Teresa Hill (5 page)

She opened her mouth to say something, then obviously thought better of it and closed it again. He watched her waffling back and forth on just what she was going to say, watched the silence make her more and more uncomfortable.

Finally she said, “I haven’t been in town that long.”

“It’s a friendly town,” Joe said.

“I’m sure it is.” She turned her wrist over, so she could see the time on that dainty gold watch of hers. “Oh, I’m sorry. I’m sure I’m keeping you from…something. Where’s Luke?”

“In the waiting room. I thought I’d let him sweat it out a minute before he makes his apology. And I should warn you—my daughter’s here, too.”

She hesitated, looking scared again. “You have a daughter?”

He nodded. “Dani. She’s four. She’s so jealous of Luke’s glow-in-the-dark toothbrush she can hardly stand it. I promised her we’d find her one somewhere.”

“Oh, no problem. I buy them by the case.” She put her hand into the big pockets of her white coat and pulled out a handful of stuff.

He saw scarves in three different colors, coins, thick tongue depressors and a set of plastic teeth. Picking them up, he turned the crank and they started dancing along the desktop.

Joe laughed, as he had this morning, while Samantha fished in the other pocket until she came up with two toothbrushes.

“Pink or purple?” she asked.

“Pink, definitely. What else have you got in those pockets?”

“Tricks of the trade,” she said. “Anything to make the kids smile.”

And then Joe simply couldn’t resist her anymore. Stepping close, tucking her hair behind her ear, then brushing his knuckles against the side of her face, he said, “Who makes you smile, Doc?”

Her eyes got so big and so blue, and she seemed to stop breathing all together. “No one,” she said softly. “Not for a long time.”

“I think it’s time someone did.” He brushed the pad of his thumb across her bottom lip.

She exhaled shakily, her breath skimming across his thumb. Joe caught her face between both hands. Ready to take his time, to savor the moment, because he hadn’t wanted to kiss a woman so much in a long, long time, he started at her eyes, kissing them softly, finding them still wet from her tears. The skin of her cheek was soft, and the tip of her nose was cold. He kissed all of those spots.

She relaxed a little against him. Then Joe lowered his mouth to hers and gently kissed her lips.

He wasn’t doing this because he’d come in here and found her crying or because he wanted to see her smile or because the loneliness radiated from her like light shining from the lamp in the corner. He was doing it because he had to see if this kiss was anywhere near as good as he imagined it would be.

It felt so good. Nothing had felt this good to him in the longest time. And he wanted to—

“Dad! Dani’s bugging me!” Luke bellowed, then came charging into the room, tripping over his own two feet just inside the door and not seeming to notice anything that was going on in the room. He righted himself and then proceeded to launch into his list of complaints. “I’m making a tower with the blocks and she keeps knocking it down. And then I tried to make her leave me alone and she started to cry!”

Joe took his time stepping away from Samantha, and he had to remind himself that he loved his son very much, even if the little urchin had the manners of a savage. Try as he might, he couldn’t seem to teach Luke to knock on a closed door, to go find someone—instead of yelling—when he wanted to talk to the person or to respect anyone’s privacy.

Samantha looked mortified.

“Will you come’n make her leave me alone, Dad? Please?”

“Luke, that’s a door,” Joe said, pointing it out to his son, in case Luke missed it. “It’s the door to Dr. Carter’s office, and it was closed. What does that mean you should do?”

“But Dani was bugging me!”

“Luke,” he warned.

“Knock, okay? I should knock. Sorry.”

“Don’t tell me. Tell her.” He nodded toward Samantha. “And while you’re at it—” he dug into his pocket and came up with the pretty fairy “—give her this and see if you can explain what you did and why. I’ll go find your sister and deal with her.”

“’Kay,” Luke said miserably, sighing as he took the fairy into his hand.

“Dani and I’ll be waiting out front,” he said, then allowed himself one more look at Samantha. Her cheeks were flushed.

Joe winked at her, which had soft color flooding her cheeks once again and making her look even more kissable than ever.

As he turned to go, he realized she still hadn’t told him who Abbie was or why she missed the little girl so much. And he still hadn’t managed to make Samantha smile.

Samantha’s head was spinning, for reasons she simply couldn’t understand.

All he’d done was kiss her. It wasn’t as though she’d never been kissed. But then, she’d never been kissed by Joe Morgan. Could it make that much difference which man did the kissing?

Perplexed, her spinning head making her dizzy, Samantha concentrated on Luke Morgan, cute as ever and looking absolutely miserable as he stood in front of her, clutching her favorite fairy figurine to his chest.

