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He turned just in time to snatch the basketball out of the air, spin and sink it into a basket above his head. Nothing but net.
Three male voices groaned loudly. Two others cheered. Mike’s three-on-three teammates slapped him on the back and offered upraised hands for high fives.
“And that would be…game!” Bob Sharp performed an embarrassingly dorky dance of victory, his near-shoulder-length red hair flying around his square-jawed face.
“Dude.” Mike rolled his eyes. “Chill.”
“Seriously.” Black-haired, green-eyed Brandon Williams, the third member of the winning team, tossed a sweaty towel at Bob. “You’re making us look bad.”
Still joking around with his teammates and opponents—also all friends—Mike moved to a bench at one side of the park basketball court and rooted in his gym bag for his watch. He groaned when he found it. He had lost track of time during the game and now he had ten minutes to shower, change, grab his books and make it to Catherine Travis’s apartment by three o’clock.
He was going to be late.
“Hey, Mike. Wanna go have a beer and watch a game or two?”
“Can’t,” he replied to Bob’s suggestion. “Gotta study.”
Typically, Bob brushed off the excuse. “C’mon, man, you can study later. It’s not like you’ll be grounded if you don’t get an A.”
He laughed heartily at his own joke. Bob still couldn’t understand why Mike had decided to go back to school almost ten years after dropping out of his first attempt at higher education. Bob was perfectly happy driving a delivery truck and stocking snack machines in local businesses, spending his leisure hours hanging with friends and chasing women.
Until a few months ago, Mike had been pretty much content with that lifestyle himself. Now that he had decided he wanted more, some of his friends seemed determined to try to talk him out of it.
“C’mon, Mike, have a beer with us,” Brandon seconded. “It’s too nice a day to study.”
“Sorry, guys. Can’t. I’m supposed to meet someone at three for a study session, and I’m already running late.”
“Oh, ho.” Bob gave a sudden, knowing grin. “That explains your hurry to hit the books. So who is she?”
“Just someone who offered to help me get ready for a test Monday. And I’ve really got to go, guys. See you later, okay?”
“You’re holding out on us, Clancy,” Bob called after him. “We want to meet this chick.”
As he jumped into his pickup and threw it into gear, Mike wondered how Dr. Travis would feel about having herself referred to as a “chick.” He wouldn’t think she’d care for it much.
Dr. Travis. It felt sort of odd to refer to her that way. Made her sound like one of his stuffy professors, rather than the attractive young woman she was.
Glancing at the dashboard clock, he saw that it was almost straight-up three o’clock. He was definitely going to be late.
He had been criticized quite often for his rather fluid concept of time. His friends had pretty much gotten used to never knowing when to expect him. He hoped Dr. Travis wasn’t one of those clock-watching types who got upset about that sort of thing.
But when she opened her door for him at twenty minutes after three, she didn’t look at all annoyed. In fact, strangely enough, she seemed almost apologetic.
“It occurred to me a few minutes ago that I never gave you my phone number,” she said, motioning him inside. “There was no way for you to let me know you’d been held up. I hope you didn’t have to rush too hard to get here because of my oversight.”
She really was blaming herself because he was late. Interesting. “It’s my fault for letting time get away from me,” he assured her. “I hope it didn’t cause you any inconvenience.”
“No. I don’t have any other plans for the afternoon.” She motioned toward her small, rectangular dining table. “I thought we could spread your books and notes on the table. Can I get you a glass of fresh lemonade before we get started?”
“That sounds great, Dr. Travis. If it’s no trouble.”
She smiled and shook her head. “I’d like a glass, myself. And please call me Catherine.”
He watched surreptitiously as she moved into the kitchen. Wearing an olive-green camp shirt open over a khaki-colored pullover and khaki slacks, she looked even younger than she had the last time he’d seen her. He still couldn’t really guess her age, though he would bet she wasn’t more than a couple of years on either side of thirty. Very close to his own age.
She must have earned her doctorate at a young age. One of those brainy, ambitious, superfocused types, apparently. But not an intellectual snob. She wasn’t giving off any vibes that suggested she considered herself superior to a twenty-eight-year-old maintenance man with only a few hours of college credit behind him.
Remembering a recent, painful encounter with a woman who had made no secret of her disdain for his current status, he winced.
Something touched his leg. He glanced down just as Catherine’s cat meowed a greeting. “Well, hello, Norman. I wondered where you were hiding.”
Returning to the table with two glasses of lemonade and a plate of brownies, Catherine slid into the chair beside him. “He’s been asleep on my bed. He has to have at least ten naps a day or he gets cranky.”
