of her. “First you spent your birthday alone, and then everything in your apartment broke. Not to mention a difficult week at work.”
Catherine took a sip of her punch and set the plastic tumbler back down on the table before replying to her friend of almost two years. “It wasn’t so bad, really. I received some lovely gifts for my birthday. Thank you again for the gloves, by the way. They’re gorgeous.”
“You’re welcome. I’m just sorry I had to be away on that business trip and couldn’t celebrate with you. A girl shouldn’t be by herself on her thirtieth birthday.”
“Norman and I had a very nice little private party.”
“The cat doesn’t count.”
“Don’t tell him that,” Catherine advised with a smile. “Norman is very sensitive, you know. And as for things breaking in my apartment, that turned out okay, too. The management responded very quickly each time, having the repairs done the very day I reported the problems.”
“Wow. That is efficient. I hope you didn’t have to deal with gripey old Luther again.”
Catherine concentrated on scooping a tortilla chip into white cheese dip, keeping her voice casual when she replied, “Actually, no. There’s a new maintenance guy now. His name’s Mike.”
“Really. Nice guy?”
“Yes, he seems very nice.”
A sudden, rather loaded silence from the other side of the table made Catherine look up. “What?”
“How did he look?”
She started to give a vaguely generic answer, but then she sighed and said, “Like he just stepped off a surfboard. Or—since we’re a ten-hour drive from the nearest beach—a skateboard, maybe.”
“Young guy, huh?”
“I’m not very good at guessing ages, but I’d say twenty-five. Maybe a year or two older.”
“And you say he’s nice looking?”
“Like someone you would see on the cover of one of those teen magazines my mother would never let me buy,” she replied with an exaggerated sigh. “Blond, blue-eyed, athletic build, beautiful smile. Nice teeth. And enough charm to sell sand in a desert.”
Julia shuddered. “Sounds like one of those guys who are about as deep as a rain puddle.”
Julia had a well-known aversion to handsome, shallow men, having been hurt very badly by one in her younger, more trusting days.
“He seemed quite nice, actually. But—as always happens when I’m in the presence of a good-looking guy—I displayed the wit and personality of petrified wood.”
Julia rolled her eyes. “I doubt it was quite that bad.”
“Trust me,” she said with a groan. “I couldn’t even remember poor Norman’s name. All I could do was just sit there, staring at the guy. He probably thinks I’m the most boring tenant in the entire complex.”
“Oh well, it isn’t as if you’d be interested in boffing the maintenance stud, anyway,” Julia said with a shrug. “You’ve got more common sense than that.”
“No, of course I wouldn’t be interested in anything like that,” Catherine agreed with a laugh that sounded a bit hollow to her own ears.
“And he hardly sounds like the kind of man you’d want to date for any other purpose. A young maintenance man? What on earth would you have in common with him?”
Julia, bless her, was pretty much as clueless as Catherine when it came to men. A natural blonde who defied all the stereotypes, she was a fiercely focused and ambitious dynamo in a deceptively fragile-looking package. Unlike Catherine, Julia was frequently the target of passes from prowling males, few of them interested in her mind. Her experiences with the opposite sex had left her decidedly cynical when it came to romance.
Losing interest in the subject of buff young men—and totally oblivious to the man who was openly ogling her from a table nearby—Julia launched into a discussion of a workshop she had attended at the conference in New York. Catherine was quite sure her friend had rarely, if ever, left the conference hotel to enjoy all the wonderfully exciting things to do in the “Big Apple.” For Julia, nothing in the city was as interesting and challenging as scholarly discussions of the law.
Hopeless, Catherine thought with a slight shake of her head. Both of them.
Settling in for an evening of spicy Mexican food and stimulating conversation, she pushed the lingering thoughts of Mike Clancy to the back of her mind. She knew full well those thoughts would be there to tease her again later, when she was alone in her apartment.
Friday afternoon Catherine was sitting at her desk behind a mountain of paperwork for an important grant, when she accidentally overheard a couple of graduate students chatting out in the hallway. Maybe they didn’t know she was in her office, or maybe they weren’t aware of how clearly their voices carried through the partially opened door.
“Got big plans for the weekend?”
“Uh-huh. Scott’s taking me to Tunica for a weekend at the casinos. We’re leaving tomorrow morning. I can’t wait.”
“Sounds like fun.”
“I know. What are you doing this weekend?”
“Going clubbing tonight with Tommy and Jan and Nick. Tomorrow Tommy and I are driving up to Jonesboro for the football game and staying the night there.”
“Cool.”
“You and Scott want to go clubbing with us tonight?”
“Maybe. I’ll ask him and give you a call.”
There was a momentary pause before one of them said, “What do you think she’s doing this weekend?”
“Dr. Travis? Same thing she does every weekend. Working.”
“Think she ever just cuts loose and has fun?”
A laugh of disbelief was followed by a cynical, “I think fun might be one of the few words missing from her extensive vocabulary. She’s nice and all, but can you imagine her partying?”
“No. The image just won’t form in my mind.”
The voices faded as the unseen speakers moved down the hallway, leaving an echo of laughter behind them. Only after she was sure they were gone did Catherine get up to quietly close her door.
By the time she arrived at home that evening, her steps were dragging. Though it was after seven, it was still light. The days were getting shorter, though, she mused with a sigh, tucking her bulging briefcase beneath her arm. Soon it would be dark when she came home alone. And cold.
Locking her car door, she glanced across the mostly empty parking lot. Most of the other tenants were already home from work, and quite a few of them had probably already headed out for Friday night fun. Someone climbed out of the driver’s side of a small pickup truck, and she recognized Mike,
