“Dana.”
She screamed and spun around. She knew the voice, of course, but the unexpectedness of hearing it from behind her sent her heart careening around in her chest, bouncing around her rib cage like a gerbil on amphetamines.
“Jesus!” she yelled, her hand on her chest. “Don’t you ever call first?”
Nick glanced down at an envelope he had in his hand. “I didn’t think you would be awake yet. I didn’t want to disturb you. I just… I wanted Babs to get this as soon as she woke up. I’m going to be busy later, and something unexpected happened when I ran the errand for her last night. I thought she should know about it.”
Dana’s eyebrows knit. What was he talking about? Didn’t he know babbling was her thing?
“I would have called,” he continued, “but her phone is still…”
Dana nodded. “Do not disturb. Yeah. I’ll talk to her about that.”
His jaw muscles tightened. “This just explains what happened. Not a big deal, but, like I said…”
“You’ll be busy.” Avoiding me, she added silently.
“Yeah.” He held her eyes for a moment, then stepped past her to put the envelope on the kitchen table. He kept the tips of his fingers on it for a few moments as if he wasn’t sure what to do next. Dana used this time to pull her robe closed around her and cross her arms over her stomach.
“I’ll make sure that she gets it,” she said.
Nick looked at her. “Sure. Thanks.”
He just stood there, watching her. It was as though he couldn’t move, which Dana kinda understood, as she kept telling her feet to carry her somewhere else, and yet there she still was. Ignoring her internal pleas, her legs kept her cemented to the spot and staring up into the sweet blue eyes of the biggest mistake she ever made.
***
Nick swallowed and tried to move away, but he couldn’t. She was still so beautiful. Even with her auburn curls sticking up on one side of her head. Even with that old flannel robe tied clumsily around her, stopping at the knee to reveal smooth legs he remembered too well. Even with her oversized gym socks, the right one clinging to her calf, the other scrunched around her left ankle. It shouldn’t have been a beguiling image. He should have been able to walk away, easily. After all, this was the woman who had ruined his life, kinda. Ruined him for other women, anyway. He should have been able to walk away.
But he couldn’t.
Nor was he able to say anything. What could he say? Last night, he’d pretty much proven himself unable to engage in small talk with the “You changed your hair,” comment. He cringed at the thought of it.
“You okay?” she asked, her voice soft and quiet, reminding him of the hundreds of mornings he’d woken up to it, taking for granted that he’d wake up to the sound and smell of her for the rest of his life.
“No,” he answered honestly. He could lie, tell her he was great, but it wouldn’t do any good. Dana had known him since the tenth grade. She’d detect a lie from him before he could even get the words out.
She gave a little nervous giggle. “Well, I’m great. Never been greater. My life is perfect, pretty much.”
“Good,” Nick said stiffly. “Glad to hear it. See you later.”
But he didn’t move. Just stood there, staring at her in that robe, with the messy hair and the… legs.
Oh. God. The. Legs.
He needed to get out of there. Now.
Without a word, he turned and walked toward the elevator.
“Wait,” he heard her say behind him. “Nick.”
He’d almost made it to the elevator when she caught his arm, stopping him. The heat from her fingers zapped him, even through his jacket.
“I’m sorry,” she said. “I don’t know why I said that. I’m just… seeing you is difficult.”
He nodded. “Yeah.”
“I mean, not that you’re hard to look at,” she said. She was starting to babble, as she always did when she was nervous. “I mean, definitely easy on the eyes. Especially with the…” She motioned vaguely toward his chest. “I like the leather.”
He raised his eyes to hers, and they locked on to each other. In that moment, a thousand memories came rushing back at him. The prom, graduation, long drives to and from SUNY Potsdam, where they’d both gone to school. Having sex for the first time in his truck at the edge of the vineyard. Proposing to her in a small hotel room in Niagara Falls.
The view from the back as she ran out of St. Christopher’s. The look on her face when she walked in and found him with Melanie Biggs.
