudly held the life-size doll straight out in front of herself to show Maggie.
“Her name is Penny,” Brandy said. “And she’s my favorite doll, isn’t she, Daddy?” She glanced up at her father and he nodded almost imperceptibly. Maggie noticed how the firm lines of his face softened slightly as he looked at his daughter.
Brandy turned the doll back toward herself and tugged Penny’s rumpled red dress down. When she was satisfied, she flipped the doll back around for Maggie’s further admiration.
“She’s very pretty,” Maggie said, showing the proper appreciation for Brandy’s prize doll. “I had a doll a lot like her when I was about your age,” she added, surprising herself by voicing the sudden childhood memory. The happy memory, before her father’s bankruptcy, before…
Maggie blinked quickly, pushing back the painful memories that rushed in on her at the thought of her father. She was annoyed with herself for allowing the hurtful past to intrude. She took a quick, determined breath.
“Who gave Penny to you?” Maggie asked with false brightness, back in control, with the hurt neatly tucked away in long-practiced fashion.
Ryan Conner moved slightly in his chair as Brandy answered, “Mommy gave her to me. Do you still have your doll? What’s her name?” Brandy asked, impatient and clearly not to be sidetracked from her own line of thought.
Maggie noticed Ryan’s discomfiture, and was torn between curiosity and relief that Brandy didn’t elaborate on her mother.
“Her name is Sarah,” Maggie told her, carefully guarding herself from thinking beyond the doll itself. “I still have her. She’s getting rather old now.”
“Do you still play with her?” Brandy asked, her blue eyes bright.
Maggie grinned. “I haven’t played with Sarah in a long time. I used to like to have tea parties with her, though. Do you ever have tea parties with Penny?”
Brandy nodded eagerly. “Daddy plays with me,” she said.
Maggie looked directly at Ryan for the first time since Mrs. Fletcher had left the room. She tried to imagine him playing tea party with his little daughter and her doll, but couldn’t quite manage it.
“If you’d like, and if it’s all right with your father—” Maggie glanced at Ryan. His impenetrable azure gaze answered nothing. And asked…? She wasn’t sure what. “Maybe when it warms up we can have a little tea party together, for Penny and Sarah. And Romeo, of course. He likes tea.”
“Who’s Romeo?” Brandy asked, moving a little farther from her father, a little closer to Maggie.
“Romeo’s my cat. He’s a big, fat, white cat. He just has one little patch of orange between his eyes.”
“And he drinks tea?” Brandy squealed. She turned to her father and laughed, clapping her hand over her mouth in childlike glee. “Isn’t that funny, Daddy?”
Ryan nodded, his lips curving slightly upward in response to his daughter’s exuberance. He stretched out one long arm and, with a broad, strong hand, ruffled her dark head, so like his own, and pulled her back toward him.
Maggie’s breath caught in her throat as she watched him smile.
Ryan Conner looked…human! The smile was gentle and loving, softening the squareness of his jaw into something no longer intimidating. Into something downright appealing.
Something that started a funny little tremble in her stomach. Not nerves.
Attraction.
Maggie swallowed hard, pushing back the thought, stifling the feeling. It was truly insane, and had to be squelched immediately.
Ryan lifted his gaze to Maggie then, and for a second—a heart-touching pitter-patter in time—she spied warmth and softness and…pain? Then, without warning, the mask of coolness shifted back into place.
“I want you to go find Mrs. Fletcher and tell her we’re through here, Brandy,” he instructed his daughter softly, his eyes turning down to meet hers. She wrinkled her nose up at him obstinately, but he set his mouth firmly and she hurried off obediently to the door, still hanging on tightly to Penny.
Maggie recrossed her legs and looked at Ryan. Having glimpsed a gentler side of the man, she felt even more uncomfortable. He’d be easier to deal with if she could decide he was an all-around jerk.
“You have a very bright daughter,” she commented, trying to fill the void left by Brandy’s exit.
Ryan stared narrowly at Maggie, ignoring her compliment.
“Why do you want to spend your spare time with a six-year-old girl whom you don’t know and who isn’t even related to you?” he asked brusquely.
Maggie’s mouth dropped open in surprise at his blunt question.
