Playing By The Rules

“Let me get this straight.

“We’ll do things together for a while—uncomplicated things—while we swear off dating until such time as one or both of us feels up to plunging back into the dating pool?” I asked.

“Yeah,” he said, looking relieved. “We could swear off chasing the opposite sex while we keep each other company. We could assuage all those male-female urges without the issue getting too complicated,” he explained excitedly. “So, what do you think?”

“Not so fast,” I said. “First, define uncomplicated.”

“I don’t know. Dining, drinks, companionship. Sex.”

He shoved the last part in quickly, and the air stopped somewhere midway in my chest.

“That’s the whole point of this,” he said when I didn’t answer immediately. “Without the sex, we’re right back to bashing our heads against the wall looking for the whole enchilada!”

The more I thought about it the better it sounded.

“This could be a mutually gratifying situation,” he continued.

“Okay,” I said. I was breathing again, but just barely.

Then he smiled.

“When do we start?”

Dear Reader,

Make way for spring—as well as some room on your reading table for six new Special Edition novels! Our selection for this month’s READERS’ RING—Special Edition’s very own book club—is Playing by the Rules by Beverly Bird. In this innovative, edgy romance, a single mom who is sick and tired of the singles scene makes a deal with a handsome divorced hero—that their relationship will not lead to commitment. But both hero and heroine soon find themselves breaking all those pesky rules and falling head over heels for each other!

Gina Wilkins delights her readers with The Family Plan, in which two ambitious lawyers find unexpected love—and a newfound family—with the help of a young orphaned girl. Reader favorite Nikki Benjamin delivers a poignant reunion romance, Loving Leah, about a compassionate nanny who restores hope to an embittered single dad and his fragile young daughter.

In Call of the West, the last in Myrna Temte’s HEARTS OF WYOMING miniseries, a celebrity writer goes to Wyoming and finds the ranch—and the man—with whom she’d like to spend her life. Now she has to convince the cowboy to give up his ranch—and his heart! In her new cross-line miniseries, THE MOM SQUAD, Marie Ferrarella debuts with A Billionaire and a Baby. Here, a scoop-hungry—and pregnant—reporter goes after a reclusive corporate raider, only to go into labor just as she’s about to get the dirt! Ann Roth tickles our fancy with Reforming Cole, a sexy and emotional tale about a willful heroine who starts a “men’s etiquette” school so that the macho opposite sex can learn how best to treat a lady. Against her better judgment, the teacher falls for the gorgeous bad boy of the class!

I hope you enjoy this month’s lineup and come back for another month of moving stories about life, love and family!

Best,

Karen Taylor Richman

Senior Editor

Playing by the Rules

Beverly Bird

www.millsandboon.co.uk

BEVERLY BIRD

has lived in several places in the United States, but she is currently back where her roots began on an island off the coast of New Jersey. Her time is devoted to her family and her writing. She is the author of numerous romance novels, both contemporary and historical. Beverly loves to hear from readers. You can write to her at P.O. Box 350, Brigantine, NJ 08203.

Dear Reader,

I can honestly say that Playing by the Rules is my favorite of all my Silhouette books. It was an absolute kick to write this entirely from Mandy’s point of view and in her own words, and it offered the interesting challenge of portraying Sam only through Mandy’s eyes and his dialogue—like figuring out a man in real life! I’ve often wondered if relationships might be easier if we went into them with our expectations and “rules” right up front, and Playing by the Rules was my chance to explore that idea and to take it to an extreme. I hope you enjoy reading it as much as I loved writing it.

Contents

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Chapter Eleven

Chapter Twelve

Chapter Thirteen

Chapter Fourteen

Chapter Fifteen

Chapter One

The last time things were normal between Sam and me, we were fighting in Judge Larson’s courtroom.

We’re lawyers. At least, I’m a lawyer. Sam Case is more like a world-class actor with a law degree. He lulls the opposition into a false sense of security by coming off as overly polite and just a little slow-witted. He’s transplanted from south Texas, land of drawling cowboys and good tequila, so he can get away with it. He cultivates an impression of bemused confusion at our East Coast aggression, and it always seems to work.

