The Grand Finale

Chapter Three

Berry saw the strange little puff of black smoke two and a half blocks away but her mind was on other things-like her recent economics test and Jake Sawyer’s smile. It wasn’t until she turned the corner and saw the fire trucks that her mind contemplated disaster. Her heart skipped a beat and then felt as if it had stopped altogether. The trucks were in front of the Pizza Place. Fire hoses snaked across the sidewalk. Soot blackened the second-floor windows.

Berry clapped her hand to her mouth. “Oh, Lord, no!”

Mrs. Dugan, Mrs. Fitz, and Miss Gaspich were supposed to be safely housed in that building. At this time of the afternoon they would be taking naps and making tea. Please, please, please, Berry pleaded, let them be okay. Please don’t let them be behind those four fire-blackened windows.

Berry stumbled into the street and broke into a run. Her chest was tight with fear, her vision blurred by the pounding of her heart. How could you grow to love three little old ladies so quickly? she wondered. She’d known them less than a week, but they’d become a precious part of her life.

She slowed to a jog when she caught sight of the women standing behind a fire truck. They were safe!

And then wonk! Instant black.

Minutes later Berry struggled through the murk of semiconsciousness. She opened her eyes and smiled. “Thanks for the pudding, Mom.”

Jake tightened his grip on her. “What?”

“The pudding. It was great.”

“Honey, I’m not your mom. Look at me.”

Berry blinked and concentrated, shaking the last of the cobwebs away. Did she just call Jake Sawyer Mom? He felt like Mom. Strong and reassuring, pressing kisses against her temple, into her hair. She could get used to this. This could be habit-forming. Jake Sawyer was going to make some woman a wonderful mother… except he looked awful. Grime streaked his face, emphasizing the grim set to his mouth and the cold terror in his red-rimmed eyes. Berry touched her fingertip to a sweat-soaked ringlet that had fallen across his forehead. “You look terrible.”

Jake broke into a grin, his teeth seeming extraordinarily white in the soot-darkened face. “I’m okay. Are you okay?”

“Of course.”

“You got smacked in the head with a fire extinguisher that fell off the truck. It knocked you out.”

“That’s what happens to you when you don’t make time for breakfast. You get wimpy. My mother warned me this would happen.”

The stricken look left Jake’s face and was replaced with an only moderately successful attempt at anger. “Don’t ever skip breakfast again. It’s enough to scare the daylights out of someone.”

How great is this, Berry thought. No one was hurt, and Jake Sawyer was worried about me. Okay, so my apartment is trashed, and that’s a bummer, but I’ve got a man hovering over me who seems to genuinely care if I live or die.

Jake looked at her carefully. “You sure you’re okay? Your apartment just burned to a crisp, and you’re grinning from ear to ear.”

“I know. I can’t help it.” Berry pushed her mouth together with her fingers, trying to wipe away the smile. “I’ll try to look more serious.”

Mrs. Fitz dabbed at her nose with a tissue. “Lingonberry, I’m so sorry. It was all my fault. I got a nice big tip for delivering those pizzas, and I spent it on some newfangled electric curlers, and the dang things burned the apartment up.”

Berry looked to Jake. “Is that true? Is that how the fire started?”

Jake nodded. “Mrs. Fitz plugged the curlers in to heat up, and then she set the case on the couch. Somehow, the curlers overheated and started to spark. The couch caught fire, then the curtain went up.”

“How bad is it?”

“Could be worse. The fire was confined to the couch area. Mostly what you’ve got is smoke damage. The downstairs wasn’t affected at all.”

“Can I go in?”

“Yeah. I just went through with the fire marshal. They’re packing up to leave. You’ll have to go down to the fire station later to fill out some forms.”

Berry nodded and led the little parade of three ladies and Jake Sawyer up the stairs to her apartment. She walked into the middle of the living room, her feet squishing across the wet carpet, and blinked into the darkness. Everything was charcoal-gray. The walls, the ceilings, the rugs, the windows. The couch looked like it had been burned to cinders by the fire, stomped into oblivion by overzealous firefighters, and drowned.

“Yikes,” Berry said.

“It makes a body want to cry to see it like this,” Mrs. Fitz said. “It was so cozy.”

“It’ll never be the same,” Mrs. Dugan said. “Everything in here smells like smoke. All our clothes, all the linens, all the tea bags.”

