A Date on Cloud Nine

by Jenna McKnight

  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.

  “Oh.”

  Since Elizabeth had delivered the bad news, marriage was a topic Lilly no longer wanted to entertain. As a matter of fact, she was downright afraid to go there, for Jake’s sake. He’d already lost one fiancée. If he lost another—or worse, a wife—the poor man might think he was jinxed.

  “Hm, I hadn’t thought about that.” She moved to the chair across from him, so she could see him better, propping her feet up next to his thigh so they were still touching.

  If she got pregnant, would he insist on marrying her?

  When he learned she’d used him just to get pregnant because two angels told her to—oh boy, that was rich— would he even want to? Geez, Elizabeth and John should come with warning labels. Next time, she wasn’t agreeing so fast.

  “Lilly? I don’t want to pressure you”—he grinned sexily—”at least not until I have camellia petals and candles on hand. But if this son you’re wanting to name is my son, he won’t be named Marquette.”

  Shit, she couldn’t let him think about proposing, because she didn’t want to turn him into a widower. She’d have to turn him down, and how would that help her goal?

  “Oh, right. I should go back to my maiden name, shouldn’t I? I think I’d like that.”

  Jake paused a moment, mulling over her neat sidestep. It probably wasn’t the answer he’d been leading toward, but she wasn’t giving him an opening if she could help it. He scratched out Marquette and, neatly spacing letters as before, he printed Carpenter.

  “You remember?” she murmured, inordinately pleased.

  “About you, darlin’? Everything.” He gazed into her eyes the way he always did, strong, intent, sucking her in like a vortex, and she was relieved when he said, “Ready to go?”

  “I’m waiting on a new car for your uncle.”

  “Is it yellow? He won’t like it unless it’s yellow.”

  “It’s black.”

  “He won’t like it.”

  “I don’t think Mercedes come in yellow.”

  His eyebrows arched, but he held his tongue. She should have he
ld hers.

  “I thought he could be a limo driver.”

  “He doesn’t like limo drivers. He likes the freedom of throwing puny tips back at people. That’d kill a limo business.”

  She blinked. “Maybe if he’s a very good limo driver, he won’t get puny tips.”

  Grinning broadly, as if he knew a secret, Jake chuckled. “I’ll leave it to you to explain that to him. Right after you convince him that accepting an, oh I don’t know, hundred-thousand-dollar-plus car doesn’t come with strings.”

  She chewed her lip.

  “There’s more?”

  She nodded apologetically.

  “Let’s see. You’ve never met my uncle, but you buy him a nonyellow Mercedes—granted, a rather nice one, I’m not faulting you there—and you presume to think he could be a limo driver. That right so far?”

  “You don’t have to make it sound like an evil plot. There are no strings attached.”

  “Huh. I just figured you out.”

  She waited quietly, but not eagerly.

  “You have a death wish.”

  “Oh c’mon, if he doesn’t like it, he can trade it in for a whole fleet of ugly yellow taxis. My attorney arranged a nonbinding lease arrangement.”

  “Which he can’t afford.”

  “At a hundred dollars a month.”

  He grinned with boyish capitulation then. “Oh, so you do know my uncle. He’ll love it. Think we’ll be done by six tonight?”

  “I don’t see why not.”

  “Good. Bring something tropical to change into.”

  She sat up straighter, waiting for more, an explanation, a punch line, something, but it never came. “Why?”

  “You’ll see. Just do it.” He winked, leaned toward her, and whispered enticingly, “I’ll bring the camera.”

  She fanned herself. Damn Elizabeth for making the hottest guy on the planet fall in love with her and then not let her keep him.

  “I don’t have anything tropical.”

  “Then come naked.”

  19

  While she waited for the Mercedes to be delivered, Lilly called the shelters again. The man who answered recognized her voice right away.

  “He’s not here,” he said, weary with strained patience. “You only have to call once a day.”

  “I know.”

  “Let me guess. You and that fella’re gonna keep calling every hour anyway.”

  “Pretty much.”

  He sighed, said, “Okay,” and hung up.

  Jake’s sisters organized their own continual, rotating search of the smaller shelters. Their unsolicited sibling support was so far out of the realm of Lilly’s experience that she experienced the warmth of a deep, emotional hug every time she thought about it. Maybe she should hold a family lottery to name her son. Better wait until she was pregnant, though, or they might think she was a conniving slut and come after her with a full arsenal of sisterly offenses.

  Because Jake was being so good about the numerology thing and she didn’t want him to set it aside, Lilly ran off dozens more LOST CAT flyers so he wouldn’t have to. Every dime he made went right into the bank, yet he was offering a generous reward to whoever brought Mooch home.

  As devoted to the cat as he was, Jake not only hadn’t let up on his newly attentive behavior toward Lilly, he segued it right into the just-delivered Mercedes. After thirty minutes of driving around and stapling flyers to telephone poles, she finally gave in and rolled her window down.

  “It’s not that I don’t like the hyacinths, but…”

  “They don’t go with the new leather smell, do they?”

  “My throat’s starting to hurt.”

  “Well, where’re we going next?”

  She checked the sticky note, which he wouldn’t let her attach to the dash, so she’d stuck it high up on the windshield instead. “Library headquarters.”

  “That’s no good.”

  “What?”

  “For the flowers. What say we drive into the city and find a woman who looks like she’d appreciate them?”

  “By way of the Humane Society?”

  “You read my mind.”

