LEARNING CURVES

by Joanne Rock

  He felt like an engine that had been idling for too long, suddenly revving faster—more erratically—than it should, eager to flex its muscle and test its own power.

  Maddy stepped closer, situating herself between his thighs, lightly skimming her body against his. He tensed, debated the wisdom of holding her for all of two seconds, and then enfolded her in his arms.

  His hands found her waist and secured her to him, clenching silk-covered curves. He held her there, drinking in the taste of her, wishing they were somewhere where he could search out the source of the raspberry scent that still teased his nose.

  If he had the chance to get her alone, he'd never be stupid enough to turn her down again. If he had an hour—no, make that a night—with her, he'd make her forget her hare-brained scheme to hone her seduction skills on a stranger.

  Urging her closer, he relished the press of her breasts against his chest, the slide of her silken dress across his clothes.

  The sound of another set of high heels clicking on the paved parking lot jarred him. He pulled away from Maddy, disoriented, just in time to see a jeans-clad couple walk by on the way to their car.

  As their footsteps faded, Cal willed his breathing back to normal. He braved a look at Maddy and immediately wished he hadn't. Her steamy glasses tugged at his conscience.

  "My God." Of all the stupid things he'd done, this one topped the charts. What if someone had seen them? What if rumors of him out on the town, acting as irresponsibly as a teenager on his first date, reached the social services department? They'd reject his request for guardianship of Allison long before he got the chance to explain.

  "Sorry." Madeline touched her lips hesitantly, as if they might have changed since his kiss.

  The simple gesture made him want to kiss her all over again. And that kind of thinking could only get him in trouble.

  He grabbed her by the hand and pulled her toward the club. "See? The red dress is definitely working." He couldn't hide the growl in his voice. He hadn't been so sexually frustrated since high school.

  Maddy, however, sounded pleased. "I guess you're right." She tripped along behind him. "Slow down, Cal. Dr. Rose said a woman needs to make an entrance."

  "Dr. Rose?" He curbed his pace, not to help her with her entrance, but only because he didn't want her to twist an ankle. "Don't tell me the queen of malebashers has been giving you pointers in the manhunt."

  "She's very knowledgeable about that sort of thing," Maddy assured him. "I think she's dated a lot."

  "Dated and discarded, you mean. She's gone out with half the professors on campus." Rose Marie Blakely had a reputation almost as bad as his. Fleetingly, Cal wondered if Dr. Rose was avoiding a real relationship, too.

  "And I'll just bet no one has ever told her she doesn't have enough experience to handle her field of research," Maddy returned. "Maybe they only call her a male-basher because she doesn't let the administration walk all over her."

  Cal shrugged, willing to let the subject drop now that they had closed in on their destination.

  As they passed through the front doors to the bar, Cal noticed several men pause to look at Maddy. He put his arm around her to reel her in a little closer and then paid the cover charge.

  "I'll pay you back," Maddy whispered. "My money's not in a place where I can get to it in public."

  Did the woman live to torture him? He had a vision of himself scouting the terrain of her body in search of hidden dollar bills. "This one's on me."

  "But—"

  "I mean it, Maddy." He couldn't bear any more of Maddy's surprises tonight. They'd only just stepped through the doors, yet he felt as if he'd already been through the wringer.

  Music engulfed them. Another pop country tune boomed from the stereo system, giving a rhythm for the dancers and a back beat for the would-be Casanovas as they scoured the room for likely prey. Stetson hats and cowboy boots abounded, but so did khakis and polo shirts. A neon moon hung above a dance floor bigger than the average high school gymnasium. Cal gripped Maddy's hand, determined she wouldn't stray too far from him. He gritted his teeth at the male attention she garnered, but led her to the bar like a polite date and offered to buy her a drink. He'd get through this night somehow. While she waited for her tequila sunrise—a cocktail that suited her dress, according to Maddy—Cal scanned the room. He made meaningful eye contact with a few guys ogling Maddy, effectively communicating her off-limits status.