He didn’t say anything for the longest time, just scuffed one of his sneakers against the other and sighed big heavy sighs. Finally he held the fairy out to her.

“I took it,” he said. “Yesterday, when I was here. But I didn’t mean to keep it. Honest, I didn’t. I just had to take it home for a little while.”

“Why, Luke?”

“I had to see if it was the one, if she was the fairy in the book, and she was. That’s all I had to see. I didn’t hurt her a bit. An’ I’m real sorry I took her, ’cause my dad’s so mad at me.”

“Luke?” He was so sweet and so worried she had to fight not to smile. “Is that why you’re sorry? Because your dad found out what you did and he got mad?”

Luke puzzled over that for a moment, as if it might be a trick question. “Well,” he admitted, “I am sorry he found out. And that he’s mad. But…I’m not s’pposed to take things that don’t belong to me. Is that what I’m s’pposed to be sorry about?”

Samantha couldn’t help it. She smiled, then started to laugh, then felt all the tension leave her body. “I think you know what you did wrong, Luke.”

“I really am sorry,” he said. “I liked it here and I liked you. Are you really mad at me?”

“I think I can forgive you,” she said.

“And you’ll still gimme my wish?” he asked earnestly.

“Wish?”

“You don’t have to pretend with me,” he whispered, then looked around as if to see if anyone was listening. “I know who you are.”

“You do?”

“Yeah. I recognized you from when you came to my school that day in your real clothes.”

“Real clothes?” Oh, no. Samantha knew what was coming next.

“You’re the tooth fairy! I know ’cause you look just like the one in my magic book. An’ I saw you do the magic, too! Tell me you’re not really mad. Tell me you’re still gonna gimme my wish.”

Samantha got down on her knees in front of him and told herself not to ask. It was none of her business, and he wasn’t her kid. Much as she might wish for someone just like him in her life, there was no one. And she’d promised herself she’d never fall in love with another man’s kids again.

It was too much of a risk. If she came to love Luke, as she’d loved Abbie and Sarah, then lost him, she simply wouldn’t survive it this time.

“Please,” said the precious little boy, near tears now.

Bracing herself, she ignored the whole argument about her magical powers and asked, “What do you want, Luke?”

“My mom,” he said solemnly. “I want her to come back.”

Samantha stared at him, unable to say anything.

“Can you do it?” Luke asked with absolute sincerity. “I know you can. You have to, ’cause nobody else would.”

Samantha shook her head, trying to clear it so she could think. “What do you mean, no one else would?”

“Santa didn’t do it. And I wished on my birthday candles, but that didn’t work. I wished on a star and a four-leaf clover, but that didn’t work, either. But I didn’t know about you, then. I didn’t understand that the magic is real. And then I saw you do it, and I knew you were the one. I knew you could bring my mom back for me. So will you?”

“Luke,” she began, then looked around in hopes that Joe might come back. Honestly, this wasn’t anything for her to handle. This was Joe’s son, Joe’s problem. It was none of her business.

“I know I don’t have all the teeth yet, but I’m working on it. I thought a hundred would do it.”

“A hundred!” She nearly shrieked. “A hundred baby teeth?”

Luke nodded solemnly, and Samantha had to sit down. She took one of the smaller chairs pulled to the front of her desk, and Luke sat down in the other, as if they were going to negotiate some business between them here in Samantha’s office.

“Is a hundred enough?” Luke asked. “I only have six now, but I’ve got two loose teeth. See?” He opened up his mouth and wiggled two of his teeth with his tongue. “And I know three other kids in my class who have loose teeth, too. One of ’em’s already promised me his for fifty cents and a really cool T-rex sticker I got at the zoo.”

Samantha just sat there with her mouth hanging open, not knowing how to begin to explain this to him.

“T-rex is a dinosaur,” Luke explained.

“Oh, Luke,” Samantha said, then simply didn’t know what to add.

Luke must have known something was wrong, because he looked near tears again. “You’re not gonna do it, are you?”

“No. I mean, I’m not refusing to do it. I just… I have to talk to your father, Luke.”

“I already asked him to bring her back, and he wouldn’t.”

“He wouldn’t? Or he couldn’t? It’s not the same thing, Luke.”

The little boy was crying now. Samantha got down on her knees in front of him and pulled him into her arms. Skinny little arms crept around her neck, and his tears soaked into her collar as he hung on for dear life, much in the same way she’d hung on to Joe earlier.

