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He didn’t know so much. There
was 
always
 a need for cheerleaders.

Still, this was an exciting thought. A fiery
thought. I felt hot and fluttery, and attributed it entirely to the
new-sprung hope of a Back-Up Plan and not at all to the sensual
heat of Finn Dante.

Pretty much without thinking, I pushed up on
my toes and kissed him. In 
thanks
. In grateful
appreciation. Nothing else.

Pretty much.

I might have started that kiss, but Finn
most definitely finished it. Finished me off like a glass of wine,
and I went down hot, wet and willing. We used every tool at our
disposal, mouths, tongues, hands, zippers. God knows how far it’d
have gone if we weren’t interrupted by the group of juniors and
seniors tripping down to the tree-lined riverbank that divided our
town in two—the have-nots and the wanna-be’s.

I was the wanna-be’s. Finn was the
have-nots. But corny as it sounds, that night I thought Finn Dante
had it all.

I’m not sure I ever recovered from that
kiss. I suspected things about myself after that kiss. Things about
what I might be capable of. Things that scared me. Things that felt
turned off, right in the middle. Like a light switch flipped
off.

Like a genie stuffed back into a bottle.

And that was its real danger.

I never dated another bad boy. I did,
though, get out of Dodge.

My mother almost died at the notion of a
back-up plan that involved community college, and I almost died at
the realization I’d be living with my loving, perfectly coiffed,
slightly maniacal mother until…when? I got married? The thought
chilled. Got a job? What kind of job here in Dodge?

Then I recalled my dark, riverside
conversation with the have-not Dante boy, the only one who’d ever
told me,
“Go for it,”
and notwithstanding that he meant to
stick my hand down his pants, I decided he was right.

There had to be another way for a girl who
could manage other people’s lives so well and smile through
hurricanes.

Turned out there was. If I was willing to
work hard.

I was.

I found a new town and intended to
become the best damned event planner in the entire San
Francisco Bay Area, maybe the world. For the moment, though, I was
the best damned event planner north of Alameda, south of Vallejo,
elbowing my way into Piedmont. But I wasn’t stopping there. Which
is why I was now stuck in traffic in a rental car on a mountain
pass near Tahoe, sitting in a sheen of my own sweat, covered by a
film of construction dust, contemplating how I was going to save my
dream client, the one who was going to catapult me onto maps.
Social maps, money maps. Lots and lots of maps.

I was all about the maps.

I never expected to run into Finn Dante
again. And certainly not on the only other day in my life when I’d
been pushed straight to the end of my rope.

Because that was some kind of voodoo, and I
did not believe in magic.

~ Finn ~

IT WAS HOT.

Summer was here with a vengeance, pulling
sweat from pores. I saw the line of traffic from half a mile away,
a hot line of brake lights lit up like angry red eyes in front of
me.

Construction. Again.

If I was lucky, after a wait of fifteen or
twenty sweltering minutes, I’d pass through, bumping and shuddering
at four miles an hour through the rocky maw of the half-finished
road they’d been working on since last September.

Or not.

I slowed as I came up behind the car in
front of me, slowly braking. Cars sat at half angles, slowly and
angrily trying to veer into turning lanes, which were just as
backlogged. The car in front was driven by a woman—or rather, was
being sat in by a woman. Slim, female arms lifted up over her head
in a sweaty stretch, then crossed at the wrists, elbows bent. Long
hair spilled down over her arms.

That looked good.

It would be bad, of course, I thought idly,
long hair in this heat. I always shaved mine short come summer.
Winter I grew it long again, but in the brutal summer days, you had
to grab coolness whenever you could.

But that hair. . . . It looked good. Real
good. Vaguely familiar. Last time I’d seen hair like that had been
eleven years ago.

Since I had to sit behind her, I was glad
she kept it long and hot.

She slowly maneuvered her car into the right
lane and came to a full stop. I inched forward into the space,
putting my battered red pickup directly beside her much less
battered sporty thing. Like everyone else, I killed the engine. Hot
silence spread out. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw her start to
wrap that fine long hair up into a knotted bundle on top of her
head.

Too bad.

Tinny bars of music drifted in from the cars
around me. I closed my eyes, ignoring how the seat stuck to me
through the thin cotton, ignoring the dusty rays of afternoon sun
beaming in through the window, the way the dashboard radiated heat
back at me.

I listened to the strains of music and
thought of that long hair falling down over my hands.

Through half-closed eyes, I saw her sit
forward suddenly and start arguing or pep-talking herself in the
rearview mirror. Her eyes narrowed at her reflection.

Then she bent her arms and slid her fingers
up the back of her shirt and began to take off her bra.

I smiled.

Because I knew exactly who she was now.
Tightly wound Janey Mac, so pretty she scared all the boys, so
totally unaware of it. Pretty Janey Mac, so tightly wound she
practically whirred.

Until that night down by the river, when
she’d dared herself with my mouth and lost. Or won, depending on
how you looked at it.

I smiled and added the image of her without
her bra to the one of her hair falling down all over my hands, not
fantasies anymore, but hot memories of the riverside and Janey
panting under my mouth.

~ Jane ~

MY CURRENT CLIENTS were the Peter J.
Sandler-Rosses.

