He looked at her with a curiously lifted eyebrow. “Um—what?”
She told herself that it would make her look even more foolish to take her words back now. And why should she, really? After all, he’d done the favor of helping her rescue Norman. And this was certainly something she was qualified to offer him in return.
“I’ll help you study for the test…if you’re interested. My undergraduate degree was in biology. So if there’s anything I can do to help you prepare—”
“Hey, I’m not too proud to beg for help,” he said with a devastatingly attractive, crooked grin. “If you’re sure you have the time, and it isn’t too much trouble, I would be grateful for any help you can give me. I really want to pass this test.”
She nodded. “It’s no trouble at all. When would you like to come by?”
“Are you free tomorrow afternoon?”
“I have some things to do at work in the morning, but I should be home by about two. Shall we make it three o’clock?”
“I’ll be there. And, hey, thanks, Dr. Travis. I really appreciate this.”
She glanced down at the cat dozing contentedly in her arms, purring like a chain saw. “It’s the least I can do. I’ll see you tomorrow, then.”
Eager now to get away before she said something incredibly dumb, she carried Norman up the stairs to her apartment. When she glanced down from her front door, she noticed that Mike was already gone.
Chapter Two
“Hey, Mike! Heads up.”
He turned just in time to snatch the basketball out of the air, spin and sink it into a basket above his head. Nothing but net.
Three male voices groaned loudly. Two others cheered. Mike’s three-on-three teammates slapped him on the back and offered upraised hands for high fives.
“And that would be…game!” Bob Sharp performed an embarrassingly dorky dance of victory, his near-shoulder-length red hair flying around his square-jawed face.
“Dude.” Mike rolled his eyes. “Chill.”
“Seriously.” Black-haired, green-eyed Brandon Williams, the third member of the winning team, tossed a sweaty towel at Bob. “You’re making us look bad.”
Still joking around with his teammates and opponents—also all friends—Mike moved to a bench at one side of the park basketball court and rooted in his gym bag for his watch. He groaned when he found it. He had lost track of time during the game and now he had ten minutes to shower, change, grab his books and make it to Catherine Travis’s apartment by three o’clock.
He was going to be late.
“Hey, Mike. Wanna go have a beer and watch a game or two?”
“Can’t,” he replied to Bob’s suggestion. “Gotta study.”
Typically, Bob brushed off the excuse. “C’mon, man, you can study later. It’s not like you’ll be grounded if you don’t get an A.”
He laughed heartily at his own joke. Bob still couldn’t understand why Mike had decided to go back to school almost ten years after dropping out of his first attempt at higher education. Bob was perfectly happy driving a delivery truck and stocking snack machines in local businesses, spending his leisure hours hanging with friends and chasing women.
Until a few months ago, Mike had been pretty much content with that lifestyle himself. Now that he had decided he wanted more, some of his friends seemed determined to try to talk him out of it.
“C’mon, Mike, have a beer with us,” Brandon seconded. “It’s too nice a day to study.”
“Sorry, guys. Can’t. I’m supposed to meet someone at three for a study session, and I’m already running late.”
“Oh, ho.” Bob gave a sudden, knowing grin. “That explains your hurry to hit the books. So who is she?”
“Just someone who offered to help me get ready for a test Monday. And I’ve really got to go, guys. See you later, okay?”
“You’re holding out on us, Clancy,” Bob called after him. “We want to meet this chick.”
As he jumped into his pickup and threw it into gear, Mike wondered how Dr. Travis would feel about having herself referred to as a “chick.” He wouldn’t think she’d care for it much.
Dr. Travis. It felt sort of odd to refer to her that way. Made her sound like one of his stuffy professors, rather than the attractive young woman she was.
Glancing at the dashboard clock, he saw that it was almost straight-up three o’clock. He was definitely going to be late.
He had been criticized quite often for his rather fluid concept of time. His friends had pretty much gotten used to never knowing when to expect him. He hoped Dr. Travis wasn’t one of those clock-watching types who got upset about that sort of thing.
But when she opened her door for him at twenty minutes after three, she didn’t look at all annoyed. In fact, strangely enough, she seemed almost apologetic.
“It occurred to me a few minutes ago that I never gave you my phone number,” she said, motioning him inside. “There was no way for you to let me know you’d been held up. I hope you didn’t have to rush too hard to get here because of my oversight.”
She really was blaming herself because he was late. Interesting. “It’s my fault for letting time get away from me,” he assured her. “I hope it didn’t cause you any inconvenience.”
“No. I don’t have any other plans for the afternoon.” She motioned toward her small, rectangular dining table. “I thought we could spread your books and notes on the table. Can I get you a glass of fresh lemonade before we get started?”
“That sounds great, Dr. Travis. If it’s no trouble.”
She smiled and shook her head. “I’d like a glass, myself. And please call me Catherine.”
He watched surreptitiously as she moved into the kitchen. Wearing an olive-green camp shirt open over a khaki-colored pullover and khaki slacks, she looked even younger than she had the last time he’d seen her. He still couldn’t really guess her age, though he would bet she wasn’t more than a couple of years on either side of thirty. Very close to his own age.
She must have earned her doctorate at a young age. One of those brainy, ambitious, superfocused types, apparently. But not an intellectual snob. She wasn’t giving off any vibes that suggested she considered herself superior to a twenty-eight-year-old maintenance man with only a few hours of college credit behind him.
Remembering a recent, painful encounter with a woman who had made no secret of her disdain for his current status, he winced.
Something touched his leg. He glanced down just as Catherine’s cat meowed a greeting. “Well, hello, Norman. I wondered where you were hiding.”
Returning to the table with two glasses of lemonade and a plate of brownies, Catherine slid into the chair beside him. “He’s been asleep on my bed. He has to have at least ten naps a day or he gets cranky.”
Chuckling, Mike scratched Norman’s ears, eliciting a loud purr of approval. He stopped scratching to reach for his lemonade. “This looks great. Homemade brownies?”
Catherine shrugged. “Just the box-mix kind. I was having a snack attack earlier.”
Judging by her slender frame, she didn’t give in to “snack attacks” that often. But since he didn’t feel quite right about checking out her figure when she was offering to help him study, he pulled his gaze away from her and snagged a brownie from the platter.
Catherine