He was entirely comfortable in social situations; she had never worried about academic pursuits.
He was obviously ready to leave. She moved toward the door. “Good luck with your test, Mike.”
“Thanks. It was really nice of you to help me study.”
“You’re quite welcome,” she said, hating the primness she heard in her own voice.
He bent to scratch her cat’s ears. “See you around, Norman.”
With a smile that included both her and the cat—and didn’t seem to particularly favor either of them, she thought regretfully—he let himself out.
Norman remained in his position for several long moments, staring at the closed door with wide, unblinking eyes. It was only when she realized that she was doing much the same thing that Catherine prodded herself into motion. “Give it up, Norman. He’s not coming back.”
The cat didn’t move. Shaking her head in rueful amusement, Catherine moved to the kitchen to put away the glasses she and Mike had used. Before setting Mike’s glass in the dishwasher, she indulged herself in one moment of fantasy by touching a fingertip to the rim. His lips might have touched just there, she mused. It was only her imagination, of course, that made the glass feel a bit warmer in that spot.
He did have a nicely shaped mouth. His upper lip was sensually curved, and his lower lip was just full enough to be nibble-able. When he smiled, as he did so often and so easily, his teeth flashed white and even, and there was just a hint of a dimple at the right corner of his mouth. When he’d tipped his head back to drink his lemonade, his tanned throat had worked with his swallows, calling her attention to the vee of the nicely fitted knit shirt he’d worn with comfortably loose jeans.
Sighing lightly, she set the glass on the dishwasher rack and shut the door. It was silly for her to be standing here mooning over him like an infatuated schoolgirl. And yet…it felt sort of good. It was nice to know her libido was still in working order, despite the amount of time that had passed since she’d last made use of it.
It had been a pleasant couple of hours. She hadn’t made a fool of herself, and she had managed to uphold her end of the conversation even when they hadn’t been talking about science. She’d even managed to crack a couple of jokes and make him smile a couple of times—not that Mike’s smiles were exactly rare.
Maybe if she’d had a bit more practice at that sort of interaction with attractive men, she wouldn’t have celebrated her birthday with her cat, she thought wistfully.
Chapter Three
Mike couldn’t remember ever feeling so confident leaving a classroom after a test. It was almost as if Catherine had known exactly what his professor was going to ask and had drilled him specifically on those points. He had found himself thinking of her during the exam, hearing her voice explaining the concepts to him as he’d read the questions.
He wasn’t quite cocky enough to believe he’d aced the thing, but he was quite certain he had passed. He wouldn’t be at all surprised to have earned better than an average grade. It was a good feeling. And he had Catherine to thank for it.
He had to stop by the supermarket on his way home. He was out of sodas and frozen waffles, his usual breakfast staples. Impulse made him wander into the florist section while he was there.
Half an hour later he stood outside Catherine’s door, having a few second thoughts about being there at all. He didn’t want her to start thinking of him as a nuisance. Maybe he should just forget about this and…
Her door opened before he had a chance to decide whether to ring the bell. Catherine came very close to barreling straight into him before she stopped herself with a gasp of surprise.
“Oh. Mike,” she said, flustered. “I didn’t know you were here.”
“You’re on your way out,” he commented unnecessarily, suddenly awkward. “I won’t keep you. I just wanted to give you these. You know, as a thank-you for helping me with my studying.”
She looked a bit startled when he handed her the inexpensive bouquet of mixed blooms. Was it because she wasn’t accustomed to receiving flowers from her handyman? Was she wondering uncomfortably if there was more to the gesture than simple gratitude?
“It’s no big deal,” he said quickly when she tried to stammer a thank-you. “I was at the supermarket, feeling pretty good about my test, and I saw the flowers and thought I should do something to repay you for your help. Since you wouldn’t take any real pay, I mean.”
She had, in fact, quite firmly rebuffed his offer to pay her for her tutoring services.
Her smile seemed to dim just a bit, but her tone was sincere when she said, “I’m glad to hear the test went well. When will you know your grade?”
“The professor is going to post them on his Web site tomorrow. I really think I did well, Catherine. I wouldn’t be surprised if I got a B. High C at the lowest.”
She smiled up at him. “That’s very good news.”
She really did have pretty eyes. Such a rich, dark brown that he could see his own reflection in them. He lowered his gaze to her mouth. And found himself captured for a moment by the soft curve of her upper lip.
He cleared his throat, using the sound to bring his own wandering thoughts back on track. “I won’t keep you any longer,” he said. “I hope I didn’t cause you to be late.”
Wrinkling her nose a little, she shook her head. “I’m just headed for the lab. I’ve got an experiment going, and I’ll probably be there until after midnight.”
He was a bit surprised. “Don’t you have grad students to handle that sort of thing?”
She smiled again. “I’m only an associate professor, just two years out of my postdoctoral position. I have a grad student assigned to my lab, but she has her own research to do. We have a lab tech, but he can’t handle what I need to do tonight. So…it’s up to me.”
“How many hours a week do you work?”
She shrugged. “Anywhere from forty to eighty hours a week. Research isn’t a nine-to-five, five-day-a-week job. But it also gives me some flexibility with my work hours when I have appointments or errands to run or just need some time away from the lab.”
A hard worker, this one, he thought. Smart, focused, self-sufficient. He admired the heck out of her. And if he were perfectly honest with himself, he would admit that he was just a little intimidated by her. And that was a new experience for him.
“Well…” He took a step backward. “Don’t work too hard.”
“Thank you again for the flowers.”
He noticed that she had her nose buried in the bouquet when she turned away and closed the door. She seemed to really like the flowers. He was glad now that he had given in to his impulse to buy them.
“And I’ve put in almost seventy hours on that one case this week,” Julia announced.
Stabbing her fork into a grilled scallop, Catherine replied with the expected murmur of amazement. Yet she knew her friend wasn’t actually
