The Grand Finale

  No way was she walking home, Jake thought. It was dark, and late. She could get mugged or snatched by a maniac serial rapist. And she smelled like pizza. She could get attacked by a pack of hungry dogs.

  “If you’ll wait a minute, I’ll give you a ride,” he said to her.

  “Thanks, but that’s not necessary. Besides, I’d get your fancy car all dirty.”

  “My fancy car has leather seats. They wash. Wait here.”

  Berry kept walking. “Really, it’s not necessary.”

  He grabbed her firmly by the shoulders and plunked her into a sitting position on the edge of the curb. “Wait here!”

  “You’re awfully bossy.”

  “So I’ve been told.”

  That intrigued her. She watched him jog away and wondered who else thought he was bossy. A girlfriend, maybe? A wife? She was still wondering when the cream-colored car rolled to a stop in front of her. She removed her vest and carefully placed it on the floor, mozzarella side up.

  “This is very nice of you,” Berry said.

  “Yup, that’s me. I’m an all-around nice guy.” He cut his eyes to her. “You haven’t told me your name.”

  “Berry Knudsen.”

  “Berry? Like in holly berry or cranberry?”

  “Lingonberry. My mother was inordinately proud of her Scandinavian heritage. So, who else thinks you’re bossy? Your wife?”

  Sawyer mumbled something unintelligible.

  “Excuse me?”

  “My kids,” he said on a sigh.

  His kids? He had kids. And a wife. And he’d just kissed her. She was going to go straight home and brush her teeth.

  “How many kids do you have?” she asked.

  “Twenty-one. This morning they all told me the same thing you did. They think I’m bossy.”

  “Twenty-one kids?”

  “I teach first grade.”

  “So you’re not married?’

  “No.”

  Berry almost swooned with relief. He wasn’t married. Not that it really mattered to her. She wasn’t interested in men right now. She especially wasn’t interested in this man. Still, it was good to know she hadn’t kissed a philanderer. She hadn’t spied on someone else’s private property. She hadn’t smashed a family pizza. And this tantalizing hunk of manliness, driving a megabucks car, taught first grade. Imagine that!

  “You don’t look like a first-grade teacher,” she said.

  Jake let out a low groan. “I know. I’m too big. I don’t fit in any of the little chairs. My fingers aren’t good at holding crayons or safety scissors. And I can’t get the hang of barrettes at all.” He slumped in his seat. “I wasn’t cut out for first grade. This is the toughest thing I’ve ever done.”

  The image of Jake Sawyer playing mother hen to a group of seven-year-olds brought a smile to Berry’s lips. If she’d had a first-grade teacher that looked like Jake Sawyer, she’d have done anything to stay after school. Her first-grade teacher had been five feet, two inches tall and weighed close to two hundred pounds. Mrs. Berman. Berry shivered at the memory.

  “Earth to Berry.”

  “Sorry. I guess I drifted off.”

  “I was afraid you might have sustained a head injury when you fell out of the tree.”

  “No. The only thing damaged is my pride and your pizza.” She squinted into the darkness. “Turn right at the next light. Then just go straight until you see the sign, pizza place.”

  “This isn’t exactly a ritzy part of town.”

  Berry shrugged. “It’s an ethnic neighborhood. Italian bakery. Vietnamese laundry. Ethiopian restaurant. Everybody’s struggling to make a start, like me.”

  Jake executed a smooth corner at the light and frowned at the dark street lined with grimy stores and intersected by narrow alleyways. “Why have you chosen to work in this pizza place?”

  “Why did you choose to teach first grade?”

  Jake smiled wryly. “If I tell you, will you tell me?”

  “I hope your story’s more interesting than mine.”

  “I invented Gunk.”

  “Gunk?”

  “It creeps. It crawls. It comes in five scents and three flavors. It’s edible. It’s freezable. It’s disgusting.”

  “I’ve seen it advertised on television.”

  “I invented it. I was working for Bartlow Labs, looking for an inexpensive organic glue, and I discovered Gunk.”

  “Are you a chemist?”

  “I used to be. I quit the second I sold my Gunk rights. I hated the fluorescent lights and the nine-to-five routine. And it was boring. Glue is boring.” He smiled proudly. “Now I’m an inventor.”

