Scrooge and the Single Girl
Page 19
Jilly turned and grabbed Will’s mother and hugged her for all she was worth. “Gotta go. See you soon.”
For once in her life, Caitlin Bravo actually seemed a loss for words.
The elevator door was already open. Jilly stepped through. The door closed just as she turned and gave Caitlin a wave.
Outside it was sixty degrees. A beautiful winter’s night in Las Vegas. Jilly sucked in a big breath of the balmy, smoggy air and headed for her car.
But there was a problem. The space where she’d left her no-frills compact rental had a huge midnight-blue Chevy Suburban in it now.
Was it possible that someone would actually go to the trouble of stealing a car like the one she had rented?
Maybe this was just a mistake. She’d been careful to write down the level and row number on a piece of paper, since more than once in her life, she’d lost track of where she’d parked her car in the first place.
But not this time. Right level, right row.
Wrong vehicle.
She heard a car approaching, rolling slowly her way. She turned and put up a hand against the glare of the headlights. The car kept coming, slowing to a stop right beside her.
She saw that it was a Mercedes. G-Class. Very dirty, a car that had recently covered a lot of distance on muddy roads. But underneath the mud, it was silver.
Will rolled the driver’s-side window down. “Need a lift?”
Chapter Seventeen
Her heart was doing impossible things inside her chest. And the world was suddenly so vivid. So beautiful. The parking garage seemed to shimmer with loveliness.
Yet she spoke quite calmly. “What are you doing here?”
“Aaron said you would be here. I came to find you.”
She stared at him, narrow-eyed. Then she blinked. “You’re serious.”
“As a blow to the head. As a long roll down a steep ravine.”
“That’s pretty serious.” She looked at him side ways. “Would your mother go so far as grand theft auto, do you think?”
“Hmm,” he said. “We are talking about Caitlin, which means anything’s possible.”
She saw movement behind him. She blinked again. But the brown-and-white spotted dog on the seat beside him was still there, ears perked, panting contentedly. “Oh, Will. You found him….”
There was a moment. A shimmering, private, perfect moment. Will looked at her and she looked back. It was magic.
It was love.
Finally, Will said, “The truth is, he found me. I opened the door. There he was. I started calling him Snapper, for no reason in particular. He didn’t object, so that’s his name.”
She had never been quite this happy in her life. “You mean—you’re keeping him? You’ve got a dog, at last?”
“I would have to say it’s more that he’s keeping me. He’s why I drove down. Hard enough to get a flight at New Year’s without a dog to worry about.”
She thought of David Aaron. “Did you hear—about the baby?”
He shook his head. “I’ve been leaving my phone turned off a lot. Caitlin’s always calling. I get sick of hearing it ring.”
She told him the news.
“Well,” he said, a musing half smile on that wonderful face. “What do you know? I’m an uncle.”
They looked at each other again, just stared and grinned until a car drove up behind him and honked to let them know they were blocking the flow of traffic.
Will said, “Let’s go.”
She rushed around to the passenger’s side. Snapper jumped in back without even having to be told. “Where are we going?” Not that she really cared.
“Some place where we can talk.”
In Las Vegas, finding a decent hotel in the middle of the night presented no problem. They paid a hefty extra fee in order to be allowed to have Snapper in the suite with them.
Once the three of them were alone, Jilly fussed over the dog for a few minutes, then Will ordered him to go lie down. Snapper trotted right over to the sofa against the far wall and made himself comfortable.
Will took her by the shoulders. “You won’t believe this. I keep having these dreams. Of my dead grandmother. Of Nora. Last night, I finally put it all together. My grandmother wants me to be with you.”
“I do believe it. I had a few nighttime encounters with Mavis myself.”
“You’re not serious.”
“Oh, but I am. And I have to admit, the whole experience had me seriously spooked. But yesterday I talked to Janey about it. She said what I needed to do was to accept it, to learn whatever lesson I thought Mavis might be trying to teach me.”
“I always did like Jane. She’s woman with both feet firmly on the ground.”
“Not silly and flighty like some of us.”
“Silly and flighty? No damn way. Lighthearted. Eager. So very, very alive.” He had her face cradled in his hands. He kissed her. A kiss that burned her to a joyful cinder and melted her into a puddle of love and desire. Simultaneously.
But there was still more to talk about before they could make use of the big bed a few feet away.
She broke the kiss. “And Nora?”
He gave her a crooked, musing grin. “It took me a while to get what she was trying to say to me.”
“Because?”
