THIS PERFECT KISS

by Christie Ridgway

  Greg smiled and came forward, ignoring the proffered palm. He pulled Rory into a bearlike hug instead. "You've never let me down," he said.

  Rory slapped his brother on the back. Despite the irrevocable—and maybe unrecoverable—blow he'd just made to his future, he thought his cloud of inevitable doom showed, for the first time, a spark of a silver lining.

  * * *

  Rory headed back to the party, the packed rooms and buzzing conversations a sure sign of the fund-raiser's success. Biting back a surprised laugh, he noticed Aura holed up in a corner of the living room, her waitressing duties long abandoned. A circle of tuxedoed men was gathered around her and her big blue book, and he thought he heard one of them mention the Nasdaq and Sagittarius in the same breath.

  Passing through the library, he raised his brows as he caught Dr. John suggesting a dragon tattoo to a woman sporting a diamond choker and a smooth, tennis-on-Thursdays tan. Maybe he wasn't the only one who would never forget this night.

  Crossing the threshold to the terrace, he paused. The senator was holding onto the microphone as if ready to give a speech, and partygoers were gathering close. Rory sucked in a breath. With his blessing, his four-year-old aunt was going to be adopted by his brother, who had just married his ex-stepgrandmother. What would the senator and the Blue Party think about that?

  Those headlines popped back into his mind.

  But they wanted him, not his brother or his family situation, he tried reassuring himself. Maybe he had a little ground to make up now, but Jilly had told him to close his fingers over what he wanted and hold on. And, dammit, he wanted this.

  Didn't he? Yeah, like Greg had said, Rory was autocratic, impatient, and undiplomatic. He chafed under the control of party leaders like Charlie Jax. And yeah, the slow wheels of the political process might grind his patience into the ground. But for a man who wanted to change his image, being part of something that wanted to change the image of politics was ideal. Wasn't it?

  Just then, the senator spotted him across the terrace and immediately lifted the microphone to his mouth. "May I have your attention. I've been on pins and needles all night, wanting to introduce you to our host … Rory Kincaid!" The silver-haired man gestured toward Rory with the mike.

  Applause broke out and more guests poured onto the terrace. Rory made his way through the crowd, taking in the pats on the back, the scents of expensive perfumes, the names of the distinguished Californians in the audience. People he respected. People who respected him. But that cloud over his head was thickening again.

  Funny, he was twenty feet away from the most important, satisfying moment of his life. You'd think that doom-cloud would finally disappear.

  But the flash of something pink and red in his peripheral vision snared his attention. Jilly. He turned his head to see her whisk down the steps toward the gardens, followed by that older woman, Dorothy Baxter.

  And suddenly, more than anything else, he had to know for certain that Jilly was all right.

  Lifting his hands above the crowd, he made the time-out signal. Senator Fitzpatrick blinked in bewilderment and the applause petered out, but Rory ignored both and hurried after the two women. The orchestra gamely struck up another tune and he didn't feel the least bit guilty for leaving the older man to use his canny political skills to smooth over the moment. This was the senator's element, not Rory's.

  And he didn't feel the least bit guilty for stopping just short of Jilly and Mrs. Baxter when he caught sight of them moving into the rose garden. Something about the stiff way Jilly was walking told him she might need him, though he suspected she wouldn't necessarily welcome his presence.

  The heady scent of roses filled his head as he paused in the shadows at the garden's entrance. No other guests had wandered this far from the house, and in the light from the moon and the lights strung through the precisely cropped hedges, he could clearly see Jilly's tension.

  "Grandmother, I don't care to discuss this."

  Grandmother. He remembered now. In San Francisco, the senator had called Jilly by the name Gillian Baxter. Rory's brows rose, and he looked more carefully at Jilly's grandmother. Like Jilly, she was small and, like Jilly, she was apparently not afraid to speak her mind.

  "I don't care whether you want to discuss it or not, girl. But you owe something to that man you're engaged to. More appropriate dress, to begin with."

  "I like what I'm wearing," Jilly said.

  The older woman sighed. "I'm sure you do. But you were trained to know better. Something less flashy, more understated, would better serve your position."