Judge Larson should have been wise to his tricks by now because he’d been appearing before her for the better part of six months. But she was a pretty blonde on her third marriage—having sacrificed her first two husbands in the interest of her career, or so rumor had it—and Sam likes blondes. Ergo, Larson likes Sam. It’s virtually impossible not to like Sam once he decides that you’re on his list of favorite people.

The judge gave him a dopey smile. It’s my firm opinion that no one ought to be allowed to simper while seated on the bench, but she did it, anyway.

“You have a point to make, Counselor?” she asked him.

“Well, something sort of occurred to me, Your Honor.” He swiveled on his heels to languidly look my way. Languid was part of the whole performance. “I believe my adversary’s chief argument is that a full-time mother is preferable to a half-time father. Is that about right, Ms. Hillman?”

I stood. “A full-time mother is preferable to a twenty-five-percent father. That’s my premise.”

“Hey, where did my other twenty-five percent go?” He sounded genuinely injured.

I stepped around the defense table and moved closer to him, then I spoke in a hiss meant for his ears alone. “My guess would be down your client’s throat.” I turned my attention back to the judge with a polite smile. “Mr. Woodsen has a drinking problem, Your Honor. This has been established. Until he gets treatment, the children are better off with their mother as the custodial parent. We’re willing to grant ample visitation, provided it’s supervised, but Mrs. Woodsen simply isn’t comfortable with her children spending overnights with Mr. Woodsen when no other responsible adult is present.”

“No other responsible adult?” Sam grabbed that one quickly. “Your Honor, I do believe she just called my client responsible.”

“No, I did not.”

“Yes, you did.”

I rolled over him before he could finish turning everything around on me, shoving a shoulder in front of him so I stood between him and the judge. “Lyle Woodsen is anything but responsible, Judge. There’s every possibility that he wouldn’t be coherent or capable during his parenting time.”

“Pshaw,” I heard Sam say in an undertone.

I wheeled on him in disbelief. “What?”

His eyes widened innocently. “I didn’t say anything.”

“You said pshaw. Is that a Deep-South word or something?”

“I don’t know,” Sam protested. “They sure don’t say it in Texas.”

“People, please,” Larson interrupted. “This is a courtroom.”

This time Sam stepped around me to speak earnestly to the judge. “Mr. Woodsen isn’t comfortable with his children spending unsupervised overnights with their mother, either. She has that—how can I put this delicately?—rather complex sense of self.”

A rather what? I felt tension wrap around my spine. “Be more specific,” I snarled, nudging him aside again so I could see the judge, too.

“It’s my understanding that Lisa Woodsen has spent a good part of the last several years undergoing vigorous psychiatric treatment,” he said.

Drugs, I thought. It had to be drugs. He’d need something worse than Lyle’s alcoholism, and that would do it.

I went back to my table and sat again, feeling a headache coming on. I glared at him, trying to figure out what he had up his sleeve and why I hadn’t been aware that there was anything there until just this moment. Sam crossed his arms over his chest and watched me right back. If he smirked, I would have to wipe the floor with his face, I decided.

“I have no idea what he’s talking about, Your Honor,” I said finally. And, oh, how it rankled to have to admit it.

Judge Larson sighed gustily. “Mr. Case, I like you. I genuinely do.” There’s a revelation, I thought. “But I don’t like you well enough to overlook your generous use of evidentiary loopholes. Even in divorce court, we have such a thing as discovery.”

Hallelujah.

Then Sam turned a soulful gaze on the judge. The man had blue eyes that could charm Satan, and a crooked smile that could melt that same black soul. He’d just broken the most basic court rule in the book, and I was pretty sure he’d done it intentionally, yet he managed to look abashed and a bit confused. “Gosh, Your Honor. I’m sorry.”

Gosh? I choked, and—predictably—Larson forgave him.

“Very well,” she said, “but I’m still going to adjourn these proceedings until Friday to give the defense a chance to catch up.”

As slaps on the wrist went, it was relatively minor, but I consoled myself with the fact that at least it was something. The judge banged her gavel and rose neatly from the bench. I waited. It took Sam no more than a minute to clear his client out of the courtroom.

