Hard to Hold (True Romance) (5 page)

“Sh,” he coaxed Sirus through the door. “It’s okay, pup. Daddy’s a moron and forgot his keys.”

She whined a little louder, but momentarily stopped barking and scratching, though she’d redouble her efforts when the combination of her desire to see him and her overtaxed bladder threw her back into canine hysterics.

He flipped his phone and scrolled through his contact list, hoping to find someone who might be able to help him out. Ben was on a business trip. Nikki, his office buddy, was on a date and likely would have no idea how to fix this problem anyway.

Then he scrolled by the listing for his friend who had once dated Shane. According to Anne, Shane also lived in the building, though he hadn’t seen her and had no idea which apartment was hers.

Still, this was a place to start.

He allowed a few minutes of small talk, filling him in on his recent move to State Street apartments and then listening to his summary of his pal’s recent purchase of a new family car to replace the old van they used to go to concerts in.

When Sirus started growling, Mike had no choice but interrupt.

“Do you remember Shane? Sanders, I think. Yeah, that girl you hooked up with at the Phish concert back in New Jersey. I know you’re a married man and everything, but you don’t happen to still have her number, do you?”

After a vague promise to share a pitcher of beer sometime in the near future, Mike scored Shane’s phone number with no guarantees that it was still valid. Luckily, the voice-mail message echoed with her voice. Unluckily, her message also said she was out of town.

He chanced a curse before the beep, then left a calm message and requested that she call him back as soon as possible. After soothing Sirus with more promises of imminent release, he tried to think of what to do next.

His neck twitched. Then his shoulder. He became aware of the increased dryness of his eyes again. Stress equaled increased symptoms of his Tourette’s.

Damn. Damn, damn, damn. He really didn’t need this right now.

Normally, his body could handle a little bit of added anxiety, but with the move, the new job, and now the inconvenience of his rushing out of work today without paying attention to the location of his keys, the disorder was starting to take over. He leaned against the hallway door and closed his eyes, concentrating on the muscles around his neck, willing them to relax. He inhaled slowly, and then breathed out through his mouth, the soft whooshing sound soothing the beast inside him. After a few minutes, his body calmed and submitted to the control of his brain and his will.

One crisis averted.

He turned and faced his door, prepared to come up with another solution in case Shane didn’t pick up her messages. Judging by the solid quality of the door frame, kicking it in wasn’t an option. He might have played varsity football back in high school, but that was a long time ago and tackling had never been his favorite activity. He’d just turned, determined to interrupt one of his unknown neighbors when he thought about Anne again.

She’d told him that she lived in 2-D. This certainly wasn’t the way he wanted to see her again after last week, but he didn’t have a choice. Chances were, she had the landlord’s number. It was late, but as she did know Sirus, she’d understand his rush to get into his apartment before his dog exploded.

The elevator seemed interminably slow. Once on the second floor, he found her door and knocked.

No answer.

He paced a minute, and then knocked again. Was no one home in this infernal building? It was a freaking Monday night! He leaned his ear to the door and could hear what sounded like a television. Maybe she’d left the box on while she went out. Or maybe she just couldn’t hear him.

He was knocking more loudly when his phone rang.

“Mike, it’s Shane. You sound desperate. What’s up?”

“I’m going to sound like a dufus,” Mike confessed, “but I left my apartment keys at my office. You aren’t home by any chance, are you?”

“I’m in the city for business meetings,” Shane said apologetically. “I won’t be back until tomorrow.”

Clearly, she meant Manhattan. “You don’t happen to have the landlord’s number, do you?”

“Yeah, but he bowls on Monday. He won’t answer his phone until after midnight, but you can leave him a message.”

“Damn. My dog’s inside. She’s going nuts.”

“Did you try Anne? She’s fairly resourceful with this sort of thing,” she said.

“Actually, I’m outside her door now. I knocked a couple of times, but she’s not answering.”

