A Date on Cloud Nine (23 page)

He converted his own wristwatch and picked a code word that didn’t fit in everyday speech, not his anyway: Angel. There wasn’t an undercover cop in the country who wouldn’t give up his own mother for one just like it.

Eventually, Susannah couldn’t stand his brooding anymore. “What’s the matter, sugar?”

“Take your pick.”

“Still mooning over that stray cat?”

“He wasn’t just a—” Jake took a breath and composed himself. “He was
my
stray cat.”

“And you miss him.”

“I even miss the little mouse parts he left in the taxi.”

“Ugh.” Susannah grimaced, but just as quickly put on a bright face and said, “There now, see? He’s a hunter, he won’t starve.”

“We’ve been to all the shelters. I call them every day. Put up flyers with his picture. Called an ad into the newspaper. I don’t know what else to do.”

“Sounds like you’ve done all you can, sugar.”

“Hasn’t been enough.”

“Mooch is smart. He found you once, maybe he can do it again.”

“Why the hell didn’t I put a tracking device in his collar?”

“So
that’s
what you’re beating yourself up over.”

“Yeah.”

He spilled some salt, and while making circles in it with the bottom of the shaker, he debated whether to tell her the rest. Might as well.

“I don’t get women.”

“Jake Murdoch, shame on you. Lilly’s living in your house this very minute. Why would you want others?”

He blinked, decoding that. “I mean I don’t
get
women.”

“Oh. Did you and Lilly have a fight?”

“She’d have to perk up to fight.”

Susannah patted his shoulder, which didn’t console him at all. “She misses Mooch.”

“She thinks I can’t forgive her for losing him.”

“Is she right?”

“No, of course not.” Although he might blame her just a little for taking the taxi in the first place. “Did she tell you they had a special connection? Whenever her arm hurt, he’d be all over her, getting as close as he could. She didn’t mean for the car to get stolen. I know it wasn’t her fault.”

“Have you told her that?”

“Only a hundred times a day.”

Susannah’s hands stilled. “She really loved that cat. Why, when we were clearing the garden, he’d come nosing around—you know how cats just love to help, poking into everything you’re trying to do. Oh, Lilly got such a kick out of playing with him.” She laughed, reminiscing. “She’d wiggle little branches underneath the dry leaves. He’d pounce on them. My, I never had so much fun working in the garden before.”

“She talks about moving out.”

“Oh. Oh my.” She put her hand on his, making him stop with the saltshaker. “Well, let’s think about this. It hasn’t been that long since she buried her husband, right? Maybe things are moving too fast. Maybe grieving for Mooch now reminds her all over again of how she lost her husband. It was pretty sudden, wasn’t it?”

He nodded.

“And there was that explosion in the store; she came pretty close to death there, too. Why, I’m sure all of it’s been so overwhelming, just all piling up on her, like.”

“I didn’t think of that.”

First Brady, then her own near-death experience. She hadn’t dealt with that well at all, talking to angels—
ha
! Now Mooch was gone. Jake remembered how devastated he’d been over Angie, and that was before he knew she’d died. Damn. What Lilly must be going through if this renewed even a smidgen of her grief over Brady. He sat up straighter, working this out in his own mind, analyzing it, getting a handle on it so he could fix it.

“I remember the first time I said something about death—I don’t know, how she’d catch her death without a coat on, something like that. All the joy just went out of her, like turning out a light. Geez, poor thing, it’s probably all catching up to her at once. I need to help her through this.”

Susannah bounced to her feet. “Good boy.”

He laughed ruefully. “But what do I do? It’s not like I can suggest she go see someone about it. I mean, I tried that for her arm. She’d have my head.”

“You can be supportive.”

“That’s a chick word.”

“So?”

“Guys have a different vocabulary.”

Susannah chuckled. “Oh, I see. Well, think romance.”

“I do wonderful romance.”

“I don’t mean sex.”

He blinked. “I love her. I can’t be romantic without sex.”

“Lord, sugar, this could take all day.” Susannah slipped a cardigan on over her blouse. “Come on, take me shopping, and I’ll explain the difference.”

