Hard to Hold (True Romance)

by LETO, JULIE

  Anne nodded. “Maybe it’s time to take a break.”

  Michael glanced up at the sky. Sunset was maybe forty-five minutes away and they still had an entire truckload to drag upstairs before the temperatures dropped and they lost their best light source.

  “No time. My dad’s helping me get my stuff upstairs and he doesn’t want to drive back home too late.”

  She paused a moment, pressing her lips together as if she wanted to say something, but wasn’t sure she should. Her hesitation, however, only lasted a split second.

  “I could help.”

  Mike glanced at the heavy boxes in the truck and then back at Anne, not sure what surprised him more—that the woman who’d occupied more than a little time in his thoughts over the last two months had suddenly appeared out of nowhere or that she was offering to help him lug heavy boxes into his new place.

  “I don’t want you to hurt yourself,” he said.

  “The dog will settle down,” Anne replied, bending so that she was eye level, but still at a safe distance from Sirus. The dog had stopped doing her imitation of a Slinky, but was still attempting to wriggle out of her skin.

  “No, I thought you meant,” he cut himself off before he made too much of a fool out of himself. Again.

  He yanked the leash, calling Sirus to his side. She obeyed immediately. She responded when Mike meant business. This wasn’t often, as he tended to spoil the pup rotten.

  The dog’s anxiety fed off his own. Despite obeying his command, the dog strained against her collar. She obviously wanted to know Anne better.

  Yeah, well, she could join the club.

  Mike knelt beside his pet and motioned Anne forward.

  “Sirus, this is Anne. Anne, meet Sirus, the wonder pup.”

  “Hello, Sirus.” The breathy sound of Anne’s voice warmed him like a gust of summer wind. The scarf, which looked rustically hand-knit, brushed against her cheek, flushed with color. The fact that her jeans curved quite nicely around her hips as she knelt didn’t hurt, either.

  The inside of his mouth parched to desert-like conditions. He was very thankful he didn’t have to speak again for a while. Anne had taken over the conversation, which was completely centered on Sirus.

  “You’re a beautiful lady, aren’t you?” she crooned to the dog, holding out her hand so that Sirus could give her a good long sniff. The dog’s butt and hind legs started rocking as her tail struggled beneath her. She wanted to obey Mike’s sit command, but she also wanted to tackle Anne and more than likely, lick at those adorably rosy freckled cheeks.

  Before he knew it, Anne was petting the dog, giving her extra scratches behind her ears. Inch by inch, the dog stretched closer.

  “You like dogs?” he asked.

  Okay, it was a stupid, obvious question, but with moisture absent from his mouth and his bloodstream pumping with the kind of powerful attraction he hadn’t felt in a very long time, he was lucky to form even three words of coherent conversation.

  “Oh, yeah,” she said, dropping to her knees in front of the dog so she could scratch both of Sirus’s ears simultaneously. For her trouble, the dog gave a long, appreciative swipe of tongue across Anne’s face.

  Lucky bitch.

  “Sirus, don’t lick.” He stood and pulled the dog back into a more controlled position.

  “It’s okay,” Anne said, wiping her hands over her face. Unadorned with makeup, her face glowed pink and pretty. “She’s just being a dog. What breed is she again?”

  “Weimaraner. I rescued her when I lived in Portland, though she’s returned the favor since.”

  Anne arched a brow. “Now that sounds like an intriguing story.”

  He remembered her telling him back in November that she was a reporter. Apparently, her instincts were well honed.

  “If I want to get moved in before nightfall, I’m afraid the story will have to wait.”

  “I can’t believe you’re moving in here,” she said, shaking her head, but smiling.

  “I can’t believe we ran into each other again,” he confessed.

  “Actually, the biggest coincidence comes from the fact that I live here, too. In this building, I mean.”

  Mike couldn’t stop the grin that generated from deep in his belly and then spread through his extremities. He suspected he could take off his coat right now and not feel the least bit of discomfort.

