So, she was looking to recreate what she’d lost so long ago? Steve gulped. Maybe he should’ve come up with a weather joke, after all. Instead he told another kind of joke, one currently making the rounds at the Capitol. If she’d heard it, she didn’t let on and laughed appreciatively at the punch line.
The conversation seemed to naturally drift to less personal topics, most of it centering on the latest news and gossip circulating the state political scene. They found they had a number of acquaintances in common.
“I’m surprised we never met before this,” Steve remarked after the waiter removed their salad plates.
“I don’t do much socializing,” Michelle confessed. “My work takes up so much of my time and energy, I don’t have much left over for anything else.” Which wasn’t entirely true, she knew, but it was an acceptable excuse, one she used so often she was almost beginning to believe it herself.
“A good deal of my work is socializing,” said Steve. He launched into his familiar spiel, the one he’d crafted for the frequent question, What exactly do lobbyists do?—even though Michelle hadn’t asked it.
“Lobbyists go to fund-raisers, parties, luncheons, and dinners on behalf of charities, cultural groups, political action committees and campaigns. You name it and we’re there, wherever the state legislators are. The name of the game is access. Even the appearance of access is a large part of the exercise.”
It sounded like a hellish existence to Michelle. “Don’t you ever get tired of it?”
“Tired of going out?” Steve was flabbergasted by such a radical notion. “Never! I can’t think of the last time I spent an evening alone, sitting around my apartment. Hmm, maybe when I had the flu five years ago. I had to vegetate in front of the tube for three nights and I thought I’d go nuts. No, I love the night life. There isn’t enough of it for me in Harrisburg so I drive into Philadelphia or Washington or New York City for ball games or parties or shows. I have friends there and—”
“Your social life spans four cities?” Michelle interrupted, awed. “And you have women that you date in each city?” Did they greet him by crawling all over him and panting with delight. In four different cities?
A four-city social world. She could hardly take it in. Pride kept her from admitting to him that the span of her social life barely included the city limits of Harrisburg. But she had no trouble admitting to herself that this was her first and last date with Steve Saraceni. Even if he did manage to find time to sandwich her in between everybody else, everywhere else what was the point? In the annals of dating, he’d achievet world-class status while she—didn’t even qualify as a footnote!
There were too mismatched, too far apart, and not only geographically.
“I have friends in those particular cities,” Steve reiterated. Looking across the table at Michelle, he could almost feel her withdrawal. “That doesn’t necessarily mean, uh, women I date,” he added expediently.
But of course, it did, and they both knew it. He’d made a serious miscalculation in revealing the extent of his peripatetic social life, Steve realized ruefully. Michelle hadn’ been impressed as his dates usually were. She was appalled
Her expression, her tone of voice, her entire response reminded him of his sister Jamie’s reaction to his rollicking tales of adventure. Terrific, he thought grimly. Until he’d met Michelle, his intransigent little sister had been the one person in the world he couldn’t charm, the one person in the universe who didn’t look upon him with favor and indulgence. Now, it seemed, there were two of them—Jamie and Michelle.
Weirdly enough, he’d always secretly wanted Jamie’s approval. Even more unfathomable, he realized that he also wanted Michelle’s. He wanted her to gaze at him the way she’d done earlier. He remembered the warmth in her smile when they’d talked about his grandmother and wanted to see it again.
He tried, he really tried. Since Michelle had reacted favorably to his grandmother, he reintroduced her as a topic, shamelessly recounting a plethora of Grandma-and-Steve stories.
Michelle listened politely, but remained aloof, untouched and uninvolved. And stayed that way for the rest of the meal. And though Steve was at his amusing, charming best, though he radiated what had heretofore been fail-safe appeal, she remained impervious to it, to him.
It wasn’t easy for her. Only a stone could stay unmelted by those warm dark eyes of his, Michelle mused grimly, and so she concentrated on being one. She had to work hard at maintaining a cool smile when she wanted to laugh out loud at his often hilarious stories. She had to stay constantly on guard to keep from falling under the potent spell of his charm. He was so attentive, so eager to please her. Michelle was exhausted as they rose to leave. Remaining impassive to his winning ways had required extraordinary effort.
