A Date on Cloud Nine (6 page)

“Although…he is pretty mad at her,” John mused. “Who knows what he might do? Money is a great temptation.”

“But that wouldn’t be fair!”

“Hey, life’s not fair. Besides, Jake has life lessons to learn, too.”

“He’s mastered patience.”

“So far.” John shrugged. “Maybe it’s been too easy. So he lost a little insurance money. Big deal.”

“Ah, so Lilly’s there to try his patience. Well, it’s a good thing for her sake that I took out a little insurance of my own.”

John’s eyes narrowed. “What do you mean?”

“You’ll see. Maybe I’m working with you for a totally different reason than you think. Maybe I need to learn to fight for what
I
believe in.”

“Lord, woman, what have you done?”

At home that evening, Lilly took stock. She wanted to talk to Elizabeth—in fact, she did talk to her, quite a bit, but no reply was forthcoming.

She wasn’t sure if she should continue.

“I mean, come
on
,” she said heavenward. No way she could give away eighteen million dollars. “I must have been in shock. You’re not really real. I never really talked to you. You’re a figment of my imagination. Aren’t you?”

She could prove it. She’d call the bank first thing and put a stop on the check.

“Ye-ow.”

Damn, but that hurt.

“Okay, so you’re real,” she muttered, shaking her arm
out. When the phone rang, she hoped it was a new avenue of communication with Elizabeth. Boy, how she’d like to give her a piece of her mind!

But it was only her weekly, after-dark, heavy breather. Shortly after Brady’s death, the nuisance calls had begun with silence on the other end of the line, which frightened her at first. Changing her number hadn’t worked. She couldn’t screen every call, because she wasn’t always in the same room with the answering machine or caller ID. About the time she got used to the silent harassment, it escalated to heavy breathing. Blowing a shrill whistle into the receiver hadn’t worked, though she’d spent one night laughing and hugging herself at the thought of the scumbag writhing on the floor in pain.

She spent hours in her glass-roofed atrium. Tending the exotic trees and plants and feeding the koi usually relaxed her, but tonight, thinking back over her day with Jake turned out to be an exercise in frustration. She wasn’t quite certain what to make of him. Sometimes friendly and polite, sometimes a chip on his shoulder. Moody? Or contemplative?

It didn’t matter which, really. She had to complete a mission, as it were. A few weeks to get pregnant, at most. With her irregular cycle, no telling when the key dates were.

She’d confessed she hadn’t any prospects, and then
bam
, Jake had shown up. No doubt about it; had to be him. And he wasn’t just a tool, a sperm donor. That would be impersonal and unfair. She felt they had a real connection. Sure, it wasn’t much yet. It needed to grow and be nurtured. She needed to get to the bottom of why he was
driving a taxi and seemed to have abandoned any profession his degrees had prepared him for. As long as she got pregnant soon, they’d have a lifetime for all that and more. Hadn’t Elizabeth said to have faith?

At ten o’clock, Lilly started packing up odds and ends that she didn’t want sitting around when she marketed the house, which, as part of her net worth, had to be liquidated. Everything of any monetary value had to be converted to cash. If she gave it all away too soon, she’d be destitute. She needed a legal arrangement that would allow her to sell the house but stay on until whatever else she was supposed to take on faith happened. That would take a unique buyer.

“Elizabeth, if you can hear me, I need some one-on-one time. You know, down here? Face-to-face?”

Unfortunately, she couldn’t shut her mind down while filling bags for the next Salvation Army pick up.

Why
was
Jake in her every thought? What had he done to make her hormones sit up and take notice, other than exchanging a few words and—oh yeah—touching her arm? That might do it. The fact that she hadn’t had sex in the whole last year of her marriage probably had a lot to do with it, too.

He couldn’t be serious about her not making passes! If he was
the right one
, he’d just have to get over that and get down to at least one night of the heated passion and endless lovemaking she knew she’d get with him. Too bad getting pregnant might take, oh, thirty or so such nights.

To hell—
excuse me, God, I’ll try to do better
—with John. He could close his eyes or his ears or not read whatever page of her life story that’d be on.

She called Betsy. “Abstinence sucks.”

“Hold on,” Betsy whispered, which meant there was an overnight guest in her bed. She picked up in another room, chuckling. “So it’s finally gotten to you, huh? I knew it would eventually.”