  In Union Station, Jake started looking for women who looked as if they wouldn’t hit him if he approached them with flowers. By the time he’d given away two, Lilly’d made four little girls smile with delight. She’d just turned to tell him she was finished when he snapped a picture of her and the children. She hadn’t planned it, but it’d make a nice addition to the album.

  When Jake’s phone rang just outside the pound, Lilly went in alone. Upon her return, she slouched in her seat. “He’s not there.”

  “We’ll check the others.” Jake squeezed her hand, which helped a little bit. Mostly it was his deep rumble, though, that reached out and shared the burden.

  He also sounded a little brighter than ten minutes ago, and Lilly did a double take. “You look, I don’t know, stunned.”

  “That was the FBI on the phone.”

  “Oh please tell me, I beg you, that they’re going after my in-laws.”

  “Better.”

  “They’re calling in hit men?” Yes!

  “Somehow I doubt it, but listen. I was pretty excited. It might’ve been the ATF or NSA, I don’t know. Some government initials. Doesn’t matter. It was an agent who heard how I integrated CATS with GPS in Rachel’s dress watch, and he wants me to put a presentation together.”

  “All right!” It was about time he received some good news. “Wait, does doing that make you as happy as the home control stuff?”

  “Close enough.”

  Then she gave him the high five he deserved.

  He started the car. “APA next?”

  “Yes.”

  As the sun dipped below the horizon at six o’clock, Jake parked the Mercedes outside a gate set way back on the east parking lot of Shaw’s Garden.

  “Nobody’s around. You can change in the car while I get the cooler out of the trunk.”

  “Huh?”

  “Remember I said to dress tropical?”

  “For here? Why?”

  “You’ll see.”

  “It looks deserted.”

  “It’s after hours.”

  “Then how’re we getting inside?”

  “Piece of cake.”

  “No, uh-uh, if you pull a bolt cutter out of that trunk, I’m turning this car around and leaving your ass here.”

  He waggled a key. “Ron thinks you’re cute, by the way.”

  “Hm, I’m not sure how to take that.” Lilly wasn’t sure she wanted to trespass, but she’d yet to see a yellow camellia this spring. And they weren’t actually breaking in.

  “Hey, Ron’s got great taste in women. Where’re the clothes you’re changing into?”

  “I’m just going to stay in my jeans.”

  “Huh. Okay. Let’s leave our phones here. You take the key, I’ll get the cooler.”

  It must’ve been heavy, because carrying it defined the muscles in Jake’s arms so nicely that Lilly almost missed the fact that he’d donned a really gaudy Hawaiian shirt. Inside the gate, she strolled beside him toward the Linnean House, her favorite spot in the gardens. It was here she’d first fallen in love with camellias and why she’d planted them in her own atrium.

  The Linnean’s reputation had it as the oldest continually operated greenhouse west of the Mississippi River, but it was scarcely the typical boring glass structure expected of a greenhouse. It was built of brick, for one thing, with soaring arched windows, a slate-and-glass roof, and a cute mermaid fountain by the double doors in the long wall.

  The quaint romantic atmosphere was exponentially heightened by this clandestine, after-hours dinner and knowing that Jake had chosen it because of what it would mean to her. Small tea candles surrounded the fountain. Wall sconces were turned down low behind the camellias. Double doors onto the perennial garden stood wide open, with the rose garden just beyond.

  Even the yellow camellia couldn’t hold her attent
ion when soft instrumentals floated from hidden speakers, filling the house. Lilly recognized “We’ve Only Just Begun” and “Love Is a Many-Splendored Thing,” among others. She didn’t need to identify the rest to know she was in the presence of a master.

  Jake carried a bench over from the entrance and set it beside the fountain, then bowed theatrically.

  “M’lady.”

  “Boy, you’re pouring it on pretty thick.”

  “You ain’t seen nothing yet.”

  It tickled her, this new, extra-romantic side of him, so much so that she had let him run with it for days now. Was it her imagination, or did his voice rumble more than normal, raising his sexy quotient to an immeasurable peak?

  Nor was he relying on that alone. He’d raided his mother’s good crystal and filled two glasses with dry white wine. Lilly plucked a bunch of grapes out of the cooler to munch on while Jake went all out setting up a silver tray with a doily, cheese cubes, hunks of salami, and crusty Italian bread.

  “Good thing I’m not into health food.”

  “I would’ve brought granola and tofu.”

  “Ugh.”

  “See, I know what I’m doing.”

  She didn’t doubt that for a minute. As designated driver, Jake had little wine. Lilly sipped her way through a glass as they dined, listened to music, strolled through the moonlit gardens and talked about anything and everything. The hours flew by until they eventually packed up together, and yet they lingered.

  “I’m flying to San Jose in the morning.” He sounded as regretful as Lilly felt upon hearing the news. “I hate to leave.”

  “I’ll check for Mooch every day. Every shelter, I promise.”

  “It’s not Mooch I hate leaving.”

  She knew that beyond any doubt.

  “I’d invite you along, but we’d never see each other. Gary’s set up a meeting for tomorrow, and then we’ll have to go back to his place and work out whatever needs working out. I’ll get finished sooner alone.”

  “What about your other presentation? You know, for the government agency you can’t remember?” She suspected he just wasn’t supposed to say.

  “I can do both.”

  She thought about the consequences if she ovulated while he was gone. “If I miss you really bad, can I fly out to see you?”