License to Love (4 page)

The committee was unable to accept Steve’s invitation to lunch until the following week. He entertained them in style at Rillo’s, Harrisburg’s top-ranked restaurant, located on the west shore. Rillo’s marvelous food, generous portions and lively, bustling atmosphere made it a favorite among the capital crowd. Even Governor George Lindow was often spotted there.

Michelle ordered one of the house specialties, swordfish steamed with vegetables, a lunch far removed from the sandwich and piece of fruit she usually brown-bagged at her desk. She wasn’t near Steve at the table. He had seated himself by the key committee members, those wielding the most influence, which she definitely was not. But she found herself watching and listening to him through most of the meal. He fascinated her.

Steve was the perfect host, chatting with each of the members about a wide variety of subjects. He was well versed in everything. Books—he’d read all the bestsellers; movies—he’d seen all the latest ones; and sports—he could discuss any sport and any team and was a wealth of information about the upcoming Super Bowl. In fact, he had tickets for the big game. He made a few dry remarks about the drubbing he had taken during his blessedly short college football career.

“I did the team a favor by leaving,” he said with a wry grin. “My replacement turned out to have the most talented hands in college football and Penn State had their choice of bowl bids that year. I still get thank-you notes from Coach Patemo.”

Michelle watched and listened as he deftly engaged the committee leaders in a discussion of the bill. He had a smooth, sure presentation. His arguments for choosing Allied Medical Technologies Incorporated seemed so logical, so practical and advantageous for all involved that it seemed almost irrational not to give them what they wanted here and now.

But there were no promises or commitments made, and Steve didn’t seem to expect any. He graciously picked up the substantial tab and anyone observing the warm and friendly goodbyes at the table would assume they were a group of old pals who’d gotten together for a lunchtime reunion.

He didn’t single out Michelle in any way. His attention remained focused on the key members. She was rather relieved, remembering her embarrassingly girlish response to him in her office, but she also felt strangely disappointed.

What did you expect? she mocked herself. That a man like Steve Saraceni—cool, smooth, devastatingly handsome
and
good at his job—would jeopardize this opportunity, one he was paying for, to devote time to her, the one committee member who was merely a liaison, the one member with no vote, power or influence? Why would he? Why should he?

Why hadn’t he?

She was still feeling a little flat when she returned to her desk. When her telephone rang, she picked it up. Accessibility was a point of pride with Senator Dineen. Everybody who worked in his office answered their own phones, with the exception of the senator himself, of course.

“Michelle, this is Steve Saraceni.”

He didn’t have to identify himself, she’d known his voice at once. Her breath caught. “Yes?”

“How do you think it went?” he asked exuberantly. He sounded so cheerful, so hopeful. His open candor struck her as charming. No subtly smooth ploys here, he went straight to the heart of the matter.

She smiled as she told him, “The general consensus is that you did an excellent job of explaining your client’s proposal in laymen’s terms. Everyone agreed that you were credible and didn’t try to oversell.”

Had she said too much? Michelle wondered at once. Was it proper to relay the committee’s response? She’d responded as she would to a friend. But as an aide to a lobbyist ... Michelle bit her lip. She was on uncharted waters here.

Credibility. It was the highest compliment a lobbyist could be paid. On the other end of the line, Steve was beaming.

“I’m glad. Thanks, Michelle.” He paused. “Michelle, I’m sorry I didn’t get to spend much time with you at lunch. In fact, I hardly had a chance to talk to you at all. I hope you understand. I had to give AMT, Inc., their money’s worth.”

“Of course.” She sounded both excited and puzzled. Why had he called her?

Steve could read voice inflections as skillfully as he could interpret body language and word nuances. What he heard in hers pleased him.

“I’ve been looking forward to seeing you again,” he continued. “As a matter of fact, I’ve had to talk myself out of calling you several times these past two weeks. I didn’t want to place you in an uncomfortable position or have you think that I was trying to cultivate a personal relationship with you for my own professional gain.”

Why, it was true, Steve realized, more than a little surprised. Until this moment, he thought he’d stayed away because he had put his attraction for her on hold, to be considered at his own convenience. Now it seemed that he’d actually had another, more altruistic motive, one considering
her.

