This Perfect Kiss (8 page)

Maybe it was a family curse. God knew the
Kincaid men always had women around them who made them crazy.

Maybe Jilly Skye was
his
curse. His downfall.

No. No way would he let her get to him. His anger heated up again and he gulped in a breath of air. She sold old clothes, for God’s sake. She dressed and behaved in flaky, weird, and unpredictable ways—everything he hated about L.A. There was the Blue Party to remember, the candidacy, the senator, this chance to be the Kincaid who did something truly worthwhile.

The camera stopped, then panned back in the opposite direction. Jilly lifted her hand and combed it absently through her uncontrollable hair. Rory felt the springy stuff against his palm, as if he were touching it. He closed his eyes, unable to fool himself any longer.

He didn’t like her, but, dammit, he wanted her.

And he’d never been any good at not getting what he wanted.

Two days after returning home, Greg Kincaid wandered into the kitchen, where Rory sat slumped behind the table, obviously held prisoner by a very black mood or a very bad headache. Since Greg had returned to Caidwater from the press junket, he’d noticed Rory becoming increasingly tense. “Are you all right?” he asked.

Rory straightened. “I’m fine,” he said automatically. “Do you need something?”

Of course he says he’s fine
. Greg mentally shook his head. Rory had ever been the strong, responsible older brother. “There isn’t something I can help you with?”

Rory grunted. “There’s nothing you can do.”

Greg tried his best disarming grin. “What about talking you out of this Senate thing?”

“Don’t start with me again,” Rory warned. “I’ve heard everything you have to say on that subject ten or twelve times already.”

“You’re impatient, autocratic, and undiplomatic,” Greg said quietly.

Rory rubbed the back of his neck. “Gee, thanks,” he said dryly.

“And those are your good points,” Greg added, shoving his hands in his pockets. “Maybe if you’d been climbing a ladder in some corporation for the last ten years, I could see you playing dirty political games.” But instead, Rory had formed his own software company and kept strict control of the reins—all the reins—until he’d sold it six months ago.

“The Blue Party wants to call a halt to those kinds of games,” Rory replied.

But what did Rory want? Greg suspected there were only two reasons why his brother was even considering the Senate candidacy. “You’re bored,” he told him. That was one.

Rory frowned. “Why are you fighting me on this? Don’t you want the Kincaid name to stand for something besides scandal?”

That was the other.

Greg dropped into the opposite chair. “And I’m not contributing in that regard?”

“The Kincaids already have Oscars, Greg.”

“Ouch.” But Greg already knew his brother didn’t understand the passion for acting that had made him follow in the profession of Roderick and their father. Rory didn’t respect the business because he didn’t respect the men in their family who had been actors. “You really know how to wound a guy.”

“Sorry.” Rory didn’t look the least contrite. “Where’s Iris?”

That was something—someone—else Rory didn’t understand. “Mrs. Mack took her on some errands. Ice cream was mentioned.”

“Ah.”

Greg took a breath. “About Iris—”

“No,” Rory said flatly.

Greg took another breath to calm himself. Stubborn Ass was his brother’s middle name, and getting the Ass’s hackles up wouldn’t help matters. “Rory—”

“For God’s sake, I’m
saving
her, Greg. We lived here, remember? We grew up in L.A., and with an actor for a parent. Do you really want her? Do you really want that
for
her?”

It was the same argument Rory used every time Greg brought up the guardianship. “I’m not our father, Rory,” he said.

Rory just stared him down, his face set.

Frustration rising, Greg fisted his hands. He hated arguing with his brother. Ever since they were kids, it was Rory who had cared about him, raised him, and that deserved his loyalty. But this was about rescuing someone else’s childhood.

“Rory—”

“No.”

Temper flaring, Greg stood up. “Damn it, Rory.” He rested his knuckles on the table.

Rory’s eyes narrowed. Obviously spoiling for a fight, he jumped to his feet, too. “Damn me, you mean?” He leaned over the table, his eyes hot and his jaw tense.

Startled, Greg jerked back. Though it was true Rory was at the core autocratic and impatient, he was usually also incredibly coolheaded and self-contained. This anger, this pose, was so uncontrolled, so un-Rory, that Greg’s own frustration and anger instantly leached away. He
sighed. “Forget it,” he said, sitting back down.

