One More Kiss (14 page)

“Hello, this is Dresden.”

“Toby? This is Jay Michener.”

There was silence on the other end of the phone.

“Is Alysse all right?”

She hadn’t told her family that he’d walked out on her again. He felt shocked and surprised. “Yes. I mean I think so. I messed up and I need your help to get her back.”

“You need my help? What the hell did you do now?”

“Ran away again. But your sister held her own with me, which I’m sure isn’t any surprise to you.”

“No, it’s not. Alysse knows how to give as good as she gets and she is brutally honest sometimes.”

“She called me a coward,” Jay admitted.

“Damn. You must have really upset her,” Toby said.

“I did, but I want her back, Toby. Will you help me?” Jay asked.

There was a long silence on the other end of the phone. “If I help you it’s because I love my sister and I know that she wants you in her life.”

“Thank you, Toby. I want to be worthy of being in her life.”

“What’s your plan?” Toby asked.

He outlined what he had in mind and after a few minutes Toby agreed to assist him. “If she says no, that’s it. I want you out of here for good.”

“If she says no then I don’t deserve her.”

Jay drove back to the Hotel Del Coronado where Toby met him in the lobby. They spent the afternoon seeing to every detail and when the evening rolled around Jay got dressed in a tuxedo he’d purchased from Nordstrom’s with Candi’s help earlier in the day. He stared at himself hard in the mirror and he hoped that whatever Alysse had seen in him when he was in his dress blues, she’d see in him tonight.

He’d never needed another person as much as he needed her and it would be damned hard for him not to worry. He’d never depended on another person as much as he did on Alysse. And he had no idea how she’d react tonight.

14

“
S
WEET
D
REAMS
B
AKERY
, home of the incredible red velvet dream cupcakes,” Alysse spoke into the phone. It had been the longest three days of her life and now that it was almost closing time on Friday afternoon she wanted to get out of the bakery and go back to her home and hide away.

But she couldn’t do that because her home was now filled with memories of Jay. She couldn’t believe he’d left her once again. Worse, that she was still in love with him.

“Hello,” the caller said. His voice was very familiar.

“Toby?”

“Yes. I have a dessert emergency,” he said.

“An emergency?” she asked. “What kind of emergency?”

“It’s Molly’s parents’ anniversary and I told her I’d order a replica wedding cake and deliver it to the Hotel Del Coronado tonight by six.”

“Toby! I can’t make a replica wedding cake in four hours,” she said.

“It doesn’t have to be huge or perfect or anything like that. I just need something. Maybe two layers.”

“Two layers. I don’t know. I have some cakes that I baked for a wedding tomorrow that I could use. If you want me to do this, you have to come down here with a photo so I can decorate it properly.”

“Fine, but then I need you to deliver it because I have to get back to their party, which you are invited to, as well. Dress fancy.”

Her brother was a lunatic. “I am supposed to bake a cake, haul it across town for Molly’s parents and get dressed up, too?”

“Yeah. Is there a problem? Mom said she’d drop off your dress.”

“Isn’t that great. Anything else?”

“Nope, that’s all. Will you bring Jay with you?” he asked.

She bit her lower lip. “I think he’s busy tonight. So it’ll just be me.”

“I was wrong about him,” Toby said. “I’m glad you gave him a second chance.”

She wasn’t. Hell, that was a lie, of course she was glad she’d given him a second chance. The last two weeks of her life more than made up for the previous four years of being alone. The only bad part was that they weren’t together still.

“Don’t forget the photo.”

“I’m emailing it to you. Check your phone,” Toby said. “Thanks, sis, you’re a lifesaver.”

“Yeah, right. Love ya.”

“Ditto,” Toby said, finishing the call.

She opened the attachment on the email from Toby and was taken aback by the cake they’d selected. It matched the one from her wedding to Jay in Vegas. There was no way anyone in her family could know that because they hadn’t attended the ceremony or even seen the cake, but it made her tear up as she looked at it.

She put two more cakes in the oven to replace the ones she was using for Molly’s parents. And then got to work decorating a cake that made her heart break.