Chuckling, Mike scratched Norman’s ears, eliciting a loud purr of approval. He stopped scratching to reach for his lemonade. “This looks great. Homemade brownies?”
Catherine shrugged. “Just the box-mix kind. I was having a snack attack earlier.”
Judging by her slender frame, she didn’t give in to “snack attacks” that often. But since he didn’t feel quite right about checking out her figure when she was offering to help him study, he pulled his gaze away from her and snagged a brownie from the platter.
Catherine motioned toward the textbook and notebook he had tossed on the table. “You said you’re studying for a test on glycolysis?”
He nodded and turned his thoughts to business. “Yeah. I brought my study sheets and the practice test the professor gave us. I tried to take the practice test yesterday, but I didn’t get very far with it.”
“Let me look at the test and your notes and I’ll see if I can help you understand it better.” She gave a self-deprecating little smile that almost took him back to noticing-how-attractive-she-was territory. “Of course, it’s been a few years since I’ve been tested on this stuff, so I might have to refresh myself a bit.”
Norman leaped onto Mike’s knees and head-butted his chin. Mike patted him absently.
“Just set him down if he’s bugging you,” Catherine advised. “He takes a hint fairly well—for a short time, anyway.”
“He’s fine.” Mike opened his notebook. “Here’s the sample test….”
“Okay, see if you can answer this one.” Catherine said almost an hour later. “Regulation of glycolysis takes place by the a, allosteric inhibition of phosphofructokinase by excess ATP, or b, conversion of dihydroxyacetone phosphate to glyceraldehyde phosphate?”
Mike blinked a couple of times, then frowned in concentration. “That would be…the first one, I think. A.”
She smiled at him. “Yes. You’re right.”
He made a production of wiping his brow, his self-satisfied smile so endearing that she had to swallow before asking the next question. “Complete this sentence. When yeast cells metabolize glucose anaerobically, the end product is—?”
“Pyruvic acid.” He must have seen from her expression that he’d given the wrong answer. He corrected it immediately. “Ethyl alcohol.”
She smiled again. “Correct. You’re doing very well, Mike. You should have no problem passing this test. Would you like to practice the essay questions? I can busy myself with something else while you work on them and then give my opinion of your answers when you’ve finished. Of course, you know that essay questions are often graded subjectively, so your professor might judge your responses differently than I would.”
“Hey, I’d really appreciate that, if you’ve got the time. The essay questions really worry me. It’s been almost ten years since I’ve had to write essays, and to be honest, I wasn’t very good at it back then.”
“No problem. I have a couple of journal articles I need to read. I can do that while you write. I’ll let you know when your allotted time is up.”
He nodded and drained the last of his second glass of lemonade, then bent industriously over his notebook.
Catherine studied him for a moment, then stood and moved to the sofa. She picked up one of the journals sitting on the coffee table. Norman padded across the floor to jump into her lap, kneading her thigh while she turned to the article she had marked earlier.
Rubbing the spot between his shoulder blades that always made him arch in bliss, she tried to keep her eyes on the page. It wasn’t easy. Mike just looked so darned good sitting at her table, his blond-streaked hair all tousled, a frown of concentration on his pretty face. She sighed.
He glanced around. “Everything okay?”
“Fine,” she assured him a bit too heartily. “Norman’s just being a little too enthusiastic with the claws.”
He smiled, then looked back down at his notebook. She turned her own attention firmly to the page in front of her.
She knew she would never be able to concentrate on the complex article with Mike sitting so close by, so she entertained herself by imagining how her cousin Lori, the biggest flirt she knew, would behave with a handsome man in her apartment. Lori would certainly not be sitting on the far side of the room pretending to read a scientific journal, that was for certain!
Because she didn’t know how to be any other way, Catherine was completely honest with her appraisal of Mike’s essay answers. She figured she would be wasting both their time if she didn’t make a genuine effort to help him. She tempered her criticism with praise for the things he had done well, but she made no effort to pander to his ego when she pointed out the areas that would very likely lose him points with his professor.
“This is worded too vaguely,” she said, underlining one weak paragraph. “And here you’ve gotten off topic, which would get points marked off by most professors, since they don’t like wasting grading time. And this statement is simply incorrect. In eukaryotes, the enzymes involved in the Krebs cycle and electron transport are located in the mitochondria, not the cell membranes as you’ve written here. This is a very basic biology class, but that’s something you should be expected to know already.”
Mike winced. Something about his expression made her suspect that he wasn’t accustomed to being corrected so bluntly, and she wondered for a moment if she should have made an effort to be more tactful. But then she reminded herself that he surely wanted her to be honest, or he wouldn’t have wasted a beautiful Saturday afternoon studying in her apartment. He certainly hadn’t come just to spend time with her and Norman.
