In the Midnight Hour (6 page)

“That was priceless,” the girl next to Ronnie declared as she slid into her seat. “I’ve never seen Iron Ball lose his cool.”

Ronnie gave a halfhearted smile. Neither had she. Iron Ball Guidry was the poster boy for uptight scientific professionals, from his pristine white lab coat to his creased slacks and spit-polished loafers with the little tassles.

“What do you suppose sex is like with Iron Ball Guidry?” the woman to her left whispered to a friend directly in front of her.

“Are you kidding?” the second woman asked over her shoulder. “Like going to the gynecologist, only not half as exciting. ‘Please lie down on the table, miss.’” The girl did her best Guidry imitation. “‘Now spread your legs. A little wider, please, I don’t have bifocals, you know. Okay, now tilt your pelvis. Yes, just like that. Now I’m going to insert my Superman into your Wonder Woman and you’re going to feel the first level of stimulation. This is called the
preorgasmic phase.’
”

Ronnie felt the giggle rise to her lips, then her gaze hooked on Professor Guidry, who was still crawling on the floor, gathering plastic parts, and the sound died in her throat. He looked so shaken at her having shattered the model.

He deserved it. He’d deliberately tried to embarrass her, and all because she’d been unintentionally late to his class.

Even so, the laughter wouldn’t come. Not when she’d just earned herself a demerit the size of Texas. Could he actually fail her for breaking his precious penis?

Luckily the class ended, and Ronnie didn’t have time to worry over the answer. She bolted from her seat and joined the crowd heading for the doorway.

“Just a minute,” came the sharp voice from behind the podium. Guidry got to his feet, brushing at invisible dust bunnies and smoothing his lab coat. “Paper topics, people. On my desk before you leave or I’ll assume you don’t plan on writing a term paper and will grade you appropriately.”

“For the record, Miss Parrish,” Guidry said when she reached the podium and handed him her neatly folded paper, “I will not tolerate tardiness in this course. I am well aware of the rumors around campus. Everyone feels that human sexuality is something inborn. An easy A. Well, this course is as scientific, as educational as any other course at this university, and I’ll have my students treat it as such. I have no misgivings about failing someone, especially after the sort of juvenile behavior I witnessed today.”

“I’m sorry, sir. I really am.”

He wasn’t the least moved by the apology. “Furthermore, I expect full participation and effort from every student. I hope you’ve put a lot of thought into your term paper topic. The paper will count for sixty percent of the overall course grade, and after your recent performance, you will need every percentage point to pass this course.”

“I really am sorry, Professor. I would never make light of your course. I didn’t mean to be late. You see, I work two jobs and—”

“I worked two jobs during college and graduate school, Miss Parrish, as do a lot of students, and we all live to tell about it, I assure you. I suggest you get your priorities straight. Exhaustion is not an acceptable excuse.”

“Maybe not, but it’s the truth.”

“Nor is there an acceptable excuse for your childish babbling and blushing today.”

“I didn’t mean to babble or blush. It’s just that …”

“Yes?”

“Well, I…” She couldn’t say it. She couldn’t tell a stranger, even if he did happen to be the resident expert on human sexuality, about her dream.

Her classmates’ speculations on the professor’s love life echoed through her head. As stuffy and uptight as Guidry was, he probably didn’t even have dreams.

Wet dreams
, came the deep, sultry voice in her head.

Those either. She could kiss goodbye any chance of the professor understanding how she felt.

Felt?
She shouldn’t be feeling anything. It had just been a dream, for heaven’s sake! A few hours of harmless fun quickly forgotten once she opened her eyes. A few fantasies were fine, as long as she kept them in proper perspective and out of her real life.

On that note, she gathered up her book bag and marched to her next class. She managed to shove the images of last night away for safekeeping while she went through the motions of a typical, busy day. She sat through lectures, studied, reported for receptionist duty at Landry & Landry, then spent eight hours shelving books at the library.

It was when she was on her way home that her dream man pushed his way back into her mind, haunting her on the short walk, a sort of foreplay for the night ahead. When Ronnie reached her apartment, she wasted little time in getting ready for bed. She was tired, in desperate need of sleep, but most of all, she was ready for a little more harmless fun. With a shiver of anticipation, she crawled beneath the sheets, closed her eyes, and waited for the enticing dream.

One that never came.

Chapter Three

This must be her.

He stared through the windshield of his ’59 T-Bird bright and early Saturday morning and watched the same woman he’d nearly bumped into yesterday descend the steps of the townhouse. She matched the description the guy at the antique store had given him. Not to mention this was the right address.

It was her.

Now all he had to do was sit back and watch, learn her routine. Then he could make his move.

His hands flexed around the steering wheel. He’d never been a patient man, which could have been part of the “problem,” his doctor had told him. Closing his eyes, he concentrated on the deep breathing exercises to help him relax. Relaxation was the key. No stress. No pressure.

His eyes opened. Once he took care of things here, he would certainly feel less pressure and he could get on with fixing the “problem,” before it was too late. No way was he going to sit by and lose the one thing in the world that mattered to him the most. His woman.

He wasn’t about to let anything come between them, and that meant he had to eliminate the competition, so to speak. What was a man if he couldn’t fight for what was his? If he couldn’t show his woman that he and only he could keep her satisfied?

Eliminate
. That was the ultimate goal.

But first he had to watch.

This Saturday played out like any other. Ronnie rolled out of bed at seven a.m. and hurried to the campus library to report for duty. She checked out books, helped several students and a few irate professors find specific titles, and shelved cartload after cartload of returned books.

What made today different, however, was that Ronnie, rather than counting the hours until quitting time, welcomed the work. She needed all the distractions she could get to keep her mind off the truth.

