Secret Baby Santos

Turn around, he prayed silently, anxious to see if the face matched the body.

And then she did turn around.

He forgot to breathe as he stared at her. The heartshaped face absolutely went with the body. Porcelain skin, upturned rosy lips, large expressive moss-green eyes that slowly lifted and looked at him.

When their eyes met, she went still. Her skin paled as she stared back.

She recognizes me, he thought with smug confidence, then flashed the smile that had graced more than a few celebrity sports pages and conquered even the most resistant female.

“Hi,” he said with smooth charm. She seemed immobilized, and he took that as a positive sign. “I’m Nick Santos.”

Her eyes widened at his introduction, then her lips moved, but no sound came out. Without warning, she whirled and ran smack dab into the tower of green beans.

The tower crumbled with a loud clatter. The woman went down with it; cans spilled over her, then rolled across the aisle in every direction.

Geez, he’d had all kinds of reactions from women, but never one quite like this.

Dismayed, Nick set his groceries down and knelt beside her. “Are you all right?’

She nodded, but refused to look at him, just waved him off. When he took hold of her shoulders to pull her up, she jumped in his hands as if he’d burned her.

“Maggie! Are you all right?”

George Kromby, the store manager and former high school classmate of Nick’s, came running down the aisle, his white apron flapping like wings around his short, round body.

She glanced up sharply, and the look on her flushed face, one of utter despair and complete terror, baffled Nick. Certainly she wasn’t afraid of him, was she? He didn’t even know the woman.

Or did he?

Maggie...Maggie...

There suddenly seemed something vaguely familiar about her, though he couldn’t pinpoint what it was. The scent of her perfume and the feel of warm silk under his hands was making it difficult to concentrate.

“Maggie, are you hurt?” George knelt beside them.

“Fine. I’m fine.” Her words were strained, but there was a soft, husky tone to her voice that seeped into his already heated blood. He realized that he didn’t want to let her go, but she twisted away from him and stood on her own. “I’m sorry, George. I wasn’t watching where I was going.”

“I told Rickie that display was too high.” George fussed over her, gathering up her purse and basket as he criticized the clerk who’d built the skyscraper of green beans. Nick realized that the manager was just as captivated with the redhead as he was. Nick frowned at George, sending mental warnings that he’d seen her first.

“It was my fault completely. Please forgive my clumsiness.” Maggie smoothed the front of her slacks, then flashed George a smile that made him blush to the roots of his thinning brown hair. “I’m sorry, but I’ve got to get home.”

Without so much as a glance at Nick, she turned and disappeared down the soup aisle.

“Tell Mrs. Smith I said hello,” George called after her.

Mrs. Smith?

Maggie Smith?

That woman, Maggie, was skinny little Margaret Smith, with the ragtop red hair and big glasses?

The last time he’d seen her was twelve years ago, just before he’d left Wolf River. He’d been working at the machine shop, and she’d come in with her father who’d needed the pistons of his 1956 Chevy bored. Nick had been twenty-one at the time, so she must have been about sixteen or seventeen. Margaret was the shyest girl he’d ever met. He’d always said hello to her, and she’d always mumbled a hello back, but never once did she actually look at him.

Obviously she was as shy now as she’d been growing up. She still wouldn’t look at him, he thought to his annoyance, but he’d certainly looked at her. He just couldn’t believe what he’d seen. Little Margaret Smith, with a killer body and gorgeous face. If that didn’t beat all.

Her perfume lingered in the air, and it suddenly dawned on Nick that both he and George were still staring in the direction of the aisle she’d vanished down.

Nick gave the other man a friendly slap on the back. “Hey, George, let me give you a hand here with these cans.”

“What?” George blinked, then looked at Nick. “Oh, ah, that’s all right, Nick. I’ll take care of it.”

“No problem.” Nick bent and reached for a can. “So, how are Mr. and Mrs. Smith?” he asked casually. “They still living over on Belview Avenue?”

Nodding, George scooped up several cans and began to stack them. “Mr. Smith went in for knee surgery last week. Maggie flew in from New York yesterday to give her mom a hand.”

So that’s why he hadn’t seen her before, Nick realized. She’d just got into town. Bad for Mr. Smith’s knee, but good for him, Nick thought. “New York, huh? She work there?”

“Mrs. Smith says she’s a journalist with some big newspaper.” George took pride in his job and meticulously straightened the cans to line up the labels. “Has her own column and everything.”

Nick spotted a credit card lying under a pile of cans and picked it up. “Margaret Hamilton.” Damn. She was married. “That must be her husband I saw waiting out front. Big guy with blond hair?”

“Maggie’s divorced.” George glanced over his shoulder and frowned. “You fishin’, Nick?”

Nick resisted the urge to grin at the good news, then slipped the credit card in his shirt pocket. “Nah, not me, pal. Too busy for females right now.” Nick winked at George. “But you know how that is.”

“Yeah, right.” George rolled his puppy-dog eyes. “Just last night I had to tell Cindy Crawford I’d have to get back to her.”

“Iris Sweeney will be disappointed to hear that,” Nick said, deciding that a little matchmaking for George would not only boost the man’s ego, but keep him from looking in other directions.

“Iris Sweeney?”

Nick nodded. “Just last week I heard her say you have the best-looking produce section she’s ever seen.”

“No kidding?” George said with a quick grin, then cleared his throat and gave a reserved shrug of his shoulders. “I am rather proud of the organic vegetable display.”

“As you should be.” Nick hadn’t seen a vegetable in weeks. Unless you counted tomatoes on pizza or lettuce on hamburgers. He doubted they were organic, though. On an impulse he snatched up two cans of green beans. “Gotta run, George. See you around.”

“Try a can of mushroom soup and cheese with those beans,” George called after him. “They make a great casserole.”

Five minutes later, his shopping done, carburetor and pistons forgotten, Nick roared out of Bud and Joe’s parking lot and headed for Belview Avenue.

Nick Santos was back.

Still in a daze, Maggie had driven back to her parents’ house and squeezed her compact rental into the garage beside her father’s yacht-size 1977 Buick. The radio blasted a loud, heavy-metal song that she never would have listened to under ordinary circumstances, but she’d been too shaken to even notice the earpiercing noise. She shut off the engine, but a loud roar still pounded in her head.

Nick Santos was back.

She wouldn’t have believed it, except for the fact that he’d spoken to her and touched her. My God, she closed her eyes and drew in a deep breath. He’d actually touched her.