The Bliss Factor

by Penny McCall

  “Get. Dressed. And make it snappy. I’ll be waiting in the car.”

  He was barely thirty seconds behind her, and when he came out he was wearing the T-shirt and jeans, which wasn’t much of an improvement, considering the denim fit him almost as snugly as the leather. No relaxed fit for Connor Larkin. But then, he was going to get attention no matter what he wore. No way to avoid that. And she couldn’t leave him home alone. There was no telling what he’d get up to.

  He opened the passenger door, but he didn’t get in. “Can I drive?” he asked her.

  “No.” Then she turned to look at him. “Can you drive?”

  “I think so.”

  “That’s a no.” She fired up the Hummer. Conn climbed in, and she backed it down her narrow, curved driveway, inch by careful inch. It already had a bullet hole in it; no point in doing it any more damage. Or her house, for that matter. She didn’t have to look at Conn to know he was grinning. “I suppose you think you could do better.”

  “I could try.”

  “Still no.”

  Conn flopped back in his seat, the grin morphing into a sulk.

  “And buckle your seatbelt,” she added, giving in to a smile of her own as she headed the Hummer toward Troy, the second largest city in Michigan—based on property value. It was also home to the Detroit Red Wings’ training facility and a thriving center of business, including Putnam, Ibold and Greenblatt, LLP, Certified Public Accountants and Personal Financial Consulting.

  Conn spent the trip gawking at the scenery. Rae spent it trying not to have a panic attack. She managed to talk herself out of turning back a dozen times, only to get to the parking structure of her firm’s building and find herself faced with a new dilemma.

  She hadn’t wanted to leave Conn alone at her house, but she certainly couldn’t take him into her place of business. If she walked in with a man like him, her plumbing excuse would fly right out the window, taking her reputation—and her future—along with it. There was no way she’d ever make partner if Putnam felt he couldn’t trust her.

  It was just past seven thirty in the morning, but the structure was pretty full. Rae took the first parking spot she found, luckily one that was around the corner from the other cars where it wouldn’t be easily seen from the elevator doors, muttering, “anal,” which was completely hypocritical since she’d have been at her desk if not for Conn.

  “Anal?” Conn repeated.

  She opened her mouth, but there just didn’t seem to be a frame of reference to bridge the gap between her century and his, at least not one she was willing to say out loud. The look on her face must have said it all.

  He held up a hand. “That one I don’t want to know.”

  “Stay here,” she ordered Conn. “Do not look at anyone, do not talk to anyone, do not get out of the vehicle for any reason.” She hit the door locks, walked a couple steps off, and stopped, letting her head fall forward as she gave in to the guilt. He wasn’t a child, and he wasn’t a puppy—a child she would have taken with her, and she’d at least have cracked the windows for a dog.

  Then again, Conn already had the door unlocked and open before she turned around.

  “I’m sorry,” she said to him. “I have to go all the way up to the top floor, but I promise I won’t be long, and then we’ll have lunch—the midday meal.”

  “Bribery?”

  “Is it working?”

  He studied her face, long enough to let her know it wasn’t the promise of a meal that got to him, even though he said, “What kind of lunch?”

  “No Scottish chicken, but I can promise there’ll be meat involved.”

  “As long as there are no turkey legs,” he said. “I’ve had enough of them to last a lifetime.”

  She knew exactly how he felt. Renaissance faires did big business in turkey legs, and the tourists didn’t seem to mind the smell of roasting fowl. But it was sickening when you spent day after day with it. On a whim, she handed him the keys. “You put it in the . . . right, like that,” she said when he slipped the key into the ignition, telling herself she was grateful he’d figured it out and she didn’t have to reach across him. “You know how to work the radio, right?”

  He nodded, already reaching for the buttons, so she made her escape, trekking through the structure, then taking the elevator to the top floor. It was a shame she couldn’t bring Conn. He’d have loved the view.

  He’d probably get a kick out of the lobby, too. Even a guy who thought he was a sixteenth-century armorer would take one look at the Putnam, Ibold and Greenblatt sign, the capital letters big and gold, and have a good laugh.