Berry agreed. “It is pretty smoky. Tomorrow morning we’ll open the windows and try to air it out.”

“Maybe we should go back to the train station for a while,” Mildred said. “You could come with us, Lingonberry.”

Jake gave a long-suffering, earth-rocking sigh. “Nobody’s going to the train station. I have an empty house with plenty of space. You can all stay with me for a few days while we get the apartment cleaned.”

Berry looked at him sidewise. “Are you sure you want to do this?”

He wanted Berry in his house, big time. Mrs. Fitz, Mrs. Dugan, and Miss Gaspich, no. They were nice ladies, but he had no desire to live with them. Problem was, he had even less desire to see them living at the train station.

“I’m sure,” Jake said.

“A house!” Mrs. Fitz elbowed Mrs. Dugan. “Hear that? We’re gonna live in a house.”

Miss Gaspich carefully squished across the room. “I’ll get my toothbrush and my nightie.” She stopped at the bathroom door and gasped. She plucked a dingy gray object off the sink and held it up for inspection. “Is this my toothbrush?” Tears filled her round eyes and made streaks down her sooty, wrinkled cheeks. “That’s the last straw. Even my toothbrush.”

Jake gathered the ladies in his arms and ushered them down the stairs. “We can get new toothbrushes and clothes. Let’s just get out of here for now. Everything will look better in the morning.” He locked the apartment door, put the CLOSED sign in the window of the Pizza Place, and locked the front door. “I got a rental car today. It’s just down the block.”

Berry looked at Jake when they reached the car. It was a tan SUV.

“You don’t seem like the SUV type,” Berry said.

Jake helped Mrs. Dugan climb into the backseat. “I don’t know what type I am. One minute I’m a carefree bachelor, riding high on Gunk, and then all of a sudden I’ve got a houseful of women. And none of them are any good for bachelor-type pursuits.”

Berry rammed her hands onto her hips. “What’s that supposed to mean? What do I look like, chopped liver?”

Jake tugged at a yellow curl. “I’m afraid, Lingonberry, that you are very much like your name: delicious but virtually unobtainable. You would not be the first choice of a carefree bachelor. You are definitely wife material.”

Berry thought about it for a moment and decided he was right. She wasn’t much of a party girl. Even if she didn’t have The Plan, she’d still be more apple pie than martini.

Jake cranked the SUV engine over, pulled away from the curb, and headed north.

“Hey, look at this,” Mrs. Fitz exclaimed, ten minutes later. “We’re out in the country. Isn’t this something?”

“This isn’t the country,” Mrs. Dugan said. “This is the suburbs. You can tell the difference because the suburbs haven’t got cows. There are cows in the country.”

Berry tried to relax as the scenery on Ellenburg Drive flew by. Cows or not, in her book this was country. There were pretty houses, tucked back off the road with lots of space between them. The road narrowed to cross a good-sized creek and then began to snake uphill to Jake Sawyer’s house. Berry felt as if she was going on vacation. She hadn’t been on a vacation in six years, but going on vacation was like riding a bike-you never forgot the feeling.

There was a sense of expectation in the car. The air over the backseat fairly crackled with it as the ladies leaned forward in hushed anticipation, and in the front seat Berry couldn’t have been more excited if she was spending a week at St. Moritz. She hugged herself and grinned. There would be lots of peace and quiet, and crickets chirping, and trees whooshing in the wind, and Jake Sawyer in his underwear. The image of Jake Sawyer in his sexy blue briefs was stuck in her brain like the refrain of a song that refused to be forgotten. Jake Sawyer in his underwear. How do you forget something like that?

Berry bit her lip, silently groaned, and rolled her window down a crack. It was getting warm in the car. This would never do. She had to put all this into proper perspective. This was not a vacation. And this was certainly not going to include Jake Sawyer in his you-know-what.

Mrs. Fitz poked her in the shoulder. “Are we almost there?”

“Yes,” Berry said, “and this is not a vacation.”

Mrs. Fitz shook her head. “What a ninny. Of course it’s a vacation.”

The house looked smaller and much less menacing by daylight. In fact, Berry decided it was downright cheerful. The house was bordered by dormant flower beds and a broad lawn. Several oak trees pressed their limbs toward the yellow siding. The lawn was surrounded by a buffer of woods. The white gingerbread trim sparkled in the sunshine. The front door was carved oak and topped with a stained glass window.

Mrs. Fitz gave a long, low whistle. “This is a pip of a house.”

