Love Lessons

“You’re the one with the hang-ups about our differences, not me.

“You made it such a big deal that you wouldn’t even ask if I would be interested in going out with you.”

“So what would you have said if I had asked?”

Catherine looked at Mike standing there, flushed and rumpled. “I would have said yes.” She moistened her lips and gazed up at him.

Mike returned the gaze. “Well, since I’ve already got so much to apologize for tonight…” he murmured.

And he lowered his head—slowly, his eyes locked with hers, giving her plenty of time to stop him if she wanted to.

But she didn’t stop him. Instead, she lifted her face to his.

Dear Reader,

People often ask if people or events in my stories are based on real life. My answer is always the same. I write fiction, with characters and situations created entirely from my imagination. I play make-believe for a living, and I love it. But there are times when I am inspired by real-life events. My two daughters make especially good research subjects, to their resignation. Both in their twenties and pursuing challenging careers, they fit the profile of many of the women I write about. Is it any wonder I’m tempted at times to follow them around with a notepad and pen?

Several years ago, a young, hungry stray cat showed up on our doorstep with three kittens. After doing our part to control the pet population by having them all sterilized, we found homes for the kittens, but no one wanted the mother. She moved in with us—and promptly became the queen of the household. Never has there been a more spoiled or beloved feline, nor (in my unbiased opinion) a smarter or better behaved cat than our Isabeau.

So, just to make it clear… Catherine, the heroine of my story Love Lessons, is not actually based on either of my beautiful scientist daughters. And Norman, Catherine’s intelligent, headstrong cat, is not Isabeau. But it is entirely possible that my always-active imagination found inspiration in real life as I played make-believe with Catherine, her cat and her hunky handyman hero.

I hope you enjoy their story.

Gina Wilkins

Love Lessons
Gina Wilkins

www.millsandboon.co.uk

GINA WILKINS

is a bestselling and award-winning author who has written more than seventy books for Harlequin and Silhouette. She credits her successful career in romance to her long, happy marriage and her three “extraordinary” children.

A lifelong resident of central Arkansas, Ms. Wilkins sold her first book to Harlequin in 1987 and has been writing full-time since. She has appeared on the Waldenbooks, B. Dalton and USA TODAY bestseller lists. She is a three-time recipient of the Maggie Award for Excellence, sponsored by Georgia Romance Writers, and has won several awards from the reviewers of Romantic Times BOOKreviews.

With thanks to my two scientist daughters for their

input and to my son for his sample AP biology tests.

They got their math and science skills from their dad!

Contents

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Chapter Eleven

Chapter Twelve

Chapter Thirteen

Chapter Fourteen

Chapter Fifteen

Chapter Sixteen

Chapter One

Norman, the sleek, black-and-white cat, sat expectantly on the kitchen table across from Catherine Travis’s chair. Her mother would be horrified to see a cat on the table, but Catherine merely shrugged in response to that thought. Her parents were in China, enjoying each other’s company, while she was stuck here alone in Little Rock, Arkansas. Since Norman was the only one available on this September Sunday evening to help Catherine celebrate her thirtieth birthday, he could pretty much sit anywhere he liked, as far as she was concerned.

He watched intently as she lit the single candle topping a chocolate-frosted cupcake. She sat back to admire the flickering flame, noting the way it reflected in Norman’s big, golden eyes. She couldn’t help but smile at his expression as he looked from her to the candle and then back again.

“You look as though you know exactly what we’re doing,” she remarked to the nine-month-old cat who had made his home with her for the past six months. “I half expect you to start singing the happy birthday song to me now.”

Norman meowed obligingly. The sound was actually rather musical, Catherine decided. “Thank you. That was lovely.”

She leaned forward to blow out the candle but then stopped herself. “Oh, wait. If I’m going to throw myself a birthday party, I should do it right. I’m supposed to make a wish before I blow out the candle, aren’t I?”

Norman’s ears flicked in interest. Curling his tail around his white feet, he sat up straighter, looking at her encouragingly. Although she knew darned well that he was waiting for the cat treat she was holding for him, she indulged herself with the pretense that he was actually interested in what she had to say.

