A Date on Cloud Nine (18 page)

There was no phone plugged into the jack, no alarm control pad—no surprise there, but Lilly looked anyway. She opened the curtains and flicked the desk lamp on and
off, three short, three long, though she couldn’t remember which letter was which in Morse code, so she could be sending OSO for all she knew. And who knew if anyone would see it, if anyone would call the police, or if a neighbor would just call Donna and say something funny was going on up in her attic.

Better quit. Better find something better.

Hmm, she couldn’t call the police, but if she could make smoke, the alarm system would summon the fire department. Then she could hang out the window and scream her head off.

Jake sped through the dark streets to the Marquette mansion. He had no reason to think anything was wrong, not really. But he worried just the same.

He powered up his notebook computer, networked to the receiver mounted on the shelf behind the rear seat, and picked up the signal from the watch Lilly had donned that morning. Rachel had it made for her feminine side; sometimes she got hassled when she was out in drag at night. She thought a record could be useful.

Jake wouldn’t track Lilly or listen in under normal circumstances, but he knew the Marquette men were shady characters. With Lilly still not answering her phone, the worst-case scenario might be the very one he’d encounter, so he began an immediate download.

Meanwhile, he dialed the Marquettes’ number on his cell phone. This time, to his relief, Donna answered.

“I’d like to talk to Lilly,” he said.

“She’s not here right now. Who’s calling?”

“Jake Murdoch.”

“Oh. Jake.” Definitely a chill there. “Drew drove Lilly
back to her house right after dinner. She remembered something in a closet that she thought he’d like. You know, something of Brady’s.”

Hair on the back of his neck stood up. Suspicious—call it experience, not intuition—he scanned the data scrolling across his screen.

Went back to her house, my ass.
According to the GPS chip in the watch, Donna was lying through her teeth.

“I see.” Not wanting to alert Donna that he was on to her, he said he’d try Lilly’s phone and hung up.

His CATS (Converting Audio to Text Software) program began typing rapidly across the screen. He chose to read text rather than listen to old audio, because even with CATS’ language limitations and negotiating his way around other cars out on the road, he could skim it faster. Real-time conversation was too slow, filled with pauses and social niceties. He read nothing pertinent during the time she’d been in the Jag and jumped ahead to her arrival at the mansion.

Sorry we’re late

He skimmed ahead and stuck a bud in his ear so he could listen to current audio as he neared his target. All he heard was a shrill shriek—could be an electronic malfunction, could be an alarm. He discarded the bud to give his ear a break and went back to old text to pick up a clue.

That’s sweet of you to say especially since I’ve gained five pounds recently

If so, it was going to all the right places. He started sweating just thinking about those places.

I’m with you Mother Lilly looks just find to me wonderful in fact

Jerk.

I’d like you to consider investing in the business

Reading had its limitations, too; he couldn’t always tell who was speaking. Andrew? Donna? Hopefully not Frank. Frank was meaner’n a snake under a pile of bricks.

After an
uh-oh
, there was a bunch of gibberish, then,
I’ll be okay really hay.

Junk typed on the screen spastically, random letters, which could only mean a lot of noise that the program thought should be words, but weren’t. He checked and found current audio still shrieking.

Drew Andrew this isn’t funny
More spastic typing.
Donna

Then more again. The receiver in the watch wasn’t able to pick up whatever was being said until
let me out of hear

Shit! He’d parked half a block away so they wouldn’t see the taxi, which stuck out like a sore thumb. He almost jumped out of the car at that point and ran and broke their door down, but when you had a system like this, you used it to its full capability. No sense going in blind.

It’ll help you wake up

What the hell had they done?

Sorry about your drink I had no idea Mother was going to do that

Right

Jake felt a tremendous sense of relief to see Lilly was talking again.

Nine thirty give or take

He checked his watch. Damn, almost an hour ago. Anything could’ve happened since then.

Oh God my heads spinning drew

Surely this was grounds to murder the bastard, right after he tortured him. If anything’d happened to Lilly—

He’d told his dad he felt guilty wanting his best friend’s wife. He’d been willing to buy into the theory that Brady wouldn’t mind because that’s what he hoped. Now he knew beyond all doubt that what Brady would’ve wanted didn’t matter. Time didn’t matter either, whether he’d been gone five days, five months, or five years. But Lilly did. Holding her again, telling her how much he loved her, spending the rest of his life with her—that’s what mattered.

This will be for your own good you’ll see

Well, of course.

