“You will? Why?”
Good question, Steve commended silently. “I want to see the kitten,” he said aloud. He decided it was true. “I get a kick out of seeing her and Burton. I like cats a lot, you know. I grew up with them and I miss not being around them.”
“Why not get some cats of your own?” suggested Michelle, as one cat fancier to another. “You could get a couple kittens from the temporary shelter. There are so many there and—”
“It wouldn’t be fair for me to have pets. Not with my schedule. I’m rarely home.”
“And the thought of having a living, breathing presence at home eagerly waiting for you makes you nauseated,” Michelle said coolly. For just a moment, she’d been on the verge of forgetting his commitment phobia. He wouldn’t even commit to a houseplant, much less a cat. A woman didn’t stand a chance with this man.
But when he appeared at her door the following evening with a pepperoni pizza, she invited him in. She was delighted to see him and couldn’t hide it. Being with him was exhilarating. Simple things like watching the news on TV or playing with the cats took on a whole new, richer dimension when shared with Steve.
The days and weeks passed. February turned into March, March into April. Steve and Michelle fell into a pattern of sorts. They spent at least two evenings a week together, quiet evenings with dinner at an informal restaurant or at her apartment eating take-out or some simple dish she’d prepared. Sometimes they rented videos and watched them, sometimes they simply listened to music and talked. There didn’t seem to be a topic they couldn’t or didn’t discuss, although the machinations of state politics was always a favorite. Burton and Squeaky, now best friends despite the disparity in their sizes, ages and sex, continued to provide entertainment.
Steve’s schedule included a host of dinners, fund-raisers and meetings, which he usually attended alone. Michelle didn’t mind. Those were working nights for him and she understood the demands of a lobbyist’s continual quest for access and information.
Weekends were different. For several weeks, Steve continued his out-of-town weekend excursions and Michelle remained in Harrisburg. When he called and came over on Sunday nights, as he invariably did, she was careful not to ask anything about where he’d been, what he’d done and with whom. She didn’t know if he was dating other women and he didn’t volunteer the information, which was fine with her. She didn’t want to know.
By the middle of March, he was spending Friday evenings with her; by the end of that month, they were going out on Saturday nights, too, to dinner alone or with friends, to the movies, to parties. On the Harrisburg scene, they were considered a couple, although Michelle was certain that Steve wasn’t aware of it. She was convinced that he also didn’t realize how much time they were spending together. It had come about so gradually, so naturally.
And the more time they spent together, the hotter and higher the sexual attraction between them flamed. Their kisses and caresses became more passionate, more intimate and meaningful. Steve made it clear that he wanted to make love with her and often pressured her, sometimes subtly, sometimes not, but he never tried to force her or threaten her when she refused. He accepted her decision without sulking or raging.
“You’re fighting yourself right now, honey, not me,” he said confidently, and Michelle knew he was probably right. She waited for him to grow bored with her, but he kept coming around. If he was biding his time, waiting for her inevitable surrender, Michelle knew he wouldn’t have to wait much longer.
She was in love with him, and all those valid reasons she’d used to keep him out of her bed seemed less relevant and completely inapplicable when compared to how much she cared for him. And he cared for her, too, she was certain that he must, although he’d never actually said so. But she took comfort in the adage about “actions speaking louder than words.”
If he didn’t care, he wouldn’t spend so much time with her.
If he didn’t care, he wouldn’t defer his sexual demands to her wishes.
If he didn’t care, he wouldn’t gaze at her with such warmth and admiration in his dark velvety eyes; he wouldn’t laugh at her jokes no matter how lame; he wouldn’t call her on those evenings they didn’t spend together, just to tell her about his day and hear about hers.
But Steve did all those things and Michelle’s love for him grew as her desire for him intensified. When—she knew now that it was when not if— they made love, it would be her decision based on her own free will rather than the successful result of one of Steve’s smooth seductions. That was important to her. She wanted to be his partner, not his target. She wanted to be the one for him, not merely one of his fungible conquests.