  "What position is that?"

  "Don't be stupid, girl. It's no secret that Rory Kincaid is going to announce his candidacy tonight. You're entering the political arena now. My arena. You should listen to me closely. Frankly, I'm shocked you've managed to get this far on your own, but I suppose those years in my home weren't entirely erased by your work at that … that … shop."

  "That shop" wasn't a smart way to describe Jilly's baby, Things Past. Rory took a breath, waiting for Jilly to explode.

  "Things Past," Jilly corrected her mildly. "That's the name of my mother's business. Now my business."

  Rory stared, stunned by her quiet response. It was as if Jilly's grandmother's presence had extinguished the light, the energy, the joy that made Jilly so uniquely herself.

  Joy. Rory examined the word in his mind and knew it was the right fit. Jilly had a joy in colors, in textures, in laughing, in life, that he hadn't felt since boyhood. Yet when he was with her, joy found its way into him, too.

  "Your business. Yes, fine." Dorothy Baxter made a dismissive gesture, then reached out and patted Jilly's cheek, ignoring her flinch. "But despite that, you've done well. This engagement wholly meets with my approval. I can only imagine you now appreciate what I did to keep you from your mother and the kind of life she led."

  Jilly appeared to absorb the words calmly, though Rory was sure each had to feel like a blow. She didn't want her grandmother's approval, and surely not for a sham engagement to him. He saw her hands slowly fist, and he knew she itched to throw the truth back at the older woman. Jilly opened her mouth, pressed her lips together, opened her mouth again.

  Rory tensed, waiting for Jilly's response. If she did indeed tell her grandmother the engagement was a fake—her grandmother who was a crucial contributor to the Blue Party coffers—it would be the final nail in his senatorial coffin. Without an engagement, their tabloid appearances became scandals that a woman like Dorothy Baxter wouldn't tolerate from a Blue Party candidate.

  The loss of Dorothy Baxter's support, coupled with the likely headline—GRANDSON FATHERS HIS OWN AUNT!—would force Rory to surrender the candidacy. He sucked in a sharp breath, his cloud gathering darkly over him. There was no way his political aspirations could weather both storms.

  * * *

  Chapter 17

  « ^ »

  Jilly battled a tumble of rising emotions. She'd fled the terrace to escape witnessing Rory's imminent announcement. When he truly entered the political field he would forever exit her realm. Watching that would be like watching his horse gallop across the dunes again, though away from her this time, leaving her alone in the desert.

  But she hadn't been able to escape her grandmother.

  Jilly bit her lip, swearing she wouldn't surrender to any of the words she longed to say or the tears she longed to shed. Grandmother hated tears. Jilly wasn't all that fond of them herself, but when her mother entered the equation, she wasn't confident of her control.

  Grandmother suddenly focused on Jilly's belly. "What is that?" she asked in offended tones.

  Jilly dipped her head to peer at her navel, exposed by the hem of her sweater. The ruby nestled there glittered. "Embellishment. Decoration." She'd donned the synthetic jewel as a wink-nudge joke to herself, assuming—rightly, she hoped—that it would make Rory nuts.

  Her grandmother shook, literally shook, with outrage. "It makes you look like a …
like a tramp."

  Years ago Grandmother had said pierced ears would make her look like a tramp. Just as her hair unbound and free made her look like a tramp, as well as the God-given curves of her body. Nothing Jilly had ever done was good enough, proper enough, modest enough.

  "Gillian." Grandmother's voice whipped at her. "That shop and your mother must have influenced you after all."

  Jilly flinched. She pushed her fingernails into her palms, but the small biting pain was nothing to the claws at her heart. "Why?" she asked. "Why do you do this?" Her grandmother's expression became blank, but it did nothing to appease Jilly. "Why would you want to judge me, or hurt me, or criticize my mother?"

  "Your mother is dead," her grandmother said coldly.

  "That's right. But what you say about her hurts me because I know now that she loved me. You lied about that. You said she left me with you, abandoned me, when the truth is she was forced to give me up. Forced by you. If Aura hadn't come to her funeral, if Aura hadn't given me the letters she wrote me that you returned to her, I'd still be believing your version."

