“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 hi
s 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.”