Janet Evanovich - The Grand Finale

Jake gathered the ladies in his arms and ushered them down the stairs. “We can get new toothbrushes and clothes. Let’s just get out of here for now. Everything will look better in the morning.” He locked the apartment door, put the CLOSED sign in the window of the Pizza Place, and locked the front door. “I got a rental car today. It’s just down the block.”

Berry looked at Jake when they reached the car. It was a tan SUV.

“You don’t seem like the SUV type,” Berry said.

Jake helped Mrs. Dugan climb into the backseat. “I don’t know what type I am. One minute I’m a carefree bachelor, riding high on Gunk, and then all of a sudden I’ve got a houseful of women. And none of them are any good for bachelor-type pursuits.”

Berry rammed her hands onto her hips. “What’s that supposed to mean? What do I look like, chopped liver?”

Jake tugged at a yellow curl. “I’m afraid, Lingonberry, that you are very much like your name: delicious but virtually unobtainable. You would not be the first choice of a carefree bachelor. You are definitely wife material.”

Berry thought about it for a moment and decided he was right. She wasn’t much of a party girl. Even if she didn’t have The Plan, she’d still be more apple pie than martini.

Jake cranked the SUV engine over, pulled away from the curb, and headed north.

“Hey, look at this,” Mrs. Fitz exclaimed, ten minutes later. “We’re out in the country. Isn’t this something?”

“This isn’t the country,” Mrs. Dugan said. “This is the suburbs. You can tell the difference because the suburbs haven’t got cows. There are cows in the country.”

Berry tried to relax as the scenery on Ellenburg Drive flew by. Cows or not, in her book this was country. There were pretty houses, tucked back off the road with lots of space between them. The road narrowed to cross a good-sized creek and then began to snake uphill to Jake Sawyer’s house. Berry felt as if she was going on vacation. She hadn’t been on a vacation in six years, but going on vacation was like riding a bike-you never forgot the feeling.

There was a sense of expectation in the car. The air over the backseat fairly crackled with it as the ladies leaned forward in hushed anticipation, and in the front seat Berry couldn’t have been more excited if she was spending a week at St. Moritz. She hugged herself and grinned. There would be lots of peace and quiet, and crickets chirping, and trees whooshing in the wind, and Jake Sawyer in his underwear. The image of Jake Sawyer in his sexy blue briefs was stuck in her brain like the refrain of a song that refused to be forgotten. Jake Sawyer in his underwear. How do you forget something like that?

Berry bit her lip, silently groaned, and rolled her window down a crack. It was getting warm in the car. This would never do. She had to put all this into proper perspective. This was not a vacation. And this was certainly not going to include Jake Sawyer in his you-know-what.

Mrs. Fitz poked her in the shoulder. “Are we almost there?”

“Yes,” Berry said, “and this is not a vacation.”

Mrs. Fitz shook her head. “What a ninny. Of course it’s a vacation.”

The house looked smaller and much less menacing by daylight. In fact, Berry decided it was downright cheerful. The house was bordered by dormant flower beds and a broad lawn. Several oak trees pressed their limbs toward the yellow siding. The lawn was surrounded by a buffer of woods. The white gingerbread trim sparkled in the sunshine. The front door was carved oak and topped with a stained glass window.

Mrs. Fitz gave a long, low whistle. “This is a pip of a house.”

Berry stood in the foyer and admired the freshly waxed hardwood flooring, the hand-carved cherry banister that spiraled up the stairs, the ornate doorjambs. The entire downstairs had been painted a creamy white, giving the house a light, airy feeling. It contained few pieces of furniture. A large, overstuffed, buff-colored couch and matching club chair had been placed at the perimeters of an Oriental area rug in the living room. A pottery table lamp sat on the floor next to the chair. The foyer opened into a breakfast area at the rear of the house. A large round wood table nestled into the curve of a long bay window. It was a great house, Berry admitted. Worth every cent of Jake’s Gunk money. And it deserved to have a terrific car sitting in its garage. She felt a true pang of remorse for the loss of the Gunk car. The car and the house belonged together.

“This is gonna be fun,” Mrs. Fitz said. “I always wanted to live in a house like this. Boy, this feels like home. I could stay here forever. Come on, ladies, let’s go upstairs and explore.”

Berry caught the look of horror that passed through Jake’s eyes and had to clap her hand over her mouth to keep from laughing.

