MIRANDA APPROACHED the podium with a wry smile, a quick wave and a downright adorable blush. The audience at the kick-off rally increased the volume of their applause while she adjusted the height of the microphone with one hand and held tight to her plaque with the other. Noah tucked himself between two huge promotional banners—one for a campus ministry group and one for a popular brand of birth control pill—and watched the woman he loved accept her award as the Most Virtuous Woman on Campus.
He couldn’t resist the swell of pride that surged through him—not because he had anything whatsoever to do with her win. If not for him and his “temptation,” the award would probably hold a simpler meaning for her, though he willingly admitted that their lovemaking the weekend before hadn’t lessened his respect for her one bit. In fact, his estimation of her virtue had increased considerably. She deserved more than a cheap wooden plaque for holding to her standards, especially around the likes of him.
Miranda believed in honesty. No games. No surprises except those most sensual. She told him she could have a brief affair and walk away. She promised that any heartbreak she experienced would only make her stronger. And it had—as well as more beautiful and infinitely more desirable, if that was possible. He’d watched her from a distance all week long, counseling her students, teaching her classes, even joking with her colleagues more readily than he’d ever seen before.
Every so often, he’d caught a glimpse of the sadness Katie’d oh-so-gently brought to his attention. From his office window, he’d watched her dash off to her car without an umbrella during an afternoon rainstorm, pausing next to his car just an instant before finding refuge in hers. But after the briefest flash of regret on her face, a sweet reminiscent smile had curved her incredibly kissable lips.
She was amazing.
“Thank you, thank you.” Her voice boomed from the row of boxy black speakers in front of the stage. “I most humbly accept this award from the Campus Institute for Safe Sex, not because I think I necessarily deserve it, but because I truly believe in this cause.”
The crowd quieted. While Miranda spoke, about half of the four hundred or so audience members continued to mill about, accepting literature and samples of everything from breath mints to music-store coupons, while the rest listened with rapt attention to Miranda’s mellifluous yet forthright voice.
“The most important thing I learned from this contest—and yes, even people with Ph.D.’s often have a lot to learn—is that virtue is a misunderstood term. As Katie Brown so skillfully pointed out in her article, as we grow and experience life in ways that are sometimes sweet and sometimes painful, we can’t help but define and redefine its meaning. But virtue is a word that can’t stray too far from being part of our personal moral code—and I should mention here that if you don’t have a personal code, you should. Decisions become infinitely simpler—though no less heartbreaking—when you set high standards for your heart.”
Her words were crisp and businesslike, and yet Noah couldn’t help but believe she spoke just to him. She scanned the crowd casually, comfortably, like the seasoned speaker she was, and yet, he recognized a slant to her smile that seemed private. Intimate.
He took a few steps forward.
“I’m a scientist, not a philosopher,” she continued, obviously not seeing him, “so please don’t expect me to wax too poetic, but I do have a few words to say about what I’ve learned about myself over the past two weeks since my nomination. I’ll keep it short. I don’t intend to bore you with the details—”
The crowd voiced their disappointment with a collective “aww,” followed by a string of boos and hisses that made Miranda laugh.
“—but there are a few important discoveries I think are worth sharing. First, I learned virtue is best found in someone who has a clear picture of what they want out of life, though the picture will change, trust me. Second, when we get right down to the most basic definition of virtue, the archaic meaning is actually gender-specific. Big shocker.”
Another laugh from the crowd. Noah couldn’t manage even half a smile.
“For women, virtue meant purity. I’m not knocking that one, but in the spirit of honesty and reality and the sexual revolution, let me say that a woman is purest when she’s deeply in love and loved in return by a man unafraid to show her the depths of his soul.”
Noah stopped dead center in the crowd when Miranda finally found him. Her breath caught. Her eyes widened. Her mouth curved into that familiar bittersweet smile she wore whenever she looked at him.
The pause was personal, focused. The students immediately around him knew to turn in his direction, giving him the opportunity he’d sought all night—perhaps, all his life.
“What about men?” he shouted. “I don’t think I’m quite clear on the meaning of virtue for my sex.”
“Interrupting again, Dr. Yeager?” Miranda asked, her grin tentative but genuine.
“It works for me.”
It works for us.
“Well, in men, virtue means courage.”
He shouldered through the crowd as she spoke, never once letting his gaze stray from the direct line he had to her as he neared the stage. She hesitated briefly, then glanced at her notes once before folding them over on the podium.
“Courage to be honest. Courage to be discreet. Courage to be loyal and willing to risk heartbreak and disappointment and even humility to maybe, just maybe, find someone to share his life with.”
He took the steps two at a time, shaking the temporary stage with his weight. He stopped nearly a foot away from her, afraid to get too close. He had the strong compulsion to wrap her in his arms and kiss her long and hard—until she knew without a doubt that he’d found his courage. In her.
Luckily, the president of the campus group stepped forward and started the applause.