  “What about teaching first grade?”

  “Guinea pigs. I have twenty-one kids to test my new ideas. Besides, I had a teaching degree and I needed the money. I squandered my Gunk money on this car and that monstrous Victorian house.”

  Berry wrinkled her nose. The man had forsaken a respectable profession to invent future Gunk, and thought of seven-year-olds as guinea pigs. Prince Charming had some frog in him.

  “How did you ever get the school board to hire you?”

  “Luckily, Mrs. Newfarmer had a nervous breakdown and suddenly abandoned her first-grade class. When I applied for a job as substitute teacher, they were desperate enough to consider me.”

  “Nervous breakdown? Must be some group of kids.”

  “The kids are terrific. Mrs. Newfarmer had marital problems.”

  Hmmm, she thought, I can relate to that. Marriage could easily give somebody a nervous breakdown. It could give you hives, and dishpan hands, and paranoia.

  Berry knew firsthand. She had tried marriage. Four years of struggling to put her husband through medical school, and then she’d found him playing doctor with Mary Lou Marowski. Yes sir, she knew all about marriage.

  “Well? What about you? Why are you working in this neighborhood?” he asked.

  “I was married while still in college. We couldn’t both afford to go to school full-time, so I quit and went to work. When my marriage fell apart after four years I didn’t think I could manage a job that required much mental concentration or emotional energy. I wanted something to do with my hands. Something that was physically exhausting. And I wanted something that was close to the university so I could return to school part-time. Well, here it is. The Pizza Place. I worked as a pizza maker for a year, and when the owner retired seven months ago, I scraped together every cent I could find, mortgaged my soul, and bought the business.”

  Jake parked at the curb and considered the two-story yellow brick building. A gaudy red neon sign flashed out pizza place in the ground-floor picture window. White ruffled curtains hung in the four second-story windows.

  “You live upstairs?” he asked.

  “Yup.”

  “Alone?”

  “Not anymore. I adopted three old ladies this week.”

  Jake raised his eyebrows.

  “It’s a long story.”

  Berry eased herself out of the car, relieved to say good-bye to Jake Sawyer. The man was physically disturbing. He gave her hot flashes. She wasn’t even sure if she liked him. He bought extravagant cars and eccentric houses. He thumbed his nose at security. The man was a risk taker with big dreams.

  Berry had small dreams. She wanted a college education. She wanted a window that overlooked a meadow, or a creek, or a green lawn bordered by flower beds. She wanted a nice, boring husband who believed in monogamy, but she didn’t want him now. First the college education, then the husband, then the lawn. That was The Plan. It certainly didn’t include breaking out in a sweat over awesome Jake Sawyer. And the worst part about all this was that she’d acted so dopey! She’d fallen out of his tree onto a pizza. Yeesh.

  Berry mumbled an embarrassed thank-you, carefully closed the door of Jake’s expensive car, and beat a hasty retreat to her apartment. Her back ached, her arms were scratched, and her jeans had a large hole in the knee. Not one of her better days. She’d peeked in
Jake Sawyer’s bedroom window and ogled his body, and now she was being punished. How else could you explain the Jeep suicide? Berry trudged up the narrow stairs. At least the score should be even now. Her Jeep for thirty seconds of Jake Sawyer practically nude. It seemed like a fair price, but she didn’t know how she was ever going to replace the stupid Jeep. She didn’t have a dime in the bank, and she had nowhere to go for credit. What a rotten break. Just when she was making some progress. Last week she’d gotten two lunch contracts at local businesses. How was she going to deliver pizzas without the Jeep?

  “Damn,” she said, trudging up the narrow stairs. “Double damn.”

  Mrs. Dugan stood ramrod-straight with righteous indignation at the head of the stairs. “Hmmm, fine talk for a young lady. I may as well tell you right now, I don’t tolerate cussing.”

  A second gray-haired lady appeared in the doorway. “For goodness’ sakes, Sarah, all she said was damn. Damn doesn’t hardly count as a cussword. Young people say things like that nowadays.”

