Just Like a Man (26 page)

"No, I wouldn't," she agreed. "But this isn't a job I chose to do."

"The hell it isn't," he countered. "I
told
you to stay out of it, but you wouldn't listen. And hell, you even got a good night kiss out of it."

Oh, now,
that
was going too far, Hannah thought. She gaped at him. "You talk like you think I enjoyed that."

He chuckled derisively. "I was listening in, remember? I heard how you reacted, Hannah. You think I'm going to believe you were repulsed by that kiss?"

"Yes, that's exactly what you're supposed to believe. It
was
repulsive." She couldn't believe he was acting this way. "God, how can you think I
enjoyed
it?"

"You sure the hell sounded like you were enjoying yourself."

"Oh, please," she spat. "The only way I managed to kiss him without becoming physically ill was to pretend he was—"

It was only at the last possible moment that Hannah was able to cut herself off before she revealed something to Michael she absolutely did not want to reveal. But she was too late. He'd heard enough to want to hear more.

"Was to pretend he was what?" he asked.

"Nothing," she snapped. "I didn't pretend anything."

"No, you were going to say something, Hannah. What was it? You only managed not to get sick by pretending Adrian was… ?"

In an effort to put as much distance between them as she could—and also to stall, because she
really
didn't want to pursue this line of questioning—she moved to the other side of the kitchen and leaned back against the counter, crossing her arms over herself again. "I pretended he was someone else, all right?" she said curtly, hoping that would satisfy him.

Fat chance.

"Who?" Michael asked. "Who did you pretend he was?"

She fluttered her hand in front of herself dismissively. "Just someone else, that's all."

"Who, dammit?" he insisted. And she knew he wasn't going to stop until he had the answer he wanted. The answer, she had to admit, that was true.

"You," she finally said softly. "I pretended he was you, okay? There. Are you satisfied?"

He looked at her from his place on the other side of the kitchen, bathed in the pale yellow light of the bulb burning over the stove. He shook his head. "No. I'm not satisfied. Not by a long shot."

And then he was across the kitchen and standing in front of her. She started to say something, but he cupped his hands over her shoulders and dipped his head to hers, and before she could even catch her breath, he was kissing her. Softly, at first, his lips brushing tenderly across hers, feathery little touches that lit tiny fires throughout her body. Then he moved his hands to her face, curving his palms over her cheeks, threading his fingers into the hair at her temples. He tilted her head to the side a bit and swooped in again, angling his mouth this time so that he could kiss her more deeply.

Unable to help herself—not wanting to help herself—Hannah slid her arms around his waist, silently cursing the barrier of his jacket, but loving the feel of the soft leather beneath her fingertips. It was almost like touching his skin, except that his skin would be warm, not cold, and it would move beneath her fingers where she touched him. He smelled of sweet tanned hide and strong black coffee, and she knew she would never be able to inhale those scents again without thinking of him. He sighed, an echo of her own, then roped an arm around her waist to pull her closer, tangling his other hand in the ponytail that fell between her shoulder blades. Then he was freeing her hair from the ribbon that bound it, and threading his fingers through the long tresses, bunching a fistful in his hand to bring it to her nape before letting it cascade back down as he seized another handful.

Again and again he kissed her, his hands sweeping over her back, her waist, her hips, until Hannah was unaware of anything but him. It just felt so good to hold him and be held by him. She never wanted to let go. She lifted her own hand, curving her fingers over his nape, but the moment she touched him, skin on skin, he pulled back.

He didn't, however, let her go.

"There," he said as he lifted his head and gazed into her eyes. "Take that one to bed with you tonight. Forget about the one you suffered from Adrian."

For a minute, she honestly wasn't sure what he was talking about. Then she smiled and asked, "Who's Adrian?"

Michael smiled back, then ducked his head to hers again. This time, though, he kept it brief, taking her mouth once, twice, three times in succession. And then, with obvious reluctance, he released her, and turned to make his way out.

