had a couple of advanced degrees, was quite successful in her career as a biomedical researcher, had a few good friends and a nice apartment, but she had never really learned the art of dating. As far as she knew, there were no classes in flirtation, and she had never picked up the talent in her science labs.
She had been focused so single-mindedly on her education and her career that she had missed out on learning how to play. She just wasn’t a “fun” person, she thought with a sigh. The only men who had asked her out during the past couple of years had bored her half-senseless. She seemed destined to be alone with her work and her cat.
To distract herself from her mounting self-pity, she reached for the small stack of presents she had saved to open all at once. Her friend Karen Kupperman from work had given her a tin of herbal tea and a scented candle in a pretty cobalt glass holder. Practical and yet slightly self-indulgent—just the sort of gift Karen would appreciate herself.
Karen was in Europe now, on a two-week trip with her husband, Wayne. They had combined a vacation with a science conference in Geneva, and Karen had been looking forward to the excursion for months.
Catherine’s other friend, Julia, a public attorney, had given her another practical, but elegant, present—a pair of soft brown leather gloves lined with cashmere. Lovely, she thought, trying them on to admire the perfect fit. Typical of Julia—who was currently in New York City at a convention of lawyers.
A couple of Catherine’s graduate students had gone in together to buy her an emerald-green cashmere scarf. Rubbing it against her cheek, she murmured her appreciation of the luxuriously soft feel. She would enjoy this when the weather turned cold. Since it was almost the end of September now, it wouldn’t be much longer until the temperatures began to drop.
Finally there was the package from her parents, both academics currently teaching at a university in China. They had sent her a beautiful silk blouse and a check. The blouse pleased her; the check made her frown.
She wished she could convince them that she was doing fine financially. An only child born to them rather late in life, she had been overprotected and indulged, gently pushed to follow in their academic footsteps, raised in a sheltered, Ivy-League environment that hadn’t exactly prepared her for modern dating and socializing. And now, despite her career and her friends and her financial security—she was lonely on her birthday.
Biting her lip, she set the gifts aside and picked up her pet, snuggling into his neck. His purr vibrated against her cheek as she murmured, “I know wishes don’t really come true, Norman, but just this once I’ll try to believe….”
The day after Catherine’s birthday was a Monday, and it started out with a minor frustration. After she had showered and dressed for work, she walked into the kitchen to prepare her breakfast, only to find one of the knobs from her stove broken off and lying on the linoleum floor.
“Great,” she muttered, bending to pick it up. The knob had been loose for weeks—something she had meant to report but kept forgetting. She couldn’t imagine how it had broken off by itself during the night, but here it was.
Shaking her head, she stepped over the cat winding himself around her ankles and picked up the phone to call the rental office. As it happened, the new maintenance guy had just stepped into the office, she was told, and he could come right then if it was convenient for her. It would take him only a couple of minutes to repair the knob.
She agreed, then called her lab to let them know she would be a little late. Fortunately, her schedule was flexible that day, so she didn’t have to rush in. If something had to break, it seemed it had happened at a convenient time, she mused, walking toward the front door in anticipation of the maintenance man’s arrival. While she was accustomed to prompt responses from the management of her upscale apartment complex, this was even faster than usual.
Three quick raps announced his arrival, and she opened her door. Then very nearly dropped her jaw.
The last maintenance man who had repaired something in her apartment had been sixtyish, beer-bellied, balding and borderline surly. This guy looked somewhere in his mid-to late-twenties, athletically built, handsome in a blond, blue-eyed way, and flashed a hundred white teeth in a melt-your-spine smile.
All semblance of her usual intelligence and composure leaked right out of her brain. “Er…uh…”
“I’m Mike Clancy,” he said, tapping the ID badge he wore on the pocket of a blue denim work shirt. He held a toolbox in his left hand. “Lucille said you’ve got a broken knob on your stove?”
“Oh, yes. Of course.” Moving awkwardly out of the doorway, she motioned toward the kitchen. “It’s in there.”
Brilliant, she thought with a slight wince. Where else would the stove be? The bathroom?
But he merely nodded and walked into the living room, casting a quick glance around at her carefully put-together green, burgundy and cream decor. “I like the way you’ve decorated. It looks real comfortable.”
“Thank you.” Since comfort had been the primary criterion for each piece she had selected, she was pleased by the adjective.
“Well, hello.” Mike bent to offer a friendly hand to Norman, who sniffed him, then promptly rolled onto his back in a shameless bid for a belly scratch. Chuckling, Mike obliged, generating a rumbling purr that Catherine could hear from where she stood.
“He likes you,” she commented unnecessarily. “He usually hides from strangers.”
“He can probably tell that I like cats. What’s his name?”
Watching that capable-looking, nicely shaped hand stroking the cat’s fur, and unable to miss noticing how Mike’s jeans strained against his crouching thighs, Catherine had to take a moment to come up with the answer. “Norman. His name is Norman.”
“Hey, there, Norman.” He scratched just under Norman’s pointy black chin, causing the silly cat to go into a frenzy of purring and wriggling. And then he straightened, to the disappointment of both cat and owner. “Okay. Where’s the knob?”
Doubting he would appreciate an audience while he worked, Catherine stayed in the living room, but the apartment just happened to be arranged so that she could see him from the couch, where she had settled with the newspaper. She read maybe three words of the lead story, and those only when he glanced her way. The rest of the time, she simply watched him from beneath her eyelashes, struck by the novelty of having such a good-looking man in her kitchen.
Norman wasn’t nearly as circumspect in his staring. He sat in the kitchen doorway, ears perked and nose twitching as he watched Mike work. Occasionally he glanced at Catherine as if to say, “Why are you way over there when your visitor is in here?”
Or maybe she was just projecting.
It took only a few minutes for Mike to repair the stove. He came out of the kitchen all tousled hair and gleaming smile, and her breath caught hard in her throat. “It’s fixed,” he announced. “Anything else you need before I go?”
Maybe a woman who’d learned how to flirt would answer that leading question with a witty comeback. A funny innuendo that would make him laugh, then give her a second look.
Catherine said only, “No, that’s all. Thank you for coming so promptly.”
“You’re welcome.” With a last pat for Norman, Mike let himself out,