  A third voice chimed in. “You’re right, Mildred, what should she say? Oh, fudge? Darn? It’s not the same, not the same at all. Sometimes you need to let loose with a good cuss. In fact, I feel like cussing right now.” The plump old lady uttered an expletive that made double damn sound like polite conversation and raised everyone’s eyebrows, including Berry’s.

  “Mrs. Fitz!”

  Mrs. Fitz slapped her leg and laughed out loud. “That was a beauty, wasn’t it? See, I feel much better now.”

  Berry wearily walked across the room and sank into the Boston rocker.

  “Good heavens,” Mrs. Fitz exclaimed. “What happened to you? You’re a mess.”

  “I fell out of a tree onto the large pizza with the works. And then the Jeep drove itself over a cliff.”

  Mrs. Dugan set a bowl of soapy water at Berry’s feet and began gently dabbing at her scratched cheek. “You aren’t hurt serious, are you? You have anything worse than these scratches and scrapes?”

  “Nope, I’m okay.”

  Berry smiled. It had been a long time since she’d had this sort of motherly attention. Her own mother was miles away in McMinneville, Oregon, and Allen, her ex-husband, had never given her much attention. She was still amazed at how marriage could be such a lonely way of life. Four years of living with a man who never remembered her birthday or noticed a wayward tear. She’d been so impressed with his cool intelligence and professional aspirations that she’d jumped into marriage without considering his emotional limitations. Thank goodness all that was behind her. She was older and wiser and pleased with her hard-won independence.

  “Hello,” Jake Sawyer called from the top of the stairs.

  “Goodness,” Mrs. Fitz exclaimed, “who’s the hunk?”

  “I’m Berry’s friend.”

  Mrs. Dugan gaped at him in dumbfounded silence, her hand frozen in midair.

  Jake noticed the water and blood dripping from Berry’s arm and gently removed the wet cloth from Mrs. Dugan’s fingers. He soaked the cloth and applied it to Berry’s scratches.

  Having Mrs. Dugan swab away the dirt and blood was one thing. Having Jake Sawyer minister to her wounds was another. It was disturbingly tender and caring and absolutely unwanted. Berry clenched her teeth, narrowed her eyes, and hoped she looked menacing.

  “What are you doing here?” she asked Sawyer.

  “Damned if I know,” he said. “I was sitting down there at the curb and couldn’t get myself to drive off. I kept getting this mental picture of you standing out on the highway, thumbing a ride with a pizza box stuck under your arm.”

  “So?”

  “So I didn’t like it.” His dark eyes searched hers. “You’re really in a bind, aren’t you?”

  “I’ll figure something out.”

  Jake’s mouth quirked into an embarrassed grin. “I have a confession to make. That was my neighbor’s cat in the tree. She gets up there all the time.”

  Berry’s eyes opened wide. “You acted like I was a Peeping Tom.”

  “Well? Were you peeping?”

  “Only a little!”

  She felt her blood pressure rise. It wasn’t her fault. She had been in that tree doing a good deed, and he’d practically flaunted himself at her. She sprang out of the chair and stood with her fists on her hips.

  “What was I supposed to do? You got undressed right in front of the window. Don’t you believe in shades? What are you, some kind of exhibitionist?”

  “I just moved in. I haven’t had time to put shades up. Anyway, there aren’t any neighbors for miles.”

  Berry turned on her heel and glared at the three ladies who were “tsking” behind her. She frowned and gave a look that said, One word out of any of you and it’s back to the train station.

  Jake held his hands up. “Wait. I didn’t come up here to discuss your voyeuristic tendencies.”

  “Voyeuristic tendencies! Of all the…You are the most…I am not!”

  Berry closed her eyes and took several deep breaths. She opened her eyes and made a flamboyant gesture with her arm, pointing to the door.

  “Out!”

  Jake took a seat in the vacant rocking chair and accepted a cup of cocoa from Mrs. Fitz. “Boy, she sure can get riled,” he said.

  “Yeah, ain’t she a pip?”

  That was the perfect description, Jake thought. Berry Knudsen was a pip. He’d dated lots of women and none of them had been exactly right, and now he realized none of them had been a pip.

  Berry spun around and flapped her arms at Mrs. Fitz. “Mrs. Fitz, anyone can see this man is leaving. We don’t serve cocoa to men who are leaving.”

