THIS PERFECT KISS

by Christie Ridgway

  She was grateful, she said. She would start the job first thing in the morning. With one more flash of sequins and one more flash of smile, she was out the library door and then out the front door of the house.

  The sudden and energetic burst of activity made his head spin. That and the waft of too-warm, too-sweet-scented air that washed over him once he made it to the front door himself and opened it to watch Jilly Skye steer her junkyard car down the long, winding driveway.

  She took it slowly, probably unwilling to push her battered vehicle too hard. Despite her care, the woody wagon popped and rattled, proclaiming, if its owner were willing to listen—which Rory adamantly doubted—that something this old and this odd should have been junked years before. As she rounded the first curve, the second-to-the-last thing Rory saw was a cherry-red roof and a hand lifted in a cheerful farewell.

  Only when he saw the very last thing, a final wink of gold sequins, did he realize he should at least have suggested a more modest mode of dress.

  Rory shook his head. Only in L.A. Now that he'd involved himself with another of its kooks, something was bound to go wrong.

  It was only a question of how wrong it would be.

  * * *

  Jilly's heart was beating so fast she wondered if she'd swallowed one of the hummingbirds that flitted about the flowering shrubs lining the Caidwater driveway. Squeezing the steering wheel tightly, she just managed to tamp down her excitement as she drove through the wrought-iron gates and turned in the direction of home.

  But she wouldn't make it all the way back without stopping first, not with the news she had to share. Jilly guided the car to a wide, shaded shoulder of the road. With the engine off and the emergency brake on, she reached under the passenger seat for her cell phone. Her fingers shook so hard she couldn't press the buttons, so she held it against her thrumming heart for a moment

  She'd done it! Rory Kincaid had agreed.

  Rory Kincaid. A funny knot in her belly blossomed, releasing heat that rose to kiss her skin.

  Goose bumps broke out on her forearms even as she tried banishing the man from her mind. Whispering good ol' Bill's name at every opportunity hadn't transformed Rory from gorgeous to geeky, that's for sure. He'd turned out to be six lean feet of black hair, blue eyes, and unusual, almost exotic features.

  Exotic features that instantly conjured up images of—

  No. Squirming against her seat, she willed the silliness away. The way the man ignited her imagination not only was unsettling, it was untimely. Hip-hopping hormones had no place in her plan.

  Still… She sighed. For some unexplained reason, the instant she'd seen Rory, and when she thought of him now, a daydream unfolded in her mind. A most peculiar daydream in which—

  Beep. Jilly jumped, then loosened her button-pushing clutch on the cell phone. She glanced around guiltily, slightly appalled by this entirely new and almost kinky turn of her mind.

  Maybe she needed to eat more vegetables. Or switch to decaf coffee. Certainly she was suffering from some sort of deficiency, because she was mooning over a man when she had more vital things to do. Jilly had wrongs to right.

  With her thumb, she flicked the phone on and pressed the first speed-dial entry. A familiar voice answered, reedy with nervousness. Jilly forgot her worrisome reaction to Rory Kincaid and smiled so wide her cheeks hurt. "I'm in!" she said jubilantly. "And I saw her."

  * * *

  Chapter 2

  « ^ »

  Still brimming with excitement Jilly hurried through FreeWest, the small, offbeat neighborhood where she lived and worked. Named for the two main cross streets of the eight-square-block section—Freewood Drive

  and Westhill Avenue

  —FreeWest was cool, it was hip, and if the crowded sidewalks were any indication, it was happening.

  Winding around the shoppers, Jilly smiled to herself. In other parts of L.A., her appearance in bedraggled evening dress might cause people to walk the other way. But here it raised only a few curious eyebrows.

  FreeWest was famous for its eccentricity and energy. What was one knotted-together sequined gown in the midst of boutiques, a small art-film theater, an astrologer's parlor, and more than two dozen other to-the-left-of-mainstream-but-thriving businesses?

  She passed Beans & Leaves, the beverage bar half a block from her store, then French Letters, the store next door to her own. As usual, people jammed its aisles, hovering beside shelves displaying condoms in every conceivable texture, style, color, and flavor. The manager stood behind a countertop, his fingertips drumming impatiently upon it. Jilly sent him a sympathetic look. He complained that most of the store's patrons were voyeuristic looky-loos, not paying customers, and the silent cash register seemed to prove him right.