There was little text after that, a couple of
shit
s, and then Lilly was talking to herself again, or more correctly, she was talking to her invisible friend Elizabeth.

He inserted the bud again. He could barely hear Lilly with the shrieking, but it was enough to assure him that she was more lucid, up and moving around. Deep groans sounded like heavy furniture scooting across a wood floor. For a change, he wished she’d talk to herself some more, and louder, so he’d know what she was doing. Too bad he hadn’t told her that morning just what kind of changes he’d made to Rachel’s watch.

“There!”

Finally
. She sounded upbeat, holding her own, giving him time to reach her.

He’d storm the Marquettes’ front door, but it was undoubtedly steel and impenetrable.

Maybe he could scale the side of the house. He scanned backward to check text—yep, he knew where Donna’s of
fice was. He could climb through a second-story window and work his way up to it.
That
door was breakable.

A sharp noise blasted through his ear bud. A gunshot?

“Son of a bitch.”

He sprang out of the car and took off without looking back to see if he’d even closed the door, wondering as he ran if he’d be too late.

Time for 9-1-1 after all. Halfway to the house, he reached for his cell phone, checked his belt, checked his coat pocket, checked his jeans pocket, but
damn
he’d either dropped it or left it in the taxi.

Another blast came directly from the mansion looming ahead.

“Son of a bitch!”

He raced onward, thinking,
Please don’t let me lose her
.

I
t wasn’t the type of emergency Lilly had trained for as a pilot, but discipline was discipline.

She pushed a heavy desk up against the doorframe, then knotted a drapery tieback around the knob, over the desktop, and wedged it into a drawer, effectively locking Andrew out, which really ticked him off. She couldn’t make out a lot of what he was yelling through the door, thanks to the screeching smoke alarm, but she wasn’t waiting around for an interpretation. Nice of them, though, to lock her in an office with a metal waste can, plenty of paper, and a handy lighter. Too bad she hadn’t searched through the trash first; she would’ve pulled out the aerosol cans before they exploded and scared her half to death.

She ripped curtains off the attic windows and knotted them together to fashion a makeshift rope.

Next she looted the attic’s crawl-in storage space. Each minute she spent preparing her escape would be another
minute for her drugged, shaky muscles to regain strength. Normal would be nice, but she wasn’t in a position to be picky. She threw pillows and blankets and old clothes and anything else soft she could find out onto the roof a story below, to cushion her fall if the hastily constructed rope didn’t hold. Even with drugs in her system, her toes still hurt; a hard landing would immobilize her.

Andrew landed a couple good smacks on the door with something large and heavy.

I’m outta here. Good-bye, thanks for a wonderful evening, don’t bother walking me to the door, I’ll take the window.

A soft heaping pile waited on the second-story roof below, spilling off it, as it wasn’t much wider than a ledge. Falling definitely wasn’t part of her plan.

Unlike the morning at Cloud Nine, this time Lilly saw Jake running to her rescue, charging into the yard like a man possessed, his entire focus on reaching the front door. She leaned out the office window and yelled to him. He pulled up short, looking both relieved that she was okay and fearful that she wouldn’t be for long.

He seemed to divine her plan, as he threw both arms up in a commanding,
Don’t move
gesture and bellowed, “Stay there! I’m coming up!”

“No!”

No way she was putting his life at risk again. At the dildo shop, he was a stranger who’d taken a chance; this time, he was someone she cared for, and she had a say in how everything played out. The last thing she needed or wanted was Jake getting hurt again on her behalf.

“Don’t. I think Drew’s got a weapon.”

That didn’t worry her nearly as much as what Jake
would do to Andrew. Assault would get him locked up for a while, and her timetable didn’t have room for that. The fact that she couldn’t get pregnant while he was held over didn’t bother her except that meant she wouldn’t be able to stay with him permanently. Forever was looking pretty good. She’d almost given up on forever.

She’d get out onto the roof. From there, she’d crawl along the ledge and find a sturdy drainpipe or tree to climb down, at least stay out of the way until the fire department arrived. Let Andrew and Donna explain why the only fire was a little bitty smoky one in a metal wastebasket.

She tossed her red heels out the window, and they bounced on the lawn. They were new, strappy, and sexy, and she still needed them to get Jake into bed. Next she peeled out of her stockings and swung one leg over the windowsill.

Jake yelled, “Stay there! Give me two minutes, just
stay there
.”

It was impossible to argue with someone who disappeared.