  “You’re kidding,” he said.

  “No, I’m not,” she said, standing. “There’s a park right around the corner. Why don’t you let me take the dog while you move your stuff in?”

  “Really? My dad just took some stuff upstairs and Ben’s coming over later with his car, but not having her underfoot would be a big help.”

  Anne slid her hand up Sirus’s leash until her hand was inches from his. Just when he thought their fingers might touch, she tugged the loop out of his hand. “I’ll take care of her. We’ll go for a walk and then I’ll bring her up to check out her new digs. What floor are you on?”

  Mike had to think. Before Anne had shown up, he’d known the location of his apartment. Now the information had retreated to a remote corner of his brain, probably to escape the powerful chemical reaction brought on by Anne’s proximity. Anne was beautiful. Anne lived in his building. Anne liked his dog.

  He’d hoped that his move to Albany would spark a change to his life, but he’d never expected for kismet to explode with such power.

  “The third. I’m in apartment 3-B.”

  She smiled. “I’m right below you. 2-D. Welcome to the building.”

  Anne took a few minutes to let the dog get accustomed to her before she slipped her hands back into her mittens, tightened her scarf around her neck, and headed to the park around the corner. She supposed running into Michael Davoli again hadn’t been entirely out of the realm of possibility. They had a mutual friend in Shane. Albany, while not a small town, wasn’t a teeming metropolis like Portland, where Mike had just moved from, or Manhattan, where Anne hoped to someday live. But in her wildest imagination, she never would have guessed they’d end up in the same building.

  State Street was a hot property. The tallest complex in downtown, the collection of midsize apartments was inhabited by a wide range of people, from graduate students to young professionals to start-up families. She lived across the hall from a Republican state senator. But mostly, it was single, working professionals such as herself, and now Mike. Before today, she’d thought the residents’ nickname of the place as “Albany 90210,” on account of the romantic hook-ups, had been overrated.

  Now, it was ripe with possibilities.

  Mike had definitely seemed happy to see her. After a split second of surprise, they’d spoken with ease and, if she wasn’t imagining it, some sexual tension. Anne didn’t claim to be an expert on men and mating habits, but she generally knew when a guy was interested.

  Of course, she’d caught a tremor of that vibe the first night they’d met and clearly, she’d been dead wrong about him then. Why did she think now would be any different, except for the whole close proximity thing?

  Sirus the wonder pup, as Michael adorably called her, proved an amiable, if not hilarious companion. She obeyed commands well on the leash, tugging only a little when she noticed another dog or passed by the playground that was overun by with screaming and easily excitable kids. The dog only tested the strength of Anne’s arm sockets once when they walked by a guy who was throwing tennis balls to his Labrador retriever. He’d offered her a chance to join in, but there was no way Anne was letting the dog off leash. That would be a great way to make a friend—lose his dog or let her get hit by a car.

  No, thank you.

  By the time Anne led Sirus over to a fountain to lap water from the chilly pool, they’d become lifelong friends. Or so she thought. Once they returned to the apartment building and rode up the elevator to Mike’s new place, the dog lost complete interest in anyone but her master.

  Amid a lot of human laughter and dog barking, whini
ng, and sniffing, Anne met Michael’s father, who was just on his way out to make the drive back home. With Ben running back to his place to pick up the last of Mike’s stuff, Anne felt suddenly very self-conscious about standing in the middle of Mike’s neatly stacked boxes and carefully arranged furniture—including, of course, a large and inviting-looking bed.

  “I should leave you two to settle in.” She side-stepped toward the door while Sirus circled through the apartment, sniffing every single object in the space as if to assure herself that these pieces belonged to her boy.

  “I really appreciate you keeping her for me,” Mike said, waving the dog away from a CD tower that looked like it might topple without the weight of music discs to hold it steady. “Not having her underfoot or tugging on me to play was a huge help. Why don’t you stick around? When Ben gets back, we’re going to order a pizza and he’s going to sift through my DVD collection. He likes to make fun of my cinematic choices.”