And then, he was back to the robe and the smooth legs.
“You’re looking at me funny,” she said. “It’s the hair, isn’t it? I get horrible bed hair and—”
His restraint ran out at that moment and he reached for her, stunning her into silence as his hand slid under her robe and around her waist. It was like instinct, so natural as he maneuvered his palm against that special place in the small of her back and pressed her against him, remembering what that used to do to her.
Based on the look on her face, some things hadn’t changed.
“So the hair’s okay, then?” she whispered. The sound of her voice, all breathless and soft, broke down the final wall. He kissed her, although not to shut her up. He kissed her because all the forces in God’s green earth couldn’t have stopped him, he wanted her so bad. There was barely a pause before she responded in kind, her arms wrapping around his neck, her hands in his hair, on his face, their tongues writhing against each other as their bodies did the same.
He pulled back and looked at her, breathless. Her lips were reddened with the force of the kiss, and she exhaled slowly, showing him a bit of those slightly crooked teeth that nearly sent him over the edge. He knew this was the point where his reason should return, where he should let her go, apologize, disappear. But he couldn’t. Neither could he lose himself in her the way he wanted to. That way lies madness, he thought.
Not that he wasn’t already plenty mad. That was fairly obvious right now.
He put one hand on her face, ran his fingers down her cheek, his thumb tracing her bottom lip.
“Dana,” he whispered.
Her chest heaved as her breath caught, and he looked in her eyes. There were tears there, not enough to spill down her cheeks, but enough for him to know that she was as deeply affected by him as he was by her.
At that moment everything changed. He let her go quickly, as though he suddenly realized he was holding a blazing coal, and he stepped back.
Her lower lip trembled. “Nick?”
He swallowed hard against the pain rising in his chest and walked into the elevator.
“Nick?” she said again, stepping up to the elevator door, but staying inside the penthouse. Nick avoided her eyes as he hit the button. The doors closed. He released his breath and leaned back against the elevator wall as it descended. It was one thing to feel crazy with lust, or even to be slapped in the face with the reality that he still did, and probably always would, love her. He could deal with that. He had been dealing with it with varying degrees of success for six years.
What he didn’t want, what he didn’t need, what chewed holes in his gut was that, for a brief moment, he’d felt the one thing he never wanted to feel again.
He felt hope.
And it scared the hell out of him.
***
Dana put her fingers to her lips, which were still tingling from Nick’s kiss. She stood in front of the elevator door, staring at it, stunned.
“Well,” she said to herself after a moment, “that was interesting.”
Although interesting might not have been the word. Surprising would have worked. Hot definitely applied. Disconcerting was appropriate; her hands were still shaking. The rest of her body, however, was revved up and ready to go, and very desperately wanted Nick to come back through those doors and press her up against the wall and do things to her that would make the coat rack clutch its pearls.
“Oh, this isn�
�t good,” she said, and rubbed her hands over her face. Slowly, she stepped away from the door. Nick was gone, and based on the look (of what? Disgust? Terror? Indigestion? Why didn’t she ever have a pocket thesaurus when she needed one?) on his face when the elevators closed, she’d bet the farm he wasn’t coming back.
Ever.
She shuffled numbly over to the kitchen table and sat down. It had just never occurred to her, not for a second, that he might still have feelings for her, but that kiss told a different story.
Then again, it could have just been the hair. Nick had always been partial to the disheveled look.
She took in a deep breath, trying to calm the hopped-up gerbil in her chest. None of this made sense. In the world as she knew it, she had a few things she could always put her back up against. The sun came up every morning, the Democrats always took New York in the presidential elections, and Nick Maybe hated her.
That was just the way it was.