Too bad the faulty furnace had been at Cloud Nine instead of here. Donna deserved to have her precious house burn to the ground. A couple second-and third-degree burns would be justified. Something really painful but not life-threatening.

Finally, the shrieking alarm shut off. She didn’t know if Donna figured out how to silence it or what. Didn’t matter. What mattered was that she could hear Andrew banging on the hinges, loosening them.

Lilly glanced downward, measuring the distance to climb, the width of the ledge, the depth of the landing
pile. She checked the rope—the curtains were anchored around the leg of a chair pressed against the wall—pulling and tugging on it to make sure it’d hold her weight. Even if the chair lifted off the floor, it wouldn’t fit through the window, so she felt okay about things on that end. Actually climbing down a bunch of knotted curtains was another matter entirely, but they only had to keep her from tumbling two stories into the thorny pyracanthas.

Leaning backward, she scrunched her other leg through the window, then wondered how she was supposed to hold on for dear life, turn around,
and
grab the curtains. She’d just eased onto her stomach and started to slide off when she heard boots thumping across the lower roof.

“Lilly!”

Her heart melted at the sound of Jake’s voice, her knight-on-a-white-steed to the rescue.

“
Don’t move
.”

“You better not have hurt yourself coming up here.”

Strong hands grasped her ankles. “I’m fine. Slide on down here, easy, I’ll catch you.”

“The ledge isn’t wide enough for both of us.”

“Don’t argue.” He tugged at her ankles.

She wiggled and slithered the rest of herself over the sill, feeling his hands slide up her legs, then her body, as she descended inside the circle of his strong arms. On the skinny ledge, Jake turned her and hugged her and nearly smothered her against his chest.

She didn’t care whether she could breathe. If he held her this way forever, if she felt this cherished forever, then all would be well.

Fire trucks roared up in front of the mansion. Lilly and Jake watched together, remembering a similar scene.

“We have to quit meeting like this.” His breath was hot on her ear, and he made her laugh.

“Promise.”

“Come on.” He took her hand and drew her carefully along the roof. “Don’t look down.”

She loved the way his voice was all rough and edgy and gave her goose bumps.

A subconscious sense of self-preservation forced her into a low crouch as she followed him, hand in hand, their steps slow because there was precious little moonlight on that side of the house to illuminate the way. They moved steadily onward until they reached the back of the house and the first-story covered porch that would provide a route down.

“Sit on the edge. I’ll lower you.” He never took his hands from her, touching her arms as he steered her, her body as she approached the copper gutter. Never had she felt so protected, so safe.

Peering over the edge as he inched her forward, she noted the more gently sloped roof below—
far
below, because the house was built with very high ceilings.

“What?” he said when she paused.

“How on earth did you get up here from there?”

“Guys with brains work out, too, you know. Chin-ups, push-ups, the whole works. Now sit.”

She dangled her legs over the edge, feeling cold copper against the backs of her thighs.

“Now just like you did up in the window, turn over onto your stomach, and I’ll lower you down.”

“Unless your arms telescope, I think we’re in trouble.”

“Shit, yours don’t do that?” He crouched on the roof behind her, still touching her at all times with his strong hands. “C’mon, honey, you can do it.”

She peered past her toes. “Is a smooth landing too much to hope for?”

“You ever crashed a landing yet?”

“No. Well, there was that one tiny incident when I was fifteen and overshot the end of the runway a little.”

“And to think I was considering flying with you. C’mon, don’t look down. Just turn around and flip over.”

Cautiously, she eased into position.

“Okay. Grab hold of this.” At least he’d been thinking ahead; he’d picked up one of the blankets she’d tossed out, and she hadn’t even noticed.

When he told her to slip off her perch, she trusted him completely.

Under cover of darkness, Jake and Lilly stood together beneath the widespread branches of an ancient oak tree, arguing Lilly’s options, which was the last thing Jake wanted to be doing right now. She wanted to march up to Donna and Andrew and punch out their lights. While Jake was somewhat in favor of this, he had something better in mind, if she’d just stop pacing—actually, stumbling over tree roots—and hear him out.

“See if I sell my house to her
now
.”

“Hey, listen—”

“I’ll donate it to the university myself, so there. As long as they give the rent to a needy cause—”

“Listen.” He grabbed her by the shoulders and held her
directly in front of him so she’d have to focus on what he had to say.

Still, she clenched her jaw and swore. “I can take Donna, I know I can.”

“You know, you’re cute when you’re mad.”

She shifted from foot to foot, her hands tightly fisted. “She may work out, but she’s older’n me.”