“Don’t sound so smug, missy. You were the one begging for a vibrator this morning.”

“Not anymore.”

“Yeah? Who is he?”

“That cute paramedic from this morning, and
wow
, does he know a thing or two. But back to you. You want me to fix you up with one of his friends?”

“Can you just tell me how to make a pass at a man who’s told me not to?”

“Why bother? Unless it’s a doctor. Ooh, I’ll bet there was a cute one at the hospital.”

“No, not a doctor.”

“Well, who else? Andrew?”

“Oh c’mon, he’s my brother-in-law.”

“
Was
. I’ve seen those exquisite bouquets he sends you.”

“He’s being nice.”

“Yeah, a hundred bucks a week’s pretty nice. I read the last card. ‘To my favorite Lilly of all. Love, Andrew.’”

“He doesn’t mean it like that.”

Betsy gasped audibly. “Oh, wait a minute! You don’t mean the store clerk?”

“His name’s Jake, and you should’ve remembered him from the wedding. He was Brady’s best man.”

“Well,” she said, drawing the single word out very suggestively. “And you want to seduce him?”

“In a word, yes.”

“Way to go, girl. Invite him to dinner.”

“My chef quit, remember? I do takeout now.”

“Gotta do better than that. I know, have a caterer deliver something yummy, and then disappear. Let’s see, you’ll need candlelight, soft music, sheer blouse, perfume on the pulse points. What’s his favorite hobby?”

He designed computerized home control systems, but Lilly didn’t know if that counted as recreation. “Selling sex toys?”

“Hm, I was going to say whatever his hobby is, leave a book on it lying around, as if you’re interested, too? But I doubt that counts unless he designs them.”

“Oh yuck.” Lilly had a less-than-pretty mental picture of someone bent over his workbench, fashioning the next-generation vibrator.

“Hey, somebody has to do it.”

“Let’s say it’s not him.”

“Okay. So next time you see him, find out his hobby. If you don’t know anything about it, act interested. If you know something—Hey, wait a minute, didn’t you ever seduce your husband?”

Lilly sighed. “I don’t think I was very good at it.”

Brady’d had a little trouble in that department, and the more Lilly tried to help him through it, the more distance he’d put between them. He wasn’t the kind of man who asked for help. He certainly wasn’t about to accept any, either. Eventually he’d changed bedrooms.

“Did you wear red?”

“I don’t know. Sometimes.”

“Can’t go wrong with red. It sends a subliminal message.”

“I thought it was a power color.”

“Mm-hm, makes ’em feel more
man
ly, if you know what I mean.”

“I don’t know, Betsy. Maybe it was me.”

“Don’t be ridiculous. I’ll take you shopping, and we’ll buy lots of sexy red stuff.”

“Yeah, let’s not,” she said with a short laugh. “I can’t stand to get blown up again.”

After the phone call, she sorted boxes, one for her mother-in-law, one for Jake, if he wanted it, seven for a charity, and one she wasn’t quite sure what to do with. She left a message for Andrew that she had a box of his brother’s things he might want to go through.

The phone rang at eleven, undoubtedly Betsy with more good advice to impart. Hopefully not along the lines of crotchless panties.

“Lilly?”

Ah, now there was the voice of the man she might consider wearing them for.

“Oh. Jake, hi.” If only he were after her instead of throwing out ride-in-the-back ultimatums.

“Good, it doesn’t sound as if I woke you.”

“I wish. But I’ve been on this cleaning frenzy.”
Don’t babble.
“What’s up?”

“We forgot to set a time.”

“No we didn’t. Eight o’clock tomorrow morning.”

“Huh. Oh yeah, now I remember.”

Maybe this was his subtle way of hitting on her. Smiling to herself, she sank down on the carpet and leaned against the bed, getting comfortable, feeling cozy. “You’re checking up on me, aren’t you?”

“It’s the least I can do. You know, for Brady.”

“Really.”

“Yeah, I owe him.”

Gee, thanks.
“So, you want to check me out, Doctor? Ask me what year it is and who’s president?”

“Nah, you sound fine. Call me if you need somebody, okay?”

Now that sounded better. “Promise.”

“Good. See you at eight.”

