License to Love (2 page)

She jerked her arm free. “Just tell yourself that you aren’t responsible. Tell yourself that I’m easy; there could be any number of men who might be the father; you’re an innocent man who’s been wrongly accused.”

“Shut up!”

His vehemence surprised them both. A tense silence filled the room. Going ballistic would only exacerbate matters, Steve admonished himself. The secret to skillful negotiating was to keep cool, stay calm. He cleared his throat. He even managed a small smile, though it was far removed from the high-voltage grins he usually flashed. “Nothing is ever accomplished in the heat of anger,” he said in measured, conciliatory tones. “Let’s sit down and we’ll discuss—”

“That’s more like the Steve Saraceni I know,” Michelle cut in caustically. “Right down to the trust-me-I’m-on-your-side smile.”

His smile faded abruptly. “That’s not fair, Michelle. I’m trying to...”

“... Do damage control while you assess your options?” “... Keep steady and think clearly,” Steve corrected with a frown of disapproval.

“Am I supposed to congratulate you on your efforts? I probably am. You’re used to congratulations, you’ite used to doing what you want and getting what you want. You’re not only used to it, you expect it!”

Her voice had risen and she was on the verge of tears. Once again, a wave of panic assailed him. The prospect of a hysterical pregnant woman was as unnerving as a sick one. “Michelle, I’m doing my best to—”

“Yes, you always do your best. You’re infallible, a winner.”

A fulsome compliment he had heard before, but she’d turned it around and made him sound odious. Steve scowled. “Michelle, I’m a patient man but you aren’t making this easy for either of us.”

No, she wasn’t, Michelle silently agreed. She didn’t know why. After all, he hadn’t done any of the things she had envisioned in her worst-case-scenario nightmares. He hadn’t denied paternity, he hadn’t announced that it was her problem, not his. He hadn’t thrown her out of the office, threatening her reputation and her livelihood.

He hadn’t taken her in his arms and told her he loved her, either. He hadn’t kissed her, whispering that he’d been in agony since their breakup, that he’d been dreaming of a reconciliation and her appearance in his office was an answer to his prayers. He hadn’t said he was thrilled that the woman he loved was carrying his child and from now on they were all going to live happily together.

What a fool she was! Unwelcome tears filled Michelle’s eyes. Twenty-five years old, unmarried and pregnant by a man who didn’t love her, a man who enthusiastically extolled the pleasures of bachelorhood and made no secret of his intention to remain single.

And if she didn’t get away from him quickly, she was going to be crying—like a baby. She flinched at the imagery.

“I apologize for failing to appreciate your efforts to be patient and keep steady and think clearly,” Michelle said, striving to hide her teary weakness behind a show of bravado. “How rude of me to be ungrateful when you’ve been such a champ. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I have a one o’clock meeting with Senator Dineen. I’m sure you must have a meeting yourself.”

She promptly rushed from the office.

Her abrupt departure caught Steve off guard. She was out of the suite of offices and striding down the corridor before he caught up with her. He followed her to the elevator, amidst the busy flow of lunch-hour traffic.

Michelle pressed the call button, then impatiently pressed it again.

“All right, go to your meeting,” Steve said, keeping his voice low and out of earshot of the four others who’d joined them at the elevator. “We’ll talk later. I’ll come over tonight and—”

“Save yourself the trip,” she whispered. “I won’t be home.”

The elevator arrived and its passengers filed out. “Where will you be?” Steve demanded. Impulsively he caught her wrist and tugged her toward him.

Michelle tugged back. Though he kept hold of her, her outstretched arm kept a distance between them. “I’m going to my stepsister’s for the Fourth of July weekend, not that it’s any concern of yours.”

He ignored the gibe. “But it’s only Wednesday. Why are you leaving tonight? Are you taking tomorrow off? Which sister are you visiting?”

“You sound like a prosecutor grilling a witness on the stand. A definite departure from your usual smooth way of weasling information.” Michelle glanced pointedly at his hand on her wrist. The elevator was beginning to load. She took a step toward it.

His fingers tightened, halting her. Reflexively her eyes flew to his face. A mistake on her part, Michelle conceded as his gaze met and held hers. His velvety dark brown eyes were compelling and intense. Those soul-piercing stares of his had always had a mesmerizing effect on her. He had such power over her, Michelle acknowledged miserably. The fact that she had freely given him that power was little consolation.

