Hard to Hold (True Romance) (9 page)

“Let’s get outside before you melt, then,” he suggested.

Or before she lured him to her bed. Either way, leaving was probably a very good idea.

There had been occasions in Mike’s life when he’d felt like he could take on the world. When he’d gotten into the college of his choice after struggling through high school. When he’d scored his dream job upon graduation. But none of those victories came close to the injection of elation that lightened his steps as he walked to the park with Sirus tugging at the end of her leash and Anne Miller strolling beside him. He’d already kissed her. Twice. And despite his anxiety over accidentally tugging her too hard on account of his Tourette’s, he’d taken her hand the moment they’d crossed the threshold out of their apartment building. Keeping himself from touching her was as impossible as warding off the cold during a frigid February.

Though the reading on the thermometer mounted outside the bank on the corner near the park was in the teens, warmth flooded through his system—starting at the spot where his fingers tangled with Anne’s. They found a bench beneath a tree and let Sirus off her leash. He commanded the dog to sit, and then reminded her to stay where he could see her before sending her off with a wave of his hand.

“Does she understand you?” Anne asked, her skepticism unhidden.

“She never goes far,” Mike replied. “And she’ll come right back if I call her.”

“She’s a smart girl,” she said.

“I got lucky. Rescue dogs can be unpredictable, but she was easy to train and just wants to be loved. Did you have dogs growing up?”

“No,” Anne said, her voice dripping with regret. “My parents worked a lot and we weren’t home much. It wasn’t fair to have a dog just to lock it up in a cage or a backyard. At least, that was my parents’ argument when my brother and I whined a lot.”

“They were right,” Mike agreed. Since it was so cold, he scooted closer to Anne and shifted his jacket so that he could tuck his hand—and hers—into his pocket. He hadn’t imagined the gesture would be so intimate, but it was. Her eyes widened for a split second before she grinned and relaxed into the curved bench.

“So you got Sirus when you were in Portland, right?”

“Yeah,” he said, trying to remember the details, because at the moment, his brain was befuddled by the feel of Anne’s shoulder pressed against his. “My job there was really flexible. Most days, she actually came to the office with me. I can’t do that here. I’m going to have to find someone to help me with her.”

At that moment, Sirus bounded out of a bush, startled, as if she’d sensed something that might require chasing should it appear in the next few seconds. With her front paws spaced out, her legs rigid and her head cocked, she looked every bit the hunting dog that Weimaraners had been bred to be.

Anne leaned in so that her voice was a whisper. “She looks so serious.”

Mike inhaled the heady scent of Anne’s shampoo. “To a dog, play is serious business.”

With nothing to chase, Sirus spun and dashed back into the bushes, which were really no more than twigs this time of year. Once satisfied that nothing interesting lurked amid the brittle branches, she leaped out and charged down the lighted walkway to investigate the shadow and scent of a trash can.

“Speaking of
serious
,” Anne said. “What’s up with her name? Is it a Harry Potter thing?”

“That’s Sirius,” he said, referring to the infamous character, Sirius Black, otherwise known as the Prisoner of Azkaban. “She was originally named after Osiris, the Egyptian—”

“God of the dead,” Anne filled in. “That’s morbid.”

“Which is why I changed it,” Mike admitted. “I didn’t get her until long after she was named and apparently, she had a lot of health problems as a puppy. Call me superstitious, but I thought naming her after a god of death was a bad omen. And since Sirius is also the name of the brightest star in the night sky, I change it to just Sirus.”

The dog’s scampering had started to slow and she was now sniffing the ground in search of a strategic location in which to do her business. Mike had a plastic bag in the opposite pocket of the one which he shared with Anne’s hand. He supposed picking up after his dog wasn’t the most romantic activity he could imagine, but Anne seemed to be getting to know the real him in all his complicated glory in one fell swoop. He’d told her about his Tourette’s, he’d acted on his compulsion to clean, and he was about to make sure his dog didn’t leave a deposit for some unsuspecting neighbor to step in. She was getting it all—good and bad—right from the start. He’d always been honest with the women he’d dated, but he couldn’t remember ever feeling quite so voluntarily exposed.

But Anne certainly didn’t seem to mind.

“So how old was she when you got her?”

“She was eighteen months old. A rescue. For both of us.”

“That’s the second time you’ve said that,” Anne pointed out.

“Does it sound corny?”

“No,” she replied, then laughed. “Okay, just a little. Still, it’s intriguing.”

Mike watched Sirus jog over to a tree, sniffing at the roots with the intensity of a police dog rooting out drugs. He’d adopted Sirus at one of the lowest points in his life, but confessing as much to Anne seemed a bit like overkill. He’d already hit her with quite a bit tonight. The date. The Tourette’s. And yet, her openness was undeniable. And infectious.

“It’s an old story that’s been told for generations,” he said, with a tad more drama than was warranted, just to drive the point home that his past, at this point, was nothing more than a distant tragedy that no longer drove his life. “A guy gets his heart stomped. He decides to fill the gap with a female who, thanks to careful breeding and training, does everything he says and never lets him down.”

“I hope you don’t expect unwavering obedience from all the women in your life,” Anne said.

Mike snorted. “If you met my mother or sisters, you’d never have to ask.”

“Not exactly shrinking violets?”

“They pretty much escaped the whole flower family. Except maybe belladonna,” he joked.

“I like them already,” she concluded.

“And they’d like you.”

“How do you know?”

“Because I like you.”

And again, they were kissing. This time, Mike didn’t plan or strategize. Their bodies, leaned close against the cold, gravitated toward each other with a pull as natural as the moon and tides. Her chilly lips warmed under his, adding a layer of sweet, sensual awareness.

