Trouble (44 page)

“No.”

Scowling, he folded his arms. “I'll think about it. But I ain't making any promises. Okay?”

Without waiting for her answer, he wheeled around and took off down the hallway.

“Okay,” she called after him.

Once he was safely gone, she clapped her hands together. “Thank you, God,” she whispered, turning toward the steps.

But on her way past the downstairs copy machine, which was hidden behind a cubicle screen, she was startled to see Mike looking bemused. Warm. Admiring.

“Thank
you
, Dara.”

“Yeah. Of course.” Flustered, she nodded. “I mean … It's nothing.”

He hesitated, looking as if he wanted to say something else, but, for God's sake, people, how was she supposed to think when he looked at her like
that
?

Time to go, Dara
.

“I'll just …” she began, but the rest of the sentence evaporated in the space between her brain and her tongue.

Trailing off, she scurried on her way, propelled by his burning gaze on her back.

A week or so later, Mike hung up the phone and rubbed the back of his neck to relieve some of the tension permanently lodged there. He glanced at his watch and realized it was just after six. Wait a minute. Was Jamal still here? He got up and strode into the corridor outside Dara's office.

“Jamal!” he bellowed down the hall. “Jamal!”

Dara, who'd started spending more and more time back at the office after classes—he had no idea why—sat at her computer and looked up at him just as Jamal poked his head around the screen that hid the upstairs copy machine.

“What are you still doing here, man?” Mike asked. “You're going to be late for your GED class!”

“Well, you told me to finish making these copies before I left,” Jamal said, flapping a stack of papers at him.

Mike shook his head. “You don't have the sense God gave a goat. I didn't mean for you to be late for class. I'll take you. Get your stuff and meet me at the front door.”

Dara had begun packing up her backpack to go home, but she looked up and smiled as Mike wandered into her office. Lately he'd developed the troublesome habit of seeking her out before she left for the night, even though he knew he shouldn't. But it felt like something crucial was left unfinished if he didn't see her that one last time each day.

“That boy's going to be the death of me,” he told her.

Dara cocked her head and studied him, her brows knit in concentration. He could almost hear the wheels spinning in her sharp little mind.

“You don't want Jamal on the street at night, do you?” she finally asked.

“I was heading that way, anyway,” he said, a complete lie. But he didn't want to make a big deal out of his concern for Jamal's safety for fear Jamal would resent and resist it.

“No, you weren't,” Dara said flatly.

Thoroughly disconcerted, Mike could only stare at her.

What kind of Jedi mind trick was this? Every day this woman found new ways to mess with his head. And the way she looked at him sometimes—with those big shining eyes; expressive eyes; hypnotic eyes—would make him crazy if he wasn't careful.

“It's no big deal,” he muttered, dropping his gaze and praying she couldn't read his thoughts through his lowered eyelids. “Forget it.”

“It is a big deal,” she insisted. “And when he makes something of his life, it'll be because
you
believed he could. He's dedicated, hardworking, and smart, and no one would ever have realized it if you hadn't taken an interest in him.
You
volunteered to be his mentor.
You
stay in touch with his teacher.
You
drive him to class. It
is
a big deal.”

Mike stared at her in slack-jawed astonishment, fighting the urge to touch her. Kiss her. Pull her up against him so he could discover, once and for all, how her body felt against his.

Seconds passed.

An eternity passed.

For the life of him, he couldn't think of anything to say. How did she understand him so well on this issue and still not have the slightest idea he was fighting a losing battle to control his attraction to her?

“You're”—he paused, clearing his throat—”you're good for him, too. I know you've been helping him with his English work.”

“It's been my pleasure.”

“Good,” he said, knowing he had to get out of there and away from her gravitational pull ASAP, before he said or did something he'd regret. Which was pretty much everything he wanted to say or do at the moment. “Guess I won't fire you today, then.”

She grinned.

His heart contracted.

Without another word, he spun on his heel and left, leaving another little piece of himself behind, with her.

The next night, Dara drove her car through the dark streets, compulsively clicking her automatic door locks every several blocks or so. After reviewing Jamal's essays for him, she'd forgotten to give his notebook back before he left the office this afternoon, so she'd decided to drop it off at his apartment.