Time and patience, he told himself. He had to trust that time and patience would untangle the situation, because Rory was unmovable in this mood. Something was getting to his brother, bad. Greg blamed the Blue Party, but it could be Jilly Skye, too. He’d noticed that Rory took convoluted paths through the house just to avoid meeting up with her.

Which reminded him. “Didn’t Jilly ask if she could take that black gown with her yesterday when she left?” She’d tracked Rory down in this very kitchen at lunchtime, and Greg had watched with surprise and interest the way the air between them shimmered. He wasn’t quite sure if they irritated or excited each other, or some combustible combination of both.

At her name, Rory fell back into his seat, his face shuttered. “Yeah. She wanted to display it at some show this weekend.”

“She must have forgotten it. It’s on the foyer table.”

Rory grunted.

Obviously Rory didn’t want to think about or talk about the woman. Greg smiled to himself, itching to poke his brother’s buttons. It was so rare that Rory let himself be annoyed, and he was being so damn stubborn about Iris he deserved it. “Maybe you should take it to her,” Greg said, his voice casual.

Rory didn’t fail him. “Forget it,” he answered forcefully. “I have from now until Monday morning free of that wacky woman and her even
wackier outfits, and I’m going to savor it.”

Greg raised his eyebrows innocently. “I guess that means she’ll have to come over and pick it up herself. As long as she’s here, I bet she stays and puts in a few more hours.” He rubbed his chin. “I wonder what she’ll wear. She told me she just bought a dress Marilyn Monroe wore in
Some Like It Hot
.”

Rory looked so aghast that Greg almost laughed out loud. It was more than entertaining to see unflappable Rory flummoxed. The free-spirited Jilly—so different from the cold-faced superwomen his brother usually squired—was just the right thorn to pierce Rory’s sometimes puritanical hide.

But then Greg thought of the signs of tension written all over him—the testiness, the tiredness—and he relented. “Do you have her address? I’ll take it to her.”

Greg was still smiling as he left Caidwater. He’d thought Rory was going to kiss him when he’d made the offer. Despite the Iris-dilemma, it was good having Rory around.

His smile died. God, he’d hate for the mess Roderick had left behind to ruin their relationship.

Curse the old man. Curse him, and curse his marquee-sized ego, too. Greg had continued living at Caidwater with Roderick for the past four years, both of them obstinately refusing to acknowledge the secrets between them. But in the end, damn him, Roderick had won. He’d given the guardianship of Iris to Rory.

The thought so depressed Greg that he forced
his mind from it, concentrating instead on the scripts his agent had sent over the day before. If Rory couldn’t be convinced, and actually took Iris north, he would need a new project to fill the huge void in his life.

She’d been like his daughter since the day she was born.

Since before she was born.

Yet Greg wasn’t sure how hard and how far to fight for her. Rory would certainly be a responsible father figure for Iris, he had no doubt about that. But would he ever understand her spirit? Would he ever love her?

Greg understood Iris. Appreciated her. Loved her.

But he wasn’t sure he didn’t have to pay for the past by losing her.

Those thoughts depressed him as well, so he went back to considering the scripts. He’d read through them yesterday, and the one that appealed to him most would shoot on location in Wyoming.

So far he’d been doing “buddy” roles, the kind of character who never got the girl, and this one was no different. But there was something appealing about this part. Ned Smith was the best friend of the hero and a bronco rider, a man in extreme and chronic physical pain throughout the course of the film.

It would be an interesting challenge, and according to his agent, maybe even a breakthrough role. But only if Greg could realistically portray a suffering man. At eleven, he’d broken his leg while skiing at Big Bear. But that single
injury, along with some jammed fingers from beach volleyball, was the extent of the personal experience he had to draw upon.

Once in the FreeWest district, Greg whipped his Land Rover into a parking space down the block from Jilly’s shop. His mood lightened as he looked around the area. A condom shop? And the art theater on the corner was showing a film he remembered reading about. From an Indian director, it was said to curl the toes of the most jaded sensualist. Greg grinned. He’d vote for Rory himself just for the chance to see his brother’s face the first time he got a load of Jilly’s neighborhood.

The image made him whistle a jaunty melody that he saved for only his cheeriest moments. The long string of bells on the front door of Things Past clashed with his musical notes, but he kept right on whistling as he walked a few feet through the store, the box with the dress she wanted in his hands.

He didn’t see her or anyone else. “Hello?” he called out. “Jilly?”

At the very rear of the shop was a doorway, presumably to an office, and Greg headed in that direction. “Jilly?” he said again, and poked his head around the door.