I shifted in my seat to look at Lisa Woodsen. “So how right is he?” I asked her.

“A little.”

I felt my headache pop behind my eyes, gaining life. “This isn’t one of those gray areas in life, Lisa. Either you’ve had psychiatric treatment or you haven’t.”

“Well, then, yes. I did. Do. But I’m staying on my medication this time.”

Medication. Oh, glory, I thought. “What’s your problem exactly?”

“It’s complicated.”

“I can probably grasp it,” I assured her.

“It’s…well, a form of schizophrenia.”

I folded my arms on the defense table and lowered my now-throbbing forehead against them. A complex sense of self, indeed! It wasn’t drugs after all, but this was definitely worse than Lyle Woodsen’s nightly twelve-pack-and-shooters habit.

Lisa Woodsen began to cry, so I lifted my head and dug a tissue out of my briefcase. In family law, tissues—along with candy, coloring books and trading cards—are crucial accessories. I raided my daughter’s supplies with some regularity. So far Chloe hadn’t caught on.

I spent another five minutes comforting the woman before we left the courtroom. When she’d passed through the heavy oak doors of the lobby into the blinding sunlight outside—for some reason the sun always shines brightly on the rotten moments of my life—I looked around for Sam.

I knew he would have waited for me, and he had. The sad truth was that he was my upstairs neighbor and my very best friend—platonically-speaking—to boot. All in all, that made it very hard for me to hate him on any kind of regular basis.

He stood beside the water fountain, leaning one nicely broad shoulder against the wall there. I bore down on him.

“You just talked your way right out of tonight’s linguine and scampi, pal,” I said.

He straightened from the wall and his eyes went as soft and hopeful as a puppy’s. “You were going to make me scampi?”

“No. I was going to make Chloe and me scampi. I was going to let you have the leftovers. But now I’ve changed my mind.”

“You’re a hard woman, Amanda Hillman.”

“Only when I’ve just been played for a fool.”

“I thought Lisa had told you. I thought you were just holding it close to your vest and hoping I didn’t find out.”

“You were holding it close to your vest and hoping that I didn’t find out.” No wonder he hadn’t wanted to bother with exchanging interrogatories, I thought. He’d said it would just run up the Woodsens’ respective bills, and we both knew the couple couldn’t afford that. But the simple act of having my client answer all those detailed questions would have revealed all sorts of vermin in the woodpile.

I rubbed my forehead.

“Another headache?” Sam asked.

“You gave it to me,” I muttered.

“Lisa Woodsen gave it to you. She should have confided in you. And I keep telling you that your forehead isn’t the root of the problem. It’s the way your neck gets all knotted up. Turn around.”

I wanted to be obstinate, but it would have been a little like cutting off my nose to spite my face. Sam has hands to die for.

I turned and gave him my back. His strong fingers flexed at the base of my skull and found all the tight spots down the line of my vertebrae. My headache waned even as something coiled in the pit of my stomach. This was a normal reaction to Sam’s neck rubs that I had learned to ignore over the months. But this time I think I might have groaned aloud.

“Better?” he asked.

“Much. I’m still mad at you, though.”

He laughed and his hands fell away. My loss. I turned to face him again.

His dark hair had fallen over his brow sometime during our long afternoon in court. Together with his just-slightly crooked, bad-boy grin, it gave him a rakish look. It was something else I’d noticed before and that I tried to disregard. As a general rule, it’s not good to get all quivery inside over your best—platonic—friend.

“Our first priority should be those kids,” I said finally, pulling myself back to business.

“Agreed. So share your scampi with me and we’ll talk about it over dinner.”

“No.” I pivoted sharply and headed for the big oak doors and all that sunshine outside.

“I have a date, anyway!” he called after me.

I swung back to him. “That’s two already this week, Sam. You’ve got an obsession going on here. Want me to ask Lisa Woodsen for the name of her shrink?”

“Hey, I’m busy looking for the wrong woman.”

