Janet Evanovich - The Grand Finale

“That’s it,” he announced, squishing into the car. “I’m going home. I’m not delivering any more pizzas.”

Berry looked in the backseat. “We have one last delivery.”

“Too bad. Let them eat cereal. I’m cold and I’m wet and this whole thing is stupid. You’re not even making any money on these deliveries.”

“But I always deliver.”

“Not any more you don’t. We’re going home to talk.”

“Just what are we going to talk about?”

“We’re going to talk about this pizza business. Then we’re going to talk about us.”

“There’s nothing to discuss. My pizza business is doing fine, and there’s no us. What we have is a living arrangement soon to be terminated. I don’t mean to sound ungrateful. You’ve been very kind-”

“Kind?” he shouted. “You think I’m kind?”

“Well, yes.”

“I’ve been kind to your three old ladies, but I haven’t been kind to you.”

“What have you been?”

“Waiting, mostly. Trying to get rid of Mrs. Dugan. I can’t get ten minutes alone with you. The only time we’re alone is when we’re delivering pizzas, and then I’m busy with my nose in a map or you’re falling asleep on the seat beside me. Your lifestyle is not conducive to romance.”

“I know that, Sherlock.” Berry turned, into Ellenburg Drive. “I’ve told you before. I don’t have time for romance.”

“Wrong. You don’t want to have time for romance.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“It means you’re still running scared from your first marriage.” His finger lightly stroked her cheek. “Let it go, Berry. Give yourself a chance to fall in love again.”

“You don’t understand. I have goals.”

“You make falling in love sound like a terminal illness.”

Berry pulled into the garage and cut the ignition. “I feel guilty about this last pizza.”

“I don’t. I’m sure the people who ordered it have already eaten something else. It took us almost two hours to deliver seven pizzas in this damn rain. Let’s heat it up in the warming oven and eat it.” He opened the kitchen door for Berry and set the pizza on the counter. “I’ll be right back. I’m going to take a hot shower and change my clothes.”

Berry paced in the kitchen. Jake was wrong. She didn’t make herself busy just to avoid romance. Did she? Of course not. But if she did, it was for good reason. She had priorities. She had a plan. Damn that plan. She was beginning to hate it, and it was all Jake’s fault. He made her dissatisfied. He dangled all sorts of forbidden pleasures under her nose. For crying out loud, she’d had a hard enough time doing without butterscotch pudding-now she had romance added to her list.

She heard the water stop running in the upstairs bathroom. Jake was done with his shower. She popped the pizza into the warming oven and hastily scribbled a note telling Jake she’d gone back to the Pizza Place to help Miss Gaspich. Was she running away from romance? Darn right she was.

Miss Gaspich looked up when Berry walked in. “Did you get all the pizzas delivered?” she asked. “I was worried about you out there in this rain. It’s a real soaker.”

“I was fine,” Berry said, “but Jake almost drowned. He’s home drying off.”

“We didn’t have any walk-in business and no new orders so I’m just cleaning up. I’m almost done. Bill is coming over, and we’re going out for dessert and coffee. He’s such a nice man.”

“I know almost nothing about you,” Berry said. “You never talk about yourself.”

“Not much to tell,” Miss Gaspich said. “I was a personal secretary to the president of an insurance company for fifty years. I took the job right out of high school, and when my boss died at age eighty-three I retired. That was five years ago. I gave up my apartment and moved into the hotel for ladies on my pension and small savings. I never thought I’d find myself living in a train station. I suppose I should have put more away for a rainy day, but I always thought…” Miss Gaspich gave her head a shake. “I don’t know what I thought. I never had a good head for business.”

“Never married?”

“No. The right man never came along, and I wasn’t the one to settle. I always had a cat.”

Berry entered the darkened kitchen on tiptoe. It was twelve o’clock, and if she had any luck at all, no one would wake up. She inched across the floor, waiting for her eyes to adjust to the dim light, and almost screamed out loud when she stumbled into Jake.

His voice was soft and lethally lazy. “It’s late.”

Berry used to go fishing with her uncle Joe back in McMinneville. They’d sit all day in the warm shade of a willow tree, listening to the hypnotic drone of dragonflies and crickets, and then when she was just about asleep, Uncle Joe’s voice would buzz low in her ear. “Well, look at this. This big ol’ catfish is finally taking my bait. If we just wait here nice and quiet that fish’ll hook himself and we’ll have catfish for dinner.”

That was the sort of voice Jake had used. A catfish-catching voice.

Berry made an effort to swallow the panic that was rising in her chest. “Miss Gaspich and Bill left early, and I stayed around to tidy up.”

