There were women at the bar. Mike and Jerry had flirted mildly with a pair of computer technicians in town for a training seminar at AT&T, but the arrival of several more people from the seminar had ended the flirtation before it developed into anything.
Mike was, frankly, relieved when their names were called for a table before they had a chance to strike up a conversation with anyone else. Intellectually, he wanted to play the game, but his heart was no longer in the chase. Perhaps it was a lingering emotional ennui from the broken engagement, but Mike suspected it was more. He’d been on the merry-go-round too long. He was passing the same scenery over and over again. He was just plain tired of the courtship rituals—the speculative glances, the getting-to-know-you questions, the trying-to-impress-you gestures, the wondering where you stood.
“Our special tonight is chicken tetrazzini, which is linguine with a Parmesan cream sauce,” the server said.
“That sounds good,” Jerry said. “I’ll have that.”
“And you?” the server said, looking at Mike.
“Spaghetti,” Mike said flatly, snapping his menu shut. “With classic tomato sauce and meatballs.”
The man nodded and collected the menus. “I’ll be right back with your salads and garlic bread.”
“To keep the vampires at bay,” Mike mumbled.
“Beg your pardon?” Jerry said.
“I said,” Mike replied, “that the garlic on the bread will keep vampires at bay.”
Jerry rolled his eyes. “Yeah. Sure. Vampires.”
Mike was oblivious to his friend’s exasperation. His attention was focused several tables away on a woman with hair the color of Mrs. Winters’s.
* * *
“ARE YOU GOING to take Princess’s temperature again?” Lily asked.
“Yep,” Mike replied, lifting the puppy’s tail. Princess was in for her routine exam.
“And give her a shot?”
“Uh-huh. She has to have the whole series in order to get the protection she needs.”
Lily’s face pinched in concentration as she watched Mike work. Finally, with a winsome sigh, she said, “I’m glad I’m not a puppy.”
“You don’t think you’d like going to the vet, huh?”
The child, with her characteristic seriousness, responded with a slow shake of her head.
“Not even a nice vet like me?” Mike cajoled.
“Not if you gave me a shot every time.”
Mike chuckled and took a doggie biscuit from a jar on the counter. “How about if I gave you a vitamin cookie?”
“Does it taste good?”
He held the biscuit near the puppy’s nose and she quickly snapped it up. “Princess seems to think so.”
“I still wouldn’t like shots,” Lily said cagily.
“Then it’s a good thing you’re a girl and not a puppy, isn’t it?”
“Uh-huh.”
Mike read the dog’s chart. “You must be feeding Princess well. She’s gained three and a half pounds.”
“Mommy says she eats like a piglet instead of a puppy,” Lily replied.
“Where is your mommy? Isn’t she with you today?” He hated himself for asking, hated even more the way his insides tensed as he waited for the little girl’s reply.
“She had to go grocery shopping. Princess can’t go in the store, so she said for me to take care of Princess and she’d be back in a few minutes. The lady at the desk said it was okay.”
“I see,” Mike said, wondering why he was annoyed that Mrs. Winters was dodging him when he should have been relieved. After all, he’d spent the last three weeks trying not to think about her.
He finished the examination, administered the dreaded injection and gave Lily a vitamin biscuit to reward the puppy for good behavior.
He tried to resist the urge to follow the child back to the waiting room. He tried—and failed. But a quick glance around the room told him Mrs. Winters was not there. Lily sat down, cradling her puppy in her lap, and became engrossed in the documentary about dogs playing on the VCR. Mike shuffled over to the examining room, where an aging Siamese cat with a nasty kidney infection awaited his professional attention.
After treating the cat, he went to the utility room to wash up before his next patient. Mike Calder’s Minimum Requirements for a Woman stared at him from the wall as he soaped his hands. Well, good. He needed something to remind him that he was lucky not to have seen Mrs. Winters—Mrs. One-Point-Five-Out-of-a-Possible-Six Winters, who was just the type of woman who’d prompted him to write his manifesto in the first place.
To reinforce the thought, he picked up a pen and wrote, “Winters 1.5.” in the margin of the list.
One more patient, and he was finished for the day. Then—
He’d call Jerry, he decided. Jerry was always ready to go schmoozing through noisy nightspots in search of women. Not that they ever found any—at least, not any that Mike was interested in for anything beyond superficial conversation. Jerry wasn’t as particular.
He left a message on Jerry’s answering machine before seeing his last patients of the day, a mother cat with four kittens in for a routine health screening and worming. Distracted by the antics of the squirmy kittens, he had momentarily forgotten about Mrs. Winters by the time he helped the cat owner carry the menagerie to the reception desk.
She was standing at the desk, chatting with Suzie as they waited for the receipt rolling off the computer printer. Mike smiled involuntarily as he recognized her and, for an instant, Mrs. Winters’s face registered surprise mirroring his own. Then she returned his smile, and his hello.
“Lily tells me you were grocery shopping,” Mike said.
She nodded self-consciously. “I hope you didn’t mind my letting Lily come in alone. The supermarket was right there, and I would have had to take the dog home and come back.”
“Lily’s welcome here anytime,” Mike told her.