  Outside her own two-story building, Jilly halted. When under stress, some women baked cookies or scrubbed floors. Kim Sullivan, Jilly's twenty-three-year-old partner, dressed the windows of their shop.

  Jilly sighed. Her back to the street, Kim stood in the middle of the window's raised platform "floor," props and pieces of clothing in disarray around her. At five-foot-eleven, she looked like an Amazon trapped in a jewelry box. As usual, she wore jeans and a T-shirt over her model's body and had her long blond hair scraped back in a schoolmarmish bun held in place with two yellow Ticonderoga pencils, a style she'd stuck to since beginning her computer studies over three years ago.

  Kim draped two red dresses, their colors clashing painfully, over a rocking chair in the corner of the display. Jilly winced. Kim wasn't any better at decorating shop windows than she was at downplaying her beauty.

  To put them both out of their misery, Jilly rapped loudly on the window. Kim whirled around, pantomiming surprise, then smiled giddily when she saw who it was. Jilly took a deep breath to clear her mind of any lingering, inappropriate Rory-effects, then grinned back. She'd report to Kim about the meeting, of course, but absolutely not start talking about him.

  With the way her imagination was working overtime, who knew what might pop out?

  Jilly hurried to enter the store. The bells on the door jangled and Kim was already there to meet her. She grabbed Jilly's hands, her fingers cold, and Jilly grabbed back. "Tell me everything," Kim demanded, her voice excited and her grip tight. "Tell me everything now."

  This was the moment they'd waited for since they'd seen the obituary in the newspaper a month ago. Scratch that. They'd been waiting four years for this moment. "She's beautiful, Kim. Blond hair, blue eyes. I think she's going to be tall like you."

  "And did she seem … happy? Now that her father has died…"

  Jilly wished she could reassure her friend with complete certainty. "I don't know, Kim. She didn't appear unhappy. I only spoke with her for a couple minutes. She has lots of toys and a pretty room." Jilly went on to describe the lacy bedcovers, the rose-colored walls, and the kinds of dolls and books she'd glimpsed.

  Once she ran out of details, Kim dropped Jilly's hands to press her fingertips against her eyes. "I can't believe it," she said. "I can't believe you were that close to her."

  Blinking back her own tears, Jilly breathed in the delicate potpourri scent of the air. She scanned the store. Toward the back, one of the salesclerks was on tiptoes dusting a high shelf. Another clerk was helping a customer, and several more patrons happily browsed.

  She gently propelled Kim away from the door toward the relative privacy of a corner by the window. Her chest tightened and she pitched her voice low. "It's going to happen, Kim," she said. "We're going to find a way to reunite you with your daughter."

  Kim slid her hands away from her eyes. "I never dared hope," she whispered.

  "No," Jilly corrected her fiercely. "We always hoped." She stared up at her friend. Gone was the incredibly beautiful nineteen-year-old who had shown up at the shop Jilly had just inherited from her mother, toting a small suitcase and a soul-deep desperation. Kim was still unbelievably beautiful—no matter how hard she tried to ignore it—but thanks to her s
uccess in college, she now exuded a new confidence.

  Except when it came to counting on a future with Iris.

  "Jilly, maybe I don't des—"

  "No. Don't even go there." She knew Kim struggled against feeling that her choices of five years ago made her undeserving, even tainted in some way. "Not now, when I have the opportunity to be at Caidwater—to see Iris—every day. The only thing you should be feeling is hopeful."

  After another moment, Kim's tight features relaxed. A small smile played around her mouth. "Blue eyes, you said?"

  "But with your blond hair," Jilly quickly added.

  Kim gazed off into the distance. "Roderick had blue eyes."

  Rory Kincaid did, too. Cool, dark blue eyes that made her think of— No! She didn't want to think of Rory Kincaid at all.

  Kim was looking at her, her brow furrowed. "What?"

  Jilly's eyes widened and her face heated. Had she said something? Made some sound? She definitely needed to switch to decaf. Decaf and some big helpings of cauliflower.