Suddenly she didn’t feel like cleaning anymore. She leaned her head against the comforter and replayed their conversation, not for the words, but to hear Jake’s deep sexy rumble, to relish how nice it was to have a man care enough to call.

But she didn’t need nice. She needed horny. And potent. Very, very potent.

L
illy was up again at 6:00
A.M
. She’d chosen red silk pajamas last night, hoping they’d give her concrete ideas for successfully seducing Jake. No such luck, but they’d felt unexpectedly decadent against her skin. Between Jake’s heated touch and the sumptuous silk, she recognized a pattern of at least one heightened sense.

She’d learned some valuable lessons in the five months since Brady’s death, and she reviewed them while she fed the koi and lovebirds and strolled through the atrium at a leisurely pace, checking everything from the tiniest primrose to the tallest tree.

Who knew beforehand what happened when their time was up, what they were supposed to have learned? She did.

Most people weren’t prepared. She would be next time.

They didn’t know what to expect. Again, she did.

Her mother-in-law had given her a framed copy of the Serenity prayer after Brady’s funeral, and she’d carried
the words engraved on her consciousness for months now.
Grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, courage to change the things I can, and wisdom to know the difference.

Thanks to Elizabeth, she was practically wearing it on her arm, too.

So far Lilly had just about mastered the serene part. She couldn’t change Brady’s death; she’d moved beyond that. Now John and Elizabeth had thrown this whole go-back-but-you-have-a-deadline issue at her, which pretty much blew serenity out of the water.

As for the courage part, well, she could change how she lived. She would. It’d take a lot of courage to give away
every blasted cent
. Think about it. What if she ended up on the street, dependent on the charity of others? How ironic. That could be her standing in line outside a food kitchen, eight-and-a-half-months pregnant and hungry.

It would also take a lot of courage to chase a man until he got her pregnant. How much time could she invest in Jake before cutting her losses if he wouldn’t cooperate? With only a few weeks, there really was no room for failure. The dashboard photos spoke in his favor, showing her that he’d had the rollicking, boisterous childhood she’d always dreamed of, the very same childhood she wanted for her kids—no way she wanted a man who wasn’t close to his family. If she had half a chance with him, she had to go for it.

Jake popped into mind again, full of life and vigor and not many clothes.

With a renewed burst of energy, Lilly searched for
something in the kitchen to scrub. Eventually she stumbled upon the tub of miniature Snickers bars in the refrigerator, left over from Halloween. Stuffing one into her mouth, she closed her eyes and savored the sweetness.

God, chocolate had always been her favorite—and a chilled Snickers was hard enough to break teeth, that’s why she kept them that way, to slow her down—but since when did one taste this heavenly?

Oh yeah, since I got blown up.
As soon as it was chewable, she consumed it and stuffed in another.

The doorbell bonged promptly at eight o’clock.

Lilly’s hands flew to her hair, her face, her pajamas. She didn’t need a mirror to see what a mess she was. Lopsided hair. Eye makeup that hadn’t quite all come off the night before. Wrinkled pajamas, far too silky to disguise anything beneath them, which she thought might be a little too blatant to hit her target with so early in the morning. She hadn’t even brushed her teeth yet.

“I’ll unlock the door,” she said into the intercom. “But I’m not dressed, so count to ten before you come in.”

Once Jake stepped through the leaded-glass front door into the cavernous marble foyer, he could rest easy that Lilly hadn’t changed her mind about hiring him. While the salary she was paying was a pittance compared to what she owed him and what he needed to get his family out of debt, it was more than he’d clear picking up fares.

And it gave him an additional reason to be with Lilly, one he could rationalize as to how their togetherness was potentially beneficial and not detrimental to his objectives.

He thoroughly enjoyed watching her race back up the
gently curving staircase. In this weather, sleeping alone, he would’ve pegged her for flannel pajamas sprinkled with delicate little violets. Certainly not that silky, redhot set that skimmed over her skin as she topped the stairs and turned the corner. Damn, Brady had been a lucky man.

Well, maybe not. Brady was dead.

And I’m here.

He felt just the tiniest bit of elation over that.

He could be here all right, as in
with Lilly
. He got hard just thinking about the possibilities, distracting him from what his conscience was telling him. If he didn’t mind being a gigolo, the whole money issue would be moot. But no damn way he was going there. He owed Brady life and loyalty, and guilt edged its way in and settled in his gut.

