Just Like a Man (43 page)

So then how come, she asked herself, Michael's reasons for lying to her couldn't have been the same?

Because it wasn't the same, she immediately answered herself. That was why.

But herself wouldn't be put off so easily, because she demanded further, How? How was it different?

It just was, that was all. Dammit.

But
howl

Hannah silently shushed the annoying voices in her head and tried to focus on her surroundings instead. Okay, so maybe she and Michael needed to talk, she finally relented. Maybe. If they survived the evening ahead. Because if anything went wrong this evening… if something happened to one of the candidates… or to Hannah… or worse, to Michael…

Well, she wouldn't think that way, she told herself. Everything would be fine tonight. It had to be. She just wished she could say everything would be fine
after
tonight, too. Unfortunately, she wasn't nearly as confident of that.

As if her thoughts had conjured him from thin air, Michael appeared on the other side of the room then, dressed, as he had been that night at the fund-raiser, in his faultless tuxedo. Before she could stop it, Hannah felt her heart soar at the sight of him. But just as it was arcing into a perfect rainbow of pure ecstasy, it went hurtling back to earth again, crashing and burning against craggy, windswept rocks. Because she saw then that he had accessorized his tuxedo tonight the same way he had the night of the fundraiser—with the dreaded and dainty Tiffannee hanging from his sleeve. This time her dress was fashioned from some clingy, translucent fabric of sapphire blue. All the better to match her enormous, if rather vapid—well, they
were
vapid—eyes. The dress was every bit as revealing as the other had been, however. And Tiffannee was as perky and as dewy and as tiny—and, God, as
blond
—as ever.

Hannah tried to tell herself Michael had only brought his majorette along tonight to make her jealous. It wasn't because he and Tiffannee were and had been an item. Or perhaps they were an ittemm.

Stop it,
she instructed herself.
You're being sillee.

Evidently he wasn't going to be listening to her conversations with Adrian via the pearls, she realized. No, he was going to be listening in person. And when she realized that, strangely, something inside Hannah grew much lighter and easier to carry.

"Oh, what a surprise," Adrian said blandly when he, too, noticed Michael and Tiffannee approaching. "Who would have thought Michael would be here, too?" He pulled Hannah close, roping an arm around her waist with the fierce-ness of a boa constrictor. "My, my, my," he added when they drew within earshot, "what a feeling of deja vu I'm having."

Michael smiled as he came to a halt, while Tiffannee, Hannah noted, looked as vapid as always. Well, she
did.
The adorable little thing.

"Deja vu, is that what it is?" Michael asked. "Funny, but when I saw you, a totally different word went through my head. But it wasn't
deja vu.
It was
scumbag."

Wow. He wasn't even going to pretend to be polite, Hannah thought. That was odd. Before, he'd at least
acted
like he was tolerant of Adrian. What happened to playing cat-and-mouse? This was like one of those shows on the nature channel during "Shark Week!" where a big ol' great white comes popping up out of the surf to suck down a half dozen baby seals in one bite.

Adrian seemed surprised by the pointedness of Michael's comment, too, Hannah noted. For all of three seconds. Then his expression suddenly cleared and he began to laugh. But it was a strange, nervous sound that started off as a few doubtful chuckles and gradually built into laughter that seemed very confident indeed.

"Oh, Michael," he finally said. "You're always such a kid-der. How could I have forgotten that about you? How could I have forgotten so many things about you?" Before anyone had a chance to comment on that, though, Adrian hurried on, "And you brought the lovely Tiffannee with you again this evening, I see. How nice."

"Hel-loo, Adrian," Tiffannee sang out with a smile, wiggling the fingers of her free hand in what Hannah supposed was meant to be a wave. Kind of. "It is
so
nice to see you again," she added in the same singsongy voice.

And then she winked at Adrian. But not very well. It was as if she were trying to keep the gesture a secret between just the two of them. All in all, it had the effect of making her look as if someone had just poked her in the eye. And when Adrian only smiled blandly in response to her greeting, Tiffannee's expression fell, and she frowned like a Wink 'n' Pout Barbie.

