When Somebody Loves You (6 page)

January tossed her salad in the trash and crossed her arms over her breasts. “I’m not chicken!” she shouted above Helen’s noisy exit. “I’m just cautious. Is there any crime in that?”

Helen responded with several insistent clucks.

January grinned in spite of her irritation. “As long as you’re in the mood,” she yelled, “I could use a dozen eggs.”

Four

January liked autumn best. The colors, the scents, the clean, crisp zip in the air. She shoved the sleeves of her heavy gray sweatshirt up to her elbows and dug a little deeper for the run up the hill. By the time she reached the summit she was gasping for air and clutching her aching sides. She’d pushed too hard—nothing new—and now she had to pay the piper.

Veering off the jogging path at a slow, cooldown trot, she ducked under some low-hanging branches and followed a little-used trail through the thickest part of the woods, heading toward the creek. This time of day, early on a Saturday morning and in full sunlight, she didn’t worry about the isolation or the vulnerability of being a woman alone. She welcomed the solitude and the peace that came with it.

When she reached the creek, she sat down on the carpet of dried maple and aspen leaves and listened to the gurgle of water tripping over the stony creek bed. Slowly her breathing returned to normal and the ache eased out of her side.

Complacent in a way that only the afterburn of physical exertion could make her, she flopped down on her back and indulged in some rare and basic laziness. Feeling like a kid playing hooky, she watched through the lacework of bare tree limbs as china-white clouds cruised against the backdrop of the blue Colorado sky.

And she thought of Michael.

Michael, and the way he’d tasted when he kissed her the night he’d brought her home in the rain. Michael, and the way he’d caressed her with his eyes and made her insides go all zingy and weak. Michael, and the way he’d looked like a little lost boy when she’d slammed the door in his face. She flinched just thinking about what she’d done to him, then felt a hollow ache of guilt remembering the anguish in his eyes when he’d realized she had prepared herself for a blow.

She still didn’t know where that reaction had come from. She’d known he wouldn’t physically hurt her, but another kind of fear had muddled things up. She was afraid she was beginning to care about him. The emotions he stirred inside her were so powerful, yet the memories he brought with him were so painful.

How could one man represent both threat and promise? He made her feel as out of control as runaway fireworks on the Fourth of July. She’d never known a man who had the power to dominate her thoughts this way, who made her consider her personal priorities over her professional ones. The children had always come first, and yet now, because of Michael, she wanted that number one spot for herself.

Pulling her knees up until they were pointing skyward, she flung an arm over her eyes and tried to analyze why she reacted to him that way.

The only thing she ended up analyzing was how he’d looked in those biker boots and bun-hugging jeans, then in banker flannel and a crisply knotted tie. She groaned and became so lost in the tummy-tightening images, it was a moment before she realized she was no longer alone.

She sat up, alert to the brittle snap of dry tree limbs and the crunch of running footsteps over fallen leaves and pine needles. Before she had a chance to register alarm or the presence of mind to rise to her feet, two huge, furry paws hit her full in the chest and shoved her to her back again.

“Dammit, George! Come back here!”

With a disjointed sense of relief, she recognized his voice. Michael was clearly irritated, and his curse rose above the deep-throated barking of what appeared to be one hundred pounds of dog in a teddy bear suit.

Ignoring his master, the bushy critter pinned her to the ground and exuberantly washed every inch of her face with a huge pink tongue.

“Get off her, you big oaf!”

As quickly as her canine admirer had arrived, he was gone, not of his own volition, but because Michael had forcefully dragged him away. Still battling the excited dog, Michael knelt by her side.

“January?” He had the audacity to look surprised when he realized it was her. “Oh, Lord, January. Are you all right?”

“I’m fine.” She sat up slowly. “But as approaches go, I’ve got to tell you, this one lacks your usual finesse.”

He grinned sheepishly. “Yeah, well, what George lacks in finesse, he makes up for in sheer animal magnetism. Not that it’ll cut any weight right now, but you should feel honored that he attacked you. He only does that to people he truly likes.”