  "Nonsense."

  Jilly recognized the bluster in the woman's voice. Five years ago she would have been intimidated by it, but no longer.

  "Her letters would have confused you."

  Jilly fought the telltale sting of tears in her eyes. "Her letters would have let me know somebody loved me."

  "What did she know of love?" Grandmother's voice. "She was a disobedient, wanton child."

  Jilly blinked furiously. Her mother had been pregnant with Jilly—the father unknown or unrevealed—at seventeen. She cleared her throat, trying harder to suppress the tears. "So why didn't you encourage her to give me up for adoption? Or let both of us go?"

  Her grandmother blinked. "What? When I had the opportunity—no, the responsibility—to make right with you the mistakes I had made with her?"

  Jilly's throat was so tight she had to whisper. "The success to counterbalance the failure?" But it was more than that, she thought, seeing it all so coldly clear for the first time. Her grandmother was someone who didn't like to lose, and she'd paid back her rebellious daughter in the way that would hurt the most—by taking away her child. Hot tears spilled down Jilly's cheeks.

  "Crying." The older woman shook her head as if appalled at the very idea. "Crying is a weakness. And you listen to me, Gillian. You wouldn't be in this position, and with this man, if it weren't for me and everything I drilled into you." Her arthritic finger jabbed toward Jilly's throat. "Think about that."

  Jilly put her hands over her eyes. The movement wasn't going to stop her tears—they continued to flow down her face—but she wanted to hide from the knowledge that was creeping into her mind. Some people could not be swayed. Some people could not be reasoned with. There was no word, no gesture, no memory that could be invoked that would in turn evoke tenderness.

  And whether her grandmother was evil or ignorant wasn't for Jilly to judge or to influence. A thousand business successes or a million vows of celibacy wouldn't change the old woman's opinion of her. There wasn't a thing she could do to prove herself worthy.

  Jilly merely had to let go.

  Rory was right. She had to step out of the past and stop living against her grandmother and just live. For herself.

  Squaring her shoulders, she turned away to start back to the house.

  "Foolish girl." Her grandmother's voice was no less certain than it had been all those years when she'd kept Jilly's spirit imprisoned in her austere gray and white house. "You think twice before turning your back on me. What about this engagement? I can mean a lot to your fiancé."

  Oh. Oh, God. Jilly halted, and then spun around to face the older woman. Because of her new resolve to live her own life on her own terms, Jilly couldn't suppress the nasty urge to throw the engagement back in her grandmother's face. But that would be throwing Rory's chances back as well.

  Grandmother was right, at least about that. She was an old, and moneyed, political influence in California.

  "No, Grandmother," Jilly found herself whispering though. "Don't use Rory to get at me. You've already done enough damage on that score."

  Her grandmother's gaze narrowed. There was a calculating and cynical gleam in her eye. "What do you mean by that?"

  And despite every resolve and every self-protective instinct, the words poured out of Jilly. "I've never told him I love him," she said, her voice hoarse. "And I do."

  She brushed away the last of the wetness on her cheeks. "You made me afraid to admit to such a 'weakness.' You made me worry about how he could hurt me, manipulate me, with that knowledge."

  Her grandmother had made her afraid of love. All along, she realized now, her vow of celibacy had never been a way to prove anything. It had been her way to protect herself from loving.

  "Oh, fiddle."

  Jilly almost laughed, it was such a ridiculous response. She shook her head instead. "Don't you see? Love is what you used against my mother and me. It's how you controlled my mother, and how you tried to control me. She loved me, so she didn't fight the more powerful you. When you didn't want me to move to L.A., when you didn't want me to take over my mother's business after her death, you used every threat you could think of, telling me you were being truthful because you loved me. I would fail. I would be promiscuous. I would come begging at your doorstep in no time flat."

  "But Jilly did none of those things." The familiar deep masculine voice, then the familiar figure stepped out of the shadows and into the rose garden.

