Just Like a Man (11 page)

She'd accessorized her outfit with a glass of red wine, something which again made Michael reassess his view of her. Of course she would relax with a glass of wine in the evening, he told himself. Why should he be surprised that she would enjoy such a leisurely activity? She was an adult woman with a high-pressure job. Naturally, she'd need to unwind a bit at night. The fact that her expression was kind of dreamy, and her cheeks were kind of flushed, and her eyes were kind of brighter than usual—as if maybe she'd enjoyed more than one glass—was beside the point. As was the fact that, at the moment, she also looked incredibly approachable and agreeable and desirable and kissable and—

And what was the point again?

Oh, yeah. He'd come here to find out if she was alone. And if she
was
alone, then maybe he could…

Nothing,
he told himself firmly. He could—
would
—do nothing. If she was alone, then he'd chat with her for a bit about Alex, and then he'd turn around and go back out the way he'd come in. Through the front door. Down the front steps. Feeling really frustrated and wondering what the hell was going on. Only this time he wouldn't be wondering about what the hell was going on with Hannah. No, this time, he'd be wondering what the hell was going on with himself. Because never in his life had he been so thoroughly fascinated by a woman so soon after meeting her.

He was trying to think of some mundane question to ask about Alex that would get the conversation going, but something to his right caught his attention and held it, a faint, flickering light that drifted through open glass French doors dividing the living room from what he assumed was the dining room. But watching that weird light, Michael got the distinct impression that there truly was a birthday cake in that other room. A birthday cake with candles lit. A birthday cake over which the birthday song had just been sung.

And before he could stop himself, he heard himself ask, "Is today your birthday?"

Her eyes widened in obvious alarm at the question. "Why do you ask?" she said, her tone of voice contributing to the aura of alarm.

Michael pointed toward the light. "Because if it isn't your birthday today, then your house is on fire."

At that, Hannah spun around in panic, though somehow he got the impression that her panic stemmed less from the threat of her house being on fire than it did from him intuiting that today was her birthday. When she turned around again, she was blushing, though this time it had nothing to do with the wine. And damn, she was even more beautiful when caught unawares.

"The house isn't on fire," she said.

Michael couldn't quite help smiling. "So then it
is
your birthday."

She nodded quickly, once.

"Happy birthday," he told her.

"Thank you," she replied. But her voice was so soft and so quiet, and she was so disconcerted when she said it, that had he not been looking right at her, he might not have even registered the acknowledgment.

"I'm sorry to interrupt the party," he said further. "Had I known…"

"There's no party, just me," she said, verifying what he had suspected all along. And still she spoke softly. Still she spoke quietly. Still she was so disconcerted. "I just, um, I like cake," she finally finished, as if that should explain everything.

Michael had no idea what it was inside him that responded to her just then, but something, some unknown thing he'd never felt before, something he probably couldn't have explained in a million, billion years, went all soft and gooey as he watched her. In the gauzy golden light of her living room, surrounded by her too-tidy, too-perfect, too-quaint furnishings, wearing her soft, curvy clothes, Hannah Frost just looked… well, she looked lost, truth be told. Which was bizarre, because whenever he'd seen her before, she'd always seemed to be completely in control of herself and her surroundings. Now, though…

Man, he must be losing it. Because at the moment, Hannah Frost, uptight school director, looked very much like a woman who just wanted to be held.
Unguarded,
that was the word that came to him just then. That was how she seemed to be. Unguarded. And more than anything else in the world, at that moment Michael wanted very much to guard her. To keep her safe. To reassure her that everything was fine.

And he wanted even more to kiss her.

So much so, in fact, that he actually took a step forward and, before he even realized what he was doing, found himself lifting a hand toward her face. But he didn't seem to be the one controlling the gesture. Not consciously, anyway. Something else inside him was acting just then, was responding just then, and Michael, even consciously, had no wish to stop whatever it was. Higher and higher his hand rose, but he was too busy drowning in Hannah's blue, blue eyes to really notice it. She didn't seem to notice, either, at least not the movement of his hand, because she was too busy gazing back at him.