Which I knew he had found many, many times. More accurately, Sam didn’t seem to want to find the right one. I put my back against the door and pushed it open.

“Good luck,” I called back to him. “Maybe she can make you shrimp and linguine.” I was all the way down the big stone steps outside before I shook my head and let myself laugh aloud.

“Sam again?” asked a voice from behind me.

I turned to find Grace Simkanian on my heels. Grace was also my neighbor. She lived one floor up from Sam in a one-bedroom unit she shared with Jenny Tower. They had to buddy-up to afford the place. Jenny was a waitress and Grace clerked for one of the criminal court judges. Law clerks are paid worse than volunteers, but they have very bright futures.

“Sam again,” I agreed. I matched Grace’s stride and we headed for the municipal lot. I always gave her a ride home when I was in court in the afternoon.

“When are you two going to stop fighting and start clawing each other’s clothes off?” she asked.

My stomach lurched hard and suddenly. “There’s a ridiculous notion.”

“Ah. Clawing is beneath you.”

That stopped me in my tracks. Grace headed on to my car without me.

“I claw,” I protested finally, shouting after her.

Grace stopped at the trunk of my Mitsubishi and looked back at me. “When? Tell me the last time you even considered it.”

I caught up with her and unlocked the trunk, and we tossed our briefcases inside. “Let me think.”

“This will take a while.”

The hell of it was, she was right. I was coming up empty. I hadn’t had a date in six weeks and even then, Frank Ethan—the last guy—had definitely not been the clawing type.

“Well,” I said finally, “I could claw if I wanted to.” Then I frowned. “Why are we even discussing this?” I asked.

“Because I think you should be clawing with Sam. He’s got the look of a man who’d be good at it.”

There was that action with my stomach again. I was starting not to like this conversation. “Sam isn’t interested in me that way.” I wondered who he was seeing tonight, if it was the same voluptuous blonde from Monday.

“You’re touching your hair again,” Grace said. “What’s that all about?”

I dropped my hand fast. “What?”

“Whenever you talk about him, you touch your hair.”

“I do not.” Then I thought about it. As I’ve mentioned, Sam has a strong preference for blondes. Specifically, he likes blondes with a lot of hair. Mine is short and black. I have that kind of face, with small features. Anything more would overpower me. I have that kind of life. I’m a single parent. I don’t have time to fuss with voluminous layers.

My headache chose that moment to come back with an extra punch. “If you’re that impressed with Sam, then why don’t you claw with him?” I asked her.

Grace shrugged. “I scare him.” She’s sleek, sophisticated and sharp as a tack. She says what’s on her mind and she makes no apologies for it. She’s a stunning woman with reams of dark hair, a flawless dusky complexion, and the kind of figure that stops men dead in their tracks. Then they get to her mind, and that usually backs them off. At least it does if they have any sense.

“He tried to snuggle up to Jenny once, though,” Grace said.

I frowned. This was the first I’d heard of it. Jenny is a sunny blonde transplanted from Kansas.

“What happened?” I asked.

“Nothing. He scares her.”

I nodded, understanding that, too. Jenny is waiting for Mr. Right. The last time I checked, her list of prerequisites had not included good-hearted wolves like Sam.

I opened my car door. “I want to go home now. I’ve had a long day.”

“Let’s go to McGlinchey’s, instead,” Grace suggested. Jenny worked at the bar there and would be getting off at five-thirty.

I looked at my watch and decided that I really didn’t want to cook shrimp for two tonight after all. I took my cell phone out of my purse. “If Mrs. Casamento can keep Chloe an extra hour, then I’ll go.”

Grace settled into the passenger seat. Grace doesn’t sit, she settles. It’s a kind of gentle floating-down with her. Men tend to be very appreciative of the phenomenon.

I made the call to the baby-sitter as I got in the car with a little less finesse. Sylvie Casamento keeps me on a short leash even as she laps up the money I pay her. Sam says it’s her express purpose in life to ensure that no one she knows enjoys anything. No one except Sam, that is. Most women adore Sam, and Mrs. C. is no exception.