Michelle allowed herself to dream that she was the one woman in the world for him, the special and lasting love of his life. And slowly and steadily, her dream became her belief. She really was his love and it was only a matter of time before he knew it, too.
Seven
April
“Michelle, this is Steve.”
She knew at once that something was wrong. Steve never identified himself over the phone, he always assumed that she’d recognize his voice. Of course, he was quite right, she always did. And after all those long, lazy hours on the telephone with him, she was attuned to every nuance in his voice. Today he sounded tense and uneasy.
“I, uh, I’m going to have to cancel for tonight.” Michelle swallowed, hard. “Oh?”
“Something’s come up,” Steve said tightly. “I won’t be able to make it.”
He paused and she waited for him to continue. He didn’t. A shiver of apprehension rippled through her. That was it? Without any further explanation, he was canceling the small dinner party that she’d planned with his partners, Greg Arthur and Patrick Lassiter and their girlfriends, Stacey and Julia, to celebrate his thirty-fourth birthday?
Disappointment rolled over her. She’d already planned the menu, bought the food and cleaned her apartment. Patrick and Julia were bringing the birthday cake, Greg and Stacey the wine, and she was about to start cooking the dinner.
But she decided to give him the benefit of the doubt. “Steve, are you sick?” she asked concernedly.
“No.” His voice was clipped. “I’m—” he cleared his throat, then added coolly “—sorry about this, Michelle.” He was standing her up for the birthday party she’d planned for him, without offering a single reason, and he had the nerve to merely say he was “sorry”? And he didn’t even sound particularly sorry, at that.
“So am I,” Michelle said. Her tone was as cool as his and completely belied the pure, unadulterated fury bubbling up inside her. “But we’ll toast you and sing Happy Birthday to you in your absence.”
There was a momentary shocked silence on Steve’s end of the line. “You’re going ahead with the dinner? Without me?”
“Of course. The arrangements have already been made. I see no reason to change plans at the last minute.”
“No reason?” His voice rose. “It was a birthday dinner for me and I won’t be there! Isn’t that reason enough?” “Oh, you’ll be here in spirit. When we light the candles on the cake, we’ll all be thinking of you.”
“There will only be five at the table,” Steve reminded her testily. “Two couples and you. Talk about feeling like a fifth wheel!”
“Hmm, I suppose I could always call Brendan O’Neal from the office, and invite him to come over. He’s always broke, always hungry and always happy to accept a free meal. He would make six, an even number of wheels.” “You’d invite another man to take my place at my own birthday party?” Steve was incensed and made no attempt to conceal it.
“Brendan isn’t another man,” Michelle said airily, mocking his dramatic intensity. “He’s just a student and he happens to be a very good friend of mine who—’ ’
“He’s a law student, only a couple of years younger than you, not a schoolboy,” Steve interrupted caustically. “Don’t kid yourself, Michelle. O’Neal is a man and inviting him to
| your apartment is tantamount to a come-on. As for that good friends bit, hah! Maybe on your part, baby, but not on his. I’ve been in your office, I’ve seen the way he practically slavers and pants over you.”
Michelle actually laughed. Her relationship with Brendan O’Neal had always been—and continued to be—purely platonic. But her laughter took on a hard edge as she snapped, “Brendan doesn’t pant over me! It’s the dim-witted women you date in four different cities who do the panting over you whenever you do them the honor of showing up for a night of—of meaningless sex.”
“You’re the only woman I’ve dated in months, dim-witted or otherwise,” Steve snarled. “Furthermore, I haven’t had any sex since I met you. Lord knows, I practically have to chase you around the room for a good-night kiss.”
It was hardly an accurate description of the increasingly passionate, intense necking sessions that they indulged in at least twice a week, but Steve was too outraged to be either accurate or fair and Michelle was too dumbfounded by his impromptu admission to call him on it. He hadn’t slept with anyone since way back in January, when they’d met? He hadn’t dated others during the early months of their relationship, when she had gloomily assumed he was still pursuing other women?
