Hard to Hold (True Romance)

by LETO, JULIE

  “I’m in the city for business meetings,” Shane said apologetically. “I won’t be back until tomorrow.”

  Clearly, she meant Manhattan. “You don’t happen to have the landlord’s number, do you?”

  “Yeah, but he bowls on Monday. He won’t answer his phone until after midnight, but you can leave him a message.”

  “Damn. My dog’s inside. She’s going nuts.”

  “Did you try Anne? She’s fairly resourceful with this sort of thing,” she said.

  “Actually, I’m outside her door now. I knocked a couple of times, but she’s not answering.”

  Oddly, Shane laughed. “Yeah, she wouldn’t. Look, I’ll give her a call and see if I can coax her up to your place. Trust me, she’ll get you inside.”

  Anxious to check on Sirus, he accepted Shane’s suggestion and disconnected the call, only mildly wondering why Anne would need “coaxing” in order to help him out. And still, the more he thought about Anne, the more she intrigued him. If she helped him out of yet another jam, he might have to do something drastic like take her out for a nice dinner.

  As he waited for the elevator, though, he acknowledged that gratitude had nothing to do with his desire to ask her out. He should have gotten her number the night he met her at the concert. He should have invited her out last week when she’d taken care of Sirus. He’d screwed up their first meeting by refusing to go out for drinks. This second meeting, wholly accidental, could have been better. And now, for his third shot, he was going to look like a flake.

  He tried not to think about it. His night was already bad enough.

  “Anne, I know you’re there . . . pick up the phone!”

  This was the third time Shane had called her landline in the last five minutes. Was the woman nuts? Did she not know what time it was? Anne wasn’t fanatical about a lot of things, but Monday nights at ten o’clock belonged to one man and one man only—Jack Bauer. Was it too much to ask to have sixty uninterrupted minutes once a week to watch the world’s most gorgeous antiterrorist agent save the free world?

  “Anne, I wouldn’t ordinarily dare to interrupt your weekly drool-fest over Keifer Sutherland, but remember Michael Davoli? He’s an actual real man in need of rescue and only you, my dear, can meet the challenge. Call me back!”

  Even though she heard the definitive click of Shane disconnecting the call, Anne cursed. Unlike many of her friends who had VCRs that actually worked, Anne did not have a way to record this episode. But now that she knew Michael might be in trouble, she couldn’t ignore the call to assist.

  A commercial came on, so with a good three and a half minutes until the next segment of 24 aired, she grabbed her handset and dialed Shane.

  “You have three minutes, less if you’re going to actually ask me to do anything,” she said by way of greeting.

  “I had no idea that Jack massacring perfectly good terrorists made you this cranky,” Shane quipped.

  “Two minutes, fifty seconds,” Anne snapped back.

  “Mike locked himself out of his apartment. Or left his keys at the office. I don’t remember the details, but he needs help. His dog is inside and she hasn’t been out for a while.”

  Anne frowned. Poor Sirus.

  “Did he call Joe?” Anne asked. Only the landlord had a spare set of keys to all the units. Most everyone who lived in the building gave spare keys to trusted neighbors for such emergencies. Shane had Anne’s, but a lot of good it did her since her friend was out of town more often than not.

  “Joe’s bowling. Besides, Mike didn’t have his number and I don’t have it with me, either. Can’t you dash down there and see if you can help?”

  “Why didn’t he come up and ask himself?” Anne asked.

  “He did! He was knocking on your door when I called him back. I suspect Jack Bauer was torturing an enemy combatant at the time.”

  Anne winced. When she watched 24, she snuggled beneath the quilt on her couch, a hot cup of coffee on the warmer, along with a bowl of popcorn or some other not-too-crunchy snack that she could eat without missing any crucial dialogue. Bathroom breaks were taken only during commercials, which might have been when Mike had knocked.

  “The show’s coming back on,” Anne said. “I’ll run up there next break.”

  She could hear Shane clucking her tongue on the other end of the phone. “You’re choosing the fictional hunk over the real one, my friend.”

  Anne didn’t bother to reply.

