Chapter 22
For a few blazing seconds, Maggie couldn’t think. Couldn’t breathe.
She tensed beneath Theo’s touch, his lips moving firmly and persuasively over hers.
Her mind blurred and her body softened and he pulled her even more closely to him, so her breasts were pressed against his chest, her hips molded to his in a way that made heat and alarm flare in equal measure, and for a few tantalizing seconds she felt as if she were drowning, and she wanted to let herself surrender to those waves, let them wash over her, and yet she knew she couldn’t.
Gasping, with more effort than she wished it required, Maggie ripped her mouth from his, wiping it with the back of her hand as she wrenched herself from his embrace. “How dare you,” she choked out in a shaky voice that she feared rang hollow.
“Yes, I dared,” Theo replied, unrepentant, grinning, his arms falling to his sides. “Why shouldn’t I steal a kiss from the most beautiful girl in all of Chicago, especially one as talented as you?” His smile turned cajoling, while Maggie’s stomach churned with guilt and misery.
After the women’s condescension, Theo’s far too assured overtures felt as if insult had been heaped upon injury, a weight too heavy to bear.
And no matter how tempted she might have been to succumb to those overtures for those few treacherous moments, Maggie knew absolutely she had to resist. Entangling herself in some kind of romantic attachment with Theo Stein would spell disaster for both her career and her heart.
“Spare me such flattery,” she said in as cold a voice as she could manage.
“Oh, Maggie…” Theo sighed, now sounding impatient. “Are you really going to play the outraged miss now?”
“I am the outraged miss,” Maggie snapped heatedly, hating that he thought she was playacting—and for whose benefit? His?
“We’ve kissed before,” Theo reminded her, his mouth curving slowly into a sensual smile as he lounged against the wall, smug in the certainty of his own appeal.
“Only as a desperate measure!” Maggie cried, furious that he’d mentioned that ignominious moment, that he now looked so very certain.
“Does it matter?” Theo countered with a gleam to his dark eyes. “We both remember just how nice it was…”
Maggie shook her head, tears springing to her eyes that she blinked furiously back. “You’re despicable,” she whispered, and blindly she started to stumble from the room.
“Maggie.” Theo caught her arm, more gently this time. “I’m only flirting! Have you never flirted before?”
Maggie turned slowly to stare at him, shocked that in the space of a single second, Theo had made her feel ridiculous and gauche, a green girl who didn’t know how to flirt, who took such remarks—or kisses—far too seriously. It felt as much of an insult as the kiss had been, in its own awful way.
“Apparently I haven’t,” she replied after a moment, her voice both trembling and taut as she shook off his hand. “And I don’t care to.”
He let out a sound that was half sigh, half groan, as he reached for her hand again and she pulled it sharply back. “Don’t be like that, please. I was trying to comfort you.”
She let out a sharp laugh. “And I thought you were trying to flirt!”
He laughed back, unrepentant as ever, although Maggie thought she saw a flash of annoyance in his eyes.
“Both, then.” He started to reach for her hand again and then checked himself.
“What I was really trying to say,” he told her, “was you shouldn’t pay those women any mind.
They might think they’re just humoring you, but they’re still going to wear your hats, and your hats are going to take the world by storm.
” He caught her hand then, pulling her gently toward him, his mouth curving once more. “I’m sure of it.”
For a few seconds, Maggie simply stood there, letting herself imagine a world where her hats did take the world by storm, and she could allow Theo Stein to hold her hand and speak to her in this low, cajoling voice and no one would mind or care.
Her reputation wouldn’t be ruined if they were discovered in such a compromising position.
She could believe his promises, trust them, including the ones he hadn’t made but she saw in the warmth of his eyes.
But she wasn’t in that world, and if any of those women who had smiled at her with such kind condescension in the room opposite saw her now with Theo like this, they certainly wouldn’t be wearing her hats.
Resolutely, she yanked her hand from Theo’s. “Thank you for your vote of confidence,” she told him stiffly. And even though it felt far harder than she wanted it to be, she forced herself to turn and walk out of the room without another word.
All the way back to Englewood and the life there she’d been trying to leave behind, Maggie’s mind was a dazed blur as she relived the women’s patronizing smiles and then Theo’s shocking kiss.
She felt exhausted by both, too overwhelmed to stiffen her spine, throw back her shoulders and soldier on determinedly, as she’d done so many times before.
Right now, she just wanted to curl up in a ball and close her eyes against the entire world and everything it threatened and tempted her with.
But she couldn’t… because she had six hats to make, and in just a few weeks.
Six hats that could be made a mockery of…
or stun the world. No matter what went on in the heads that wore them, these six hats, she knew, could still be the making of her and her career.
She had to believe that. It felt like the only hope she had.
The streetcar came to her stop on Sixty-Third Street, and Maggie got off, glancing once toward Holmes’ drugstore where she knew Brendan was working.
She dreaded having to tell him about the tea party; she knew he would want to know how it had gone, and she longed to reply with fizzing excitement and enthusiasm, confidence and control, but she feared she couldn’t manage the ruse.
The thought of admitting what had happened with the ladies, that she was a source of both their amusement and pity—she certainly wouldn’t mention Theo’s kiss—made her stomach cramp with humiliation.
She couldn’t bear it if he felt sorry for her yet again.
And yet… she knew Brendan would only be kind, if she was able to be honest. He would be sympathetic, supportive, outraged on her behalf, but also encouraging her to make a success of the situation, assuring her that she could and would.
A choked sound escaped her, and she pressed her fist to her lips.
Even with believing all that, being certain of it, Maggie knew she still couldn’t bring herself to admit to the events of the afternoon.
And that was to her shame, not Brendan’s.
She had a few hours, at least, before he came home from work and she had to decide what she was going to tell him.
Maggie thought she might face a flurry of questions when she returned from Mrs. O’Malley and Sarah Whitman, both knew of her invitation to such an exclusive tea party, but as she came into the hall, she heard an excited commotion from the front room and she realized with some relief that her arrival was likely to go unnoticed.
She was about to slip upstairs when Mrs. O’Malley came out of the room, her face flushed and her eyes bright. “Oh, Maggie,” she exclaimed, calling her by her Christian name for the first time in weeks, if not months. “Come into the parlor and meet Mr. O’Malley, who has returned to us!”