He traced the edge of her mouth with his tongue and she instantly let him in, twisting so that he had full access. She tasted like mint and kissed with abandon. In his pocket, their hands tightened.

And then, Sirus jumped across their laps on the bench.

“Sirus! Bad dog!” he chided, half annoyed and half thankful that his pooch had interrupted a moment that could have gotten way more intense than he’d planned before their first date.

Anne laughed and scratched Sirus’s ears, which sent the dog into apoplectic fits of happiness, punctuated with barks and whimpers whenever Anne attempted to stop.

Soon the cold was creeping in through their outerwear, so they ambled to the café. With Sirus on her leash basking in the attention of strangers, Mike went inside and ordered two cappuccinos to go, a slice of cheesecake, and two forks. They ate standing at the outdoor pub tables, making quick work of the luscious dessert before heading home.

Mike dropped Sirus off and despite the dog’s protests, walked Anne back up to her apartment. At the door, he lingered, certain he wanted to kiss her one more time, but mindful of scaring her away by wanting too much, too soon.

She took the choice away from him by elevating herself onto her tiptoes and brushing a soft kiss on his cheek. “I had a great time tonight.”

“Yeah, me, too.”

He turned his head, stealing the full-on kiss he so desperately wanted, but pulling away before he reached the point where he wouldn’t be able to stop. Anne intoxicated him. The feel of her mouth on his, her tongue flavored by the sweet dessert, was the best indulgence he’d had in a long time. If he thought too long about how her intelligent conversation, easy sense of humor and general joy for life grabbed at his insides and pulled, he might never have found the power to say goodnight.

She rushed inside. A sudden burst of energy ricocheted through his system. He could have run up and down the stairwell for at least an hour without losing a single breath, but he decided to wait for the elevator. Lingering near her, even if it was just down the hall, was a welcomed torture.

But when the mechanism finally dinged, the sound was drowned by Anne’s distant scream.

Eight

NYCAM

NEW YORK COALITION AGAINST MICE

For Immediate Release

February 21, 2006

For more information:

Contact Michael Davoli

NEWS ADVISORY

NYCAM TO STAGE RAID ON SCHENECTADY COURTHOUSE:
ALL MICE BE DAMNED

Schenectady, NY—Members of the NYCAM, the New York Coalition Against Mice, announced today that they will be launching a new series of raids against mice in the Schenectady Courthouse. The raids are part of a stepped up attempt to crackdown on the fastest growing crime in Schenectady: illegal mouse droppings.

This raid was scheduled two days after a massive assortment of droppings were found in an Albany high rise apartment building. The droppings carried the markings of the Schenectady mouse gang,
Magic Kingdoms Rejects
. This was the first time that the MKR had staged a dropping in the state capital.

Anne read the message in her inbox twice, and then burst out laughing. The stares from her coworkers made her cover her mouth and lean in closer to her keyboard, but she chuckled all the same. After what she’d put Michael through last night, she thought she’d never hear from him again.

Instead, he’d turned her terror into a fake press release like the ones he wrote at his job.

High on the endorphins from Michael’s parting kiss, Anne had spun back into her kitchen to put the energy to good use. She’d opened her dishwasher and instantly spotted a dead mouse on the top rack. Her throat still hurt from the screaming. Only a split second later, she’d answered Mike’s insistent knocking and somehow managed to tell him about her rodent invader.

Precisely how he’d gotten rid of the dead mouse, she did not know or care. He’d not only stayed late to help her rewash every dish, but he’d apparently also listened when she’d told him how she’d be spending the majority of her time this week at the Schenectady Courthouse.

The press release would make sure she didn’t forget the crazy ending to their amazing night any time soon.

“I can’t imagine what would be so funny on the crime beat, Ms. Miller.”

The sound of her boss’s voice sucked the humor out of her system with the same power as a high-flow toilet. In the dictionary, listed under the word “buzzkill,” was a photograph of Pamela Toledo. She was like a female Lou Grant—only not during the lighthearted
Mary Tyler Moore Show,
but the more serious eponymous drama—and without the humanity. In fact, the only real reason Pamela reminded her of Lou Grant was because she was a newspaper editor and she looked remarkably like Ed Asner.

Anne quickly closed the window to her e-mail program, pasted on her best smile, and turned to Pamela. “Did you need me, Pamela?”

Pamela threw the marked-up copy of Anne’s latest article across her desk. It floated onto the floor in a flash of red on white. “No, but you certainly need me. I guess they don’t teach about dangling participles in journalism school anymore.”

Anne forced her smile to remain steady. Never mind that she had graduated from journalism school more than five years ago and had since worked on several publications of equal size and scope as the
Daily Journal
. She preferred instead to picture the dangling not of a participle, but of Pamela’s squirming body out of a tenth-story window.

“Right,” Anne said, scooping up the marked-up copy from the floor.

“You finished with that article on the city council indictment?” Pamela asked.

“Just waiting for one more quote from the district attorney,” Anne replied calmly, even though she’d reported that fact to her superior not twenty minutes ago during their morning staff meeting. “I was just about to call in. I’ll make my deadline, no problem.”

She stared into Pamela’s scowl and silently counted to ten. Then twenty. Even after the woman cleared her nicotine-coated throat and shuffled away in mismatched montage of bad eighties business suits, Anne counted another ten, just for good measure.

When the woman finally turned the corner into her office, Anne let out the breath she’d been holding with a colorful, but quiet, string of curses. When she’d first signed on to the job at the
Daily Journal,
she’d hoped to learn a great deal from the experienced newspaperwoman before she moved up and on to a byline at either the
New
York Times, Washington Post
or
Wall Street Journal.
Instead, she’d been browbeaten, underappreciated and abused. Her ambitions, however, remained solid. She hadn’t worked this hard to be undercut by someone as soulless as her current editor.