Adding to the Family
Autor:in
Gina Wilkins
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Chapter One
There was something about a man with a calculator that Miranda Martin found oddly sexy. A man whose fingers flew over a number pad, adding up columns of dollar amounts as he talked about bonds and investments and tax-deferred annuities—just the mental image could make her shiver with exhilaration.
Other women were attracted to cowboys or cops or bikers or baseball players; Miranda was a sucker for accountants. One accountant, in particular. Her own.
Her chin cupped in both hands, she rested her elbows on his desk and gazed across the glossy surface at him. It didn’t hurt that he was so very nice to look at. Mark Wallace had clear gray eyes, disheveled brown hair with a tendency to curl into loose waves, and the most perfect teeth she’d ever seen. Had he not chosen to work with numbers, he could probably have made a living as a model.
“What’s this deduction you’re claiming for comfortable shoes?” he asked, frowning at the paperwork in front of him.
“I had to buy them on a business trip last month. The shoes I took with me were killing me, and you know you can’t really concentrate on business when your feet hurt. I was much more effective after I bought those nice, comfy shoes—which, I might add, were obscenely expensive.”
He had been her accountant for just over a year, and he always gave her exactly the same look when she said something he considered outrageous. He was giving her that look now, and she enjoyed it immensely. She had anticipated that expression when she had listed the deduction she had known very well his sharp eyes would not overlook.
He stared at her with his head cocked slightly to one side, as if he weren’t quite sure if she was joking, and then he shook his head and marked through the item with a decisive stroke of his mechanical pencil.
She just loved it when he did that.
“Other than the shoes, everything looks to be in order,” he remarked, closing the file folder. “I’ll have the tax forms ready for your signature by the end of the week. Next time, though, you might not want to wait until the last minute to bring your information to me. You didn’t allow either of us much room for error.”
“As if you ever make any errors,” she teased.
He shrugged, a smile playing at one corner of his firm mouth. “It’s been known to happen—on very rare occasions.”
Sometimes she couldn’t resist touching him. She reached out to stroke a fingertip across the top of his right hand—the one that had just been calculating her money. “I find it hard to believe you aren’t completely perfect.”
Maybe after a year of working with her, he was finally getting accustomed to her flirting. He had been amusingly disconcerted the first couple of times, but during their meetings since, he’d seemed to accept it as part of the package. Especially since she had teasingly informed him that talking about money always gave her goose bumps.
In response to her stroking his hand, he shot her a look that was so direct, so male—and so uncharacteristically predatory—that her mouth suddenly went dry. “Someday I might just take you up on one of those come-hither looks,” he murmured. “And then what are you going to do?”
For just a moment, Miranda Martin—who always had a witty put-down in response to even the most insistent advance—couldn’t think of anything to say. She found herself lost in Mark Wallace’s gleaming gray eyes, her mind filled with unsummoned and decidedly erotic images rather than cleverly cutting retorts.
Fine, take me up on it, she would have liked to say. Heck, just take me.
But she didn’t say it, and the primary reason for her reticence burst into Mark’s home-based office only a moment later.
“Daddy, I’m home from preschool and guess what? We’re going on a field trip to the Museum of Discovery and I—”
“Payton,” Mark cut in firmly, raising his voice a bit to be heard over the little blond girl’s excited chattering. “I’m with a client. You know better than to come into my office when I’m working. Where’s Mrs. McSwaim?”
Only slightly chastened, the blue-eyed, curly haired moppet pointed behind her while studying Miranda from the other side of the room. “She took Madison to the bathroom.”
“Then go entertain yourself for a little while and I’ll hear all about your field trip when I’ve finished with my work.”
“Okay, Daddy.” Heaving a dramatic sigh, Payton turned toward the doorway at the back of the office through which she had entered so precipitously.
Mark waited until the door closed behind his daughter, then swiveled his leather chair around to face Miranda again. “Sorry about that. Most of the time a home office has its advantages, but occasional interruptions come with the territory.”
Miranda had her brightly impersonal smile firmly in place again. She reached down to the floor beside her chair, picked up her purse and slung it over her shoulder as she stood. “I’ve got to be going, anyway. I’ve got a few more work-related things to do before I make it to the concert at Juanita’s tonight.”
He nodded. “I’ll call when the forms are ready.”
She fluttered her lashes at him. “You do that.”
“Have a good time at the concert.”
“Darlin’, I always have a good time.” She made sure the smile that accompanied her huskily drawled reply held a touch of wickedness.
Just because there was no way she and Mark would ever have even a passing fling, it wouldn’t hurt to leave him—like herself—wishing just a little that things could be different between them.
Of all Mark’s clients, there was only one who left his head spinning after every meeting, no matter how briskly professional he tried to keep things between them.
Miranda Martin.
