Hard to Hold (True Romance) (24 page)

“Pleading guilty in this case would be much more interesting,” she teased.

“Well, if that’s what you want,” he said, pressing closer so that no question remained about what they’d be doing once she finally came home. “I’m guilty as charged. Gonna write a story about me?”

“And expose all your deep, dark secrets to the world? I’d rather keep them to myself.”

Two things stopped the intense make-out session that commenced. One was Shane tapping on the glass window to remind Anne that she had a pitcher of fresh sangria waiting at their table and the other was Sirus, who’d nuzzled in between them as she often did whenever they were kissing.

One challenge they’d yet to overcome in their new living arrangements was finding a way to coexist with the dog. She loved the pup, but the competition for attention and affection was going to have to stop.

“See you later, then?” he asked, untangling his legs from the leash trap Sirus had created around his knees.

“Not too much later,” Anne replied.

She returned to the table, determined not to make eye contact with Shane until she had to.

“You’re whipped,” Shane said.

“No, I’m in love. There’s a distinct difference.”

“You’d better be in love. Nothing else is going to help you survive living together.”

“What do you know? You’ve never shacked up with anyone.”

“Not for the lack of being asked,” Shane countered. “But I haven’t ruled it out. I just haven’t met the right guy. Maybe you have. I hope you have. I’d like to think someone can still find true love in this world.”

Anne stared down into her wine, suddenly struck by the import of what was happening. She and Mike had been together for over a year and while things between them hadn’t always been perfect, they were definitely on a romantic road she’d never traveled with anyone else. The decision to move in with him had not been an easy one. Giving up her space came with a price.

But the potential payoff was too tempting to resist. She loved him. He loved her. The idea of sharing her world with him all the time consumed her, even if it also scared her to death.

She and Shane headed back to the apartment building around ten o’clock. She was just about to open Mike’s door with her key when her cell phone buzzed in her back pocket. Glancing at the caller ID, she expected to see Michael’s number and had a sultry greeting on the tip of her tongue.

She stopped up short when she saw the caller was the
Daily
Journal
.

Not wanting to disturb her neighbors with what would likely be an unpleasant conversation, she went inside Mike’s place before she said, “Hello?”

Sirus bounded over, twirling in a circle to celebrate Anne’s arrival. She petted the dog while Pamela said something on the other end of the phone that she missed entirely.

“Excuse me?”

“We need you at the paper,” the editor said tersely. “Drop whatever you’re doing and get here ASAP.”

“I just finished a ten-hour day. Isn’t there anyone else?”

Pamela nearly growled. “If there was someone else, I wouldn’t be calling you, would I? You’ve got fifteen minutes.”

Mike came into the room and stopped short at what must have been the livid expression on her face. Never in her life had anyone spoken to her with so much disdain. Not even Pamela. She couldn’t take it anymore.

She wouldn’t.

Digging deep into the well of her professional soul, Anne managed to reassure her boss that she’d be there with maximum speed, then disconnected the call.

She’d go, because it was her job. She’d go, because despite how bone tired she was, she had a responsibility. But for how much longer she called the
Daily Journal
her employer was another matter entirely.

All her adult life, she’d wanted to be a reporter. She’d traveled across the country to make her dream come true, but nothing had topped finding a job in journalism in New York. She’d nearly sacrificed her relationship to keep her job. It was a testament to her bond with Michael that bickering over her hours or her unhappiness hadn’t torn them apart. Protecting her relationship at the same time she protected her job had sapped her dry. She had no more energy left to build a shield for her self-esteem.

She’d had enough.

“What’s up?” Mike asked.

Her eyes burned, but she blinked back tears. She was beyond crying. Beyond rage. She was numb.

“Pamela wants me back at the paper now.”

“You just left!” Mike said.

Anne shrugged and headed toward the couch where she’d left her laptop.

“You’re going to go?” he asked, shocked.

She nodded, but couldn’t reply. If she didn’t make this one last effort, Pamela might fire her—might ruin her chances for another job elsewhere. But Pamela’s unreasonable request had acted like a line in the sand. Anne had to make a choice about whether or not to cross.

“Tonight, yes, but Michael, this is it. I used to love my job. I used to feel like I could take on the world as long as I had a story to follow. But I’ve worked too hard to be treated this way.”

Mike sidled up beside her, his bright blue eyes alight with pride. He wrapped her in his arms, but didn’t say a word. He didn’t need to. Her body shook, but he compressed her fear and anger until she felt nothing but peace.

She should have done this months ago.

“You’re going to quit?”

Against his shoulder, she nodded. “I’ll go in tonight, file whatever story that’s got her so desperate for me and then tender my resignation first thing in the morning. Or maybe I’ll look in to that buyout thing the guys in HR were talking about a couple of months ago. I don’t know anything for sure except I can’t work there anymore.”

She couldn’t bear to look up at him. She’d intended to give Pamela an ultimatum regarding her hours tomorrow, one that the editor would have to capitulate to because Anne was a valued employee. She’d worked the night shift for longer than anyone else on the crime desk. She’d consistently turned in good work and had been reliable and diligent.

But the tone of her editor’s voice and the unreasonable demand that she work another eight-hour shift in the same day had simply been the last straw. Her tolerance had reached its limit.

Her stomach rolled over, then dropped to her feet.

She was going to quit her job.

“You’re doing the right thing,” Mike assured her.

She managed a little nod.

Mike took her hand. “Come sit down. I’ll pour you something.”

“I just drank a whole pitcher of sangria,” she confessed, and then her heart stopped. “Do you think that’s it? I’m drunk and making rash decisions?”

