dunno,” Luke said, Mr. Innocent now.
“I need to talk to you,” Joe said, not wanting to explain the problem in front of Luke.
“All right.” Dr. Carter turned back to his son. “Luke, I have a very special chair that goes up and down when you press this little button. How ’bout I let you sit in it and take it up and down?”
“Can I really?”
“Sure.” She helped Luke into the chair and showed him the button. “But you have to promise that when Mary comes in to count your teeth and when I check them, you’ll leave the chair alone. Deal?”
She held out her palm. Luke slapped it with enthusiasm. “Deal!”
The chair was revving up and down when the dentist led Joe from the room.
“Don’t the kids wear out the chairs?” he said.
“Eventually, but it makes them happy to take them up and down.” She said it as if that was the only thing that mattered—making the children happy. “Besides, it’s impossible to keep them from playing with the chairs, kind of like telling them to be still or to stay out of the mud on a rainy day. So I cut a deal with them—they can play for a minute, get it out of their system, then they have to leave the chairs alone while we work.”
She led him down the hall and to the right. Joe found himself watching the muscles flex in those trim calves of hers as she walked, and he wished she’d take off that white coat so he could see what was beneath it. She opened a heavy wooden door to the right, then offered him a seat in front of her desk. The desk was old and solid, made of polished cherry, and he guessed it weighed a ton. Joe couldn’t help but admire it.
“They don’t make pieces like this these days,” he said, running a finger around the intricate trim work.
“I know. This was my father’s. In fact, almost all the furniture in here was his.” She stood beside a big leather swivel chair that seemed as if it would swallow her.
Joe glanced around the room, saw bookshelves overflowing with thick heavy texts, a dozen or so plants of all sizes and shapes that almost took over the room, and another glass cabinet with dozens of fairy figurines inside it.
“You’re really into this tooth-fairy thing, aren’t you?”
“My father was. He was a dentist, too, and he’s been collecting fairies since before I was born. He died last year.”
“Sorry,” Joe said. “I didn’t mean to bring up bad memories.”
She shrugged as if it didn’t matter. But Joe knew it did. The woman who’d been so animated in the other room with his son was quite different now. No mischievous smile waited on her lips, no twinkle in those amazing blue eyes. Joe wished he hadn’t taken her smile away.
“So.” She moved to the front of the desk, then leaned against it. “What’s wrong with Luke?”
Joe ran through the list in his head. Luke wouldn’t give up his teeth. In fact, the ones he had given up to the tooth fairy, he’d cried and begged to buy back within days of giving them up. He played dentist at school, tearing out Jenny’s tooth, and was in some kid’s mouth with a flashlight in the lunchroom earlier that day. He had a mother who’d left and probably wasn’t ever coming back. How much of that could Joe share with this woman who pulled quarters from behind little boys’ ears to make them smile?
“It can’t be that bad,” she offered, then reached a hand out to him.
Joe sat back in the chair. He felt her fingertips brush his chest above the pocket of the clean shirt he’d donned in the truck before he picked Luke up from school, and then she pulled a long yellow scarf from his shirt pocket. It seemed to take forever, and Joe was baffled by the whole procedure.
Being this close to the woman, having her touch him in such an inconsequential way, having her smile at him, then blush as if she’d embarrassed herself—it all baffled him.
Because it felt so good.
Time to go out on a date, he supposed, dismissing the idea just as quickly as he considered allowing another woman into his life. One had been more than enough.
And then he looked up at the woman with the yellow scarf in her small elegant hands, a flush of color in her cheeks.
Here, he thought with flashes of unease shooting through him, was a woman who just might be able to change his mind about that. Not that he wanted it to change. He certainly didn’t intend to let another woman get anywhere near his kids.
Samantha froze, like a mischievous kid caught red-handed, as Joe Morgan stood there, staring at her. He didn’t so much as blink, didn’t say anything. He looked bewildered at first, then impossibly stern.
“I…I’m so sorry,” she stammered, as heat flooded her cheeks. She explained as best she could. “Force of habit.”
“Habit?” the striking dark-haired man said.
She nodded and tried not to stumble over her words. “I do little tricks. To make the children smile. And…”
It had been sheer impulse. She’d seen him sitting there looking sad, so she’d done the first thing that popped into her head—pull a silk scarf from his shirt pocket. Except he was no scared little boy. He was a man. A very attractive man. And she’d just made a fool of herself.
“You looked…troubled,” she said, wondering if he’d felt anything at all when she touched him. She certainly had. Something like a little jolt of static electricity, only better. Something like magic, except Samantha wasn’t sure she believed in magic anymore. She suddenly felt foolish for all the years she had believed. It seemed so naive now.
“It’s been a difficult day,” he said.
“I’m sorry,” she said, thinking she’d like to know about his day, like to know if his had truly been nearly as bad as hers and whether he had any idea how to fix it. Maybe he could tell her how to fix hers, how to fix everything. He looked like a man who fixed things.
Samantha stared at him, at long legs encased in well-worn jeans, snug in all the right places, cowboy boots splattered with dried mud, but a clean shirt, the sleeves rolled up nearly to his elbows. He had the kind of all-over tan worn by a man who worked outside year-round, and the lean corded muscles in his arms indicated he did something physical and likely did it well.
He dusted off his jeans—maybe because he’d caught her staring—and sawdust went flying.
“Sorry. I came straight from work,” he said. “I’m a mess by this time of day.”
“No problem,” she assured him, fingering the shapeless white coat she wore. “I get messy, too. Which is why I live in these.”
She thought about taking off the ugly white coat, but decided that might be too obvious, and she’d never been obvious with a man.
“You must work outside,” she guessed. To her, that was a bold move.
“Yes. I’m a builder.”
He said it as if she might find something objectionable in that. She didn’t. He was obviously a strong man who was good with his hands, and he was gorgeous, in a rough-and-tumble sort of way. What was there for any woman to object to?
Samantha’s only problem was that she’d lost all track of the conversation and forgotten the reason he was here. His son. That was it. Did that mean he had a wife, too?
She checked as discreetly as possible and saw no ring on his left hand. Women did that these days, she’d found. Regularly. For some women it was an automatic action. Check the hand. No ring? No telltale pale band of skin on the ring finger? He wasn’t shy about giving out his home phone number? Didn’t find excuses why you shouldn’t call him at home? He was likely single.
Samantha hadn’t put any of those tactics into practice—until now—but