Just Like a Man (16 page)

She twisted the phone cord in her hand as she spoke to him, but her mind was miles away. Would that the Kimmel-mans were miles away, too, instead of sitting in her outer office waiting to talk to her. "No, really, Adrian, I'm sure it will be wonderful," she said.

"You sound about as enthusiastic as you would had I asked you to accompany me to an autopsy," he replied wryly.

Well, if he had, at least she'd have a reason for the sick feeling in the pit of her stomach, she thought. "No, it isn't that. You just caught me at a bad time, that's all. It's been one of those days. Again."
Translation,
Hannah thought,
stop calling me at work.
"I'm sorry."

"I know it's last-minute," he said, "barely twenty-four hours' notice. But I wasn't sure myself if I'd be going until just now. I'm glad you're free."
Translation,
Hannah thought,
I know you don't have a life.

"It sounds fabulous," she said. And it did. Or, rather, it would, had someone else been the one asking her to attend. Someone like, oh, say… Michael Sawyer.

Because she hadn't been able to stop thinking about Michael since she'd hallucinated him at her home Monday night. Though she still couldn't quite bring herself to believe he'd been a hallucination. He'd certainly seemed real. Looked real. Sounded real. Smelled real. She just couldn't quite bring herself to believe he'd
been
real. Because if she conceded to the fact that he had been real, then she'd have to concede, too, to the fact that he'd very nearly kissed her. And she'd also have to concede to the fact that she'd very much wanted him to.

Chianti, she told herself again. Lethal, lethal stuff. Made a person far too fanciful, far too romantic. And now Adrian was talking again, and she realized she had no idea what he was saying, because she'd been thinking about Michael. Again.

"I'm sorry, Adrian, what did you say?"

"I said I'll pick you up at your house at six tomorrow night. How will that be?"

Wonderful,
she thought sarcastically. "Wonderful," she said brightly.

And as she hung up the phone, she wondered what one wore to a black-tie gala event, and if her black suit would be all right.

The black suit wasn't all right. Hannah discovered this after going to the Emerson library and discreetly thumbing through the etiquette books, none of which appeared to have been consulted by any of the students since… ever. All of the books had stated quite adamantly that for a black-tie event, one needed a gown. This was a problem, since in spite of being a formal person, Hannah didn't own a single formal. So now she stood beside Adrian in the hotel's crystal ballroom, dressed in a brand-new purchase, one she would doubtless never wear again after tonight, making it a ridiculously unnecessary—well, just plain ridiculous, as far as she was concerned—expense. She told herself the flowing, black strapless velvet number was an investment, one that would more than pay for itself in other ways, in the form of financial remuneration to Emerson. And she reassured herself that at least she hadn't had to buy any jewelry to go with it, since the pearl necklace and earrings from Great-Aunt Esmeralda were the perfect complement. And she decided that the ridiculous expense she'd had to go to was the reason she felt so irritable at such a sparkling gala event accompanied by a dazzling, handsome escort like Adrian Windsor.

It was
not
because she saw Michael Sawyer on the other side of the ballroom looking more handsome than ever in a faultless tuxedo, and that he'd accessorized it with an even more faultless blonde.

Honestly, she thought, talk about robbing the cradle. The woman—hah,
girl
was more like it—couldn't even be out of college yet. And could her dress be cut any lower? And could her hair be any bigger? And could her smile be any shallower? And could her breasts be any perkier? Boy. Some people.

"I told you you'd have a good time," Adrian said as he pressed a glass of champagne into her hand. "Have you ever seen such an impressive display of pretension and ostentation in your life?"

"Never," she replied absently.

And then she realized that Adrian had said
prominence and distinction
not
pretension and ostentation,
and that her own prejudices might possibly be slipping in. Nevertheless, her reply would have been the same, because she really
hadn't
ever seen such a display in her life. She just wasn't talking about the one laid out for the guests, that was all. The way Michael Sawyer and his date were pawing all over each other—now,
that
was a display.

Jeez, people! Get a room!

Honestly. Boy. Some people.

