Annette Blair (27 page)

Jason approached his friends and spoke to them.

Tiago, Seth, and a couple other bachelors nodded, left, and returned with more men, and Jason raised his hand for the bidding to begin.

One bid after another, all of them made by men, the bidding dollars on Billy rose so high so fast, the women didn’t have a chance. The men made it impossible.

In the true spirit of a power play, Billy went for fifty thousand dollars to Tiago’s grandfather. Ninety years of age, if he was a day, Jose Santiago clutched his walker and laughed so hard, Kira was afraid he’d need oxygen.

Billy left the stage with good grace to meet his date halfway. He had promised to take his winner dancing in Paris.

Kira and Jason mingled separately, and later they sent Gram home while they stayed to clean up. They drove home in separate cars.

Kira got there first, but she sat on the floor beside the elevator and dozed while waiting for Jason. She still wanted to know if he was angry with her for putting Billy in the auction.

He gave her a hand up, when their eyes met, and pulled her straight into his arms. As he nuzzled her neck, she leaned over to push the Up button.

Too tired to discuss her decision about Billy, though she was pretty sure Jason wasn’t angry, they necked in the elevator, lips never touching, by mutual consent, though his lips touched every place else on her that they could reach.

Actually, Jason was making a feast of her, and Kira was willing to let him slay her with passive pleasure.

He didn’t let her fall out of the elevator this time; he was prepared.

“Hey,” she said. “Good catch. Tiago would be proud.”

“Would you please not talk about him at a time like this.”

“A time like what?”

“You won me. I’m . . . your sex slave, right?”

“Wait a minute.” She held him at arm’s length. “I want the date.”

“You
want
to get up at four in the morning for a balloon ride?”

“You did book one, right?”

“Well, yeah, but . . .”

“Then, hell yes, I want it.”

Jason checked his Rolex. “That gives us an hour to play and two to sleep.”

“No, that gives us three to sleep . . . in our own beds.”

Kira raised Jason’s jaw to shut his mouth. “Balloon ride. Attic picnic. Tomorrow. Meet you here in three hours.”

“Nuts.”

“For breakfast? Sure. Bring some.”

“You’re killing me here.”

“Don’t make me use my wand, Goddard.”

AT
four the next morning, bright-eyed and packing a wallop in black jeans and an off-the-shoulder sweater, one turquoise bra strap showing, Kira carried binoculars, a hamper, and a black wool cape.

Cranky and sleep-deprived, Jason forgot his car keys and had to go back for them.

“Yeesh,” Kira said as he crabbed about it. “Nice date you’re gonna make.”

In the elevator she socked him. “Wake up. It’s morning already.”

He pulled her into his arms and rested his chin on her head. “I like you, Fitz; you’re a real pain in the ass, like me. I like your body, too, right here. Sometimes I think we’d make a good coup—” Jason stopped talking.

Kira stepped from his arms. “Did you fall asleep in the middle of that sentence?”

“Yeah.”

“Bad dream?” she asked.

“Scary,” he said. “Nightmare scary.”

“I suspected as much.”

“Sorry,” he said, “did I wake you?”

She took him by the hand to lead him from the elevator, and he was so tired, he surprised himself by getting into the passenger seat of his Hummer.

He tried to doze on their way to the balloon field, while Kira drove, annoyed him, and amused herself, by keeping him awake. If he didn’t like her so much, Jason thought, he’d beat her.

“Bad weather for a balloon ride,” the operator said. “Have to give you a rain check. I’ll call next Saturday around three
A
.
M
., if it’s a go.”

Jason woke from another bad dream. “You’re kidding. We got up this early for nothing?”

“Can’t take a chance with these winds. Coming on hard winter, you know. You might want to wait until spring.” The guy looked up and rubbed his hands together. “It’s freezing up there.”

Jason and Kira looked at each other, probably sharing the same thought; they wouldn’t be together in the spring . . . not working together . . . or any other kind of together, despite his near-fatal statement in the elevator.

“Sure,” Kira said. “We’ll call you in the spring.”