  She cleared her throat. "I meant to say that Roderick Kincaid was a bastard, a cruel, steel-hearted bastard."

  Only the cruelest, hardest of men would exercise the rights a naive teenage girl had signed away in prenuptial papers. Megarich and powerful, he and his legion of lawyers had drawn up a beyond-death agreement that couldn't be cracked. When he threw Kim—his seventh wife—out, he'd left her with nothing and kept everything for himself … including their infant daughter.

  Kim hugged herself, as if feeling a chill. "I wouldn't have survived at the beginning if it hadn't been for you. You've always been the one with the strength and determination."

  Jilly shook her head. "I just get mad better than you and stay mad longer. Anyway, we wouldn't have survived without each other."

  The starkness of those times four years ago rushed back to her, too. Still in her black funeral dress, wrinkled and sticky from her furious but determined overnight drive from San Francisco to Los Angeles, Jilly had been wandering the floor of Things Past when Kim had walked in. Her suitcase was full of vintage wear she wanted to sell in order to buy a bus ticket out of L.A. But Jilly hadn't had the faintest idea what the clothing was worth, and was short on cash herself.

  At that, Kim had collapsed onto her suitcase and started to cry. Exhausted and emotional, Jilly joined her. But then their tears dried up and their stories started flowing. Understanding followed. An understanding that was the cornerstone of their deep friendship.

  And they both understood that Kim's getting Iris back was going to help heal Jilly, too. Or at least bring her some peace.

  Suddenly, Kim's eyes rounded and she blinked. "My goodness, I just noticed! What happened to you?" Her gaze ran over Jilly's disheveled evening gown.

  Jilly half smiled. "Woman meets chinchilla."

  "What?"

  "Iris has a pet. She told me Greg gave it to her."

  Kim's face went completely blank. "Greg? You mean Rory's brother?"

  "I suppose." Jilly shrugged. "I got the impression he lives at the house, too."

  There was a moment of silence as Kim seemed once more to retreat into the past. Then she shook her head and her eyes refocused. "I still can't believe you did it, Jilly. So tell me about Rory Kincaid. Do you think he'll be reasonable?"

  At the mention of his name, Rory's image roared to life in Jilly's mind. Oh, boy. She pasted an urgent but bright smile on her face. "Give me a moment to run up and change, 'kay? Then I'll tell you all about him." Right. Just as soon as she could reduce him to reasonable proportions in her imagination.

  In her tiny apartment upstairs, the one that was a mirror image of Kim's, which lay on the other side of a matchstick-wide hallway, Jilly wriggled out of the evening gown. She reached for jeans and a vintage, pink bowling shirt embroidered with the name "Angel." Then she slid her feet into bubble-gum-colored sneakers. There. Perfect fix-the-window-Kim-bungled clothing. Which was a perfect avoid-the-conversation-Kim-began occupation. Some instinct warned Jilly that if she started talking about Rory, her imagination might—

  Clamping down on the thought, she ran into the kitchen, grabbed three baby carrots, and crammed them into her mouth before going downstairs. Maybe Kim would forget the whole line of conversation if Jilly got busy.

  As if. Nobody knew better than she that Kim's brains were as awesome as her beauty.

  So although Jilly had climbed into the display window while Kim was tied up on the phone, as soon as the receiver slid into its rest, Kim immediately came to hover. Jilly had already removed the horribly clashing red dresses. Her heart sinking and her hands on her hips, she avoided Kim's gaze by pretending to be intently considering the placement of the props—a folding screen, a small hip bath, a narrow rocking chair, and a square-topped table.

  Kim sighed. "I shouldn't have tried to do the window for you. I did my best to follow your sketch, but…" She shrugged.

  Relief waved over Jilly. "That's okay." She dragged the folding screen to one corner, adjusted the hip bath so it was nearly dead center, then set the small table beside it. The rocking chair she pushed into the opposite corner from the screen.

  Good. Now the area looked ready for a lady's bath, especially with corkscrew streamers of iridescent packing material filling the tub to resemble bubbles. Jilly retrieved one of the garments she'd decided to use. As if a woman had just disrobed, Jilly draped the white cotton-and-lace summer dress, circa 1910, over the top of the folding screen. Old-fashioned, white linen high-top boots went on the floor beneath the dress. Over one corner of the screen she balanced a straw, lace-trimmed hat.