  The joke had lost its luster for Rae, but she stifled an urge, as always, to shake her head. They could solve their unfortunate acronym problem if Mr. Putnam would stop being stubborn about having his name first. And since Putnam was being a putz, Ibold, the cofounder, refused to be named last. So they were P.I.G.

  The G in P.I.G., Morris Greenblatt, met her at the door, opening it and ushering her in with a big, welcoming smile on his face. Mr. Greenblatt was the one and only partner who’d ever been added to the firm, and that had been twenty years ago. Probably that should have been Rae’s first clue that her hopes were doomed, but Putnam and Ibold were getting up there in age, and since neither of them had children to fill their shoes Rae had decided Italian leather pumps would do the job nicely.

  It had seemed, at first, that they felt the same way. After all, she’d been chosen from hundreds of applicants, at the behest of the partners, she’d been told. Unfortunately, the two senior partners showed absolutely no inclination to either retire or expand the business, so what had sounded like the opportunity of a lifetime had instead turned into a treadmill workout. No matter how fast she ran she got nowhere.

  “Mr. Putnam asked me to help you gather your files,” Mr. Greenblatt said, looking sheepish because he knew help was really watch.

  “I don’t need anything from the vault,” she said.

  Most of the accounting work was done on the computer, but the paper printouts were kept in a locked room called the vault, where files had to be checked in and out. Those files belonged to the big corporate clients of Putnam, Ibold, and Greenblatt, and while Rae had worked on every one of them from time to time, they weren’t her regulars. And even if they were, there was no way she’d be allowed to take them off site.

  Mr. Greenblatt fell into step with her anyway, accompanying her into her office, which officially put it over the fire marshall’s maximum occupancy. The narrow window kept it from feeling completely claustrophobic.

  “I’m sure I can be helpful,” Greenblatt said. Translation: He’d been instructed not to let her out of his sight. Just in case she’d turned into a raving criminal overnight.

  Greenblatt took a step back, eyes on her face, sounding tentative when he said, “I hope everything at home is all right.”

  “The plumber assured me it will be fine but, well, it’s an old house, you know?”

  “Of course, of course.” He waved it all away with a couple nervous flutters of his hands. “Perhaps this time next year you won’t have to clear your work schedule with Putnam, or anyone else for that matter. Not if I have my way.”

  “Thank you, Mr. Greenblatt,” she said, and meant it. “You know how much it means to me to make partner.”

  “Oh, now, it’s nothing,” he said, looking over his shoulder in case, she assumed, Ebenezer Scrooge poked his head out of his cave. Or Jacob Marley, for that matter, because if Putnam was Scrooge, Ibold would be Marley—before Marley had died and gotten a clue. Not that she saw herself as Bob Cratchit. The pay was better, but mostly it was because she had goals, and she was only going to hang around there as long as she stood a chance of meeting them.

  “Well,” she said to Mr. Greenblatt, “I have to go.” She stuffed the entire contents of her two-drawer file cabinet into a box and hefted it. “Thank you.”

  “Let me help you with that.”

  “No! It’s not heavy. Real
ly. And I’m sure you have other things to do.”

  “Nothing impor—”

  “Mr. Greenblatt!” One of the assistants stuck her head in the door, “You have a visitor. Mr. Putnam said to make sure you tell him the rates because he doesn’t look like he can afford our services.”

  Greenblatt scurried out. How he’d made partner when he was so clearly scared of Putnam and Ibold was beyond Rae. Not that Putnam didn’t take pains to be intimidating. Hell, two days ago Putnam’s disapproval would have been absolutely mortifying. Now . . . What she wanted to do was shrug her shoulders.

  She hitched the box up and walked out, running into Mr. Putnam in the hallway.

  “Please check in at regular intervals,” he said to her.

  “I will, Mr. Putnam.”

  As she passed him, he gave a dry, disapproving little sniff. Rae stopped and looked back at him; he was doing the same, the expression on his face speculative at first, then warning.

