A Date on Cloud Nine (3 page)

“I could give it to the Church, I guess.”

“May I make a suggestion?”

“Please!”

“Spread it out. Reach more people, and I mean on a personal level. Don’t just write a bunch of checks and drop them in the mail. Go see where it’s needed, meet those who need it. Give just what’s warranted in each situation. Nothing extra. Make every dollar count. You’re good at that, and John will expect you to put it to good use.”

“Whew, that could take a while.” She’d look up Mr. Sexy Rumble in her spare time. But that raised a big question. “So how will I find the right man right away?”

“I can’t tell you that.”

“Not even a hint?”

Elizabeth leaned close and whispered, “It’s someone you already know.”

“That’s the best you can do?”

“There’ll be perks,” she said with an enticing wink.

“Other than having a baby, the only perk I can think of is—” Lilly felt her cheeks burn hell-hot. “It’s not so bad that you know everything I’ve ever said, but do you have to know every thought I’ve ever had, too?”

“It’s pretty universal, really. Every woman wants one night of lusty, heart-pounding passion.” Elizabeth sighed. “The multiple-orgasms-until-you-think-you’ll-pass-out type.”

“Yeah, I wouldn’t mind trying that.” In light of Elizabeth’s glow, it was impossible to be embarrassed.

“You’ll do fine if you just keep the rules in mind. Break any of them, though, and
pfft
, you’re right back here, and you’ll be dealing with John, instead of me.”

“Will I remember this? Well, I guess I will, if I’m going to be writing my net worth down to zero. Otherwise my friends’ll have me committed.”

“If you’re comfortable, you can share some of what you saw and felt. You know, the usual near-death-experience stories.” Elizabeth’s voice began to fade. “But I just want to caution you against telling anyone
why
you’re doing what you’re going back to do. That never works out. Oh, and since you were early, everyone’s already booked, but I’ll see if I can find a mentor to get you through the next few months. Wouldn’t want you to go astray again.”

“Will I—Hey, wait!” At first she thought Elizabeth was fading, but then she realized it was she herself who was moving away from the light.

Elizabeth’s parting words were, “Whatever you do, don’t take it off.”

“What? Don’t take what off? Wait. How will I know who my mentor is? Elizabeth!”

J
ake Murdoch didn’t mind the snowstorm. He’d grown up in St. Louis and was used to its unpredictable weather. Fifty degrees one day, six inches of snow the next. Big deal.

Nor did he mind filling in for Tom at Cloud Nine, especially in bad weather; in fact, he insisted on it. His neighbor was elderly, had broken his hip last year, and shouldn’t be out in the snow and ice. Jake could make up lost time in his taxi later, when more people were out and about.

And he could handle the minor—ha!—gas leak in the store. Call a repairman ASAP, open the doors, bad air out, good air in. Should’ve been a piece of cake.

But he was really pissed off with the outcome: explosion, dense smoke, missing customer. The other woman—her friend—ended up in the same corner as he, so it was a simple matter to grab her by the arm and propel her through the gaping hole that used to be the front
door. Now she was standing outside next to him, crying, screaming at the store, at him, at the world in general, he guessed. He never thought he’d be grateful to have his ears ring so loudly that he couldn’t hear someone, but if the view of her tonsils was any indication, she was shrieking loud enough to be heard by everyone else in the state.

He shook her by the shoulders until he had her attention, then mimed the hand signal for telephone, thumb to ear, pinky to mouth, and yelled, “Nine one one!” in her face so she couldn’t miss it. Understanding dawned. When she pulled a cell phone out of her coat pocket, he turned away, ready to deal with more important matters.

Smoke poured out of the store’s every gaping wound. It was dense from the burning plastics—the shop was full of them—and probably toxic. Continually fed by the flames beneath, it rose into the gray sky.

Without hesitation, Jake grabbed his leather bomber jacket out of his taxi and draped it over his head. He dragged in deep gulps of frigid air and charged headlong into the building, knowing he had a customer to find, a woman in danger.

The floor was uneven, strewn with products, packages, chunks of wood, and drywall. Negotiating his way across all that without actually being able to see any of it was like walking on a rocky beach at night, every step hampered, every lump testing his balance, using up precious time, precious oxygen.

Still, he pressed on.

Two engineering degrees hadn’t prepared him for this, but knowing where the missing woman had been and the approximate trajectory of the blast by where he’d been
thrown, Jake hoped logic worked. He’d pray for it, but he wasn’t a praying man.

He stumbled toward the wall where he thought she’d most likely be, moving as quickly as he could. The leather jacket stayed draped over his head, and he kept both hands down low, rooting through everything on the floor, skimming over the hottest stuff if it was too small to be a body.

Along the far wall, his path was blocked by a metal clothing rack. It leaned on an angle, forming a canopy of flaming panties and bras. Quickly running out of oxygen, he had to make a decision. Go out and come back, or keep going.