“Okay, here’s my wish. I wish I had someone with whom to share occasions like this. Birthdays, holidays, other special events. As much as I appreciate your companionship, Normie, it would be nice to have a human male in my life.”

She blew out the candle. She and Norman both watched the thin line of white smoke drift from the blackened wick to dissipate above the table. Only then did she set the salmon-flavored treat in front of her cat. “There you go, pal. Enjoy.”

He sniffed at the treat, took an experimental lick, then began to nibble delicately, his tail twitching with pleasure. Catherine peeled the paper from the sides of the cupcake and took a bite, letting the rich chocolate frosting dissolve slowly on her tongue. “Mmm. Good.”

Norman responded with a muted, whirring noise that might have been agreement.

She reached out to stroke his silky back, and he arched into her touch. If only people were as easy to understand as her cat, she mused wistfully. Men, especially.

She had a couple of advanced degrees, was quite successful in her career as a biomedical researcher, had a few good friends and a nice apartment, but she had never really learned the art of dating. As far as she knew, there were no classes in flirtation, and she had never picked up the talent in her science labs.

She had been focused so single-mindedly on her education and her career that she had missed out on learning how to play. She just wasn’t a “fun” person, she thought with a sigh. The only men who had asked her out during the past couple of years had bored her half-senseless. She seemed destined to be alone with her work and her cat.

To distract herself from her mounting self-pity, she reached for the small stack of presents she had saved to open all at once. Her friend Karen Kupperman from work had given her a tin of herbal tea and a scented candle in a pretty cobalt glass holder. Practical and yet slightly self-indulgent—just the sort of gift Karen would appreciate herself.

Karen was in Europe now, on a two-week trip with her husband, Wayne. They had combined a vacation with a science conference in Geneva, and Karen had been looking forward to the excursion for months.

Catherine’s other friend, Julia, a public attorney, had given her another practical, but elegant, present—a pair of soft brown leather gloves lined with cashmere. Lovely, she thought, trying them on to admire the perfect fit. Typical of Julia—who was currently in New York City at a convention of lawyers.

A couple of Catherine’s graduate students had gone in together to buy her an emerald-green cashmere scarf. Rubbing it against her cheek, she murmured her appreciation of the luxuriously soft feel. She would enjoy this when the weather turned cold. Since it was almost the end of September now, it wouldn’t be much longer until the temperatures began to drop.

Finally there was the package from her parents, both academics currently teaching at a university in China. They had sent her a beautiful silk blouse and a check. The blouse pleased her; the check made her frown.

She wished she could convince them that she was doing fine financially. An only child born to them rather late in life, she had been overprotected and indulged, gently pushed to follow in their academic footsteps, raised in a sheltered, Ivy-League environment that hadn’t exactly prepared her for modern dating and socializing. And now, despite her career and her friends and her financial security—she was lonely on her birthday.

Biting her lip, she set the gifts aside and picked up her pet, snuggling into his neck. His purr vibrated against her cheek as she murmured, “I know wishes don’t really come true, Norman, but just this once I’ll try to believe….”

The day after Catherine’s birthday was a Monday, and it started out with a minor frustration. After she had showered and dressed for work, she walked into the kitchen to prepare her breakfast, only to find one of the knobs from her stove broken off and lying on the linoleum floor.

“Great,” she muttered, bending to pick it up. The knob had been loose for weeks—something she had meant to report but kept forgetting. She couldn’t imagine how it had broken off by itself during the night, but here it was.

Shaking her head, she stepped over the cat winding himself around her ankles and picked up the phone to call the rental office. As it happened, the new maintenance guy had just stepped into the office, she was told, and he could come right then if it was convenient for her. It would take him only a couple of minutes to repair the knob.

She agreed, then called her lab to let them know she would be a little late. Fortunately, her schedule was flexible that day, so she didn’t have to rush in. If something had to break, it seemed it had happened at a convenient time, she mused, walking toward the front door in anticipation of the maintenance man’s arrival. While she was accustomed to prompt responses from the management of her upscale apartment complex, this was even faster than usual.

Three quick raps announced his arrival, and she opened her door. Then very nearly dropped her jaw.