He wouldn’t have been surprised if Lilly’d reneged on the job and refused to open the front door this morning, but she hadn’t. So it looked as though they were poised for a day playing give away—with
his
money. Remembering that ought to keep his head clear and in control, as if he were on a tightrope that required constant balance and careful steps.

Strolling through the house, which he’d been in plenty before he’d moved away, he noted the changes since Brady’d gotten married. It was still a gorgeous, three-story, stone-and-glass affair, but now that he’d glimpsed Lilly running through it in red silk, it seemed warmer, more intimate, as if she brought pure sexual energy to everything. Marble foyer and stairs, two-story entrance, soaring glass windows, arched doorways—in the space of seconds, it had all been transformed. Yes, softer now. More inviting.

Unsettled with that introspection, he retreated to Brady’s office, where he could count on the familiar, lingering aroma of cigars past.

Only he couldn’t, because the smell was gone, and it nagged at him because it was part of their history—his and Brady’s—and he’d counted on that being there forever. It was like losing him all over again.

No problem, Jake knew where the good ones were stored. He’d right this soon enough. It was a tough job, but somebody had to do it.

“What the heck are you doing?” Lilly demanded, before he was halfway through a truly fine cigar.

Sprawled in Brady’s leather recliner, totally vegged out and at peace with the world, he turned his head toward the door. There stood Lilly, feet planted, arms akimbo, fire in her eyes, one button too few buttoned on her red blouse, and the whole thing pulled taut across her breasts. Instantly hard again, he couldn’t help but imagine—

Shit! Remembering Brady’s hot recounting of this very chair, a bottle of wine, and Lilly in a sheer black teddy, Jake vaulted out of the recliner, damned near damaging himself as he tripped and scrambled to his feet.

“Sorry, didn’t think you’d mind.”

She yanked the cigar out of his teeth.

“I, uh, missed the smell in here.”

“And you obviously have no idea how tough it was to get it out.”

He dogged her heels to the kitchen sink and watched helplessly as she drowned the poor thing. He must have looked heartbroken, because she said, “Aw, poor baby,”
and offered the rest of them to him, as long as he promised to smoke them far, far away.

“You need to update your alarm system,” he said as they left.

“My father-in-law sent a company out to look into that after Brady died. They said they’d never seen anything this high-tech.”

Jake didn’t mind taking a little pride in that, since he’d designed it. “Well sure, but that’s
them
.”

“Ah.”

He also didn’t mind the way Lilly glanced up at him, her single word laced with acknowledgment of his superiority.

“I could upgrade it in an afternoon.”

“Thanks, but I’m selling, so there’s really no need. Oh, here, I don’t want to forget.” She handed him his first week’s check with a cheeky grin. “Wouldn’t want you telling people I’m not good for it.”

She got into the front seat instead of the rear, just as he’d figured she would. Good thing, because he had Mooch set up in the back, curled up in a nest of blanket, his tail wrapped tightly around him. The cat wasn’t in a good mood. One long, low, mournful yowl from him had Lilly whipping around to see what it came from. Jake swiped her checkbook out of her purse and tucked it in the crack beside the seat before she glanced from the cat to him.

“One of your regulars?”

“He lives here. Mooch, Lilly. Lilly, Mooch.”

Mooch was a huge mixed-breed feline who looked as if he’d been tumbled in a dryer with several shades of earth-tone paints, then plugged into an electrical outlet. And his attitude was a prickly
Yeah, what of it?

“He lives in the car?”

“Yep. I came out one morning, there he was, sitting right where you are. Refused to get out. I tried to pick him up and put him out, but let me tell you, he has all his claws and knows how to use them. So beware. Tomorrow, he’ll probably want his spot back.”

“Day
and
night?”

“Well, he’s started coming into the house with me in the evenings. And he gets out to do his business. Boy, does he hate the snow.”

“He wasn’t here yesterday.”

“He was at the v-e-t getting f-i-x-e-d.”

She snickered. “You’re
spelling
?”

“Hey, animals understand more than you know.”

“You don’t believe in heaven, but you think he knows he was fixed?”

Mooch hissed, showing off a full set of pointy teeth.