Only one way Jake could think of to shut her up, only one way he wanted to. He framed her face between his hands and kissed her, just like that—no warning, no leading up to it, no giving her a chance to back off, just get it done.

It worked. Lilly froze in place, her gaze locked with his like a deer caught in headlights. She licked her lips, tasting where his had just been. For once she was speechless, couldn’t even manage a smile.

“Come on. Follow my lead.” He squeezed her hand to impart a little confidence, then kissed her knuckles.

In the front yard, Donna and Andrew were huddled with a fireman and a police officer, explaining that Lilly had a drug problem and didn’t really mean to set off a false alarm, but you know how these things are, it happened anyway. They’d been trying to help her through this on their own, “family, you know,” but they could see now that she needed to be checked into a resident program, and what could they do to make this whole thing disappear?

“I’d like to make two Marquettes disappear.”

Though Jake appreciated the sentiment, he said, “Hush,” squeezing her hand where it nestled in his. “Let ’em talk.”

“But—”

“Trust me.”

“Fine, you listen to them, but I’m getting my purse before they steal my checkbook.”

It crossed his mind to take Andrew aside and tell him about the transmitter in the watch Lilly was wearing, to offer to make the evidence disappear for a rather large contribution to the Murdoch-got-screwed fund.

But he chose the other path, the one that would get Lilly’s side on record and substantiated so if anything else happened to her—and it damned well better not!—Marquettes would be the primary suspects. Once they knew that, she’d be safe. Nothing was more important to him than her safety.

He didn’t wonder how or when he’d started to feel that way, because it was a combination of things she’d done and said over the past two weeks, things he’d never expected out of her: free day care for working teenage mothers, increased publicity for hotline numbers, literacy programs and adult basic education, scholarships to his alma mater, help for stray dogs and stray kids, and even something as simple and personal as a fudge treaty with Susannah.

“They’re lying through their teeth,” she said when she returned.

“Yeah, I know.” He grinned. “Give ’em time, they’ll bury themselves.”

The little regard Donna and Andrew had for Lilly made Jake sick to his stomach, but Lilly’s recounting to the authorities, backed up by an audio and text demonstration of the watch and software, went a long way toward making him feel better. The best part was that most
of that technology had been developed with none other than Brady’s money.
Ha!

Getting Lilly home and safely in bed would finish the job.
His
bed would be nice.

And what of respect for his dead friend now?—his conscience prodded now that the adrenaline rush was over.

Well, he was pretty sure after rescuing Lilly twice that even Brady couldn’t object. Rationalization?—maybe. She was a helluva kisser.

Finally thinking clearly?—more likely.

Not giving a damn anymore?—definitely. Brady was dead, Jake was here, and Lilly was going to be his. Period. Forever, if she’d have him.

After Angie, after being pulled off the path of self-destruction, he hadn’t dared to share his heart with anyone else. Now—Well, now he was thinking he just might have a future with Lilly.

He only wanted what was best for her. He was it.

Lilly picked up her shoes. Jake draped his arm around her shoulders and steered her to the taxi.

Speeding homeward, safely by his side, Lilly said, “I don’t know what you’re smiling about. They’ll still find a way to come out on top, just wait and see.”

“You prefer to be on top?”

“Well of course!”

He grinned, thinking of the night ahead. “Fine by me.”

Jake kept his free hand on Lilly as they sped home. Not only did she enjoy his touch on her bare leg, her arm, her hand, anywhere he could reach, she was breathless with every minute of it.

He kept asking if she was okay; she kept gasping that she was fine. She considered begging him to pull over to the curb and climb into the backseat with her.

“Jake.” She was surprised to hear her voice shake.

“The hospital? Is it your arm again? Are you hurt? I’ll get you there—”

“You do, and I won’t sleep with you.”

“Well, screw the hospital.” His grasp on her hand softened. His thumb rubbed lazy circles on her thigh.

Finally, they were on the same page, and she drew confidence from that knowledge. It would take more than drugs for her to miss Jake’s intentions.

Finally, she’d be able to complete two goals: step one of getting pregnant was getting him in bed, and they were almost there.

But it was the other goal giving her goose bumps and quickening her pulse: she was about to experience the passion she’d longed for, the all-consuming heat that could make up for seventeen months of abstinence and years of ho-hum sex. About that, she had no doubt. If she was this turned on while he was driving, imagine how she was going to feel when they got right down to it.

It seemed like forever before they pulled into the driveway.