Flinging the rack out of his path, the toe of his boot encountered something—some
one
—soft.

He scooped the limp body into his arms. Hunched over, partially to shield her from more injury, partially to smother the fire singeing her fur—not that he gave a damn about the coat, but he didn’t know how deep it was burning—he got them the hell out of there.

In the parking lot, he dragged in huge, lung-clearing breaths and laid her gently on a bed of snow. That’d take care of any burns on her back. He flung his smoky jacket aside and patted her down, starting at her head, putting out any lingering embers. She’d lost her hat, and the ends of her hair were singed. Her face was smudged, a little red, but not burned. It was also vaguely familiar.

The coat was a total loss. And her purse? Surprisingly, she still had it clutched in one hand in a death grip.

He kept working downward, patting everywhere, knowing it would be a long time before he’d forget the stink of burning fur.

Recognition suddenly dawned—in this case, about as welcome as the damned explosion—and his gaze locked on her face. With a handful of snow, he wiped away sooty smudges for a better look.

Son of a bitch, Lilly Marquette.

Just who he needed to make this, without a doubt, the day from hell.

His devilish side screamed,
What a perfect opportunity to get even. Let her burn.

He put her out anyway.

After every ember had been smothered, he cooled his hands in the snow. Then, peeling open her coat to assess the damage, he found the fire hadn’t burned through the backing. Too bad. A little, lingering discomfort—say a couple weeks of not being able to stand the feel of clothing against her skin—wouldn’t be too severe a sentence for her, for what she’d done to him. Yeah, that’d be fair. He’d like that.

How could he have missed recognizing her earlier?

Of course—she’d been acting funny in the store. He was so used to customers playing low-key, trying to be inconspicuous, to remain incognito, that he’d thought nothing of it when she’d tugged her hat down to her eyebrows and donned sunglasses.

The first time he’d seen her was almost three years ago, on her wedding day. Two years and eleven months, to be exact.

As best man, he’d been more than happy to pose with her for a formal picture before the ceremony. He’d dangled his arm around her shoulders and said something cute and complimentary about Brady—his best friend
and partner, her groom—keeping him so busy on the West Coast because Brady was afraid he’d steal her away. She’d laughed, just as he’d meant her to, and when she’d smiled up at him, up close like that, it hit him. All those photos Brady’d shown him, Jake had thought it was the camera that did an outstanding job of catching the light in her hazel eyes. But it hadn’t been the camera at all. She really did have gold flecks that caught the light, that made her eyes dance and mesmerize him. So much so that he missed the photographer’s next order, until Lilly obediently snuggled up next to his side and turned toward him, just so.

“A little more…A little more…” the photographer said.

That’s when he’d really gotten into trouble. Her breast pressed against his side, feeling fuller and fuller as she turned a little more, a little more, practically rolling it across his rib cage, and he suddenly felt so goddamned hot. Since when was a woman in a wedding dress a turn-on? And why the hell the bride of his best friend?

Fortunately his tux jacket covered for him. But there were other things to worry about, like the stupid impulse to take her by the hand and drag her off behind a locked door and make love to her until she forgot that Brady even existed. Nothing like personal and professional suicide all tied up in one neat package.

It wasn’t very creative—but then his brain wasn’t getting much blood—but he saved himself by staging an awful coughing fit right after that pose, then excusing himself. He and Brady had been friends since the summer between junior and senior year in high school, when
they’d worked the same construction site. Sure, Brady was the boss’s son, but he didn’t act like it then, and he didn’t act like it years later when Jake went on a drunken binge and tore another site apart over Angie, his college sweetheart.

He and Angie had been inseparable, the perfect couple according to friends. They wanted a short engagement, but Angie’s mother begged for a big, traditional wedding, so they figured why not and, together, kept a lid on the planning.

Then one day, out of the blue, Angie stopped returning his calls. She changed her phone number and her locks. Her mother, in tears, said she couldn’t tell him anything, but when she hugged him, he could tell it was final on her end. Still, he didn’t give up. He camped out on Angie’s doorstep, showed up at her work, haunted every place they’d ever gone together, but he never saw her again. Within a week, she left St. Louis. No forwarding address. No phone message. None of her friends would talk.

He’d drowned his pain in hard liquor until Brady found him, dried him out, gave him an alibi that cleared him of all damages at the construction site he’d ripped apart, and provided the money to start the tech company in Silicon Valley.

Nobody had to remind Jake how much he owed Brady; lusting after his bride certainly was out of bounds. He avoided Lilly as much as possible the rest of the day, giving her one chaste kiss after the ceremony and dancing one obligatory dance with her at the reception.

And then he’d gotten the hell out of town before anyone discovered he’d just fallen head-over-heels for his best friend’s wife.