  He guided her to a table, thinking maybe he could do this after all. Another hour or two and he'd convince Maddy to go home. Maybe by then she'd realize that going out on the town wasn't all that exciting.

  He'd almost reached a quiet corner when a couple of friends who owned a rival car repair shop stepped out of the crowd to greet Cal. One of the men offered Cal a hearty handshake and a drunken slap on the back.

  In the moment that Cal was forced to let go of Maddy, he heard her murmur something about finding some paper for her notes.

  Notes?

  He swiveled around to grab her, almost knocking over his tipsy friend.

  But she was gone.

  The red dress had vanished into a sea of womanizing cowboys, leaving nothing but a whiff of raspberries and a trail of turning heads in its wake.

  * * *

  Chapter 5

  « ^ »

  Freedom.

  Madeline savored its sweetness as she hurried away from Cal and his iron grip around her wrist. At least, she tried to convince herself she was savoring her freedom. A little voice in the back of her mind wondered if she wasn't just running away from the wealth of emotions his kiss had fostered tonight.

  And what a kiss it had been.

  If Cal hadn't pulled away when he had, who knows how far she would have wandered into dangerous territory. She'd temporarily lost all ability to process any sensory impressions outside of him. In other words, she'd been completely, utterly lost in his kiss.

  Which probably meant she was as naive about human mating as her dissertation committee seemed to think. She needed to cultivate a little more sophistication about male-female associations before she did something stupid, such as getting caught up in a relationship her work left no time for. Or worse, what if she landed in a relationship and wrought as much heartache as her work-obsessed father had visited upon his lonely wife?

  So, despite the tingling in her lips left over from Cal's kiss—or maybe because of it—Madeline told herself she was only too glad to escape him. She might have accepted him as her date for the night, but that didn't mean she had to chain herself to his side, did it?

  Tempting as Cal and his spectacle-fogging kisses might be, she refused to forsake tonight's main objective—to observe the basics of human mating rituals.

  Cal had made it clear he wouldn't be able to show her the intricacies of flirtation and seduction. Therefore she would focus on learning whatever she could from other men and women in the bar tonight. If she paid close attention, she might begin to see the behavior patterns and learn what techniques were most successful in luring a partner.

  The raw data would be similar, on a small scale, to what she would gather for her dissertation. But this information would be used for personal purposes only. Madeline really needed it if she wanted to snag a male to flaunt around campus soon.

  This project taunted her, egging her on to succeed in spite of the obstacles. It marked the first topic she'd ever chosen without a care for how it would be professionally received. She'd chosen mating rituals because the subject attracted her, enticed her. She wouldn't back down now, not when she'd spent her whole life succeeding for success's sake.

  Her dissertation would be for her sake.

  Scoping the massive club for likely sources of paper, Madeline wound her way through the crowd toward the phone booths in the back. Surely she would find a scratch pad of some sort there.

  She walked slowly, concentrating on every step in her skyscraper heels so she wouldn't fall. One benefit to walking with Cal had been his so
lid strength at her fingertips. He balanced her when she teetered.

  Somewhere between the dance floor and the phone booths, a crazy man dressed in skintight denim accosted her.

  "Hey, hot thing, want to light my fire?" He drifted too close to her unsteady feet, reeking of alcohol. He didn't even bother to look her in the eye, choosing instead to stare straight down her dress.

  Madeline resisted the urge to cover her chest with a cocktail napkin. "Looks like you're already lit, cowboy."

  She sidled by him without too much trouble since he was falling-down soused anyway. Congratulating herself on routing disaster without the help of her jailer/date, Madeline jumped when a masculine hand wrapped around her forearm.

  A new crazy man stood in her path, this one clear-eyed and more intimidating than the drunk. He wore his perfectly combed hair slicked back. His designer silk shirt and Italian-looking shoes probably cost more than Madeline's entire wardrobe. And his cologne almost knocked her over. "Want to dance?"