"Aren't you glad to see me, too?" she asked him.

"Delighted," he assured her in a voice that sounded anything but. "Especially with Michael this way," he added. "The two of you look just… darling together. Don't they, Hannah?" he asked her, turning to look at Hannah now. "Don't Michael and Tiffannee look
darling
together? Don't they look as if they were just
meant
for each other?"

"Mm," Hannah said, wondering at his exuberance over the discovery. Wondering even more why it hurt her so much to hear him say such a thing about Michael and Tiffannee belonging together.

"Yep, two of kind, that's what you are," Adrian said with a quick, certain nod, his voice still tinged with a shade too much ebullience. "I don't know why I didn't see that from the start." And before Hannah could remark on his odd commentary and behavior, he asked, "Would you like a glass of wine?" Then he turned to Tiffannee. "I'll be happy to bring something for you, too," he said. "And I remember your preference for double letters. How about a beer? Guinness, perhaps?"

Tiffannee giggled prettily. "I'll go with you," she offered sweetly… if a little vapidly. Well, she
was.
"I want to see if they have any amaretto."

"Of course you do," Adrian said, crooking his arm in invitation. But there was still something about his expression that didn't sit quite right with Hannah, and for some reason, she was glad it was Tiffannee going with Adrian to the bar instead of she herself.

Tiffannee accepted the proffered appendage willingly, and then she and Adrian strolled off, leaving Hannah and Michael alone for the first time since they'd parted ways.

"I thought they'd never leave," he said as he watched them go.

Hannah battled the smile she felt creeping up, telling herself not to be charmed by him. "But they'll be back," she said with certainty.

When she turned away from the retreating forms of Adrian and Tiffannee, she found Michael gazing now at her with unabashed affection, undisguised longing. He took a step forward, closer to her, and just that simple gesture made Hannah's heart pound hard in her chest.

"You look incredible," he said, his voice quiet, rough, and earnest.

At the sound of it, something deep in her belly went hot and rampant. There was just something about the way his gaze was fixed on her face, as if he weren't going to let anything in the world deter him from… something. From doing some thing he was thinking about doing. Probably to her. As soon as possible. He took another step forward, closer to her, and her heart hammered even harder when she saw desolation warring with hopefulness in his eyes.

Oh, Michael…

"You look wonderful, too," she said, telling herself she needed to start being honest with him, but deciding not to think for now about why that was so.

"I wanted to tell you that this afternoon," he added, taking a third step forward, closer to her. "I wanted to tell you lots of things this afternoon. Hannah, we need to—"

She held up a hand, palm out, both to stop the flow of words and to stop his approach. "Michael, don't," she interrupted him. "Not here. Not now. We can't do this tonight."

"The hell we can't," he said. "I might never have another chance after tonight."

She said nothing in response to that, neither denying nor confirming his charge, because she just couldn't think any further ahead than this evening.

"Then when?" he asked, the hopefulness flitting from his eyes now, the desolation taking over.

Oh, Michael…

But then he took another step forward. Closer to her. Close enough that now Hannah could smell the fresh, potent, masculine scent of him, a scent she remembered too well and that carried her immediately back to that afternoon at her house, when they had come together first so explosively and then so tenderly. She remembered the skim of his fingertips along the ribbon of her spine, the brush of his mouth along the column of her throat. And she remembered the way his body had joined with hers, deeply, wantonly, completely, melting into her as if the two of them would remain coupled that way forever. She remembered way too much. And it wasn't nearly enough.

She shook her head slowly, doing her best to push all the jumbled thoughts away. "I don't know," she said, not even sure what question she was answering. "There's just too much going on right now for me to be able to think."

"And me, I've been thinking too much," he said, taking one final step forward, closer to her, eliminating what little distance was left between them. "Because, Hannah, I can't stop thinking about you."

Nervously, she lifted a hand to the pearls encircling her throat… and remembered that everything they were saying to each other right now could be heard by someone else who was listening in. It might even be being recorded by someone else who was listening in. Because Michael was a spy. And so was she, by default, however temporarily. And they were both in danger. Thanks to him, nothing in her life was stable, secure, or normal anymore. And thanks to him, her life would never be the same again.