She couldn’t help but think of Abbie then. Somewhere, nearly three thousand miles away, Abbie was crying, too, because she loved Samantha like a mother, and Samantha was gone. Samantha worried that there wasn’t anybody to hold Abbie when she cried, so she made her arms even tighter around Luke.

Two kids, she thought. Two mothers gone.

She wouldn’t judge Luke’s mother too harshly, not without hearing from the woman herself about what happened. Because Samantha knew what it was like to have a child wrenched away.

Surely there was nothing worse in the world.

She wondered what sort of explanation Richard had given his girls for her leaving, wondered if he’d made her out to be the bad guy in all of this. She had certainly tried not to make him the villain in front of the girls, because he and his new wife were all the girls had left.

And now Samantha wondered what had happened between Joe Morgan and his wife. She remembered when she and Joe had talked in her office yesterday.

“What does Luke want?”
she’d asked him.
“Something that’s not within your power to give?”

Still, he hadn’t said whether he couldn’t bring Luke’s mother back or whether he didn’t want to. There was a difference. Samantha wondered why Luke’s mother might refuse to come home; that was a possibility, too, that his mother simply wouldn’t come home. And she wondered why a kid as wonderful as Luke had to be standing here in Samantha’s arms sobbing his little heart out and plotting and scheming to get his hands on a hundred baby teeth to get his mother back.

Life was so strange, she thought. And so very sad.

But it shouldn’t be. Especially not for little children like Luke.

J
oe waited for five minutes while Dani danced around the waiting room. In the space of those five minutes, she’d already asked him ten times about the glow-in-the-dark toothbrush. She was the most impatient creature he’d ever encountered, even more impatient than his ex-wife. And that, Joe knew, was saying something.

He was impatient to know what was going on between Luke and Samantha, to know whether she was mad at Joe about that kiss, now that she’d had a chance to think about it.

He wondered exactly what had possessed him to do something so impulsive, some thing so dangerous, as kissing a woman the way he had.

He’d promised himself that he would keep his relationships with women simple and straightforward from now on. He had his kids to think about, after all. Nobody got to hurt his kids again.

But Samantha Carter wasn’t the kind of woman he could keep away from his kids, not if he was involved with her, which he couldn’t be.

Still, he hadn’t been able to resist trying to comfort her when she cried, hadn’t been able to keep his lips off hers when she’d been so sad and sweet, so tempting.

Joe dropped his head into his hands.

“What’s wrong, Daddy?”

Joe winced at the tone of his daughter’s words. “Nothing, sweetie. Let’s go find Luke,” he said.

“And my toof-bwush?”

“Of course. Your toothbrush.”

“She really has a pink one for me?”

“Yes, she does.”

“Wow!” Dani said, pulling open the door and taking off at a run before Joe could stop her.

“Dani? Wait for me. You don’t even know where you’re going.” He took off after her.

“I found the star room!” she exclaimed.

Sure enough, she had. The blue room with the glittering stars in the painted sky was right there. Joe reached inside and flicked on the light, which bounced off the stars, setting them off and making them seem to twinkle in a way Joe couldn’t understand at all.

“Wow!” Dani said again, her eyes big now. “Luke said it was magic, and it is.”

It had to be glitter, Joe thought. A woman who walked around with pockets full of chattering teeth would glue glitter to her ceiling to please the children reclining in the dental chair.

“Come on, Dani. We need to find Luke.”

She skipped down the hall, singing as she went, her hair bouncing behind her. The child had more energy than any seven human beings put together. Like that silly pink bunny on the battery commercials, she kept going and going and going.

“To the right, Dani,” he said, directing her to the office. She pushed her way inside without a knock or a word to the owner of said office. Par for the course, Joe decided. Privacy was a concept totally unknown to his children.

“Luke’s crying,” Dani announced as Joe walked through the open door of Samantha’s office.

Frowning, he saw that Luke had indeed been crying. Samantha had, as well, but he couldn’t tell if it had been fifteen minutes ago, when Joe was here holding her, or more recently, when she was talking to Luke.

What had happened? He had very little patience or even the ability to reason when it came to his kids getting hurt. He was all they had now, and he shot her a burning look.

“Are you going to help me?” Luke cried to Samantha.

“Luke…I have to talk to your father first.”

Luke glared at her, but his lower lip was trembling, diminishing the effect.

“You’re right. We need to talk,” Joe said, flashing back to all the times in the past thirteen months he’d seen his son in tears over another woman, a woman who had all but torn out his heart.