Lilly checked her saliva in the small ovulation predictor; still no ferning. Was the damned thing defective or what? She threw it into a bathroom drawer and slammed it.

She could already be pregnant. Considering how important that was, she reasoned she ought to just intuitively know. But she didn’t. She was running out of patience and frazzled from worrying about running out of time. This was one thing she had to get right.

And when she got back to heaven? She was giving them a piece of her mind about how come they could send her back and manage long-distance electric shock therapy, but not a two-way phone connection?
Gimme a break.

Please.

If she failed, would she go through Transition again where she could complain, or directly to the back of that horrendous line? If the latter, she wouldn’t get the opportunity to tell anybody anything for a long, long time.

Lilly stared at the two photos Jake had snapped of himself, all bare-chested and sweaty.
Yum
. Nothing sexier
than a man with brains
and
brawn. Tucked into the frame of the dresser mirror, they never failed to bring a smile to her heart and a stupid grin to her face. What a ham.

In spite of his pain over losing Mooch, he’d turned up the charm on her. Fresh daffodils and hyacinths on her dresser every morning, so they were her first sight of the day. Sure, they were right out of his mother’s garden and he didn’t have to go far or put much thought into it. But he did. A pretty crystal vase. A peachy floral bow. Gentle curls of ribbon artistically scattered around the base, echoing the colors of spring.

She’d seen no prior evidence of this side of him, so she figured he was getting tips somewhere. And that wasn’t all. Either he was banking on chocolate as an aphrodisiac or he’d been talking to Betsy, because suddenly there was homemade Snickers pie for dessert and a bite-sized Snickers bar on her pillow every night. Then came the Easter M&M’s sprinkled in her lingerie drawer.

He hadn’t confined this to the bedroom, either. New honeysuckle-scented candles lined the edge of the bathtub. A pretty bottle of bath oil sported a new floral ribbon to match the one on the vase, so she was pretty sure these little touches didn’t come from the store.

More candles on the breakfast table.

“Power out?” she asked without thinking.

“It’s not romantic if the power’s out.”

Boy, did she feel stupid.

Not as stupid as Angie, though. What on earth had been going through her mind to leave Jake? He would have stuck with her to the very end.

Falling in love really screwed with a person’s mind.

It hurt to see Jake hurting. He wasn’t sleeping well since Mooch went missing. She watched him pace the backyard at night, heard him calling the cat’s name softly in hopes he was nearby and just needed a little more help getting to the right house.

He called the shelters every day. He drove by and checked each one every day. Many of the small cities that comprised St. Louis County had their own animal control departments, and he checked all of them, too.

Clearly Jake wasn’t the giving-up or leaving kind of guy. He should run as far from her as he could get, as fast as he could go.

Yep, falling in love
really
screwed with a person’s mind.

The first day of spring came and went. The succession of blooming bulbs and flowering trees reminded her that the third anniversary of her wedding was just around the corner. Of course she wouldn’t celebrate it, but she couldn’t just forget it either. It had happened, she’d been in love and happy for a while, and it had made her who she was today.

It was also the day she’d met Jake. Now there was a strange thing to think about. If she were going to live for years to come, every anniversary would evoke both sad and happy memories. Talk about a mixed bag. Fortunately, Jake would only remember the date as a good one, the one on which they’d met.

Spring also meant that Lilly’s shortened biological clock was rapidly ticking down. Suppose she wasn’t pregnant. If she didn’t ovulate soon, she wasn’t going to make it until her next birthday, and there were loose ends that needed to be tied up. The least she could do was buy
Jake’s uncle a new car, a good one with lots of bells and whistles, leather seats, and a quality CD player.

Zap
.

“Go away.”

Something large and sedate, definitely not yellow. With the right vehicle, he could be a limo driver. She reached for her cell phone.

Zap!

“Stop it. I am so frickin’ mad at you guys. I’m keeping my promise. You don’t have to sit up there with your finger on the button.”

Determined, she ran to the kitchen and yanked open the drawer where Jake’s mother kept her supply of tools. Hammer, no. Screwdriver, no. Pliers…

“Need help?”