His hands were at her neck, massaging little circles. “You feel tense.”

You bet I’m tense, she thought. I’m not as dumb as that ol’ catfish. I know when I’m about to get reeled in.

She felt his breath whisper through her hair while his hands slid over her shoulders and nestled against the fullness of her breasts. It was an act of gentle possession. As was the taking of her mouth: a silent affirmation of the power he held over her. His tongue touched hers in confident intimacy, and she felt his arousal stir against her belly. She placed both hands against his chest and pushed away. “Lord, you’re probably murder on catfish, too.”

Even in the dark she could see the look of astonishment on his face. “Catfish?” He rested his head against the refrigerator and groaned. “Do you hear someone at the front door?”

“Miss Gaspich?”

The door opened, and Bill’s voice drifted through the dark house in a stage whisper. “Mildred, I had a great time tonight.”

Miss Gaspich’s answer was low and indiscernible. There was a prolonged silence.

“Holy smoke,” Berry said, “you don’t suppose they’re…”

“Sounds to me like he’s got a more cooperative partner than I do.”

Berry and Jake cringed at the unmistakable thump, thump, thump of Mrs. Dugan thundering down the hall, stomping down the stairs. A light flashed on in the living room.

“Mmmmmmmildred!” Mrs. Dugan pronounced it like a drum roll.

“This is Bill Kozinski,” Miss Gaspich said. “We were just saying good night.”

“He has a tattoo.”

“It’s an anchor. He was in the navy.”

A car door slammed in the driveway, and Mrs. Fitz and Harry joined the party.

“What the devil is this?” Mrs. Fitz demanded. “Why isn’t everyone asleep?”

Mrs. Dugan stood her ground. “You’d like that. You’d like to have the living room all to yourself, I suppose.”

“Darn right. How’re we supposed to neck with you standing there gawking at us?”

Bill put his arm around Harry’s shoulders. “Time to leave.”

They made a quick exit.

Mrs. Fitz glared at Mrs. Dugan. “See what you’ve done. You made them go away.”

Mrs. Dugan shook her finger at Mrs. Fitz. “You’ll never catch a man that way. Everyone knows men don’t buy what they can get for free.”

“Well, that’s fine with me ’cause I don’t want to be bought.”

“Me either.” Miss Gaspich giggled. “I don’t want to be bought, but I might be persuaded to give it away for free.”

Mrs. Dugan and Mrs. Fitz instantly turned scarlet. “Mildred!”

“I think we should all go into the kitchen and make a nice pot of tea.” Miss Gaspich smiled pleasantly. “I’m just dying to tell someone about Bill.”

Berry sipped her orange juice and watched Jake from the corner of her eye. He was clearly lost in his own thoughts. He glanced at the clock while he unconsciously drank his coffee. An air of brooding expectancy gave his dark eyebrows an ominous slant. She’d successfully avoided him since the kitchen encounter, trying with little success to sort out her feelings. It was like playing the game of plucking petals off a daisy. Keep The Plan. Junk The Plan. Keep The Plan. Junk The Plan.

In the beginning it had been her body that wanted to junk The Plan, but more and more, it was her mind that wanted to love Jake Sawyer. Oddly enough, he carried a sense of order and security with him. His lifestyle was a little extravagant, what with one-of-a-kind cars and exploding cereal, but his house was a home. That was the part that really scared her. Was she still looking for someone to take care of her mittens? Was she still looking for someone to fill in the blanks in her personality? Jake Sawyer was the man every woman dreamed of, but some incomprehensible, elusive instinct gnawed at her stomach when she thought of commitment to him.

Mrs. Fitz hadn’t noticed Jake’s preoccupation. She was contemplating the raspberry-colored egg on her breakfast plate. “Looks like Jell-O. Is it Jell-O?”

Jake checked the clock one more time. “Nope. It’s not Jell-O.”

Mrs. Fitz tried to cut it, but it skittered across the table. “Slippery little devil,” she remarked.

Berry had a similar object on her plate. It was green. “You sure this is edible?”

Jake looked injured. “Of course it’s edible. It’s also entirely natural and high in protein.”

“How’d it get green?”

“Spinach extract.”

Berry rolled it onto her spoon and watched in dismay as it slithered off Slinky style. “How do you eat it?”

Jake leaned back in his chair. “That’s the fun part.”

“You have a bizarre idea of fun.”

This was better than a room filled with first graders, Jake thought. He got to test out ideas on the ladies. Tomorrow he was going to see what they thought of his dancing Brussels sprouts.