That was unlike him. Uneasily, he began to fiddle with the pens and pencils in the leather cylinder that held them.

Michelle’s stomach dropped, as if she were on the dou-ble-loop roller coaster at a nearby amusement park. “I wouldn’t think that, Steve,” she said softly.

Steve cleared his throat. This was beginning to get sticky. Now was the time to lighten things up with a cleverly glib remark. His brain had stockpiled thousands to fit any situation.

Except this one, it seemed. “I’m glad,” he heard himself say. Which hardly qualified for clever or glib. Help, he thought. He felt mired in mental quicksand.

Michelle came to his rescue. “I didn’t know that you went to Penn State,” she said, mercifully taking the conversation in a different direction. “I did, too.”

“I know,” said Steve. Relieved, he continued expansively, “I saw your diploma in your office. Did you happen to know my sister, Jamie Saraceni? She went to Penn State, too. She would’ve been a class or two ahead of you, I think. Majored in library science. She’s married now. In fact, she just had a baby boy last month, two weeks before Christmas. His name is Matthew Albert Marshall.”

Good Lord, he needed a clamp on his tongue! Steve grimaced. What was the matte- with him? He wasn’t normally given to long, free association monologues.

But Michelle didn’t seem to mind. In fact, she gamely replied, “A new little nephew, how nice. No, I didn’t know your sister, but of course, Penn State’s main campus is an enormous place.”

“Jammed to capacity with students,” Steve agreed. “Remember those lines at the bookstore the beginning of each term?”

“I’ll never forget them! How about the lines in the dining halls?”

Some things in State College remained the same, whatever the year and the class, and Michelle and Steve reminisced about their alma mater and the classes, professors, social life and sports. There had been some changes in their old college town, and they discussed those, too. The conversation was so enjoyable to them both that it continued for more than half an hour.

Then Michelle was interrupted by Claire. “I hate to bother you, Michelle, but you were going to read over this draft before we showed it to Ed, and he’s due here in about fifteen minutes.”

And Steve was interrupted by Saran. “Steve, there’s this guy who’s been waiting around to see you for the past twenty minutes and he’s getting awfully hyper. Are you going to see him or should I tell him to get lost?”

“Oh my goodness, the draft!” Michelle exclaimed. “Claire, I’ll get to it right away.”

“Good Lord! I forgot all about my appointment with the chief counsel to the party caucus!” gasped Steve. “Saran, do
not
tell him to get lost! ”

“I guess we lost track of the time,” Michelle said sheepishly over the phone to Steve.

“And I accused my cousin of conducting marathon telephone calls!” Steve murmured, completely nonplussed. He had never, ever forgotten an appointment! Nothing distracted him from his work, particularly not a
woman.
He’d always consigned women to his leisure time when they would not interfere with anything important.

Yet, even now, both were oddly loath to hang up. “Maybe we could—” Michelle said at the same time that Steve was saying, “Would you like to—”

They both paused and laughed awkwardly.

“You first,” said Steve.

“No, really. You go ahead,” insisted Michelle.

“I was going to ask if you’d like to continue this discussion over dinner sometime?”

“Yes,” she replied quickly. Probably too quickly, but Michelle didn’t care.

“I know this is short notice, but what about Friday night?” He did some swift mental calculations. He had a date, of course; he always had a date on Friday nights. Saturdays, too. But he’d never had a problem with breaking dates if something else—someone else—came along.

“Friday night is fine,” Michelle said breathlessly. A Friday night date, now that was a rarity for her. Usually she rented a video and watched it with her cat, both of them crashing on the sofa after her sixty-hour
^:
plus work week. Her job consumed most of her energy and too many hours for her to pursue much of a social life.

“Would Alfred’s Victorian be all right?” He named a popular restaurant in a restored Victorian mansion, which had carefully preserved the luxurious, old-fashioned ambience. He already had reservations there for Friday at eight.

“Oh, that would be very nice,” Michelle exclaimed. She knew the place. Senator Dineen treated his staff to an annual Christmas party there. But the romantic atmosphere would be entirely different with Steve instead of the office gang. A tremor of anticipation shook her.