And then he did see his hand, hovering near her jaw, his index finger slightly extended past the others, all of them curling slightly toward his palm. Closer and closer his hand drew to her face, to the softly flushed flesh he wanted so desperately to touch. And then his hand was turning outward, forming itself into a cradle as it nestled under her jaw, and then he
was
touching her, just barely, the warmth of her skin seeping into the palm of his hand, and just that slight touch set his heart to racing, ignited tiny explosions in his mid-section. Hannah's eyes fluttered closed at the soft contact, her lips parting ever so slightly, as if she knew he wanted to kiss her, as if she wanted that, too.

And then Michael's head was following the path of his hand, dipping toward her face, toward her jaw, toward her mouth. It was almost as if time had stopped, as if reality had simply ebbed away, and he'd been transported over the last few minutes to another place, another body, another life. Hannah tilted her head a little to the right, and he tilted his a little to the left, and as the narrowing space between their bodies grew narrower still, he could almost feel the heat of her mingling with the heat of him, and the wanting of her mingling with the wanting of him, and the need in her mingling with the need in him.

He could feel her breath against his mouth, and he thought he heard her utter a soft sough of surrender, when suddenly whatever it was inside him responding to her was finally overridden by his conscious mind. Because that was when Michael's conscious mind stepped in and reminded him that Hannah did need guarding at the moment, and she did need to be kept safe—from him. If he kissed her now, regardless of how genuinely he felt about her—not that he could quite identify what it was he felt for her, only that it was indeed genuine—he would do so as the man who was spying on her. Who was misleading her. And although Michael had done some pretty questionable things in his time, kissing a woman while lying to her wasn't one of them. On the contrary, he'd been kissed himself while being lied to, and he hadn't liked it much. The last thing he wanted to be was someone like Tatiana.

So he stopped himself from doing what he wanted to do, forced himself to rescind his hand from Hannah's face and take a step backward, then shoved his hands deep into the pockets of his blue jeans so they wouldn't break free again. Hannah sensed his withdrawal, because she straightened and opened her eyes, blinking a few times in rapid succession as if just awakening from a trance. Michael sympathized. He felt a little fuzzy around the edges of his brain, too.

"Yeah, I, uh, I guess there comes a time in our lives when we don't want birthday parties anymore," he said, trying to pick up the threads of their conversation where they'd dropped it, amazed that he even remembered where they had been. "A time when birthdays don't seem so much like something to celebrate." He expelled a rough sound that he hoped didn't sound like dejection, but feared very much did. "Must happen around the same time we stop referring to ourselves by fractions. I mean, me, I'd be thirty-nine and three-quarters now. Somehow, though, I just don't feel compelled to tell people that."

Hannah smiled back, albeit a little shakily. Her smile seemed to result more from gratitude, though, than from any kind of amusement his comment may have inspired. But whether she was grateful for his deflecting the potential embarrassment of her situation away from her, or for the fact that he'd stopped himself from kissing her, he couldn't have said. He hoped it was the latter. Because he still wanted to kiss her. Still intended to kiss her. Once he was in a position to do so. He just hoped he
would
be in such a position. Soon.

"Thanks," she said, cementing his suspicion that she was more grateful than anything else. And then, more forcefully, "But I actually do enjoy celebrating birthdays," she told him. "I just keep my observances to myself, that's all. Well, usually," she amended, and he told himself she was too polite to be making a dig at his intrusion.

In spite of that, "I'll go," he said, "and I'll just call you at school tomorrow."

"No!" she exclaimed, surprising him.

Surprising herself, too, judging by her expression. But then, it had been a night for surprises, hadn't it? Surely she had found their near-embrace just now as unexpected as he had.

"I mean," she hastily backpedaled, "I don't mind you being here." She lifted one shoulder and let it drop in what he supposed was meant to be a shrug. "You can stay if you want."