“I’m sorry,” Jason said, walking her back to the car. “Our date’s ruined and I’ve been a jerk.”

“Yeah, well, that’s been known to happen. But the date’s not over,” she said. “You’re not getting out of it that easy. I’ve got an attic picnic coming, and I want it. I didn’t pay thirty-five grand for nothing.”

“Gram paid thirty-five grand.”

“Oh, sure, shove that in my face. But it doesn’t matter because I’m going to pay her back. We have a deal.”

Jason couldn’t contain his bark of laughter. “What does she get for her thirty-five grand, because I’m thinking it can’t be cash.”

“My firstborn.”

Jason stopped walking.

“Honestly,” Kira said, “she asked for my firstborn, then she corrected it to naming my firstborn after her.”

“You could end up with one sissy boy on your hands.”

“Okay, so my first
girl,
then, and Elizabeth is a pretty name.”

“Bessie. My grandmother’s name is Bessie.”

“It’s okay; she told me about the big family secret, that she was named after her father’s mistress in a moment of wifely spite, so her father nicknamed her Bessie. But I like Elizabeth, so I said yes.”

Jason tried to make sense of what Kira was saying. She knew a secret he didn’t; his grandmother’s secret. And she was going to have kids . . . without him.

“You didn’t know your grandmother’s real name?”

“I guess not, and I’m ticked that you do.”

“I wanna watch the sun rise,” Kira said. “Look, there’s a rock where we can sit and wait.”

“Nice rock. My ass hurts already. Come on. I have a better idea. Get in the Hummer.”

Driving Kira back to Cloud Kiss, Jason kept thinking about giving “Elizabeth” a piece of his mind, and not just for the withheld name. It was that firstborn thing.

He knew damned well that Gram was angling for Kira’s firstborn to be
her
grandchild.

“I wanted to watch the sun rise,” Kira said into the silence.

“Did it rise yet?” Jason asked, indicating the darkness beyond the windshield, his hand, palm up.

“No.”

“Then you haven’t missed it.”

“How come you’re so logical all of a sudden?”

“You woke me up.” He brought her to Gram’s ocean-view greenhouse, an octagon garden room furnished in white whicker.

Lush with exotic plants, the scent of orchids permeating the air, six of the room’s eight sides were windows. Kira had never been here before, Jason knew, because this was Gram’s private wing.

“Goddard,” Kira said. “
This
is awesome.”

Jason pulled a velvet smocked fainting couch over to the window and invited her to lie on her side facing the ocean.

“Open the door so we can hear the tide,” she said.

Jason cracked it open, letting in a fresh salty sea breeze, then he lay on the couch behind her, and pulled her against him like spoons in a drawer.

“Don’t fall asleep,” Kira warned, waking him.

Jason raised his head. “What? I was awake.”

“Right. Mumble that again so I can be sure.” She elbowed him in the gut. “
Stay
awake.”

“Okay, okay. I’m awake. Annoyed, but awake.” She fit perfectly against him, he thought, her head beneath his chin, her bottom exactly where it belonged.

“Look. It’s beautiful.”

“Yes,” he said, “it is,” but Jason wasn’t looking at the sun, he was admiring the way the light spun Kira’s hair to copper and shimmered against her skin. He sat forward to see the wonder in her eyes. He kissed her shoulder and she raised her hand to cup his cheek.

Jason closed his eyes and opened his senses to the moment.

There was indeed something magical about Kira Fitzgerald, and he decided to allow himself, for this one day, to accept whatever she was willing to give, and to give whatever she asked.

It was a date, after all, not a lifetime.

One day, all theirs. A day to make memories.

GRAM
stepped into her greenhouse room and stopped.

“Bessie!” Kira said, pulling her legs from under her. “Is it okay if we watch the sunrise from here? We didn’t disturb you, did we?”

“Disturb me? No, I’ve been up for hours. I’ll check my plants later.”

“Stay, watch it with us,” Kira said, patting the spot beside her, and Jason could see his grandmother was touched by her invitation.

When he nodded, Gram joined them.