Adrian seemed to notice where her attention lay, because when she turned to look at him—-and she was turning to look
at
him, she told herself, and not turning to look
away
from Michael and Perky Breasts Barbie—she saw that he had trailed his gaze in the same direction. And just as he had at the potluck that night, Adrian went rigid beside her.

"Well, well, well," he said. "Look who's here."

Hannah feigned confusion and looked in Michael's direction again, but pretended she didn't see him. Pawing all over the blonde. Who was young enough to be here selling band candy. Except that the band director would surely frown on the microscopic size of her screaming red dress. Then again, it probably wasn't any more revealing than the majorette outfit she normally wore.

"Who?" Hannah said. "I don't see anyone I know."

When she turned toward Adrian again, she could tell by his expression that he thought she was full of hooey. "Your friend Michael Sawyer."

Hannah looked that way again and this time pretended to be surprised. "Why, so it is. I didn't realize he had a daughter in addition to Alex."

She could hear the laughter in Adrian's voice when he replied, "He doesn't have a daughter. But Michael's always liked them young."

Why that should surprise Hannah, she didn't know. She'd seen for herself how many of the mothers at Emerson were second, much younger wives to men who had found themselves denying their own middle—and even later—age. But it did surprise her that Michael Sawyer would be one of them. He really didn't seem like the type of man who would be intimidated by women of his own age and experience. He struck her as the sort of man who would welcome a companion of equal measure. Just went to show how much Hannah knew about men. Which, of course, was very little. She did know herself.

"Well, we can say our hellos to him later," she said, threading her arm through Adrian's, because… well, just because, that was all. "If our paths cross later, I mean." And then she tried to steer him away toward anything that wasn't in Michael's direction.

But Adrian stood firm. "Looks like our paths will be crossing now," he said.

And sure enough, when Hannah glanced over again, it was to see Michael and his majorette marching toward her and Adrian. Strangely, though, instead of being focused on his escort—and, my, but wasn't she a
tiny
thing, too? Hannah couldn't help noticing—Michael seemed to be focused on the way Hannah had linked her arm with Adrian's. Not sure why she did it, Hannah snaked her other arm across her waist and settled it, too, in the crook of Adrian's arm. And she noticed that Michael noticed. Because he frowned when she did it, and narrowed his eyes.

"Fancy meeting you here," Adrian said as Michael and the majorette came to a halt.

Michael shrugged off the greeting almost literally. And he didn't return it, Hannah noted. "My firm always sends a couple of representatives to big fund-raisers like this. Someone they can trust to make sure the check arrives. This year, it fell to me and Tiffany."

"Tiffany?" Hannah asked, biting back a smile. Somehow, the moniker was just so appropriate.

The blonde nodded. "Uh-huh. With two/'s, two n's, and two e's." For a physical illustration, she held up her index and middle fingers as if to say,
That's this many.

Ooohhh, Tiffannee
, Hannah thought. That was even more appropriate.

"And do you know Adrian Windsor, Tiffannee?" she asked. "You two have something in common, kind of. He has two a's in his name."

"Oh, how interesting!" Tiffannee said in wide-eyed delight. "What a coincidence!"

"Hannah, too," Michael said.

She looked at him strangely. "What?" she asked.

"Lots of pairs of letters in Hannah," he pointed out. "In fact, your name is made up entirely of pairs of letters. Two
h's,
two
a's,
two n's."

Yeah, so what's your point?
she thought. It wasn't like she was named Tiffannee. "So it is," she said, feeling suddenly defensive for no reason she could name.

He smiled. "And it's also a palindrome."

"Michael!" Tiffannee said in a chiding voice, swatting him playfully on the arm. "There's no reason to be mean. Just because Hannah's name is old and kind of stiff—"

Old?
Hannah echoed to herself indignantly.
Stiff?

"—doesn't mean you have to insult her by calling it a pal… a palin… a palind…" She screwed up her widdle features into an impatient widdle face and stomped her widdle foot on the floor. "Oh, whatever it was you just called it. That wasn't very nice."

Michael opened his mouth to explain, then evidently thought better of the task and closed it again. But Adrian seemed not to be put off at all, and it was he who saved them from more trouble by asking Tiffannee if she wanted to dance. They were, after all, he pointed out, striking up the chords of a fox-trot, which had two o's and two f's, thus making it the ideal dance for Tiffannee, even if the letters weren't quite paired together.