“Well, you know from the information Mrs. Fletcher gave you that I’m single. I don’t have any children of my own,” Maggie explained. So much for his soft side, she thought dryly.
“I don’t want to know what’s on the form,” Ryan cut in. “I want to know why you think you want to become a part of my daughter’s life.”
Maggie noticed the lightly sarcastic emphasis he placed on the word think, as if he didn’t believe she was really serious about it.
“As Mrs. Fletcher said, I’ve agreed to the specifications on time that I’m willing to commit to the program,” Maggie said coolly, struggling not to squirm under his unflinching gaze.
“Look,” she continued, “I’m not really sure what you’re trying to get at. You seem to have a problem with me.”
There. It was out in the open.
He seemed unfazed.
Maggie shook her head.
“Well, it’s up to you and Brandy whether I’ll be assigned to work with her or not,” she said. “I don’t know what you want to hear, but the bottom line is just that I feel I have something to give and no one to give it to. I don’t think I can be more frank than that.”
“You work at a computer company, I believe,” Ryan stated, completely ignoring Maggie’s honest admissions.
“Yes,” Maggie answered, feeling herself shrink under his tight scrutiny. She was a little rattled by his rapid change of topic. “I’m the assistant director of the local sales division.” She felt better as she told him that, pride in her accomplishments shoring up her flagging confidence.
“I’m sure your job is very important to you.”
“Yes, of course,” Maggie agreed. “But I have plenty of time to give to Brandy, as well. I’m fully prepared to keep my commitment to her, as I’ve said.”
Several times already, she added silently.
“I see,” Ryan said quietly. “Perhaps I need to tell you why I entered Brandy in this program.”
“That would be helpful, yes,” Maggie agreed politely, forcing a smile to her lips. Brandy was such an appealing child. She would be a joy to work with. Getting through this strange conversation with her father would be worth it, Maggie reminded herself.
“Brandy’s mother is very busy with her career,” Ryan said. “She doesn’t live here in Charleston. In fact, she doesn’t even live in South Carolina. She’s in Atlanta,” he explained, his face expressionless. “I entered Brandy in the women’s outreach program because she hardly ever sees her mother. But I don’t want her put in the same position with you that she’s in with her mother.”
“I don’t think that would be a problem, as I’ve already tried to explain,” Maggie broke in. “I think Brandy and I could get along quite well, and I promise I’ll be there for her.”
Ryan appeared thoughtful, then fixed his gaze on Maggie in an assessing manner.
“I wonder whether you work a great deal of overtime,” he suggested. “I don’t want someone who’ll be canceling out on Brandy every time a crisis comes up at the office. She already has that.”
Maggie stared back at Ryan, carefully holding her gaze steady.
“I’ve already assured you that won’t happen,” she said sharply. She sighed and rose. Then, with an ease that came from years of practice pretending an assurance that she didn’t always feel, she flipped back the curls that fell forward across her shoulders.
She wondered if that glimpse of softness she’d witnessed a few moments earlier had existed only in her imagination.
“I’m sorry, Mr. Conner. I see that I’m just not what you’re looking for,” Maggie continued, enunciating each word with a cool precision that she hoped hid the nervous roiling of her stomach. “I think you decided that before you got here today.” As she reached the door, she couldn’t resist looking back and adding a challenge. “Too bad. You’ll never know now, will you?”
Turning away, she almost bumped into Brandy and Mrs. Fletcher. She said goodbye without stopping and escaped the community center quickly. Reaching the parking lot, she inhaled the sweet, fresh odor of South Carolina winter pine and tried to stanch the rushing tide of pent-up nerves.
“I made such a fool of myself, Emma,” Maggie moaned. She buried her face in her hands and leaned back into the couch in the living room of her suburban Charleston home. “I handled it all wrong. The man detested me. That was obvious from the start. And there I was, practically begging him to let me help him with his daughter. It was ridiculous.”
“Oh, Mag, it couldn’t have been that bad, could it?” Emma Mathison asked, laughing. “You make this man sound like an ogre.”
Maggie lifted her head and stared at Emma, brows raised.
“Okay, he does sound a bit primitive,” Emma conceded, hazel eyes twinkling in a narrow face framed by short, dark, salon-created waves. “I’ll give you that. But didn’t you say he was good-looking?”