I got the okay from the baby-sitter, but not without a lot of aggrieved and chastening sighs over the fact that I might—heaven forbid—have a good time. I started the car. When I turned out of the parking lot, Sam was just stepping into the street. I stomped on the gas to pass him before I was tempted to run him over.

McGlinchey’s was mobbed, as it usually is at that hour. The bar was crammed with enough bodies to rival a New York subway at rush hour. I was still trying to explain my feelings about clawing to Grace as we squeezed past a knot of people in animated conversation. They, too, were lawyers.

Philadelphia’s legal community is incestuous. Don’t get me wrong—we all know how to draw lines in the dirt and keep to our own side of them. Favors are owed, calculated and warily exchanged, but that occurs during regular business hours. The rest of the time, it’s sort of a family affair. Many of us have, at some point in time, been married to a handful of the others. For example, Chloe’s father is an attorney here in the city, though I pride myself on the fact that I had the good sense not to go tying any knots with him. But the bottom line is that everyone seems to know everyone else’s personal business, and they talk about it.

As I shoved my way through the crowd, I saw too many considering expressions on faces I recognized. Here’s Mandy, those expressions said, and she’s with a female friend again.

I never considered myself exempt from the storytelling, but I did think I knew what they said about me: She’s more interested in her career than in men. Chloe’s father started that one. His name is Millson—Millson Kramer III. If he were going to be honest, he’d tell you that he was actually relieved when I refused to marry him. He was just “doing the right thing” by asking me in the first place. Right after Chloe was born, he suffered a hiccup of conscience and tried to make things neat and legal and tidy for all of us. I declined his offer, and that, of course, looked bad for him, so he saved face by informing Philadelphia’s legal community that he had tried his best but that I was a cold and brittle workaholic.

I’m pretty sure that Frank Ethan—the last date I’d had six weeks ago—contributed to Mill’s version of Mandy Hillman when I declined to go out with him a second time. There have been a few others like Frank over the years who’ve failed to excite me, so no doubt they’ve all tossed their two cents into the pot, as well. But I’m not cold. I just like my own company. And your perspective on these things changes when you pass that milestone of turning thirty-five, which I had just done. You don’t need to claw quite as much.

“When you’re in your twenties, you’re just seized by all the possibilities,” I tried to explain to Grace as we waded through McGlinchey’s clientele. For all her jaded world-wisdom, Grace is only twenty-six.

Someone nearly spilled a drink on her, and she curled a lip in the man’s direction. He apologized profusely. “What possibilities are those?” she asked me.

“Sexual. Life advancement. Societal compliance.” We finally reached the bar. I had to raise my voice to order. Then we began trolling for a table, each of us armed with a glass of Chardonnay.

At McGlinchey’s, this is a game not unlike musical chairs. The trick is to be near a table when the inhabitants stand to go. It took us twenty minutes, but we managed it. Grace slipped into one of the vacated seats. Her stockings whispered as she crossed her legs. The noise level in McGlinchey’s was at full throttle, but every male within a six-foot radius heard the sound. Heads ratcheted in Grace’s direction.

“That,” I said, looking around at their faces, “was the sexual part of it.”

Grace shrugged. “It’s the Pavlov syndrome, an automatic response to stimuli. It means nothing.”

I pursued my point. “Anyway, when you’re young, you’re more inclined to settle into a relationship just because the sex is fantastic.”

“That’s a very good reason at any age, Mandy. Assuming one was the settling type.”

“Over thirty-five, you’re less likely to be satisfied by the sex alone,” I insisted, sipping wine. “And you’re less likely to hook up with someone for the express purpose of having children and raising a family. Most people take care of that issue in their twenties.”

“Not so much in this day and age. Women are having their children later and later in life.”

“I said most, not all.” I held up a three fingers. “Third, you’re also not likely to settle down in your thirties just because it makes it easier to get a mortgage. You’ve probably already done that, too.”

“You haven’t.”

“I live in Philadelphia. Real estate is ridiculously expensive.”

“So move out of the city.”

“I love the city. What number was I up to?”

“Four.”

I nodded. “Last but not least, you’re also less likely to take a mate just because society is geared almost exclusively toward couples.”