In the Midnight Hour (31 page)

He turned the light on and reached for a nearby book.

Long, willowy fingers touched his arm. “Why?”

“I don’t want you to lose face with your friends.”

“Why?”

His gaze collided with hers. “Because it’s important to you. They’re important to you. When, if, it happens between us, I don’t want you to have any regrets.” And she would. Maybe not now, but later.

“I’m sorry,” she whispered before bolting off the couch, righting her clothes and finger-combing her hair before pulling open the door. Though the apology was little consolation for the erection throbbing in his pants, hiding beneath an open chem book, the words eased the ache in his chest because he knew she meant it.

And that meant things weren’t over between them.

Chapter Sixteen

“And there you have it, class, the phases of preorgasmic male stimulation.”

For a lesson on male stimulation, Ronnie herself was quite stimulated.

Her gaze went to Guidry as he flipped on the lights and walked stiffly back to the podium. With his hair slicked back, his beady black eyes, his stern expression, and a necktie that appeared to be choking off the blood flow to his brain, he looked so sour it almost succeeded in dampening her inflamed senses. Unfortunately, the dream she’d had last night, preceded by a great big dose of reality, was still too vivid in her mind. Even the sight of unhappy, stuck-up Iron Ball couldn’t cool her down.

“A reminder, people. Papers are due on the last day of class, two weeks from today. If I do not have your paper in my hand at the beginning of class, you automatically fail. No exceptions will be made.”

Short of death, most professors would have said, but not Guidry. He, no doubt, would expect any student with the nerve to drop dead to have the hearse stop off on the way to the cemetery and deliver the treasured assignment, on time, into his cold hands. The guy needed a heart.

And Ronnie needed …
Val
.

Now where had that come from?

She certainly needed no such thing … person …
ghost
.

But somewhere along the line, Valentine Tremaine had turned into more than a ghost. She saw a man, felt a man. In her mind, he
was
a man. A man who took care of her when she was sick, who taunted and teased and kept her company. A man who scrambled her thoughts and made her yearn for marriage and babies and …

What the hell was she thinking?

She didn’t want marriage and babies, and she certainly didn’t want a man in her life. She was too busy studying, working, surviving.

Too afraid.

Who said that?

She forced the thought aside. She was not afraid of men.

Not of men. Of falling in love, stupid
.

She stiffened. That either. Especially that. She simply didn’t want to fall in love. She wanted a career first, foremost. More than she wanted Valentine Tremaine.

Her face heated at the thought of him and she clamped her legs together. Suddenly as determined as she’d been to seduce Val, she was even more hell-bent on avoiding him for the next two weeks. No more lessons. Madame X was only a few steps shy of the fifty. Ronnie could make up the rest. She would keep her distance, finish her paper, find out the truth about Emma, then give Val his walking papers. In the meantime, she had to concentrate.

She turned her attention, or at least tried, to school, and spent the rest of the morning rushing from class to class. After lunch, she headed to the accounting firm and spent four hours filing and answering phones. Then she headed back to campus for her shift at the library.

Not once did she think about Val, or what had happened.

No, it was more like a dozen times. Maybe two dozen. Just when she managed to forget him, his image popped into her head, his blue eyes vivid and intense, stirring so many things she’d never felt before.

That was the trouble. She
felt
too much where he was concerned. More than sympathy and admiration and compassion and lust. More.

“Are you all right?” Delta asked later that evening as they both stood behind the circulation desk and checked out books.

“Tired and stressed.” Ronnie finished checking out one student and turned her attention to the next in line. “Finals start soon.” She took a pile of books and flipped the top one open to the card pocket.

“Stress?” Delta gave her an I-don’t-buy-that look. “And here I thought you looked so uptight because you were mooning over a man.”

Try a ghost. “What makes you think I’m uptight?” She handed the stack of books back to the student.

“Well, you stamped the same book at least five times.”

“Oh, no.” She shook her head. “I don’t know what’s happening to me.” But she did. She knew all too well and that’s what had her so freaked out. She was falling for Val.

“It’s okay.” Delta sighed and glanced at the empty spot where Professor Gibbons usually sat every evening, reading his cooking magazine. “I completely forgot to pocket five cards a few minutes ago. Men,” she muttered.

“Looks like Gibbons must be doing his reading at home.”

Delta shrugged and turned to the next student. “It’s a free country.”

“So he
is
at home?” Ronnie pressed, grateful to be off the subject of her own love life and onto someone else’s.

“I guess.” At Ronnie’s skeptical look, she shrugged. “Okay, he’s at home, not that I’ve been spying on him.”

“You drove by his house.”

“I would never do any such thing.” At Ronnie’s knowing look, Delta shrugged. “I phoned him. He answered and I hung up.”

“So how many times have you two gone out?”

“Four dinners and a lunch.” Ronnie smiled, and Delta added, “Not that I’m keeping track. I mean, it’s hard not to. The food is so memorable. Cass is a wonderful cook.”

“Cass?”

“If I can eat the man’s food, I can call him by his first name. It doesn’t mean anything. I mean, he would like it to mean something. He wants more than good food and a little conversation, of course, but I’m not about to get serious with some over-the-hill Casanova even if he does cook a really divine chicken cordon bleu.”

“So you’re snapping and growling because you miss the chicken, right?”

