Or cause her to do something incredibly stupid. The list of possibilities there was enough to make her choke on her soup. It began with falling into bed with him. It ended with falling in love.
“It’ll never happen,” she muttered adamantly.
“What won’t happen?” Hank inquired curiously.
Her gaze shot up. He was standing in the doorway, watching her again, Melissa cradled contentedly against his shoulder. How could a man the size of a truck move so stealthily? Maybe she ought to insist he wear a bell around his neck. She could use the warning in order to get her defenses into place. Right now he was probably seeing naked longing in her eyes. Terrific, she thought with disgust. Just great!
“Hi,” Melissa said with a sleepy smile. She held out her arms. Ann took her.
“Did you have a good day, pumpkin?”
Melissa nodded. “Hank and me builded a sand castle. Wanna see?”
“It’s a little dark to see it now. We’ll look in the morning.”
“Hanks says it’ll be all gone by then.” She gave him a beguiling grin. “We do it again, okay?”
He laughed. “Okay, squirt. Now remember what we talked about.”
She nodded. “I go to bed now.”
“That’s right. Ann will come tuck you in.”
“You, too?”
“Me, too.”
“Okay.”
When she had toddled off, Hank pulled out a chair, turned it around and sat down straddling it.
“I never thought I’d see the day,” he said, his eyes filled with amusement.
“What’s that supposed to mean?” she said.
“You, tongue-tied. Makes me wonder what you really were thinking about when Melissa and I arrived.”
“A case,” she improvised hastily. “It’s a tough one. It really has me stymied.”
“Oh, really.”
“Yes. This couple, they, um, they can’t seem to figure out what they want.”
He looked immediately interested. “So, what’d you tell ’em?”
Gathering her defenses, she met his gaze evenly. “I told them if they couldn’t make up their minds about each other, then getting together was probably the wrong decision.”
“But aren’t doubts normal, especially when a relationship is new?”
“Some doubts, yes. But if the love’s not powerful enough to overshadow them, then perhaps it’s not strong enough to survive, either.”
“Perhaps,” he echoed, reaching out to pick her hand up off the table. His thumb rubbed across her knuckles. “No guarantees?”
Ann felt an incredible tension begin to build inside just from the brush of his callused thumb across her hand. Her voice was shaky when she said, “There are never any guarantees, with or without doubts.”
He turned her hand over, lifted it up and kissed the palm. A current of electricity jolted through her as he said solemnly, “So you might as well play the hand out and see where it leads, right?”
She shook her head and nervously snatched her hand away. “Sometimes it’s better just to cut your losses.”
“When?” He asked the question very seriously, but she caught the desire to laugh lurking in his eyes.
She swallowed hard and tried to think straight. “When what?”
“When do you know it’s time to cut your losses?”
Now, she wanted to shout. “That’s a very individual sort of thing,” she said sensibly, struggling against the emotions sweeping through her, fighting the temptation in his eyes.
“Let’s take you and me, for instance.”
He made the suggestion in all innocence. Still, her eyes blinked wide. “What?”
“You and me,” he repeated. “Purely hypothetical, of course. On the surface, you and I couldn’t be more unsuited, right?”
She nodded weakly.
“But we’re living here together for the time being and there’s this attraction growing between us.”
She tried valiantly for indignation. “Attraction?” Her voice was barely above a whisper. Instead of skepticism, however, she merely managed to convey nervousness.
“Sure. Lust. Chemistry. You know what I mean.”
“We’re talking hypothetical here?”
“Naturally. Now is that something that should be played out to its logical conclusion?”
“Absolutely not,” she said in a rush.
“Under no circumstances?”
“None.”
“Why?”
“You said it yourself. We’re unsuited.”
“On the surface.”
“That’s all we know about each other.”
“And we shouldn’t bother trying to dig beneath the surface? Maybe there’s more we have in common than we realize. Where there’s Beethoven, who knows, there could be Wagner.”
She was shaking her head. “Definitely not.”
“Definitely not Wagner?” he teased. “Or definitely not us?”
“Us,” she said, barely getting the word past a throat gone suddenly dry.
He tilted the chair forward and touched his lips to her forehead. “Coward,” he murmured softly.
And then, with a wink that made her heart flip over, he was gone again. One of these days, when she had her wits about her, she was going to have to talk to him about walking out in the middle of a conversation. It was a really lousy way to have the last word.
Super Bowl Sunday. Hank could hardly wait. He’d thought about going back to Miami to hang out with the guys, but by the time he’d finished working on Saturday it had been too damn late to tackle the drive. He considered going to a bar, which would be rowdy and filled with eager fans. But as beat as he was, nothing appealed to him more than settling down in front of the TV at home with a six-pack of beer, some chips and maybe a couple of hamburgers at halftime.
He hadn’t stopped to consider that Ann would regard the entire plan as tantamount to treason.
“You want to do what?” she said when he suggested they flip the channel on the TV away from some documentary on PBS.
“Watch the game.” When she stared at him blankly, he added, “The Super Bowl. You know, the big end-of-the-season matchup. This is what it’s all about.”
She looked appalled. And unyielding. “Only if you’re a cretin,” she said emphatically.
He sighed heavily. “Oh, Annie, there were such sad gaps in your education.”
“There were no gaps in my education. I have my B.A., my M.A. and my Ph.D.”
“But
