THIS PERFECT KISS

by Christie Ridgway

  A woman deserved to pretend, didn't she, even when she didn't deserve anything else?

  "I—"

  "I—"

  They both spoke at the same time, then broke off. He reached out a hand, and she quickly stepped back. "No."

  God, no. He couldn't touch her. She'd never let him touch her, not even when his desperate heart had been in his eyes and hers was crying out for him.

  Maybe she'd spoken too loud, because the few Monday morning customers were staring. Kim took a breath and turned toward her office in the rear of the shop. "Why don't we go somewhere less public?"

  She didn't wait for his answer but headed in that direction, praying that when push came to shove, she wouldn't ditch the whole awkward situation after all and run out the back door. Stress and fear did funny things to her though. When she was eighteen and dumped by her stepfather on the streets of Hollywood with a D-plus grade point average and fifteen credits short of a high school diploma, she'd gone ahead and done what he'd always said was the only thing she was good for. She'd traded her young body and her blond beauty for the security and money a man could give her.

  But she hadn't made her trade with just any man. Oh, no. Kim had brokered what she thought at the time was an awesome deal with an eighty-five-year-old Hollywood icon. Maybe her step-daddy would have been proud after all.

  To be fair to herself, she'd gone into the marriage with every intention of being what Roderick wanted, a beautiful young wife who could prove that he still had it, that he was still virile.

  In return, she'd thought she would attain the security she'd been desperate to possess. She'd said "I do" without a qualm, never once considering that she was giving up marrying for love. It wasn't as if she'd thought Roderick loved her, of course.

  And he hadn't. No one ever had. At eighteen years old, she'd never expected anyone would.

  That was why she'd been thrilled about her pregnancy. Someone to love! Someone to love her!

  She pushed these painful thoughts away and, by some miracle, found she'd made it to her office. She sat down at her desk and gestured for Greg to take the other chair. But he remained standing, his hands shoved in the pockets of his jeans as he looked around the small room.

  "You graduated from high school," he remarked, gazing at a framed diploma.

  Jilly had given that to her as a "graduation" gift three years ago. "My G.E.D.," she corrected.

  He leaned toward another frame and she couldn't stop herself from staring at him. She liked his very short hair. It looked thick and warm and she wondered how soft it was. Her hands had never touched it. Not her hands, or her cheek, or her mouth. They never would.

  He turned his head to look at her. "And your A.A. in Computer Science?" He didn't sound surprised, and she found herself astonishingly grateful for that.

  "Yes. And in June I'll have my Bachelor of Science degree. I'm already doing a little Website building on the side." She hoped she didn't sound proud. She was, of course, extremely proud, but Greg was fully aware of all her faults and probably thought she didn't deserve any pride at all.

  "So, including school and working here, you do a little Web-site building?" He sounded surprised now. And maybe impressed.

  "I don't just work here, I'm a partner," Kim said, then instantly wished the words back. For a thousand reasons.

  "A partner," he repeated slowly. "You're a partner in Things Past? That doesn't happen overnight."

  Her hands curled into fists. He'd just put his finger on one of the thousand reasons why she should have kept silent. He spun around and inspected her A.A. diploma for a second time. She knew what he was looking for. It was from a local college.

  He spun back. "You've been here all the time," he said. He didn't make his words sound like an accusation, but he didn't have to.

  "Yes," she said.

  He lifted a hand, let it drop back to his side. "I thought… I always assumed… Roderick said you were leaving L.A. for Vegas. Phoenix, maybe."

  "Yes," she said again. She didn't want to tell him she hadn't had enough money to get that far.

  Greg had been out of town on a shoot when Roderick sprang the divorce papers on her. Greg was to have been gone only five weeks, but on the second day of his absence, her husband had told her calmly, quietly, to get out. She'd been feeding their infant daughter a bottle and Roderick had been on the phone with the sheriff's department, just in case she refused to leave without a fuss.

  Apparently Greg assumed that Roderick had given her something to start a new life with, but in fact, he had locked her out of the house with a small suitcase and the cash she'd had in her purse.

  Nineteen dollars and twenty-four cents.