“Likes?” Charmed but not wanting to be, she gave George a forgiving scratch under his chin. “As in affection, or as in for dinner?”

Michael’s grin became a full-fledged smile. “As in affection. Our taste in ladies is very similar.”

It struck January then that she didn’t want to be angry at Michael for invading her solitude. Once she accepted that, it was less difficult to admit that she was glad to see him. From the look in his eyes and the sudden quiet between them, it would seem he, too, sensed the change in her attitude.

Apparently he didn’t quite know how to react to it either, because he busied himself with quick, absent pats to George’s back. “If you can behave,” he finally said, directing his comment to George, “I’ll let you go play.”

George’s response was an enthusiastic attempt to peel the skin off Michael’s face with one huge, scraping stroke of his tongue.

“Where’s the squirrel, George?” Michael asked in staged excitement. George bounced up and down like a little kid looking for Santa. “Go get him! Go get the squirrel.”

George charged away, his nose to the ground, searching diligently for a scent.

Michael grinned. “Works every time. It should keep him busy and out of your hair for a while.”

Feeling suddenly like their chaperone had exited stage left, January tried to direct her attention toward the creek and away from Michael. Tried and failed. Without her permission, her gaze strayed back to his devastating smile.

She looked at him uncertainly, telling herself there wasn’t a reason in the world for her to find him so attractive today. Gone were both the biker and the businessman. In their place was a reject from a soup kitchen.

Knotted string and athletic tape held a pair of grungy jogging shoes together. His dingy gray sweatpants had holes in both knees, and the sweatshirt that used to boast the letters U.S.C. but now showed just an outline was frayed at the neck. The sleeves appeared to have been chewed off just above his elbows. A crimson sweatband held his unruly black hair away from his face and provided the only splash of color, except, of course, for the multifaceted diamond that glittered intriguingly in his left ear.

Not exactly the stuff dreams are made of, she thought, and not exactly a threat either. “Nice outfit, Hayward. What’d you do, roll a bum on the way over and swipe his clothes?”

He pretended to scowl. “This from a woman with leaves in her hair and paw prints on her . . . um, shirt.”

She looked down, felt herself redden, then brushed self-consciously at the dark marks imprinted over each breast.

When she raised her eyes, Michael was sitting back on his heels, studying her as if trying to gauge her mood. “I don’t suppose,” he began as he gently tugged a leaf from her hair, “that it would do any good to tell you it really is an accident that George and I stumbled onto you today.”

Something in his expression made her want to believe him. A long-nurtured resistance to trust, however, wouldn’t let her. “It does seem a little strange that I’ve never seen you here before.”

He shifted his weight until he was sitting beside her. Linking his wrists over upraised knees, he looked speculatively at her. “You mean you run here often?”

Seeing his genuine surprise, she realized he was telling the truth. “Not as often as I should,” she admitted, feeling an unsolicited sting of disappointment that their meeting was coincidental. Afraid he’d read her thoughts through her eyes, she diverted her gaze to the creek. “I rarely stray off the main path. But it’s so pretty up here, I couldn’t resist today.”

“It is pretty,” he agreed. “This is George’s favorite spot in the park. I think he pretends he’s a frontier dog making the wilderness safe for new settlers.”

His silly banter eased the tension that had been building and drew a laugh from her. It bubbled out, quick and unguarded, as she watched the huge, lumbering dog crash about in his quest for the elusive and bloodthirsty squirrel.

Michael became very quiet. With a soft smile still lingering on her mouth, she met his eyes. The heat she saw shimmering there made her breath catch.

“Definitely worth the wait,” he murmured.

Her questioning frown brought a quick, heart-melting explanation.

“Since the first time I saw you, I’ve been wanting to make you smile.” He touched a finger gently, lightly, to the corner of her mouth. “It was nice,” he said in a hoarse whisper. “Very, very nice.”

