“NOT EVEN a good-night kiss?”
Katie Brown slapped her pen flat against her spiral notebook. “Man, either she is the most virtuous woman on campus or you are severely losing your touch.”
Noah sat up straighter in his office chair. Katie might be new in the journalism game, but she obviously knew that a surefire way to the truth—at least with a man—was through his ego. She’d just questioned the potency of his prowess. Fortunately, Noah had spent the past thirteen years either studying or teaching about the nuances of the male psyche. He wouldn’t be such easy prey.
With an even exhale, he eased back into the comfortable worn leather on his high-backed, swivel chair. “Dr. Carpenter is a true inspiration.”
She jotted down his response, wrinkling her nose as she wrote. Katie wore her dissatisfaction, and just about all her other emotions, like a bright carnival mask. He wished reading Miranda was so easy. Since he left her house Saturday, he’d tried unsuccessfully to figure the woman out. She believed in commitment before sex, and yet she willingly participated in an erotic interlude that left Noah breathless even now. She claimed to be embarrassed to the point of utter humiliation after her sister revealed her private secrets to the world, yet she had lunch with him under a tree wearing nothing but a towel.
At least he’d learned one thing about Miranda this weekend, not counting the part about her being the most sensual creature he’d ever encountered. Miranda Carpenter wasn’t as simple, straightforward or straitlaced as he’d once believed. Her behavior wasn’t always based on black and whites. And if he once thought the gray areas would send her running for cover, he now knew that wasn’t the truth at all.
She was a woman of myriad contradictions. And damn it if he wasn’t hungry to unravel each and every one.
Katie tapped her pen point on her paper, reminding him she was still in the room. “I don’t get it. What do you mean she’s an inspiration? She inspired you not to make a move on her? I’m not sure that’s a compliment.”
“Trust me, it’s a compliment.” He swallowed the last of his coffee, wondering why he’d agreed to Katie’s impromptu request for an interview. She planned to grill Miranda after class, but said she wanted his impression of the date first. The man’s perspective. Truthfully, Noah could hardly remember what had occurred Friday night. His memories seemed stuck on Saturday afternoon.
“Katie, let me tell you something about men that you—and your readers—might not know. Most men really like women. We’re fascinated by them. At a very early age, however, society demands a certain gender separation that breeds distrust of the opposite sex and heightens a masked curiosity often mistaken for disrespect.”
She looked up from her notebook, her eyes, thinly lined by soft black, wide. “Huh?”
“Remember when you were little and the boys all played in one corner with their trucks and the girls in the other with the dolls?”
Katie shook her head. He shouldn’t have expected her to have a traditional childhood experience.
“I played with the boys a lot.”
“And how did the other little girls feel about that?”
She sat up straighter and ran her hand through her hair, which he suddenly noticed seemed a lighter shade of brunette than last Monday morning. And something else was different, though he couldn’t quite figure out what.
With a hair-flip meant to show bravado, she answered, “They were jealous.”
“Exactly.”
She watched him for a moment. “I hate to ask you the same question twice, but—huh?”
Chuckling, he understood why Miranda took such a liking to Katie. She was starting to get under his skin, too. “When you were admitted into the ‘enemy camp,’ so to speak, your own gender turned on you. That’s very typical behavior in children. I once did a study…”
Katie held up her hand. “You know what, let’s try a different route. Could you forget, just for a millisecond, that you’re a psychologist? Drop all the textbook babble and forget every study you’ve ever done and read about. All I want to know is if you wanted to kiss Dr. Carpenter. And if you did want to kiss her, why didn’t you?”
He started to open his mouth, but Katie pointed the tip of her pen at him like a razor-sharp rapier. “Answer like a man, not a scientist. You use one word bigger than three syllables and I’m outta here.”
Noah grinned and resumed thinking. He couldn’t very well tell Katie, and thus the entire university community, that he hadn’t kissed Miranda that night because he wouldn’t have been able to stop there—a fact he proved to himself and Miranda the very next afternoon.
He shook his head. Don’t go there, Noah. Not with Katie in the room. Not with anyone in the room. He’d made that mistake yesterday during the barbecue at his sister’s house. As he’d stood over the grill, he’d allowed himself to remember, just for an instant, exactly what Miranda looked like wet and naked and enraptured. He’d relived the feel of her skin against his. The sound of her cooing as he laved her breasts. The pebbled hardness of her nipple between his teeth.
Not only had he burned the hamburgers, but his sister took away his spatula and interrogated him for the next two hours over the identity of the woman who’d distracted him so much that burnt meat and thick black smoke had hardly made him blink.
Only after pleading with his sister to give him space, had she relented and let the subject drop. But not without one of her typical warnings. Something that amounted to, “This one must be special. Don’t screw it up.”
