Authors: Sherryl Woods
They were in turmoil.
It was the damn Beethoven, she told herself. And the Chopin.
It was the kiss, she finally confessed with more honesty. One stupid, meaningless kiss and the man had her feeling like a teenager whose hormones were newly rampaging out of control. She’d taken enough courses, handled enough cases to recognize good old-fashioned lust when it hit her in the gut. Forget his tenderness. Forget the concern. What she was feeling had nothing to do with those gentler qualities. What she was feeling was heart-tumbling, spine-tingling desire for the man’s body. Recognizing it was half the battle. Now all she had to do was ignore it and sooner or later it would wear off.
Or cause her to do something incredibly stupid. The list of possibilities there was enough to make her choke on her soup. It began with falling into bed with him. It ended with falling in love.
“It’ll never happen,” she muttered adamantly.
“What won’t happen?” Hank inquired curiously.
Her gaze shot up. He was standing in the doorway, watching her again, Melissa cradled contentedly against his shoulder. How could a man the size of a truck move so stealthily? Maybe she ought to insist he wear a bell around his neck. She could use the warning in order to get her defenses into place. Right now he was probably seeing naked longing in her eyes. Terrific, she thought with disgust. Just great!
“Hi,” Melissa said with a sleepy smile. She held out her arms. Ann took her.
“Did you have a good day, pumpkin?”
Melissa nodded. “Hank and me builded a sand castle. Wanna see?”
“It’s a little dark to see it now. We’ll look in the morning.”
“Hanks says it’ll be all gone by then.” She gave him a beguiling grin. “We do it again, okay?”
He laughed. “Okay, squirt. Now remember what we talked about.”
She nodded. “I go to bed now.”
“That’s right. Ann will come tuck you in.”
“You, too?”
“Me, too.”
“Okay.”
When she had toddled off, Hank pulled out a chair, turned it around and sat down straddling it.
“I never thought I’d see the day,” he said, his eyes filled with amusement.
“What’s that supposed to mean?” she said.
“You, tongue-tied. Makes me wonder what you really were thinking about when Melissa and I arrived.”
“A case,” she improvised hastily. “It’s a tough one. It really has me stymied.”
“Oh, really.”
“Yes. This couple, they, um, they can’t seem to figure out what they want.”
He looked immediately interested. “So, what’d you tell ’em?”
Gathering her defenses, she met his gaze evenly. “I told them if they couldn’t make up their minds about each other, then getting together was probably the wrong decision.”
“But aren’t doubts normal, especially when a relationship is new?”
“Some doubts, yes. But if the love’s not powerful enough to overshadow them, then perhaps it’s not strong enough to survive, either.”
“Perhaps,” he echoed, reaching out to pick her hand up off the table. His thumb rubbed across her knuckles. “No guarantees?”
Ann felt an incredible tension begin to build inside just from the brush of his callused thumb across her hand. Her voice was shaky when she said, “There are never any guarantees, with or without doubts.”
He turned her hand over, lifted it up and kissed the palm. A current of electricity jolted through her as he said solemnly, “So you might as well play the hand out and see where it leads, right?”
She shook her head and nervously snatched her hand away. “Sometimes it’s better just to cut your losses.”
“When?” He asked the question very seriously, but she caught the desire to laugh lurking in his eyes.
She swallowed hard and tried to think straight. “When what?”
“When do you know it’s time to cut your losses?”
Now,
she wanted to shout. “That’s a very individual sort of thing,” she said sensibly, struggling against the emotions sweeping through her, fighting the temptation in his eyes.
“Let’s take you and me, for instance.”
He made the suggestion in all innocence. Still, her eyes blinked wide. “What?”
“You and me,” he repeated. “Purely hypothetical, of course. On the surface, you and I couldn’t be more unsuited, right?”
She nodded weakly.
“But we’re living here together for the time being and there’s this attraction growing between us.”
She tried valiantly for indignation. “Attraction?” Her voice was barely above a whisper. Instead of skepticism, however, she merely managed to convey nervousness.
“Sure. Lust. Chemistry. You know what I mean.”
“We’re talking hypothetical here?”
“Naturally. Now is that something that should be played out to its logical conclusion?”