  “Nonsense. He’s all settled in here.” Mrs. Fitz pressed her lips together in satisfaction. “Don’t he look nice and comfy.”

  Mildred Gaspich brought him a plate of chocolate chip cookies. “We just baked these fresh tonight.” She turned to Mrs. Fitz. “Goodness, it’s nice to have a man in the house.”

  “Makes me want to put on some fresh lipstick.” Mrs. Fitz laughed. “Too bad I haven’t got any.”

  Miss Gaspich put her arm around plump little Lena Fitz. “That’s okay. Pretty soon you’ll have money to buy some lipstick.”

  “Berry’s hired us,” Mrs. Fitz explained to Jake. “We were just about scraping by on our social security checks, living in the Southside Hotel for Ladies, and then they decided to renovate the building and turn it into fancy condominiums. We couldn’t afford anyplace else. We looked real hard, but there just wasn’t a room cheap enough. Finally, they evicted us. We were temporarily holed up in the train station when we saw Berry’s ad in the paper.”

  Mrs. Fitz grinned. She was five feet tall with short steel-gray hair that had been permed into two inches of frizz. She was apple-cheeked, with an ample chest and dimples in her elbows and stout knees.

  “We know we’re a bunch of old ladies,” Mrs. Fitz said, “but we figured the three of us together might be able to hold down a job. Sort of a package deal.”

  Miss Gaspich pulled a kitchen chair close to the rocker. “We walked all over town for days trying to get a job and then Berry hired us. We’d just about given up.”

  “This business with the Jeep isn’t gonna change things, is it?” Mrs. Fitz worried. “How bad is the Jeep?”

  “All the king’s horses and all the king’s men can’t put the Jeep back together again,” Berry told her.

  Jake downed the last of the cocoa and stood to leave. “It’s okay, Mrs. Fitz. Berry’s going to use my car until she can replace the Jeep.”

  Berry looked at him wide-eyed. “I can’t deliver pizzas in your car.”

  Jake somberly chewed a cookie. “It was my cat that started this fiasco. I feel responsible.”

  He leaned close to Berry and whispered in an aside, “Besides, I liked kissing you.”

  Berry ignored the heat that burned in her cheeks. “I can’t deliver pizzas in a megabucks car!”

  Mrs. Fitz whistled behind her. “You mean he look
s like this, and he’s rich, too?”

  “I invented Gunk.”

  Mrs. Fitz’s eyes popped wide open. “That disgusting slimy stuff you can eat? I love that stuff.”

  Jake turned to Berry. “My school is just three blocks from here. I’ll drop the car off on my way to work tomorrow morning.”

  Chapter 2

  Berry looked at the stacks of pizza boxes and wondered how she was ever going to get them all into Jake Sawyer’s two-seater. Eighteen large pizzas and seven small, all due at Windmere Technicals by twelve-thirty. She groaned. If it hadn’t been for these lunch contracts she would never have accepted Jake’s offer. The car was too expensive, too powerful, too exotic. What if she scratched it? The car was perfect, for crying out loud. How could anything that old look so new? We aren’t talking about a two-hundred-dollar Jeep here. We’re talking about an outrageously extravagant toy in mint condition.

  And what about Jake Sawyer? Another extravagant toy, Berry thought. Too powerful, too expensive, too exotic…and in mint condition. She’d spent half the night reviewing his kiss and knew it was in her best interest to not have a repeat performance. Berry had interrupted her education once for a man, and she wasn’t about to make the same mistake again. She would borrow Jake’s car only until she could find a better solution to her problem, and she would steer clear of its owner.

  She speared the car keys with her pinky finger and pushed through the front door, balancing six large pizza boxes in her outstretched arms. She squinted into the light drizzle, wondering where Jake had parked. He’d said the car was directly in front of the Pizza Place. Berry held the door open with her foot.

  “Mrs. Fitz,” she called over her shoulder. “You took the keys from Jake this morning. Where’d he park the car?”

  Mrs. Fitz wiped her hands on her big white apron and shook her head. “Goodness’ sakes, child, the car’s right in front of you. It’s right here in front of the store.” Mrs. Fitz walked to the front of the store, and her eyes opened extra wide. “Where’s the car?”