“No,” he said, a grin teasing the edges of his mouth that should have annoyed her, but didn’t. “I think you just had a moment of extreme clarity. They tend to knock the equilibrium out of you, though, so you really should take a load off. And as for that pitcher of sangria, I’ll make coffee and drive you in myself.”

She allowed Mike to lead her to the couch. The cushions cradled her, and seconds later, Sirus was lying across her lap, pawing her hand so that she’d pet her, which she did. At some point, Mike placed a mug in her hand. The smell of the coffee at once repelled and lured her. She sipped, and then shook her head in utter disbelief.

“I’m going to be unemployed for the first time in . . . ” Her voice trailed off. It was too taxing on her brain to think that far back. Except for college, she’d been working since she was a counselor at Camp Odyssey in her early teens.

“Good thing that you’re moving in with me, then,” he said.

Her entire chest seized up. “Oh! God, no. Now I can’t move in with you! I don’t have a salary. I can’t pay my half of the rent. There’s no way . . .”

Mike sat on the coffee table, his face frozen in a stoic, no-nonsense expression that was foreign, and yet, completely trustworthy. “You
will
move in with me. We’ll figure it all out, but if I have to support you in the manner to which you are accustomed, which luckily for me, isn’t all that extravagant,” he said as an aside, his mouth softening into a deeper smile, “then that’s what we’ll do. I love you, Anne. I love us. We will take care of each other. It’s what people in love do.”

Twenty-One

“
M
IKE, HONEY, YOU OKAY
?”

Startled, Mike looked up from the report he’d been trying to read for nearly half an hour. He blinked, trying to focus his eyes. Only when he looked up at Nikki, who was standing over him with concern etched on her pretty copper-brown face, did his vision clear.

“I’m sorry?” he asked.

“Are your allergies acting up again? You were kind of coughing, like,” she said, then imitated the sound.

Mike’s stomach turned. He had not been aware of any coughing and his allergies were fine. He was struggling with his eyes, which had fluttered shut. The muscles in his lids battled against the pulses sent to his brain. He couldn’t remember the last time his disorder had manifested with both physical and vocal tics to this degree. In fact, he wasn’t sure it had ever happened before.

“It’s the Tourette’s,” he replied.

Nikki’s eyebrows popped high on her head. As a close friend, she knew about his disorder. He wasn’t shy talking about it to people he met who might be put off by his symptoms if they didn’t understand why he had them. But in all the time she’d known him, he’d never experienced such pronounced signs of his disorder.

She grabbed the chair beside his desk and wheeled it closer to sit down knee to knee with him. “Since when?”

He closed the cover of the report, certain he wasn’t going to be able to process anything more today. “Since the new job, the new living arrangements, the new everything.”

Though Mike was currently working at the Quality Education Alliance, he’d given his two weeks notice a couple of days before. He’d received an offer from the teacher’s union in New York City, an opportunity he’d worked toward his entire career. His colleagues at the Alliance, supportive of educators, lauded his move to a more visible position as a lobbyist. Despite the fact that he’d have to commute to the city for his work week until Anne finished graduate school, they had decided that the move, in the end, would be a good thing.

Too bad his body did not agree.

In a split second, Nikki’s expression of concern morphed into one of focused energy. He couldn’t help but laugh. The woman was unstoppable. When presented with a problem, even one that wasn’t hers, she set her mind on finding a solution. “Okay, call Anne. Tell her to meet us at Lark Tavern at seven o’clock.”

“Lark?”

“I blame you for getting me hooked on their artichoke dip,” she said with mock indignation. “But you need to relax and I’m going to see to it that you do.”

Knowing better than to contradict his friend once she made an executive decision, he agreed. He was going to miss working with her. He was going to miss this job all together. But the union would give him an opportunity to work with the highest levels of state government. He’d make a difference in the educational programs he believed in.

But at what cost?

And how was he going to do his job—which was essentially, public speaking—if he couldn’t form a sentence without coughing, humming or sounding like a cursed mummy from a bad B-movie?

He dialed Anne’s cell, catching her as she left class.

“Hey,” he said, then cleared his throat. “How was school?”

He’d made a habit of asking this question every day since she’d started her graduate studies, even though it sounded like something one would ask a child. Still, it made her laugh, so he asked it anyway.

“No offense, but I’m in desperate need of estrogen,” she said.

Mike chuckled. Six months after leaving the
Daily Journal,
Anne was now a full-time graduate student working toward a Master of Science degree in Human-Computer Interaction. Which meant, she worked mostly with men. Cognizant of the rapid change in the delivery of news content from traditional paper to the Internet, Anne had decided to turn her unexpected break from gainful employment into time to pursue an advanced degree.

Mike had been one-hundred percent behind the idea, up until the moment he realized that if she was in school, she wouldn’t be able to move when he accepted the job in New York City.

“Too many engineering students in your personal space today?” he asked.

“Too many engineering students in existence,” she quipped. “I was going to call Shane and see if her knitting needles were sharp.”

“How about a trip to Lark Tavern instead?”

“Why not both?”

They made plans to meet in an hour. Mike kept the conversation short. He had every intention of telling Anne about this new development in his Tourette’s, but as her frustration level seemed to have peaked, he decided to wait until they’d both had a chance to relax.

He attempted to return to the report, but just as he’d struggled with written text so often during his life because of his disorder, he couldn’t manage to focus his eyes long enough to process the content. Instead, he bugged out early, went home, changed clothes, and took Sirus for a quick walk around the block. After they returned, he sat on the couch, willing his body to calm.