Miranda waved one last time, shook hands with the C.I.S.S. president and then accepted Noah’s escort down the steps. Before he had a chance to pull her to a private spot, Teri, Katie and a young man who looked a lot like Liam O’Connell, but wasn’t, surrounded them.
Miranda pasted on a cordial grin and retreated into that cool, you’ll-never-know-what-I’m-really-thinking facade that had waylaid him for so long. Luckily, he now knew better than to buy her nonchalance. Miranda loved him. She’d said so on the beach. She’d intimated her emotions in her very public speech.
Now it was his turn.
The words caught in his throat.
“Noah!” Teri punched him in the arm with all the childlike familiarity of a little sister. He looked at her with surprise. Usually, she was clutching and purring and flirting. “How courageous of you to even come tonight, much less interrupt.”
“I wouldn’t have missed it.” He gave Teri a quick glance, then sought out Miranda’s liquid lavender gaze. “Your speech was…enlightening, Miranda.”
She glanced down briefly before meeting his stare straight on. “I didn’t say anything you don’t already know.”
“But a lot I haven’t been willing to admit.”
Katie grabbed her young man by the elbow. “Okay, personal moment. I want to check out the…” She searched the booths and banners for something of interest, her eyes suddenly brightening. “There! A chance to win a romantic evening at a tractor pull. Come on, Sean. Bye, Ms. Carpenter. Dr. C.” Her smile turned stony and insistent when she looked at him. “Dr. Yeager.”
If ever an expression said don’t blow it, it was that one.
“Wait,” Teri said. “I’ll go with you. A tractor pull could be fun. Do they have big brawny men that pull these tractors?”
Their voices faded into the crowd. The bodies milling about melded into a colorful blur along Noah’s peripheral vision. He could see only Miranda. She crossed her arms over her chest, enhancing the sweet swell of cleavage her silk tank top afforded. With slim pleated slacks and matching pumps, she wore the palest shade of apricot from her sleeveless blouse to shoes. Her loose blond tresses caressed the curves of her bare shoulders and a chunky gold choker drew his attention to her neck, making his own throat tighten with undeniable desire. She looked professional on the surface, but inherently vulnerable underneath.
She looked exactly how he felt. The parallel threw him off guard.
“Who’s that with Katie?” he asked, needing a moment to reform his thoughts.
“Sean O’Connell, Liam’s brother. He’s a senior creative writing major. Seems Liam decided to play matchmaker to convince Katie that all men aren’t dumb.”
Noah dug his hands into the pockets of his olive khakis. He really did need to buy an iron. “Judging by my behavior over the past week, I’m not sure that’s true.”
Miranda murmured her agreement. “I was sort of beginning to wonder myself.”
She wove through the crowd, stopping once to make sure Noah followed but glad for the noise and bustle that seemed to offset the quaking throughout her body. With all her heart, she’d hoped he’d come tonight—she’d crafted her speech specifically for him. Yet at the same time, she wished she’d never see him again. Not if it meant not touching him, not kissing him or sharing her most secret thoughts. Desires. Fantasies.
She accepted a free soda from a beer distributor representative, then grabbed one for Noah as well. The carbonated drink brimmed with shaved ice, cooling her throat, but not her belly.
God, she loved him.
“Quite a turnout, huh?” Surrounded by students, Miranda could do little more than make small talk, as hollow as each word sounded. “There’s a band scheduled to go on in an hour if you want to stick around and listen.”
“I don’t want to listen to any band.” He grabbed her by the waist and pulled her forward, spilling some of her soda onto her wrist. Taking the cup, he handed it to the nearest hapless passerby, encircled her wrist with his steely grip and took a lick off her shimmering, sticky skin.
“Noah.” Her protest came out only as a whisper. The raspy sound should have died beneath the raucous noise around them, but his eyes darkened as if she’d called out his name in urging rather than in objection. “Everyone will see,” she explained.
“Everyone will see what? They’ll see what I should have seen a long time ago. I love you, Miranda.”
He kissed her wrist, sensually curving his lips to lap up the spilled soda all along the soft skin. He never broke eye contact and Miranda held her breath, willing herself to show no reaction, no response to the confession of his feelings—feelings she’d learned of that night on the beach.
That he loved her wasn’t the point. And it wasn’t enough.
“I know you love me, Noah. I’m glad you can say it. But it really doesn’t change anything, does it?”
Though it broke her heart a second time to do it, she broke his hold and backed away. She was so wrong, so cocky to think she could have a brief fling with Noah, fall in love and then leave. Heartbreak did not make her stronger! She felt certain that if someone bumped into her while she wove her way through the crowd, she’d fall over, get trampled and be happy for it.
A thick wall of students leaping for free T-shirts stopped her escape, allowing Noah the chance to catch up to her. He didn’t just grab her hand this time, he wrapped his arm around her middle and nearly carried her away. When he found a secluded spot behind a moving van, he set her down and kissed her, his mouth completely over hers, his arms securely ensnaring her, his body supporting her weight with its full length.