So
that
was how they debriefed people after a mission, Hannah thought vaguely as she watched him go. No wonder so many people wanted to be spies.

He pulled the back door open and stepped through it, and, for a moment, she feared he would leave without looking back, without saying good-bye. "Michael?" she called out softly before he could close the door behind himself.

She noted when he turned to look at her that his cheeks were flushed, his breathing was ragged, his hair was a mess, and he was in no way steady on his feet. And she smiled to know she had the same effect on him that he had on her.

"Yeah?" he said.

She had been thinking there was something very important she needed to tell him, but she couldn't quite wrap her mind around the appropriate words. So she settled on a quiet but heartfelt, "Thank you."

"You're welcome," he said. Then he added, "Have dinner with me tomorrow night. Me and Alex. At our house."

Her first impulse was to tell him no, that she couldn't, that it wouldn't be appropriate for the director of the Emerson Academy to have dinner with the father of one of its students. Then she remembered how she had originally told Adrian she couldn't have dinner with him, because it wouldn't be appropriate for the director of the Emerson Academy to have dinner with a member of its board of directors. And there was no way she'd show Adrian preferential treatment.

So she said, "That would be nice. Thank you for that, too."

"I'll leave work early, and we'll pick you up after school," he said. "That way we'll have part of the afternoon, too."

"No, that's out of your way," she told him. "And I usually stay for a while after the kids have gone. I'll drive over to your house when I finish up. Around four? Four-thirty? That way Alex will have time to do his homework first."

And that way, she added to herself, no one at school would see them leaving together.

"Then we'll expect you by four-thirty," he said. "Bring an appetite."

Not a problem,
she wanted to say. Especially not after that kiss. Then she realized he was talking about an appetite for
dinner.
At least, she was pretty sure he was talking about that. Alex would be home, after all. But then she noticed how he was looking at her, and she found herself reconsidering. Alex had to go to bed sometime, right? But would he be the only one doing so?

Oh, stop,
she told herself. She would
not
be going to bed with Michael, regardless of whether his son was home or not. It was dinner, that was all. And it would serve the same purpose as the kiss just had—to give her a better memory to replace the dinner she'd had with Adrian. Michael was being polite, that was all.

And he was also working, she reminded herself.

Don't let him charm you,
she told herself.
You thought Adrian was charming, too, at first, and look what he turned out to be.

Deep down, she thought, Michael really wasn't all that different from Adrian. Two sides of the same coin. There had been a time when the men were virtually two of a kind, working side by side for the same organization. Eventually one went one way, and one went the other. But they'd both started from the same place. And it was safe to assume that they'd both been drawn to that place for similar reasons. Because they were similar men. Michael had spied on her. He'd entered her house when she wasn't home. He'd misled her. He'd deceived her. Yes, he'd ultimately come clean about everything he'd done, had even apologized for doing it. But he'd been able to do all those things in the first place. And any man who had the capacity to act in such ways, regardless of how charming he might seem, wasn't a man Hannah needed to have in her life.

She started to tell him then that she'd just remembered a previous commitment tomorrow evening, and that she wouldn't be able to make dinner after all. But his gaze hooked hers just then, and there was something in his expression…

"I'll be there by four-thirty," she promised.

"And bring an appetite," he repeated.

She did her best to smile, but somehow the gesture didn't quite feel right. "I will."

And then Michael was gone, almost as if he hadn't been there at all. But the faint smell of leather and coffee lingered, and Hannah inhaled it as deeply as she could into her lungs. Then she switched off the light over the stove and headed back to her bedroom. And, later, as she fell asleep, the only thought wandering through her head was how soft Michael's hair had been caught between her fingers, and how wonderfully warm and wanton his mouth had been on her own.

And she hoped that, in the morning, she didn't wake up too hungry.