  She watched the next segment, trying to concentrate on the show when all she could think about was Michael and Sirus. She really was a wonderful dog who probably didn’t understand why her beloved master wouldn’t come in. And what if she had to go? He’d been at work all day. If he had a dog walker, he could have called them for an extra key. With a huff, she tore off her fleece pajamas and traded them for a pair of jeans and a blue wool sweater. While Jack exchanged information with his team, Anne took a second to rush a brush through her hair and dig a stick of gum out of her bag. She tried not to think about how attracted she must really be to Michael if she was willing to risk missing even a minute of the show to help him out.

  Ironically, the segment ended with a gunshot, which sent Anne scrambling to the door. She shoved her keys into her pocket and hit the stairs. She made it to the third floor in less than fifteen seconds and saw Michael outside his place, his forehead pressed against the door while Sirus whined on the other side.

  “Anne!” he said, alerted to her approach by the sound of her hoofing it down the hall.

  She held out her hand. “Give me a credit card.”

  “What?”

  She didn’t have time for him to catch up. Boldly, she slapped his backside. “Wallet. Credit Card. Get it.”

  He did so quickly, handing her a shiny new Visa that wasn’t about to be so pristine when she was done with it.

  She gave him a little shove to move him out of the way, concentrating only on her goal. Though she didn’t have a pet to worry about, she had lost her own keys more times than she could count. She might not be organized, but she was resourceful. She shoved the thin plastic into the nearly imperceptible gap between the door and the jamb, then slid it to the precise spot where, if she jiggled the doorknob and pulled forward just a quarter of an inch . . .

  Click.

  The door moved inward just enough to disengage the loosened lock.

  “Score!” She shoved the credit card back into Michael’s hand and then dashing toward the stairs again.

  “Hey!” he called after her. “Where are you going?”

  She spared him a glance over her shoulder before pushing the door to the stairwell open. “Back to what I was doing before you locked yourself out of your place.”

  “Oh, okay. Thanks,” he said.

  Was it her imagination, or did he sound disappointed?

  She was back beneath her blanket before she’d processed the answer. Yeah, he’d looked sad to see her go. In the part of her mind that contained her romantic fantasies, she conjured a scenario where Mike hadn’t really forgotten his keys, but just wanted an excuse to see her. Unfortunately, as her brain had been engaged in untangling the plot of her favorite television show for the last half hour, her neurons quickly blasted that daydream to bits.

  He hadn’t needed any convoluted excuse in order to stop by. She’d made that clear the last time she’d seen him. This time, however, she’d come across as wholly disinterested.

  Too bad that was the furthest thing from the truth.

  Anne settled into her pillows, grabbed the bag of chocolate-covered raisins from her coffee table and focused on the television. She’d helped him out. What more could a guy want? She resolved to stop thinking about him and concentrate only on the screen. If her real life suddenly seemed a little emptier than it had an hour before, such was life.

  The next move belonged to Michael.

  Five

  “I DON’T KNOW WHY you bother watching Jack Bauer,” Shane said with a snort. “You are Jac
k Bauer.”

  Anne rolled her eyes and pawed through a discount bin overflowing with skeins of soft, pastel-colored yarns. She’d finally talked Shane into joining her knitting group. Trouble was, Shane did not knit. She didn’t sew. She didn’t crochet, cross-stitch or engage in any hobby that fell under the “crafty” banner. Anne had promised to help her put together a starter kit, but only if Shane agreed to keep her questions about Michael to a minimum.

  So far, only one of them was keeping her end of the bargain.

  “How do you feel about lavender?” Anne asked, digging out a roll in variant shades of light purple and pearl.

  “It’s pretty,” Shane said, though from her crinkled nose, Anne knew the hue wasn’t to her taste. “I like darker colors. Bolder. You know, to fit my vibrant personality.”

  With a snicker, Anne moved to the next bin, which had a few jewel tones mixed in with bright summer colors of yellow, orange, and pink.

  “So?” Shane asked.

  “So, keep your jeans on. I’m looking.”