  Oh, God. Jilly cringed. Rory. Her body, mind, heart, emotions, turned into themselves, trying to prevent the vulnerability that she was terrified he'd witnessed. Oh, God. Had he heard her say she loved him?

  His footsteps crunched on the gravel path until he reached them. "And neither did she agree to marry me," he said. "Our engagement is a sham."

  Jilly moaned. "No."

  He ignored her pitiful sound. "When we found ourselves in a compromising position, Jilly agreed to pretend a relationship with me to preserve my scandal-free reputation."

  Her thin lips pursed, Grandmother looked from Rory to Jilly. "This can't be true."

  Shaking her head wildly, Jilly tried to find her voice. "He's joking. Ho-ho-ho. What a big kidder this guy is." And it wasn't altogether true. Their engagement had been to protect her as well.

  Grandmother's gaze switched to Rory, who stood calm and relaxed beside Jilly. "Those kind of jokes aren't funny, young man," she said frostily, but then her voice warmed. "I'll overlook it, though, and tell you what I told my granddaughter. This engagement has my support and approval. Frankly, I'm more than pleased to find that someone could see through Gillian's apparent … frivolousness to what she has to offer. To the standards I raised her with."

  Rory crossed his arms over his chest. "Unfortunately, ma'am, I can't say that I have that kind of vision."

  Jilly cringed again. While she knew he considered her about as substantial as dryer lint, it wasn't easy to hear him say this to her grandmother. She made a quick move to get away, but Rory's hand snaked out and grabbed her wrist.

  "Like you," he continued, "until now I didn't appreciate Jilly for who and what she is—a loyal, loving person. A person who always tries to do the right thing, despite the risk to herself."

  Jilly stared at him. His expression was something—tender? bemused?—impossible to name. "What?"

  "And, ma'am, she doesn't need my approval or yours. Neither does this engagement. I wasn't joking earlier. It was a hoax I coerced her into, something to save my reputation."

  Jilly's free hand grabbed Rory's forearm. "No," she whispered. Didn't he realize he was a knife's edge away from cutting his own political throat? "Don't listen to him, Grandmother."

  He didn't take his eyes off the frozen expression on her grandmother's face. "But she should, Jilly. She should listen to everything I have to say."

  But Jilly couldn't. Not for one more second. By standing up for her with the truth, h
e would drive a stake through his dream. Grandmother would see to that personally.

  "No," Jilly said again. Her feet scraped against the gravel walkway as she jerked her arm to break free of Rory's hold. "No." And then she turned and ran, because if she couldn't stop the death of Rory's ambition, she certainly couldn't stick around and witness it.

  The air was thick with the smell of roses. She would never enjoy their scent again.

  Without one thought but to escape the destruction rampaging behind her, she ran away from the party, away from the lighted gardens and into the darkness. In her own ears her breath was loud and her footsteps sounded panicked. Only trees and dark shadows were ahead and she dodged around them until one of the shadows materialized directly in front of her.

  Jilly ran straight into a man's body. "Umph." She grunted and her heart jumped high in her chest before she realized it wasn't Rory.

  Ducking around the winded man, she mumbled, "Sorry," and started running again. To her car. That was the direction she was heading in anyway. Her car was parked near the secret entrance to Caidwater.

  Home. She could think all this through at home.

  "Wait," the man called out. "Our cell phones aren't working. Did he do it? Is it over?"

  Jilly slowed, but didn't stop to consider how this person knew what Rory was up to or why cell phones were involved. "Yes," she called back miserably, "Yes, I think so." And then she ran again, her mind focused on home. "I'm sure it will all be over in just a few minutes."

  Her grandmother was elderly, but spry. Once Rory laid the truth on her, she'd make haste back to the party and finish the job he'd so foolishly begun.

  * * *

  To avoid dealing with the valet parking service that had taken over several nearby properties for the guests' cars, Jilly had left her own vehicle at the mouth of the dirt road that led into Caidwater via the neighboring estate. Once she reached the old woody wagon, her fingers scrambled underneath the bumper for the hide-a-key. She gripped it like a lifeline, finally allowing herself a moment to haul in a few much-needed breaths.