LITMIR.BIZ

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the muscles of his upper body like cling wrap. It was all good. Too good.

      She’d spent most of the late evening making phone calls. From the station chief at the airport to the manager of the hotel, she’d contacted anyone she could think of who might have an idea where the plans had gone. She’d even come in to work early to search the back rooms here in the café, just in case he’d stopped in for a snack before heading to his flight back on that fateful day. Perhaps he had left the portfolio at his table and someone had stuck it in a cupboard somewhere and forgotten about it. So she’d searched, but so far, no luck. Maybe their trip today would bear fruit, though she didn’t have a lot of hope. Somehow she had a feeling that anything left behind two weeks before would have shown up by now.

      Biting her lip and shaking her head, she turned away. “Hang in there. I’ve got two more tables and then I’ll be ready to go.”

      He watched her head for a table full of young couples and he flipped back to the portrait he’d been drawing. He stared at it for a long moment. What was it about this woman that kept tangling with his emotions? His mouth twisted and he ripped the page out of the book, crumpled it in his hand, and aimed at a nearby trash can. It was a decent attempt, but it had missed all her special magic, and he wasn’t going to accept anything less.

      A half hour later, she finished up and they headed for the shed where she kept her Vespa. She kick-started it and he climbed on behind, but this time his hands didn’t go to the edge railing to hold on. With no hesitation, his large hands clamped down on either side of her waist, practically spanning the distance and holding her completely in his control.

      She felt as though she’d just taken a sudden drop off the edge of a tall cliff, and it took a second or two to get her equilibrium back. Then she turned to look at him. He looked right back at her, not smiling, almost daring her to complain. She stared at him for a moment and then gave a small, almost imperceptible shrug.

      “So I guess you don’t feel like such a stranger anymore, is that it?” she noted dryly.

      A slow smile tilted the corners of his wide mouth. “Just drive,” he said.

      Shayna drove, but she took note of Marco’s move toward a new level of intimacy. They were going to have to get this task done quickly. It was obvious he was beginning to feel he could take over for the old Marco, in more ways than one. That just couldn’t be allowed to happen. She was highly susceptible to male influence. She knew that. It was the reason she was here, as far from her father as she could get. Did she have to stay away from Marco, too?

      Maybe so.

      They swung by her house so that she could change, and there was Jilly waiting on the front stairs, a small boy of about three in her arms.

      “Hi Auntie Shayna,” she called out as they left the Vespa and started for the house. “I brought Eddie over. He really wants to see Mr. Smith.”

      Marco recoiled for a moment, glanced at Shayna, then at the children.

      Jilly looked up at him, so young and bright-eyed and innocent. He almost grunted aloud, but stopped himself in time.

      “Marco,” he reminded her carefully. “The name is Marco.”

      She blinked like a young owl. “Okay, Mr. Marco,” she said. “Here’s Eddie.”

      She released the little boy and Marco stared down at him. His thumb was planted firmly in his mouth, but the huge, almond-shaped eyes were filled with some sort of earnest hope that took him by surprise. Marco almost took a step backward. No one should depend on him this much.

      “Hi, Eddie,” he said, putting on a slightly forced smile.

      Eddie didn’t say a word. Never taking his eyes off Marco’s, he took a few steps forward, and then his free hand reached out and took hold of Marco’s slacks, the grubby little fingers curling tightly into the fabric as though he would never let go again.

      “Hey, little guy,” Marco said, half laughing, but somewhat startled as he patted the boy’s head a bit awkwardly.

      “He missed you lots and lots,” Jilly told him in her matter-of-fact manner. “When I told him you were back, he smiled.”

      It was heartwarming to be missed, and the child seemed pretty darn adorable, but Marco didn’t have any memory of ever having seen him before in his life. It would seem the two of them had developed some sort of relationship. That was unusual for him. He usually avoided getting too close to little ones. You never knew how long they were going to be around. He’d had enough experience losing contact with a cherished child to make him wary of repeating the situation.

      He patted the boy’s head again, hoping to be friendly but detached, then looked to Shayna for help. “Don’t you have a cookie or something Eddie might like?” he asked, trying not to sound too desperate.

      “Coming right up,” Shayna said with a reassuring wink. “Let’s all go in and see about it.”

      Eddie didn’t want to let go of Marco’s slacks, which made walking a bit awkward, but once inside, Shayna was able to coax him away with a huge chocolate chip cookie and a cartoon DVD in the player. She served milk with the cookies and they left the youngsters in the front room with the entertainment.

      “He’s such a duck,” she whispered to Marco as he followed her into the kitchen. “But he hasn’t said a word since his father went missing last month. I think he must be transferring the attachment to you.”

      “Pop psychology,” he muttered, glancing back into the room where the kids were. “What happened to his father?”

      “Went overboard on a fishing trip.” She shrugged, then added as an aside, “Though rumor has it he’s AWOL on purpose. Who knows?”

      Marco looked at the little guy with a larger measure of sympathy after hearing that. A moment later, as he lowered his long body to sit on the rattan couch in the front room, Eddie shot up beside him and sat very close, little legs out straight, as though trying to copy whatever he did.

      Shayna watched, touched at the scene. Marco hadn’t gone out of his way to cultivate Eddie when he’d been here before, but the boy had been fascinated by him from the first. She was glad to see that Marco wasn’t trying to fend him off. Poor Eddie was having a rough time of it with his father missing and his mother gone trying to get work wherever she could.

      And so was Jilly. She had a lot of sympathy for the girl and what she was going through. Losing a parent when one was just beginning to learn what life as an adult was all about was rough. She knew from experience, though for her it had been a little different. Her mother and brother had died in a car accident when she was about Jilly’s age. Instead of having to take over the family chores and babysitting responsibilities, she’d been drafted into providing emotional support for her father. If her mother had lived, would she have gone down that glittery yellow brick road she took into her twenties? She hardly thought so. If her brother had been there to help deflect some of the intense influence from her father, would she have been a more normal adult? She had no doubt of it. She’d missed them both so much; they still haunted her dreams.

      “Is your mom working at the hotel today?” Shayna asked Jilly.

      Jilly looked up and nodded. “She’s going in after lunch. She likes to work there. Sometimes people give her tips.” A look of alarm came over her face. “Oh! We better go back. She’s probably looking for us now.”

      As she turned toward her little brother, Eddie’s little hand shot out and curled around the seam of Marco’s slacks again, fingers digging in.

      “Eddie! We have to go home.” She tried to pry his fingers off the fabric, but the little boy’s face was set with determination. “Oh, Eddie!” she wailed.

      “Here.” Marco put his hand out, palm up, in front of the boy. He looked down at him and smiled, this time with genuine warmth. “We’ll make a deal,” he said.

      Eddie looked at him, then at his hand, but didn’t take the bait. His dark eyes

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