A long silence hung between them. Steve was the first to break it. “Look, I have to go,” he muttered, and hung up without saying goodbye.
Michelle carefully replaced the receiver in its cradle, restraining the impulse to slam it down with bone-jarring force. There was no use punishing the telephone, which was, after all, only an inanimate instrument communicating infuriating messages. That would be as irrational as the old custom of killing the bearer of bad tidings. But for the first time, Michelle truly understood the motivation behind it.
She was standing there, debating whether or not to call off the dinner or to invite Brendan to come to it, deciding whether to rage or to cry when the phone rang again. She answered it reflexively.
“Michelle, I’m not bowing out tonight on a capricious whim,” Steve said, he voice calm and smooth and reasonable once more. “I had hoped you would realize that instead of staging a possessive tantrum.”
“I didn’t,” Michelle fired back. “You did. You accused Brendan O’Neal of lusting after me. And if the reason you called back is to rehash or prolong the argument, I’d prefer to hang up now.”
She could almost hear him clench his jaw as he clenched, “I called back because I decided I should tell you why I can’t make it tonight.”
“How big of you!”
“It would serve you right if I hung up right now without another word,” Steve said grimly. But he didn’t. He was well aware that failing to appear at a party being held in one’s honor was unconscionably rude unless one had a faultlessly acceptable excuse, neurosurgery or death being two of the very few in that category.
“The truth is that my family arrived here unexpectedly,” he continued, loosing a sigh. “They had some furniture to bring to my cousin Saran and decided to combine the trip with a birthday visit to me. They’re all over at Saran’s place right now, but they’ll be back here for dinner. The entire family is here—my parents, my grandmother, Cassie and her kids, Jamie and Rand and the baby. They brought enough lasagna, ravioli, braciola, saltine bocca, foccacia and salad to feed both houses of congress.”
“You should’ve told me in the first place,” Michelle said quietly. “Of course you can’t leave them. I—I’ll call the others and explain.”
“Michelle, the food you bought for the dinner tonight ...” Steve took a deep breath. “I know it was expensive. I want to reimburse you for it.”
“Don’t be silly. I can freeze everything.” Michelle did not presume to suggest the logical alternative—that she join his family at his place for the birthday dinner. She’d known him long enough and well enough to realize that Steve Saraceni kept his social life entirely separate from his family. An introduction to the Saraceni clan was not in the cards for her tonight. Dispiritedly, she wondered if it ever would be.
“Have a good time tonight, Steve,” she said, mustering credible cheer. “Oh, and happy birthday.”
“Thanks, babe.” He was smooth and smiling again; she could hear it in his voice. Steve expected things to go easily for him and was rarely disappointed. “I’m really sorry about the dinner,” he added. “If you’d like, I’ll call Greg and Patrick myself and explain.”
“Never mind, I’ll do it.”
But instead of calling his partners, Michelle called their girlfriends, Julia and Stacey, whom she’d gotten to know well since dating Steve.
“He didn’t even invite you to have dinner with than?” Julia exclaimed after Michelle told her that the dinner was off and why. “That jerk! ”
“I can’t believe he didn’t suggest that you join him and his family for the birthday dinner!” Stacey was equally irate on Michelle’s behalf. “What a thoughtless creep!” Michelle had to agree. She’d needed to vent some steam over Steve’s cavalier dismissal and it was something of a soothing balm to hear her own thoughts verified. But following her bout of self-righteous anger, there came a deep and searing hurt. How could she delude herself into believing that he cared about her when he wouldn’t even invite her to his birthday dinner?
Well, thought Michelle, I can sit around here and mope like a pitiful creature who’s been Hooked! or I can take my life into my own hands. She opted for the latter. It was April, she’d recently read an article about the cherry blossoms being in gorgeous full bloom in the nation’s capital where her stepsister Courtney happened to live. She hadn’t seen Courtney for a while and, suddenly, it seemed an ideal time to visit her.
