Lissa- Sugar and Spice 1.6 - Final (21 page)

She didn’t have to wait for Nick’s call. She could call him.

“Lissa? How about calling him?”

Lissa rose to her feet. She looked at her sisters. They looked at each other.

Emily swung away, picked up the TV remote control, turned on the enormous flat-screen set that hung over a long buffet table and turned the volume to low. Jaimie looked at the screen, too, as if she really gave a damn about watching whatever stupid program was on.

Lissa drew a long breath, let it out and walked to the far end of the sitting room, called up her contacts list and hit the icon for Nick’s cell number.

It rang. And rang. And rang again. There was a faint click. OK. Not Nick, but his voice mail…

“Welcome to GlobalPhone. We cannot complete your call at this time. Please check the number and dial again.”

Frowning, she disconnected. Redialed by touching the icon again. Once more, the call went through. The phone rang and rang and then, click…

“Welcome to GlobalPhone. We cannot complete your call at this time. Please check the number and dial again.”

Obviously, there was some kind of glitch.

She placed the call again, this time using the keypad, touching her index finger to one digit at a time.

It didn’t matter.

The phone rang. The automated message came on.

She ended the call.

OK. Definitely, a glitch. Well, GlobalPhone was her carrier, too. The number for customer service was right in her contacts list. She chose it, went through the nonsense of its electronic switchboard—

“GlobalPhone,” a voice said briskly. “How may I help you?”

Lissa cleared her throat. “I’m having a problem trying to reach someone.” She explained it all. That she’d called three separate times, that she’d reached the same automated message each time.

“Do you happen to know the message, ma’am?”

She did. By now, she knew it by heart, and she repeated it word for word.

“The thing is, I don’t understand the part about checking the number because I absolutely know the number I’ve called is correct.”

“I’m sure it is, Miss,” the rep said. “What that message means is—”

Lissa listened. And listened. She reached behind her for a chair and sat down.

“I see,” she said. “Thank you. No, no, there’s nothing else.”

“Lissa?”

She looked across the room. Emily and Jaimie were standing with their backs to the television screen.

“Lissa,” Jaimie said, “you should probably see—”

Emily elbowed Jaimie in the ribs. “What’s the matter?”

Lissa’s lips felt as dry as the Mojave Desert. She moistened them with the tip of her tongue.

“It’s… It’s…” She paused. “I called Nicholas.”

“And?”

“And I got a weird message.”

“What kind of weird message?”

“A recording. I thought it meant that his phone was, you know, overloaded. I mean, everybody he ever knew is probably trying to reach him, but—”

“But?”

“But what it means is that—is that the person you’re calling has—has changed his number.”

Jaimie’s expression turned grim. “He changed his number without telling you?”

“It’s probably a mistake,” Lissa said. She was shaking. Dammit! She was shaking! “Just some kind of screw-up, you know?”

Jaimie and Emily looked at each other. Then Emily picked up the TV remote. She and Jaimie moved to the sides of the set as Emily turned up the sound.

“… plans are just that right now,” a slightly rough, wonderfully familiar male voice said.

Lissa caught her breath, rose to her feet and whispered Nick’s name. And, yes, it was Nick on the TV screen, tall and handsome with that sexy, lazy smile on his lips.

“They’re still only plans, but Beverly and I are discussing what happens next, and I promise, you guys will be the first to know.”

Beverly?” Lissa said in bewilderment.

“The redhead,” Jaimie said. “The one plastered to his side like glue.”

Lissa tore her gaze from Nick, settled it on the woman beside him, a spectacular redhead who was gazing up at him with adoration.

“Did you ever give up hope, Beverly?” a voice called out.

The redhead laughed and put her arm through Nick’s.

“Never,” she said.

“And you had no idea what had happened to him?”

“No. Nick didn’t let any of us know. Not even me.”

“Nick?” A sea of microphones and cameras swung in Nick’s direction. “Is there anything more you’d like to say about what happened in Afghanistan?”

The sexy smile faded from Nick’s mouth.

“Nothing beyond what I’ve already told you. It was an honor to have known those men. They were the true embodiment of heroism and I’ll never forget them.”

Voices rang out; Nick raised his hand.

“The rest is for their families. I’m going to meet with them individually, if they’ll have me, and none of it—
none
of it—will be for public discussion or display.”

Lissa felt the sting of tears in her eyes. This was the Nicholas she knew. The real one. The man she loved.

“Nick? What about that woman? Your cook?”