She finished the anniversary cake just as her mom came through the back door with a garment bag over one shoulder. Alysse was alone in the shop because Staci had gone to L.A. to do some more prep work for her audition on
Premiere Chef.

“Hello, honey,” her mom said, coming over and giving her a kiss.

She kissed her mom hello then shooed her hand out of the frosting bowl as Candi swiped her finger through it. “You look nice.”

“Thanks. Toby is in the hot seat tonight,” her mom said. “Molly just found out about this last-minute stuff with you. She was not pleased.”

“He should have said that he asked me to do it a while ago,” Alysse said.

“He couldn’t lie to her. Would you lie to Jay?” her mom asked.

“No,” she admitted. But apparently she had no problem lying to the rest of her family. She hated that she hadn’t told her mom or brother that she and Jay weren’t together anymore, but she was so afraid of looking stupid.

She put the cake in the van while her mom tidied up the kitchen. Then she got dressed in a pale yellow dress that she knew hadn’t come from her closet. Her mom loved buying her things and, to be honest, Alysse didn’t mind.

“Okay, I’m ready to go.”

“You look beautiful, sweetie.”

“Thanks, Mom.”

When they arrived at the hotel Toby was waiting in the lobby. “I need Mom to come with me. Will you take the cake down to the beach?”

“Sure,” she said. “I need a valet cart though. It’s kind of big.”

“No problem,” Toby said. He took care of getting her a cart and helped her with the cake. Then he hugged her close.

“What was that for?”

“Just because I love you,” he said.

“Love you, too, Tobe. But if you make me do this again I’m going to strangle you.”

“I will never ask you to do this again,” he promised.

As she followed the path to the beach she couldn’t help but remember the last time she’d been here, supposedly trying to rekindle a romance and instead finding Jay waiting for her.

She wished that would happen again. But she knew that she would have better luck wishing for snow right now than Jay being here with her.

She got close and saw that the beach was set up for a dinner party with tables and chairs and in the middle a dance floor with a table nearby that she assumed was for the cake. A man stood there with his back toward her. He wore a formal jacket and there was something distinctive about the breadth of his shoulders.

She stopped abruptly and stared. “Jay?”

He turned around and a cascade of emotions ran through her. “What are you doing here?”

“Waiting for you,” he said.

“Waiting for me?”

“Yes. I set this up. I wanted to do things right this time.”

“I’m not entirely sure what you mean,” she said.

He came to her and took her hand, leading her to the middle of the dance floor.

“I was a coward for leaving again. Even as I walked out of your door I knew I loved you, but I was so afraid to stay. Afraid I couldn’t be the man you needed me to be,” he said.

“What changed your mind?”

“You did,” he said. “You have haunted me every single second since I left you. And I know now that I need you with me, Aly. I don’t want to be alone anymore.”

“But—”

“I know I haven’t given you much to believe in, but I want you to know that I am changing. I quit the Corps and got a job with Company B. I confessed to your mom and Toby that I’d hurt you again.”

“Oh, I hadn’t mentioned that to them,” she said.

“I think you did that because you knew I wasn’t leaving for good this time,” he said. “You took a big chance on letting me go and had to hope that I loved you enough to come back this time. And I do. I love you.”

She blinked at the tears that were stinging her eyes and looked up at him. “Are you sure?”

“Yes. Very sure. Do you think I can redeem myself and be your hero again?”

“Yes,” she said. “I love you, Jay Michener. If you ever try to leave me again I might have to hurt you.”

“I never will,” he promised. “In fact, I want to do something...will you wait here a minute?”

“Yes,” she said.

While Jay strode up the path she moved the cake onto the table so it was out of harm’s way. Eventually, hotel staff showed up to man the deejay booth and then her family and friends arrived. They all sat down at the tables and Jay came back to her in the center of the dance floor and got down on one knee.

“Alysse Dresden, in front of all of our family and friends, will you marry me and be the light in my life?”

“I will,” she said.

Jay smiled up at her and pulled a small ring box from his pocket. Taking out the diamond ring, he slipped it on her finger and stood up to kiss her.