“Let me go, Steve,” she said breathlessly. “We—we’ll talk later.”

“Tonight.” It was a statement, not a request.

Michelle glanced at the passengers in the elevator who were beginning to stare at her. They looked impatient, ready to leave her behind if she didn’t board.

“All right. Tonight,” she agreed quickly.

‘We’ll have dinner. I’ll be over shortly before six.” He released her wrist.

Michelle rushed into the elevator, the doors snapped shut, and the car descended.

Steve was at the door of her apartment at approximately 5:43 p.m. In one hand he clutched a bouquet of carnations, daisies and ferns, which he had purchased from a street vendor. Was it appropriate to bring flowers to the woman who claimed to be carrying his child? He usually had an instinctive feel about how to proceed in any given situation, but the etiquette for this one totally eluded him.

He was very aware of his pounding heart and churning stomach, physical symptoms of anxiety that he found extremely unpleasant. He wasn’t used to them; he’d never been the nervous type. Not even as an adolescent had he experienced the palm-sweating, throat-clogging anxiety of his peers.

But he was suffering it now, with a vengeance.

He knocked at the door. There was no response. He knocked again and then pressed the buzzer. Still no sounds from within. Steve glanced at his Rolex watch, one of his most treasured possessions, a status symbol that thrilled him every time he looked at it. He’d told Michelle shortly before six. Perhaps she hadn’t returned from her office yet. She certainly wouldn’t expect
him
to be early.

Eventually he tired of waiting at her door and returned to his car, a sleek black Jaguar, another treasured possession, another status symbol that thrilled him every time he drove it. He’d illegally parked it directly in front of the building and he sat behind the wheel, watching and waiting for Michelle to arrive.

She didn’t. At six-thirty, he marched back up to her apartment and pounded on the door. Nothing. Frustrated, muttering a curse, he leaned on the buzzer. It sounded, nonstop. He pounded on the door with his other hand. He knew he was making a terrible racket and didn’t care. He willed the door to open.

It didn’t, but the door across the hall did, and a middle-aged woman appeared, looking annoyed. “There’s nobody home there,” the woman said. “She’s, gone for the long holiday weekend.”

“Gone?” Steve was flabbergasted. “But we were supposed to have dinner!”

The woman shrugged. “Looks like you’ve been stood up.” The door closed.

Stood up!
Steve was staggered. It was unthinkable, an alien concept. Michelle had stood him up.

He was still in shock as he drove himself and his cousin Saran back to the Saraceni family home in the small working-class town of Merlton, New Jersey, for his parents’ annual Fourth of July barbecue.

It was an event he would’ve preferred to skip, particularly now, but he had learned over the years that it was easier if he was present at family holiday affairs. His absence guaranteed worried and/or scolding phone calls from each and every family member, not to mention the possibility of any one of them turning up on his doorstep “just to make sure he was all right.”

But it was not his loving family—whose possessive devotion he viewed as suffocating and smothering—that dominated his thoughts on that dismal drive to New Jersey. Images of Michelle kept tumbling through his mind, kaleidoscope fashion: Michelle loving him, and now, hating him.

He thought back to the first time he had seen her, six months ago. He’d met her shortly afterward. How had it come to this? Steve wondered bleakly—

In the suburban Washington, D.C. home of her stepsister Courtney Tremaine, Michelle was equally preoccupied with memories of Steve. While she went through the motions of talking and laughing with Courtney and her husband Connor, of oohing and ahhing over the cuteness of their three-month-old adopted daughter Sarah, her mind replayed every scene with Steve from the moment they’d met until their most recent encounter—that tense, unhappy confrontation in his office. Her heart was truly broken. She should have known it would come to this...

One

January, six months earlier

“A chain letter!” Michelle scowled at the letter she’d just opened, then crumpled it up and tossed it into the trashcan alongside her desk.

“You’re not going to, uh, pass it along to anybody?” asked Brendan O’Neal. He was a part-time law student who worked as an intern in Senator Dineen’s office and was unofficially Michelle’s assistant.

