Jeanie London - Secret Games

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.

“How does a superclub translate into long-term experience?”

She huffed in obvious exasperation. “Think about it, Sam. I can’t just snap my fingers and miraculously get experience, so I have to improvise. I’ll visit one of these superclubs to observe the effects on couples. I’ll get all sorts of ideas to help Angie and Raymond, and others, too.”

Sam rubbed his temples beneath the arms of his glasses, certain it wasn’t the late hour but Maggie’s reasoning that encouraged this headache. She was infamous for her harebrained schemes and this one qualified as more harebrained than most. And who was she planning to take to this superclub? Last he’d heard, her current loser had already gotten his walking papers.

Man, this was exactly what he didn’t want to think about tonight. Maggie running off to some hotel with another guy. When was she going to learn? Better yet, when was he?

He’d had years to reconcile himself to the reality that Maggie didn’t think of him as anything more than a brother. By rights, the reconciling should be getting easier. No such luck.

“So your research trip is actually a visit to some sort of pleasure palace?” He was getting a clearer picture of what she was talking about and couldn’t keep the disapproval from his voice. “Does that about sum it up?”

“No!” Maggie cried indignantly. “This isn’t a pleasure palace. It’s a romance superclub.”

Which sounded like a classy name for a pleasure palace.

Sam could tell by the way Maggie straightened her spine and lifted her chin that he was about to be treated to an in-depth explanation of the differences. Slipping the sheaf of papers from the end table, she sank to her knees beside him and spread what he recognized as printouts of a Web site over his lap.

Steeling himself against the brush of her fingers on his jean-clad thigh, he made a valiant effort to focus on the papers she brandished at him, tried to concentrate on her words rather than the wispy hairs fringing her cheeks.