“Absolutely not,” she said in a rush.
“Under no circumstances?”
“None.”
“Why?”
“You said it yourself. We’re unsuited.”
“On the surface.”
“That’s all we know about each other.”
“And we shouldn’t bother trying to dig beneath the surface? Maybe there’s more we have in common than we realize. Where there’s Beethoven, who knows, there could be Wagner.”
She was shaking her head. “Definitely not.”
“Definitely not Wagner?” he teased. “Or definitely not us?”
“Us,” she said, barely getting the word past a throat gone suddenly dry.
He tilted the chair forward and touched his lips to her forehead. “Coward,” he murmured softly.
And then, with a wink that made her heart flip over, he was gone again. One of these days, when she had her wits about her, she was going to have to talk to him about walking out in the middle of a conversation. It was a really lousy way to have the last word.
Super Bowl Sunday. Hank could hardly wait. He’d thought about going back to Miami to hang out with the guys, but by the time he’d finished working on Saturday it had been too damn late to tackle the drive. He considered going to a bar, which would be rowdy and filled with eager fans. But as beat as he was, nothing appealed to him more than settling down in front of the TV at home with a six-pack of beer, some chips and maybe a couple of hamburgers at halftime.
He hadn’t stopped to consider that Ann would regard the entire plan as tantamount to treason.
“You want to do what?” she said when he suggested they flip the channel on the TV away from some documentary on PBS.
“Watch the game.” When she stared at him blankly, he added, “The Super Bowl. You know, the big end-of-the-season matchup. This is what it’s all about.”
She looked appalled. And unyielding. “Only if you’re a cretin,” she said emphatically.
He sighed heavily. “Oh, Annie, there were such sad gaps in your education.”
“There were no gaps in my education. I have my B.A., my M.A. and my Ph.D.”
“But you obviously missed cheerleading.”
“Thank God.” She said it so fervently he had to hide a smile.
“Now, Annie, how do you expect to identify with your average American male if you know nothing about the sport that consumes most of his Sunday afternoons from late summer through winter? You owe it to yourself and the future of your practice to watch the Super Bowl.”
“I prefer to identify with his poor wife, who’s left to raise the children, mow the lawn and suffer in silence while the slob sits in front of a TV and stares at a bunch of grown men beating one another’s brains out.”
“Obviously you’ve missed the finer points of the game,” he said dryly.
“That’s okay by me.”
This clearly wasn’t getting them anywhere. Ann’s beliefs seemed entrenched. With only ten minutes to go until game time, he didn’t have a lot of time to win her over. He gazed longingly at the comfortable sofa and the thirty-four-inch television screen. “Is there another TV in the house?”
“Jason and Paul have an old tube TV in their room.”
Hank felt his heartbeat screech to a halt. It would be a travesty to watch the Super Bowl on a tube TV. “I don’t suppose…”
“Not on your life,” she said adamantly, turning the sound back up with a quick flick of the remote control.
If he drove like hell, there was still time to get to a bar. Or he could suffer through the game on the smaller screen. Or, he decided with a certain amount of roguish delight, he could use his considerable charms to get Annie to change her mind about sharing. As skittish as she was, ten minutes ought to be just enough time for that. He dropped down on the sofa beside her, mere inches from her.
“So what are you watching?”
She regarded him warily. “It’s a report on herbal medicine in China.”
“Any good?”
“It’s fascinating.”
“Good. Tell me what’s happened so far.”
She gave him a sharp look. “Why?”
“So I can catch up. If this is what we’re going to watch, I don’t want to feel left out.”
“This isn’t a suspense thriller. You won’t be confused if you don’t know what’s already happened.”
“But you said what you’d seen so far was fascinating. Fascinate me.”
“I thought you wanted to watch the Super Bowl.”
“I did, but I’d rather spend a quiet evening right here with you.” He allowed his hand to drift innocently to her thigh when he said it. He felt the muscle jerk beneath his touch, but to her credit Ann never glanced away from the television.
“Go away, Hank.”
“Am I bothering you?”
“Yes.”
He chuckled at her honest, heartfelt response. She turned a fierce scowl on him.
“Go away,” she repeated.