She stared at the envelope on the table, Babs’s name written in Nick’s firm hand on the floor. She smiled, remembering the letters he used to write her, putting them in the mail and sending them from his dorm to hers, which were less than fifty yards apart. He’d deliberately written the hokiest love letters he could manage, filled with tongue-in-cheek passages of blatantly absurd crap. Her favorite passage: “Your lovely face is emblazoned on my eyelids, as though an evil elf snuck into my room at night and embroidered it there.” But he always ended them with the same simple, “Yours. Always. Nick.”
And she still had them, in a shoe box in her closet. For a moment, she wanted nothing more than to go home and read them, but then she remembered there really was no point.
She ran her hands through her hair. None of this made sense. Not the moment of clarity, not the cosmic coincidence of their running into each other now after six years of successful avoidance, not the inability to go five minutes in a room alone together without throwing themselves on each other like a couple of teenagers on prom night.
The kissing had been good, though. A little too good. She was going to have to change her underwear.
Dana sighed and shook her head. There was no point in obsessing over Nick all morning. That wasn’t why she was there. This trip was about having to run to Mommy to get bailed out of trouble. It was important she focus on one failure at a time. The disaster that was her and Nick was not on the agenda.
She glanced at the clock: six-thirty. If history served, Babs wouldn’t be up until nearly eleven, and if Dana sat around the penthouse all morning, she’d go nuts first from trying not to think about Nick, and later from thinking about him.
“Okay,” she said to herself, getting up. “Cold shower, long walk on the city streets, enough caffeine to revive the dead, and Nick Maybe will be out of my system before noon.”
And she padded toward the bathroom, trying to ignore the voice in her head that mocked, Fat chance.
Seven
Dermot Finnegan pulled his PDA out of his jacket pocket and flicked it on. Except for the ridiculously overpriced items Chez Animaux stocked for people who were too rich to realize animals were not people, the place was empty. It was a loser job, selling fur-lined cat boxes, diamond-studded dog collars, and books on how to psychically communicate with your cockatiel, but it was a means to an end. In six months there, he’d gotten more leads than he had in the two years he’d been working birds previously. He figured three, maybe four more jobs, and he could get out of it entirely. Although he had to admit that every job was kinda fun—the adrenaline rush as he picked locks, disabled security systems, and worked the sale—he’d grown over time to hate birds with the white-hot passion of a thousand suns. He hated the way they smelled, the way they chirped and squawked, the way they molted all over his apartment until he was finding feathers and fluff in his toothpaste. He was twenty-seven years old and just now realizing that life was too short to waste on stealing birds.
He tapped the stylus to the screen and started to play solitaire. He was halfway through the game when the front door jingled and an older, well-dressed woman in a dark blue suit and an expensive-looking coat walked in. Finn tucked his PDA back into the pocket of his jacket and smiled.
“Good morning, ma’am.”
She grinned at him. “Call me Babs.”
Finn tried to conceal his surprise. Most of Chez Animaux’s clientele preferred he walk ten feet behind them and never make direct eye contact. He liked this woman already.
“Okay, Babs,” he said. “Can I help you with anything this morning, or will you just be browsing today?”
She pulled off her sunglasses and smiled at him. “Actually, I’m hoping you can help me. I need supplies for a bird.”
A bird. Hmmm. “We have a wide selection of bird supplies. What kind of bird is it?”
“It’s from New Zealand.”
Finn started checking off the possibilities of valuable New Zealand birds in his head. Not that he was going to steal from her. She seemed like a nice lady, and he tried to steal only from the assholes. But still. Habit is habit.
“New Zealand. Nice place. Do you know exactly what kind of bird it is?”
“It’s a parrot,” she said.
A parrot. From New Zealand. And she was being cryptic about it. People didn’t tend to hide things unless there was something to hide. All signs pointed toward a job worth doing, which would be one job closer to getting away from birds forever.
Too bad he wasn’t going to steal from her.
“Where’d you get it?” he asked. “Just curious.”
“Gift. From a friend.”
Finn smiled. Again with the cryptic. “I see.”
