his, and Anne. Thumbing his nose at the usual budget restraints, Alex
reserved a long table at one of New York's finest restaurants. Only
because she had refused him on so many other occasions, Anne agreed to
let him pick her up and drive her to the dinner.
She was self-consciousness when they arrived together, but the
awkwardness faded. No one seemed to think twice about it. Besides, she
knew these people and liked them. This was the kind of dinner with
friends that she and Jeff had always enjoyed.
And Mitch? Did he like spending time with friends? There were other
groups in the restaurant. Her eye skimmed one or two, then went to a
third, and her pulse tripped. A man there had Mitch's hair and good
looks. He wore a dark suit and tie, and a crisp white shirt. He was with
a woman. In all the time Anne watched, he didn't take his eyes from her
face.
Funny, but the possibility of their bumping into each other hadn't
entered her mind. New York was a big place, and she rarely went out. The
man in the corner couldn't be Mitch. It would be too much of a
coincidence.
She refocused on her friends. Shortly before dessert was done, though,
the maitre d' materialized beside her and slipped her a folded piece of
paper.
"What's this," Alex teased. "A secret admirer?"
Anne unfolded the paper. There, in a bold black script, was the short
message. unul DECEMBER 3lst. Her eyes flew toward where the man and his
date had been seated, but the table was empty now, reset with fresh
linen and silver.
Biting her lip, she reread the message.
"What is it, Anne? Any problem?" Alex's concern made her aware of the
others' attention.
Embarrassed, she refolded the paper. "It's nothing. An old friend was in
and saw us." With a feeble smile, she tucked the note in her purse.
"Must have been some old friend," Alex whispered. "You're blushing."
"I am not," Anne replied. "It's the wine."
But her cheeks grew red more than once in the following days. Sometimes
it was with annoyance that Mitch had embarrassed her in front of her
friends, sometimes with frustration that he hadn't approached, sometimes
with anger that he hadn't made his note more personal. One or twice, it
was even with jealousy. He had been with a woman. His "other
obligation"? Anne couldn't recall anything about her, not her looks, her
age, her dress, or her expression. She wished she could, but she'd had
eyes only for the man who looked so much like Mitch.
Thinking about this faceless woman, she had second thoughts about
returning to Vermont. If Mitch wasn't free, what was the point? Already
she thought about him far too often. Better to cut her losses and make a
clean break.
But she did think about him a lot, and she needed Vermont. No matter
that it would be safer spending New Year's Eve home alone, she found
herself driving to the cabin.
The landscape was snow-covered and bleak now. Ice hung in spikes from
the boughs of trees and the caves of tidy farmhouses and cottages along
the familiar route. Everything in sight was either gray, ash-green, or
white. With the superhighway far behind, her small car slid often on
patches of ice.
Anne drove as fast as she dared. The midafternoon sun cast a feeble
shadow through bare trees lining the road. She was mesmerized by the
grid it formed, so much so that she lost track of her speed, until the
loud blast of a car horn from the village road on her right brought her
back.
She recognized the light blue Honda instantly. With a smile of delight,
she pulled up on the shoulder of the road. The Honda stopped just
behind. When Mitch climbed out, Anne's heart throbbed. Any doubts she'd
had about coming vanished on the spot.
Smiling more widely than ever, she rolled down her window and called a
breathy "Hi!" even before he reached the door.
His glower took her by surprise. "What are you trying to do, get
yourself killed? You can't speed on this road."
"I was only going forty."
Anger and all, he was a sight to behold. Looking her fill through dark
glasses, she kept right on smiling. His hair was more blond than silver
in the dull sun, making him look younger and, for a tall, hard man,
oddly soft. Then she realized that despite the show of anger, he was
glad to see her again.
As though he sensed she had him figured out, he blew the anger off with
a misted sigh. "Look, Annie, you stay behind me for the rest of the
trip. Okay?"
She humored him. "Did you get everything at the market? All the
perishables? Plenty of wine?"
"Behind me!" he repeated.
"Hot chocolate? And whipped cream?"
He wiped the smile from her face with a hard, fast kiss, sucking her
lips to his for just an instant before straightening. Shooting her a
watch-yourself-lady look, he returned to his own car and pulled out in
front. He drove at a sedate thirty miles per hour. It was deliberate,
and too slow for the road. Anne smiled and simply adjusted her foot on
the gas.
Shortly, they reached the cottage. When the cars were parked in a line
on the snow-packed drive, Mitch carried her luggage inside. She took the
attic room without a word, because it hadn't been at all uncomfortable,
warmer if anything than the larger room downstairs. And she didn't have
to listen to him over her head. It was bad knowing that he had once
slept in this bed. Hearing things would have driven her imagination
wild.
She was in the process of storing groceries when she felt him at the
kitchen door. He looked her up and down. She still wore the gray wool
pantsuit that had been warm and comfortable for driving. Bul its white
cowl-neck sweater was a switch from the somber navies and blacks he'd
usually seen her in. And then, her hair was loose.
"Well?" she asked, growing self-conscious when he just kept looking.
"Come here," he said in a low, deep voice.
She didn't hesitate. Within seconds, she was across the room and in his
arms. They were warm and intimate, very dear in a way that said friend
before lover.
"You looked beautiful that night in the restaurant," he said against her
hair, then drew back enough to smooth a loose strand from her cheek.
"Did you enjoy yourself.?"
She looked up, leaving her hands locked behind his back. "I didn't
realize it was you until I got the note. Why didn't you come say hello?"
"That's off limits, isn't it? Socializing in the real world?"
In that instant, Anne sensed she didn't want it that way, not anymore.
But she needed to get used to the thought, so she blocked out words by
dropping her head to his chest. Her arms told him that she'd missed him.