She started, and then laughed at herself when she realized it was Jake. As if John would sneak up behind her. “I’m trying to find a tool to break this bracelet.” Only a little zap; they didn’t believe her.

“It, uh, goes nice with what you’re wearing.”

She was in jeans and a T-shirt, and what difference did that make anyway? “I’m not trying to accessorize, I just want it off.”

Za-ap!
She would’ve cursed at that one, but it took her breath away. Elizabeth was taking her more seriously now.

Desperate, Lilly grabbed one chain with the pair of pliers, jammed it all the way on to the part that cut wire, and pressed hard. The link gave a little.

Her knees buckled, her heart really did stop—none of that romantic bullshit—and she crumpled to the floor like a wet dishrag. On the way down, she caught a flash of bright light, a whispered warning.

One was all it took to understand who was in charge.

“Lilly!”

“I’m all right, I’m okay,” she said automatically as Jake scooped her up, not really sure whether she was, but she felt blissfully alive in his arms again.

No way this bracelet was coming off if it meant instant recall. No way she’d leave before the last possible moment.

“It was just a mistake,” she said. “I’m sorry.”

“I’m not mad at you, sweetheart.”

“I’m uh—” Now how should she put this? “I was talking to, you know…”

Lilly felt Jake’s chest expand against her body as he took a deep breath. A very deep breath. Long, steady pressure that made her oh, so aware of him.

“You okay?” she asked in a strained whisper.

“Shut up, I’m counting.”

“Counting?”

“You know, as in ‘to ten.’ Only in your case, I may need to go all the way to ten thousand.”

She grinned at his put-upon tone. “You’re saying I’m a pain in the neck?”

“Farther south. Now that you’ve mopped up the floor with your butt, are you going to change into a skirt and give money away?”

“I’m thinking if people want my money, they won’t mind if I wear jeans.”

“I know I don’t.” He fondled her rear as he set her on her feet.

“I’m going to make a call first.” She gazed at the pliers wistfully, then tossed them back into the drawer. “See you in about fifteen minutes?”

Her attorney suggested she buy a car that would hold its value better than average—
“Yes, a Mercedes would be fine”
—then donate it to a charitable organization that would in turn lease it back to Jake’s uncle at a very low rate.

No more zaps, neither during that call nor the ones to buy and insure the largest, glossiest black Mercedes currently available in St. Louis.

“So there.” Feeling she’d one-upped Elizabeth and John, she slammed out the back door in victory.

She found Jake in a chair on the back porch, one ankle propped on the other knee, the numerology book spread open across both. Neat columns of letters and numbers covered at least one page of graph paper.

The young mother who lived on the other side was pushing her son on a tire swing, and Lilly sat on the armrest to watch. She leaned against Jake’s broad shoulder and spiraled her finger through a lock of his hair simply because he liked it, and she liked touching him. She couldn’t dwell on what she’d miss. She had to ignore the pain, had to be content with knowing that he and her son would enjoy simple things like sitting on the porch, or swinging on a sunny day.

“You still talking to them?” he said.

“Who?”

“John and Elizabeth.”

Taken aback that he not only was acknowledging their presence, but had remembered their names, she slipped her arm around his shoulders and smiled with great pleasure.

“So, you’re starting to believe?”

“Oh hell no. I’m just making conversation.”

Thinking he was coming around had lifted her mood,
and she wasn’t letting it get away. “Well, maybe you shouldn’t mention them unless you believe in them.”

He muttered something that could’ve been, “Like that’ll be a problem.”

“What?”

“I said I’m having a problem.”

She squinted at him suspiciously. “With what?”

He tapped the eraser end of the pencil on the paper. “According to this, I need a full birth name for this to work—” He shuddered.

Touched that he was not only honoring their bet, but also working on her request for a boy’s name, she tempered her grin. Couldn’t stop her tongue, though, when he shuddered so adorably.

“What’s the matter? Afraid lightning’ll strike?”

“That’d mean I believe in this crap,” he said, grinning triumphantly. “May I continue?”

“Please.”

“According to the rules—and no, I’m not buying into this stuff—you need a full name to work with. You know, a
last
name?” He let that hang there between them.