Nick’s expression turned to stone.

“What about her?”

“Well, those pictures of you with her… Can we have some details about her?”

“I’ve told you. No, you can’t.”

“Looks like she was a lot more than—”

“She was kind and generous at a time when kindness and generosity were what I—”

Lissa snatched the remote from her sister’s hand. The screen went dark.

For a very long time, no one spoke.

Could you really feel your heart breaking?

“Liss,” Emily said.

Lissa’s words cut across hers. “Wow,” she said brightly, “wasn’t that a nice thing for him to say about me? Really nice…”

It was no good. She couldn’t pretend, couldn’t maintain the lie. She began to cry, silently, desperately. Emily moaned and threw her arms around her. Jaimie started to, but the hotel telephone rang and she grabbed it.

“Hello? Travis? And Jake. And Caleb. All three of you. Well, that’s—that’s… Yes. We just saw…. No, no, it isn’t a problem. It was just a, you know, just a job… The photos?” Jaimie turned away. “Could we talk about this some other time? Because now isn’t—” Her voice rose. “Jesus, are you guys dense? We are not going to talk about—”

Lissa took the phone from Jaimie’s hand.

“I was an idiot,” she said. Her voice shook a little, but her words were clear and decisive. “OK? Have we got that straight? I was a fool and it’s over and if you really want to help me, you can just—you can let the whole thing go and—and—What? That’s crazy! You were all in Europe and now you’re at JFK, waiting for one of the family jets? Listen, if this is because of me, if you lunatics are flying to El Sueño because you think I’m going there, too, if any of you are dumb enough to think I’m going to behave like a—like a lovesick teenybopper and bawl my eyes out…”

Jaimie took the phone back.

“Here’s what’s happening,” she said crisply. “We’re going home. Right away. Yes. We’ll meet you there. Oh, for heaven’s sake, of course with Lissa! Yes, I know what she said… Look, just get in touch with Marco and Zach. Tell them… Fine. In that case, we’ll see you all soon.” Jaimie hung up the phone and turned toward Lissa. “Did you hear what I said? We’re all going to the ranch—and neither Em nor I will put up with any arguments.”

It turned out your heart could be in pieces, but you could still laugh.

“The general would be proud of you, James,” Lissa said.

An hour later, one of the Wilde’s jets was soaring high above the clouds heading for Texas and Wilde’s Crossing, and for the sprawling kingdom called El Sueño, a place that would always be home.

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

I
n the spring,
the lush meadows and low ridges of the Wilde ranch always looked as if they’d been touched with an artist’s paintbrush.

They were bright with bluebonnets, the Texas state flower. Legend said that bluebonnets had been brought over from Spain centuries ago. It was a charming story, but like most charming stories, it wasn’t true.

Bluebonnets were true Texas natives. They might look delicate, but they were strong and determined, and Lissa was trying hard to learn from them.

Be strong. Be determined. And life will go on.

She’d been at El Sueño for four days. So was all the rest of her family, well, everyone except the general, and his absence was pretty much the standard.

John Hamilton Wilde had a world to run. A good thing, right now. It meant that nothing about Lissa’s situation had reached him.

But the rest of the Wilde clan—brothers and sisters and spouses, an almost-spouse and even babies—had Lissa’s world to organize.

Lissa clucked softly to her roan mare as she rode the animal to the top of a ridge.

They all meant well. And she loved them with all her heart, but she’d reached the point at which she’d have given anything for an hour of solitude.

This morning, she’d sneaked out of the house in search of some.

Everybody had still been asleep; the house had held an early-morning stillness. She’d tiptoed from her room as if she were still a little girl determined to avoid the housekeeper or one of the nannies who’d traipsed through the lives of the three Wilde sisters after their mom’s death, and gone to the stable.

Soft whinnies had greeted her.

She rubbed noses, said a few words to each horse. Then she’d saddled up the roan that she’d always loved and ridden here, through meadows alive with bluebonnets, past horses grazing on new spring grass, letting the roan find the way because, even after all these years, the mare knew her rider’s favorite early-morning trail.

Now, they were on the top of a ridge that looked out over land that endless generations of Wildes had claimed and worked and cherished, and Lissa, who had always thought of herself as a city person who just happened to have been born in the country, found herself seeing the meadows and, beyond them, the softly rolling hills of north Texas with new eyes.

It was a beautiful view, but not as beautiful as the dense stands of pine and aspen and, beyond them, the fierce mountain peaks that were the view from the Triple G.