It was only the knowledge that countless women in four cities undoubtedly did not remain impassive or on guard, and succumbed regularly to those well-practiced winning ways of his, that strengthened her resolve.
The snow was falling, fast and thick, as they left the restaurant. A surprising amount had accumulated during the two-and-a-half hours they’d been inside. They watched a car skid on the snow-covered street while another spun its wheels futilely, trapped on an icy patch.
“This storm came up so fast, I guess it caught the roac crews by surprise,” observed Steve. “There’s been no snow removal at all from what I can see.”
Michelle glanced nervously at a car fishtailing around the corner. “Do you have snow tires or chains?”
“On my car?” He was aghast. “Not on a bet.”
She gazed up and down the street at the cars slipping, sliding and stuck in the snow. And Mr. Macho scorned snow tires and chains. “Driving is going to be murder. We’ll be lucky to get off this street.”
“My car drives like a dogsled in snow,” retorted Steve. He started down the front walk that the restaurant personne had cleared with calcium chloride crystals.
Michelle followed, pulling the belt of her coat tighter. It wasn’t a very warm coat, designed more for style than colc temperatures. As an icy blast of wind swirled snow arounc her, she thought longingly of her boxy blue and gray goose-down parka hanging in her closet. It even had a hood! If she were wearing it now, her hair wouldn’t be whipping arounc her head, and her neck and earlobes would not be flash-frozen. But she had opted for this coat, to be attractive for Steve. On their first and last date. Michelle sighed gloomily.
Unlike the private walk, the sidewalks hadn’t been cleared, and Michelle watched Steve tramp through the snow ahead of her. She glanced regretfully at her velvet shoes. They would never be the same after the block-long trek through the snow. Shivering, she prepared to step into one of Steve’s footsteps to follow the trail he was blazing.
And then, suddenly, he was back at her side. Michelle, who’d ducked her head low against the howling wind,jerked it up in surprise. And then gasped as she felt herself being lifted off her feet. “Wha—what are you doing?”
“What’s it look like?” growled Steve. “I’m carrying you to the car.”
He skidded, but managed to regain his footing almost immediately. Unnerved, Michelle clutched him around the neck. “We’re going to fall! Please, put me down!”
“We’re not going to fall and I’m not putting you down. I’m going to carry you so you can’t blame me for ruining your shoes like I ruined your evening.”
“I’m not sure I understand,” Michelle said stiffly. The wind sent a blast of snow in her face, cooling her flushed cheeks.
Steve trudged through the blizzard, carrying her, his breathing growing more labored but his jaw stubbornly set.
“I know you had a lousy time tonight, Michelle. You were simply going through the motions, putting in time and waiting for the evening to be over.” It was a strong speech for a perennially cool, uninvolved, nonconfrontational kind of guy, but Steve was glad he’d said it. "Don’t bother to deny it,” he added.
“All right, I won’t,” Michelle said quiet
ly.
They reached his car. Steve held her as he opened the door and deposited her inside, her shoes and feet dry and snow-free. His were soaked and cold. A less chivalrous soul might’ve dumped her in the snow—and with just cause. He brushed off the snow from the car before he stomped around to his side to get in, commending himself on his gallantry.
She hadn’t denied that she was glad the evening was over, that she hadn’t had a good time! He’d been half expecting her to tell him that he had been reading her all wrong and he was prepared to believe it. Unfortunately he had been right on target.
Neither said anything as the car’s engine roared to life. Steve easily steered the car out of the parking space and into the street. The windshield wipers worked diligently to keep the glass free of snow, but the flakes were falling so thick and so fast that it was a losing battle.
“The visibility is horrible,” Michelle said anxiously. “Do you think you should pull over and—”
“Do what? Sit in the car and freeze until it stops snowing? No thanks. I’ve never had any trouble driving in the snow. I don’t anticipate any now.”