  Anne nearly fell forward into the cloud of cotton thread when Shane shoved her on the shoulder.

  “I don’t care about the yarn. Tell me more about rescuing Michael!”

  “I didn’t rescue him.” Anne tamped down her annoyance that Michael had allowed yet another opportunity to ask her out go untaken. He’d left her a thank-you note the next morning—quite literally. A yellow Post-it with the words, “Thank you,” written in neat block letters. She’d nearly torn it up in frustration. Instead, she’s scribbled “You’re welcome,” underneath and pasted it on his door in reply. She wanted no mistakes made. The ball was now in his court.

  Though even as she conjured the thought, she imagined a faded, chewed-on tennis ball not unlike the ones Sirus liked to gnaw bouncing impotently across a deserted concrete playground. Michael had had three separate opportunities to invite her on a date or at least ask for her phone number. Maybe the internal radar that alerted her to possible interest from a guy was faulty, but she’d never been so off base with anyone before. Her instincts told her he liked her, but his actions denied this with a vengeance.

  “You got him into his apartment with a credit card,” Shane continued, flipping over a few skeins of yarn disinterestedly. “Very impressive. But I especially like how you lit out of there so quickly. It adds an air of mystery. That’s very attractive to men.”

  Yeah, she might have thought so, too, if she hadn’t found the Post-it note.

  “Trust me, this guy is not attracted,” Anne said. “If he was, he would’ve thanked me properly.”

  Flowers. Chocolate. She didn’t need Godiva—a Hershey bar would have sufficed.

  “What did you expect him to do?” Shane asked. “Sweep you up into a sexy kiss, maybe do you against the wall while his dog ran around, waiting to pee?”

  “You’re so crude,” Anne shoved two skeins of amethyst and plum-colored yarns into Shane’s arms. “I didn’t expect anything from him, okay? He’s very nice, but stop trying to set us up. If the magic hasn’t happened by now, it’s not going to.”

  “Is that what you’re waiting for? Magic?”

  “Why not?”

  Shane shrugged, raising her yarn-holding hands in surrender to Anne’s rather over-emotional challenge. “No, no. I am a total, one-hundred percent believer in magic. It just seems like there’s already been a lot of the stuff twinkling around you and Michael. I’m not exactly sure how much more you could possibly want.”

  “Are we going back to the my standards are too high argument again?”

  Shane dropped the yarn into a basket. “What do you think?”

  Anne beelined to the aisle that held an assortment of knitting needles, not because the idea of stabbing Shane through the eye with one right about now didn’t have its appeal, but because she wanted to finish this trip quickly and get on to the drinking part of the evening.

  Though her mother had taught her to knit back in junior high, she’d only recently rediscovered the hobby thanks to the cold Albany winter nights. When a couple of friends had shown interest in taking up the craft, too, they’d moved to a neighborhood bar where they sipped wine and created hats, scarves and squares for afghans. More often than not, the wine took center stage and they became a drinking club with a knitting problem rather than the other way around. Anne had been looking forward to bringing Shane along for the fun, but the evening was going to be a bust if her friend insisted on talking about Michael all night long.

  “Look, can we stop talking about Michael, please? He’s not interested. I don’t know what magic you’re talking about, but I certainly haven’t seen any evidence.”

  “Number one,” Shane said, hardly taking a breath before she launched into her counterattack. “You happen to go to a concert with me, and we run into a cute Jewish boy named Michael, who I haven’t seen in years, but just so happens to be at the very same concert.”

  “Coincidence,” Anne snapped.

  “Hm,” Shane hummed. “Magical coincidence. Number two—”

  Anne speared her friend with a warning look, but Shane continued, wholly unfazed.

  “—Of all the apartment buildings in the city, Michael not only moves into the one you live in, but he happens to be in the act of transferring his worldly possessions into the building at precisely the same moment that you are walking by. And number three—”

  “Please don’t tell me that his forgetting his keys is magic, too?” Anne begged.

  “Well,” Shane said, “Michael is practically famous for his organization and neatness. His friends used to give him a hard time about it. What are the chances that a guy with OCD tendencies would forget his apartment keys at the office?”