The last maintenance man who had repaired something in her apartment had been sixtyish, beer-bellied, balding and borderline surly. This guy looked somewhere in his mid-to late-twenties, athletically built, handsome in a blond, blue-eyed way, and flashed a hundred white teeth in a melt-your-spine smile.

All semblance of her usual intelligence and composure leaked right out of her brain. “Er…uh…”

“I’m Mike Clancy,” he said, tapping the ID badge he wore on the pocket of a blue denim work shirt. He held a toolbox in his left hand. “Lucille said you’ve got a broken knob on your stove?”

“Oh, yes. Of course.” Moving awkwardly out of the doorway, she motioned toward the kitchen. “It’s in there.”

Brilliant, she thought with a slight wince. Where else would the stove be? The bathroom?

But he merely nodded and walked into the living room, casting a quick glance around at her carefully put-together green, burgundy and cream decor. “I like the way you’ve decorated. It looks real comfortable.”

“Thank you.” Since comfort had been the primary criterion for each piece she had selected, she was pleased by the adjective.

“Well, hello.” Mike bent to offer a friendly hand to Norman, who sniffed him, then promptly rolled onto his back in a shameless bid for a belly scratch. Chuckling, Mike obliged, generating a rumbling purr that Catherine could hear from where she stood.

“He likes you,” she commented unnecessarily. “He usually hides from strangers.”

“He can probably tell that I like cats. What’s his name?”

Watching that capable-looking, nicely shaped hand stroking the cat’s fur, and unable to miss noticing how Mike’s jeans strained against his crouching thighs, Catherine had to take a moment to come up with the answer. “Norman. His name is Norman.”

“Hey, there, Norman.” He scratched just under Norman’s pointy black chin, causing the silly cat to go into a frenzy of purring and wriggling. And then he straightened, to the disappointment of both cat and owner. “Okay. Where’s the knob?”

Doubting he would appreciate an audience while he worked, Catherine stayed in the living room, but the apartment just happened to be arranged so that she could see him from the couch, where she had settled with the newspaper. She read maybe three words of the lead story, and those only when he glanced her way. The rest of the time, she simply watched him from beneath her eyelashes, struck by the novelty of having such a good-looking man in her kitchen.

Norman wasn’t nearly as circumspect in his staring. He sat in the kitchen doorway, ears perked and nose twitching as he watched Mike work. Occasionally he glanced at Catherine as if to say, “Why are you way over there when your visitor is in here?”

Or maybe she was just projecting.

It took only a few minutes for Mike to repair the stove. He came out of the kitchen all tousled hair and gleaming smile, and her breath caught hard in her throat. “It’s fixed,” he announced. “Anything else you need before I go?”

Maybe a woman who’d learned how to flirt would answer that leading question with a witty comeback. A funny innuendo that would make him laugh, then give her a second look.

Catherine said only, “No, that’s all. Thank you for coming so promptly.”

“You’re welcome.” With a last pat for Norman, Mike let himself out, telling her to call again if she needed any other repairs.

Catherine closed and locked the door behind him, then sagged against it. She wasn’t usually the type to notice such things, but Mike Clancy had one fine, tight butt encased in those soft denim jeans. She wasn’t sure whether to be more dismayed or relieved that she had noticed this time.

At least it proved she was still in the game, she finally decided—even if only as a quiet spectator.

Late Wednesday afternoon Mike tapped on the door of apartment 906. If no one was home, he was authorized to let himself in and handle the repair job he’d been assigned, but he heard someone stirring inside. He smiled when the attractive brunette who had let him in only a couple of days earlier opened the door to him again. “I understand you have a broken window blind.”

Her cheeks were pink, her expression chagrined when she nodded. “I haven’t needed maintenance in almost a year, and now I’ve had two problems in one week. I’m sorry to be so much trouble.”

“That’s what I’m here for.” Had it been anyone else, he might have suspected ulterior motives. It wouldn’t be the first time he’d been called to a woman’s apartment on a trumped-up excuse. But he would bet this woman was different.

For one thing, Catherine Travis—Dr. Catherine Travis, he reminded himself, having been told a little about this tenant by the rather gossipy apartment office manager—seemed genuinely put out that she’d had to request his services again. For another—well, get real. This woman was class from her neat brown bob to her sensibly shod feet. Hardly the type to angle for a quick fling with the maintenance man.

