2000 Kisses (3 page)

Tess crooked one brow. “Until I return from where?”

Richard raised his glass to a passing cruise bigwig. “Wherever you want. If not Kauai, how about Morocco?”

Damien shook his head. “Not suitable for her.”

“Oh? Then what is suitable for me?” Tess asked, amused by the man's presumption.

“Someplace quiet with lots of color.” Damien nodded slowly. “Someplace with history.”

Tess refused to take their fussing seriously. She wasn^t going to be maneuvered into a vacation that someone else chose for her.

“Why don't you try New Orleans?” Richard tapped his jaw. “You'd love the food and the energy, and the weather is fabulous this time of year. What do you think, Damien?”

“I think mystery and ancient secrets would appeal to her more, but that is just a feeling. New Orleans is certainly exotic. You could fly down tomorrow, my dear. Indulge in beignets, shrimp etouffee, and some marvelous jazz.”

“You might as well have a fling while you're there,” Richard added helpfully.

“A fling?”

Richard's gray eyes were gentle. “That thing two people do. It involves heavy breathing and general insanity for about three days before reason returns. You'll be a new woman when you come back.”

“Maybe I don't want to be a new woman.” For some reason the suggestion irritated her, and she swirled the wine in her glass, frowning. “But I'll consider it,” she lied. She wasn't going to have her love life arranged for her, and a fling was definitely
not
on her agenda.

Not that she planned to dwindle away into middle age, successful, driven, and unhappy. Something would come up. The Frenchman might even be right in his predictions.

A yacht cut through the channel, adrift in lights that sparkled and broke in the churning waves.

“Twenty minutes until midnight.” A waiter made the grand announcement as the first chocolate dessert course was brought in with full fanfare.

Damien mised his glass, then went very still. “Heat. I definitely see heat. Walls of stone the color of the sunset, and a city that rises to meet the sky.”

“Are you picking up something, Damien?” Richard
asked gravely. “I can always use a good stock tip. Something to do with urban utilities would be nice.”

The man's voice was low. “Heat and color. I heard a sound clearly, almost like drums.”

“You mean oil drums?” Richard looked confused.

Tess frowned. “It has to do with me, not the stock market.”

“Then you'd better believe him. Damien's never wrong.” Richard reached out to shake hands with a prominent senator with white hair and a ruddy face. Soon the two were deep in conversation.

Damien stared at Tess. “His eyes are cool, the blue of the rain that comes at dawn.”

“Whose eyes?”

“The one I see for you. The one you will meet in a place you have walked before. The connection is old for you, and you will feel its shadows where the stones rise warm in the sun.”

“You're saying I'm going to meet a man, but he's someone I already know?”

The Frenchman took a slow breath. “You have walked through shadows together before. Your blood will know him, even if your eyes do not.”

This was getting way too weird, Tess thought. “That's all very interesting, but I don't see any travel or adventure in my future. I planned to be chained to my phone devising a new chocolate campaign for the next six months.”

He touched her hand. “The images were very clear, my dear. But I'm not used to this kind of intensity.” His smile was wistful. “I must be older than I thought.”

Tess didn't really
believe
any of his predictions, of course. She wasn't born yesterday.

But she couldn't ignore the exciting feeling of anticipation
that came over her as she watched travelers surge toward the windows, where dozens of boats rocked at anchor, ready to release a barrage of fireworks. Could there possibly be someone waiting for her?

She had a sudden vision of bright colors beneath a turquoise sky. Maybe she'd head for Barbados and float in frothy water beside a pink sand beach. Or maybe she'd try Kauai.

The overhead lights flickered and went out, to a chorus of sharp gasps.

“Don't be alarmed, please.” The captain moved past them in the darkened lounge lit only by candles. “Occasionally we experience a brief lapse in harbor power as we prepare to put out to sea. It's perfectly normal.” As he spoke, the lights returned.

“So much for Nostradamus.” A woman in black silk and too many diamonds raised her empty champagne glass. “And so much for all that Y2K gloom and doom.”

A slender man with a receding hairline and gold-wire-rimmed glasses contemplated his champagne glass with morose satisfaction. “A lot of people won't have lights and phone service tomorrow. Food might even be scarce if transport systems break down.”

The woman in black frowned. “How do you know that?”

“Because I've been working for two years to fix the bugs, but there are too many programs and too many codes, some of them written by companies that went belly-up years ago.”

“So what do you predict?”

The man frowned at his empty glass. “Two or three local utility grids will go. So will most of the ATM machines in America.”

The woman glared over her glass as her husband
walked up beside her. Tess recognized him as a former secretary of state. “Are you telling me that people have spent millions of dollars bringing their businesses into Y2K compliance for
nothing
?”

“Ma'am, the only things you can count on are death and taxes,” the computer expert said morosely. “Even
those
might be postponed unless God has full-scale Y2K compliance.” He snagged another glass of champagne from a passing waiter.

“I can't agree.” A slender man in a perfectly cut Armani tuxedo contemplated his wedge of Brie on toast points. “As a banker, I'm fully prepared to state that all our corporate systems are in place. We've been checking scenarios for twelve months now with no problems.”

“Is that a fact?” The programmer raised his glass, sloshing champagne over his wrist. “The Fed clears more than two trillion dollars in payments and securities every day, and you're making guarantees?”

A faint frown marred the banker's tanned face. “Every local bank has its own cushion of funds to cover problems.”

His opponent smiled thinly. “What happens when that's used up?”

“if conditions warrant, we may borrow from other banks.”

The programmer swayed slightly. “And if hundreds of banks are suffering the same problem, then good-bye liquidity.”