The second and last time he’d seen her was at Brady’s
funeral. He’d only just approached Lilly and swallowed her in a big how-could-he-die-and-leave-us? hug when Brady’s brother dragged him away to discuss something of little importance. Try as he might, he’d been unable to contact Lilly for the next month. Then he found out she wanted nothing to do with him. And why.

He couldn’t believe he’d just saved her life.

“Jake?” Lilly said, hoarse from the smoke. She’d been quietly muttering to herself for a minute, but until she said his name, her words had been too garbled to decipher.

“Don’t talk.” He didn’t mean to growl at her; it came naturally. “And quit moving around.”

She lifted her head from the snowy parking lot.

“Hold still,” he cautioned, gently placing his hand on her forehead.

Big mistake, touching her like that. Protective feelings welled up inside his chest, unbidden, urging him to throw her into the taxi and race through the icy streets to the nearest hospital. That was the side of him that still—

But no, he couldn’t still love her. He’d never been a man who let his heart dictate his life. So what if it was family tradition? He was only in
danger
of falling head-over-heels again, and if he was careful,
very
careful, he could overcome that. It helped to remember that he’d learned the hard way what she was capable of.

“You’ll be okay if you don’t move.”

Yeah, so okay that she’d probably go straight to her attorney’s lavish suite of offices and initiate a lawsuit against him for negligently allowing her into the store in the first place when there was a slight gas odor. Just what
he needed. He couldn’t afford a lawyer. He’d had one once, over that whole life insurance fiasco, where
supposedly
his and Brady’s tech company would be protected financially if something happened to either of them.
Ha
! If she sued him now, he’d spend so much time in depositions and court, he wouldn’t have time to work. He’d never get back on his feet.

She’d fucked him over five months ago. Might as well give her the keys to the house and taxi right then and let her finish the job.

He left the scorched coat on her to keep her warm until EMS arrived. He owed it to Brady to protect the woman he’d loved and married, even if he
was
still pissed. Jake covered Lilly’s legs with his jacket, the leather scarred now, looking as though a few thousand cigarettes had been ground out on it. Then he sat in the snow and, resigned to his fate, cradled her head in his lap.

Brady had died five months ago. That’s when the real trouble had started. Oh, Lilly didn’t have anything to do with Brady’s death, Jake was sure of that.

But she sure as hell stole his three million dollars.

Caught off guard, Jake couldn’t stop Lilly when she suddenly jackknifed upward and scurried to her feet. He rose more slowly, watching as she pulled up short, mouth agape, in awe of the whole blackened scene before them. She circled her limo slowly, staring at it, laying her hands on it. Probably praying over the damned thing, which was undoubtedly insured to the hilt. People like Lilly didn’t take chances on losing their possessions without full compensation.

And sometimes people like her got more than they deserved.

Ankle-deep snow cratered around her boots as she pivoted in a tight circle, taking in the entire surrounding area. She was talking to herself, too, probably calculating property values so she’d know how much she could realistically get when she sued the owner.

It was below freezing, but you wouldn’t know it to watch her. Shit, if she slipped and fell…

He moved closer. “Call me crazy, but I’m pretty sure you’re not supposed to be on your feet after you’ve been blown up.”

“I’m fine.”

“
Sit down
.” His sisters said he was intimidating—to others, not them—when he ordered people around.

But Lilly just grinned up at him and said, “Stop being so bossy.”

“Oh what the hell, you just survived an explosion. No need to worry about a little fall doing you in.”

“Exactly. Betsy looks all right. Was anybody else hurt?”

He preferred to think she was the type who wouldn’t care. Made it easier to dislike her. But she hadn’t forgotten there were others involved, including her friend, who was tending to the chauffeur.

“The repairman made it out the back door in time. Your limo caught a lot of the blast, and your driver looked as if his arm was broken. So you’ll be needing a new one. Driver, I mean. Well, both actually.”

Either tell her what you really want to say or shut up, stupid.

But he couldn’t, not yet. After Brady’s death, their tech company had folded fast and furious, leaving serious debts. Jake’s dad had volunteered his house and masonry
business as collateral on a private note to pay them off. That note was held by none other than the man with whom Murdoch Masons had done decades of business—Frank Marquette, Lilly’s father-in-law. Contract negotiations were currently under way. No way he was pissing off a Marquette right now. No way he’d be responsible for his parents losing their home and everything else they’d worked for.

He was never so glad to see EMS arrive and take someone away.

Three hours later, Lilly’d been poked and prodded and thoroughly checked out by a gorgeous doctor who should’ve made her blood race, but didn’t. She could hear better now. Before Betsy had left, she’d gone on and on about how manly Jake was, how knight-in-shining-armor of him to run into a burning building and search for her. How strong he must be to carry her out when he must have run out of oxygen by then.