Mixed Messages. Linda Miller Lael

figured he probably brought a variety of women to the restaurant, and was inexplicably annoyed by the thought. She chose a Cajun plate, while Mark ordered a steak.

      “Making any progress with the letters?” he asked when they were alone again.

      Carly sighed. She’d probably be up until two or three in the morning, wading through them. “Let’s put it this way,” she answered, “I should be home working.”

      The wine arrived and Mark tasted the sample the steward poured, then nodded. The claret was poured and the steward walked away, leaving the bottle behind.

      Mark lifted his glass and touched it against Carly’s. “To workaholics everywhere,” he said.

      Carly took a sip of her wine and set the glass aside. The word “workaholic” had brought Reggie to mind, and she felt as though he were sitting at the table with them, an unwelcome third. “What’s the most important thing in your life?” she asked to distract herself.

      The waiter left their salads, then turned and walked away.

      “Things don’t mean much to me,” Mark responded, lifting his fork. “It’s people who matter. And the most important person in my life is my son, Nathan.”

      Even though she certainly wasn’t expecting anything to develop between herself and Mark, Carly was jarred by the mention of a child. “You’re not married, I hope,” she said, practically holding her breath.

      “No, I’m divorced, and Nathan lives in California, with his mother,” he said. There was, for just an instant, a look of pain in his eyes. This was quickly displaced by a mischievous sparkle. “Would it matter to you—if I were married, I mean?”

      Carly speared a cherry tomato somewhat vengefully. “Would it matter? Of course it would.”

      “A lot of women don’t care.”

      “I’m not a lot of women,” Carly responded, her tone resolute.

      He shrugged one shoulder. “There’s a shortage of marriageable men out there, I’m told. Aren’t you worried that your biological clock is ticking, and all that?”

      “Maybe in ten years I’ll be worried. Right now I’m interested in making some kind of life for myself.”

      “Which you couldn’t do in the Midwest?”

      “I wanted to do it here,” she said.

      Mark smiled. “Exactly what kind of life are you picturing?”

      Carly was beginning to feel as though she was being interviewed, but she didn’t mind. She understood how a reporter’s mind worked. “Mainly I want to write for a newspaper—not advice, but articles, like you do. And maybe I’ll buy myself a little house and a dog.”

      “Sounds fulfilling,” Mark replied.

      There was so little conviction in his voice that Carly peered across the table at him and demanded, “Just what did you mean by that?”

      He widened those guileless choirboy eyes of his and sat back on the bench as though he expected the salt shaker to detonate. “I was just thinking—well, it’s a shame that so few women want to have babies anymore.”

      “I didn’t say I didn’t want to have babies,” Carly pointed out. Her voice had risen, and she blushed to see that the people at the nearest table were looking at her. “I love babies,” she clarified in an angry whisper. “I plan to breast-feed and everything!”

      The waiter startled Carly by suddenly appearing at her elbow to deliver dinner, and Mark grinned at her reaction.

      She spoke in a peevish hiss. “Let’s just get off this topic of conversation, all right?”

      “All right,” Mark agreed. “Tell me, what made you start entering beauty pageants?”

      It wasn’t the subject Carly would have chosen, but she could live with it. “Not ‘what,’” she replied. “‘Who.’ It was my mother. She started entering me in contests when I was four and, except for a few years when I was in an awkward stage, she kept it up until I was old enough to go to college.”

      “And then you won the Miss United States title?”

      Carly nodded, smiling slightly as she recalled those exciting days. “You’d have thought Mom was the winner, she was so pleased. She called everybody we knew.”

      Mark was cutting his steak. “She must miss you a lot.”

      Carly bent her head, smoothing the napkin in her lap. “She died of cancer a couple of weeks after the pageant.”

      When Carly lifted a hand back to the table, Mark’s was waiting to enfold it. “I’m sorry,” he said quietly.

      His sympathy brought quick, stinging tears to her eyes. “It could have been worse,” Carly managed to say. “Everything happened almost instantaneously. She didn’t suffer much.”

      Mark only nodded, his eyes caressing Carly in a way that eased the pain of remembering.

      “How old is Nathan?” she asked, and the words came out a little awkwardly.

      Mark’s voice was hoarse when he answered. “He’s ten,” he replied, opening his wallet and taking out a photo.

      Nathan Holbrook was handsome, like his father, with brown hair and eyes, and he was dressed in a baseball uniform and was holding a bat, ready to swing.

      Carly smiled and handed the picture back. “It must be difficult living so far away from him,” she commented.

      Mark nodded, and Carly noticed that he averted his eyes for a moment.

      “Is something wrong?” she asked softly.

      “Nothing I want to trouble you with,” Mark responded, putting away his wallet. “Sure you don’t want to go take in a movie?”

      Carly thought of the pile of letters she had yet to read. She gave her head a regretful shake. “Maybe some other time. Right now I’m under a lot of pressure to show Allison and the powers-that-be that I can handle this job.”

      They finished their meal, then Mark settled the bill with a credit card. He held her hand as they walked to his car, which was parked in a private lot beneath the newspaper building.

      Barely fifteen minutes later, they were in front of Janet’s door. Mark bent his head and gave Carly a kiss that, for all its innocuousness, made her nerve endings vibrate.

      “Good night,” he murmured, while Carly was still trying to get her bearings. A moment after that, he disappeared into the elevator.

      “Well?” Janet demanded the second Carly let herself into the apartment.

      Carly smiled and shook her head. “It was love at first sight,” she responded sweetly. “We’re getting married tonight, flying to Rio tomorrow and starting our family the day after.”

      Janet bounded off the couch and followed Carly as she went through the bedroom and stood outside the bathroom door while she exchanged the jumpsuit for an oversize T-shirt. “Details!” she cried. “Give me details!”

      Carly came out of the bathroom, carrying the jumpsuit, and hung it back in the closet. “Mark and I are all wrong for each other,” she said.

      “How do you figure that?”

      Turning away from the closet, Carly shrugged. “The guy sends out mixed messages. He’s very attractive, but he’s bristly, too. And he’s got some very old-fashioned ideas about women.”

      Janet looked disappointed for a moment, then brightened. “If you’re not going to see Mark anymore, how about fixing me up with him?”

      Carly was surprised at the strong reaction the suggestion produced in her. She marched across Janet’s living room, took her briefcase from the breakfast bar and set it down on the Formica-topped