Free Starstruck by Anne McAllister Page B

you say?” Liv looked stunned.
    “A house.” Joe wiped damp palms on the sides of his jeans and continued to gaze blankly out the window, hoping that the famous Harrington acting ability wouldn’t desert him now. He hadn’t felt like such a nervous, fumbling, moonstruck schoolboy in years.
    “Why on earth are you looking for a house?” Liv sat up and set the tray aside on the table, wrapping her arms around her knees like a young girl. He darted a glance at her, taking in the rumpled, defenseless gentleness, and the ache in his insides sharpened perceptibly. He couldn’t even look at her without wanting her. And on that bed! In his sweat shirt! It didn’t bear thinking about.
    He flung himself across the room to the other window and stood leaning against the frame, looking out into the garden, taking deep, slow breaths that some drama coach had once told him would calm him. He hoped so. He needed a bit of calm now. He’d been strung up since he’d met her.
    “I like it here,” he said to the garden. “I want some peace and quiet to work on a screenplay that I’m interested in. I’m fed up with emphasizing acting.” Not bad, he thought. His tone was carefully nonchalant, controlled. He managed a slight, self-mocking smile and turned so that she could see his profile. “And there are other advantages in the immediate neighborhood.” He allowed himself a quick, leering glance in her direction, the sort that Steve Scott would have sent his leading lady to let her know she interested him. He only wished he felt as confident of Liv as Steve Scott felt of his ladyloves.
    You’d have thought he was trying to get up the courage to ask a girl out for the first time, he thought. He almost snorted with impatience at his own ineptitude. Liv was looking at him, obviously flustered, the color high in her cheeks. At least he seemed to have put her of f balance with his statement as badly as he was off balance himself. Quite likely she didn’t know what to make of him, either. Superstar playboys must be as foreign to her as lovely, normal, sane women were to him. Neither one of them seemed to know how to act.
    “Well,” she said, with the spunk that he had found so appealing the first time he was here, “you had better clear out of my room, then. I’m certainly not getting up and dressing while you’re here.”
    “Why not?” Joe smiled, feeling immediately more confident. This kind of light, sexual bantering came all too easy.
    “I need to think of my children,” she said softly, not bantering at all.
    Joe felt as though she had knocked the breath right out of him. He felt certain she must see the dull red he knew was creeping above his collar. But if she did, at least she was kind enough not to comment on it. It was bad enough that he felt his remark was cheap.
    “I’ll wait in the kitchen,” he mumbled, backing toward the door. “There’re plenty of dishes to do.” He couldn’t get out of the room fast enough, not even when a part of him truly wanted to stay. Scruples? he chided himself. At your age? He shook his head in disbelief and started clearing the dishes off the kitchen table, scraping the plates and stacking them in the sink. But he couldn’t deny it. Something about her made him want to clean up his act. He hadn’t wanted to be caught leaving her house early that morning when he had spent the night, and he didn’t want to embarrass her in front of her kids. He wanted their friendship to be aboveboard, clean, not a gossip monger’s delight. He turned on the water and stared out the window above the sink at Theo and Jennifer, who were playing in the yard. Nice kids. He liked them. He didn’t want to fe el embarrassed or awkward in front of them, either, he realized. And that was an alien feeling, too.
    Joe hadn’t cared what anyone else said about his sexual escapades or relationships in years. And now he was worrying about the reputation of a thirty-two year old divorcee and her near