I usually juggle a biblical multitude of
clients, but when you have the Sandler-Rosses, who made their money
in DC and spent it in California, and their twenty-year-old
daughter is about to shuffle off her minority and come into a hefty
portion of her inheritance, and you’re the one planning the
birthday celebration, you make room in your schedule. A lot of
room.

I made room. I travelled east, deep into the
wilderness of California-Nevada state line. It wasn’t quite the
gates of Hell, but it bordered them. I knew a couple people from
our area who’d dared come so far west. The Escapees, we used to
call them.

Not me, though, I don’t run from things. I
was
called
to Destiny Falls.

I accepted the challenge, because I’d done a
couple jobs for Mrs. Peter J. in the past, and now the
Sandler-Rosses trusted me, they needed me, their event was going to
be a disorganized mess without me, and if this wasn’t what I was
put here on earth to do, I don’t know what was.

Mrs. Peter J. Sandler-Ross had a powdered
face, a terrifying knowledge of the incomes of her neighbors, and a
daughter in need of a twenty-first birthday party that would put
their friends to shame. And as she and
Mr
. Peter J. deeply
disapproved of their daughter’s friends, dredged up at college, who
frequented hellholes with names like the Red Cat Tavern and Tommy’s
Sports Bar, they would be inviting “another sort entirely” to their
gala affair on behalf of their very beautiful, very rich, very
heiress daughter.

Mrs. Peter J. also had a strong tendency—a
mania—to change things at the last minute. Big, expensive, unwieldy
things.

“Thirty more?” I’d repeated slowly, earlier
this morning when I met with her for an “emergency check-in.” I
should have known right away. You don’t “check in” with
emergencies; you operate on them. “Thirty more
guests
?”

Mrs. Sandler-Ross pushed open a set of
French doors with a flourish. “Yes, thirty!” she said brightly.
Hot, humid air puffed into my face.

I followed her out to the flagstone porch
and off onto a sweeping lawn. Our heels sank into the plush green
grass like knives poking into an Easter Peep. Grass was hell on
heels. I wasn’t a huge fan of grass.

“Mrs. Sandler-Ross,” I said as I staggered
across the lawn behind her. “Thirty more people is a lot more
people. It will require a few”—
an excrement-load
of
—“changes. The celebration is in two weeks, remember?”

“I remember.” She smiled over her shoulder
at me. “You see why I wanted you to come out early? And do call me
Lovey, dear.”

Many names had occurred to me. Not one of
them resembled
Lovey
.

Mrs. Peter J. had that can-do,
nothing-can-stop-me-not-even-the-law spirit of the high-beta rich
who went bust in the last market crash. In every market crash.
Except the Peter J.s hadn’t crashed. They were flourishing, getting
stronger, more powerful, bionically capable of wreaking havoc on my
best-laid plans.

I was going to have to call my assistant,
Savannah, and tell her the Tahoe job was going to be a bigger
problem than we’d thought. And she’d already thought it was going
to be a
big
problem.

“And here is the pavilion we’re building to
accommodate the guests,” she announced, turning the corner and
flinging out an arm at the huge lawn and an open-walled structure.
“All custom-made, of course.”

“It’s beauti— Wait. What? Accommodate
guests?”

She looked at me. “Put them somewhere.”

“Put them somewhere?” I said, low and
suspicious. Was I being filmed? “We already have a ‘somewhere.’
Your neighbor’s huge, glass-walled conservatory. The one with the
center courtyard and the commercial ovens. And the
air-conditioning.”

I threw out my hand like I was throwing dice
at a craps table, pointing fiercely down the sunny green hill.
“
Down there
.”

Mrs. Peter J. shielded her eyes from the
blazing sun. “Yes, that was the plan, but our neighbor declared
bankruptcy and moved south rather suddenly. Belize, I think. So
hard to extradite.” She smiled. “So we have to make do.”

“By adding thirty more guests?”

“By building the pavilion.” She pointed
again. “Mahogany beams.”

“Mahogany,” I repeated weakly, touching the
dark wood.

“Sustainable
and
stunning.”

“Mrs. Sand— Lovey. Adding thirty people and
a new venue are rather large last-minute changes,” I said, matching
her perky smile for perky smile. Except I had my eyebrows raised,
which was like upping us to a double-dog dare.

She raised hers back, then laid a hand on my
arm. “I know, Jane. You’re right. We’re in trouble. We need you to
save us.”

Triple dog. She won. I sighed and turned to
the pavilion.

It actually could work, if we forgot that
there’d be thirty extra bodies. Open-aired, with a high-peaked
roof, cool, dark shade beneath, and huge supporting pillars that
allowed views of the sweeping green lawns and two stone fountains
to the east. A steep drop-off down to a ravine on the west side
promised gorgeous sunset views.

I began mentally measuring how much material
I’d need to pipe and drape the place and deciding whether the
ceiling beams looked strong enough to support scarf dancers. I was
already moving into disaster-response mode, which simply meant
seeing the potential in all things.

If you did it right, it could be a religious
experience.

Or not.

I turned back. “Mrs. San— Lovey. That
pavilion, beautiful though it is, will never fit a hundred and ten
people.”

She laughed. “Of course not. I have an
idea.”

I stilled. “Idea?”

“Come with me.” She took off for the house.
“I’ll show you. I think you’ll be impressed.”