“I’m cranky because it’s eight in the evening and I’ve been so busy, I haven’t had time to eat. I need my nourishment, you know.”

“Come on, Delta. You like the guy. Admit it.”

“He’s not a guy. He’s a man. An old man.”

“Who’s really cute.”

Delta seemed to soften. “Well, he does make me laugh, and we do like to watch Ted Koppel. And Letterman. Most men Cass’s age like Leno: it’s one of those loyalty things having to do with Johnny Carson that I still haven’t figured out. But not Cass. He’s a Letterman man all the way. And he likes Audrey Hepburn movies and Elvis …”

Speaking of Elvis.

Ronnie’s gaze went to Mr. Heartbreak Hotel sitting in his usual spot in the reference section. He didn’t spare her a glance, not that she wanted one. She pulled the baseball cap even lower and hunched over the circulation desk.

“… and picnics and he’s a Democrat.” A big plus, Ronnie knew, because Delta’s late husband had been not only a saint, but a Democratic saint. “And he likes to dance and he has all his own teeth.”

“A definite plus,” Ronnie agreed. “So why don’t you
like
like him?”

“Because … Just because,” she huffed, stuffing a card into a slot and shoving a book back toward a startled young man. “He’s … old,” she finally finished, but she didn’t say the word with near as much distaste as she had before.

“From what you’ve told me, Cass seems very young at heart. In the prime of his life, teeth and all.”

“Well,” she conceded. “You’d certainly never be able to tell his age by the way he kisses.”

“You’ve kissed him?”

“Well, uh, yes. Just a little peck. Nothing to write home about.”

She grinned. “Admit it, Delta. You like him.”

“Okay,” she said with a deep sigh and a purse to her lips. “Maybe I do.”

“Maybe?”

“Oh, all right, I do. But obviously he doesn’t feel the same way.” Her gaze went to his empty chair. “We sort of had a fight last night.”

“Why?”

“Over the kiss. It surprised me. Not that he did it, but the fact that I liked it. A lot. Too damned much. Anyhow, I sort of threatened to chop off a certain part of his anatomy if he didn’t start behaving like a gentleman. But I didn’t mean it. I mean, I did at the time, but I didn’t
really
mean it. Men are just too damned sensitive when it comes to their doohickeys.”

“Did you tell him you were sorry?”

“Of course.”

“And what did he say?”

“That maybe we should let things cool down a bit.” She shook her head and frowned. “If he wants to cool down, fine, but this girl is not going to sit around waiting for him. I’m going out tonight.” She eyed Ronnie. “You up for some after-work dessert at Jake’s?”

Jake’s was as famous as the House of Pies in the South, and always more packed because the twenty-four-hour café specialized in gourmet desserts, and Ronnie wasn’t the only tired, overworked student who needed a daily sugar fix.

“They make a mean chocolate rum cake,” Delta said, trying to tip the scales in her favor.

Ronnie could feel the fat cells expanding at the mere thought and she shook her head. “I’ve got a lot of studying to do. I have to get home.” As the refusal rolled off her tongue, she thought about Val waiting for her, stretched out on the bed, so naked and handsome and tempting …

“Maybe one piece.”

Jake’s was packed, as usual. Ronnie and Delta took up residence at a table in the corner and shared their misery over two huge pieces of chocolate rum cake.

“Ronnie?” Danny’s voice carried through the crowd and Ronnie’s head snapped up to see him wind his way around several tables. When he reached their table, he exchange hellos with Delta, then turned to Ronnie. “What are you doing here?”

“Having dessert.”

“You? But you don’t drink.”

She shoveled in the last bite of cake and licked her fork. “I’m not drinking, I’m eating.”

He glanced at the second piece of rum-soaked cake waiting in the wings for her fork. “That definitely qualifies as both.”

She grinned and reached for plate number two. “Want a bite?”

He shook his head. “I’m driving.”

“You don’t have a car.”

“It’s Wanda’s car. She asked me to meet her here. We’re supposed to study back at her place.”

“Studying?” Delta raised her eyebrows. “Is that what they call it these days?”

“Unfortunately,” Danny grumbled.

“What happened to your date the other night?” Ronnie asked.

“It started out great, we ended up back at her place, and then one of her friends showed up. End of date.”

“Love sucks,” Delta said, pouring a raspberry liquor sauce over her own monstrous piece of cake before shoveling a forkful into her mouth.

“Yeah.” Ronnie took a bite out of her second piece of rum decadence. Or was that her third?

“Yeah.” Danny eased into a seat beside Ronnie and glanced moodily at a table near the doorway where Wanda sat with a group of her friends—a few cheerleaders and some grade-A-looking hunks from the football team. He glanced at his watch.

“Are you taking medicine?” Ronnie asked.

“I’ve got a test at seven a.m. and we still have our nightly tutoring session.”

“Then blow this off and go home without her,” Ronnie told him. “You have to think about yourself.”

“But it’s calculus. Wanda’s weak in calculus. Besides, this was kind of supposed to be our second date. We were going to have dessert before the studying.”

“Here, honey,” Delta said, waving a forkful of cake dripping with liquor sauce. “This will help.”

Danny held up a hand. “I’m not really hungry.”

The woman shrugged and shoved the bite into her own mouth. “It’s not about hunger, sweetie,” she said after she’d swallowed with a satisfied gulp. “It’s about comfort.”