“Don’t walk away from me,” he begged, his breath stroking her lips, as his kiss had, “ever again. I love you. And not just for today, or next year. I can love you forever. I know that.”
Despite the swelling in her heart, despite the tears burning the back of her throat, Miranda was too much a creature of logic to let his declaration go without question. “Why? All these years, you’ve believed you simply didn’t have the capacity to love anyone for the long run. Why am I different?”
She slid her palms over his cheeks, then twined her fingers into his hair. She searched his eyes for an answer, trying not to be soothed into false hopes by the fluid desire that turned his irises to that irresistible shade of midnight blue.
His smile bordered on indulgent, as if the answer was so simple, they were both idiots for not discovering the secret sooner.
“You’re different because you know me. You saw right through all the walls I built up. And those were thick walls, sweetheart, because I couldn’t even see through them myself until the reality of losing you forced me to knock them down. You fell in love with me, despite the fact that I was—”
He bent his head and winced, then took a deep breath and tried to begin again. She placed the most chaste of kisses on the rugged line of his jaw and soothed the strain from his temples.
“Since you walked away from me at the beach, physician, heal thyself kept playing in my mind. I decided a long time ago that I couldn’t love anyone, when the fact was, I kept trying to love the wrong women—women who didn’t know me any more than I knew them. Not really.”
He slid his hands up her back and diminished the hairbreadth of space between them. “But, Miranda, I feel like your soul is so much a part of mine, every new discovery is like a revelation of myself. This connection we have…overwhelmed me, scared the hell out of me.” His chuckle sparked a matching reaction in her. They filled the silence with quick laughter, then Miranda watched his face lose all its mirth.
“You spoke about courage and virtue tonight. You were talking right to me, weren’t you?”
“I was talking to both of us.”
“But only one of us had to come to our senses. Me. Believe me, Miranda, I have. I love you.”
He dropped to his knee so fast, Miranda jumped back in surprise. He grabbed both her hands, kissed them—knuckles first, then palms—and gazed up with complete and euphoric surrender.
“Marry me. Be my wife until the day I die.”
Miranda swallowed, sure her tongue was too thick to form a word, but she managed to nod. In the morning, she was sure the reality of this would assault her, the magnitude of her agreement would set her heart reeling, but for the moment she wanted nothing but to collapse in his arms.
“Is that a yes?”
She took in another great mouthful of air and pressed her hand, still entwined with his, against her rib cage, as if to force the word out. Not because she didn’t want to say it, but because she couldn’t believe she was given the chance.
“Yes, Noah. Yes.”
Half expecting him to leap up and twirl her around, Miranda watched with wild fascination as his eyelids grew heavy and hooded while he kissed her hands once more. When his mouth began a trail up past her wrists and toward the ultrasensitive crook of her elbows, she glanced around her and pulled back.
“Noah!”
“I’m going to make love to you, Dr./Mrs. Yeager-to-be.”
“Not right here,” she insisted. “It wasn’t easy earning that award. I’d like to keep it for more than ten minutes.”
“Why? Aren’t you done being a ‘good girl’? I’m quite certain anyone who would marry me doesn’t fit the profile.”
Miranda grinned and slipped her hands beneath his forearms, urging him to stand up before someone caught them behind the parked truck.
“I’m not a girl anymore, Noah. Haven’t been for a while.” Slipping her hands around his waist and then sliding them down his taut buttocks, she pressed him close, groaning with pleasure at the feel of his hardening erection against her belly.
“You’re not so good, either.” His hands roamed her body from shoulder to thighs, warming the entire length of her arms, the sensitive sides of her breasts and igniting a thirst she knew only he could quench.
“Oh, yeah? Wanna bet?”
Hooking her hands in his, she stepped backward, drawing him away from the gathering in the center of campus. They were going to make love—that was certain. But Miranda had no intention of doing so anywhere near this crowd.
“Where are you taking me?”
She wiggled her eyebrows, then winked, invigorated by a quickening thrill. She nearly broke into a run, her high heels digging into the soft grassy dirt between the sidewalks. She knew a shortcut.
“Miranda?”
With barely a tug, he yanked her back into his arms and she allowed him to kiss her—briefly. She pulled away, determined to keep this liaison a secret between them, at least for one more night.
He searched her eyes for her intentions, but she only laughed and urged him to follow her by hooking her fingers into his beltless loops and stepping carefully backward.
“Where are we going?”
“Everyone on campus seems to be at the rally, don’t you think?”
Noah glanced over his shoulder. The band, a popular regional group treated to lots of airplay, had just started tuning up. The crowd swelled to easily over five hundred. The campus buildings, spread out over the fifty or so acres that made up the university property, seemed completely devoid of activity.
“Looks that way.”
Her lavender eyes lit like amethysts, fired by unadulterated desire. “I doubt anyone would be studying or doing research with all this fun going on…”
Noah needed less than a split second to decipher her suggestion…and no more than five minutes to carry her through the lobby of the library and straight up the staircase to paradise.