Jennifer Crusie Bundle (66 page)

It would be nice to have a little place with a bedroom at the top of a flight of curving stairs. A bedroom with a big, warm, soft bed. A big soft bed with Mitch in it and the rest of the world gone away.

Mae closed her eyes at the thought, craving sleep because she craved oblivion.

She tried the first door on the right at the top of the stairs.

It was a guest bedroom, but there was something odd about it. Mae stood inside the door and frowned, trying to put her finger on what was wrong. The walls were painted bright yellow and trimmed with a yellow flowered border, and all the furniture was white with yellow flowers and butterflies painted on it, and it was very pretty but not quite like the rest of the house, somehow. And in the middle of the room was a plain single bedstead with nothing pretty or comfortable about it. It looked temporary.

Maybe Stormy had ordered a bed that went better, but it hadn't arrived yet. Mae tried to mentally delete the bed from the room. It definitely didn't belong. What would? Mae tried to picture a white bedstead with the butterflies and flowers, covered with a flowered comforter. Or a quilt. It was the kind of room she would have loved to have as a child.

Mae froze. That was what was wrong with the room. It wasn't an adult room, it was a child's room. She thought of the toy catalog down on the hall table, and suddenly she knew that the missing piece of furniture, the one that would replace the cheap, plain bed, was a crib.

Stormy had planned a nursery.

Mae sank onto the bed, overwhelmed with sympathy for her. Stormy wasn't deep, but she was human and female and she'd loved Armand and wanted his child. And she'd planned her dreams in this room. Mae closed her eyes and pictured Stormy and a little redheaded daughter in this room, and she knew instinctively that Stormy had done the same.

When she couldn't bear it anymore, she went out of the room and closed the door and crossed to the room opposite it.

It was an adult room, decorated in browns and reds and dominated by a heavy mahogany bed. The only incongruous note was a large wastebasket full of socks and underwear beside the bed. Harold had packed clothes for Goodwill but had evidently drawn the line at passing on anything too personal.

Mae sat down on the bed feeling like Goldilocks. The first room had been too young, and this one was too old. She was due to hit the one that was just right next.

The only bed she could think of that would be just right was Mitch's.

She glanced at the clock on the nightstand. She'd been there two hours. It was time to move before someone found her. A cab was out of the question, but a bus was a possibility. She picked up her purse to look for money, only then remembering that she'd handed it all over to Mitch the night before for gas.

She opened the drawer beside the bed and checked for spare change, but Harold had been thorough, as always. The drawer was empty, and she was going to have to walk it.

She looked down at her feet and tried to remember how far it was to Mitch's. She didn't mind the hike, but her leather flats weren't meant to travel that far. She was starting blisters from just the first six miles. Mitch's place had to be another fifteen or twenty miles. Four or five hours. She'd be lame for life.

She threw her purse on the bed and went to check the boxes that Harold had packed for Goodwill. Maybe there would be shoes, even house slippers. Even five pairs of socks would be better than her leather flats. She pawed through the boxes, finally finding a pair of brand-new men's sneakers. She pulled them out and felt a pang of sorrow. Stormy had probably bought them for Armand, not knowing he'd never wear anything with a purple-and-magenta stripe. After seven years, she should have known, but Mae had a pretty good idea that Stormy had seen the Armand she'd wanted to see, not the real Armand. Stormy's Armand wanted a child and running shoes. The real Armand wanted Barbara Ross and money.

Poor Stormy.

A car door slammed out front and Mae froze, but after a moment she heard the front door of the next town house bang. She breathed out a long sigh of relief and scrambled to her feet. Now all she needed was socks. She went to the wastebasket and began to pull out socks, looking for the thickest pairs she could find. She was going to need about four pairs to get those shoes to fit her feet.

She was pulling out the fourth pair, when her hand struck something hard. She froze and then turned the wastebasket over to dump everything onto the floor.

There in the middle of the tangle of socks and undershorts was a brown leather book.

Mae's hands shook as she picked it up and turned it so she could see the spine—Lewis and the current year. She clutched it to her for a moment, and then the irony of the situation dawned on her. She'd finally found the diary, so the money was protected, but now there wasn't any money. She started to laugh, and then she pulled herself together. At least the diary might tell her where Armand had put the money. In the meantime, she had to get away. Now. She put the diary in her purse, put on the four pairs of socks that made her feet fit Armand's shoes, and five minutes later walked out of the back door of the town house and down the street to Overlook.

It was the first time in her life that she'd ever thought of Overlook as a safe place.

M
ITCH TRIED
the art institute, Claud's, the storage place, Stormy's condo and finally Armand's town house, squelching every panicked vision of Mae being run down, shot, stabbed, smothered, poisoned, strangled, pushed under a train and arrested. Arrested was looking pretty good by the time he got to it, but it still wasn't what he wanted for Mae. What he wanted for Mae was for her to be with him, with his arms around her. After that, he would wing it, but her being with him was not negotiable. It was now top on his list of needs, and he felt more and more out of control the more he tried to find her and couldn't.

He even finally called Gio's, only to be met by alternating threats of violence and pleas to tell them where she was. Wherever she was, she wasn't at Gio's.

At nine that night, he turned toward home. He wasn't giving up, he'd search all night if he had to, he was not going to leave her alone in the dark, but first he was going home to try to regroup. He'd tried all the logical places; now he was going to have to do some fast thinking on the illogical ones.