He tried to calm down and not glare at Samantha, knowing he was madder than he had a right to be, considering he had no idea what had gone on in this room.

She wouldn’t hurt his son, he told himself. He would have sworn he knew the kind of woman she was and that she wouldn’t hurt Luke. Of course, he never would have believed Elena would walk out on his kids, either.

Maybe he just didn’t know anything when it came to women. That was a possibility, Joe decided. That was reason enough to stay away from them, or at least to keep them away from his kids.

Looking at Luke, he just couldn’t believe this was happening. Luke was devastated. What in the world had gone on in here?

“Do you really have a toof-bwush for me?” Dani jumped in.

Samantha turned to his daughter and smiled. “If you’re Dani, I do. Pink?”

Dani nodded happily. When Samantha pulled the prize pink brush from her pocket, she took it and asked, “Does it really glow?”

“Yes, it does.”

“I gotta test it.” Dani’s eyes scanned the room, then settled on the door in the corner, which most likely led to a closet. She and Luke had played and played in one of the closets at the house the night before with Luke’s toothbrush.

“Dani, wait a minute,” Joe said, too harshly. “You can’t just go into someone else’s closet.”

“Why not?” She pouted.

Joe winced. He was too worried about Luke to get into it with Dani right now.

“We need to talk later,” Samantha said. When he turned to face her, she mouthed to him, “Without the children.”

Joe nodded, but wondered if he could wait that long. He wanted some answers. Now.

“I’ll call you tonight,” she said.

He took Dani by the hand, despite her protests about not being ready to go. Luke threw one more pleading look in Samantha’s direction, then turned and left.

Joe thought Samantha looked as if she was going to cry again, and he wanted to hit something. What in the world had she said to Luke?

Luke didn’t say anything on the way home. He didn’t eat his dinner, raced through his homework, didn’t even want to play Nintendo.

Joe was absolutely baffled, and if Samantha Carter didn’t call him soon, he was going to break something in two. Maybe a nice piece of crystal, he thought, the stuff his wife had paid a fortune for. She’d been sure they’d have a need for such frivolous extravagances eventually. They never had.

Well, maybe she did now, but she hadn’t bothered to pack the stuff she’d picked out when she was living with him. She’d left behind a lot, including two frightened little children.

One of those children was hiding in the linen closet with her pink toothbrush, which did indeed glow in the dark. The other was nowhere to be found. Joe searched the whole house, calling out Luke’s name as he went. He was starting to get really worried when Dani stuck her head out of the closet and yelled, “He’s in the closet in his room, Daddy!”

He stuck his head in the door. “You could have told me before I searched the entire house, Dani.”

“I thought you’d find him,” she said innocently. Then added gleefully, “Is Luke in trouble?”

“I’ll let you know once I find him,” Joe said.

Joe headed upstairs, walked into Luke’s room, then knocked on the closet door.

“Who is it?” a muffled voice called out.

“Your father. Can I come in? Please?”

The door opened. Joe got down on his knees and found Luke hiding in a tangle of dirty clothes that somehow never made it to the clothes hamper. They lived here in Luke’s closet until he had nothing to wear, and Joe finally came to see why.

Luke had made a nest of the clothes, hunkering down inside the pile clutching his flashlight and a jar.

“Can I sit there?” Joe indicated a spot to his son’s right.

Luke shrugged and said, “’Kay.”

Joe sat. “Want to tell me what’s wrong?”

“Uh-uh.”

Joe saw that Luke had the jelly jar with the baby teeth in it. “Pretty impressive collection,” he said, taking the jar from Luke’s hands.

Luke grabbed it back. “It’s mine.”

“Sorry.” Joe decided to back off. “Luke, I wish you’d tell me what’s wrong. I might be able to help.”

“You won’t,” Luke said.

Joe leaned down so he could look his son in the eye. “Hey, partner. I would do anything in the world for you. Don’t you know that?”

Luke’s bottom lip started to quiver. His whole face puckered, his little nose scrunched up like a cat’s, and he began to sob. Joe pulled his son into his arms and for the second time that day, let someone cry all over his favorite shirt for reasons he didn’t understand and wasn’t likely to hear.

He’d never really found out what had upset Samantha, either, he remembered.

Samantha had Luke’s address in her patient file at the office, and she copied that down before she left. She went to her house, but was too nervous to stay there. She expected an angry phone call from Richard after the conversation she had with Abbie today, and she wasn’t up to dealing with Richard tonight. She felt too fragile, her feelings rubbed raw, all the old hurts exposed.

