Have Me. Jo Leigh
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thought it would be good for Jake to use his body to build something tangible.
Jake had realized when he was widening the wall that he actually liked remodeling. That was quite satisfying. The actual work itself though sucked like a Dyson.
But this was his life now. Crazy old men on the porch, fixing every problem the world had ever known. It didn’t matter that it was March and as cold as hell outside; they kept on playing their bones, the space heater barely keeping them from hypothermia. Of course they had their cold-weather gear on. These men had been beat cops in so many New York winters the cold didn’t stand a chance.
Thank Christ for electric blankets. ‘Cause Mike Donnelly, for all his bluster, was getting on. It would be good when Jake had the new shower finished. Nothing to step over, nothing his crooked hands couldn’t handle. Then he’d be able to jack up the heating bill to his heart’s content, shower three times a day if he wanted.
In the meantime, there was plumbing to do. Jake limped over to the laptop and continued the how-to. Two minutes in, his cell rang. It was Katy Groft, which was weird. They’d gone out, it had been fine, but Jake had been pretty damn clear about his intentions. He wasn’t one of those guys who said they’d call, then blew it off. None of that bullshit. “Hello?”
“Hey, Jake. Got a minute?”
“Sure.”
“I’m sending you a picture.”
“Okay.” His phone beeped a second later. “Hold on.” He clicked over to the photo, and what he saw surprised him even more than the phone call itself. It was … what’s her name, the Winslow who wasn’t called Winslow. Thorpe. That’s right. Rebecca Thorpe. Ran some kind of big foundation or something, was always in the papers, especially the Post. What he didn’t know was why Katy Groft would want him to see Thorpe’s picture. “Okay,” he said again.
“This is my friend Rebecca,” Katy said. “Interested?”
“In what?”
“Her. Going out with her. You know, a date?”
He stared again at the phone, at the picture. Rebecca Thorpe was a beautiful woman. Interesting beautiful. Her face was too long, her nose too prominent, but there was something better than pretty about her. Every picture he’d seen of her, didn’t matter who she was with, she seemed to be daring everyone to make something of it. Of her. Right now, looking at the overexposed camera phone photo, he had to smile. No choice. It didn’t hurt that she had a body that struck all the right chords. Long, lean, like a Thoroughbred. “You do realize you called Jake Donnelly, right?”
Katy laughed. “Yes. I’m very aware of who you are. And who she is. And I happen to believe you two would hit it off well. I’m pretty clever about these things. And don’t worry, she already understands you’re not in the market for anything serious.”
So this Thoroughbred wanted to go out with a quarter horse for a change of pace? “She knows I’m busted up, right?”
“Not a problem.”
He gave it another minute’s thought, then figured, “Sure. Why the hell not?”
“Great. How about the Upstairs bar at the Kimberly Hotel, tomorrow night at eight?”
It was his turn to laugh. “What is this, some kind of gag?”
“No. I swear. She’s great. You’ll like her. A lot.”
He’d have to wear something nice to the Kimberly. But he hadn’t worn anything nice in a long time. Before he got shot, that’s for sure. “I’ll get there a little early. Introduce myself.”
“Excellent. You’ll thank me.”
“I’m already thanking you. For thinking of me. Although I’m still unclear why.”
“You’ll see,” she said.
“Fair enough.” He disconnected from Katy, but stared at the picture on his phone for a while. God damn, she was something else.
Katy had been only the second woman he’d been with since he’d been put out to pasture. She’d been great, and if his life had made any kind of sense, he might have pursued more than a onetime thing. But the only thing he knew for sure at the moment was that he was a broken ex-cop without a plan in the world except for rebuilding the house he was born in so his father could live out the rest of his days at home. After that was anybody’s guess.
“Hey, Jake?”
He winced at the sound of his father’s voice, tinny over the walkie. “Yeah, Dad,” he said, his thumb finding the transmit button without his even having to look.
“How many cop jokes are there?”
He shoved his cell into his pocket. “Two,” Jake said. “All the rest of them are true.”
Laughter filled the mess of a bathroom, and Jake supposed that as far as problems went, having three lunatics telling him cop jokes all day was pretty far down the list.
2
REBECCA ARRIVED AT HER building just before 6:00 a.m. She needed coffee and lots of it. Facing her to-do list was not something she was looking forward to but there was no getting around it.
Her suite on 33rd was a behemoth. The size itself wasn’t the issue—it was the fussy ostentation that got to her, the image that nearly outweighed their purpose. There was an enormous fresh-flower display next to the huge mahogany reception desk. Warren, the receptionist, wouldn’t be in until eight-thirty, and Rebecca’s personal assistant, Dani, had been coming in at eight lately, an hour earlier than she had to. It was very, very still with no one else on the floor, but then that wasn’t unusual. The air of gravitas was nurtured like a living thing in this fortress.
Rebecca didn’t make a sound on the plush burgundy carpeting in the long hallway that led to her office. She swiped her key card, put her briefcase on her desk, her purse in her credenza drawer, and went to the small private room—the truest symbol of how much the founders had prized their creature comforts. She headed straight for the coffeemaker.
Once she’d finished with the prep and pressed the button for the machine to start brewing, she turned and leaned on the counter. There was a huge LED television mounted on the wall across from the deep and supremely comfortable leather chairs, museum-worthy paintings on the muted walls and a couch with such deep bottom cushions that it was more suitable to napping than sitting. Fresh flowers were here as well, replaced weekly by a service that understood decorum while making a point that when it came to the details, no expense was spared. It was as ridiculous as it was sacrosanct.
She was the first woman to ever run the foundation, and her ideas about modeling their business plan after the great philanthropic organizations like the Rockefeller Trust or the Carnegie Group continued to be an uphill war. Picking her battles had been one of her first and most important lessons.
That’s why she tried hard not to resent the time and money being spent on the donor dinner. The guest list included most of the Forbes top-fifty richest people in the world. They gave millions so that after all these years, their endowments were in the billions. She needed to remember that and just do the job.
Preparing her coffee in her favorite mug soothed her, letting her prioritize the next few unencumbered hours. It wasn’t until she took her first sip that her thoughts turned to Jake. And there was a problem.
Not her excitement, that was a pleasure and a rush. It wasn’t like her to want a man purely for sex. She was, in theory, at least to quote her mother, above that sort of thing.
Guess not, Mom.
When she returned to her desk, instead of clicking on her email, she got her purse from the credenza and took out Jake’s trading card.
Oh, yeah. She wasn’t at all sure why, but looking at him made her clench all kinds of important muscles. She hadn’t even