As he embraced her she knew she’d found something more than she’d ever expected. By taking that rush order for a redemption cupcake, she’d found the happiness she’d been missing. The man who was the other half of her soul.

* * * * *

Keep reading for an excerpt of
His First Noelle
by Rhonda Nelson!

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1

Six months later...

D
RESSED
IN
A
courier's uniform, newly minted security agent Judd Willingham made the short walk up the cracked sidewalk to the small front porch of the nondescript brick house. Twinkling Christmas lights with more burnt-out bulbs than working ones sagged from the eaves and a sad-looking wreath hung from a door in desperate need of a fresh coat of paint. Dead weeds, their crispy skeletons all that remained from a robust summer, pushed up between the evergreen shrubs, crowding the flower beds on either side of the entrance, and a rusty mailbox hung drunkenly from a lone nail which was dangerously close to slipping from the mortar. Judd grimaced.

This was the safe house? Really?

Granted he hadn't expected a mansion—the little town of Mossy Ridge, Mississippi, could barely afford its five-man police force, let alone a state-of-the-art safe house—but surely something a little more sound could have been made available. Considering this was the third time his target, Noelle Montgomery, had been evacuated due to another failed attempt on her life, no doubt their choices were dwindling.

Honestly, when he'd been briefed on his first assignment for Ranger Security, Judd had expected something a little less grave than protecting a key witness to a murder trial. After all, Jeb, his twin brother—older by two minutes and his exact mirror opposite—had merely had to find a jewel thief burgling a high-end retirement community. No life-or-death situation there. In fact, other than potentially getting run over by a motorized scooter, he hadn't been in any danger at all. At least physically, anyway. Judd inwardly grinned. His heart was another matter altogether. Much to their equal astonishment, Jeb had found himself married at the end of his assignment.

Having always enjoyed an almost supernatural twin connection, making sense of his brother's feelings had been a little disconcerting. He'd picked up on a lot of awe, wonder, confusion and frustration. It wasn't until Jeb's, er,
physical release
—orgasms had never been a secret, a fact that had been quite embarrassing in their teens—that Judd had realized that his brother had fallen head over heels in love. Though he didn't experience the sensations as strongly as Jeb—more shadowed and less profound than the original—he'd found himself a little envious of his twin.

Not envious enough to want to permanently shackle himself to a member of the opposite sex though. He'd come damned close to that in his last year at West Point, a mistake he didn't ever intend to make again. He smothered a dark chuckle.

Fool me once...was enough. Lesson learned.

Naturally he knew that all women weren't faithless money-grubbing connivers, like the one who'd almost tricked him into an until-death-do-you-part, but knowing it and having it make a difference were two different things.

Heather had studied him, understood his weaknesses and knew exactly what to say and do to appeal to his “hero” complex. In the end, his “damaged fragile flower in need of a protector” had been a two-time divorcée with multiple aliases and a rap sheet longer than the damned Declaration of Independence. And he'd nearly brought that viper into their family? His lips quirked.

They already had one of those, thank you very much—his grandmother.

The matriarch of the family and the formidable head of Anderson Enterprises, Twila Anderson was notoriously hard and could hold a grudge and her own opinion longer than anyone he'd ever known. She no longer had the ability to scare the hell out of him, but if he'd wanted to continue taking orders he would have stayed in the military. Though he could have gone to work for her, or any one of the company's holdings, Judd had ultimately, once again, decided to follow in his brother's footsteps.

Contrary to popular belief, he
did
have an original thought and they
didn't
share a mind, but they were so closely tied to one another that living independently of the other was simply...unpleasant. They were more than brothers, they were best friends. And while Jeb had left the military after that horrible disaster in Mosul, Judd had actually been considering it before his brother had.

A sniper who couldn't pull the trigger was essentially useless and, given that it had gotten increasingly more difficult with every target...

And the hell of it? He had no earthly idea why.