In this case he could almost be disappointed, he thought.

The living room window she led him to gave her a view of the parking lot and the swimming pool on the other side of the compound. A sliding glass door on another wall of the living room led onto a small balcony shaded by a big oak tree, which grew right at the corner of her end apartment. The balcony, too, overlooked the parking lot, except for the little patch of grass and bushes that lined the sidewalk leading to her steps.

The view from the large, back bedroom was better, he knew, though he hadn’t been into that particular room in this two-bedroom apartment. From there she would be able to see the Arkansas River beyond the levee that protected the complex from flooding.

Catherine motioned toward the crookedly hanging window blind, the gesture emphasizing the gracefulness he had noted about her before. Slender and just slightly above average in height, she looked as though she could have been a model or a glamorous actress, rather than the scientist he knew her to be.

Her face was a perfect oval, framed by glossy brown hair shot with golden highlights that looked natural. Her eyes were a dark chocolate brown, her nose small and straight, her lips softly curved. Even dressed in a casual red knit top and comfortable-looking black slacks with black flats, she had a sort of classic poise about her that he would bet his sisters would openly envy.

“I don’t know what happened,” she said, her voice low and rich. “When I tried to open the blinds this morning to let in some sunlight, they just broke in my hand.”

“That happens sometimes,” he said with a shrug. “Especially with these plastic brackets. I’ve brought another blind with me. It won’t take but a few minutes to replace it.”

She nodded. “Thank you.”

Feeling something brushing against his leg, he glanced down and grinned. “Well, hello, Norman. Nice to see you again.”

The cat meowed a greeting, then arched and purred when Mike reached down to stroke his soft fur.

“He seems to remember you,” Catherine remarked, watching them. “You really do have a way with cats.”

“I grew up with them. At one time my sisters had four in the house with us, one cat for each sister. I had a pet snake at the time, just as a way to assert my masculinity.”

“You have four sisters?”

He chuckled and straightened away from her cat. “All older. There are a few people who might tell you I was just a bit spoiled growing up.”

Her smile transformed her face in a way that made his pulse jump in instinctive male reaction. It added warmth and personality to her cool expression and drew his attention again to her perfectly shaped lips. “I’m sure that’s not true.”

“Actually, it’s absolutely true,” he admitted with a laugh. “I was shamelessly indulged.”

Whatever she might have said in response was interrupted by the ring of her telephone. Her smile vanished. “Excuse me,” she said, and turned to pick up the cordless extension that had been lying on the glass-topped wood coffee table.

He concentrated on his work as she carried the phone into the kitchen. While Norman lay at his feet begging for attention, he unscrewed the broken blind from the window casing. He wasn’t trying to eavesdrop on Catherine’s conversation, but he couldn’t help overhearing a few snatches of what she was saying. Not that it mattered. Though she was speaking English, she might as well have been talking in a foreign language.

Obviously, the caller was someone from her work. She seemed to be giving instructions to whoever it was on how to do some sort of procedure that apparently involved a lot of steps and many multisyllabic terms that Mike had never heard.

He’d been told that some men were intimidated by brainy women. He, on the other hand, had nothing but respect for intelligent women, having been raised in a house full of them.

As for himself, he was smart enough to read the signs when a woman was interested in him, and he wasn’t getting any of those signals from Catherine Travis. So, despite his respect for her body and her brains, he would keep things strictly professional while he was here.

He glanced at the coffee table as he set the broken blind on the floor and reached for the new one he’d brought with him. A stack of science journals and notebooks teetered at one end of the table, looking as though she’d been reading through them when he’d arrived. A workaholic? Seemed to be in character with his first impressions of her.

By the time she had finished her call, he had just completed the installation of the new blind. He opened and closed it a couple of times, raised and lowered the slats to assure himself that everything was working correctly, then he closed his toolbox. “All done,” he said as Catherine came back into the room. “I told you it wouldn’t take long.”

She nodded. “I appreciate it. I’ll tell Lucille how much I’ve appreciated your quick responses this week.”