  She'd even laughed—sure, a bitter laugh—about it at the time. Nineteen dollars and twenty-four cents. Nineteen for her age. Twenty-four for Greg's.

  He ran a hand over his hair. "But if you've been here, you could have seen—"

  "No!" For some reason, she couldn't bear to hear him say her daughter's name. "Roderick—the prenuptial agreement—"

  "I know all about that, Kim," he said softly. "He told me what you'd signed."

  Kim nodded. She'd been so naive. So stupid. She hadn't even read the agreement.

  "What I meant," Greg continued, "was that you could have seen me."

  She was so astonished she just stared at him.

  An expression crossed his face, something she didn't dare put a name to. Then he turned his back on her.

  "I looked for you, Kim. I looked for you in Vegas and I looked for you in Phoenix. Other places, too."

  Oh. She bit the inside of her mouth again, tasting blood. He'd looked for her.

  But she ignored the traitorous softening in her chest. Where would he have gone to look for the Kim of four years ago? Would he have looked for a showgirl? A waitress? Would he have looked for a woman bought and paid for by another old, wealthy man?

  Sometimes she still hated herself.

  "You need to go, Greg." She put every ounce of her strength in her voice. "I don't want to see you." She swallowed and said it once more. "I don't want to see you ever again."

  Greg turned to face her, so slowly it felt like she died four times before she could see what her words had done to him. The bones of his face were stark and his eyes almost empty. Almost. "Not before you explain something. There's something I don't understand."

  She waited, unable to say anything to that stark, beautiful face just yet.

  "What's going on? Why is Jilly at the house? What does it have to do with Rory?"

  Jilly. Rory. Kim's heart slammed against her ribs. Oh, God. Oh, God. Her fingers gripped the edge of her desk as if she could squeeze some answers out of the wood-embossed plastic. She'd been so caught up in being near Greg again that she hadn't seen this question coming.

  Greg could ruin everything. If he warned Rory before Jilly had figured out a way to get him to see Kim's side, then she might never get her daughter back.

  She stood so abruptly her chair crashed to the floor. "Please, Greg." Her voice cracked. "Please don't say anything to Rory. Or Jilly. I've never told her about—about—that you and I even know each other. But Jilly and I, we're not trying to hurt anyone."

  She couldn't tell if he believed her. His expression was stony, his eyes chips of blue ice. Oh, God.

  Kim swallowed. "We're not doing something bad. Please, Greg." She knew she sounded desperate. "Please, please don't say anything."

  If possible, his face became even harder. "I remember you saying those exact words before. Four years ago, in fact."

  She latched onto what he'd said, unheeding of the grim look on his face. "And you didn't. You didn't say anything then."

  She'd been six months pregnant when he'd called her name from across the Caidwater library. She'd looked up from her book, instantly sensing his feelings and his intent to tell her of them. But they were in his grandfather's house and she was his grandfather's wife and her belly was round with his grandfather's child. Sh
e'd known that speaking of it would only torture Greg more. Both of them. Then, like now, silence was best.

  In her panic she moved forward, toward him, but her hips smacked into the desk. She looked down, as if the furniture had sprung out of nowhere, and then back up at the glittering blue of Greg's eyes. "You never said a word to Roderick or anyone else about … us. I should have thanked you for that."

  He stared at her from those hard and empty eyes, then shook his head. "Shit, Kim." There was pain and confusion but mostly a savage anger in his voice. "Should you have thanked me? Should you thank me now? Should you really?"

  He walked quickly toward the door. But then he paused and slowly turned back around. "Don't worry," he said wearily. "For … for old time's sake, I'll keep your secret."

  Her heartbeat still thrumming in panic, Kim watched him go. Secrets again. She was so tired of them.

  * * *

  Chapter 7

  « ^ »

  Seated in a corner of the Bean & Leaves beverage bar, surrounded by a few of her favorite members of the FreeWest Business Association, Jilly stared into the dregs of her cup of Cosmic Comfort tea and sighed. She was stalling.

