The Daddy Deal. Kathleen O'Brien

narrowed his eyes thoughtfully and took another slow swallow of champagne. He held her gaze so long she began to wish she hadn’t asked. Perhaps he thought she was overstepping the bounds of their extremely short acquaintance. He couldn’t understand, couldn’t even know, that she felt strangely as if she’d known him a long, long time. She couldn’t even really understand it herself.

      Finally he smiled. “If I said I came here to see you, you probably wouldn’t believe it; would you?”

      She grinned and shook her head. “I think that line only works after three bottles.”

      “I was afraid of that.” He spread his hands, palms up, surrendering the notion. “Actually, I’m in Tampa because—” he paused “—because I have family here.”

      “Not a wife, though?” She could hardly believe her audacity. But it seemed, in her champagne logic, to be better dealt with now than later.

      He shook his head. “Not a wife.”

      “Or a girlfriend?”

      He shook his head again, and a reluctant smile crooked his mouth appealingly. “Not even female.”

      “Good.” She relaxed as if she had settled a question of major philosophical importance. “Then you don’t have to leave.”

      “No. I’m free to indulge my own pleasure tonight.” He picked up his glass and swirled the liquid in it, as if admiring the way the bubbles burst golden under the electric starlight. “And it would please me very much to spend the evening with you.” He glanced up. “Assuming, of course, that you’re equally free.”

      She waved her hand toward the exit through which Clarke had so recently slipped. “Well, as you can see, I have no date—”

      “And no one waiting at home, wondering where you are?”

      She shook her head. “The only male at my house is two years old, and he’d better not be wondering anything. He’d better be sound asleep.” She raised her chin slightly. “Justin is my son.”

      This, too, seemed like something she needed to make clear from the outset. A lot of men remembered they had urgent appointments elsewhere the minute they learned she had a child. She watched Taylor’s handsome face carefully, looking for the familiar signs of shock, disappointment or disapproval. A son, but no husband...

      His expression was hard to read. He didn’t look threatened, and he certainly didn’t exhibit any moral indignation. But he did look intensely interested, thoughtful, somehow, as if he were trying to assemble a picture that wouldn’t quite come together for him. That was all right, she decided. A little mystery did more to enhance a woman’s appeal than a boatload of diamonds. And she did want to appeal to him. She wanted it with a raw intensity that was growing stronger by the minute.

      “Tell me,” he said finally, his green eyes quizzical, “when you said you were glad you hadn’t married Westover, was that just an academic observation? Or had you really considered it?”

      “Considered it?” She shook her head again, as if she could hardly believe the truth herself. “I was his fiancée for almost two years.” Looking down at her now-unadorned left hand, she sighed. “Of course, I was out of the country for one of those years, so it’s only half as stupid as it sounds.”

      “Why?”

      “I don’t know, really. I’ve asked myself that a hundred times.” She gazed toward the door, where she had last seen Clarke. “I guess it’s because, though you’d never know it from tonight’s performance, he can charm the petals off a rose when he wants to. And because I was lonely—”

      She stopped, something in his expression suddenly warning her that she was answering the wrong question. She flushed. “Oh...you mean why was I out of the country for a year?”

      He nodded. “You have to admit it’s...different. Your average, hot-blooded American woman, upon becoming engaged, doesn’t just grab her passport and emigrate.”

      “Well, I was already committed to going overseas before Clarke asked me to marry him,” she explained rather heatedly, as if he had accused her of possessing a tepid nature. Of being passionless. “People were counting on me. I’m a nurse, and I was part of a volunteer medical team our hospital sponsored. The country we were sent to was being torn apart by civil war.”

      She leaned forward, squeezing her hands together, trying to make him feel the urgency of her obligation. It wasn’t fair for him to judge her. She wasn’t a cold woman, though Clarke had used that argument against her frequently. She wasn’t. “People were dying.”

      “Well, then, of course you had to go,” he said, running his fingers lightly over her whitened knuckles, his smile reassuring. “And if Clarke Westover had been half a man, he would have packed up his fax machine and gone with you.”

      She tried to smile back, but foolish tears were pooling along her bottom lids, and she had to look away, afraid that he would see them. She wasn’t sure why she suddenly felt like crying. Perhaps the memories of that desperate, blood-soaked year were too close. Or perhaps it was because no one had looked at her like that in a long time, with sympathy and understanding and... amazingly, there was admiration, too.... No, not in a very long time.

      Or maybe it was just the champagne. Get a grip, she told herself. If you turn into one of those dismal, weepy drunks, this white knight of yours will disappear faster than you can say spifflicated.

      “What’s wrong?” Taylor’s hand settled over hers, cupping her tense fingers in his cool, soothing palm. “Is it about Clarke?”

      “No. No, I’m glad he’s gone.” Without looking at him, she shook her head. She didn’t trust herself to try to explain. She had forgotten how drinking lowered her defenses—or perhaps she had just forgotten how completely she had begun to rely on those defenses to get her through.

      “Then what is it?” His voice was low and warm. She could just barely hear it over the sound of violins as the conductor waved the orchestra into a plaintive version of “For All We Know”. “Tell me.”

      Again she shook her head, appalled at how tempting it was to think about giving in, breaking down, handing her too-heavy heart to this man who seemed so strong, so thoroughly capable of taking care of it. She felt him stroking the back of her hand, his fingers sensitive and sure, and she had to bite her lips together, for fear the words would come tumbling out—private, mortifying little words that could only shame her. Words like lonely. Empty. Frightened.

      “Nothing,” she said tightly. “It’s nothing.”

      For a moment he was silent. And then she sensed him rising.

      “Come with me,” he said, holding out his hand.

      She finally looked up slowly, from the lean, ridged pads of his palm up to where the golden-tanned skin of his wrist disappeared into the snowy cuff of his dress shirt. “Where?”

      “We’re going to dance,” he said, curving his fingers to beckon her toward him. “I think they’re playing our song.”

      At first, she didn’t move. She looked up the long creases of the black tuxedo sleeve, up to where he towered over her. And she realized, with a sudden shivering heat at the base of her spine, that she found Taylor so attractive it terrified her. She hadn’t thought about men that way in a long, long time. Not even Clarke—although she had certainly tried to. When Clarke had kissed her, she’d found it difficult to keep her mind off other things, like the laundry or how she was going to pay the electricity bill next month. Ironic, wasn’t it? Her fiancé’s kisses had left her completely unmoved, yet the thought of dancing with this stranger made her knees go hopelessly warm and mushy.

      She couldn’t stop studying him, though she wondered if she was taking too long to answer. She suspected that, in her muzzy mental state, time had begun to lose its firm contours like an overused rubber band.

      What was it about him that melted her from the