A Date on Cloud Nine

by Jenna McKnight

  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, red-hot 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.”

  “Stingy, too.”

  “And rude, oh my gosh, you can’t believe how—”

  “Sure I can. Did they tell you stories you didn’t want to hear?”

  “Are you kidding? They curled my hair!” She turned in her seat, facing him, caught up in the moment they shared.

  She was so beautiful, she took his breath away. Sure, some people might say her eyes were too big or her hair too singed. Not he.

  “Makes me shudder, just remembering,” she said.

  Jake quickly withdrew, afraid to think they had anything in common. If they were going to spend a lot of time together until he got the all clear from his dad and demanded the fortune she owed him, it would be better to maintain a professional distance. Easier on him anyway.

  “And the men! What is it about men that I no sooner get the wheels up, and they say, ‘Let’s see how this baby handles’ ?”

  Try as he did to resist, he grinned at her testosterone-laden imitation. No wonder Brady’d bragged about Lilly. Most women would freak out over their burned hair or mismatched fingernails. She’d taken one look at his sore fingers and unwrapped his breakfast sandwich for him, and then Mooch’s, too. She even cooed at the cat while she took care of him. It was hard to be mad at a woman who liked his ugly, mean-tempered cat.

  “Anyway, I leased out the plane with the stipulation that I could fly it often enough to keep up my license, and when he got his, Brady could borrow it.”

  “To come see me?”

  “Yeah.”

  Lilly’s voice trailed off, and Jake wondered if she was thinking along the same lines as he—what might’ve been if they’d met at the airport on one of those days? Would it have been their third wedding anniversary coming up?

  “Anyway, you can bet I was always nice to my chauffeur. Which reminds me.” She flipped open her phone and speed-dialed him three pounds of Godiva chocolates. On account.

  He’d had a lot of customers, but he’d never seen that before. One button to nirvana for the chauffeur.

  He also noticed that during the two-minute call, Lilly dropped her phone three times, fumbling it like a hot potato, banging it off the window, the dash, and finally the steering wheel. Mooch gave one long mournful moan, then hoisted himself to his feet and poked his nose in Lilly’s hair. Jake watched him closely, because he wasn’t used to the moaning, and he wanted to be sure Mooch wasn’t anti-Lilly and out for a bite of her neck, but he settled back down shortly thereafter.

  “Maybe you should have that arm x-rayed if it’s still bothering you,” he said when she finally corralled her phone and flipped it shut.

  “It’s nothing.” She glanced at him through lowered lashes. “Nothing that’ll stop me, anyway.”

  Jake didn’t like the predatory way Lilly looked at him when she said it, but it wasn’t obvious enough to call her on it. Even so, he felt a little bit like a lab rat. Or a guinea pig.

  7

  The first thing Lilly did after breakfast was restore her appearance. As her stylist trimmed away the singed hair, he started listing options ranging from pixie to sophisticated.

  Lilly interrupted. “I want seductive.”

  He’d known her for years. He knew she was recently widowed. “How seductive?” he asked tentatively.

  “Well, I don’t want you shaving letters on my scalp, but otherwise, in-his-face.”

  “Oh-kay,” he said, pausing to reflect. He studied her features and toyed with her hair, measuring bounce and wave and whatnot. “I know just the thing. You want color, too?”

  “You’re a man, what do you think?”

  “Personally, I like highlights. But once you take your clothes off, he won’t be looking at the color.”

  “Okay, just the cut then, and if that doesn’t work, I’ll be back for stage two.”

  She ended up with a sexy little bob. Now that it was shorter, it had a natural kink, lending her a naughty look, she thought. Very much a Come open the package and see what’s inside invitation. She finished the morning by getting her nails resculptured in the same salon.

  “Red,” she decided.

  The nail artist winked at Lilly and held up three tiny bottles. “So I heard. I’ve got Ravishing Red, Seductive Scarlet, and Kick-Ass Claret.”

  “Seductive Scarlet.”

  “Yeah, that’d be my choice, too. Don’t want to overwhelm the guy. If you come back for highlights, we’ll switch to Kick-Ass.”

  As Sandi worked on one hand, Lilly called her mother- in-law and offered her first option on the house.

  “I knew it, that house is way too big for you. We have plenty of room here, if that wouldn’t make you too uncomfortable.” Donna made the same offer at least once every week.

  “Actually, I’d like to stay in the house a few months.”

  “But you want to sell it now?”

  “I know it sounds strange, but I just feel a real need to get everything in order, you know?”

  Donna was too polite to say she didn’t. “Of course, dear. I suppose it’s only natural, with Brady dying so suddenly. Maybe you should talk to someone.”

  Lilly chuckled, knowing exactly how to change that topic. “I did. She’s a Realtor. Are you interested?”

  “Let me get back to you.”

  When Lilly’s nails were finished, she carefully used just the very tips of her fingers to pull her wallet out of her purse. Everything was going fine until s
he reached for her credit card. That damn bruised nerve zapped her again, making her squeak, sending her wallet flying across the room, turning her moments-ago Seductive Scarlets into Scarred Scarlets.

  Jake materialized by her shoulder. “Again?”

  “A little bit,” was all she’d admit to.

  “Let’s see, first time, you were telling me to send you a bill. Second time, you were ordering chocolate for your chauffeur. Now, you’re charging something. Damn, Brady said you were tight with a buck. He didn’t say it actually hurt you to part with money.”

  “Don’t be silly.”

  She frowned heavenward, wondering whether Jake had hit on something. Maybe he had a point, but she had to pay her bills. She hadn’t been zapped when she’d paid him to be her full-time chauffeur, so there had to be some leeway. John and Elizabeth couldn’t expect all her money to go to charity.

  “Consider this an investment in sedu—uh, in securing my ‘future,’ “ she said through gritted teeth.

  “What?”

  “Not now, Jake.”

  “Weren’t you talking to me? I could’ve sworn you were, because the cashier’s on the phone, and I’m the only one, you know, listening!” He eyed her suspiciously. “You get hit in the head yesterday?”

  “Probably. What’s your point?”

  “I’m just wondering how long it takes for a head injury to show up.”

  After signing the receipt and having her nails touched up, she found Jake in the freshly plowed parking lot, leaning into the trunk of his taxi. She peeked in, too, only to find a jumbled mess of packages from Cloud Nine.

  “Looking for a good time?”

  “What? Oh.” He grinned. “No, just inventorying what I was able to salvage from the store. The owner wants a complete list. Got your phone on you?”

  “Yeah, why?”

  He pulled a small box out of the trunk and extracted a tiny cell phone. “This one’s better. It’s yours if you want it.”

  “Really?” Fascinated by its minuscule size, Lilly took it gingerly and, careful of her nails, gave it a once-over. “I’ve never seen one like this.”