  The last Wednesday of every month, the business association met at 7 A.M. to discuss shared concerns. As the association secretary, Jilly was required to take the minutes and she never missed a meeting. But Ina, the association president as well as the owner of the Pilates exercise studio on the corner of Freewood and Fourth, had concluded the meeting with a clack of her mug against the tabletop nearly an hour ago.

  "Got a problem, Dink?"

  Jilly looked across the table into the warm gaze of her good friend Dr. John. At six-foot-seven, Dr. John had nicknamed her "Dink," short for "dinky," just about the first moment they'd met.

  "Oh. You know." She tried smiling as she reached up to scratch her eyebrow. A gold ring pierced Dr. John's ebony skin at the far corner of his left eyebrow. Looking at it always made her itch. "It's that big job I have at Caidwater."

  Knowing she could trust her friends, she'd told them days ago the truth of the "engagement" Rory had announced to the press. She had to admit he'd been right about that. The press interest had died quite a bit, especially since he'd said the wedding date was indefinite. She occasionally saw reporters around, but so far had managed to avoid them.

  Dr. John's gold eyebrow ring hitched higher as he widened his eyes. "Are you falling behind?"

  Jilly rubbed at the spot on her nose that was tickling. "No, I'm making a lot of progress on the clothing." Dr. John's diamond nostril stud caught in the gleam of the overhead light and winked. She rubbed her nose again. "It's something else."

  The "something else" was the fact that, despite the engagement, she hadn't made any progress with Rory. In trying to avoid being caught with him by any spying, kiss-inducing telephoto lenses, she'd managed to also avoid the man himself.

  Rubbing the prickling skin on her upper lip, Jilly gazed at Dr. John speculatively. "How would you go about acquainting yourself with a man?"

  The blond-haired one sitting beside her laughed. "Why are you asking him, Dink? You know Dr. J is strictly hetero."

  Jilly swiveled in her seat, smiling at Paul, one half of Paul and Tran's Catering—a new venture in the neighborhood—who was also one half of Paul and Tran the long-committed couple. "Okay, then you tell me, Paul. Say you want to spend a little time with a man. Let him get to know you. What would you do?"

  From his seat on the other side of Paul, Tran leaned across his partner and answered for him. "Paul would cook, of course. Lots of finger food. Oysters." Tran rubbed a hand over his washboard abs and winked. "Yum."

  "Or go to the movies." The ring piercing Dr. John's upper lip and matching the one in his eyebrow wiggled as he spoke. "And I happen to have free passes." From the inside pocket of his elegant, ash-colored Armani jacket, he slid out two tickets and placed them next to Jilly. "Among the Pillows is guaranteed to get you closer."

  She picked up the passes, considering. Dr. John had a quarter interest in their local art-movie house, though his main occupation was running The Cure, his shop specializing in piercings, tattoos, and mehndi body art. "I don't know…"

  For one thing, Rory didn't seem the type to appreciate visiting her neighborhood, let alone art films. The other, bigger reason was the shiver that ran down her spine when she thought of being alone with him in the dark. She wiped her suddenly damp palms on the front of her jeans and sighed. "I can't seem to make up my mind about anything."

  For the first time since this conversation had begun, another of Jilly's friends, Aura, looked up. "Why didn't you say you were having problems earlier? I would have been happy to help."

  Jilly smiled at, the older woman. Aura wore her slightly graying sandy hair styled in a somewhat mussed pageboy. It went well with her comfortable, conservative clothing, mostly denim or khaki with the occasional Irish knit sweater thrown in.

  Pursing her lips, Aura consulted the book she carried with her everywhere. Eight inches thick and its cover a plain celestial blue, it had gilt-edged pages filled with equations, notations, and drawings made in Aura's angular and undecipherable handwriting.

  She tapped a page with her finger. "Aquarius," she murmured to herself, then addressed Jilly again. "You don't know whether to zig or to zag because of all the extra energy coursing through you. Blame the recent eclipse. But the restlessness won't go away until you find a way to relieve some of your stress."

  Dr. John snickered and Aura sent him a frosty look. "Yes, John. That could very well be the kind of stress Jilly needs to relieve."