  She drew in a breath and let it out slowly, realizing she stood at a crossroads, and she couldn’t take the fork she always chose, the one marked CAUTION. And sure, it was because her parents had unintentionally put her in the position of jeopardizing her job, but she refused to feel guilty about it. She’d worked thousands of hours of overtime for this firm, and if they decided to fire her over one special request, she’d survive it. She’d struck out on her own at eighteen, no money, no friends, no safety net, and she’d managed to make a life for herself. She could do it again. If she had to.

  chapter 9

  RAE KEPT HER HEAD UP AND HER SPINE STIFF. She didn’t look back until she was in the elevator and the doors had closed. Her last glimpse of Mr. Putnam had not been reassuring. By the time the elevator hit the garage level all her bravado had evaporated, and her heart was pounding.

  She didn’t waste time wondering what the hell had gotten into her. It was a useless question because she knew exactly what had gotten into her. Connor Larkin, and not in a good way. She’d been with him—she consulted her watch—less than twenty hours, and she was willing to throw her job down the tubes? In this economy?

  She was good and steamed by the time the Hummer came into sight—or rather hearing, since she caught the thump of the bass from the radio well before she turned the last corner. And found the passenger door open and Conn gone.

  “Shit,” she said under her breath, “shit, shit, shit,” as she climbed into the driver’s seat, started the Hummer, and screeched out of the parking space, the passenger door flinging itself closed from the acceleration.

  How in the world had the bad guys found them? she wondered frantically. They didn’t know where she lived or worked, and the Hummer wasn’t registered to her so they couldn’t have found her that way.

  She took the first turn practically on two wheels and hit the brakes when she saw an unmistakable form in the gloom by the exit. He was peering in the window of a Chevy Impala.

  She pulled up next to him, shot the Hummer into park, and jumped out. “I thought you were going to stay in the car,” she said, hands on hips, toe to toe with him.

  He gestured to the car he’d been examining. “I thought maybe one of these vehicles would strike a chord.”

  “You don’t strike me as the family sedan kind of guy.”

  He shrugged, which ticked her off even more, especially in light of her recent behavioral readjustment. “What’s that?” she demanded, lifting her shoulders to her earlobes. “This,” she did it again, “is not a response. No is a response. Yes is a response. This,” she mocked his shrug one more time, “just means you don’t care.”

  “That is not my intention,” he said solemnly. “I simply mean that I feel no urgency—”

  “No urgency? Two pirate wannabes with swords tried to carve you up like a Thanksgiving turkey. Three clowns in a Honda shot at us. Not to mention some or all of them cracked you over the head and broke your memory banks, which is why my parents sent you off with me in the first place. The least you can do is listen when I give you instructions that are for your own good.”

  There was a beat of silence.

  “I’m finished,” she said.

  “Do you feel better?”

  “Yes.”

  “I apologize.” He moved around behind her and began to knead her shoulders, then her neck and spine.

  In the time it took to draw her next breath she went from burning mad to just burning.

  “I did not mean to make light of my situation, or to give the impression that your life is so inconsequential that my presence is not an imposition.”

  She moved away before she lost more than her anger, like some of her clothes. “I’m hungry, how about you?”

  Conn didn’t say anything, but the air between them seemed to crackle.

  It would be so easy to cross that supercharged foot of distance and throw herself into the inferno. And it would be the most difficult thing she would ever do. She wasn’t an impulsive person. Or an open one. That wasn’t to say she shut people out by choice. Rather, it wasn’t in her nature to let people in easily.

  Besides, the man didn’t even know himself, so how could she know anything about him? Except that there were people who wanted to harm him, if not kill him, and while he might be a floater as an amnesiac, there was a core of steel in him, an ability to go from harmless to threatening in the space of a heartbeat that didn’t come from being an engineer or a mechanic. Whatever his occupation was when he was in touch with reality, it was something people like her didn’t want to know about.