  Anne smiled, seriously tempted by the offer. Ultimately, she was a “hanging out” kind of girl. She liked getting to know guys in a casual situation without the pressure of dressing up or putting on airs. A girl could learn a lot about a guy from the movies he liked enough to purchase, but for the first time that she could remember, her instincts screamed for her to refuse.

  She’d met up with Mike twice. Both times, she’d felt a tug of interest. From him. From herself. Both times, fate had brought them together in circumstances that cast her in the role of the “new friend.” The girl to have drinks with after a concert. The neighbor in the building who would take care of your dog.

  This was not good.

  The fact that she’d sacrificed her time without a second thought to puppy sit for him told her she wanted something more from this guy than hanging out with his buddies and chomping on slices of pizza while insulting or praising his taste in movies.

  She had male friends. Lots of them. Many of them lived right in this building. She didn’t need another guy to hang out with. If fate was setting up Michael to be in her life, she was going to exert some control over what role he played.

  And friend wasn’t it.

  “Thanks for the offer,” she said, traveling the distance to the door with a determined stride. “But you need to settle in. Maybe we can get together another time.”

  She let that possibility hang in the air for a moment, glancing over her shoulder to watch Michael’s expression for any sign that he understood her subtle suggestion. She was being purposefully obtuse. But heck, if she had to spell it out for him, maybe he wasn’t the right man for her anyway.

  He took a step toward her, stopping short when Sirus dashed into his path and nearly tackled him with a raucous leap. Before Anne left, the last thing she heard beyond excited yipping was, “I’d like that.”

  Four

  MIKE GLANCED AT HIS WATCH AND CURSED. He had thirty minutes before his dinner meeting with the head of a grassroots organization looking to partner with his employer, the Quality Education Initiative. Unfortunately, he had an hour’s worth of work to do and his eyes were dry from the excessive blinking brought on by the added stress of today’s workload. He soothed them with some drops, then shuffled papers and attempted to prioritize his tasks while wondering how he was going to walk Sirus before his appointment.

  He hated leaving her home alone for such a long stretch. He lived close by and had already made it part of his routine to head home at lunchtime and take the dog to the park so she could stretch her legs and baptize the tree roots while he munched on a sandwich from the deli. Today, his trip home had been earlier than usual. He was risking his furniture and his dog’s mental health by not going home before his meeting, but he’d have to make it up to her with a good long jog before bed.

  Mike dove into his work, determined to skim a few items off his to-do list. He really needed to make arrangements for this scenario in the future. The QEI had already warned him that he might have to take more than just day trips for his job. He couldn’t keep running the dog over to his parents every time he had an overnight in Manhattan or a long series of meetings at the State House. When he’d lived in Portland, he’d had a neighbor who looked out for Sirus in emergencies.

  So far, he hadn’t had a chance to meet many of his neighbors. Well, he knew Anne, but when he ran into her next, he did not want to talk about his dog.

  He’d been thinking about her off and on for days, but his crazy schedule had kept him from dropping by her apartment. He hadn’t run into her accidentally, either. He supposed his luck had run out in that department.

  His phone chirped, shoving both Anne and Sirus out of his mind. He put out a quick fire between a local school board and his organization, and then dashed off the proposal revision and meeting agenda that two other department heads needed before he hurried to his car and battled traffic to reach his dinner appointment on time.

  Both the meal and the conversation went on longer than he’d anticipated. After nine-thirty, he made excuses and was half-jogging down the hall to his apartment at ten o’clock. Instantly, he heard scratching and whining inside the door.

  Damn.

  He dug his hand into his pocket and retrieved his keys, but as he jangled them, he realized one was missing. He had his car key. He had his office key. What he did not have was his apartment key.

  Damn, damn, damn.

