Hard to Hold (True Romance) (18 page)

Although now, the only person he wanted to sate with his cooking was Anne.

Scooting in beside her, he cut into the soft corn tortilla, scooped up a balanced serving of
salsa verde
and
pico de gallo,
and fed her. Her cheeks flushed and her lips bruised from his kisses, she made his mouth water, reinvigorating his hunger for something so much more than food. When she closed her eyes and made a happy noise from the back of her throat, he nearly lost his mind.

“These are amazing,” she said.

“Not nearly as amazing as you,” he said, surrendering to his need to nibble a bit more on her neck.

She squealed, but didn’t fight him. “I meant the food!”

He supposed he did have to be a little less insatiable. It had been, after all, their first time. “Want more?”

“Yes, please.”

He had no idea if she meant enchiladas or sex, so he gave her a little of both. He fed her a bite, then kissed her temple. He fed her another bite, then shifted the comforter so that he had access to her bare shoulder. After a little while, the sting of the jalapeno became unbearable, so he returned to the kitchen, retrieved two cold bottled waters and a small carton of sour cream.

Anne swirled her fork around the last of the enchiladas, then balanced a serving on her fork and held it to his lips. He took the bite, more entranced by how she fed him than the actual food itself.

“So, you’ve taught me a valuable lesson about myself,” she confessed. “Evidently, enchiladas are the way back into my good graces. Very clever of you to figure that out.”

He chuckled. He’d had no idea just how far into her good graces he’d get when he’d been cooking or he would have whipped up an entire meal from tortilla soup to cinnamon-dusted sopapillas.

“I didn’t think you were going to open the door unless I came bearing gifts.”

“I wasn’t that angry,” she argued.

He stared at her intently. “Yes, you were,” he said. “And you should have been. I was furious at myself, once I finally realized how I’d hurt you. How I’d hurt us.”

“Care to share why you did that?”

He shook his head, still so high on the endorphins of their lovemaking, he could barely tap into the guy he’d been less than an hour before, much less the moron who had invaded his body when Anne left for Egypt. How could he possibly have thought that letting Anne go was the right thing to do?

And yet, there was no denying that he’d believed he and Anne needed to re-examine the nature of their relationship before moving forward. Become friends first and lovers second had been his
modus operandi
since he’d started dating. He realized now that he tested the women in his life in a series of scenarios, ensuring his safety from hurt before he risked his heart.

But now that he and Anne had dove into the risk-infested waters of true romance, he couldn’t imagine living or loving any other way.

“Trust,” he said simply.

She nodded, as if she knew. As if she understood. He didn’t know if she really did or not, but there would be plenty of time to figure that out.

“So what changed your mind?” she asked.

“I realized that if I didn’t rethink my stance, I was going to lose you. And that outcome wasn’t acceptable.”

“So, in other words, I was right and you were wrong,” she said.

Her grin was pure, unadulterated evil—and he loved it so thoroughly, he couldn’t help pressing his lips to hers. Somewhere deep inside, he wanted to disagree with her, but only because he wasn’t used to losing an argument. Instead, he decided to kiss a path from her shoulder to her ankle, skillfully weaving his hands into the folds of her comforter until he could touch her bare skin.

“I’ve never felt so strongly for any woman before,” he confessed between kisses. “From that first night we met at the concert, I was snagged.”

Her eyes widened in surprise. “At the concert? You certainly didn’t show it!”

“Hey, I hugged you before I left. We’d only known each other for fifteen minutes. That’s a pretty strong signal,” he insisted.

She harrumphed and tucked the comforter tight around her body. He settled for massaging her feet, surprised to find that her toes sparkled with a pale, pink polish that nearly matched her skin tone.

“You didn’t even ask for my number,” she complained.

“That was the allergy meds,” he explained. “Or maybe it was just me, afraid of feeling something so strong for someone I’d just met.”

“And after that?”

She made a show of batting her eyelashes, clearly enjoying his groveling.

He lifted her adorable foot and kissed the sweet curve of her arch. “Do you want me to waste time listing all my lame excuses or would you rather go to a party?”

She eased into the cushy mattress, humming in enjoyment of his attention. “I’m not dressed for a party and you’re out of enchiladas.”

“I have another tray upstairs and as much as it pains me to say this, you could get dressed.”

“Is that what you really want?” She allowed the comforter to fall away just enough to reveal a very luscious swath of skin.

“Just because we go to the party doesn’t mean we have to stay there all night.”

Fifteen

A
NNE TYPED THE WORDS
“
P
ERU,
” “travel,” and “deals” into the search engine and pressed enter. In seconds, her screen was awash in choices. She started to click on the first when Michael scooted beside her on the couch and set a steaming cup of coffee on the table.

Just a week ago, Michael had surprised her with their first trip—a weekend in the Catskills for a music festival, a one-night romantic stay at a charming bed-and-breakfast followed by a second day camping. A consummate planner, Michael left no detail ignored. And yet, when things didn’t quite go their way—like the sudden downpour of rain that flooded their campsite, he proved adaptable and easygoing, setting up a nest for them in the back of his car.

He was, she decided, not only the perfect lover, but the ultimate travel companion.

Of course, a weekend excursion was nothing compared to the vacation they were now planning to South America. On the way back from the festival, they’d talked about all the places she’d visited around the world and he’d explained how part of his obsession with Phish had been not just in the music, but in the travels. They discussed dream destinations for future vacations and Anne learned that like her, Michael had always wanted to go to Peru.

Since the one hiccup, Michael had stopped trying to derail the bullet-train ride that was their relationship. Instead, he’d started looking up tours to Machu Picchu.