"And there's also an/ in it," Tiffannee said, "which is sort of an upside down
t
when it's in little letters. So that makes it kind of like having triplets. Which, omigosh, also starts with
t.
Hey, this is fun!"

Then she tittered. Actually tittered. Hannah was reasonably sure she'd never heard anyone titter before, but now she could say with all honesty that she had. And she was certain she spoke for everyone present when she said, "Amazing." She also found herself wondering if Tiffannee would boost the amazement quotient even higher later by lighting her batons on fire.

Then Adrian and Tiffannee were off—with two
f'
s—to the dance floor—with two
o's
—and she and Michael were left to stare uncomfortably at each other.

"So what's your problem tonight?" he asked without preamble.

She gaped softly in surprise. "My problem?" she echoed. "I don't know what you're talking about. I don't have any problem."

"You seem to be in a blue funk this evening," he said.

"Actually, it's a black Dior," she quipped.

She could tell he was trying not to smile at that, but he didn't quite succeed. "And you look ravishing, too," he told her. He punctuated the observation by driving his gaze hungrily up and down her body, and suddenly Hannah felt as if she weren't wearing anything at all. Even stranger than that, she found herself
wishing
she wasn't wearing anything at all. And she wished she was with Michael when she wasn't wearing it. And hopefully, he wouldn't be wearing anything, either.

Um, what had they been talking about?

"Hm," he said, "now you seem to be in a brown study."

Oh, right. They were color-coding each other's moods. "Well, I suppose it's better than being in a purple haze."

"Actually, now I'm beginning to see red."

She narrowed her eyes at him. "So now that we've covered the spectrum," she said, "have you delivered the check you came to deliver?"

"Actually, Tiffannee's the one who brought the check," he said. "She just asked me along for the ride."

And Hannah really, really, really didn't want to think about what—or whom—he would be riding. "Someone actually entrusted her with a large sum of money?" she asked.

"Don't underestimate Tiffannee," he said. "Those who have have regretted it."

Probably, Hannah thought, that was because they'd had to go so low to underestimate Tiffannee that they'd drowned at the bottom of the Marianas Trench.

She trailed her gaze back to the dance floor, and was surprised to see that Tiffannee was currently engaged in scientific experimentation and was trying to absorb Adrian through osmosis. Hmm… Hannah had never seen the foxtrot danced like
that
before.

"Looks like you might be hitchhiking home tonight," she told Michael. "Your ride seems to have just veered off onto Adrian Street."

Michael followed her gaze and sighed. But all he said was, "Ah, youth."

"And just how young is she, by the way?" Hannah asked. "Shouldn't you be getting her home to study for her spelling test? I mean, I know it's not a school night, but…"

Michael didn't respond right away, and when she looked at him again, he was grinning quite openly, and quite wickedly. "Well, my goodness, aren't we waspish tonight?"

Hannah lifted her nose into the air. "That was not waspishness. It was concern for Tiffannee's school performance. Education is very important to me, you know."

"Yeah, right." But he was still grinning. "What do you care how young she is?"

"I don't," Hannah said coolly. "I just wondered how she got hired at your firm when she's obviously still in high school. And speaking of your firm," she added before Michael had a chance to further embarrass her—not that she wasn't doing a fine job of that all by herself—"it occurs to me that I have no idea which accounting firm it is you work for. I don't recall seeing it on Alex's application."

Not that she looked that closely at every student's application, mind you. But since meeting Michael that first day, she had looked over Alex Sawyer's application a time or two—or ten. But only because she wanted to make sure everything was in order, and not because she wanted to find out where the Sawyers lived so she could drive by their house on the way home from school occasionally, as if she were a twelve-year-old girl on a pink Stingray checking out the new boy in the neighborhood. She'd just accidentally gotten lost that time she'd accidentally driven by their house, that was all. It had been accidental. And she had perfectly good reasons for all those other accidental times, too. She did. After all, how could she have known that the Sawyers lived less than a mile away from a tire store she'd been dying to check out for months?