The banker smoothed his tie. “It will never happen.

Outside in the harbor a boat horn thundered.

The crowd silenced for the space of a breath, maybe two, as if they were waiting for something to happen. Disaster? Writing in the sky?

But the spell was broken as colored lights cut back and forth over the harbor.

People cheered.

Confetti flew.

Party horns blasted.

Complete strangers threw their arms around each other, caught in wordless emotion. Thousands of white rose petals dropped from behind hidden alcoves in the ceiling, creating a sense of romance and enchantment as the crowd cheered as one.

Someone planted a drunken kiss on Tess's cheek. She dodged another kiss by leaning to the side, though she was smiling, caught in the sudden atmosphere of jubilation, as if the new millennium had somehow given them all a second chance.

Even Tess began to laugh as the banker shook her hand exuberantly and the computer expert leaned forward awkwardly for a kiss and missed. She lifted her head and felt her heart pound as great flowers of light spiraled into the sky and burst into glorious streams of color.

The end of a century, a millennium.

The grand beginning of a grand new era.

In the middle of the noise, one of her wealthy pursuers ambled back, giving her a drunken leer. “How about we forget Paris and go up to my cabin instead?” He swayed closer, winking. “My wife and I have an understanding about these things.”

Tess controlled an urge to dump the last of her champagne over his balding head. “Well, I don't, mid I happen to have other plans.”

Damien Passard moved in front of her, looking angry and protective. “I think you'd better go before I do something physical.”

The businessman frowned. “I didn't know you were coming tonight, Passard. No need to be nasty. I didn't know she was taken.” The man staggered off toward the crowd gathered along the windows.

Tess felt oddly childlike, caught in wonder at the sight of fireworks trailing through the night sky. She felt her driving professional edge begin to soften at the sight of such beauty.

She was ready for the new millennium, ready for something wild and crazy to sweep into her life. Clutching her champagne, she was rocked by a yearning that left her dizzy.

“Do you think he's really out there, Damien?” she whispered. “That we'll run into each other on a crowded street or waiting in line for coffee? Do you think he'll know me and somehow I'll recognize him?”

The Frenchman gave a very Gallic smile. “Miracles can begin in the most insignificant way. For you, it will begin with color. Great soaring colors that touch your heart.” The Frenchman stared out at the hundreds of boats rocking in the harbor. “For you, there is no question. He waits. He walks where the ladder rises to a city in the sky. He is remembering, too, in his way.”

Ladders and cities in the sky? “Can't you just give me a name and a concrete time?”

The Frenchman chuckled. “It doesn't work that way.” He bnished a strand of hair from her cheek. “A good adventure comes when you least expect it. At any time you may look up to find your man of mystery.” His eyes held a secret knowledge as he raised his glass to hers. “Now make your millennium wishes, my dear. Close your eyes and dig very deep.”

Wishes.

Where could she even begin?

Tess took a deep breath, searching through all the hopes she'd never dared to admit and all the dreams she'd never had time to pursue because of her hectic career. “I wish for something I've never done before.”

The Frenchman rolled his eyes. “You wound me. What kind of resolution is this? To succeed, you must make your dreams very grand,” he urged. “Try again.”

She gave a wistful smile. “Then I wish to be spontaneous. Completely, absolutely spontaneous.”

“You can do better than this. More,” he commanded.

“If you knew me, you'd understand what a big change that will be,” Tess said. She caught a handful of confetti and threw it up in the air, laughing. “Okay, I wish for adventure. I wish for a baby-blue Mercedes. I wish for—for red cowboy boots and a man who makes me see my life in a whole new light.”

“Good, good. Put your whole heart into the wish.”

“I want to ride a horse beneath the stars and tell stories all night before a roaring fire. I want to fall in love,
really
fall in love—so deeply that there are no questions and no limits.”

“Excellent.”

Tess's heart pounded as she was swept up in a dozen rich fantasies. Already waiters were bringing in trays of chocolate desserts and the chef himself ushered in the gleaming millennium cake on a wheeled cart. “But how will I know him? How will he—”

Sirens blared. More fireworks thundered over the last strains of “Auld Lang Syne.”

Would her millennium wishes come true?

Was she ready for such a change if it came?

Tess pressed a kiss on Damien's cheek, dreaming about hot colors and wild adventures as lights exploded
over the harbor. Amid screams and laughter and tears, clock hands slid forward, marking the progression into a grand new era.

And for a few minutes, caught in the cheers and the noisy laughter, Tess found herself believing that her wishes would all come true.

T
ess awoke with a start.

Drums boomed. Echoes danced inside her head.

She opened one eye and winced. Bad idea. Movement plus hangover equals pain.
Major pain.

It had been almost four o'clock when a taxi deposited Tess back at her apartment. The onboard cruise festivities had continued for hours, with flowing champagne and noisy dancing.

Before her departure, Tess had received two proposals of marriage, an offer to spend a week on a shipping magnate's private island in the Caribbean, and another invitation to experience carnal delight in the stateroom of a drunken millionaire.

But she hadn't met Mr. Right.

She might have dreamed about him though. She remembered a wild mixture of colors and heat, with cities of stone rising hot beneath turquoise skies.

Groaning, she pulled a pillow over her head, tot the drumming grew louder. Tess tugged away the pillow and stared at the room, trying to place die sound. Several lifetimes later she realized the thunder was coming from
her foyer, most likely from her front door. And it was definitely getting louder.

Outside, snowflakes were drifting down in the darkness. The clock beside her bed said 10:20
AM.