“Why? I think this is cozy. I want to share your interests. If this herbal medicine thing is as good as you say it is, I’m sure I’ll enjoy it just as much as a football game.”
With a deep sigh, she turned and handed him the remote control. “You win. Watch the game.”
“Are you sure?” He’d flipped the channel before the question was out of his mouth.
“Very sure,” she said wryly, getting to her feet.
Hank grabbed her wrist and pulled her back down. “Stay and watch it with me.”
“When pigs fly.”
“Give it a chance. I was willing to watch the China thing with you.”
“Sure you were.”
“Honest.”
She chuckled despite herself. “Your nose is growing, Riley.”
“Okay, so it was a calculated risk. Stay and watch this with me. Football’s no fun alone.” He reached behind the sofa and came up with two beers. “Here you go.”
To his astonishment, she took the bottle without protest and tilted it up. When she took another long swallow and then another, he began to get worried. “Maybe you should slow down,” he said.
“Why? Isn’t this the way you’re supposed to watch the game? A beer in one hand, a bowl of chips in the other. Where are the chips, by the way? I’m sure you have them hidden away somewhere.”
Still watching her warily, he reached behind the sofa again and retrieved the potato chips.
“Any dip?” she inquired as she took a handful.
“In the refrigerator,” he murmured, bemused by her odd behavior. Chips? Dip? Why wasn’t she yelling her head off by now? “I’ll get it.”
When he came back, to his amazement she hadn’t switched channels. He held out the onion dip. She loaded down a chip with the sour-cream mixture, then popped it into her mouth.
“Are you okay?”
“Fine.”
“But you hate all this stuff.”
“But I’m a good sport. Don’t forget that. Now be quiet. They’re playing the national anthem.”
All through the first quarter, Ann sat stoically beside him, drinking her beer and eating potato chips as if she’d been deprived of them since childhood. She did
not, however, look as though she were enjoying herself. She closed her eyes every time she anticipated the players making contact, which meant she was missing most of the game.
She watched the aftermath of a particularly violent third-down defense with a sort of avid fascination, then shivered. “Brutal. What is wrong with you? How can you stand this?” she said, turning her gaze on him. She actually looked shaken.
“Annie, this isn’t just a matter of brute force out there. It’s not just twenty-two guys trying to see how hard they can slam into one another.”
“You’ll never prove that to me.”
“I can if you’ll keep your eyes open for a couple of plays here. Now watch this. See the receiver going out for that pass. See that leap, the way he turns his body and reaches over his shoulder for the ball. Have you ever seen a ballet dancer execute a turn any more gracefully than that?”
“What do you know about ballet?” she scoffed.
“Season ticket holder, Miami City Ballet,” he retorted.
She stared in obvious astonishment. “You?”
“Me. Do you know that male dancers have almost as many injuries as football players? They wind up with bad backs, knee surgery, hip replacements. Do you wince when you see them on stage?”
She considered the argument thoughtfully. “I never thought of it like that.”
“These men are just as agile in their own way. If you watch a game as an exercise in athletic skill, rather than a display of brute strength, it takes on a whole different perspective.”
She glanced at the screen, then back at him. “Ballet, huh?”
“Pirouettes, leaps and all.”
“I’ll give it another inning.”
He groaned. “Half, Annie. Another half.”
Chapter 5
T
he last of Ann’s patients had left an hour ago. She’d finished her notes, put away the files, emptied the teapot and tidied her desk. She’d even plumped every last cushion on the sofa and aligned every slat in the vertical blinds. Practically the only thing left that could possibly delay her departure for home was kneeling down and picking every piece of lint from the carpet. She glanced down consideringly, then muttered an oath that rarely crossed her lips.
She was losing it. If this wasn’t proof enough, then yesterday’s behavior was. She had sat in front of the television through an entire football game. She had actually caught herself cheering for one extraordinarily evasive runner. She’d only barely noticed the violent tackles that had cleared his path. She had eaten more than her share of a huge bowl of greasy potato chips
slathered with sour-cream-and-onion dip. She’d allowed the kids to order pizzas for dinner. Stunned by the unexpected permission, they had asked for fat-laden pepperoni and sausage. She hadn’t even blinked. She blamed it on the beer.