Jake grabbed her by the nape of her neck. “I saw that smile. You’ve got a mean streak in you, Lingonberry Knudsen.” His thumb massaged small circles on her neck just below her ear, and his muscled thigh grazed against her denim-clad leg. He put his mouth to her ear and spoke in a husky whisper. “She wouldn’t really stay here forever, would she?”

“Mmmmm,” Berry purred. “Mmmmaybe.”

“And what about you?” Jake asked. “Will you stay forever?”

“I have a plan,” Berry whispered.

Except The Plan was hazy when she was pressed against Jake like this and his thumb was doing those magical circles on her neck. The Plan seemed more like an idea she’d once had. The plan she had at the moment involved nibbling on Jake Sawyer’s neck. Lord, he smelled good. Masculine-like musk cologne and campfire.

Her eyes opened wide. Crap. Hold the phone. Sawyer didn’t smell like campfire. He smelled like her charcoal-roasted couch!

Jake stopped the massage and grinned at her. “Changed your mind?”

Berry blinked at him. “What do you mean?”

“For a minute there, you looked like you were contemplating nibbling on my neck.”

“Jeez.”

He stepped closer, backing Berry up against the foyer wall. “Just to get the record straight, I think I should tell you that it’s okay for you to nibble on my neck any time you want. It isn’t as if we’re strangers, you know. After all, you’ve seen me in my underwear.”

Berry stared at him in stoic resignation. They were back to his underwear. This was never going to work. He had an evil sense of humor, he read minds, and he gave her a hormone attack just by lowering his voice an octave. “I think I should go home,” Berry said, inwardly wincing when her voice cracked on the word home.

Jake shook his head. “Tsk, tsk, tsk. Where’s your sense of adventure? Don’t you want to be bold, like a red geranium?” His voice was teasing, but his eyes were serious, and the sexual tension stretched taut between them.

Berry gnawed on her lower lip. “Geraniums aren’t in bloom yet. And neither am I,” she added. “We’re out of season.”

Jake moved two inches closer, and Berry felt the panic rise in her throat as the tips of her breasts crushed against the wall of his chest. Oh, Lordy, she thought, he’s going to kiss me again. He’s going to plant those incredible lips of his on mine and melt the soles of my sneakers. She didn’t know whether to close her eyes and pray it didn’t happen, or leave her eyes open so she wouldn’t miss a single thing. Jake lowered his mouth to hers before she had a chance to make a decision, and gave her a short, gentle kiss.

“Are you blooming, yet?” he whispered against her lips.

“No,” she said. “I’m not even nearly blooming. I’m not going to bloom until I’m good and ready.”

He ran his finger across her lower lip and tangled his hand in her hair. When he kissed her this time it was with barely checked passion. He broke from the kiss and held her at arm’s length when he heard Mrs. Fitz come thumping down the stairs.

“Wait until you see the upstairs, Berry. It’s wonderful,” Mrs. Fitz exclaimed. “You can see forever from the third-floor windows.”

Mrs. Dugan followed her. “Not much furniture in this house. No window shades. I can’t live in a house without window shades.”

Jake gestured to the cartons stacked along the dining room walls. “There are extra linens in one of those cartons. We can tack a couple sheets up for tonight.” He zipped his jacket and opened the front door. “I guess I’d better go buy some toothbrushes.”

Mrs. Fitz, Mrs. Dugan, and Miss Gaspich perched on the edge of the couch, their eyes glued to the television set, their mouths slightly open as they watched the last few minutes of Ghostbusters. Scattered in front of them were the remnants of supper: Styrofoam hamburger cartons, a few ketchup-soaked French fries, five empty milkshake cups, and a large bakery box containing one lonely doughnut.

Berry sat on the rug, her back resting against the edge of the couch. A gigantic marshmallow man had just appeared on the screen, and Berry decided he didn’t seem nearly as menacing as Jake Sawyer stoking the fire in the Franklin stove. Jake wore jeans that seductively clung to the most mouthwatering butt Berry had ever seen. Definitely not the butt of a chemist, she concluded. It would be a sin to hide that butt under a lab coat. Jake Sawyer had the butt of a pirate. A rogue butt. Her eyes glazed over in silent appreciation while she memorized the contours and speculated on the hidden details. When Jake stood and stretched, she quickly transferred her attention to the movie.

She sensed, rather than saw, Jake moving toward her. His knee grazed her shoulder, and Berry knew if she turned her head she’d be staring into the intriguing bulge behind his zipper-the one part of his anatomy that was possibly more perfect than his butt. Don’t look! she told her eyes. You know what trouble you got into last time you ogled that bulge!