Looking at Joe’s little girl had taken her back to another time, when Abbie was Luke’s age and Sarah had been so much like Dani. She’d ached to hold Joe’s daughter close, but knew he wouldn’t have allowed it this evening.

Joe had been angry when he found Luke crying in Samantha’s office, and there simply hadn’t been a way to explain quickly or privately what Luke wanted. So she decided she’d have to go and see him tonight. He had a right to know what was going on with Luke. She couldn’t leave him totally unaware of the fact that his kid was going to try to collect one hundred baby teeth in a jar and trade them for a mother.

In the car she took out her map, because she still didn’t know a lot about the city, and drove for about three miles before she found Joe’s house. It was in an older neighborhood, a narrow but deep two-story house with all sorts of bushes and big trees, toys scattered here and there, a pretty swing on the porch. It looked lived-in, Samantha decided. She liked it, just as she liked Joe and Luke and Dani.

Getting out of the car, she studied the front of the house and found the bedrooms dark, but lights on downstairs. That was good. She wanted to wait until the kids were asleep so she and Joe could talk privately.

Samantha hadn’t quite decided what she was going to say to him. Walking to the door, she ignored the doorbell and knocked quietly, instead. No one answered, and she knocked again, more forcefully this time.

“Coming,” she heard Joe call.

Then the door swung open and he stood there, his hair wet, smelling all clean and new. When he propped one of his arms against the door frame and leaned into it, the light from the porch fell across his handsome face, and the sight made her mouth go dry. She forgot everything she’d said about needing to keep her distance from this man, particularly about staying out of his arms.

“I probably shouldn’t have come here,” she said stupidly.

Probably?
she mused.
As if there was any question?

He reached out and snagged her arm. “Well, you’re here, Doc, and you’re going to tell me what had my son so upset this evening.”

“He wouldn’t tell you?” she asked, letting him pull her inside and shut the door behind her.

“No. He hid in his closet with that jar of teeth he’s collecting and cried until bedtime. He didn’t tell me a thing, but you will.”

Samantha stepped away from him and found her back pressed against the wall. Joe protecting his children was something to behold. Obviously no one was going to mess with his kids without hearing about it from him. It only made her like him more.

“That’s why I came over here,” she said. “To tell you.”

He folded his arms across his chest, totally oblivious to the effect that had on her. Right then he was totally focused on his son.

Good, Samantha thought. She would focus on Luke, as well. After all, that was why she was here.

“Could we sit down?” she said, thinking she might put some distance between him and her, that the distance might somehow diminish the power he had over her.

He gave her a look that said she was pushing her luck by stalling this way, but stepped away and nodded toward the sofa. It was a buttery soft leather, expensive, and not what she would have expected from a man like him. She would have thought his tastes ran to simpler things.

Glancing around the room, she saw it was done with equally expensive taste, the effect of its quality pieces, obviously chosen with the help of a decorator, softened somewhat by the tiny shoes piled in the corner by the door, the coats thrown across the big leather chair in the corner, the toys scattered here and there throughout the room.

Samantha sat on one end of the sofa and ran her hand along the arm.

“My wife,” Joe said. “She liked expensive things.”

“Oh,” Samantha said softly.
“Liked?”

“Hmm?”

“You said
liked.
Not
likes.
Does she still like expensive things? Or is she…”

“I wouldn’t know what she likes anymore. I haven’t seen her in thirteen months. Did Luke talk to you about his mother?”

“A little.” This was going to be more difficult than Samantha realized, and she was nervous. “I know this isn’t any of my business, but…why did Luke’s mother go away?”

“Because deep down inside, where it really matters, she’s selfish and immature, and being a mother to two little kids was just too hard for her. It wasn’t fun anymore, not when it called for putting the happiness and the needs of two little children ahead of her own.”

His tone was dead even as he said it, although from the tension she saw come into his shoulders and the hard line of his jaw, she suspected Joe Morgan was bitterly angry about what he’d just told her.

Selfish? she thought. Immature? How did he ever get tangled up with a woman like that?

If she truly was a woman like that. Samantha didn’t know that for sure. She barely knew this man, she reminded herself. She couldn’t afford to take every word he said as gospel. She couldn’t give any man’s word that much credibility, not ever again.

“I’m sorry,” she said. “I know it’s none of my business, but—”

“It’s all right. And it’s not all her fault. I married her. I had children with her, without ever seeing what she was truly like. It’s my fault, too.”

“You’re not the one who ran out on your kids,” she pointed out.