“I kept dreaming of her off in the distance, waving, telling me something I couldn’t make out. And then, last night, I got it. I understood she was saying goodbye. She was saying—”
Jilly knew. “That her dying was not your fault.”
He grabbed her close again, his strong arms banding tight around her. “I did know it.” He whispered the words into her hair. “In my mind. It’s just…taken a while for the knowledge to settle into my heart.”
Jilly hugged him as hard as her arms could hug.
And then he was taking her shoulders again, holding her away enough that he could see her face. “Luckily, this Christmas, I got professional help.”
She laughed at that. “It was a hell of a job, but somebody had to do it. And for my fee…”
“Anything.”
She laid a finger against those warm, tempting lips. “Don’t say that until you’ve heard what I want.”
He grabbed her hand, kissed that finger. “Anything,” he repeated. “Name your price.”
So she did. “I love you, Will. Marry me.”
He said, “You’re crazy.”
“No. It’s time for the big leap of faith. For both of us. I’m scared to death and I know you are, too. But I think that you do love me. And as I’ve just told you, I love you. So…”
He grabbed her close again, even tighter than before. “But what if—”
“No. None of it, none of the bad things that have happened in the past were your fault.”
“But you have to admit—”
“I admit nothing, not when it comes to this. I messed up once, badly, when I chose a man to love. But I’m not letting that wrong choice keep me from making the right choice now. And you can’t let the bad things that have happened to you keep you from reaching out and grabbing hold when a good thing comes your way. Oh, Will, there’s just no way for us to know how it’s all going to turn out, what will happen next year, tomorrow, an hour from now. All we can do is live for all we’re worth, from minute to minute.”
“You seem so damn sure.”
“I am sure. About this, anyway. You are no jinx, Will Bravo. You are the man that I love.”
“I really like the sound of that.”
“I’m glad. Because it would take a lot more than your bad luck to do me in. I lived through this holiday season at your side. And I intend to live through a lifetime more of them.”
“Is that a promise?”
“It is a vow.”
“I love you, Jilly. Marry me.”
She sighed. “Missy is going to be so very pleased.”
“Kiss me, damn it.”
Jilly did. With tenderness and heat, sweetness and sizzle. And with a
ll the love in her heart.
They ended up in the bed for several long, lovely hours.
But luckily, it was Las Vegas. They got up at noon and called Jilly’s mother to give her the news. Next, they called Aaron, who put Celia on to congratulate them. Then they tracked down Jane and Cade to be their witnesses. Caitlin got wind of a wedding in the works. She insisted on being there, too. She also swore she’d had nothing to do with the disappearance of Jilly’s rental car, which turned up a few days later—in Winnemucca, of all places.
Thus, in a very short time, everything was arranged. And at six in the evening, on the first day of January, Jilly Diamond and Will Bravo exchanged their wedding vows at the Chapel of Love Eternal in the heart of Las Vegas, right on the Strip.
Epilogue
On December twenty-second of that year, Jillian and Will Bravo put their cat and their dog and a whole lot of groceries into Will’s Mercedes and drove up into the mountains.
The old house seemed to be waiting just for them. They cut down their own tree and decorated it with all the wonderful faded ornaments in Mavis’s attic. Will read the first two hundred pages of The Brothers Kara mazov. Jilly got in a little work on some future columns. She beat him at Scrabble and he trounced her at checkers. They listened to NPR and Christmas carols. For the most part, Missy and Snapper got along.
There was Dinty Moore chili and Campbell’s to mato soup, Kraft macaroni and cheese and bags and bags of Cheez Doodles. For Christmas, they prepared the kind of meal that would have made the divine Martha proud.
And they made love. Frequently. With great joy.
If Will seemed reluctant to let Jilly out of his sight, she tried to be tolerant of his not-quite-banished fears. Life, after all, was a work in progress. And old ways of thinking sometimes died hard.
As midnight approached on December thirty-first, they filled their juice glasses with the finest champagne. When the clock on the old desk in the corner said the New Year had come, they raised their glasses high.
Will proposed the toast. “To us, to our first anniversary. And to one entire holiday season injury-free.”
“I’ll drink to that.”
They drained their glasses.
She put her hand over his. “It’s going to get easier as every year goes by.”
“Is that a promise?”
“It is a vow. Now, kiss me, damn it.”
And he did.
ISBN: 978-1-4268-6218-2
SCROOGE AND THE SINGLE GIRL
Copyright © 2002 by Christine Rimmer
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