She tried not to do that too often, to think about those mountains or anything even remotely connected to them, but it was hard to close your eyes at night without suddenly seeing Louie and Peaches chasing a small rubber mouse down the hall, or Brutus trundling toward her, his tail wagging so hard that she’d laugh as she got down on her knees and wrapped her arms around him. It was hard not to hear Ace’s gruff voice complimenting whatever it was she’d made for dinner, hard not to see the other men coming into the dining room, looking as eager and expectant as a bunch of kids on Christmas morning.

Most of all, worst of all, it was hard not to think about Nick.

To more than think about him.

To see his face in the shadows of the porch at night, to hear his voice telling her how much he wanted her, to feel his hands on her breasts, his mouth on her mouth.

When was that going to stop?

Because it had to stop. It had to, or she was going to go crazy. Or maybe her family, her wonderful family, was going to be the cause of her going crazy and, yes, she knew that they meant well.

Nobody talked about Nick. Nobody mentioned him.

Nobody raised the subject of what in hell they were all doing here when there’d been no plans for any of them to be here in the middle of March.

Instead, everybody bubbled.

There was no other way to describe it.

“Lissa!” her sisters and sisters-in-law would say when she walked into the room, their voices and faces filled with bright and totally artificial delight.

“Liss,” her brothers would say, beaming happily whenever they saw her, “you look great this morning!” Or this afternoon or this evening, because they were always there, being cheerful, being upbeat, and Marco and Zach treated her the same way because even if they didn’t carry the Wilde DNA, they were the same kind of men, caring, concerned, thoughtful and loving.

Amazing, that Nick had seemed to be like that, too.

Caring. Concerned. Thoughtful. Loving—but no, not loving. He had never mentioned love, and if she’d realized one thing these past few days, it was that falling in love with him had been her doing, not his.

And the truth was, she hadn’t fallen in love with him. She’d fallen in love with lust. With needing and being needed.

Nick had come into her life, or rather she’d come into his, when she’d been at a low point. No job. No future. No money. No anything to look forward to, except more worries.

And then, overnight, everything changed. She had a job. A purpose. A bunch of people to care about.

And a man.

A man who was funny and smart and sexy, who cared about her—because he had, he
had
cared about her, and whose fault was it if she’d confused that with love?

Plus, Nick had needed her. What woman didn’t want to be needed?

Add it all up and she had nothing to complain about. She’d had two weeks of incredible sex with an incredible guy who’d made her feel like the most important person in his life, and now it was over.

“Over,” she said briskly. The mare whinnied and tossed her head. Lissa smiled. “Exactly. I’m glad we agree.”

But he could have handled the ending a little better. She understood that their two weeks hadn’t been destined to have a happy-ever-after-ending because this was not a movie, but he could have shown some tact. A phone call, even an e-mail…

Really? A phone call? An e-mail? To say what?

Lissa, I wanted to thank you for everything, but I’ve gone back to my real life now and…

And, Lissa thought grimly, the simple truth was that if she ever had the misfortune to see Nick Gentry again, she’d tell him that she’d been right all along. He was a selfish, egotistical jerk, and if he’d ever been foolish enough to think that he’d truly meant anything to her, it was just proof of exactly how much of a jerk he was.

All she had to do now was decide where to place him on the Lissa List. Between Carlos Antonioni and Jack Rutledge? After Rutledge but before Raoul? Or maybe after Raoul. Maybe Gentry belonged in a class all his own.

Or maybe it was her.

She’d let a series of selfish men use her.

“
—kind and generous at a time when kindness and generosity were what I needed.
”

Her eyes narrowed.

He made her sound like the Red Cross.

“To hell with you, Nicholas Gentry,” Lissa said, and turned the roan toward home.

* * *

They were all waiting for her in the big kitchen at El Sueño, brothers, sisters, sisters-in-law, a brother-in-law and a brother-in-law-to-be, babies, the entire enormous Wilde clan.

They all looked up when she came through the back door. She could see the worry in their faces, worry that changed to artificial expressions meant to assure her that they hadn’t been worried at all.

“Having a family powwow?” she said pleasantly, slipping off her jacket, hanging it on the coatrack beside the door, smiling at babies as she headed for the coffeepot on the stove.

“Just, you know, getting the day started,” Jacob said.

Was he the designated spokesman for the morning? They seemed to choose a different one each day.