But Noah always screwed it up, starting with the high-school sweetheart he’d made his wife, only to make her his ex-wife just two years later. He’d thought he knew Trish as well as he knew himself. They’d been inseparable right up to the wedding day. But once they lived in the same house, shared the same bed, he found himself feeling more crowded than the candy bars he stuffed in his pockets.
He’d tried not to screw it up with Sarah either. After the disappointment of his divorce, he’d purposefully taken the relationship slowly. They’d been together for over six months before he finally gave in to Sarah’s considerable sex appeal. He’d even held out for a few months more before moving into her apartment—which had been the beginning of the end—a long, drawn-out end that Sarah didn’t quite accept until his lawyer advised him to take out the restraining order. When the job offer came from the University of Southern Florida, he’d jumped at the chance to start over. Be near his family. Forget all other personal relationships for a while.
He’d almost blown his vow when he’d first met Miranda, three years ago, but she hadn’t seemed interested, and by taking up the practice he called random dating, he’d succeeded in keeping their interactions professional. But that wasn’t the case anymore. Not only was he now firmly ensconced in Miranda’s private life—and she in his—he was talking about it to a nosy reporter.
Glancing at the partially closed door of his office, he looked for signs of his teaching assistant, maybe a student who needed to see him before class. Someone to conveniently cut this interview short.
The outer office was empty. In the background, he could hear the whir and sputter of the department copy machine where he’d just banished his grad student to make copies of his next exam. He’d find no reprieve.
He had to answer. Did you want to kiss Dr. Carpenter? And if you did, why didn’t you?
“Those are tough questions,” Noah said.
“Duh. Stop evading. Why didn’t you kiss her?”
He wouldn’t risk a lie. He felt certain he couldn’t pull it off. He forced himself to focus on the night in question, ignoring the unhindered desire Miranda had revealed the very next day. “She didn’t want me to.”
“Did she tell you that?”
“Yes.”
Katie sat up straighter. “That’s ballsy.”
“No, that’s honest. Dr. Carpenter is a woman who says what she means.”
“The old no-means-no thing?”
Noah squirmed. Not only did “no mean no,” but “yes meant yes” in ways he’d never imagined.
“Dr. Carpenter made it very clear to me what her expectations for my behavior were. And she’s the kind of woman whose expectations I want to live up to. Men like a challenge. Women like Dr. Carpenter up the ante.”
Katie smiled in admiration of her role model. “So the playing hard-to-get thing really works?”
“Like a charm.” Though Miranda had undoubtedly put a whole new spin on the age-old female ruse. Sometime last night during his restless battle with sleep, Noah realized that while Miranda had opened a gate to her body Saturday afternoon, the wall around her heart was still utterly formidable. She’d allowed him access only to the part of her she felt certain he wouldn’t hurt.
But she’d made the mistake of whetting his appetite. Her body was a fine, cherished prize, but the contents of her heart, the depths and secrets of her soul, beckoned like the grail to pious knights of old. He just wanted a peek—a glimpse into what made Miranda Miranda. What fired her passions beyond the physical? What stirred her emotions to utter frenzy?
He probably had no business exploring that side of her. He’d put both of them at even greater risk if he didn’t tread lightly. Yet he knew he’d never satisfy his yearning for her on the course he was now taking.
Time to shake things up.
Noah flipped his calendar to the end of the week, formulating a plan as Katie continued her questions.
“So, when do you lose your patience? Give up?”
He flipped open his phone book and jotted down a number. “When I win.”
Katie’s grin widened. “You sound awful confident. What if you don’t win?”
Circling the upcoming weekend with a nearby highlighter marker, he wondered if he had lost his mind. He should stop this madness now, before he did something stupid—like believe he could become more than Miranda Carpenter’s lover.
Yet, if he acted quickly, he might manage to snuff out this attraction before either of them got hurt. Not too quickly, of course. There was something to be said for fantastic foreplay.
“This is entirely off the record,” he clarified to Katie. Time to end the interview and make some travel plans.
Katie clicked her pen and slipped it into the spiral coil on the side of her notebook. “Off the record.”
He leaned forward. “I always win.”
IF MIRANDA DIDN’T know better, she would have sworn she’d been set up. Here she was in the middle of her interview with Katie, and Noah miraculously appears in the doorway, his finger pressed over his lips, begging her to keep his presence secret. So, he wants to eavesdrop, does he? Not without paying a price.
“I’m sorry, Katie, what was your last question?”
Katie flipped back through her notes, completely engrossed in her work. With her back to the door, she’d spread her preprepared questions and tape recorder on the edge of Miranda’s desk. They’d been talking for nearly twenty minutes already, but only now had gotten down to the real meat of the article.
