“What do you mean you didn’t have it? Don’t tell me you chickened out?”
Mara’s voice was sharp with what was fast working into a sense of outrage. Cari tried to nip that in the bud.
“No, Mara, I did not chicken out. I was there with bells on. And I waited for quite some time. But then …” She sighed. This really wasn’t all that easy to explain. “Well, I kind of went off with the wrong man.”
“What?” There was still an edge to Mara’s voice. “How did you do that, exactly?”
“Believe me, it was not that hard. Not when he came up carrying a red rose, just like you told me to do for Randy, and he seemed to call me by my name and … and …” She sighed. “It’s kind of hard to explain. Listen, I’ve got the lunch shift. I’ll swing by on my way to work. We’ll talk.”
“I guess. Okay.”
Mara sounded grumpy. Cari knew she was disappointed. She thought she’d planned the perfect date for a good friend and it had all gone wrong. Who wouldn’t be disappointed? And Mara had been so excited. She groaned internally. But she would take care of things when she stopped by her friend’s house. Face-to-face it might actually be possible to give her a better picture of exactly what had happened.
“In the meantime, uh, do you have Randy’s number?”
She was tempted to put it off for a while, but she steeled herself and called the man. Once she had him on the phone and explained who she was, he reacted well. Instead of demanding an explanation, he was apologetic that he’d been a little late.
Which only made her feel more guilty. It was hard to explain why she’d dumped him for some suave Italian guy. There was no good excuse for it, actually. One look into Max’s deep dark eyes had mesmerized her and she’d been ready to follow him anywhere. But how could she tell Randy that?
“Well, it was certainly an interesting evening,” he said. “I haven’t had many like that.”
He sounded just as likable as Mara had said. She was impressed that he didn’t seem at all disgruntled. She had a quick flashback to how her husband, Brian, would have reacted to what had happened, and the memory of his volatile temper made her cringe.
“Did you wait for long?”
“Only for an hour or so.” He chuckled. “Actually, I met the woman who was supposed to be dating the man you ran off with.”
“Ran off with” seemed a bit harsh, but she let it go. After all, the man deserved a little dig here and there, didn’t he? He’d paid his dues.
“Oh. C.J.?”
“Celinia Jade. Do you know her?”
“No, I don’t, but Max told me something about her.”
“Well, she’s somethin’ else.”
His voice conveyed a sense of awe. Cari tensed a bit.
“Is she?”
“Oh, yeah. She’s dynamite.”
For some reason, that didn’t make her smile. She chewed on her lip and wondered if Max was going to be as impressed with the woman once they got together. But what did that matter, anyway? Grimacing, she avoided the impulse to slap herself.
“We were both wandering around with red roses,” Randy went on. “So we started talking. It didn’t take us long to figure out what must have happened. So we hung out for a while, sort of commiserated, so to speak.” He chuckled again. “She had some funny stories to tell. That passed the time for a while. But when y’all didn’t come back, we called it a night and headed home.”
She nodded. It sounded like he’d enjoyed the evening with C.J. as much as he might have with her. Maybe more. She frowned at the trend in her own thoughts.
“So it wasn’t a total waste,” she said quickly.
“Oh, no, not at all.”
“Well, would you like to try it again tonight?” she said, knowing she pretty much had to suggest it. “I sort of promised Mara I would.”
“I guess we both promised Mara, didn’t we?”
“She can be persuasive.”
“Oh, yes.” He chuckled again. He seemed a happy sort. “Let’s do it,” he agreed. “Only this time, why don’t I pick you up at your place? I’m not sure that red rose thing works very well.”
She hesitated. The rationale for meeting at the club had been to avoid letting a strange man know where she lived. She was wary these days. She didn’t want to risk any man getting the upper hand in a relationship. But he seemed so genuinely nice, she decided it wouldn’t hurt to give him her address.
Maybe all would go great. Maybe she and Randy would get along so well, the crazy night with Max would be forgotten, a relic of history, a strange interlude in what she was hoping to turn into a sensible, placid life. Maybe.
Max was restless. He’d spent the afternoon hovering over the nanny, second-guessing everything she did. She’d snapped at him once, and he’d almost fired her. But he’d quickly realized that he had no replacement lined up. If she left, he would be on his own. And what he knew about taking care of babies could be blurted out in one quick epithet.
Tito was no help. Every time the baby cried, he stuffed cotton in his ears and went out on the hotel room balcony, plunked himself down into a plastic chair and tried to sleep. But Max couldn’t sleep. His existence was caught up in this baby for now, and that was all he could think about.
That, and Cari Christensen. She was the one person he knew who could help solve a lot of his problems. But he had to forget about her.
He’d come to Dallas with two clear goals in mind. First, he’d wanted to find Sheila and discover if the baby she claimed she had was really Gino’s. That was pretty much in the works. He had no idea where Sheila was, but when you came right down to it, that didn’t matter. He had the baby. And he would soon know the truth about the baby’s parentage.
He’d never been a baby person, never been around the little things. And he hadn’t expected to feel much of anything for this one. Babies were nothing but potential people—little blobs of flesh and noise. Puppies had more personality.
But the funny thing was, he’d felt something of an instant connection when he’d seen baby Jamie. One look at that little face had torn a hole in his heart. He was as sure of this as anything—this baby was his brother’s.
When word had come that Gino had died in the crash of the plane he was testing out, Max had felt his world tilt on its axis. His big brother had been his guiding star all his life. For a long time, he’d thought he might never feel joy again.
But he’d had to suppress any overt mourning, because his mother’s despair had been so deep and so complete it had taken all his effort to pull her out of what he was afraid could have developed into a suicidal impulse at any moment. And now, to think he might be able to bring her Gino’s baby—the thought took his breath away. He couldn’t allow himself to get too invested in this until the tests proved the connection. But he was pretty sure what the results would be.
His other goal had been to find a way to wrest the Triple M Ranch from the daughter of his mother’s old rival. That wasn’t going so well. But he hadn’t really concentrated on it as yet, so there was plenty of time to figure out ways to succeed there, too. He’d contacted Celinia Jade, or C.J. as he preferred to call her—and she didn’t seem to mind—who came across as something of an airhead at first. But in no time at all, he’d noticed a sharp turn of mind that sent up warning flags. The woman might talk like she had nothing in her mind but fluff, but underneath there was a steely sense of purpose. She knew what she wanted, and she wasn’t going to be easy to snow. He might have more trouble there than he’d anticipated.
They