Maggie had to smile at that. Emma had been trying to set her up with a man and marry her off since their third year of college when Emma quit school and married a dentist. A house, a dog and two small children later, Emma never let an opportunity slip to try to bring Maggie into the ranks of wedded women.
“Don’t even start, Em,” Maggie said. “Believe me, this man is not a possibility. For starters, he hates me. And even if he didn’t, I definitely don’t like him. I’m not even attracted to him.” That was a lie, but it felt good to say it. “And when did I say he was good-looking, anyway?”
Strong, firm features and mysterious eyes flashed into her mind. She tried to push the image away, but the vague impression of hurt in his blue depths stayed with her.
“Okay,” she admitted, determined to ignore the troubling sensations her thoughts evoked. She smiled at Emma playfully. “So he was handsome.” Maggie leaned back. “But, so what? I’m telling you, I’m not interested.”
“What else is new?” Emma teased in the same familiar tone she always used when Maggie turned aside her attempts to interest her in romance.
“None of this matters, anyway,” Maggie reminded her. “He was so rude. I just don’t understand it. He doesn’t even know me, and he seemed to be assigning all these rotten characteristics to me.”
Emma drank the last of her coffee and set the cup down on a coaster on the end table. Rising, she said, “Well, I’ve got to go pick up the boys from my mom’s. Don’t brood, Maggie,” she warned, shaking one well-manicured finger Maggie’s way. “It’ll make you wrinkle.”
Maggie followed her friend to the door. Shutting it after Emma, she wandered thoughtfully into the kitchen, picking a tub of low-calorie fruit yogurt out of the refrigerator. Then she returned to the functional blue couch in the living room and plopped down again. The package made a soft pop as she tore off the aluminum cover. A large white cat jumped up beside her and mewed.
“Oh, Romeo,” Maggie whispered to the cat. “Forget it. I’m not sharing my yogurt.” She ruffled the long fur between his ears and pushed him down from the couch.
I can’t believe how everything turned out, she thought, her mind turning back to her meeting with Ryan Conner.
She remembered her excitement a month earlier when she’d seen the article in the newspaper about the community center. The section detailing the women’s outreach program had caught her eye as she’d been picking at a TV dinner late one night after work. As she read the story describing the community center’s program, she was inspired to volunteer. She had Emma—her best friend—and her neighbors and coworkers, but something was missing. She hadn’t known just what until she’d read that article.
Maggie felt an empathy born of experience for children growing up with only one parent. She wanted to share her life with a child, to share the innocence and joy that had been cut short in her own childhood.
Through satisfying a child’s need in this way she hoped to fill the void—past and future—in her own life. At twenty-eight, she’d begun to think it was a very real possibility that she would never marry and have a child of her own.
Now it looked as if her chances of taking part in the life of sweet, bright Brandy Conner were pretty dim, too. And all because of the child’s insufferable father, Maggie thought with irritation.
She swallowed a spoonful of strawberry-banana yogurt. Who was she kidding? she berated herself. She certainly hadn’t done her cause any good by walking out on him. If she could have just gotten past the first meeting, she was sure she wouldn’t have had to have much to do with him after she was paired up with Brandy. After all, she was supposed to befriend the child, not the father.
And what was all that stuff about his wife? she wondered. He obviously had some ridiculous problem with self-sufficient women. He didn’t seem to understand that some women wanted—or needed—to work.
Maggie knew about need, about desperation. The picture of her own mother dragging home late at night after hours of cleaning offices or waiting tables intruded into her thoughts. Later, Maggie, too, learned to wait tables, but only long enough to work her way through college and earn her business degree.
But working and studying had left little time for a social life, and despite Emma’s dubious help, Maggie had rarely dated during college. The dates were even fewer and farther between after she began her career. Her job made up for it, she always told herself. Her work made her feel good, and she was good at it. She depended on herself, and no one else.
And Ryan Conner could go jump in a lake if he thought he had a right to criticize her for it, she thought defensively.
Maggie sat up and put the barely touched carton of yogurt down on the coffee table, leaving the cat to stretch up and sniff at it unhindered. Maggie rose and walked down the hall to her bedroom at the back of the house.