Oh, he wanted. He most definitely, most assuredly wanted. So maybe he'd do like the song said and stay-ay-ay, just a little bit longer.

Hannah looked at Michael Sawyer and told herself she really should have stopped after one glass of Chianti. Because if she had, then maybe he wouldn't look so dreamy and winsome and fine. And maybe it wouldn't feel so good to have him here.

And maybe she wouldn't have nearly kissed him just a minute ago. Good heavens, what had happened with that? One minute, she'd been wondering where he had come from and why his presence in her home had been even nicer than the presents in her home, and the next minute, he'd been
this
close to kissing her, and she'd been
this
close to letting him. Letting him? she echoed to herself. Hah. She'd been
encouraging
him. She'd closed her eyes and tilted her head, just like a dewy starlet in a fabulous forties film. Could she have
been
any more obvious? What had come over her? What must he think of her?

And why was she tempted, even now, to lift her hand to his face this time and trail her fingertips over the smile that so sweetly curled his lips, and then press her mouth to his?

Chianti, she thought. The libation of love. Except that love had nothing to do with it. No, it was another L-word, she was certain, that was ruling her just then. Surprisingly, though, it wasn't lust, either. It was simple loneliness, that was all. Because ever since Michael Sawyer had walked into her office, her condition had been especially acute.

And speaking of cute, Michael was certainly that tonight. She had thought him handsome in a suit and tie, but dressed in more normal clothes like jeans and a sweater, the man was quite… She sighed in spite of herself. Breathtaking. That was what he was. Because he seemed so… normal. So accessible. So available. And even though she tried to tell herself otherwise, she was pretty sure that that, at least, had nothing to do with the wine.

"Please," she said, stirring herself almost physically from the strange reverie that wanted to encompass her, "stay. You can even have some cake, if you want."

And that, she decided,
had
to be the wine talking. Because never had Hannah wanted to share her birthday—especially her birthday cake—with anyone. Something about having Michael here, though, in her home, on a special occasion like this, just felt… good. Normal. Right. And she couldn't remember anyone ever feeling that way.

Chianti,
she told herself again. That had to be it. It was just one of the many reasons Italians were such gregarious people.

In silent invitation, she turned and made her way back to the dining room, smiling over her shoulder when she saw that Michael was following. Too late, she remembered the stack of gifts sitting on the table beside the cake, and she hoped he wouldn't comment on them. It would be too unsettling—not to mention flat-out humiliating—to have to share her imaginary family and friends with someone else.

"You even have gifts to open," he said, dashing her hope before it was even fully formed. He hesitated in the doorway. "Honestly, I can go. I really don't want to intrude."

"You're not intruding," she said to be polite. Then she realized it wasn't courtesy at all that made her say it. He really wasn't intruding. She actually liked having him here. "I can open my gifts later."

"Looks like you have a generous family," he said, dipping his head toward the stack. He smiled, a sympathetic sort of smile that made Hannah melt a little more inside. "So who are your gifts from?" he asked.

She really wished she could have headed off that question. Ah, well. She could fib a bit. He'd never know the truth. And there was certainly no harm that could come as a result of what she would be fibbing about. It wasn't like she was going to tell him she could hack into the computers of the International Monetary Fund. "The big one on the bottom is from my Great-Aunt Esmeralda. The others are from my parents, my Nana Frost, my Cousin Chloe, and my best friend from first grade, Patsy."

Hannah started to change the subject after that, but Michael continued before she had a chance.

"I don't have much family myself," he said. "Me and Alex. That's about it."

"Your parents are gone?" she asked.

This time he was the one to nod. "I lost them both within a few years of each other not long after I graduated from college."

"I'm sorry," she said.

"Thanks. They were quite a bit older than me. I was kind of a late-life surprise to them. They'd tried for years to have kids without being successful, and just when they gave up, I came along."

"I bet they doted on you," Hannah said softly.