  Anne thought back to the state of Mike’s apartment after he’d spent the day moving in. Now that Shane mentioned it, he did seem to have the boxes color coded and stacked in neat rows against the door. The carpets had been newly vacuumed, as if he’d taken the time to give the apartment a quick cleaning before he set up his stuff. While this was something Anne’s mother might do, it wasn’t exactly expected behavior for a guy moving in to his new bachelor pad.

  “Maybe he’s changed.”

  “No guy changes that drastically unless he’s had a head injury, and Michael looked perfectly healthy last time I saw him. Except for the cold. Anyway, magic may not be at play in the most obvious way, but it is here and you’d be a fool to ignore it.”

  Anne saw a book on elementary knitting patterns and tossed it at Shane. “What if I’m not the one ignoring it?”

  Shane smiled deviously. “Aha! Now, we’re getting to the real issues. You want him to come on to you instead of the other way around.”

  “Is that too much to ask?”

  Shaking her head, Shane threw Anne a pitying look that only someone of her vast romantic experience could successfully pull off. “Not all guys are players, sweetie. The ones worth having are usually the ones most wary of being rejected. If a guy doesn’t fear being blown off, he’s probably too confident for anyone’s own good, much less his own.”

  “I wouldn’t reject him,” Anne said, then clarified, “if he bothered to ask.”

  “Does he know that?” Shane pushed.

  Anne frowned. She and Shane had dissected her interactions with Michael enough times for both of them to know the answer. Anne hadn’t really turned on the charm and broadcasted her interest. She hadn’t wanted to work that hard. But was that fair? A receiver could only pick up signals if someone sent them. Sure, she’d invited him for drinks after the concert, but that had merely been polite. She’d watched his dog the day he moved in, but had summarily turned down his invitation for pizza afterward.

  And last night, she’d literally given him no more than three minutes of her time.

  “Okay, okay,” she said after selecting the last of the supplies her friend would need. “I’ll have to do something to make sure he knows I’m available.”

  Shane shouted in triumph. “Excelle
nt. What are you going to do?”

  Anne shook her head, her mind focused entirely on her anticipation of her first merlot.

  “I have no idea.”

  For the next week, Mike tried to come up with a good way to thank Anne for rescuing him with her felonious skills. He had left a Post-it note that night, the least intrusive mode of thanks he could think of, as it was more than obvious that she wanted to get back to whatever had kept her from answering his knock in the first place. Though she’d taken the time to jot “You’re welcome” on the yellow square and paste it back on his door the next afternoon, he hadn’t heard from her otherwise. For this, he was thankful. Before he proceeded, he needed a plan.

  Mike couldn’t remember the last time a woman had injected herself into his consciousness so completely and in such a short period of time. Even with his ex, he’d had a slowly developing relationship. They’d shared an intense love of music and common friends. They’d hung out and over time, started doing so without a crowd. But without drama to set them at odds, they’d stayed together until the relationship fell apart.

  Mike had wallowed in the loss for a while, but then he’d moved on. Or at least, he thought he had. But he couldn’t deny that since then, he’d avoided serious relationships.

  Now that he’d met Anne, however, the strength of his recovery surged through him. Her magical smile—or even, as he’d learned Monday night—her annoyed smirk, awakened him to possibilities he could neither ignore nor take lightly. He wanted to ask her out, but he couldn’t imagine going the ordinary route to this important destination.

  That simply wasn’t his style.

  Boring, unimaginative, “same-old, same-old” invitations popped into his mind and were summarily dismissed. Dinner. A movie. Dinner and a movie. He knew she liked music, but though he’d scoured the local venue websites for information, no interesting concerts were taking place in the next week. He had absolutely no idea how she felt about sports. He was sitting at his desk, pondering other possibilities when his phone rang.

  “Michael?”

  Anne.

  He instantly recognized her voice. He’d been replaying their conversations in his mind for a while and yet again, she’d proved her resourcefulness. Anne had not only managed to scare up his work number, but she’d actually made the call.