At home, Michael paid Alex's sitter and sent her on her way, then went up to his son's room to check on him. He'd bought the house in Carmel right after coming home to Indianapolis, after leaving OPUS behind. He'd chosen the roomy Victorian because it was exactly the sort of house he wished he'd grown up in himself, the kind of house where Alex could put down roots. Deep enough roots that maybe someday, after Michael was gone, Alex would even move his own family into it. Because roots, Michael had come to realize, were very important.

Not that it had always been that way. On the contrary, he hadn't been able to light out of Indiana fast enough when it came time to go to college. And landing the job with OPUS had exceeded his wildest dreams. He'd majored in accounting because he was good with numbers, and because he'd let his parents sway him into thinking it was better to go with a sure thing than to take chances with a career path that might ultimately dead-end. The world would always need accountants, they'd assured him. Of course, the fact that they were both accountants themselves may have had something to do with that.

But Michael had discovered that people who were good with numbers could find other kinds of work, too. Enter OPUS, where his skill at finding patterns and locating hidden funds had ultimately made him one of the best at assimilating, evaluating and articulating. It was Adrian, the risk-taker, with his borderline morality, who had been the perfect candidate to send out into the field. Field work was easy for him, Adrian had once said, because he never felt fear. Fear, he had told Michael, only existed in people who had something to lose.

And when Alex came along, Michael had been forced to
really
look at what he was doing, and decide if that was what he wanted to continue to do. He'd talked to Tatiana about it, of course, had asked her if she didn't think that now that they had a child, they might try to make their living in a more conventional fashion. But Tatiana had wanted none of that. She'd been a risk-taker, too. And Alex hadn't been planned. Michael was as honest with himself about that as he was everything else. He and Tatiana hadn't intended to start a family, ever. But the moment he'd taken his newborn son into his arms for the first time, Michael had known a love unlike anything he had ever felt before. And he'd known that Alex's arrival would be the greatest thing that ever happened to him, past, present, or future.

Now, as he made his way upstairs to check on his son, Michael knew a satisfaction that had been a long time in coming. He had a great kid. A beautiful home. A job he enjoyed. Well, his usual job, anyway. Not so much the one he'd been performing for the past several months. But even his return to OPUS obligations had provided an unexpected, and very nice, surprise: Hannah Frost. And soon that job would be over. But Michael intended to do whatever he had to do to ensure that Hannah Frost would still be around afterward.

He had his work cut out for him.

He knew she didn't trust him. And he didn't blame her for that. And he'd seen the way she looked at him tonight before he left, had known she was trying to think of some way to back out of the commitment she'd made in a moment of weakness to come to dinner tomorrow night. He'd deliberately invited her at a time when he knew she was vulnerable, right after kissing her, because he'd known if she had time to think about it, she would have turned him down. But in the end, she hadn't turned him down. In the end, his manipulation of the situation—and of her—had worked out the way he'd planned.

And realizing that made him wonder just how much better a man he was than Adrian Padgett after all.

But then, Michael
was
like Adrian in some ways. He just hoped Hannah eventually realized there were differences between the two of them, too.

Then again, he thought with a smile as he padded down the hallway toward Alex's room, his footsteps muffled by the thick Persian runner spanning the hardwood floor, if her reaction to that kiss tonight was even half what his own had been, he stood a pretty decent chance of her figuring that out. Eventually.

Nevertheless, Michael did have his work cut out for him.

He flipped on the hall light and peeked into his son's room, where Alex was sprawled on his stomach on the top bunk. His moon and stars comforter was still glowing subtly in the dark, just like the luminous stars Michael and his son had stuck all over the ceiling immediately after moving in. There was a space shuttle lamp on the desk, a poster of Neil Armstrong on the wall, and every Lego Mission to Mars model that had been invented, not to mention a half dozen free-style versions Alex had created himself.

Surprisingly, he wanted to be an astronaut when he grew up.

Michael moved to the top bunk and tugged on the comforter that Alex had kicked off, gently pulling it over his son's sleeping form. But Alex stirred when he did, turning his head to the side, smiling sleepily when he saw his father.