He thought of her as “the golden girl.” Her almost shoulder-length, layered chestnut hair was shot through with artfully applied golden highlights. Her flawless skin was deepened either by tanning booths or bronzers. Even her eyes were a pure amber—and those he suspected were her natural color.
She had a smooth forehead, a perfect nose, high cheekbones and a rounded chin dotted with a shallow dimple just below the right corner of her mouth. Of medium height, she had legs that went on forever, nicely proportioned breasts, a slim waist and gently curving hips—adding up to a package that would make any red-blooded man stop in his tracks and think, Whoa, buddy!
If he were a man who was interested in fleeting affairs, he would have taken her up on the invitation her habitual flirting seemed to imply long ago. But he was the full-time single father of two little girls. He didn’t have the time nor the luxury to indulge in affairs.
As for anything else—well, he’d been married to a woman who had valued entertainment above the daily responsibilities of family life. Even if he were in the market for a long-term relationship, it wouldn’t be with a party girl like Miranda Martin.
Besides, he had seen the way she’d looked at his kids on the rare occasion when she’d seen them. As if strange and somewhat intimidating aliens had wandered into her field of vision. Even if he tried to delude himself into thinking he and Miranda could form a personal bond, he had a feeling that she considered there to be two very prominent obstacles in their path.
“Who was that lady in your office today, Daddy?” Payton asked over dinner that evening.
“You mean the one you so rudely interrupted when you burst in without knocking?”
She sighed—something she did with innately expressive skill. “I already said I’m sorry,” she reminded him. “Who was she?”
“A client. Her name is Miranda Martin.”
“She was pretty.”
Mark glanced across the table. “Madison, don’t give your peas to Poochie. Eat them yourself.”
Three-year-old Madison, a smaller, blonder duplicate of her sister, obligingly stuffed a spoonful of peas into her food-smeared mouth, leaving Poochie, a rather ragged stray mutt Mark had rescued six months earlier, to wait beneath the table in hopes of dropped scraps.
Payton, who liked to tell everyone she was four-going-on-five (in just four months), and whom Mark thought of as four-going-on-thirty, wasn’t finished asking questions. “Don’t you think she’s pretty, Daddy?”
Mark was still keeping a watchful eye on his youngest child. “Mmm? You mean Madison? I think she’s very pretty.”
Payton groaned. “Not Madison, Daddy. That lady. Miranda Martin.”
That reclaimed his attention. “Yeah, sure. She’s very pretty.”
“Can I get my ears pierced? I want some of those big gold circles like she had.”
Picturing his four-year-old in gypsy hoops, Mark stifled a smile. “Not until you’re older.”
“Nicola Cooper got pierced ears. She gets to wear little silver circles.”
“When you’re older, Payton.”
Another sigh, and then, “Are you going to take her on a date?”
“No.”
“Nicola Cooper’s mother goes on dates. She gets all dressed up in pretty clothes and takes Nicola to her grandma’s house. Sometimes Nicola gets to stay all night at her grandma’s house.”
“Yes, well…eat your chicken, babe. It’s getting cold.”
Two hastily swallowed bites later, Payton was at it again. “Why aren’t you going to take her on a date if you think she’s pretty?”
“Just because.” As an answer, it was pretty lame, but the best he could come up with at the moment. “Tell me more about your field trip,” he said, making an attempt to change the subject. “When did you say you’re going? Next Monday?”
He remembered perfectly well that it was Tuesday, but at least the question distracted Payton from his social life—or lack thereof. She started chattering about the planned outing, seeming to forget all about Miranda Martin.
Mark wished he could forget her as quickly. Payton’s innocent questions had made him think of things that would be much better left alone.
Though Little Rock was the capitol and the largest city in Arkansas, it was still small enough that Miranda could hardly go anywhere without running into someone she knew. Especially at the local music clubs where she liked to hang out in the evenings; she only had to walk in for someone to call out to her to join them at their table.
Tonight that table included three other women and two men, all of whom Miranda knew at least in passing. She considered them friends, though she doubted that any one of them would be of much use if she found herself in trouble. Not that it mattered to her, since she considered herself a fiercely independent woman who took care of her own problems and expected others to do the same.
“Miranda, you look amazing,” Oliver Cartwright pronounced, studying her outfit with a critical eye. “Not many people can get away with that color, but it looks fabulous on you.”
“Coming from you, that’s a high compliment,” she assured him.
She had paid a little extra attention to her appearance tonight, pairing a flirty gold top with a pair of low-slung dark jeans and strappy heels. The top was cut just low enough at the neckline to give a glimpse of cleavage and just high enough at the hem to reveal an inch of spray-tanned abdomen. Modest compared to what many of the young women in the club were wearing, but still eye-catching, which had been her intention.