“Great. I’ll pick you up around seven.” That meant erasing the name already written in his pocket calendar, but that was okay. He always used pencil, never pen, for his social engagements. Pencil was freedom and subject to change; ink was permanence, commitment and obligation.

He wasn’t aware that he’d reached for a pen to write in Michelle’s name until he saw the ink on his pocket calendar’s Friday square. He felt slightly spooked for a moment, but swiftly disregarded it. He’d never found any relevance or credence in so-called Freudian slips. As far as he was concerned, they were as hocus-pocus as Ouija boards, tea leaves and palm reading.

And
chain letters.
He grimaced as he crumpled up the one he’d just opened and tossed it into the trash just as a gum-chewing Saran led the irate chief counsel into his office.

Two

Steve timed his arrival at Michelle’s apartment for a strategic 7:13 p.m., not too late to be insulting yet definitely, deliberately not on time. Arriving early, of course, was unthinkable. It could be disastrous if a woman got the idea that he was chomping at the bit to be with her!

Michelle was running late. The ramifications of a five o’clock phone call had kept her in the office till nearly 6:30. Traffic was unusually snarled and she burst into her apartment at two minutes past seven, grateful that Steve hadn’t arrived yet.

She groaned when the doorbell rang at 7:13. If only he’d been a little later! As it was, she had just pulled on her dress, she was shoeless, and hadn’t even started on her hair or makeup.

“Hi! I’m so sorry I’m not ready yet,” Michelle greeted him distractedly at the door. “It was crazy at the office today and I had to stay late. And naturally, traffic was the worst because I was in a hurry.”

She reminded herself to smile. This was a date. She was supposed to be anticipating a good time, not feeling harassed.

So much for his tactical arrival, Steve noted dryly. She hadn’t even noticed the time, unless it was to hope he’d be later. He was slightly disconcerted. His dates were usually ready and waiting for him at the door when he made his shrewdly timed arrival.

“If you want to help yourself to something to drink, I’ll hurry and finish getting dressed,” Michelle said, already heading toward the bathroom.

Steve blinked. He’d hardly gotten a glimpse of her. She’d come and gone so quickly, she had been little more than a blur. He glanced around the small living room. It was neat but undistinguished, furnished with garage sale pieces mixed with the kind of new furniture sold in discount warehouses. His own place was similarly furnished. Who wanted to spend time and money on decorating? Leave that to the married couples who seemed to thrive on such projects.

He looked at the collection of picture frames grouped on an end table and wondered who all the smiling faces were. If Michelle was around, he could have asked her, but she had immediately made herself unavailable. Steve frowned. He wasn’t accustomed to being left to his own devices in a woman’s apartment. Usually,
he was smothered
with attention.

It occurred to him that, for the women he usually dated, his appearance was the highlight of their day. Maybe even their week. His dates were the living-for-the-weekend kind of girls who had little or no interest in their jobs, girls who just wanted to have fun. His arrival signaled the beginning of their real life.

But Michelle had a job that she took seriously, one that involved her and engaged her. She had a life that extended beyond the fun of the weekend. She hadn’t taken the afternoon off to do her hair and her nails or to shop for a new outfit to wear for him. He knew from his own work experience that if she had stayed late at the office, her attention had been on the project at hand, not on him.

Such were the drawbacks of dating a career woman. No wonder he’d always avoided them. Feeling neglected, he walked into the small kitchen and opened the refrigerator. She’d offered him something to drink—which he had to fix himself! —and he had his choice of diet soda, fruit juice, or milk. There was no imported beer or ale. No wine, not even a wine cooler. What a way to kick off an evening! Sulking a little, he poured himself a glass of cranapple juice.

He reached into the pocket of his sport coat and pulled out a tiny stuffed toy lion wearing a blue and white shirt and cap with the letters PSU on the front. It was the Nittany Lion, Penn State’s mascot. He’d purchased it as a memento of his and Michelle’s first long talk on the phone. Steve set it on the kitchen counter to surprise her.