Oddly, Shane laughed. “Yeah, she wouldn’t. Look, I’ll give her a call and see if I can coax her up to your place. Trust me, she’ll get you inside.”

Anxious to check on Sirus, he accepted Shane’s suggestion and disconnected the call, only mildly wondering why Anne would need “coaxing” in order to help him out. And still, the more he thought about Anne, the more she intrigued him. If she helped him out of yet another jam, he might have to do something drastic like take her out for a nice dinner.

As he waited for the elevator, though, he acknowledged that gratitude had nothing to do with his desire to ask her out. He should have gotten her number the night he met her at the concert. He should have invited her out last week when she’d taken care of Sirus. He’d screwed up their first meeting by refusing to go out for drinks. This second meeting, wholly accidental, could have been better. And now, for his third shot, he was going to look like a flake.

He tried not to think about it. His night was already bad enough.

“Anne, I know you’re there . . . pick up the phone!”

This was the third time Shane had called her landline in the last five minutes. Was the woman nuts? Did she not know what time it was? Anne wasn’t fanatical about a lot of things, but Monday nights at ten o’clock belonged to one man and one man only—Jack Bauer. Was it too much to ask to have sixty uninterrupted minutes once a week to watch the world’s most gorgeous antiterrorist agent save the free world?

“Anne, I wouldn’t ordinarily dare to interrupt your weekly drool-fest over Keifer Sutherland, but remember Michael Davoli? He’s an actual
real
man in need of rescue and only you, my dear, can meet the challenge. Call me back!”

Even though she heard the definitive click of Shane disconnecting the call, Anne cursed. Unlike many of her friends who had VCRs that actually worked, Anne did not have a way to record this episode. But now that she knew Michael might be in trouble, she couldn’t ignore the call to assist.

A commercial came on, so with a good three and a half minutes until the next segment of
24
aired, she grabbed her handset and dialed Shane.

“You have three minutes, less if you’re going to actually ask me to do anything,” she said by way of greeting.

“I had no idea that Jack massacring perfectly good terrorists made you this cranky,” Shane quipped.

“Two minutes, fifty seconds,” Anne snapped back.

“Mike locked himself out of his apartment. Or left his keys at the office. I don’t remember the details, but he needs help. His dog is inside and she hasn’t been out for a while.”

Anne frowned. Poor Sirus.

“Did he call Joe?” Anne asked. Only the landlord had a spare set of keys to all the units. Most everyone who lived in the building gave spare keys to trusted neighbors for such emergencies. Shane had Anne’s, but a lot of good it did her since her friend was out of town more often than not.

“Joe’s bowling. Besides, Mike didn’t have his number and I don’t have it with me, either. Can’t you dash down there and see if you can help?”

“Why didn’t he come up and ask himself?” Anne asked.

“He did! He was knocking on your door when I called him back. I suspect Jack Bauer was torturing an enemy combatant at the time.”

Anne winced. When she watched
24,
she snuggled beneath the quilt on her couch, a hot cup of coffee on the warmer, along with a bowl of popcorn or some other not-too-crunchy snack that she could eat without missing any crucial dialogue. Bathroom breaks were taken only during commercials, which might have been when Mike had knocked.

“The show’s coming back on,” Anne said. “I’ll run up there next break.”

She could hear Shane clucking her tongue on the other end of the phone. “You’re choosing the fictional hunk over the real one, my friend.”

Anne didn’t bother to reply.

She watched the next segment, trying to concentrate on the show when all she could think about was Michael and Sirus. She really was a wonderful dog who probably didn’t understand why her beloved master wouldn’t come in. And what if she had to go? He’d been at work all day. If he had a dog walker, he could have called them for an extra key. With a huff, she tore off her fleece pajamas and traded them for a pair of jeans and a blue wool sweater. While Jack exchanged information with his team, Anne took a second to rush a brush through her hair and dig a stick of gum out of her bag. She tried not to think about how attracted she must really be to Michael if she was willing to risk missing even a minute of the show to help him out.