They watched in silence, him with a hand on each woman’s shoulder, the one who’d raised him and the woman she’d handpicked for him. Too bad she’d done it for nothing.

It wasn’t Gram’s fault that he wasn’t ready, but he appreciated the attempt. If he weren’t going back to hockey . . . well, Kira had been an inspired choice.

“What happened to the hot-air balloon?” Gram asked when there was nothing more to see but the ocean
completing its endless cycle, mesmerizing in its own basic and primitive way.

“The balloon popped,” Kira said. “I’m hungry,” she told Jason. “What time’s the picnic?”

“I didn’t plan a breakfast menu.”

“I’ll get Rose in the kitchen to pack breakfast instead of lunch,” his grandmother said. “Go on up. You’ll like the attic, dear,” she said to Kira. “It’s been cleaned to Jason’s specifications.”

“Oh, no, I don’t want to explore a clean attic, I want to rummage.”

“There’s plenty to rummage in,” Gram said. “But now it has a year’s less dust on it. Go and explore to your heart’s content. Have fun, both of you.”

His grandmother watched them get on the elevator. He was going to have to have a talk with that woman.

“She’s gonna hate it when you go back to hockey, isn’t she,” Kira said as the elevator began to rise.

“She’ll miss me, but she wants me to be happy. I’ve always known that.”

“She’s something.”

“Something special,” Jason said, thinking the description fit both the women with whom he’d shared the sunrise.

“I see we’re skipping to the fifth floor,” Kira said. “So what’s on the fourth?”

“Staff quarters.”

“A whole floor? Cool. And what’s in the wing opposite Gram’s?”

“The summer bedrooms.”

Kira did a double take.

“The way the wind blows off the ocean,” Jason said, explaining, “the rooms in that part of the house are cooler. No air-conditioning in 1889 when this was built, don’t forget. Those rooms are decorated with lighter fabrics and softer colors, too, and the beds are made with coverlets, not heavy blank—”

“You’re not freaking kidding. Your ancestors switched bedrooms with the seasons?”

“Yep.”

“Where’s the nursery?”

“This is not a nursery picnic,” Jason said.

“Another day?”

“Maybe, but don’t count on it.”

“Why are you afraid of the nursery?”

“I’m not af—Because Gram’s been trying to get me to fill it for a few years now. Her heart would give out if I took a woman there.”

Kira pushed him against the wall and fell against him. “Rabbit hole,” she declared, rescuing them both from the dangerous direction he’d been going, and giving his hands permission to wander.

The elevator opened on the fifth floor, too soon for him, not soon enough for her.

“I’ve never seen such a huge, bright attic,” she said.

Jason examined it as if for the first time. The walls, whitewashed, the sunburst windows plentiful, the morning light streaming into a world of faded color and ageless chaos.

High-button shoes stood on steamer trunks. Dress forms wore corsets. Bric-a-brac, sandwich glass, and rare bronzes filled curio cabinets from several eras. Rare paintings sat stacked in corners. Gargoyles and angels guarded fringed Victorian lamps and fussy Victorian furniture.

Reverent and silent, Kira started a rocking horse to galloping. She picked up a glass-eyed china doll in a blue dress, rocked it in her arms, then placed it in a wicker doll carriage. She found a miniature quilt, rubbed it against her cheek, eyes closed—shooting Jason’s heart with arrows—and placed it over the doll.

She pushed a pricey nineties perambulator his way and said, “Get in.”

He didn’t need to ask why she was enchanted. He’d
always felt the same when he was touching the past. He simply never expected to find anyone else who did.

“These are memories,” she said, as if she’d been in his head. “Yours, your ancestors’. I don’t know where to start.”

“Tell me if you’re looking for something special. I used to like to play up here.”

She perked up at that. “Really. Where? Where was your fort?”

“Guess.”

“So if I show you something, you’ll share the memory that comes with it, whether it’s yours or someone else’s?”

“Rabbit-hole deal, and as usual, nothing leaves this room.”

When breakfast arrived, they were caught sitting, Indian-style, beneath a mountain of furniture that had once, indeed, been his fort. Two hours had passed like a blink.