  "No, thank you." She tugged against his grip, but he didn't release her right away.

  He pulled her toward the dance floor. "Come on. We'll make your boyfriend jealous."

  Unwilling to run back to Cal just yet, Madeline stepped closer to the cologne-doused Don Juan and carefully tread one red suede heel over his toe.

  Romeo let her go, but as she hurried away, he called her a name she'd never been labeled before. At least not within her hearing.

  No wonder women traveled in packs. This was insane. Her short walk through the club reminded her of trips down a carnival midway with the hustlers shouting out anything and everything to make her come play their games.

  She'd started out ready to have fun, but suddenly she didn't feel like playing anymore.

  The phone booths didn't have any paper, so Madeline approached a small bar in the back of the room. After her third unsuccessful attempt to capture the lady bartender's attention, a man at the bar pulled out a stool for her.

  "She'll notice you sooner if you have a seat," offered the man, who looked neither dangerous nor drunk. He wore a white button-down shirt similar to the kind Madeline normally wore to school. With his blond hair and blue eyes, he could have just stepped out of a Ralph Lauren advertisement.

  In fact, Madeline probably would have thought him handsome if she didn't have Cal on her mind.

  "Thanks."

  She accepted the chair, more for the sake of her sore feet than any haste to accomplish her mission. She didn't know if she was ready to face the crowd again.

  The man beside her withdrew his wallet. Madeline watched him reach for a ten-dollar bill.

  "You want me to order for you?" the man asked, startling her from her bout of nosiness.

  "No thanks," she returned, embarrassed to be caught staring. "I just needed a pen and paper anyway."

  Mr. All-America pulled a ballpoint from his breast pocket and passed it to her along with a cocktail napkin. "Here."

  She passed it back to him. "Thanks, but I need a little more room to write."

  "You can fit at least twenty phone numbers on here." He set the pen and napkin on the bar in front of her. "How much more room could one woman need?"

  "I'm taking notes, actually."

  He shook his head. "The women are taking notes these days?"

  He looked so woeful, Madeline had to laugh.

  "No. I'm collecting some data on the singles scene for a paper I'm writing." She thought it sounded better than, I'm taking notes on the art of seduction so I can lure a man.

  Her companion signaled the barkeeper and ordered a drink for himself along with some paper for her.

  "You have to admit, that sounds like a pickup line."

  "It does?" Fascinated, Madeline scribbled it down on a fresh cocktail napkin for future reference. Why couldn't Cal help her out like this? If he wasn't so busy clamping her to his side like a well-trained dog, maybe he could have given her a few pointers about this sort of thing.

  The Ralph Lauren man laughed. "Definitely. If I said that to a woman in here, she'd probably roll her eyes and walk away."

  "I don't know." Considering his statement, Madeline lifted the ballpoint to chew on the end, then remembered it wasn't one of hers. "I've heard a lot worse lines in the fifteen minutes I've been here."

  The bartender returned with his drink and Madeline's paper. She transferred her one note to the small pad with the club logo blazoned across the top.

  "Would you care to hear my spin on the pickup line?" Mr. All-America asked.

  Madeline poised her pen for her second notation. "Yes, please."

  Grinning, he lightly withdrew the pen from her grasp. "I think I'd like to pitch to the woman and not the researcher, if I may."

  Madeline froze. Had she understood this handsome, normal man correctly? He wanted to pick her up? To buy her a moment's time, she took her first sip of the tequila sunrise she'd ordered with Cal. The concoction singed her throat, but the slinging sensation gave her a moment of much-needed clarity.

  She didn't want this.

  No matter that she needed a man to help prove to the academic world she was no prude. No matter that she needed experience with seduction—her research topic of choice. What she really wanted was Cal.

  She smiled back at this nice, normal guy who wasn't for her. "I, um … I'm with a date."

  * * *

  Cal had prepared himself to find Madeline bumming a sheet of paper off the doorman or fending off the unwanted advances of some drunken lecher staring down her little red dress.