The night was hot, beyond hot, and he rolled down the car window and drove through the city, trying to ignore the whine of police sirens and the screech of cars stopping too fast and the laughter of women that sounded like screams. His heart was so swollen with fear that it filled his chest, pressing on his lungs so that he couldn't breathe deeply enough, and his breath came in shallow sighs.

Please, God, let me find her,
he prayed.
I'll never ask for anything again. Just let me find her and let her be all right.

M
AE SAT
exhausted on Mitch's bed and watched the sky slowly turn gold, then orange, then purple, then blue-black through the single window of his apartment. She'd been drenched in sweat by the time she'd found his place, checked on the mailboxes in the hall for his apartment number and climbed through the window on the fire escape. She'd stripped immediately and showered, putting on one of his shirts because it was loose and cool and because it was the closest thing she could get to him, but within minutes she was drenched in sweat again, so she'd crawled onto the bed and sat there motionless, trying to think, trying not to fall asleep. The heat hung in the air, and his shirt stuck to her body, glued there with sweat, but she didn't notice. All through the late afternoon, she'd sifted through the snarl of facts and theories and fears that clogged her dazed mind, paging through the diary, trying to find the end of the knot, the one thing that would help her unravel the tangle her life had been fouled into. She'd found some fascinating things in the diary, but her basic situation remained the same: someone was trying to kill her, the police were after her and she was alone.

As the afternoon faded to evening and then to night, a new knot formed: Mitch should have been back by now. Wherever he was, whatever he was doing, it was past nine, and he should have been back by now.

What if he was hurt?

What if he was dead?

What if the shots hadn't been aimed at her? What if the shooter was aiming at Mitch?

What if he'd found him?

Carlo had been headed for jail the last time she'd seen him, but he'd be out by now. Uncle Gio's lawyers had getting Carlo out down to a science. Suppose he'd decided to put an end to Mitch's involvement with her. Suppose he'd decided to put an end to Mitch.

Mae leaned her head back against the iron bedstead and closed her eyes and concentrated on not panicking. She was fine alone. She could handle anything alone. She didn't need Mitch to get her out of trouble.

But she did need him.

She drew a ragged breath at the realization. She needed him in her life, not because he could protect her, or support her, or even put his arms around her.

She needed him because she loved him.

And suddenly she was terrified that she was never going to see him again. It didn't matter that he was a terrible relationship risk, that he was never going to be able to commit to her, that she was asking to get kicked in the emotional teeth by loving him. Those things were all logical and true and had nothing to do with love. Love had its own truth; you knew when you were in it and the likelihood of the success or failure of it had nothing to do with the fact of it.

At that moment, all she needed was to know that he was safe. That would be enough. She didn't need him to hold her or to save her. Just let him be all right. Somewhere. He didn't even have to be with her, he just had to be all right.

Then she heard a key scrape in the lock, and he came into the dark room, and she said, “Oh, thank God,” and her voice was like a prayer.

“Mae?” In the gloom, she could see him stop and lean against the door, which closed under his weight. “Mae?”

“I'm here.”

He drew a deep, uneven breath and said in a shaky attempt at lightness, “I've been looking for you, Mabel.”

“I've been here,” she said, trying to match his tone. “I figured you were with a librarian.”

He came over and sat on the bed, and it sagged under his weight, tipping her toward him. He put his hand against her cheek and just sat there for a moment, touching her, and she closed her eyes because it felt so good to have him close, to feel his hand on her face, to know that he was all right.

He sighed. “I almost lost my mind.” His voice was shaky again. “I thought I'd lost you forever.”

She reached out for him, putting her hand against his chest, curling her fingers to clutch his shirt. “I was so scared. I thought Carlo had killed you. All I wanted was to know that you were safe. I'm all right now that you're safe.” To her horror, she started to cry from relief. “I'm all right. I just couldn't stand it, thinking you were—”

“I love you.” He kissed her and stopped her words with the soft caress of his mouth, making her dizzy with relief and comfort and love. She put her arms around him, holding him hard against her to prove that he was really there, and he held her just as close, just as tightly. “From now on, we stay together,” he whispered in her ear. “This was just too damn scary. From now on, you stay with me.”

“That's really what you want?” she asked him, swallowing hard. “No more pipeline?”

He smiled in the dark, his lips moving against her cheek. “No more pipeline. I've lost all my interest in the West. The only thing I want to explore is you.”

“You wouldn't lie to me, would you?” she asked, and he said, “Everybody lies, Mabel. Everybody but us.”

She nodded against his chest, too overwhelmed with relief and love to say anything else, and he kissed her again, deeper this time, and she melted into him, trying to merge with him so they'd never be apart again. He slipped his hand under her shirt, stroking his fingers up her damp back, holding her to him, and she pressed her lips to his neck, breathing him into her. “Make love to me,” she whispered. “I want to be part of you.”

He held her tighter for a moment, and then he said, “You're already part of me.”

She stood up to pull his shirt over her head, breathing heavily in the heat that filled the room like fog, watching him gaze up at her in the blue light from the window. The shirt stuck to her, and she had to peel it off her sweat-slicked skin. She saw him stand then, too, the breadth of his body like a wall between her and whatever lay outside the door, and she heard him breathe deeper as he took off his shirt. She crawled back onto the bed and leaned forward to kiss his chest, licking at his salty dampness, and he stripped off his pants and then pulled her down on the bed with him, hot and damp and solid and safe.

She held him for a moment, savoring the warmth and weight of his body against hers, both of them slippery with sweat and heat and remembered fear and growing desire.

“It's almost enough just to hold you.” He wrapped his arms tighter around her. “I'm just so damn glad that I'm holding you again.”