In contrast to the modern functional decor of the living room, Maggie’s bedroom, her private retreat, was traditional and romantic. A four-poster bed dominated the spacious and utterly feminine room decorated with white lace curtains and a white comforter. Maggie lay down across the cool white spread and tried to clear her mind of Ryan and the disappointing episode at the community center. She tried to force herself to concentrate on work, on the next week’s projects.
She closed her eyes and saw Ryan Conner’s soft smile.
“Daddy?”
Ryan hesitated, his fingers curved over the switch to his daughter’s bedside lamp. The book he had read aloud a chapter from—as per their usual evening ritual—lay closed on his lap. Brandy often fell asleep before he finished reading an entire chapter. Tonight she was awake. Wide-awake.
There was something about the way she spoke that caught his attention and made him freeze. She was worried about something.
“What is it, sweetie?” Ryan asked. Softly his fingers swept along her small, rounded cheekbone.
“Why don’t you like Maggie?” Brandy asked, her voice low in the stillness of her bedroom.
Snapping emerald eyes and rich auburn hair flashed into Ryan’s thoughts. And that scent that had surrounded her, like peaches ripe in a summer-hot grove, tempting and sweet.
He knew the answer to Brandy’s question. He knew exactly why he didn’t like Maggie Wells. He was afraid she might turn out to be too much like Delia, Brandy’s mother—who always seemed to have plenty of good intentions, but never the time to carry them out.
He’d approached the community center program with cautious optimism from the start. He knew Brandy could benefit enormously from the opportunity—but he wanted to be very certain that he didn’t set his little daughter up for a disappointing experience.
Still, in spite of all his concerns, he’d been attracted to Maggie at an immediate, undeniable, gut level. So attracted, that the careful wall he’d formed after his divorce had very nearly crumbled during their meeting.
“What gave you the idea that I didn’t like her?” Ryan asked, sidetracking to another question.
Brandy’s blue eyes stared back unwaveringly.
“I don’t know,” she answered simply. “I just didn’t think you did.”
Ryan laughed and ruffled his daughter’s hair with a careless brush of his hand. He leaned forward and kissed her cheek.
“I’m sure she’s a very nice lady,” Ryan told her. “You know what? I bet you’re going to get to meet lots of nice ladies at the community center, and you’ll get to choose one to be your very own special friend.”
“I want Maggie to be my special friend.” Brandy reached out and took her father’s hand. “Please.”
Ryan looked down at the small hand in his, then back up to the pleading expression in Brandy’s eyes. And he remembered the flash in Maggie’s gaze when he’d demanded to know why she wanted to be part of his daughter’s life.
She felt she had something to give, she’d said, and no one to give it to. She had no husband, no child of her own.
He couldn’t help but wonder why. Had she made work her whole life?
The spark in Maggie’s eyes when she’d talked about her job hadn’t passed Ryan by. He’d seen that kind of spark before. At the time, it had been walking out the door, leaving him to raise Brandy alone.
“Doesn’t Maggie want to be my friend?” Brandy asked. A crack broke through her voice on the last word.
“Oh, sweetheart.” Ryan leaned down and hugged his daughter. “I didn’t mean that. I just meant that you don’t have to make a decision right away. Mrs. Fletcher is going to introduce you to some other nice ladies, too.”
“But I don’t want anybody else,” Brandy persisted. “I want Maggie.”
“Why?” Ryan asked, genuinely surprised by Brandy’s insistence on Maggie Wells. After all, they’d spent only five minutes together. Ryan had hoped Brandy would forget all about her.
But apparently his daughter was having as much trouble clearing her mind of Maggie as he was. He’d been haunted all day by her heart-shaped face and luscious fall of red curls, and pained by the old memories she stirred, inside him.
“I like Maggie,” Brandy said softly. She chewed her bottom lip. “Doesn’t she like me?”
“Of course she likes you, sweetie,” Ryan assured her.
“Will you call Mrs. Fletcher and tell her I want Maggie?”
Ryan hesitated. Seconds passed in silence.
Too bad, Maggie had said to him coolly as she’d left the community center. You’ll never know, she’d added.
Never know what?
“Please, Daddy.”