The wanting revealed in his eyes was eloquent in its intensity and frightening in its implication. Afraid to acknowledge that mixed with that hunger was a kindness, a caring, and an unexpected vulnerability that touched her bone-deep, she quickly looked away.

She could feel his gaze still touching her, and tried not to think about the fact that she wore absolutely no makeup, that in all likelihood her hair rivaled Helen’s in the wild mop department, and that she had a huge, grubby paw print stamped over each breast.

Michael shared her quiet for a long moment before he rose slowly to his feet.

“Well, George and I have intruded long enough.” He gestured vaguely toward her shirt. “Sorry about that. If he did any permanent damage, uh, to the shirt, I mean, let me know, and I’ll replace it.”

If she didn’t know better, she’d think he was flustered. And somehow, a flustered Michael Hayward was much less threatening . . . and achingly more appealing.

“It’s no problem, really.” She shrugged dismissively and felt her heart kick her a couple of good ones in the chest. He was leaving. Without her request, he was going to leave her alone.

Helen’s words came back to haunt her:
You are blowing a very good thing here, sweetie
. She swallowed hard, knowing that if she didn’t say or do something, he’d be gone. And she didn’t want him to go.

Maybe it was the phase of the moon. Maybe it was just a temporary lapse in sanity. Or maybe she was simply tired of fighting the feelings. Whatever it was, it had taken over, because she heard herself say his name. “Michael . . .”

His look was expectant, yet cautious, when he turned back to her, a panting George in tow.

She rose slowly, brushing off her bottom as she straightened. “I—I know it was a long time ago that you offered,” she said haltingly, “but, about that dinner invitation. If—if it’s still open . . .”

Had she said that? she wondered. Had those words actually come out of her mouth?

The dark light in his eyes told her he was as surprised as she was. “It’s still open, Counselor. You just name the time.”

How about next year?
she thought, her courage slinking away. She licked her suddenly dry lips. “Next Saturday?”

His smile was slow, pleased, and steady. “Seven o’clock?”

Lacking the will or the desire to stop herself, she nodded. It was done. An irrevocable, irretrievable step in the wrong direction.

He returned her nod, corralled George, and, with a wink and a wave, disappeared through the thickest part of the woods.

She was alone again . . . with her hammering heart, with her better judgment shattered, and, in the wake of what she sensed was a colossal mistake, with a smile she couldn’t control or explain.

As is often the way of things, January compounded her mistake with another. Monday morning she told Helen about the dinner date.

Helen’s response was a rebel yell that would have inspired the Yanks to surrender to the Rebs at Vicksburg. When the windows quit rattling, she offered to make January an appointment with her hairdresser, then insisted on taking her shopping for a dress that would, in her words, “tighten his shorts but good.”

With images of frizzy pink hair fueling her argument, January skirted the issue of Helen’s beautician by promising to make an appointment with her own. The shopping trip, however, was not open to debate.

“Leonard’s been talking cruise for a couple of weeks now,” Helen said exuberantly. “You can help me shop for some sun clothes, and I’ll help you pick out a dress.”

So after work that evening, January found herself in a chic boutique, trying on a classy black sheath.

“Oh, sweetie,” Helen said when January emerged from the dressing room. “Look at you. You’ve got breasts! Nice big ones. Who’d have guessed it?”

“Helen,” January warned when a salesclerk floated by, arching a censuring brow.

“Well,” Helen muttered, and toned her comments down to a loud whisper. “All I ever see you in are those stuffy suits. Lordy, lordy,” she continued after a second prideful appraisal. “If you aren’t a sight!”

“You don’t think it’s too much?” January asked, checking out all the angles in the three-way mirror. She had to admit, the dress was flattering. Though black and basic, the cut and style were feminine and chic, from the off-the-shoulder neckline and long, tight sleeves to the tightly nipped-in waist and the short, slim skirt that ended a few inches above her knees.

“Oh, it’s too much, all right,” Helen said. “So much, in fact, that I’m going to worry more about Michael than I am about you. The man doesn’t have a prayer.” She giggled. “Not an amen. Not a hallelujah!”