  The landlord had given him the keys the day he moved in, but Mike hadn’t yet attached them to the same ring as those for his car and office. He’d broken routine and as a result, he’d left the keys inside his desk drawer. But with the building locked up tight for the night and no on-site security, he wouldn’t be able to retrieve them until morning.

  Sirus started barking. She could probably smell him through the door. His first thought was to call the landlord, but of course, he hadn’t yet programmed the guy’s number into his cell phone. Mike considered knocking on the door of a random neighbor, but they were likely already aggravated from the sounds of his dog going nuts. He certainly wasn’t going to ingratiate himself with them by pounding on their doors after ten o’clock.

  “Sh,” he coaxed Sirus through the door. “It’s okay, pup. Daddy’s a moron and forgot his keys.”

  She whined a little louder, but momentarily stopped barking and scratching, though she’d redouble her efforts when the combination of her desire to see him and her overtaxed bladder threw her back into canine hysterics.

  He flipped his phone and scrolled through his contact list, hoping to find someone who might be able to help him out. Ben was on a business trip. Nikki, his office buddy, was on a date and likely would have no idea how to fix this problem anyway.

  Then he scrolled by the listing for his friend who had once dated Shane. According to Anne, Shane also lived in the building, though he hadn’t seen her and had no idea which apartment was hers.

  Still, this was a place to start.

  He allowed a few minutes of small talk, filling him in on his recent move to State Street apartments and then listening to his summary of his pal’s recent purchase of a new family car to replace the old van they used to go to concerts in.

  When Sirus started growling, Mike had no choice but interrupt.

  “Do you remember Shane? Sanders, I think. Yeah, that girl you hooked up with at the Phish concert back in New Jersey. I know you’re a married man and everything, but you don’t happen to still have her number, do you?”

  After a vague promise to share a pitcher of beer sometime in the near future, Mike scored Shane’s phone number with no guarantees that it was still valid. Luckily, the voice-mail message echoed with her voice. Unluckily, her message also said she was out of town.

  He chanced a curse before the beep, then left a calm message and requested that she call him back as soon as possible. After soothing Sirus with more promises of imminent release, he tried to think of what to do next.

  His neck twitched. Then his shoulder. He became aware of the increased dryness of his eyes again. Stre
ss equaled increased symptoms of his Tourette’s.

  Damn. Damn, damn, damn. He really didn’t need this right now.

  Normally, his body could handle a little bit of added anxiety, but with the move, the new job, and now the inconvenience of his rushing out of work today without paying attention to the location of his keys, the disorder was starting to take over. He leaned against the hallway door and closed his eyes, concentrating on the muscles around his neck, willing them to relax. He inhaled slowly, and then breathed out through his mouth, the soft whooshing sound soothing the beast inside him. After a few minutes, his body calmed and submitted to the control of his brain and his will.

  One crisis averted.

  He turned and faced his door, prepared to come up with another solution in case Shane didn’t pick up her messages. Judging by the solid quality of the door frame, kicking it in wasn’t an option. He might have played varsity football back in high school, but that was a long time ago and tackling had never been his favorite activity. He’d just turned, determined to interrupt one of his unknown neighbors when he thought about Anne again.

  She’d told him that she lived in 2-D. This certainly wasn’t the way he wanted to see her again after last week, but he didn’t have a choice. Chances were, she had the landlord’s number. It was late, but as she did know Sirus, she’d understand his rush to get into his apartment before his dog exploded.

  The elevator seemed interminably slow. Once on the second floor, he found her door and knocked.

  No answer.

  He paced a minute, and then knocked again. Was no one home in this infernal building? It was a freaking Monday night! He leaned his ear to the door and could hear what sounded like a television. Maybe she’d left the box on while she went out. Or maybe she just couldn’t hear him.

  He was knocking more loudly when his phone rang.

  “Mike, it’s Shane. You sound desperate. What’s up?”

  “I’m going to sound like a dufus,” Mike confessed, “but I left my apartment keys at my office. You aren’t home by any chance, are you?”