Jake started the car. “Try not to rile him too much. I’m supposed to keep him from jumping around for the first twenty-four hours.”

He thought Lilly looked at him a little differently after that, but she kept her thoughts to herself. They could have been anything from
What a nice guy to take in a big, ugly stray
to
What kind of demented nut lets a cat ride around all day in his taxi?

Within half an hour, they were headed into the city, all three of them munching on their respective drive-thru sandwiches. Jake was having a damned hard time getting rid of the image of her in the recliner, on top—yeah, definitely on top—wearing a sheer black teddy and tousled hair.

“You sure that’s okay?” He indicated her sandwich with a tip of his head.

It was a dumb question, especially since she’d hummed over the first bites as if they were a five-star dinner. But if she talked to him, he’d have to focus on her, here and now, and see that she’d put a nice, thick winter coat on over her snug blouse.

“Mm,” she said. “It’s delicious.”

When her cell phone rang, she flipped it open with a smooth skill that could only come from lots of practice. Why hadn’t Brady asked him for a decent phone for Lilly? That standard retail model was okay for everyone who didn’t know better, but a piece of shit for someone like her. He’d fix that tomorrow.

In the meantime, he was good at tuning people out. You had to be, sometimes, when you drove a taxi. Some people ran on at the mouth and said absolutely nothing of interest, or gabbed about personal stuff he really didn’t want to hear. Fights with boyfriends, girlfriends, wives, husbands, bosses, employees. Sex problems with all the above. Money woes. Nothing he could fix, so he took Uncle Paul’s advice and didn’t try.

He picked up on Lilly talking to someone about selling her house—
Oh, wait’ll Brady’s mother hears about this
. He told her so when she hung up.

“That house has been in the family for years,” he warned, surprising himself with a hint of censure in his voice. “I know, because my dad did the stonework on it.”

“Is that why you’re being proprietary?”

He swallowed his last bite. “I’m not.”

“But you don’t want me to sell it.”

“I’m just explaining that Brady’s dad had it built special. Same as having my grandfather do the stonework on
his parents’ house. I’m just saying they won’t want to let it go to strangers.”

“Is that how you and Brady met? Family friends?”

“I wouldn’t go that far. I worked Marquette Construction every summer. Brady’s dad thought it would be good for him to understand how the other half lived, and he just happened to be put to work on the same site as me. We carried hod, we talked, we went out afterward for beer. Good times.”

“He missed you, you know. He knew you had to be in California, but he missed you.”

“Yeah, me too.”

“And he worried about you.”

No way he was going there. He bagged up their cups and empty wrappers. “I’m just saying you might offer it to his mom first.”

“Oh, good idea,” she said, making him feel stupidly pleased for helping.

“I don’t know how you’d agree on a price, though.”

“Betsy’s in real estate. She’ll make sure I get what it’s worth.”

He promptly drove into a branch of her bank and cashed his first week’s check. Just in case.

Then Lilly called a broker about selling an airplane. From the way the conversation went, it seemed it was hers. Brady had piloted it on his trips to the coast, but Jake doubted he would’ve known all the answers Lilly was handing out, rattling off statistics without second-guessing herself.

“The plane’s yours?” he asked when she was finished.

“Yeah, I used to fly private charters.”

“Really?”

“Mm-hmm.”

“
Really?
”

“Don’t be sexist.”

“Bear with me, I want to get this straight. You’d fly other people around, take them where they wanted to go, cater to their every whim—”

“Make your point.”

“—then come home and get into a chauffeur-driven limo?”

She laughed lightly. He hadn’t meant her to, but it sounded so nice, he might try it intentionally later. When he got over being pissed at her, which would be about the same time she gave him a seven-digit check and called off her in-laws.

“Wait a minute, I thought you grew up rich. Why were you flying charters?”

“Temporary reversal of fortune,” she said. “You’ve heard of the domino effect? Well, so did my dad’s investments. He lost a lot of his brother’s money, too, but my uncle managed to hold on to his plane and his charter business. He’s the one who taught me to fly and took me on as a partner. That’s how I met Brady, you know. Oh, maybe you don’t. He hired me to fly him to Silicon Valley a couple times. To see you. After we got married,
then
I hired a chauffeur and eventually quit doing charters, for most of those reasons you just mentioned. Boy, people can be so bossy.”