  "Now tell me about Rory."

  At Kim's command, Jilly's hand jerked, sending the pretty straw and lace tumbling. Biting her bottom lip, she retrieved, then carefully rebalanced, the hat before replying. "You know," she said vaguely.

  "I don't. I told you, I never met him when I was married to Roderick. What's he like?"

  Nothing like Bill Gates, more's the pity. No glasses, not even a teeny-weeny pocket protector! Instead, Rory reminded her of— Jilly shivered, then halted her wayward mind from going in that strange new direction it had so recently discovered.

  She folded a length of towel, edged with delicate tatting, over the lip of the tub. "He was very, uh, businesslike."

  Except when he'd had his hands in her hair. Her scalp had prickled and tickled and she'd almost felt her curly hair twisting in tighter coils. Closing her eyes against the remembered sensation, she dove her fingers into the packing material inside the tub, mindlessly fluffing the "bubbles."

  "Businesslike? Well maybe that explains it," Kim said. "The interest the Blue Party has in him, I mean."

  "What interest is that?"

  "Rumor has it that Rory Kincaid is going to be the new political party's first candidate," Kim said. "For the U.S. Senate."

  "Mmm." Jilly moved away from the tub and unfolded a square of ecru eyelet over the top of the little table. She didn't want to think about politics any more than she wanted to think about Rory Kincaid. It was a definite noninterest of hers. Politics was a passion of her grandmother's, which Jilly had come to realize was just one more way for the woman to control people like chess pieces.

  With careful movements, Jilly set several brightly colored perfume flasks on the tabletop.

  "But come on, Jilly, what did you think of him?"

  Jilly's hand involuntarily twitched, and the flasks toppled like bowling pins. She sent her friend a harried look. "What would I think of him, for gosh sake? I was raised by a Puritan and educated by nuns. I'm not exactly prepared to form an opinion about a man like that."

  Which was precisely why she'd banished him from her mind. Though Grandmother wasn't Catholic, Jilly had attended Our Lady of Peace Academy because it was the most rigorous—make that rigid—kindergarten through senior high to be found in the San Francisco Bay area. Behind the cold walls of a former nunnery, Jilly and her equally cowed female classmates had been taught by Sister Teresa an
d Sister Bernadette and Sister Maria Guadalupe, but had never learned anything about the ways of men.

  The perfume bottles finally just so, Jilly escaped from the table before another awkward movement revealed her silly agitation. She grabbed a pair of stubbed-toe, 1970s Frye boots and set them on the floor of the display beside the rocking chair. Wide-leg jeans of the same vintage went across the seat, and a rainbow-colored, tie-dyed T-shirt over the chair's back. Stepping away, she assessed the display. From left to right, it suggested a demure woman of the early 1900s transforming into the retro-hip gal of the new millennium. Exactly as planned.

  With two notable exceptions. Eager to complete the job, she quickly set up a light aluminum ladder. Kim disappeared into the back office and swiftly returned with the last pieces for the new window display. Jilly beamed at her. Already Kim had been quiet for approximately ninety seconds, and with luck, this chore would get her mind off probing any further about Rory.

  Jilly mounted the ladder, and then reached toward Kim. Her friend held out a clear plastic bubble about the size of a volleyball, with a small plastic loop on top that had a length of heavy fishing line attached. Inside the bubble was Kim's real contribution to the display. She'd been tasked with finding two appropriate photos off the Internet, one of a turn-of-the-century hunk, the other of a current heartthrob. Each plastic bubble held an enlarged printout of a man's face. Jilly tied the fishing line on a teacup hook screwed into the ceiling over the tub. She smiled, turning the bubble to appreciate the handlebar mustache and handsome features in this photo. Yes. It looked just like the frothy bubble of a woman's fantasy hanging over her bath.

  Jilly reached for the other plastic bubble. Kim cleared her throat, but Jilly didn't spare her a glance as she concentrated on tying this one a bit higher than the first. Satisfied, she was more than halfway down the ladder before she actually looked at the image in the second bubble, the modern female fantasy. She froze.