“Dr. Yummy…I mean, Dr. Yeager said in class that he would provide the one thing your students face on every single date—temptation. Do you think he lived up to his promise?”
Miranda glanced over Katie’s head and straight into Noah’s intense gaze. Had Katie not been so engrossed with organizing her thoughts, she couldn’t have missed the palpable tension.
“Depends on how you define temptation.”
That caught Katie’s attention. When she looked up, Miranda broke her stare with Noah and met Katie’s surprised gleam. The subject matter was obviously getting interesting.
“You define it.” Katie laid her pen down, scooted the tape recorder closer to Miranda and leaned on her hand. “Now that you’ve been out with one of the sexiest men on campus, tell me what you think temptation really means.”
Miranda eased her elbows onto the arms of her chair and steepled her fingers in front of her. With an imperceptible glance to ensure that Noah was still watching her, she brushed her index fingers against her lips. If he was going to play voyeur, she would make it worth his while.
“Temptation is finally knowing what you want….” She ran a hand through her hair, hooking the strands behind her ear, exposing her neck. Noah’s gaze darkened. He loved her neck. He hadn’t told her, but she knew nonetheless. “Yet, at the same time, temptation is knowing you can’t have it. Not yet, anyway. Not until circumstances are just right.”
“You and Dr. Yeager are adults,” Katie pointed out. “Why can’t you take what you want and say to hell with the circumstances?”
Miranda grinned. That was a damn good question. If not for Noah’s wise choice to back away, the overpowering lure of lust had nearly led her to subscribe to that exact philosophy, despite that she’d railed against it for a substantial portion of her adult life.
Luckily, a good night’s sleep and Sunday shopping with her sister—complete with the usual rundown of Teri’s latest romantic disaster—reminded Miranda that she’d treaded dangerous waters Saturday afternoon—pun notwithstanding. She’d tempted all right…tempted fate.
Luckily, Noah had resisted. Why he’d resisted, she wasn’t entirely sure, but thankfully, she wasn’t insecure enough to blame any shortcoming on her part. Only a week ago, she thought he didn’t find her attractive. She suspected he’d bought into the popular stereotype that intelligent, focused women—the so-called “good girls,”—eschewed sexual explorations because they weren’t capable of enjoying themselves. Even she had feared that might be true. Now she knew without a doubt that wasn’t the case.
And better still, so did he.
“Ramifications for your actions don’t disappear once you turn twenty-one—or thirty, for that matter. In fact, the older you get, the more dire those ramifications can be.”
“For example?” Katie probed.
“After a while, people become set in their ways. They become accustomed to the patterns in their lives. They get comfortable and…complacent.”
“Young people are more daring and unpredictable?”
“It’s more than that. You’re more daring and unpredictable…and you expect your life and everyone in it to be much the same. When you’re older, things like temptation have a tendency to throw you more for a loop.”
“Did Dr. Yeager throw you for a loop?”
Loop? Miranda was still spinning like a runaway top.
“Why don’t you just write that my date with Dr. Yeager was much more than I expected.”
“Are you going to see him again?”
“I don’t think so.”
“Why not?”
“Yes, Dr. Carpenter, why not?” Noah stepped into the room, his hands shoved into his pockets casually, belying his steely stare.
“The contest required one date,” Miranda explained. “You have your big research project to begin and, frankly, I was under the distinct impression that you weren’t interested.”
Katie nearly knocked her books to the floor. “Where’d you get that idea? I definitely missed something.”
“You didn’t miss anything, Katie,” Noah assured her. “That assumption is completely out of the blue. I never said I didn’t want to see you again. In fact, I came over here this morning to invite you out.”
Miranda’s eyebrows shot up. “Oh, really?”
He slid a sheet of fax paper onto her desk. She uncurled the message and read the text.
“This is a confirmation letter from the Don Faison Spa and Resort,” she announced.
“Yes, it is. I booked us a suite for the weekend.”
Miranda balled up the paper and threw it at him. “Well, unbook it.”
“Why?” both Noah and Katie asked.
Miranda rolled her eyes. That was the second time these two had responded in unison and she wasn’t amused.
“That’s the most presumptuous, arrogant, egotistical invitation I’ve ever received! Don’t you think progressing from one date at a crowded dinner party to a weekend away at a romantic resort—in the same suite, no less—is a big leap?”
“She’s got you there, Dr. Y.,” Katie concurred. “I think maybe dinner and a movie is more in line.”
Noah removed his hands from his pockets and nodded. “Ordinarily, I’d agree with you. But as you two were just discussing, Dr. Carpenter and I aren’t children. We’re both very busy people. How many times do either of us have the luxury of going away for the weekend in the middle of a semester?”
