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He had to be. This woman couldn’t be here. She didn’t exist. Not her, with the long, straight, light brown hair, heart-shaped face, the midnight-blue eyes, and tiny cleft in her quivering chin.
One detail convinced him he wasn’t home asleep in his bed, having another erotic dream.
The utterly heartbroken tears coursing down her cheeks.
***
Meg O’Rourke’s day had started normally enough. Typical mid-winter projects at the parochial school where she taught second grade. Excited seven-year-olds wanting to make valentines instead of read. A trio of workmen whistling at her from a construction site when she’d walked to work from her apartment.
Huh? Workmen didn’t whistle at Meg O’Rourke. She made sure of that, wearing dull, shapeless skirts and thick sweaters. She had mastered the art of remaining nondescript, with her loose clothes, plus her long, boring brown hair pulled into a simple clip at the back of her neck, and very little makeup on her face. It was hard enough being a teacher at a restrictive school in the neighborhood where she’d grown up and everybody—but everybody—knew her and her folks. She wanted no more attention to her physical appearance than she already got.
Meg had come to accept the way she looked. It hadn’t been easy, particularly since the changes had started when she was only eleven years old, practically still playing with dolls! Her mother had glowed, her father had glowered, the neighborhood boys had snickered and her friends had whispered about her.
All because Meg O’Rourke was built like a brick shithouse.
She hated that expression, but it was pretty accurate. She was way curvier than she’d like to be. Big bust, average waist, full, round hips and long legs. If she hadn’t been a good Irish-Catholic girl from a respectable ethnic Chicago neighborhood, she probably could have made a fortune as an exotic dancer. Well, if she could dance, which she could not. Except the Cha-Cha Slide, because, really, what woman who’d gone to the weddings of at least ten girlfriends in the past few years couldn’t do that one?
Anyway, life was tough enough with overprotective parents living blocks away, a dour-faced priest as a boss, and her own embarrassment about her, um, assets. So the attention from the workers, combined with last week’s flirtatious attitude from the guy who owned the neighborhood deli, and the request for a date from the uncle of one of her students, had been real surprises.
This morning, her friend and co-worker, Jenny, had clued her in. Jenny’s boyfriend swore he’d seen Meg posing, nearly naked, in pictures at some new lingerie shop called The Red Doors.
At first she’d laughed. She’d never posed naked in her life. Though she wouldn’t admit it to Jenny, she’d never been completely naked in front of anyone in her entire adult life. Her one and only sexual relationship, back at her small, strict college, had been more of a back-seat groping kind of thing. Clothes were never completely removed because campus security could come by with flashlights at any time.
Looking back, she didn’t care. Bad sex was probably better with clothes on. Good sex might be worth total nudity, though at the rate she was going, she’d probably never find out. Not only was her phone not ringing off the hook with potential dates, but her entire block provided a perimeter of protection better than any birth-control device known to man. “Peter and Paul Street,” she sometimes muttered. “More like Peter Repel street.”
She couldn’t have coffee with a man without her mother finding out and grilling her about weddings and babies.
Though Meg had laughed at the possibility that anybody could have mistaken her for a lingerie model, Jenny had insisted it was true, and convinced her to investigate. Which is why she’d come here to the shop as soon as school let out today.
She wished she hadn’t. Sitting in the tiny cubicle, staring at an image of herself on a computer terminal dressed in the kind of black leather hootchie-mama outfit she’d never imagined really existed, she wished she’d never heard of The Red Doors.
She especially wished she hadn’t when a big, gorgeous man burst into the room, looking ready to do battle. She turned to stare at him, trying to blink away the tears.
“This room is occupied,” she managed to whisper, though her throat was thick and tight. The guy would have to be completely blind not to see she was crying. Before she could ask him to leave, however, she saw him quickly scan the tiny space.
She quickly swung her chair back around, banging on the keyboard to close the image on the computer screen before he saw it. “F what?” she muttered under her breath, unable to remember the instructions. Instead of getting rid of the provocative picture, though, she only succeeded in enlarging it. She accidentally zoomed in so the top of her head was cut off, and her breasts filled the screen in pinup girl proportions.
Meg was not a stranger to computers. But frustration, anger, and a heaping helping of humiliation combined to make her brain freeze. She kept banging keys, but couldn’t erase the image. “Control Alt this, you rotten, miserable piece of...”
“I think it’s locked up,” he said softly.
Meg mentally ordered a bolt of lightning to shoot through the ceiling and strike her down as she remembered the stranger in the room with her. He hadn’t left. Swiveling around on the rolling chair again, she looked up at him and waited for what would inevitably come next. As the man’s eyes widened in recognition of the black-leather-clad temptress on the computer screen, Meg wrapped her arms tightly around her body. She held her breath, anticipating the slimy come-on, the flirtatious remark, the gawking or the leer.
The stranger did none of these. He immediately turned his attention away from the screen and stepped closer, allowing the doors to swing shut behind him. “You’re alone.”
She nodded. The guy was drool-worthy with his thick, chestnut-brown hair, heavily lashed, dark eyes and lean face, but couldn’t be too bright if he thought somebody was hiding in here. There was certainly no place in this teensy booth where anyone else could be. “Obviously.”
“I heard...that is, I thought...”
She realized he must have heard her moaning and bawling like a baby in here. “You were trying to help me?”
He nodded. “I heard you saying no, and I thought someone was, well, making unwanted advances.” Making unwanted advances. She almost laughed. It sounded like something her mother would have said, or one of the old ladies down in the neighborhood. Definitely the term did not suit this gloriously masculine man, whose body seemed to suck up every inch of space in the small space.
The guy appeared tall, especially standing above her while she sat in the chair. Eye-level with his waist, she noted the faded, tight jeans, and a soft, broken-in, brown leather bomber jacket. The jacket, which probably didn’t do much to keep out the Chicago cold, hugged broad shoulders and thick arms. So in some respects, it probably was effective at providing warmth in the winter—at least for all the ladies in his vicinity. Just the look of him could certainly be enough to make even the most happily married woman feel suddenly hot. And his jeans. Wow. The worn, soft denim did sinful things to the leanest hips and flattest stomach she’d ever seen on a man.
Swallowing hard, she continued to study him.
His dark hair brushed his collar and was matched in shade by his rich, brown eyes. He had the kind of chin that warned of stubbornness and the kind of mouth that could drive a woman crazy wanting to taste it. Even a woman like Meg.