It'd seemed like a perfectly reasonable plan until she got to Jamal's sketchy neighborhood.

Groups of people, mostly men with bulky jackets and sweatshirt hoods pulled low over their eyes, stood on every corner, eyeballing her car as she drove by.

Probably because she stood out like a toaster in a swimming pool.

Finally, she found Jamal's apartment building, an old brownstone with crumbling steps and looping, swirling white graffiti climbing the walls like kudzu. Miraculously, there was a free parking space in front of the building. She parked and climbed out, squeezing her way past yet another group of menacing men. Too bad she didn't have any of Mike's business cards to pass out. Surely, everyone in this group kept a criminal attorney on retainer.

The heavy front door was ajar, emitting the stench of old cooking grease and something sharper. Urine, maybe.

She climbed the steps to the second floor and knocked on his door. She heard someone on the other side mumbling and checking the peephole, and then a loud
“What the … ?”
before Jamal yanked the door open.

“What the hell are you doing here, Dara?” he snapped without preamble.

“I—I'm returning your notebook,” she said, surprised by his alarm and, beneath the surface, his shame. “I know you need it for class.”

He snatched it from her, then grabbed her arm and marched her back down the steps and outside, to her car.

“Overreact, much?” Dara yanked her arm back, trying to get free.

Jamal finally turned her loose. “Don't ever come here alone, Dara. This ain't the suburbs. Wait till Mike hears about this.”

“You're tattling on me?” she cried, outraged, because, even though she'd known better, she'd still ignored that most basic rule of humanity:

No good deed goes unpunished.

“You bet your ass I am,” Jamal grimly assured her.

“What's this I hear?”

Mike stormed into Dara's office first thing the next morning, slamming the door behind him. His heart beat crazily, as it had ever since Jamal told him what Dara had done. Just last week a fourteen-year-old girl had been sexually assaulted in an abandoned building across the street from Jamal's. Didn't Dara read the papers?

But there was more to his anger than that. The enormous power she had over him enraged him. She put herself in unnecessary danger and he unraveled. And there didn't seem to be a damn thing he could do about it.

She was wedged deep inside his head no matter how desperately he tried to get her out.

“You went to Jamal's neighborhood at night by yourself?” he continued. “Are you insane?”

She'd been typing at the computer, but now she swiveled to face him, her expression mulish. “Look. Jamal's already read me the riot act. Let's move on.”

She turned back to her keyboard, like that was the end of the matter.

For one disbelieving second, Mike stood there, stunned speechless and trying not to choke on his anger.

Then, all but snarling, he strode to her side of the desk and spun her chair to face him.

With a squawk of surprise, she started to get up, but he squatted at her eye level and put his hands on the arms of her chair, trapping her.

“What if something had happened to you?” he roared.

Dara's entire body jerked, as if she'd been riding in a speeding car when suddenly the driver slammed on the brakes. At this distance, Mike's strength and power—his raw masculinity—hit her like a punch to the gut. And all at once, it was clear in his fever-bright eyes, the throbbing pulse in his forehead and the tension in his jaw.

He wasn't just angry. He was scared.

She … mattered to him.

Undone, Dara watched him for a long moment. His eyes, clear as two prisms on a chandelier, were astonishing. With his anger, they'd turned a darker brown, but she could see flecks of gold and green in them.

Those were amazing eyes.

A woman could easily get lost in those eyes.

And then the unthinkable happened, and her gaze slipped to his full lips.

The set of his mouth was harsh and cruel, but some primitive instinct told her his lips, on hers, would feel …

“Never. Do that. Again. Understood?” he demanded.

The tension inside her spiked higher, surging toward some nebulous point beyond which she would shatter if she weren't careful.

“Yes,” she said.

Mollified, he eased his grip on her chair, giving her the opportunity she needed. Feeling as though she was running for her life, she dug in her heels and rolled her chair back, surged to her feet, brushed past him and hurried out of her own office, determined to hide out in the conference room until he left for court and it was safe for her to return.