Several phone calls later, Michelle’s plans were in gear. She arranged for a few vacation days from work and her neighbor agreed to keep Squeaky whom Michelle deemed too young to travel. Besides, springing a lively kitten, plus Burton, on Courtney who was politely indifferent to cats at best, didn’t seem quite fair.
Within an hour of Steve’s cancellation, the food for his birthday dinner was in the freezer and Michelle and Burton were on the interstate highway heading toward Washington.
“And how was your day, Burtie?” Michelle asked the cat upon entering Courtney’s apartment. Burton meowed a greeting and followed her into the bedroom.
“I think that a full day of sightseeing is more exhausting than a forty hour work week.” She kicked off her shoes as she spoke, then peeled off her pantyhose. It felt good to flex her cramped, bare toes in the soft pile of the carpet.
“Before I fix myself a cup of tea and get you a kitty treat, I want to show you the prints I bought for my bedroom.” Michelle removed the reproduction prints of the original masterpieces from the paper bag marked National Gallery of Art. She’d made her purchases in the gift shop after viewing the paintings in the cavernous art museum, her sixth and final tourist stop of the day. She’d ended with dinner in a small restaurant near the White House, then caught the Metro back to Courtney’s apartment.
Burton was unimpressed with the art. His attention was focused on a furry gray toy mouse that he hunted with the same tactical concentration as a big cat in the wilds. Both were so engrossed—Michelle with her prints and Burton with his mouse—that neither made any response the first time the doorbell rang.
When the ringing persisted, Burton froze and tilted his head, cocking his ears. Michelle looked equally quizzical. “Who could that be?” she wondered aloud. “Courtney couldn’t be expecting anyone, she’s out of town. And couriers don’t make evening deliveries, do they?”
Tentatively, she went to the front door and reached to open the small metal door that covered the square metal-barred peephole. Michelle uttered a small gasp. Were her eyes playing tricks on her?
“Steve?” Her voice rose to an incredulous squeak.
Steve’s eyes flew to the small opening in the door where he saw and heard Michelle through the crossed metal bars. “Of course it’s me. Who were you expecting, the Easter Bunny?”
/>
Michelle was operating on pure astonishment as she automatically opened the door. “But how—” she began.
He gave her no chance to finish. He pushed his way inside, pulled her roughly into his arms and bent his head to hers, capturing her mouth with one fell swoop. The door slammed behind them. For one startled moment, Michelle stood rigid and still in his arms as her spinning mind attempted to assimilate his presence.
Steve wasn’t waiting for her to come to grips with his sudden appearance. His mouth was open and hard on hers, his kiss angry and punishing, a primitive display of possessive male dominance, and the effect on Michelle was oddly paradoxical. She wanted both to rebel and to submit.
And then her most primal feminine instincts took over, responding to the hard strength of his arms and the warm pressure of his body against hers. Her lips parted on a small sigh and the hot taste of his mouth filled her. Michelle thrust her fingers into the dark thickness of his hair and fervendy kissed him back.
As soon as Steve felt the melting warmth of her response, the whole nature of the kiss changed. Anger gave way to pure passion and he kissed her with a hungry urgency that revealed a desperate desire.
His hands gathered her skirt and lifted it. His big, warm palm glided up her bare thigh. When he encountered the lacy edges of her panties, he shuddered with arousal, then cupped her bottom with both hands, kneading and caressing the firm, silk-covered softness.
Michelle’s breath caught on a moan and her back arched. She moved against his hands as a river of sensual pleasure eddied through her. She wrapped her arms around his muscled shoulders and hugged him tighter to her, wanting to be as close as she could. Part of her wondered if she were dreaming a very erotic dream. His sudden appearance seemed like an awesome combination of fantasy and wish fulfillment.
But her swimming senses validated the reality of his presence. She could feel the heat of his body and smell the male muskiness of his skin. His body was hard and taut under her hands, and the sound of his deep, rasping breaths filled her ears.
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