Ironically, the segment ended with a gunshot, which sent Anne scrambling to the door. She shoved her keys into her pocket and hit the stairs. She made it to the third floor in less than fifteen seconds and saw Michael outside his place, his forehead pressed against the door while Sirus whined on the other side.

“Anne!” he said, alerted to her approach by the sound of her hoofing it down the hall.

She held out her hand. “Give me a credit card.”

“What?”

She didn’t have time for him to catch up. Boldly, she slapped his backside. “Wallet. Credit Card. Get it.”

He did so quickly, handing her a shiny new Visa that wasn’t about to be so pristine when she was done with it.

She gave him a little shove to move him out of the way, concentrating only on her goal. Though she didn’t have a pet to worry about, she had lost her own keys more times than she could count. She might not be organized, but she was resourceful. She shoved the thin plastic into the nearly imperceptible gap between the door and the jamb, then slid it to the precise spot where, if she jiggled the doorknob and pulled forward just a quarter of an inch . . .

Click.

The door moved inward just enough to disengage the loosened lock.

“Score!” She shoved the credit card back into Michael’s hand and then dashing toward the stairs again.

“Hey!” he called after her. “Where are you going?”

She spared him a glance over her shoulder before pushing the door to the stairwell open. “Back to what I was doing before you locked yourself out of your place.”

“Oh, okay. Thanks,” he said.

Was it her imagination, or did he sound disappointed?

She was back beneath her blanket before she’d processed the answer. Yeah, he’d looked sad to see her go. In the part of her mind that contained her romantic fantasies, she conjured a scenario where Mike hadn’t really forgotten his keys, but just wanted an excuse to see her. Unfortunately, as her brain had been engaged in untangling the plot of her favorite television show for the last half hour, her neurons quickly blasted that daydream to bits.

He hadn’t needed any convoluted excuse in order to stop by. She’d made that clear the last time she’d seen him. This time, however, she’d come across as wholly disinterested.

Too bad that was the furthest thing from the truth.

Anne settled into her pillows, grabbed the bag of chocolate-covered raisins from her coffee table and focused on the television. She’d helped him out. What more could a guy want? She resolved to stop thinking about him and concentrate only on the screen. If her real life suddenly seemed a little emptier than it had an hour before, such was life.

The next move belonged to Michael.

Five

“
I
DON’T KNOW WHY
you bother watching Jack Bauer,” Shane said with a snort. “You
are
Jack Bauer.”

Anne rolled her eyes and pawed through a discount bin overflowing with skeins of soft, pastel-colored yarns. She’d finally talked Shane into joining her knitting group. Trouble was, Shane did not knit. She didn’t sew. She didn’t crochet, cross-stitch or engage in any hobby that fell under the “crafty” banner. Anne had promised to help her put together a starter kit, but only if Shane agreed to keep her questions about Michael to a minimum.

So far, only one of them was keeping her end of the bargain.

“How do you feel about lavender?” Anne asked, digging out a roll in variant shades of light purple and pearl.

“It’s pretty,” Shane said, though from her crinkled nose, Anne knew the hue wasn’t to her taste. “I like darker colors. Bolder. You know, to fit my vibrant personality.”

With a snicker, Anne moved to the next bin, which had a few jewel tones mixed in with bright summer colors of yellow, orange, and pink.

“So?” Shane asked.

“So, keep your jeans on. I’m looking.”

Anne nearly fell forward into the cloud of cotton thread when Shane shoved her on the shoulder.

“I don’t care about the yarn. Tell me more about rescuing Michael!”

“I didn’t rescue him.” Anne tamped down her annoyance that Michael had allowed yet another opportunity to ask her out go untaken. He’d left her a thank-you note the next morning—quite literally. A yellow Post-it with the words, “Thank you,” written in neat block letters. She’d nearly torn it up in frustration. Instead, she’s scribbled “You’re welcome,” underneath and pasted it on his door in reply. She wanted no mistakes made. The ball was now in his court.