Janet Evanovich: The Grand Finale

He flung a book onto the bed and popped the top button of his shirt open. Then another button. Then another. Berry involuntarily inched closer to the window. After all, she rationalized, if he was a gangster she would need to be able to give the FBI a detailed description. She should watch closely and check for hidden weapons and identifying scars.

He pulled the shirt off and draped it over a chair. Berry closed her eyes for a split second, swallowed, and made a mental note that there was no hunchback on Quasi. Just lots of muscle in all the right places, and a flat stomach with a thin line of black hair, leading to his… Holy cow! He was unzipping his pants.

Berry panicked.

“I’ve got to get down,” she whispered to the cat. “I’ve got to get out of here.”

Berry desperately looked for a foothold, willing her eyes to behave themselves and not return to the window. This wasn’t the sort of thing pizza delivery ladies were supposed to do. Peeping in men’s bedroom windows was a definite no-no. It was rude and immoral and could get you into a whole bunch of trouble. In fact, Berry decided, there was something about this man that smacked of trouble. He had the ability to fascinate, to mesmerize, to incite riot in a woman’s body… in her body. Berry’s body hadn’t rioted in a long time. Working fourteen hours a day making pizzas didn’t leave much time or energy for romance. Lately she’d been convinced her hormones were in premature retirement, but there was something about this man that caught their attention. The way he moved with the fluid efficiency of an athlete, plus something else, something more elusive than perfectly toned muscle. There was a good-humored set to his mouth.

Berry’s pulse quickened. With or without clothes, the man was a menace to mental health and glandular stability. And she was dying to take one more peek. Her eyes focused on Mr. Large Pizza with the Works. He had stripped to a pair of navy bikini briefs. He stuck his thumbs into the elastic waistband, gave a downward tug, and…

“Holy cow!” Berry gasped, covering her face with her hands. Her heart jumped to her throat, she lost her balance and went over backward, tail over teakettle, frantically grasping for branches as she fell, her leg scraping against a lower limb as it cracked under her falling weight. Then whump! She landed flat on her back, knocking the air out of her lungs. Little black dots floated in front of her eyes, and the ocean was pounding in her ears.

A few seconds-or was it hours?-later, Berry blinked at the hunk of masculinity that bent over her. “Am I dead?”

“Not yet.”

“I feel dead. I must be bleeding. My back is all warm and sticky.”

The hunk squatted beside her and looked more closely. “I don’t see any blood, just some pizza sauce oozing through this crumpled box. Lady, you’ve squished this poor pizza to smithereens.” He extracted the pizza box. “Is this mine?”

Berry nodded. She was relieved to find that he was fully clothed in a pair of jeans and a navy hooded sweatshirt. She made an attempt to sit up and began a methodical check of any bones that might be broken.

“What happened?” he asked. “I heard something crashing around out here, and there you were, flat out on my pizza. Are you okay?”

He picked bits of bark from her tangled hair. He glanced at the profusion of broken branches scattered on the ground and his attention turned to the tree, his gaze traveling up the height of it, resting on the large limb just outside his bedroom window. Incredulity registered on his face.

“Lady, you must be kidding! You can’t be that hard up to see a naked man.”

“I’m not hard up at all,” Berry said with a toss of her head. “I’ve seen lots of naked men.”

He raised his eyebrows. “Lots?”

“Well, maybe not lots. A few. Actually, not too many.” She threw her hands into the air in frustration. “Well, dammit, I’ve been busy. I don’t have time to go around looking at naked men. I have a pizza business to run. I have old ladies to take care of. And anyway, you’ve got this all wrong. I was rescuing a kitten.”

They both looked up at the tree. No kitten.

Berry pointed. “There was a kitten up there!”

“Uh-huh.”

The hunk didn’t believe her! Of all the nerve. Berry tipped her nose up and gave him her most withering look. Well, phooey on you, her most withering look said. I don’t care what you think, anyway. She retrieved the crumpled pizza box and thrust it into his hands. “Here, this is yours. Seventeen ninety-five, please.”

He looked down at the flattened box that was oozing pizza sauce. “Shouldn’t I get a disaster discount?”

Berry had to admit, seventeen ninety-five was a little high for a smashed pizza. “Fine,” she said, “it’s on the house.”

“Thanks. The strip show is on the house, too,” he said, smiling. “Now we’re even.”

Berry looked at him. Two eyebrows, nice nose, suspicious brown eyes. And a mouth that looked like it might be laughing at her. His mouth wasn’t too big, and wasn’t too small, and it was slightly turned up at the corners. Truth was, it was probably the greatest mouth she’d ever seen.

“Are you going to kiss me?” he asked.

Berry snapped to attention. “Certainly not!”

Laugh lines crinkled around his eyes. “You were staring at my mouth.”

“I thought it might be laughing at me.”

He looked at her tangled blond curls, big blue eyes, and cute little nose. And he looked at her mouth. Full and soft. Not smiling. His gaze moved south over her red down vest, long-sleeved shirt, and faded jeans. She was slim. Maybe five-five. Hard to tell her age. Somewhere between sixteen and thirty-two, he guessed. He hoped she wasn’t sixteen because he was having thoughts about her that would be inappropriate if she was sixteen.

“Jake Sawyer,” he said, extending his hand. “How old are you?”

“I’m too close to thirty.”

“I suppose you’re the owner of that dilapidated Jeep.”

“That Jeep is not dilapidated. That Jeep is almost in A-one condition.”

As if on cue, there was a loud spronnnng at curbside, and the Jeep slowly began rolling backward, down Ellenburg Drive.

Berry gasped. “My Jeep!”

The Jeep picked up speed on a downhill curve, jumped the curb, merrily bounced over a grassy area, and headed for an opening between two large birch trees. Berry took off running and raced alongside, trying to get a grip on the door handle. Her fingers had just touched metal when Sawyer tackled her, and they both went down to the ground. She picked her head up in time to see the Jeep squeeze between the two trees and catapult itself off a twenty-foot cliff.

“Get off!” she said, twisting under Sawyer. “You must weigh two hundred pounds.”

“One-eighty and it’s all muscle.”

Berry already knew the part about it being all magnificent muscle. Besides being permanently engraved in her brain, she could feel it being firmly pressed into her. His knee was cozily nudged against the inside of her leg, and his delicious mouth was hovering just inches above her own.

“You’re staring at my mouth again,” he said.

And he kissed her. Nothing serious. Just a single, testing-the-waters kiss.

“Jeez,” Berry said.

“Is that good or bad?”

It was terrific, Berry thought. Not that she would admit it to Mr. Large Pizza.

“It was entirely inappropriate,” she said, wriggling out from under him, getting to her feet. “And that was my Jeep. I needed it. I can’t deliver pizzas without it. You had no business jumping on me like that.”

“Are you crazy? You would have killed yourself.”

“Well, fine. Now I’ll slowly die of starvation because I’m deprived of earning a living.”