“Thanks,” he said without much enthusiasm. “I’ll work on those things.”
“I’m sure you’ll do very well on the test,” she said, in case he was becoming discouraged.
“I hope you’re right. It’s been harder going back to school than I expected,” he admitted. “To be honest, I flunked out the first time I tried college almost ten years ago, but I told myself it was because I partied too much and studied too little while I was there. I thought maybe if I actually put a little effort into it this time, I’d be more successful with it.”
“I’m sure you will. It must be difficult learning how to study again after such a long absence.”
“Again?” he repeated with a short laugh. “I never learned how to study. Didn’t have to in school. My mother and sisters gave me so much ‘help’ with my homework that I managed to graduate with a minimally adequate grade point average. I got a baseball scholarship to college, but I lost that when the grades fell. It wasn’t as if I was ever going to make it to the pros, anyway. I was a decent player, but not exactly star quality.”
Catherine wasn’t sure what to say in response to his candidness. “What made you decide to go back now?” she asked, then wondered if that had been too personal a question.
His shrug was more sheepish than offended. “I attended my ten-year high school reunion this summer,” he muttered, as if that were explanation enough.
Apparently he had compared himself to some of his classmates and hadn’t been pleased with what he had seen. She gave him a wry smile. “Perhaps you should have done what I did. I skipped my ten-year reunion altogether.”
“Oh? When was that?” he asked with a casualness that was probably intended to disguise the fact that he was basically asking her age.
“Two years ago. I just turned thirty last Saturday.”
“Then I’ll wish you a belated happy birthday.”
“Thank you.”
He leaned back in his chair, slinging one arm over the back. “So why didn’t you go to your reunion? I would think you’d be proud to let everyone know you’d turned out so well.”
Uncomfortable with the new direction the conversation had taken, and suspecting Mike had deliberately directed it away from himself, she shrugged a little before saying, “I don’t have that many fond memories of high school. I wasn’t eager to relive my time there.”
She suppressed a wince as she finished speaking. Had she sounded bitter? No one enjoyed spending time with a complainer. “I’m sure I would have had a good time if I’d gone,” she amended quickly, “but I was at a science convention in London that weekend, anyway.”
“Yeah, well, I thought I’d have a great time at my reunion,” Mike murmured, looking down at the pencil he was twisting slowly in his left hand. “I mean, I had a fantastic time in high school. Played sports, had a lot of friends. Parties every weekend, hanging out by the lake all summer.”
She could almost picture the boy he had been. The jock. One of the popular crowd. Strutting through the halls of his high school with the kind of confidence that most adolescents could only watch and secretly envy. She didn’t want to believe that he had been one of the cruel kids. The ones who mocked and belittled anyone who didn’t fit into their narrow definition of what was acceptable. What was cool.
No, Mike had probably been carelessly nice to everyone. Perhaps a bit oblivious to the ones on the outskirts of the in-crowd. He wouldn’t have been the type to be deliberately cruel to them; he simply hadn’t noticed them very often, she thought with a sigh.
“Catherine?”
“Oh, sorry,” she said, realizing she’d been quiet for too long. “Flashback to my own school years, I guess. So, your reunion wasn’t as much fun as you expected?”
He shrugged. “Not quite. Most of my classmates have moved on, left those years behind. The ones who haven’t—who sat around all day drinking and replaying old memories and talking about how high school was the high point of their lives—well, they just seemed sort of pathetic, you know?”
He must have experienced quite an epiphany at that reunion. She was a little surprised that he was being so frank about it now, to her, a virtual stranger.
Perhaps he had also revealed more than he had intended. With a quick, rather irritated shake of his head, he began to gather his books and papers. “So you think I’ll ace this test now, huh?”
“I’m not sure you’ll ace it, exactly, but I’m sure you’ll do very—oh. You were teasing.” And she had responded with a careful earnestness that he must have found equally naive and clueless. She had been accused on more than one occasion of being a bit challenged when it came to a sense of humor.
To give him credit, there was no mockery in his smile. “Yeah, I was teasing. Trust me, I’d be happy with a C.”
“It wouldn’t hurt to try to ace it,” she responded, thinking he was selling himself too short. “I’ve always been told that confidence is the greatest part of success.”
Tucking his books beneath one arm, he smiled. “There are plenty of people who would tell you that I’ve never lacked for confidence.”
Somehow she suspected that no matter how many people agreed with him on that point, it wasn’t exactly true—not when it came to certain aspects of his life. But she would bet he was quite adept at camouflaging any insecurities he might have.
It was odd to think of a man like this suffering self-doubts. And rather ironic that their doubts were in such dramatically opposite areas. 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