The silence that followed was approaching awkwardness, when the printer ground to a halt. Suzie ripped off the receipt and slid it across the counter to Mrs. Winters, who glanced at it briefly before stuffing it into her handbag. She seemed flustered suddenly.
“Your puppy’s in great shape,” Mike said. “She’s extremely healthy.”
“She’s full of energy.”
“Puppies usually are.”
“I...uh...” She flicked her tongue across her lips nervously. “The groceries are in the car. The milk—” She was backing away as she spoke. She was noticeably tense, and Mike wondered if she felt the attraction between them as strongly as he did.
“Lily,” she said, looking in her daughter’s direction. “Come on. It’s time to go.”
Mike didn’t want her to leave. What he really wanted was to be alone with her.
He should have kissed her, he realized. Consequences be damned, he should have kissed her when he’d had the chance, when they were standing together in her house trying not to look at each other and wondering what it would be like. If he’d kissed her, at least he wouldn’t still be wondering.
“Look, Dr. Mike.” Lily’s voice brought Mike back to reality. “Princess doesn’t pull on the leash like she used to.”
“Hey!” he said. “You must have been practicing the way I showed you.”
“Uh-huh,” Lily said. “We go walking every night, and I make the leash short and make her walk right beside me.”
“You’re doing a good job training her. Now when she gets big, she won’t drag you all over the place.”
Mrs. Winters had reached the door. She opened it and held it ajar with her hip and shoulder, her impatience evident as she waited for Lily and the dog to pass through.
Lily paused in the doorway. “Bye, Dr. Mike.”
“Goodbye, Lily. You take care of that puppy now.”
* * *
ANGELINA WAS NOT smiling as she got in the car. She pulled out of the parking lot onto the highway with a feeling of immense relief. You take care of that puppy now!
&nbs
p; It wasn’t enough that the man was as sexy as an improper proposition. No! He had to be nice, too!
She didn’t need this. No. Not at all. She’d felt like a freak ever since her marriage broke up because she wasn’t interested in men that way; then, when she finally met a man who raised her temperature, he was nice.
Nice. Sexy. But not interested.
When he’d stayed for dinner at her house, she’d thought maybe he’d call and ask her out. And in the three weeks since, she’d spent a lot of idle moments contemplating why she wouldn’t want to be sixteen again. For a few days she’d been hopeful and expectant. After a week, she’d begun to ponder possible reasons he hadn’t called. By the end of two weeks, she had a whole list of reasons why no man in his right mind would ever call a thirty-three-year-old single mom who wore shirts that said If You’re Rich, I’m Available. Especially after he’d seen how bald her tires were.
Avoiding him had seemed like a judicious course of action and she’d almost succeeded. But then, there she was, writing out another check for five dollars for the “new puppy special” and feeling like the charity case she was, when who should appear but Himself the Veterinarian. And the first thought in her mind was that his eyes were as green as she remembered them.
She’d wanted to slap a fifty-dollar bill on the counter and say that she didn’t need new puppy specials, thank you very much. But she didn’t have a fifty-dollar bill. Women who’d just bought a full set of tires couldn’t afford grandiose gestures like that. On the salary she brought home, she couldn’t afford that much pride.
“Dr. Mike gave Princess a cookie,” Lily announced.
“That’s nice,” Angelina said, refusing to succumb to the tears burning the rims of her eyes. Damn him! Damn him for being so nice and so...male. For making her feel so...female.
She brought the car to a stop at a red light.
“Is Dr. Mike ever going to come see us again?” Lily asked.
Angelina drew in a deep breath and released it. “I don’t think so.”
“Why not?”
“Well...” She looked at her daughter’s face, so serious and sincere. “Last time, he came over because he was bringing your backpack to you, remember? He doesn’t have a reason to come over again.”
“He could come because he likes us,” Lily said confidently. “He likes Princess, too.”
“I’m sure he likes most of his patients and their owners,” Angelina said, “but—”
The car behind her gave a raucous honk, and she snapped to attention. The light was green, and traffic in the lane next to her was already moving steadily. With a gasp of exasperation, she pressed the accelerator.
“But what?” Lily asked.
“What?” Angelina said abstractedly, concentrating on maneuvering the car in the thick commuter traffic.
“You said he likes his patients but. But what?”
“Veterinarians don’t usually go to the houses where their patients live,” Angelina told her.
“He could be our friend,” Lily suggested hopefully.
“Yes,” Angelina agreed, her patience waning. “But not all friends visit your house. You have friends that you see at school, and friends that you play with at the park. You can be Dr....Calder’s friend and see him when you take Princess to the clinic for her checkups.”
Lily didn’t reply immediately. Angelina relaxed a bit, hoping the subject was dropped for good. For a blissful minute she thought it had been. Then Lily said, “You could invite him to come over.”
“I can’t do that.”
“Why?”
Angelina let out an exasperated sigh. Why indeed? How was she supposed to explain to a seven-year-old that the veterinarian made her pulse race?
“I have to concentrate on driving right now, Lily,” she hedged. “Why don’t you sing the baby bumblebee song for me?”
Much to her relief, Lily began to sing.