“What’s on the itinerary so far?” he asked.

She tiled the browser windows she’d opened so that he could see the puzzle of choices. “There’s a lot of ways to get there,” she said, clicking through some of the main tourist sites to get an overview of the available activities. “The hike to the summit won’t be a cakewalk.”

“We can handle it,” he said, dragging his own laptop from the coffee table and activating the Internet. “Peru is right on the Andes. What about a rafting tour? Do you like rafting?”

His question, so considerate despite the afterthought, made her laugh. They were lovers now, an exclusive couple who, work hours notwithstanding, spent more time together than they did apart. And yet, they still had so much to learn about each other. She didn’t even know if an entire lifetime would be enough.

“Sure,” she said. “I’ve never rafted in Peru, but it sounds like fun. Where’s the tour?”

They coordinated their web searches, finding and bookmarking several sights before Anne broached the topic that neither of them had discussed in much detail. “Are you going to be able to get that much time off work?”

Mike nodded. “Oh, yeah. I haven’t taken a day off since I started. I get two weeks a year. If we schedule this for December, we’ll be cool. What about you?”

Anne grimaced. The thought of asking Pamela for time off— even for hours she’d accumulated as part of her vacation package— turned her stomach. Just getting permission to light out early on Friday for their festival trip, despite the fact that she’d filed every single story she’d been assigned early, had been a major production. And as she’d gone to Israel and Egypt, she wasn’t sure she could finagle more time off.

Because of her employment start date, the trip to the Middle East technically counted as her vacation time from the previous year. By December, she’d be able to use up the next year’s allotment. But following the letter of the law when it came to employee’s time off wasn’t Pamela’s style. She preferred to keep her staff on a very short leash.

More and more, Anne had found herself with really sucky hours in an increasingly hostile work environment. She’d covered more weekends than any of her colleagues and since no one had taken the initiative to replace the night-desk guy, she’d filled that spot more than anyone else on the crime beat. Under any other administrator, Anne would have been able to use this as leverage to negotiate the time off in December, but with Pamela, there was just no telling.

“I can try,” she said, her fingers hovering over her keyboard as amazing pictures of the rain forest scrolled across her screen.

The next morning, after a particularly long staff meeting where everyone seemed to yet again ignore the serious need for a new night-desk reporter, Anne asked Pamela if she could meet with her for a few minutes.

The woman grunted in response, then charged off to her office.

Once inside, Anne shut the door.

“Actually, I’m glad you came in,” Pamela said, tossing a stack of old papers off of her chair before logging in to her computer. Her frown emphasized the wrinkles on her chin. If this was her version of
glad,
Anne wondered if she understood the meaning of the word.

“Really?” Anne asked, skeptical. “Why?”

“You’ve been doing a good job on the night desk.”

Anne nearly lost her footing. A compliment? From Pamela?

She narrowed her eyes and then crossed her arms. With any other editor, opening with a compliment would have boded well. Not with Pamela.

Never with Pamela.

“I do a good job whatever shift I’m on,” Anne insisted.

Her confident reply caused Pamela’s right eyebrow to arch as if challenging this claim, but instead, the editor smiled in a way that made the skin on Anne’s neck crawl. “So good that you’ve become our most versatile reporter. The powers that be have decided to put you on the night desk permanently.”

“What?”

This was what she got for venturing into Pamela’s lair willingly. The night desk, with its four o’clock to midnight shift, was bad enough as a temporary fill-in, but on a weekly basis? Every weekday? She might as well slice her wrists open because she’d have no life anyway.

“And by powers that be, you mean you?” Anne asked, unable and unwilling to restrain the rancor in her voice.

Pamela chuckled. “For the most part, yeah. You always show up. You always file competent stories. What more can I ask for?”

She let the
competent
insult slide.

“Oh, I don’t know,” Anne snapped. “How about someone who actually wants that job?”

The glint of sick humor dancing in Pamela’s keen blue eyes narrowed into a deadly stare. “But can I assume that you do, at least, want
a
job?”

Anne’s heart seized. She’d never seen Pamela resort to blackmail before, but there was a first time for everything.

“Of course I want a job,” Anne said, her brain working to find another option, even though she knew there wasn’t one. Pamela wouldn’t be taking such sadistic pleasure from this tête-à-tête unless Anne was going to walk out the door miserable.

“Then this is it,” Pamela said. “Take it or leave it.”

Anne concentrated on keeping her jaw shut while her brain processed this cruel turn. The
Daily Journal
had, from the beginning, been her stepping stone to the bigger publications. The newspaper was, current management notwithstanding, highly respected. And it was also pretty much the only game in town.

Although she had every intention of living in one of the five boroughs of New York City sometime in the near future, she loved her life in Albany. She had a new man in her life—one who wanted to sweep her off on a grand adventure in another hemisphere. But even beyond Michael, she had friends and an apartment she loved. Even Sirus was getting used to sharing Michael with her for more than an hour at a time.

She loved being a journalist, but if she left the
Daily Journal,
she’d have to move to another market. She couldn’t make such an important decision based on her fury at Pamela. Her editor had placed her in a no-win situation—which doubly sucked because she was enjoying it.

“I want two weeks off in December,” Anne said.

“You just had three weeks off,” Pamela argued, waving her hand dismissively.

“I have two weeks coming to me after November, because that’s my anniversary date. If you’re going to stick me with the night shift, I want two weeks off. Paid.”

Pamela leaned on her hand, stroking her chin like some sort of maniacal villain out of a bad B movie. “You’ll have to do some weekends, too, then.”