Lissa poured herself coffee, added cream, added sugar, stirred, sipped, took her time while working up something she could say that would let them know how much she loved them, how much she appreciated their love for her, but how it was time for everybody’s life to return to normal.

Hell. She decided she’d simply improvise.

“Listen, you guys…” They all looked at her as if they expected a message from an oracle. She cleared her throat. “I have something to tell you.” No one moved. No one breathed. Even the babies were still. “I’m going home.”

That did it. They all spoke at once. Different voices, different words, one message.

She
was
home!

“No,” she said gently, “I’m not. What I mean is, this place will always be home, of course. But I have a life in L.A. Such as it is, anyway.” She tried a smile; unfortunately, nobody smiled back. “My apartment is there. My things. My contacts. And before you point out that the one thing I don’t have there is a job, well, I’m going to do something about that.”

“Like what?” Caleb said.

There was a note of belligerence in his voice. One wrong word and for all she knew, her crazy, wonderful family was capable of barring the door to stop her from another try at taking on the big, bad world.

“For starters, I’m going to visit the last place I worked. Really worked, I mean. I was executive chef there and—well, the details don’t matter. What does matter is that I let people think I’d messed up and been fired. I didn’t and I hadn’t, and I’m going to sort that out first. Then I’m going to talk with my agent. I might look for a different kind of job. Private cook to some big-shot producer. Or start my own boutique catering service. Boutiquey stuff is big in La La Land.”

She tried another smile and was rewarded with a twitch of the lips from one sister and two brothers.

“I might even decide to pull up stakes and try another city.”

“How about Dallas?” Travis said.

She knew he was dead serious, so she gave a dead-serious answer.

“Maybe.”

“What do you mean, maybe?” Jake said. “It’s a great place—you already know that. And we know lots and lots of people who’d line up around the block to eat at a place Lissa Wilde ran.”

“It’s the Wilde part I’m trying to get away from,” Lissa said, even though she’d never realized it until that instant. “I love our family. I’m proud of our name. But—”

“But she wants to succeed on her own,” Emily said. Everyone looked at her and she blushed.

Her husband, Marco, took her hand and brought it to his lips. “And you did,
bellisima
,” he said softly.

Jaimie nodded. “Making it as yourself, not as a Wilde, is really, really important.”

Zach, her fiancé, slipped his arm around her shoulders.

“That’s my James,” he murmured, and dropped a kiss on her temple.

Lissa looked at her brothers. Their expressions were impassive. Then, Jake sighed. Travis shrugged his shoulders. Caleb nodded his head.

“Go for it, kid,” he said.

Lissa laughed. She cried, too, but these were good tears.

She went from Wilde to Wilde and hugged them. “I love you all,” she said.

She went upstairs and changed her clothes. She didn’t even bother packing; that would have taken too long. Besides, she had a closet full of clothes back in L.A. The only thing she didn’t have back there was the garish-pink goody called
Pleasure Pleaser
. It was here, still inside the suitcase she’d brought with her, and it could remain there.

She’d never gotten around to using it.

She hadn’t had to use it, she thought with a little lump in her throat.

And she wouldn’t, not for a while. Just now, she didn’t want to think about sex, not even the do-it-yourself variety.

What mattered was that one of the Wilde jets was waiting.

After that, sink or swim, she was on her own.

* * *

Once in L.A., she didn’t bother going to her apartment.

The old saying was true. The time to strike was while the iron was hot and, dammit, she was hot. She did make one quick stop at a store she’d passed a couple of times on Santa Monica Boulevard.

Then she headed for
Raoul’s
.

The restaurant was almost empty. She’d figured on that; this was the standard restaurant lull between late lunch and the early dinner hour.

“Hi,” she said to the maître d’, and breezed past him.

“Lissa,” he said, “wait—”

But she had waited too long already.

She moved quickly, through the dining room to the kitchen, past the cooks who looked up from dinner prep and blinked with surprise, through the door that led to the basement, down a short hall and straight to Raoul’s office.

His door opened before she reached it. Evidently, the maître d’ had called to tell him that she was coming.

Raoul’s handsome face was drawn up in a dark scowl.

“I would have thought you would have more sense than to show up here again, Wilde.”

Lissa smiled as she shut the door. “You mean, you thought you’d scared me off.”

“Get out, or I’ll call the police.”

“To do what? Protect you from me? You’re, what, six feet tall? I’m five four on a good day.” She held out her hands. “I’m not even armed, see? No knives. No fish stock.”