Secret Games

“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 clients won’t complain.”

“Good.” But a tiny frown creased her delicate brows. Work trouble, then.

“So, how was your day? Solve all your patients’ problems?”

Her gaze pierced the distance between them, wide, worried, yet misty with recognition because she realized that Sam already suspected something was up. He held her gaze steadily, drew in an expectant breath, and waited.

This was all the urging Maggie needed. She exploded, just like a clap of thunder, launching into a jumbled and breathless account of losing patients to sex and split-ups, of nice guys and superclubs and observation versus practical application.

Sam watched as Maggie’s cheeks reddened with agitation, or lack of oxygen, and her gesticulations grew wilder. He slid the mugs closer to his side of the table after she missed nailing one by mere inches.

He made a valiant effort to follow the threads of her disjointed tirade, but his own head was spinning by the time she’d braked hard on the emotions clearly racing inside her, stopped, and stared at him.

“So, what do you think?” she asked, winded.

He hesitated, unsure if she wanted his opinion about her choice in men or if she should take a research trip to some place called a superclub.

He must have hesitated too long because suddenly she was eyeing him accusingly, as though he hadn’t been listening well enough to answer her question.

Latching on to the last thing she’d said, Sam gave his opinion. “I’m for the trip. You should go.”

Jackpot.

Her narrowed gaze relented, and she said earnestly, “You really think so?”

“No doubt about it.” But he did have doubts. He still wasn’t clear on the correlation between sex and the so-called superclub. He’d stand a much better chance of getting her to clarify if he didn’t come straight out and ask.

“If you can get the experience you need to help this couple and get away at the same time, the trip will be considered job training. You’ll be able to write it off next year’s taxes as a business expense.”

She smiled, looking relieved. “Oh, Sam. You do have a gift for boiling things down to black and white.”

He only inclined his head at her compliment, but was pleased he’d made her smile.

“You really think observation is the way to go?”

“Well, I think getting away will do you good, and with your crunched finances, you can use a write-off. Elaborate on this observation for me. I’m not clear on the details.”

Staring into her mug, Maggie sipped before answering. “There’s a couple I haven’t been able to help, because I didn’t recognize that they needed to put sparks back in their long-term relationship. I don’t have much knowledge of long-term myself.”

Now there was an understatement. With her pale red-gold hair and creamy skin, Maggie was gorgeous in a natural, unaffected way that made men trip over themselves for her attention. That none ever managed to keep her attention for longer than it took the Dow Jones Average to dip was an occurrence he couldn’t entirely ascribe to her dates.