He shrugged. “It’s been a pretty slow week. You seem to be one of the few tenants having breakdowns at the moment.”

To his pleasure, the smile he had admired before returned. “I got lucky, I guess,” she said.

Before he could decide if there was even a hint of flirtation in her response, her expression grew serious again and she reached for the door. “Thank you again,” she said, her tone now politely dismissive.

“You’re welcome.” He stepped outside and glanced back at her. “Have a nice…”

The door closed in his face.

“…day,” he finished wryly. Shaking his head, he turned to leave. He had a class to get to that evening. He didn’t have time to stand around mooning over a pretty, but decidedly distant, scientist.

“So, you’ve really had a lousy week,” Julia observed, reaching for a tortilla chip to dip into the salsa that sat on the restaurant table in front of her. “First you spent your birthday alone, and then everything in your apartment broke. Not to mention a difficult week at work.”

Catherine took a sip of her punch and set the plastic tumbler back down on the table before replying to her friend of almost two years. “It wasn’t so bad, really. I received some lovely gifts for my birthday. Thank you again for the gloves, by the way. They’re gorgeous.”

“You’re welcome. I’m just sorry I had to be away on that business trip and couldn’t celebrate with you. A girl shouldn’t be by herself on her thirtieth birthday.”

“Norman and I had a very nice little private party.”

“The cat doesn’t count.”

“Don’t tell him that,” Catherine advised with a smile. “Norman is very sensitive, you know. And as for things breaking in my apartment, that turned out okay, too. The management responded very quickly each time, having the repairs done the very day I reported the problems.”

“Wow. That is efficient. I hope you didn’t have to deal with gripey old Luther again.”

Catherine concentrated on scooping a tortilla chip into white cheese dip, keeping her voice casual when she replied, “Actually, no. There’s a new maintenance guy now. His name’s Mike.”

“Really. Nice guy?”

“Yes, he seems very nice.”

A sudden, rather loaded silence from the other side of the table made Catherine look up. “What?”

“How did he look?”

She started to give a vaguely generic answer, but then she sighed and said, “Like he just stepped off a surfboard. Or—since we’re a ten-hour drive from the nearest beach—a skateboard, maybe.”

“Young guy, huh?”

“I’m not very good at guessing ages, but I’d say twenty-five. Maybe a year or two older.”

“And you say he’s nice looking?”

“Like someone you would see on the cover of one of those teen magazines my mother would never let me buy,” she replied with an exaggerated sigh. “Blond, blue-eyed, athletic build, beautiful smile. Nice teeth. And enough charm to sell sand in a desert.”

Julia shuddered. “Sounds like one of those guys who are about as deep as a rain puddle.”

Julia had a well-known aversion to handsome, shallow men, having been hurt very badly by one in her younger, more trusting days.

“He seemed quite nice, actually. But—as always happens when I’m in the presence of a good-looking guy—I displayed the wit and personality of petrified wood.”

Julia rolled her eyes. “I doubt it was quite that bad.”

“Trust me,” she said with a groan. “I couldn’t even remember poor Norman’s name. All I could do was just sit there, staring at the guy. He probably thinks I’m the most boring tenant in the entire complex.”

“Oh well, it isn’t as if you’d be interested in boffing the maintenance stud, anyway,” Julia said with a shrug. “You’ve got more common sense than that.”

“No, of course I wouldn’t be interested in anything like that,” Catherine agreed with a laugh that sounded a bit hollow to her own ears.

“And he hardly sounds like the kind of man you’d want to date for any other purpose. A young maintenance man? What on earth would you have in common with him?”

Julia, bless her, was pretty much as clueless as Catherine when it came to men. A natural blonde who defied all the stereotypes, she was a fiercely focused and ambitious dynamo in a deceptively fragile-looking package. Unlike Catherine, Julia was frequently the target of passes from prowling males, few of them interested in her mind. Her experiences with the opposite sex had left her decidedly cynical when it came to romance.

Losing interest in the subject of buff young men—and totally oblivious to the man who was openly ogling her from a table nearby—Julia launched into a discussion of a workshop she had attended at the conference in New York. Catherine was quite sure her friend had rarely, if ever, left the conference hotel to enjoy all the wonderfully exciting things to do in the “Big Apple.” For Julia, nothing in the city was as interesting and challenging as scholarly discussions of the law.