Judd had always prided himself on being able to do the hard job—making the conscious decision to end another person's life was not easy, even if it was justified. Men who intentionally killed, mutilated and maimed innocent women and children were lower than pond scum and didn't deserve to live, dammit. For every one of those people he finished off, he'd always congratulated himself with the lives he'd saved.

The end justified the means, the greater good and all of that. And he still believed it—he really did—but doing it... Putting a man in the crosshairs, making the kill shot. That was out of reach. He couldn't do it anymore.

Not that he'd confided that to anyone—even Jeb. It was too galling, too shameful. Better that they thought he missed his twin than the truth.

Initially, he'd chalked his hesitation up to burn-out—it happened. He'd taken a short leave to Crete—he hadn't had time to come home and wouldn't have even if he could—but even the island paradise, lots of good sex, good food and good wine hadn't made a difference.

He was done. His career in the military was over.

Luckily, Jeb had paved the way with Ranger Security and Judd couldn't have been any more thankful. Owners and legendary Rangers Jamie Flanagan, Brian Payne and Guy McCann were the collective best of what Uncle Sam had to offer. Coolly efficient with an unmatched attention to detail, Payne had been nicknamed The Specialist and the moniker more than fit. With a rumored genius IQ and enough brawn to strike fear into the bravest of men, Flanagan had met and married Colonel Carl Garrett's granddaughter, which was proof enough of his courage. And McCann's mystical ability to surf the fine line between brilliance and stupidity and always land in hero territory had made him locker room lore.

Added to the fact that these men were former soldiers—and more significantly, Rangers—it made this job the perfect fit. Because he'd never been stateside long enough to outfit a permanent residence, Judd was thankful for the furnished apartment that came with his generous employment package and looked forward to finding a place of his own.

His new sister-in-law, Sophie, had even offered to deed him off some acreage from her farm, where she and Jeb had made their home. Admittedly, it was tempting, if for no other reason than it would make his brother his neighbor. And since he suspected that a little Sophie or Jeb wouldn't be too long in the making, being the “fun uncle” held immense appeal.

A tinkle of low, feminine laughter sounded through the door, ringing an internal hum of awareness along his nerve endings. An unfamiliar prickling tightened the skin on the tops of his fingers, made his stomach clench. He frowned, shaking the bizarre sensation off, and focused on the job at hand. A quick glance along both ends of the street confirmed that he wasn't being watched and that all was well. Judd pretended to check the address on the package he carried against the house number, then knocked on the door.

Utter silence. The laughing stopped as though a switch had been thrown.

He heard the soft shuffle of a heavy foot across carpet, could feel someone staring at him through the peephole and held up the box. “Bluebird Services. I'm here to deliver a package.”

“Perishable or non-perishable?” a voice asked, verifying the security question.

“Perishable,” he confirmed.

Judd listened as a series of locks disengaged, then the door opened to reveal a rangy officer with more hair on his face than his head. His eyes were guarded, a little regretful and mildly relieved. No doubt keeping this key witness out of harm's way was the most exciting bit of police work Officer ZZ Top had ever done, Judd thought, following him inside the house.

In keeping with the generally shabby appearance of the outside, the interior was equally depressed. Stained brown carpet covered the floors, dated brown paneling lined the walls and bare bulbs hung from the dingy water-stained—okay, fine,
brown
—ceiling. Wearing uniforms the color of ditch water, the three officers matched the bleak decor.

Which was probably what made the woman standing in the middle of them all the more remarkable.

She stood out like a flamingo in a flock of cowbirds.

His heart began to pound, pushing the blood through his veins so fast that his mouth parched. A peculiar feeling fluttered through his chest, not altogether unpleasant, and the centers of his palms tingled with heat. He couldn't have been any more surprised if fireballs emerged from them. Though he knew it hadn't, the floor felt like it shifted beneath his feet and his stomach suddenly floated inside his belly with breathless anticipation, the same way it did the instant he jumped out of a plane. He swallowed, shaken.

It was...disconcerting.