  WHEN RAE TOLD HIM THEY WERE GOING TO THE Somerset Collection, Conn thought it was something people purchased for no discernible purpose, like the little pewter figurines of knights and conjurers that were sold at the faire. Turned out it was a pair of large buildings on either side of a wide thoroughfare called Big Beaver, the two connected with a walkway made of glass that stretched above the road.

  Rae guided the Hummer beneath the walkway, then turned a huge half-circle to end up behind one of the buildings. They went beneath a concrete roof covering a large parking lot, and Rae drove up and down the aisles until she found a space she could maneuver the huge vehicle into.

  “Okay, now we just have to pray nobody parks too close,” she said, opening her door and stepping out just as they heard the screech of rubber on pavement.

  Conn twisted around in his seat, making the shift from calm to alert even before he saw the Honda slide to a stop, blocking them in. All the windows were shiny new glass, but the car wasn’t blue anymore, at least not all of it. It was a rainbow palette of replaced body parts, green quarter panels, red hood, the remaining blue parts dented and crumpled.

  Conn looked to Rae—their eyes met as they came to an instantaneous and simultaneous conclusion. And since Rae was already vulnerable, he shot out of the Hummer, rounding the front of it. He wrapped his hand around hers and took off running, between cars, working their way to the building, keeping himself between her and the Honda racing after them.

  He kept them out of the wide driving lanes, not easy with the huge columns holding up the roof and drivers who parked too close to their neighbors, but the only way to neutralize the car was to get inside. That meant crossing the main drive between the cars and the mall entrance. He pulled Rae out into the yellow-lined crosswalk without hesitation, the Honda racing toward them. Conn poured on the speed, slinging an arm around Rae’s waist and boosting her up. His feet hit the curb just as the Honda blasted by behind them, tires galumphing on the curb as the driver jerked to a stop across the narrow lane that led to the delivery door for the pizza restaurant just inside the mall.

  Conn let go of Rae long enough to muscle the big door open. She scooted in under his arm as two guys piled out of the Honda, then stopped to look back at the third, heaving his bulk out of the driver’s seat. He hitched his pants up under his impressive belly and took a position by the rear bumper. Waiting for them to come out.

  Rae caught Conn by the wrist and tried to drag him in
to the mall. He pulled her into the restaurant instead, some sort of fusion pizza place. He could circle through there, he decided, come out the delivery door and surprise the third guy. The third guy wasn’t going to chase them on foot, and if Conn could get his hands on a knife, he wouldn’t be driving, either, not with a couple of slashed tires.

  The other two guys followed, all four of them winding their way through the tables and booths at a fast walk. The hostess trailed along behind with menus, customers, and waitstaff staring as they went by. Conn burst through the swinging doors that led to the kitchen, and it smelled good in there. Really good. There were bound to be knives, too, but his stomach was growling—and two bad guys were right behind them.

  The kitchen staff was yelling, pots and pans clanged to the floor, and things were frying and steaming and apparently not in the right way, considering how the cooks were racing around looking frantic and blocking off their pursuers in the process.

  Conn spied what he wanted, towing Rae between a stainless steel table and a vat of hot oil along one wall. He snatched up a carving knife with his right hand, dipping his left into a wire basket suspended over the vat. He swiped his arm along the counter in the process, knocking things over as he went, but he’d seen the same kind of oil vat at the faire, and he had a decent idea what to expect from the basket.

  “Ouch,” he said, juggling the crispy brown chunk he’d snagged until it cooled enough for him to take a bite. “Scottish chicken.”

  “Forget about your stomach,” Rae said, apparently reading his mind yet again since she was pulling him toward the door at the back of the kitchen. “I’m more interested in the knife. For the tires, right?”

  “Yep.”

  But one of the bad guys made it to the delivery door before them, yelling, “Cut them off, Harry,” the other guy already moving away to do just that.

  Conn backtracked, shoving the cooks aside and sweeping racks out of his way and into the other guy’s path. Restaurant workers shouted, dishes and flatware crashed to the floor, and a little curl of smoke emanated from the general direction of the deep fryer. The fire alarm began to wail and cell phones came out just as Conn pulled Rae through the door and back into the dining area.