“I’ll need a cage, too, I think. Something I can carry it around in.”
“We have an excellent selection of cages. How big is the bird?”
“Big. Chicken-sized.”
Something clicked at the back of his head. He eyed her for a moment. “Flightless?”
“Yes.”
Big. Flightless. New Zealand parrot. Finn scanned his memory for something specific, but came up dry. He was sure he knew what this bird was, though.
“So, what do you think? Regular parrot food or… Oh!” She made a face. “You don’t think it’s one of those birds that eats living things like mice and smaller birds, do you? Because I don’t think I could do that. I have difficulty killing spiders. I’ve been known to carry fleas outside and release them. Not that I don’t believe in the food chain, I do, I’m just all soft inside.”
“It’s the rare parrot that’s actually carnivorous,” Finn said, leaning forward amiably. “For future reference, though, you’ll want to avoid owls and hawks.”
She smiled at him. “Great. Do you think you can help me?”
“Absolutely.” Big. Flightless. New Zealand. Damnit. “Let’s take a look at what we’ve got.”
Finn hopped out from behind the counter and directed her through the store, writing up the order on a receipt as they chose a cage, some parrot food, and various chew toys, all the while trying to figure out what the bird was.
“I’d like it all delivered to this address,” Babs said, after they’d returned to the counter. She grabbed a sticky note from a pad by the register and scribbled down her address. “Today, if at all possible.”
Finn glanced at the Beekman address, which promised swank digs with beaucoup security. Too bad he wasn’t going to steal that bird. He sure loved a challenge.
“That should be just fine,” Finn said. He punched the numbers into the register. “That’ll be three hundred and sixty-two dollars and eight cents.”
“Great.” Babs pulled out her card.
Finn grinned, swiped the card, and handed it back. He drummed his fingers on the counter and waited for the transaction to approve.
Big. Flightless. New Zealand.
And, suddenly, it hit him. A Kakapo.
This woman had a quarter million dollars of bird sitting up in her penthouse. It was like a gift from heave
n, dropped right in his lap.
Forget three jobs. This one would be it. The last bird job he’d ever have to work.
Ever.
He pulled the slip out and handed it to Babs to sign.
“Thank you so much for your help,” she said as she scribbled her signature.
“We’ll get that delivered for you this afternoon,” Finn said.
Babs smiled and handed him back the slip. “I’ll let my doorman know to expect you.”
“Excellent.” He separated the slip and handed her the receipt. “Have a nice day.”
Finn watched her as she picked up her bag and headed out the door. Sure she was nice, but not nice enough for him to pass up a quarter million dollars.
No one was that nice.
***
Babs slipped on her sunglasses as she walked down the street. She couldn’t help but smile. It was a beautiful October day in the city. The sun was shining. The air was crisp.
And life was very, very good.
She’d woken up to find that Dana had gone, and had been disappointed at first, until she saw the envelope from Nick on the kitchen table, and her heart had soared. Perhaps Dana had been awake when Nick stopped by, and the two of them had a nice conversation, perhaps gone out to breakfast together. Which could lead, perhaps, to some mended fences, which could lead, perhaps, to a few dates. By the time Babs finished her coffee, she was planning their second wedding, including super-adhesive to keep the bride’s feet in place.
Just in case.
She’d showered, dressed, stuffed the envelope from Nick—which she assumed contained Vivian’s check—into her purse and headed out to run her errands. The first thing on her list was getting supplies for the bird, which had been extremely pleasant—especially since that clerk had been so nice. And young and handsome, with light green eyes and spiky red hair. If she were thirty years younger, she’d have asked him out to dinner. That’s how good she was feeling.
Now, it was off to St. Jude’s, then she’d go back home and call Nick—maybe Dana would even answer his phone—and have him drop off the bird. The matter of finding a way to sell it on the black market would be tricky, but she’d navigated rougher waters than that before. She could do it again.
Maybe Baby Page 5