Tall and willowy with long, blazing red hair that gleamed with vitality despite the lack of proper lighting, she practically glowed from within, bathing the rest of the world around her with her illumination. Her skin was pale and peachy-looking, her mouth a small but ripe raspberry pink that immediately put him in mind of sex, and delicate brows arched over a pair of particularly startling green eyes. They were light, the color of antique glass, and heavily fringed with dark auburn lashes. She wore a long multi-
colored skirt which clung to an especially nice ass, a white tunic with billowy sleeves, lots of noisy jewelry—it jingled with every move she made—and a pair of fuzzy pink bunny slippers on her feet. The scent of meat loaf and apple pie hung in the air and a small candle burned on the battered coffee table.

What was more startling was what she was doing—cutting one of the officers' hair, of all things. While she worked, she did a lot of humming under her breath, biting her distracting lips and frowning critically. She didn't look the least bit concerned that someone was trying to kill her. In fact, she just looked...busy. A quick glance revealed that everyone but ZZ Top had gotten a fresh trim and shave.

“I'm almost done,” she said, without looking up.
Snip, snip, snip.
Frown.
Snip, snip, snip.
“See, Roy, the trick is to condition regularly. Hair is hair. Just because you're a man doesn't mean your hair doesn't need a decent moisturizer, especially with all this curl,” she said, pushing her hands through it with a little groan of delight that made his balls tighten.

Roy's, too, by the look of him.

A fair baby-faced blonde with more than a spare tire hanging over his belt, dear old Roy blushed to the roots of the hair she presently worked on.

“I bet the girls just can't get enough of those curls, can they?” she continued, smiling as she tweaked a few more strands. “It's a good thing you don't have any dimples, Roy, because dimples
and
curls would have made you downright irresistible, and that's hardly fair to any of the rest of the men in this town, is it?”

“Right,” one of the men drawled. “'Cause he beats them off with a stick now, doesn't he?”

She looked up and sent the offender a scowl that managed to be as quelling as it was disappointed. “
Clark
.”

Clark's smug smile instantly fell and he reached down and popped a rubber band against his wrist. “Sarcasm isn't a weapon,” he said, seemingly by rote. “I can be clever without being cruel.”

Judd blinked, stunned.
What the hell...?

She beamed approvingly at Clark, her pale green eyes lighting with pleasure. “Intelligence is attractive, but only when it's put to good use. Wouldn't it be a shame to waste that fine mind, Clark? Have you given any more thought to going back to school, pursuing that dream of architecture we talked about?”

Clark glanced at the floor and sheepishly shuffled his feet. “I'm still thinking about it.”

“Thinking is good, but taking action is better. Make the choice and commit to it.” She smiled indulgently. “You know you can do it.”

What was she? Judd wondered. Some sort of life coach? A daytime TV junkie? Both?

“You're determined to make sure that I'm an officer short on my police force, aren't you?” ZZ Top scolded with a good-natured grimace.

She rolled her eyes as she continued to work on Roy's curly hair. “As if you couldn't handle the whole thing by yourself,” she said fondly. “You're so efficient, you've shaved all the hair right off your head to keep from having to fix it. I hope Mossy Ridge appreciates you, Les. You do a fine job. Just like that lovely wife of yours, this community is lucky to have you.”

Les's chest puffed with pride and he ran a hand over his bald head, which had turned decidedly pink.

Any minute now Judd fully expected all three men to jump up, start dancing in circles around her and break into “Whistle While You Work.” But she wasn't Snow White, they weren't dwarves and he sure as hell wasn't Prince Charming, though he had been accused of being the Prince of Darkness a time or two.

“Ms. Montgomery, I'm Judd Anderson, your security specialist. I'm here to escort you to your permanent location while you await the trial. Please collect your things. We need to go.”

There, Judd thought. Firm but polite, the equivalent of
Move your ass, please.

She stilled and finally, very slowly, looked up at him. Though he was too well-trained to betray an inkling of unease, the force of that droll green gaze when it met his was nothing short of...cataclysmic. Like a tsunami meeting a hurricane, an earthquake in the middle of a tornado, planets colliding in space. He felt like he'd been sucked into the resulting vacuum, powerless as a whole new galaxy formed around him...and he was staring directly at its princess.