“I wouldn’t waste the time. I wouldn’t foist one of those idiotic letters on anybody.” She grinned. “Not even on Joe McClusky and his staff.”

Senator Joe McClusky was one of Senator Ed Dineen’s arch rivals in the Pennsylvania state senate. As Senator Dineen’s assistant administrative aide, Michelle was fiercely loyal to her boss and therefore inimical toward the McClusky forces.

“It’s supposed to be bad luck not to pass along a chain letter.” Brendan retrieved the discarded paper from the trash, smoothed out the wrinkles and read it. “According to this, there are dire consequences for not sending this letter to somebody else. Listen to what happened to the ones who didn’t—one guy had a winning lottery ticket for a ten-million-dollar jackpot and then lost the ticket, another guy was killed in a plane crash, a woman lost her home and all her possessions in a mysterious flash fire.” He glanced at Michelle. “Are you sure you want to mess with this? You could send it to me and beat the curse. Then
I’ll
pass it on to McClusky.”

Michelle laughed. “You and your Irish mysticism!” She i snatched the letter from him and threw it back into the trashcan. “I won’t be intimidated by those bogus threats. Chain letters like these are illegal anyway.”

“Okay, okay. But may I suggest not buying a lottery ticket or an airplane ticket or lighting a match until the alleged curse wears off. Whenever that is.”

She glared at him in mock severity. “Brendan, go to lunch.”

He gave an equally mock salute. “Yes, ma’am.”

Biendan had been gone less than ten minutes when the door to her office opened again. Michelle suppressed a sigh. This was at least the fifth or sixth interruption of the morning, not including the ubiquitous phone calls. She had a small mountain of reading material on her desk pertaining to the new federal demands concerning hazardous waste sites and exactly two days to get through it before the committee meeting. At this rate she would be reading well into the night to make the deadline.

“I hope you’ll forgive me for barging in like this.”

The voice was deep, smooth, and contained a perfect blend of apology and humor. Michelle glanced up at once. Standing in the doorway was a man whose looks exceeded the cliched tall, dark and handsome stereotype. She stared at him a moment too long, but she couldn’t help herself. He was that gorgeous.

He was about six feet tall and his gray suit appeared cus-tom-tailored for his superb, muscular frame. But it was his face that riveted Michelle. He had been blessed with a marvelous combination of bone structure and coloring and the results were breathtaking. Literally. Michelle had to remind herself to exhale as she gazed at his impossibly sensual mouth, which was drawn into the most beguiling, appealing smile she had ever seen. His eyes were a dark velvety brown in color and glowed with an alert intelligence and inviting warmth that beckoned and compelled.

Charisma
.
The word immediately came to mind. He’d been abundantly gifted with that elusive but unmistakable quality along with his stunning looks.

He walked toward her, smiling that smile, exuding confidence, virile magnetism and an irresistible sexual allure. “I’m Steve Saraceni.” He held out his hand to her. “And I know you’re Michelle Carey, Senator Dineen’s assistant administrative aide and his acting liaison to the committee studying the hazardous waste elimination bill.” Automatically she gave him her hand. His fingers closed around hers in a firm shake. Michelle’s heart began to pound and she felt her skin flush. If his looks packed a potent wallop, the effects of his touch probably registered on the Richter scale. When she found herself checking his left hand for a wedding band—he wasn’t wearing one—she knew it was time to end this mind-bending handshake.

Michelle took a bolstering step backward, embarrassed by her unexpected, uncharacteristic response to the man. She was a mature professional woman, not a giddy schoolgirl, she reminded herself sternly.

It was time to regain control of the situation... and of herself! “Mr. Saraceni,” she began.

“Call me Steve, everybody does.”

Before she could reply, he whipped out his business card and pressed it into her hand. She glanced at it. Legislative Engineers Limited was printed in bold black print with the names Steven Saraceni, Patrick Lassiter and Gregory Arthur in smaller letters underneath.

Michelle arched her brows. “Legislative Engineers?”

“I know, I know. Sounds pretentious, doesn’t it? Greg, one of my partners, came up with it. He thought it had more panache than Lobbyists for Hire, which is what we actually are.”

“You’re a lobbyist,” Michelle repeated. “Of course. I should have known.”