Jennifer Greene - Ain’t Misbehaving

Bewildered, she stepped outside, since he was clearly waiting for her to go through the door first. He followed. She fumbled in her purse for her car keys and then groped for the push button of her umbrella. It was still raining-not in buckets, but the drizzle was insistent and cold.

Behind her, Mitch dug his hands in his pockets and jerked his head back at the onslaught of rain. His hair abruptly dampened, molding itself to his scalp, the ends falling in waves over his forehead and cheeks. Kay glanced back. “Share my umbrella?”

He shook his head. “Our cars are undoubtedly in opposite directions.”

She nodded, mortified. Their cars could very well be in the same direction. He simply and clearly didn’t want to pursue the conversation. “Well…goodbye then.” She added quietly, “I thought you were terrific with Peter.”

Mitch said nothing. He watched her hesitate and then finally turn, adjust her umbrella and start walking toward the parking lot. His eyes followed the sway of her hips, mesmerized. Water was starting to run down his neck, and raindrops were collecting in his lashes, splashing on his cheeks.

He still couldn’t take his eyes off her. She wore a short jacket that didn’t cover the rainbow patch on her fanny. She barely had a rear end worth speaking of, but that little patch moved from side to side with a bounce that was distinctly feminine, entirely unconscious and irresistibly sexy.

He shivered violently.

She’d been engaged, which meant she’d slept with her fiancé. That assumption went with the times, but it went with the lady as well. She radiated feeling; she was the kind of woman who naturally expressed her emotions. She’d shown no embarrassment at the show of tears in the hospital corridor, no holding back in her hug for Peter.

Mitch hazarded a guess that her ex-fiancé was demented. True, Kay was no sex symbol, in spite of her extraordinary beauty when she smiled. But Kay was something infinitely more desirable-a lover. Any man who didn’t see that… But Mitch suspected most men did see that. How could they miss it, in the free way she moved, the vibrancy she brought to a smile, the emotions that shimmered in her eyes?

Lots of men had seen, if not touched. Mitch had only needed to learn of one. He’d tensed up like barbed wire the instant she mentioned having been engaged.

Ducking his head, he tried to fend off the assaulting rain. He’d been sharing ribald jokes with nurses for thirteen years. Before that, he’d been a fifteen-year-old with an active libido.

The libido was still active-hollering to make up for lost time. His physical reaction to Kay had been instant, uncontrollable and darned near impossible to hide.

Unfortunately, he’d missed the entire decade of sexual experience that men his age were supposed to have. How would he dare approach Kay? She was damned… real.

With his head bowed low, he was barely aware he was following her until she whirled around suddenly. Her umbrella tilted back, and those sherry-brown eyes leveled furiously on his from a dozen feet away.

“If there’s anything worse than a stubborn man, it’s certainly a stupid one,” she announced with foot-tapping impatience.

His jaw dropped.

“Look. You’re soaking wet. Now, just get under my umbrella.”

He hesitated, feeling the corners of his mouth twitch as he strode forward. When he ducked under the umbrella, Kay jammed the handle into his hand as if it were a lethal weapon and hunched her shoulders as if to announce that he didn’t have to touch her for God’s sake.

“Where’s your car?” she demanded stiffly.

“One row over. The gray BMW,” he replied meekly.

She said nothing, licking up the silence like an offended kitten. She was clutching her purse and walking so stiffly she might have had iron bones.

He could smell the rain in her hair and the faint hint of some springy perfume; his hip brushed hers and he felt an instant, potent desire rise up in him like flames. Kay was trying so damned hard to establish that her earlier friendliness wasn’t a come-on; she was saying she’d caught the message that he wasn’t interested.

She was so dead wrong. He would have been happy to seduce her right there in the parking lot, rain and all. There was just the issue of how she felt about raw recruits. Regardless, he’d never meant to hurt her feelings with his coldness.

Clearing his throat, he began a peacemaking speech. “Listen…”

She cocked her head but said nothing.

He groped for something to say. “You said you had a job. What kind of work do you do?”

“I teach,” she said curtly.

A huge puddle welled up in front of them. Instinctively, his hand went to the small of her back to steer her around it. Like steel, that spine. She’d stopped puffing steam, but it was obvious that she wasn’t risking any more friendly overtures.

“What subject?” he prodded her.

“Don’t ask.”

“Kay?”

She stopped dead, glaring up at him, her sherry-colored eyes so defensive that he was startled. “I teach sex education,” she said defiantly. “You want to make something of it?”

Obviously, over the years a few men had, but, Lord, no. Mitch had no inclination to make anything of it. He didn’t need more bad news. Why couldn’t he have fallen victim to a runaway attraction for a nice, quiet, retiring woman who wouldn’t be able to guess that the closest he’d come to an erotic experience was reading the Kamasutra ?

Still, she looked so defensive, so furious, so ready to make a chilly comeback, that he had to reach out and push back the strand of hair that was bouncing down in front of her nose. Gently, he tucked it behind her ear. “You take a lot of ribbing, do you?” he asked.

Those lovely eyes gradually softened, inches from his. Suddenly, she was chuckling. “You bet I do. I start out the year taking rabbits to the kindergarten classes so they can see how a mother takes care of her young. I teach life, not pornography, but whenever I tell anyone-”

“You work with all grades?”

She nodded. “I started the program with the health department, and it evolved into a full-time job with the school system. There were just too few teachers who felt comfortable with the subject. Generally, I give a month-long course, starting with the younger grades and proceeding through high school. I go from school to school.” She stopped abruptly, as if suddenly aware she was chattering in a friendly manner again. “Where’s your car?”

“We passed it.”

She glanced up at him, startled, and then that special smile of hers lit up her face. Her soft, throaty laughter echoed through the rain, delighting him. And when, almost unconsciously, he tucked a hand across her shoulder to turn her around and pilot her toward his car, her limbs no longer felt like iron; her body was warm and giving beneath her jacket.

Her eyes lifted again to his, soft but still serious. “You know, I wasn’t trying to…pry before. I didn’t mean for you to think-”

“That you were looking for a fast pickup?” Mitch’s dry chuckle reflected just how easily he had read her mind, and chided her for having come to such a foolish conclusion. “Somehow I don’t think you usually go to the hospital on Saturday mornings to pick up men.”

“Don’t give me that much of the benefit of the doubt,” she said gravely. “Take Peter, for instance. Don’t think for a minute that I wouldn’t pick him up and spirit him right out of there if I thought I had the ghost of a chance of getting away with it.”

They’d stopped at his car. “So you’re that kind, after all,” he said with mock disgust. “I think I guessed the moment I saw you acting out your monster story that you were the cold-blooded, heartless type.”