“Yes, fine. I should be home by six.”
“Do you like pizza?”
The non sequitur made her blink, but she nodded. “Yes.”
“Then I’ll bring dinner.” He dug into his shirt pocket, pulled out a card and a pen, and scribbled on the back. “Here’s my cell number, in case something comes up. Don’t feel obligated for this if there’s something else you need to do.”
Even as she gave him her numbers in exchange, she couldn’t imagine anything cropping up that would be more tempting than having pizza and studying with Mike Clancy.
Chapter Four
“Hey, Catherine. You’ll be here this evening, won’t you? Would you mind pulling a couple of plates for me?”
Catherine looked up from her microscope in response to the question the next afternoon. It was from one of the young women she had overheard talking about her last week, commenting about how Catherine never did anything but work, as if she had no life outside the lab.
It gave her great satisfaction to be able to say, “I’m sorry, Brandy, I won’t be here this evening. I have a date.”
“A date?”
Catherine wasn’t flattered by the surprise in the younger woman’s expression. She nodded coolly, feeling little compunction now about misrepresenting her plans for the evening. “You’ll have to ask someone else.”
“Okay…well…have fun.”
“Thank you. I intend to.”
It wasn’t like her to take such pleasure from deliberately misleading someone. But her lips curved into a rather grim smile of satisfaction as she bent back down to her work. It felt good to make it clear that she didn’t actually live here in the lab, with no outside interests of her own.
She really was going to have to start getting out more to make that assertion entirely true.
Catherine usually dressed quite casually—pretty much a necessity for most lab work. Her wardrobe consisted primarily of khakis and camp shirts in muted solids, often worn open over beige or white sleeveless tops. When the weather turned cooler, she swapped the camp shirts for thin sweaters with sleeves that could be pushed up and out of her way.
Occasionally she paired her khakis with more-professional blouses and blazers. When she had to dress up, she wore black slacks with the blazers. She rarely wore jeans or shorts and owned only a few skirts, since bare legs were not usually a good idea in a science lab.
Because her wardrobe was so simple and her choices rather limited, she didn’t spend much time deciding what to wear. She simply reached for a pair of slacks and any of the dozen or so shirts that matched them. She kept her hair in an easy-to-style bob, wore only light touches of makeup and eschewed all jewelry except her functional watch and a couple of pairs of simply styled earrings. She could be ready to leave her apartment in under half an hour.
All of which made it completely out of character for her to dither about her clothing for almost twenty minutes before Mike arrived Thursday evening. She had gotten home from work an hour earlier than she’d expected, giving her plenty of time to freshen up and change before Mike arrived, but for some reason she couldn’t decide what to wear. How silly, considering they wouldn’t be doing anything but studying, and that he wouldn’t notice her clothes, anyway.
She reached for fresh khakis and camp shirt, then paused again. On an impulse, she turned to a shelf on which she kept the two pairs of jeans that she owned. She donned a pair with a snug-fitting yellow T-shirt, then slid her bare feet into a pair of brown leather clogs.
Eyeing her reflection in the full-length mirror attached to the back of her closet door, she wondered if she had made the right choice. She looked more casual than usual. Too casual? Did it appear as though she were trying too hard to look younger?
“What do you think, Normie?”
The cat, who had been playing with a jingling toy ball near her feet, looked up and meowed rather impatiently, as if to tell her to stop being silly. Deciding that he was right, she turned off the closet light and left the bedroom.
Mike was late again, but only by fifteen minutes. The large pizza box in his hand looked as though it was still steaming, which probably explained his tardiness, she decided. Maybe he’d had to wait in line to pick it up. They should have just called for delivery.
A backpack was slung over one shoulder of the Hawaiian print shirt he wore over a T-shirt and faded jeans, reminding her of the “surfer dude” nickname she had given him the first time she’d seen him. He greeted her with a broad, beaming smile that elicited quivers of reaction deep inside her. “Hi.”
“Hi.” She moved to one side. “Come in.”
She closed the door behind him as he bent to scratch Norman’s ears. She wondered if anyone had seen him entering her apartment with the pizza, and if any tongues would wag as a result. She wasn’t accustomed to imagining herself at the center of apartment complex chatter, since her life wasn’t exactly fodder for juicy gossip.
“The pizza smells really good,” she said, making a stab at polite chitchat.
“We should probably eat it while it’s still hot, and then study afterward, don’t you think?”
“That sounds good. What would you like to drink?” she asked, waving him toward the table.