Hopeless, Catherine thought with a slight shake of her head. Both of them.

Settling in for an evening of spicy Mexican food and stimulating conversation, she pushed the lingering thoughts of Mike Clancy to the back of her mind. She knew full well those thoughts would be there to tease her again later, when she was alone in her apartment.

Friday afternoon Catherine was sitting at her desk behind a mountain of paperwork for an important grant, when she accidentally overheard a couple of graduate students chatting out in the hallway. Maybe they didn’t know she was in her office, or maybe they weren’t aware of how clearly their voices carried through the partially opened door.

“Got big plans for the weekend?”

“Uh-huh. Scott’s taking me to Tunica for a weekend at the casinos. We’re leaving tomorrow morning. I can’t wait.”

“Sounds like fun.”

“I know. What are you doing this weekend?”

“Going clubbing tonight with Tommy and Jan and Nick. Tomorrow Tommy and I are driving up to Jonesboro for the football game and staying the night there.”

“Cool.”

“You and Scott want to go clubbing with us tonight?”

“Maybe. I’ll ask him and give you a call.”

There was a momentary pause before one of them said, “What do you think she’s doing this weekend?”

“Dr. Travis? Same thing she does every weekend. Working.”

“Think she ever just cuts loose and has fun?”

A laugh of disbelief was followed by a cynical, “I think fun might be one of the few words missing from her extensive vocabulary. She’s nice and all, but can you imagine her partying?”

“No. The image just won’t form in my mind.”

The voices faded as the unseen speakers moved down the hallway, leaving an echo of laughter behind them. Only after she was sure they were gone did Catherine get up to quietly close her door.

By the time she arrived at home that evening, her steps were dragging. Though it was after seven, it was still light. The days were getting shorter, though, she mused with a sigh, tucking her bulging briefcase beneath her arm. Soon it would be dark when she came home alone. And cold.

Locking her car door, she glanced across the mostly empty parking lot. Most of the other tenants were already home from work, and quite a few of them had probably already headed out for Friday night fun. Someone climbed out of the driver’s side of a small pickup truck, and she recognized Mike, the maintenance man. He seemed to be carrying a stack of books, but he managed to free a hand to give her a quick wave.

She waved back, hoping she looked friendly and casual rather than stiff and self-conscious, and then she turned toward the outside stairs that led up to her second-floor apartment. She smiled when she glanced up and spotted Norman sitting in his favorite spot on the living room windowsill, watching her.

At least someone was glad to welcome her home, she thought, walking a bit faster.

She unlocked her door and pushed it open, thinking that maybe she would throw on some sweats and make an omelet for dinner….

For the first time since she had brought him home six months ago, Norman dashed past her through the open doorway and streaked down the stairs, straight into the parking lot. Terrified that he would run in front of a car, Catherine threw down her bags and raced after him, calling his name. “Norman, stop! Come back here.”

Alerted by her shout, Mike got to Norman first, dropping his books to scoop the cat into his arms. Rather than resisting, Norman butted his head happily against Mike’s chin, as if in greeting.

Her heart still pounding against her ribs, Catherine skidded to a stop in front of them. “I can’t believe he did that. He’s never run out before. Thank you so much for catching him.”

“No problem.” Smiling, Mike transferred her pet into her arms. “Guess you’d better start blocking the door when you open it.”

“I guess so.” Catherine frowned down at Norman, who was purring as if he were quite pleased with himself. “Bad cat. You could have been hurt.”

“So could you, the way you pelted down those stairs,” Mike told her. “You’re lucky you didn’t trip.”

She wrinkled her nose. “I didn’t even think about it,” she confessed. “I was so afraid he would run in front of a car.”

As if to emphasize what could have happened, an SUV passed them at that moment, the driver nodding to Mike in recognition. Mike waved back, then turned again to Catherine. “So, how’s it going—other than escaping cats? Everything in working order in your apartment?”

“Yes, thank you.” She glanced down at the three hardcover books scattered at their feet. “I hope none of your books are damaged. If so, I’ll certainly pay for replacements.”