“Busy schedules is no excuse,” Miranda insisted. She resisted the urge to remove her jacket, despite her rising body temperature. A list of protests formed in her mouth, but each sounded hollow and hypocritical next to the fact that they’d practically made love in her backyard the day before yesterday.
She’d said no to his invitation. He’d go away now.
“I know you love the beach,” he continued.
She should have known better.
“No, thank you.”
“Why not? I told you, it’s a suite. You’ll have your own bedroom. Are you saying you won’t be able to control yourself with me so close?”
He leaned over her desk, tempting her with his woodsy scent, challenging her with his insolent grin.
“One of the mistakes young people make is putting themselves into unwise situations.”
“So you are afraid you won’t be able to control yourself.”
“I have complete command of my hormones, Dr. Yeager. That’s not the point. Going away for the weekend with you is not the example I want to set for my students.”
Katie had already started packing up her books.
“I think it’s the perfect example,” Katie mumbled.
“Excuse me?”
Katie clicked off the tape recorder and slipped it into the pocket of her loose-fitting jeans. “Under other circumstances, I’d say you were right. Going away for a weekend with someone is not a wise choice if you intend to stay…virtuous.” She stuffed her notebook into her backpack. Obviously the conversation would now be off the record. “But the whole criticism of you in that first article is that you’ve kept yourself so completely out of the dating game that you don’t really know how to play.”
Slinging the nylon strap of her book bag over her shoulder, she eyed Noah from head to toe, then looked Miranda dead in the eye. “If you can keep your hands off Dr. Yeager after spending a weekend away with him at that ritzy resort, then you’ll have proved yourself.”
Traitor!
Miranda couldn’t believe her ears. Katie was taking Noah’s side? Encouraging this reckless, destined-for-disaster weekend at the bay area’s most exclusive, most romantic beachside resort? Didn’t Katie realize Miranda wouldn’t be able to keep her hands off Dr. Yeager? Miranda knew that the same way she knew she had a class in an hour. The same way she knew that the sun would always rise. It was a fact. Pure and simple. Completely indisputable. Unavoidable.
“I don’t think that’s a good enough reason.”
“Okay.” Noah straightened the fax out on her desk. “Consider this. What if we were two colleagues going to a conference together?”
“They don’t have conferences at the Don Faison,” Miranda quickly argued.
“Yes, they do. You know they do.” He smirked at her, daring her with gleaming turquoise eyes to listen to his argument. “Are you saying that two professional people can’t go to a hotel together, enjoy the amenities and each other’s company without ending up in bed?”
Yes, dammit. That’s exactly what she was saying. When she was one of those professional people and he was the other!
“This isn’t a professional conference,” Miranda pointed out. She was avoiding the real issue and she knew it. “It’s a weekend getaway.”
Noah’s grin practically oozed sly victory. “I thought you might say that. I spoke to the events coordinator for the resort. Seems this time of year, most of their clientele is over the age of sixty. I faxed her a copy of that article you wrote…the one Amelia Henson found so impressive. She was wondering if you might not agree to give a short talk. Oh, and she saw you on the news Saturday. Seems you’re turning into quite the celebrity. She promised to invite that reporter, Yancy Graham, to the talk, as well.”
He was clever. Very clever. Miranda loved the beach. She adored the Don Faison and she’d never turned down an opportunity for community service in her entire life.
And more and more, she’d been contemplating the real possibility of the radio show. While she’d never thought herself the publicity-seeking type, such a forum could allow her more access to the audience she wanted to reach. Most sex shows focused solely on feelings and emotions. And while she wouldn’t ignore that area in the least, her unique perspectives on physiology might actually make a difference to people.
She sighed. His offer was remarkably enticing. And somehow, he even had Katie on his side.
She couldn’t win. Unless…
“All right. I’d be delighted to be your guest, Dr. Yeager. But you’ll arrange separate rooms, thank you. And Katie, since I’ve already fulfilled the contest requirements, I hope this…invitation will remain confidential?”
Katie smiled triumphantly and shrugged. “Do you see my notebook? The recorder is off, too, by the way. I do want a play-by-play when you get back—just between us girls.” With a wink at her, and then, suspiciously, one at Noah, Katie disappeared out of the office.
“What did you do to her?” Miranda asked, incredulous.
Noah crossed his arms and leaned on Miranda’s desk, watching Katie’s retreat in stunned silence.
“She hated you a week ago,” she said.
“Yes, she did.”
“Now she’s practically your partner in crime. Maybe I really am in over my head. Think you could give me a sample of that charm I could analyze? If I could bottle it, I could make a mint.”
Noah’s eyes drooped sleepily, as if he’d just woken up from a wild night of lovemaking. Or was just about to begin one.
“You’ll get a healthy dose of me this weekend, that I can promise.”