Without thinking, Hannah moved both hands to the back of her throat and unhooked the clasp fastening the pearls together, then thrust the strand forward and shoved it into Michael's pocket.

"You're going to have to stop thinking about me, Michael," she told him firmly. "Just like I have to stop thinking about you."

"Hannah—" he began.

And this time he held out one hand, as if he were begging her to throw him some small scrap of hope that, somehow, things would work out between them. But all she could do was shake her head at him slowly.

"We have other things we have to think about right now," she said softly.

His response to that was a barely suppressed snarl. "I'm tired of thinking about other things," he hissed, any lingering sense of obligation to duty clearly having dissolved. "I want to think about us. Right now," he added emphatically.

"Michael, there is no us," she said.

"The hell there isn't."

"There isn't," she insisted. "There is no—"

"I love you, Hannah," he said, again interrupting her. But this time the words were spoken not as they had been in his messages, with petition and solicitation, but with defiance and challenge. As if he were daring her to object to his declaration, because he couldn't wait to prove how much it was true.

"Michael…" she began. But honestly, she wasn't sure what to say.

Michael, however, seemed to know perfectly well what he wanted to tell her. "This place is crawling with OPUS agents," he said. "You and I don't need to be here. We need to be together," he assured her. "But we don't need to be here."

"Michael, we can't just leave," she said. "Not now. You, at least, are on assignment," she reminded him harshly. "You can't just turn your back on that." And then, because she just couldn't stop herself, she added bitterly, "And the assignment means more to you than anything, doesn't it?"

He glared at her for a moment, her barb having obviously hit home. Finally, though, quietly, his voice as steady and even as steel, he said, "You're right. I can't turn my back on my assignment. Because it really does mean more to me than anything."

Hannah's heart fell to hear him say it. To hear him declare what she'd known all along. That he'd choose OPUS over everything else. That his first allegiance was to a faceless, merciless, relentless organization, and not to her. Or to his family. Or to the life he'd built here in Indianapolis. He really was the sort of man she'd thought him all along, as ruthless as OPUS itself. And now she knew without question that there wasn't any hope for them.

"You've noticed I'm not the one doing surveillance on you tonight," he said.

She nodded, but she didn't really see how that mattered.

"That's because I declined
that
assignment," he told her.

She narrowed her eyes in suspicion. "Declined?" she asked.

He shrugged a little awkwardly. "Okay, I didn't actually decline it. OPUS agents aren't allowed to decline an assignment. We're told to do something, we do it, no questions asked, no objections offered. So when my boss ordered me to do surveillance on you from a distance tonight, the way I had to do before, I pretty much told him to shove it."

Now Hannah arched her eyebrows in surprise. "You told him to shove it?" she echoed. "Pretty much?"

He made a sour face and clarified, "Well, I'd rather not repeat verbatim what I said to him. It was pretty crass."

Now Hannah gaped in astonishment. "Can you do that?"

He shook his head. "Not without getting tossed in the brig or put on trial for subordination or treason or something."

"What?"

"I really didn't care about that part," he told her.

By now Hannah's head was spinning with confusion. "Michael, what are you talking about? You just said your current assignment was more important to you than anything."

"My current assignment is," he agreed.

Not that his agreement in any way cleared things up for Hannah, but at any rate, they were moving on. At least, she
thought
they were moving on. Kind of. Maybe.

"The reason I'm not the guy doing surveillance on you tonight," he continued, "is because I told my boss I wasn't letting you out of my sight with that bastard Adrian on the prowl. I told him the only assignment I'd accept, from here on out,
forever,
Hannah," he added meaningfully, "is staying close to you. And it's an assignment, finally, that I want to carry out. An assignment I
intend
to carry out. For the rest of my life. Whether you'll have me or not. Because that assignment means more to me than anything. Staying close to you, Hannah, means more to me than anything. Because you, Hannah, you mean more to me than anything. I love you," he said again. And the pleading was back in his voice now.