He’d no sooner uttered the words when the car began to fishtail. “We’re at that bad corner.” Michelle gulped. “The one none of the other cars—” Her voice rose into a terrified squeak as the car shot across the road. A telephone pole was looming.
Three
Michelle glanced at Steve manipulating the steering wheel with both hands and pumping the brake with his foot before she covered her eyes and braced herself for the collision ... which didn’t occur.
“You can open your eyes now,” Steve said tersely. “We’re still on the road.”
Michelle snapped her eyes open and she gazed around her. The pole was behind them and the car was hugging the curb, inching along as the snow continued to fall with blinding fury.
“You did it,” she breathed. A powerful surge of relief made her feel giddy.
“Of course. Didn’t I tell you this car drives like a dog-sled?” He didn’t feel as calm and cool as he sounded. They’d missed that pole by mere inches. The adrenaline that had suffused his system, sharpening his reflexes and his dexterity in the emergency, began to slowly abate. He took
a few deep breaths and tried to ignore the wild thundering of his heart.
“So that was ‘mush’ I heard you muttering under your breath?” Michelle teased. “That’s odd, it sounded remarkably similar to a certain swear word.” She was lightheaded from the near miss, she felt like giggling and weeping at the same time. Careening toward the inexorable wooden strength of a telephone pole could do that to a person.
Steve braked to a stop at a traffic light—or tried to. The car slid through the intersection, fishtailing crazily. Fortunately there were no other cars on the road, so it didn’t matter that they spun around in a complete circle.
Michelle gasped. Steve muttered a few more words, which sounded nothing like the “mush” a sledmaster called to his dog team.
“Your place is closer, mine is across town,” he gritted as he slowly, carefully pulled the car onto a highway whose lanes were obliterated by the snow. It looked like a vast arctic tundra rather than a four-lane road.
Michelle nodded, picturing her apartment, warm, safe— and stationary. “I wish we could teleport ourselves there,” she said softly.
“Scared?”
“Completely rattled,” she admitted.
“We’ll make it.” He reached over and patted her hand for a second before resuming his grip on the wheel.
The rest of the drive, which normally took twenty minutes, was filled with two hours of close calls and near misses. They watched a succession of hapless motorists spin, skid, and slide off the road as they proceeded at a snail’s pace— and sometimes even slower. As the storm worsened, the number of abandoned cars alongside the road—and in one case, in the middle of it—increased, creating additional obstacles to be avoided.
They played the radio for a while, but the incessant weather bulletins, proclaiming the impassability of the roads and the admonitions to stay off them, irritated Steve and unnerved Michelle.
“Staying inside isn’t an option,” Steve finally snapped back at the hypermanic voice of the radio announcer who / had once again cautioned motorists not to drive in the blizzard. “We’re already out on the roads.” He switched off the radio. “What’s the point in listening to secondhand reports of how treacherous the roads are? We’re experiencing them firsthand.”
They rode in tense silence then, Steve concentrating his attention on keeping the car on the road, Michelle mentally willing him success in doing so. By the time he pulled the car into the snow-filled parking lot adjacent to her apartment building, both were exhausted from the dual strains of anxiety and tension.
Steve shifted gears in an attempt to pull the car closer to the building. The tires went around and around, but the Jag didn’t move. He tried again, pressing the gas pedal harder. Again, nothing. The odor of friction-burning rubber assailed their nostrils as the wheels kept spinning. They were stuck on the ice, blocked in by the snow.
Steve cut the engine and leaned against the steering wheel. “Looks like our luck’s run out,” he said glumly.
“It doesn’t matter, we made it!” Michelle exclaimed. “We’re home!” A smile lit her face. “I don’t mind admitting it now, but there were times, a lot of them in fact, when I didn’t think we would ever get here. I thought we’d end up spending the night trapped in a ditch or wrapped around a pole. You drove—” she paused, searching for a superlative “—brilliantly,” she finished exuberantly.