If Oliver, the local fashion cop, approved, she must have done something right, she thought with satisfaction.
“Lucky you,” a busty bottle-blonde in a clingy red dress said with a pout. “Oliver said I look like an over-ripe tomato.”
“You insist on wearing clothes that are too tight for you,” he pointed out to her. “I keep telling you that subtlety is sexier than a desperate play for attention.”
“Miranda’s wearing a shiny gold top. Isn’t that a play for attention?”
“Note that Miranda’s boobs aren’t trying their best to escape the fabric that covers them. You’ll certainly get attention with your dress tonight, Brandi, but don’t come crying to us again when the Mr. Right Now you take home disappears with the sunrise.”
Brandi, who made no secret of her desire to get married—preferably to someone with money—flounced discontentedly in her seat. “You’re so mean, Oliver.”
“Yes, darling, but I’m always right.”
The rest of the party laughed at his droll retort, though no one dared dispute it.
A cocktail waitress appeared at the table and Miranda ordered a Manhattan while several of the others requested seconds of their own drinks. She would allow herself only a single drink tonight, but she would thoroughly savor that one indulgence.
Having grown up in a home where alcohol was synonymous with sin—as were dancing, cursing, television, movies, fiction, vanity, frivolity and any sexual activity, including handholding and kissing, outside of marriage—she had vowed to be answerable to no one but herself when she escaped, which she had done after graduating from high school at seventeen. That was ten years ago, and she hadn’t looked back since.
Oliver turned back to his friend Randall, and Brandi strutted off to the ladies’ room, making sure she caught plenty of male attention on the way. An attractive woman Miranda had met a couple of times before leaned over to ask quietly, “Do you think he hurt her feelings?”
“Brandi? Hardly. She’ll sulk awhile, then she’ll go home with some guy who’ll treat her exactly as Oliver predicted, and next week she’ll start the whole cycle again. She always insists on asking Oliver what he thinks of her clothes, even though she has to know what he’s going to say.”
Someone else interrupted that conversation. “Hey, Miranda, what do you know about entertaining kids?”
She turned to the brunette on her left. “As little as possible. Why do you ask, Bev?”
Bev shrugged. “My brother’s bringing his three kids to visit Mom next month, when school’s out, and she’s asked me to help entertain them. You always know something fun to do. I thought you might have some ideas.”
“Honey, my ideas never involve children,” Miranda returned with an exaggerated shudder.
A round of laughter answered her words.
“What?” someone asked. “No nieces or nephews?”
She started to shake her head, and then she stopped herself. “Oh, wait. I do have a couple of nephews.”
Oliver raised his carefully arched blond eyebrows. “You forgot you’re an aunt?”
“I don’t think of myself as an aunt,” she said with a slight shrug. “I haven’t seen the kids more than a couple of times in their lives—my sister doesn’t stay in one place for very long.”
“My brother’s the same way,” someone else said. “I wouldn’t mind seeing my nieces, actually, but they’re living in Singapore now, if you can believe it. My brother has a fabulous job there. He—”
Not particularly interested, Miranda tuned out and took a sip of her drink, thinking about her older sister for the first time in ages. She wondered where Lisa was these days, and whether she was taking any better care of her five-year-old twins than she had been the last time she’d breezed through town, hoping to bum a few dollars from Miranda.
The idea of having her own children made Miranda practically choke with claustrophobic panic. Nothing would be more certain to put an end to the carefree, independent lifestyle she had spent her entire youth plotting to achieve.
Maybe Lisa didn’t mind dragging her conceived-by-accident twins around on her own reckless adventures, but Miranda had always firmly believed that if someone was going to bring children into the world, the kids’ well-being should come first—unlike her own parents, of course. Being childless, she could be as self-centered and irresponsible as she liked, and no one would have to suffer for it.
She couldn’t help thinking for a moment about her sexy accountant. Mark Wallace seemed like a good father, stable and loving and dependable. She didn’t know what had happened to his kids’ mother, but Mark seemed to have committed himself completely to making sure his girls had a happy childhood and a decent upbringing, even if it meant his own life was a bit dull, in Miranda’s opinion. Still, she had to admire his dedication.
Unfortunately for the twins’ sakes, Lisa had a different view of parenting than Mark, or even Miranda. Lisa saw no reason for motherhood to interfere with her lifestyle in the least.
There had been no fun in their own childhoods, Lisa had reminded Miranda the last time they had seen each other. Her kids were going to have fun. No horribly restrictive rules, no rigid schedules, no harsh punishments if they didn’t toe some arbitrary and impossible line.
The boys were probably monsters, but that was Lisa’s problem, Miranda thought with a shrug. Miranda had an evening of music and camaraderie to enjoy, and she was wasting time thinking about serious matters.