Berry stood in the foyer and admired the freshly waxed hardwood flooring, the hand-carved cherry banister that spiraled up the stairs, the ornate doorjambs. The entire downstairs had been painted a creamy white, giving the house a light, airy feeling. It contained few pieces of furniture. A large, overstuffed, buff-colored couch and matching club chair had been placed at the perimeters of an Oriental area rug in the living room. A pottery table lamp sat on the floor next to the chair. The foyer opened into a breakfast area at the rear of the house. A large round wood table nestled into the curve of a long bay window. It was a great house, Berry admitted. Worth every cent of Jake’s Gunk money. And it deserved to have a terrific car sitting in its garage. She felt a true pang of remorse for the loss of the Gunk car. The car and the house belonged together.

“This is gonna be fun,” Mrs. Fitz said. “I always wanted to live in a house like this. Boy, this feels like home. I could stay here forever. Come on, ladies, let’s go upstairs and explore.”

Berry caught the look of horror that passed through Jake’s eyes and had to clap her hand over her mouth to keep from laughing.

Jake grabbed her by the nape of her neck. “I saw that smile. You’ve got a mean streak in you, Lingonberry Knudsen.” His thumb massaged small circles on her neck just below her ear, and his muscled thigh grazed against her denim-clad leg. He put his mouth to her ear and spoke in a husky whisper. “She wouldn’t really stay here forever, would she?”

“Mmmmm,” Berry purred. “Mmmmaybe.”

“And what about you?” Jake asked. “Will you stay forever?”

“I have a plan,” Berry whispered.

Except The Plan was hazy when she was pressed against Jake like this and his thumb was doing those magical circles on her neck. The Plan seemed more like an idea she’d once had. The plan she had at the moment involved nibbling on Jake Sawyer’s neck. Lord, he smelled good. Masculine-like musk cologne and campfire.

Her eyes opened wide. Crap. Hold the phone. Sawyer didn’t smell like campfire. He smelled like her charcoal-roasted couch!

Jake stopped the massage and grinned at her. “Changed your mind?”

Berry blinked at him. “What do you mean?”

“For a minute there, you looked like you were contemplating nibbling on my neck.”

“Jeez.”

He stepped closer, backing Berry up against the foyer wall. “Just to get the record straight, I think I should tell you that it’s okay for you to nibble on my neck any time you want. It isn’t as if we’re strangers, you know. After all, you’ve seen me in my underwear.”

Berry stared at him in stoic resignation. They were back to his underwear. This was never going to work. He had an evil sense of humor, he read minds, and he gave her a hormone attack just by lowering his voice an octave. “I think I should go home,” Berry said, inwardly wincing when her voice cracked on the word home.

Jake shook his head. “Tsk, tsk, tsk. Where’s your sense of adventure? Don’t you want to be bold, like a red geranium?” His voice was teasing, but his eyes were serious, and the sexual tension stretched taut between them.

Berry gnawed on her lower lip. “Geraniums aren’t in bloom yet. And neither am I,” she added. “We’re out of season.”

Jake moved two inches closer, and Berry felt the panic rise in her throat as the tips of her breasts crushed against the wall of his chest. Oh, Lordy, she thought, he’s going to kiss me again. He’s going to plant those incredible lips of his on mine and melt the soles of my sneakers. She didn’t know whether to close her eyes and pray it didn’t happen, or leave her eyes open so she wouldn’t miss a single thing. Jake lowered his mouth to hers before she had a chance to make a decision, and gave her a short, gentle kiss.

“Are you blooming, yet?” he whispered against her lips.

“No,” she said. “I’m not even nearly blooming. I’m not going to bloom until I’m good and ready.”

He ran his finger across her lower lip and tangled his hand in her hair. When he kissed her this time it was with barely checked passion. He broke from the kiss and held her at arm’s length when he heard Mrs. Fitz come thumping down the stairs.

“Wait until you see the upstairs, Berry. It’s wonderful,” Mrs. Fitz exclaimed. “You can see forever from the third-floor windows.”

Mrs. Dugan followed her. “Not much furniture in this house. No window shades. I can’t live in a house without window shades.”

Jake gestured to the cartons stacked along the dining room walls. “There are extra linens in one of those cartons. We can tack a couple sheets up for tonight.” He zipped his jacket and opened the front door. “I guess I’d better go buy some toothbrushes.”