CHAPTER FIVE

      THE MAN WAS enough to drive her to drink. Two o’clock Saturday afternoon and they’d spent barely a moment at home. So, of course, Michael still hadn’t made love to her. He’d touched her. Hell, he could hardly keep his hands off her. Yet the second things started to progress, he’d find something to talk about.

      Without really talking about anything at all.

      And Susan thought she was nervous about taking that final, irrevocable step.

      This morning, after he’d thrown Seth out, he’d decided he was hungry, after all. So they went to the new restaurant Seth had recommended for lunch, and a couple of hours disappeared. Then he’d asked to see her office on the way back to the condo, giving as his reason the fact that he hadn’t been there since she’d moved her desk in front of the window.

      Eventually, they’d ended up back at the condo. It was either that or go see the Star Trek movie.

      “Let’s make a gingerbread house,” Susan said as they pulled in the drive.

      “What?” He looked over at her as though she’d lost her mind. Putting her Infiniti in park, he shut off the engine and handed her the keys.

      “Come on.” She grinned at him. “It’ll be fun.” And it would give them something unthreatening to do—at home, where there was at least a possibility of babies being made.

      “You need special candies and stuff to do that,” Michael told her as he followed her into the house.

      “Got them.” She’d meant to make a gingerbread house with Spencer and Barbara’s five-year-old daughter, Melissa, at Christmastime. Thank goodness she’d never mentioned her intentions to Melissa, because she hadn’t had a Saturday off in the entire month of December.

      Hanging his coat on the rack, Michael reached for hers. “Gingerbread houses are for Christmas.”

      “If you promise not to tell Santa, I won’t.”

      “Susan.” Michael took her in his arms, pulled her against him. Kissed her once—and let her go. “A gingerbread house isn’t something you finish in an afternoon. They take hours of planning.”

      Hurt by Michael’s unwillingness to make love to her, Susan headed for the kitchen. “Then we’ll design a simple one.”

      Michael had always had artistic flair. His doodles were proof of that. But he’d hardly ever stopped working long enough to do more than doodle. She’d like to see him turned loose on a gingerbread house.

      “Just waiting for the gingerbread to bake and cool takes all day,” Michael said, walking into the kitchen.

      “We’ve got all day.” Susan was taking ingredients from cupboards, piling them on the kitchen counter. “Besides, it won’t take that long. We can always pop the pieces in the freezer when they come out of the oven.” She had to stand on tiptoe to get the molasses from the cupboard above the stove and Michael was suddenly there, reaching over her, bringing it down.

      He brushed his body against hers, then let her go. And told Susan something she desperately needed to know. He wanted her. He was hard as a rock.

      But before she could so much as turn in his arms, he’d stepped away from her to study the recipe she’d put on the counter.

      “It says you have to chill the dough overnight before you cut it.”

      “So we’ll pop it in the freezer before we bake it, too.”

      “Susan, I’m telling you, if you start this now, you’ll still be at it tomorrow afternoon.”

      “Not with you helping me I won’t.” She grinned at him to hide her hurt. “You want to mix or dump in the ingredients?”

      “Dump.” Michael didn’t sound any more excited about that than he had about the baby. She hoped he was a little quicker at the dumping or they wouldn’t get the house made.

      HE’D BEEN RIGHT, of course. There was no way they were going to finish her damn gingerbread house that day. They’d been working on it for a couple of hours already and he was still at the designing stage.

      But he had to admit the idea had been a good one. He couldn’t remember the last time he and Susan had laughed together like this.

      “You have flour on your nose,” he told her, reaching up to brush the dab of white away. His fingers lingered. He’d always loved the softness of her skin, the contrast between it and his rough stubble.

      “Remember that time we were fooling around in the trees outside my dorm, and Connie Fisher dumped that bag of flour all over us?” she asked now, leaning over his shoulder as she surveyed his drawing. He’d been sitting at the table with paper and pencil for the better part of an hour.

      “She was lucky she was up three flights,” he grumbled, remembering all right. Susan had just let him under her shirt for the first time and right before he’d had his first real handful of the breasts that had been driving him to distraction all semester, they’d been ambushed.

      And she’d been donned the rest of the week for missing curfew. He’d had to wait another five days to finally touch her.

      She’d been so worth the wait....

      “I think this is it.” He reined in his thoughts, not trusting himself to travel along the road they’d taken. Which was ironic, considering the fact that sex with Susan was his whole reason for being there.