  He would have never guessed that he'd find her cozied up at the bar with what he supposed was a decent-enough-looking guy who wasn't staring down her dress but into her eyes.

  Damn.

  Cal definitely hadn't prepared himself for the stab of jealousy the Lady Scholar inspired by straightening her glasses in front of another man. Cal had thought he was the only one who could fluster her enough to elicit that particular gesture.

  So he did what any normal, unprepared man would do when confronted with his own jealousy.

  He barreled over to the bar and inserted himself between Maddy and the man who was about to lose a few teeth if he wasn't careful.

  Cal smiled, baring enough of his own teeth at the interloper to make his point. "Sorry to break up your play, man, but I sure as hell hope you weren't hitting on my woman just now."

  Maddy laid her hand on Cal's back, her touch calming him more than any words she might have offered. "Cal—"

  The guy at the bar stood, scraping his chair across the wooden floor. "I take it you're the date." He gathered up his jacket.

  "That would be me." Cal folded his arms over his chest, staking his territory. Maybe the guy could keep his teeth as long as he was retreating. Wise move.

  "Good luck with your research, miss," he called to Maddy as he backed away. To Cal, he raised a placating hand in the surrender position. "She's all yours, buddy."

  Cal nodded, satisfied. Men understood one another. He waited until the man disappeared into the crowd before tuning back to Maddy. It was the women who couldn't seem to understand the rules.

  He snatched Maddy's notepad off the bar. "You and your research need to come with me."

  He offered his hand to assist her, but she remained seated, glaring up at him as if he were the devil's own son. This was not going well.

  "Let's get out of here, Maddy, before you get into any more trouble."

  She rose to her feet and snatched her notepad back before he realized what she was doing. "You can just go ahead and leave by yourself, Cal Turner. I have no intention of going until I get what I came here for."

  That made his blood boil. He leaned closer to her, wanting to make damn sure she heard him over the blare of the music. "Get it through your head, woman, you are not taking a man home with you tonight!"

  She lifted her chin and tossed a few feet of hair over one shoulder. "Maybe not, but I can damn well take notes to figure out how to bring one home with me
the next time!" She waggled her notepad in front of his nose for emphasis.

  Oh, she was going too far. Cal ripped the pad out of her hand and threw it on the bar. "Who needs notes when you're wearing the siren dress? You could walk out of here with any man you choose."

  For a moment she looked mad enough to spit bullets. Cal waited for the impact, in fact, knowing he might have gone a little too far by tampering with her notes.

  She straightened her glasses and tucked a strand of brown hair behind her ear, making him feel like the world's biggest heel. "I don't think so, Cal. It seems I'm not going to walk out of here with the one I want."

  She pivoted on her suede stiletto heels and walked away, using his ten seconds of shock to escape him once again.

  Damn.

  Had she really wanted to go home with Mr. Apple Pie? Or had she meant someone else?

  Either way, he'd acted like a jerk. She hadn't wanted to come here with him tonight, but he'd talked her into it because he couldn't bear to see her get hurt.

  Yet, Madeline Watson was obviously a more resourceful woman than he'd given her credit for. Not only had she conquered walking in high heels in the course of an evening, but she had warded off sleaze-balls and fended for herself just fine without him.

  Knowing he had some apologizing to do, Cal retrieved Maddy's crumpled pad of notepaper from the bar and smoothed the sheets. He added a few more bills to the bartender's jar to make up for the commotion he'd created and the customer he'd run off.

  Apparently his bad reputation remained alive and well. Try as he might to keep a clean slate, Cal seemed to have a penchant for making trouble and causing a scene.

  He had mishandled this whole week with Maddy. She didn't deserve his jealousy and bad temper when he hadn't even tried to give her the help she needed for her dissertation. He hadn't really considered taking her up on her seductive offer because he knew he'd never be able to have a no-strings relationship with someone like her.

  For her sake, maybe he could try. Maybe as long as he started behaving himself in public, he could afford a little misbehavior behind closed doors.