Some things, Angelina thought fatalistically, were even worth enduring the baby bumblebee song for. Getting Lily’s mind off Dr. Mike...whatever-his-last-name-was was one of them.
5
THE SHOPPING CENTER where the neighborhood rabies vaccination clinic was set up was in the middle of a three-day, center-wide sidewalk sale. Crowds of weekend shoppers, a popcorn cart outside the supermarket and a pair of roving clowns making balloon animals created a carnival-like atmosphere.
The outdoor clinic was set up in front of a vacant store, sandwiched between a crafts store unloading Halloween masks and other out-of-season holiday items, and an import store offering animal-shaped wicker planters. The clinic consisted of three six-foot tables forming a U-shaped booth. Pet owners lined up with pets of all shapes and sizes, many of which were nervous, unaccustomed to being anywhere but in their own backyards.
The sponsoring association, Common Pet Sense, had arranged for three volunteers to work in the booth with him. Mike introduced himself and found them all energetic and enthusiastic as they thanked him for donating his time to their program.
The line of pet owners with pets to be immunized remained constant all morning. Except for an occasional skirmish between dogs and ill-tempered cats, everything went smoothly. One of the volunteers tended the registration desk and gave out brochures on responsible pet care. A second volunteer, an older gentleman who had a way with animals, distributed the metal tags and put them on collars if asked, while his wife, a registered nurse, assisted Mike with the syringes and vaccine.
Mike was so busy that he could hardly believe it when the woman handling the paperwork commented that the lunch relief team was overdue. Samantha Curry was commuting from location to location with a full staff of volunteers and a veterinarian to give each of the teams a half-hour lunch break.
“There they are now!” said Emma, the nurse, nodding toward a Common Pet Sense van pulling into the parking lot.
Mike’s chest tightened a bit in anticipation. He was finally going to meet Samantha Curry. Ms. Curry, with the throaty, purrlike voice. The one who, if she proved as sexy as that voice, would rank a perfect six on his Minimum Requirements for a Woman scale.
It wasn’t difficult to pick her out of the entourage as it approached. The vet was in a lab coat, the volunteers in CPS T-shirts. Ms. Curry was in beige tailored slacks and a cream-colored silk blouse. Her jaw-length hair, three perfectly blended shades of auburn, was tousled with a seeming nonchalance that comes only from an expensive cut and styling products sold only in salons.
“Samantha looks stunning today,” the nurse said under her breath.
“Positively lethal,” the other female volunteer said in the same derisive tone.
Samantha Curry was clearly in charge. No one who saw the group walking toward the booth would question her air of authority. And even in the miasmic atmosphere of alcohol wipes, vaccine and nervous canines, she smelled of flowers and sunshine as she extended her hand to him in greeting.
Taking her hand in his, Mike noted the softness of her skin. Her voice was even huskier than it had been over the phone as she thanked him profusely for dedicating his Saturday to Common Pet Sense.
She asked the team if they’d had any problems, if they had plenty of supplies, if they’d had a good turnout, nodding as they gave the responses she wanted to hear.
“The line’s backing up,” the woman handling the paperwork said sharply. “Someone needs to start giving shots.”
Ms. Curry responded with an icy smile. “You’re absolutely right. Let’s change teams so you can go to lunch.”
She turned to Mike. “I have the delightful job of accompanying our doctors to lunch—unless you have prior plans?”
She framed the last phrase as a question. “No,” Mike said quickly. “No plans at all. I’m all yours, Ms. Curry.”
“For thirty minutes,” she replied with what sounded like an intentional note of suggestiveness. “Thirty minutes,” she repeated, louder, for all to hear. “Please don’t be late. The relief team has another stop after this one and we�
��re already off schedule.”
They went to a submarine-sandwich shop a few doors down from the clinic. Mike ordered the house special. Ms. Curry ordered cappuccino, but had to settle for decaffeinated coffee, the taste making her wrinkle her nose with each sip. Her nose was quite perfect, Mike noticed, ignoring the little voice in the back of his head telling him it was too perfect—along with the rest of Ms. Samantha Curry.
Ridiculous, he told himself. A woman couldn’t be too perfect. He was just used to the ones that didn’t come anywhere close—women without the smell and look of money, who didn’t have the time or resources to work as hard at it as an heiress.
As he ate, she chatted about the clinics at the locations she’d visited. One had been extremely busy, but at the second, the pet owners had come in fits and starts. It was busy one minute, not busy the next. She reiterated the importance of the clinics and the opportunity they presented to educate people on responsible pet ownership. Then, abruptly, she was silent, staring at Mike.
Mike lifted an eyebrow. “Is something wrong?”
Very slowly, keeping her gaze level with his, she smiled. There was a glint in her eyes that was purely predatory. “I just love to watch a man eat,” she purred. “There’s something so...primal about it.”
Mike grinned what he hoped was a sufficiently sensual grin. And he’d been worried that he might have to do some fancy footwork to get her interested in going out with him.
He finished his sandwich and put his wadded napkin onto his plastic plate with an air of finality. Ms. Curry responded with a meaningful glance at her watch and a gentle moue that said, “Too bad, but—”
Not This Guy! Page 6