No dream
.

She’d spent an endless Friday night tossing and turning,
waiting
, but nothing had happened. When she’d closed her eyes, she hadn’t met up with her dream man. Instead, she’d alternated between visions of Guidry marking a big fat F on her term paper and ripping the diploma from her hands, and her own funeral soon afterward. The tombstone appropriately read:

HERE LIES VERONICA PARRISH
SO VIRGINAL, PROPER AND SWEET.
SHE FAILED HUMAN SEXUALITY,
AND NOW SHE’S SIX FEET DEEP!

Being busy at the library helped. Unfortunately, it didn’t occupy her thoughts completely. Disappointment followed her around all day, dogging her like a hungry puppy.

Was she so repulsive she couldn’t get a man even in her own dreams?

She shook her head. Now where had that thought come from? She wasn’t repulsive. She was just… busy. Focused. Too fixated on her career to worry about fussing over makeup and clothes to help attract a man. She didn’t want to attract a man, to find herself chucking hard work and ambition for marriage and family. She’d come too far, sacrificed too much to land right back where she’d started and hear her father say, “If you had only listened to me.”

She’d made her choice, and she intended to see it through.

Still, she couldn’t help but glance at her reflection in an abstract painting as she pushed a load of books past the Arts section. She looked so…
blah
. With her hair pulled back, her face void of color, she was pale, washed out—

Her gaze shifted to the corner of the painting and she caught the reflection of Mr. Hunk-a-hunk-a-burnin’-love she’d seen at the crosswalk the day before. He’d changed his T-shirt and now the words
Jailhouse Rock
glittered in bright green neon—the guy definitely had a thing for Elvis.

Mr. Jailhouse sat at one of the library tables, a book in his hand, his attention fixed on her. She turned around, but by then he’d shifted and looked away, leaving her to wonder if she’d just imagined his attention.

Probably.

As homely as she looked—all those traditional years back in Covenant had taught her great camouflage techniques when it came to clothes and make-up—nobody in his right mind would pay her any attention, especially a semicute jock.

By the time Ronnie shelved the last book on her cart, she’d convinced herself she needed a little pampering. Not to catch a man, mind you. Just to boost her own ego and relax a little. Why, she’d been so worked up about Guidry and her grade that she’d been too uptight to even fall asleep, much less dream.

No more.

Tonight she would push everything from her mind—Guidry, graduation, work, the twins, whom she’d promised to watch tomorrow morning—
everything
. She refused to worry. It was Saturday night, time to kick back and let loose, and that’s exactly what Ronnie intended to do.

The minute she walked into her apartment, she peeled off her jeans and T-shirt and retrieved the bottle of champagne Danny had given her as a house-warming gift last year when she’d moved from the dorm into the efficiency. It wasn’t expensive stuff, but a year in her fruit bin had to have helped. Age was the key to good liquor, wasn’t it?

She grabbed a couple of candles, situated them around the tub, and lit the wicks. Soft light cast flickering shadows across the surface of the steaming water. Ronnie hit the lights, slipped out of her underwear, and slid into the water. Champagne, candles—by the time she finished her bath, she would feel clean and pretty and relaxed enough for a little sleep and a romantic interlude.

With a dream man
.

A no-strings-attached figment of her imagination.

All the better.

She reached for the champagne bottle, took a huge swallow, and sputtered. The bitter liquid burned its way down her throat and she grimaced. Maybe she’d settle for just the bath and candles to do the stress-relieving trick.

Corking the bottle, she placed it on the floor by the tub, settled back down into the warm water, and closed her eyes.

Mmmmm, she could get used to this.

Val would
never
get used to this. To her and her seductive antics. Last night she’d spent eight long, endless hours rolling this way and that, lifting her full, luscious breasts just so, sighing a tad too often and too deeply, easing her leg ever so casually over to his side of the bed.

He refused to accept that she didn’t know he was there. She knew. Deep down, her subconscious knew, no matter that her conscious mind refused to acknowledge him. She sensed him, his presence, his incredible hunger, and she was responding to him.

Merde!
Of all the rotten luck.

Here he was trying to preserve her innocence, and his own peace of mind, all the while she was driving him insane, trying to lure him into her bed—
his
bed—between her innocent thighs….

No! Not now. Not ever again. He had another, more important matter to focus on, the question that had haunted him for a century and a half. He didn’t need a virgin distracting him, robbing him of his peace, before he’d had the chance to relish a sweet, restful moment.

No matter how beautiful she was. How soft her hair. How silky her skin. How tasty her wine-colored nipples that peeked past the surface of the bathwater…

He swallowed and tried to force his gaze away from the picture she made, lounging so serenely in the claw-footed tub. He closed his eyes, but she was still there, the memory of her so warm and eager pushing and pulling at his control.

She sighed and the sound whispered through his head, drawing his undivided attention. A smile tilted her full lips as she reached for the bar of soap and began lathering herself. First her arms, then her legs, then one firm, round breast—

Enough! He could take no more. He was on his feet, crossing the distance to her before he could stop himself.

Val wondered as he closed the last few feet between them, the smell of rose-scented soap and ripe female stirring his senses, if maybe he wasn’t about to make the same mistake twice.

Ronnie heard the ripple of water a second before she felt the pressure on her fingers. Her grip on the soap loosened and the slippery bar flew out of her hands. Her heart slammed into her throat and her eyes snapped open, fully expecting to see a rapist leering at her. A murderer ready to chop off her head—

Nothing. Her gaze jerked around the empty bathroom, to the medicine cabinet where the bar of soap had left a slimy white trail down the glass before clattering into the sink.