No.

No
!

His heart froze but then restarted, seeming to fire instead of beat, going off in a swift burst of explosions.
Bap-bap-bap, bap-bap-bap-bap
.

“Kim?” God, it didn’t sound like his voice, but it looked like her, sitting in a chair in the small
office. There was the familiar golden color of her hair, though the woman he was staring at wore it in a confining bun instead of loose. There was the familiar fineness of her skin, as clear and sweetly colored as Iris’s. There was the familiar, gutclenching beauty of her face.

And then there was the familiar, desperate sense of shame he felt at looking at it, at wanting her.

“Kim?” he said again.

He’d never seen her move so fast. She rocketed out of her chair. She brushed past him, her shoulder knocking into his chest.

She ran out of the store.

Greg couldn’t find his breath or his feet or his way to the front door. His heart kept on with those uneven blasts—
bap-bap-bap, bap-bap-bap-bap
.

When he realized she wasn’t coming back, he finally commanded his feet to move. It took him a long time to return to his car, because he kept stopping every couple of feet to catch his breath and survey the street, willing her to show herself to him.

But she didn’t.

He put the box beside him on the Land Rover’s passenger seat, not even remembering what it contained or what he was supposed to do with it. Then, somehow, the engine was idling and he backed the car out of the parking space and started driving. If there were stoplights, he didn’t see them. If there were pedestrians, he hoped they got themselves out of the way.

“Kim.” He said her name out loud, and it stabbed him like a knife. His belly clenched, cramping against the pain, but it still came, more
pain, again and again, in sharp, burning bursts. Tears stung the inside corners of his eyes.

Some months—years?—from now, when his sanity returned, he’d have to call his agent. Maybe he could play a character like Ned Smith after all. Because seeing again the first woman he’d ever loved, the only woman he
would
ever love, hurt like hell.

On his way to Jilly’s shop, Rory maneuvered his Mercedes through the dusk and the late Saturday afternoon traffic, the large box holding that damned dress beside him on the leather passenger seat. Greg had surprised the hell out of him a few hours ago by stalking into the library and tossing the box onto the desk without explanation. Greg’s face, tight and pale, had surprised him even more. There was a glitter in his brother’s eyes that had warned Rory right away to keep his mouth shut.

So Rory had bent over the stacks of paperwork on his desk. Wrapped up in his work, he had ignored the box, too.

For about nine minutes.

But, like a quarter burning a hole in a little boy’s pocket, the box refused to be ignored.

Telling himself it was a preemptive strike—if she
did
come to get it herself, God knew how long she’d want to swish around the house, distracting him, irritating him—he’d grabbed his keys and headed in the direction of West Hollywood. He had a vague recollection of the area where he would find Jilly’s shop. Ten years ago it had been a seedy collection of bars, secondhand
stores, and rooming houses. He assumed it was different now.

And when he turned onto Freewood Drive, he realized it was different, all right. A neon sign arching over the street flickered to life just as he drove beneath it.
FREEWEST
, it proclaimed in startling blue letters. As exclamation point, a palm tree burst into chartreuse green.

The colors hurt Rory’s eyes. He winced and looked away, taking in the odd collection of shops and businesses. Christ. Tattoos and tarot cards. A shop specializing in motorcycle leathers, and a dance club advertising Saturday night was “Boogie in Bubbles Night…Bring Your Own Towels.”

Boogie in bubbles. What the hell was that? he wondered, shaking his head. It was L.A., he answered himself. Admittedly, his adopted city of San Francisco had its share of eccentricities, but a layer of Old World, tongue-in-cheek chic softened all the edges like the fog softened the northern California air.

In L.A., everything was neon-bright, unabashed, and in-your-face. And, Rory thought as he pulled into a parking space and noted the sole type of stock in the shop beside Jilly’s—condoms—in L.A. everything was about sex.

Which was all he could think about when he spotted Jilly at the back of her shop. With darkness now fully descended, the windows of Things Past were lit like a TV screen. Rory’s gaze skipped over her window display to land on the woman herself, standing beside a rack in another of her improbable outfits.

Her compact body was dressed in a hot-pink
skirt with a matching short jacket. A round hat of the same color was perched on her head, with a veil that hung over her eyes to brush the bridge of her pert nose. The outfit should have looked ridiculous, but instead, as she bent over a rack to adjust some hangers, Rory stared at her round butt and thought it looked raunchy.