most of her visit to Falling Inn Bed, and Breakfast circumventing sexual advances, she wouldn’t have the time or the energy to observe the interplay between other couples.
Perhaps Sam was the best choice for the job. Sex didn’t factor into their relationship, so he wouldn’t be distracted by the sexual theme of the place.
“I think I will ask Sam to come with me,” she said, taking an inordinate amount of satisfaction when she wiped the smile from Lyn’s face by adding, “to observe.”
“Now you’re back to unrealistic expectations,” she scoffed. “I’ve spent enough time with you and Sam to safely guess he isn’t suffering from an inactive libido. If you take the guy to a sex club, he’s going to want to have sex.”
“Falling Inn Bed, and Breakfast is not a sex club—it’s a romance superclub—and Sam won’t want sex. He’s my friend.”
“Charles is my friend, too.”
Maggie scowled. “Observation, Lyn. Not practical application. I’m going home now.”
And not to ask Sam to have sex. Observation, only. Though, if Maggie were completely honest with herself, Sam wasn’t the one she should be worried about. Those late-night fantasies of hers didn’t need any encouragement.
But she’d already had enough honesty today, thank you.
2
TAP-TAP-TAP-TAP-TAP, pause, tap-tap.
The sounds vibrated from Sam Masters’s antiquated heater in a series of harsh taps that jarred the midnight quiet. Sam smiled. The crude, but familiar melody translated into a secret code. Though he never consciously hoped to hear it, he was always glad when he did.
Are you alone? Got time to talk?
He set down the mug of coffee he’d been nursing while reviewing a client’s investment portfolio and made his way into the living room. A miniature replica of a judge’s mallet hung by a leather loop from the side of the furnace heater.
Though Maggie always improvised with her own rendition of the Morse code he’d taught her when he was still in Boy Scouts, Sam adhered to the formal rules of the dots, dashes and spaces. Retrieving the mallet, he hammered out the word yes.
Tap-tap, tap-tap, pause, tap, pause, tap-tap-tap.
He waited.
Tap-tap. On my way.
Within seconds, Sam heard the tread of Maggie’s footsteps loping lightly down the bare wooden stairs. He opened the door to their shared hallway just as she stepped off the last riser.
“Hi.” Her bright-green gaze caught his, a welcoming smile clicking her expression to high beam. “Not too late, is it?”
“I was working.”
Chuckling, she swept past him and through the door he held open. “You always are.”
Though her laughter sounded silvery and light, Sam knew with one glance why she’d come for a visit.
Maggie had a problem.
Her gaze was a little too bright. Her creamy skin a shade too pale beneath the sprinkling of pale-gold freckles across her nose. Her smile rested easily on her pretty pink mouth, too easily. She seemed relieved to see him.
Throughout the years, Sam had experienced all sorts of Maggie melodrama. He’d survived nerves about dance recitals and ice-skating competitions. Worries about bum finances. Meltdowns about unfair grades. Angst about boyfriends. Way too much angst about boyfriends.
Sam recognized the symptoms, all right. She may sail into his living room with that breezy, devil-may-care attitude, but Maggie didn’t fool him for an instant.
As always, that tough-it-out veneer she wore over her vulnerability did crazy things to him, made him want to wrestle her troubles to the mat. And her, too.
As always, Maggie didn’t have a clue.
Sam pulled the door closed, before all the heat in his apartment could escape. Before Maggie could escape. She was his now. For a while, at least.
Though she was only of average height, her slim curves made her seem taller, almost lanky. The top of her red-gold head barely brushed his chin, and he was treated to a whiff of the scent he’d associated with Maggie for as long as he could remember, a scent that reminded him of orange blossoms.
There was a certain innocence about the fragrance that brought to mind a young Maggie, dabbing drops behind her ears from a girlish perfume bottle with ribbons. The years hadn’t tarnished that innocence, but had made it a unique part of the woman standing before him.
To ward off the winter cold, she wore a white robe over gray jersey long johns and a pair of Gumby slippers that had seen the better part of a year’s wear. Holding his glasses in place on the bridge of his nose, he noted that the green fuzz had been worn shiny in patches, and the protruding Gumby heads flopped limply with every step. Maggie didn’t seem to notice their sorry condition. Or care.
“I owe you a new pair,” he said.
“They’re comfy.”
“They’re falling apart.”
Giving Maggie a pair of cartoon character slippers was a tradition that began when Sam had been ten years old. He’d wanted to give a special Valentine to the young neighbor girl who’d been so instrumental in helping him make friends after his move to a new neighborhood.
The standard boxed fare had been too generic, and neither flowers nor candy had occurred to his fifth-grade brain. His mother had stepped in, deeming a pair of Bugs Bunny slippers—a character Maggie adored—perfect. She’d been right.
“Make yourself comfortable,” he said, more out of reflexive civility than necessity, since Maggie had already deposited a folded sheath of papers on his end table and was situating a steaming mug onto a coaster.
“What’s up?” he asked.
“Oh, nothing. Just wanted to say hi.”
Maggie up at midnight? A cup of what he presumed to be herbal tea? Did she really think she was fooling him?
“Let me grab my coffee.”
Sam nuked the dregs, parked his mug next to hers on the end table, and then settled himself in the recliner. Maggie, curled into a ball on the corner of his couch with her feet tucked neatly beneath her, watched him silently.
Even if he couldn’t read the symptoms, Sam would have known Maggie was troubled simply because she wasn’t chatting away about whatever was on her mind.
There was a high-strung sort of agitation about her that reminded him of the tense moments between a flash of summer lightning and the explosion of thunder.
“So how’s it going?” He attempted to get her started.
“Fine, and you? Make lots of money on the stock market today?”
“My