  Jilly inwardly groaned as Paul, Tran, and John laughed outright now. Aura, who had once confided over a couple of glasses of wine that she'd dropped the initial L from her real first name when she opened her astrology parlor, couldn't be stopped from giving guidance any more than Dr. John could stop finding body parts to pierce.

  Though Jilly didn't take Aura's astrologically based advice seriously, she did give the older woman her respect. Aura, who bore an uncanny resemblance to Martha Stewart but who talked about astral projections instead of apple pie recipes, had been Jilly's mother's best friend. And then Aura had come to San Francisco four years ago with a packet of letters, and become Jilly's friend, too.

  Only Jilly, her grandmother, and the minister had been in attendance as they interred Jilly's mother in the marble mausoleum on the cemetery's cold and windy hilltop. But then Aura had approached with her warm smile and warm hands and pressed into Jilly's numb ones the letters her mother had written to Jilly during the past twenty years. Letters her grandmother had returned unopened. Letters she'd never mentioned to Jilly.

  Those letters had led her to L.A. Jilly had come here to get to know her mother, even though it was too late to meet her. She'd come here to escape her grandmother, even though it was too late to escape an unshakable fear of what people could do when they knew you loved them.

  Aura's voice brought Jilly back to the present "You just ignore these buffoons, Jilly, and let me see how I can guide you." She bent her head to consult her book again.

  Jilly pasted on an expression of expectant interest, doing as Aura suggested and ignoring the gibes and innuendos the three men were tossing back and forth. It was imperative to find a way to establish some kind of friendship with Rory—necessary to plead Kim's case when the time was right—so she might as well listen. It wasn't like she had any bright ideas of her own.

  Aura looked up once more. "Tran was right. It's food. Get Paul to make you up a basket of something."

  Jilly mulled over the suggestion and took of sip of now-cold tea. "Maybe…" Maybe it was a good idea. She could bring a picnic lunch to Caidwater today. She would invite Iris along as a chaperone and then she could also gauge the progression of Rory's relationship with his aunt, too.

  She smiled at Aura and jumped to her feet. "Can you do it, Paul?" The man was already nodding. "A lunch basket for three, to be ready in, say, an hour?"

 
; Scooting out of her place in the corner, Jilly beamed at all of them. Before arriving in FreeWest, she hadn't known what it was like to have a family, as "family" in the truest sense of the word—a group of people who looked out for your welfare because they cared about you. You as yourself, not as a reflection of them.

  "Thanks, everybody. You may have just solved my problem." She had a plan, she had a picnic. For the first time in days, her natural optimism surged, rising like little bubbles of carbonation in her blood.

  "Not so fast, Jilly."

  Aura's small frown couldn't check her desire to skip rather than walk out of the beverage bar. "What?" Jilly said, still smiling. "I'm listening."

  The older woman held up a finger. "Be careful of what you say, because misunderstandings will come easily today."

  "Gotcha." Jilly started to turn, but Aura caught her eye, so she obediently turned back. Sharing a patient and amused look with Dr. John, Jilly rubbed at her itchy eyebrow. "What else, Aura?"

  The woman's expression was serious. "Everything you expect to happen will be the opposite," she said ominously. Then she smiled. "Now go have fun."

  * * *

  On the drive to Caidwater, a quilt and the picnic basket beside her, Jilly pondered how to get Rory to agree to join her for lunch. What if he didn't fall right in with her plan? She sensed he'd been keeping out of her way just as much as she'd been keeping out of his.

  While she was coughing away the dust her tires kicked up on the dirt road—after her first and last run-in with the press, Rory had shown her an inconvenient but secret approach to the house—she came up with the answer. Iris.

  Rory wanted to please Iris. More than that, he was knee-quaking, face-paling, spit-scared of her. And she could manipulate him with a skill that females seven times her age didn't possess. The little girl could get the job done.

  So just around noon, Jilly hid her smile as Iris walked onto the back terrace of Caidwater, leading Rory by the hand. Maybe they should send the little girl to the Middle East. Give her a few marshmallows to squeeze and then see how fast those peace talks progressed.