“So how do you feel about having this brilliant driver spend the night in your apartment?”
Michelle gaped at him, shocked.
Steve laughed slightly. “You’re home, honey, not me. I’ve managed to get stuck in this stupid lot and it looks like I won’t be going anywhere else tonight.”
Michelle swallowed and said nothing. He was going to have to spend the night in her apartment? She’d been so profoundly relieved to be safely home, she hadn’t had time to consider Steve’s predicament. And her own!
“Guess I’m not so brilliant, after all, huh? Although there are those who might argue that getting myself marooned so I have to sleep over at your place is a brilliant strategy.”
His attempted joke fell flat. Michelle glanced at him. He looked so tired, as drained as she felt. And no wonder—he’d just put in two hours of perilous driving.
“I know you didn’t do it deliberately,” Michelle said quietly, staring sightlessly at the snow whipping around the car. The heat inside was rapidly dissipating since he’d turned off the engine. She shivered.
“I certainly didn’t. I’m not the kind of guy who hangs around where I’m not wanted. And you made it clear tonight that you don’t want to be around me.”
Maybe it was the flatness in his voice or the absence of expression in his usually expressive face. Or perhaps it was the bond that forms between those who have faced an exhausting, difficult trial together. Whatever it was, Michelle felt guilt streak through her. “I didn’t mean to give you that impression,” she said softly. “I’m sorry if I was rude. I was trying to be polite this evening. I thought I’d succeeded.” “Oh, you were polite, all right. You smiled at all the right times, you nodded and came up with correct responses the conversation required. Except that you were on automatic pilot while you were doing it.” Steve frowned. “I can tell the difference between what’s real and what’s faked, Michelle. Both in and out of bed.”
“How can you tell if a woman is faking in bed?” Michelle blurted out, completely bewildered by his unexpected candor. “Every magazine article I’ve ever read on the subject says a man can never tell.” She wanted to recall the words the moment she said them. Blushing, she felt hot all over, despite the windchill factor.
He arched his dark brows. “Do you believe everything you read, Michelle? If you do, then you believe that Elvis is still alive, that Hitler
was really a woman—”
“What?”
“According to a tabloid headline I read in a supermarket line, Hitler was really a woman. It’s World War II’s best-kept secret.”
Michelle couldn’t help but laugh at that outlandish tale. “The lesson here is don’t believe everything you read,” Steve said silkily. “And I can always tell when a woman is faking in bed, no matter what the magazines say.”
Her smile abruptly vanished. Any prior sympathy she’d had for him dissolved just as rapidly. “Well, if any man can, I’m sure you’re the one. You’ve certainly had enough experience, haven’t you? All those women, in all those cities?”
“Not that again!” Steve groaned. “That’s when our evening started going off the track, isn’t it? When I mentioned that I had a life outside Harrisburg?”
“A life outside Harrisburg? That’s a shamefully bland understatement! But you’re very good at shading the truth—or sidestepping it altogether. Putting a new slant on it is the lobbyist term for that particular talent, I believe.” Steve heaved an exasperated sigh. “Michelle, I—”
“But I have a bit of advice for you that you might want to keep in mind,” Michelle cut in. She wasn’t going to stop now, she was on a roll. “It could prove useful for all those future dates of yours.”
Steve was well aware that advice was inevitably scathing criticism when it came from a disapproving woman. He braced himself for it.
Michelle did not disappoint him. “These days, boasting about an active, non-monogamous social life is analogous to walking around with a sign saying Warning—Research
Lab Volunteer for the Communicable Disease Center. Thinking, discerning women will not be enchanted.”
“I’ve always been careful!” Steve protested. “Before safe sex became a catchword, I practiced it. From the time I was in high school, my idea of hell was a knocked-up girl at my door telling me that I was officially eligible for a card and a pair of socks on Father’s Day. Bam—end freedom, begin family life. I’ve always taken care to make sure that doesn’t happen.”
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