The speed of his heartbeat said he'd missed her, too. Okay, so they
didn't use words. That was fine for now.
Mitch shifted her to his side and, with an arm over her shoulder, led
her to the living room. He drew her down beside him on the sofa, tucked
her head in the crook of his arm, and stretched out his long legs. "Tell
me about Christmas."
She spoke tentatively. "It wasn't as bad as I'd expected."
"No downs?"
"A few. Jeff and I always went from house to house on Christmas Day. It
was more simple this year. Dinner with his parents."
"Who were your friends that night?"
"At the restaurant?"
"Uh-huh."
"People I work with."
"Tell me about your work." He hadn't ever asked her that before, but his
eyes said that he wanted to know. So she explained her interest in
languages and described the evolution of her career. He asked
thought-filled questions, clearly catching on to what she did. When she
was least expecting it, he said, "That professor-what did you say his
name was, Alex?-looked interested in you. Have you gone out with him?"
"I told you that I don't date," she chided.
"Ah," he drawled. "That's right. I forgot. He's asked you out, though,
hasn't he?"
Anne saw no point in denying it. "Several times. I'm not interested in
dating him, though. That dinner was a group get-together." When she saw
him relax, she made her move. "What about your date that night-excuse
me, your companion?" Jealousy was a tough thing to hide.
Mitch played it up with a knowing grin. "What about her?"
"Who is she?"
"Her name's Liz."
"Do you see her often?"
"Yes."
"Oh."
"Aren't you glad you asked?"
"Not particularly." She pried herself away from him and slid to the far
end of the sofa. He didn't seem bothered, simply lifted her feet to his
thighs. He slide a lazy hand under the wool of her slacks to massage her
calf. It felt too good for Anne to object.
"Jealous?" he asked.
"Yes."
"That's good." He was grinning more broadly than before.
Anne scowled. "You're an arrogant brute," she began and turned the
discussion around. "So tell me what you do. You must have some line of
work. Is it in the city?"
He answered her calmly and clearly. "My corporation has headquarters in
the city, but we operate all over the country."
"Your corporation?"
Strangely, where it might have been appropriate, the arrogance vanished.
"I head a corporation. Does that bother you?"
With a sudden, irrational anger, she asked, "Why would it bother me?
It has nothing to do with me."
He leaned forward and pulled her again to his side. "All I meant," he
said, teasing, "was that-well, to be perfectly honest, I've been told I
make a good catch. Being the president of a large corporation doesn't
help to discourage overeager women."
Anne snorted. "Any woman who'd want your strong black coffee and your
long hot showers has to be crazy. As for me"-she put her nose in the
air-"no amount of money can compensate for your squandering my
macadamias."
He gave her middle a playful squeeze. She was acutely aware of the arm
beneath her breasts. More breathlessly, she said, "So. What does your
corporation do?"
"We develop real estate, office parks, shopping centers, and so on."
"Define 'and so on."'
"Oh, we have ... other interests."
"Confidential ones," she surmised.
"For now."
"The mystery of the year."
He responded to that by shifting her sideways and down. He followed,
holding himself on his elbows. "You talk too much." His eyes caressed
her face, but it wasn't her face he was talking about when he said, "You
not only look good, you feel good." His body inched over hers, giving
her a good feel in return.
If Anne hadn't been breathless before, she was now. She wasn't fighting
him, because she realized that the attraction wasn't only physical, at
least on her part. It had gone beyond that.
She wrapped her arms around his neck and exerted the slightest pressure
at his nape. It brought him in for a kiss that held all the passion
missing from the earlier hug. She shivered when his tongue slid into her
mouth and their breath mingled. With his shoulders flexing under her
palms, her head began to spin. He intoxicated her. But she didn't want
him leaving her, and said so with a cry when he angled his body off,
then cried out again, differently now, when his hand found her breast.
He trailed kisses from her eyes, down her cheeks to her neck, while she
unbuttoned his shirt. His bare chest was an Eden of sinew and fuzz, a
potent aphrodisiac. She was ready to burst when his hand left her breast
and held her neck so that he could kiss her harder. She welcomed it,
needed it. "Annie, Annie, Annie," he groaned, ragged against her lips,
"what am I going to do with you?"
She held his head, then dropped her fingers down his throat and, again,
into the tawny hair on his chest. "Look who started it," she whispered
but she was fascinated by the bunch of muscles under her hand. She moved
her palms around, then over his nipples.
He made a frustrated sound and sat up, hauling her along with him.
Abruptly he released her and leaned forward. He put his elbows on his
knees and his head in his palms.
Everything about him cried of sudden distress. Anne rubbed the taut
muscles at the back of his neck. "What is it?"
He gave her a sidelong glance. "You don't know?" When she didn't answer,
he shrugged off her hand and pushed himself into a far corner of the
sofa. "I thought I'd be able to chalk what we have here up to a vacation
thing, but each time I go home, I can't put you out of my mind. I want
you, Anne. Want you bad."
She was dizzy with pleasure. "Why does that upset you?"
He stared, then came forward. "Do you know what I'm talking about here?"
"Yes. I'm not stupid. You're asking yourself the same questions I've
spent hours asking myself. What am I doing here? Why did I come? What do
I want to happen? Where's my sense of propriety? The list goes on and
on." She caught a breath. "What do you want me to say? I know what
you're saying, but I don't know what to do either!"
Mitch sighed and drew her back to his chest. "It's gone past that, Anne.
I'm asking myself whether I'm ready to see you in public, in New York,
and whether you're ready for that. I'm asking whether I'm ready for more
of a commitment than just a physical one, and whether you're ready for
that." He tipped up her face. "I want to sleep with you, Anne, but I
can't do that and then walk away when it's done. For the first time in
