The Closer

Walter was too proud to look relieved for more than half a second, but his shoulders relaxed and a smile broke across his weathered, lined face. “Well, you know I’ve got plenty of tomatoes,” he told her.

She inwardly snorted. He had plenty of everything. His green thumb was positively legendary in Shadow’s Gap. “I’ll give Shorty a ring and let him know you’re coming. You don’t want to drive any farther than his place, though, Walter,” she warned. “If the car overheats too much, you’ll crack a head and then you’ll really be in trouble.”

“I’ll go on over there now,” he said. “Thanks, Jess.” His brow wrinkled once more and he shot her a look. “You’re going to New York?” he said. “Today?”

Jessalyn’s cheeks puffed as she exhaled noisily. “Unfortunately, yes.”

“Will you be back in time for the race on Saturday?”

No, dammit. She’d still be babysitting the bra. “I’m afraid not.”

He grunted, his face falling into a moue of regret. “That’s a shame. I think you could have given Lane Johnson another run for his money.”

She did, too. Lane Johnson was a cocky, loudmouthed blowhard with more luck than skill and a sickening following of track whores—not to be confused with crack whores, though they could be easily mistaken for those as well—who stroked his giant ego, among other things, Jess thought with a shiver of disgust. They contributed to his misguided perception that he was, first, God’s gift to women, and second, almost on par with Dale Earnhardt Jr. behind the wheel.

He was neither.

Gallingly, while she’d taken plenty of heat for being a “woman driver” when she’d first started racing, she’d quickly won the respect of the majority of her fellow drivers. There were always going to be a few with the old-school boys’ club mentality—she’d be foolish to think otherwise—but of them, Lane was definitely the loudest. She’d thought beating him would shut him up, but instead he’d upped the trash talking and told everyone that he was going to “put her in her place” the next time they shared asphalt.

That should have been this weekend, but she hadn’t been able to get either of her siblings to accompany the damn bra, so now it was going to look as though he’d scared her away.

As if.

It made her blood boil.

Jess had always been proud of her Rossi heritage and took a keen sense of pleasure from being a part of the family business. She was a fourth-generation jeweler and thanks to inherent talent and creativity, the Rossi name was synonymous with excellence. Unfortunately, with the exception of her father, she was the last of the family with any interest in continuing the traditional trade. Her younger brother, Sean, played guitar for a popular country-music band and traveled all the time, and her even younger sister, Bethany, was a professional student, happy with higher education and her job at the Gap. Neither of them were likely to change their minds.

Which just left her.

To complicate matters, her father had developed agoraphobia after the death of her mother. It had begun gradually. At first, he simply refused to travel. He’d said that his wife had always been his companion and he couldn’t face going without her. Because her parents had genuinely been soul mates, Jess had understood and hadn’t pushed him, assuming that it would only be temporary, that, in time, he’d be able to move forward.

She couldn’t have anticipated how wrong she’d be.

Citing the need to “be closer to work,” the second her new home, a tree house, was finished, her father had sold the family house in the country and finished an apartment above the store. Initially, Jess had thought this would be a good idea. The house was still a painful reminder of her mother, being in town would keep him from being lonely, etcetera. But it was when the apartment was complete that she really began to notice a difference.

Frank Rossi loved Shadow’s Gap and the town square, where their business had stood for the past hundred years. He routinely ate at the diner next door and visited the other business owners around their little block. He’d played chess at the five-and-dime and shopped for all his clothes at Billy Walter’s, an upscale men’s store. He not only knew every proprietor, he knew their families, as well. He’d been social.

But shortly after moving into the apartment above the store, he’d started manufacturing reasons not to go out. He’d have the diner deliver his meals and he stopped visiting the other stores. He’d stand at the front door and look out, but when Jess had casually suggested that he go see if Billy had any new ties in stock, he’d shake his head and retreat to the backroom.

She’d begun to seriously worry at that point, but she hadn’t realized how dire the situation had become until she’d discovered that Paula, one of their part-time workers, had been doing his grocery shopping for him. She’d also gone to the post office for him, picked up his prescriptions and generally did anything that would require a trip outside the shop.

At that point, Jess had confronted her father and had tried to get him to talk to a therapist, but her concern had been met with an uncharacteristic angry outburst and an order to mind her own business. He was fine, he insisted, though it was obvious that he wasn’t, that he’d become a prisoner in his own space. He’d started spending an inordinate amount of time on the internet, his only window to the outside world.

It was then that Jess had started traveling for him—it would be good for her, he’d said—and, while most of the people her father had done business with over the years didn’t think too much about the fact that he’d stopped doing the legwork, there were a few who did find it odd. One of those, a representative of the Montwheeler Diamond Company, made an unannounced visit to the store to share the news that Rossi’s had made the final cut for the Clandestine design. When the man had asked her father to go out to celebrate and her father had declined, it was then that the older Rossi had become labeled a “recluse.”

Interestingly enough, it was the “recluse” part that would seal his ultimate nomination for the Clandestine bra. Everyone assumed that her dad had retreated so far into his work that the outside world had become a distraction he couldn’t afford and wouldn’t indulge. It had given him a certain mystique that the press had instantly loved and capitalized on.

Their web hits had tripled and orders were pouring in faster than they could fill them. Even her own signature line, If It Crawls, featuring bejeweled insects and bugs, had seen a significant bump in sales.

There was no doubt that the bra, much as it pained her to admit it, was already netting the results her father had expected. And it hadn’t even had The Big Reveal yet. Once it was covering the breasts of one of the world’s sexiest supermodels, the buzz would really get going. And that was good for business.

In today’s lagging economy, there wasn’t a single company that wasn’t affected in some way, theirs included. High-end jewelry was a luxury item and when money got as tight as it was now, fewer and fewer people had the ready cash to splurge on something like fine jewelry. They’d made good investments and her father had always been a big believer in gold, but they’d certainly had to tap into their reserves over the past couple years.

The Clandestine bra would change that.

And really, when one considered what was to gain, she really didn’t have any business being put out over missing a race, one that she only wanted to run in order to prove a point.

With a quick glance at the clock, Jess sighed and closed up her garage, then made the quick walk through the woods to her place. She’d already packed, but still needed to shower and change. The security agent hired by Montwheeler was set to arrive at the shop at three to collect both her and the bra, and she’d promised her father she wouldn’t be late.

If she intended to keep that promise, she’d better get a move on. She mounted the steps to her tree house—an eleven-hundred-square-foot architectural wonder of reclaimed wood and leaded glass—and leaped lightly over her cat, Pita (short for pain in the ass), who liked to lie on the next-to-last step, solely in order to better trip someone, Jess believed. Shorty had promised to come out and feed her while she was gone.

Thirty minutes later, she secured the house and lugged her bag to the car. Because she imagined the security agent was going to be either short on conversation or too long-winded to endure, she’d included her iPod and an eReader. For whatever reason, when she tried to picture the man, her warped imagination kept conjuring images of Kevin James from Paul Blart: Mall Cop. Why? Who knew, but it made her snicker every time all the same.

With a shake of her head and another glance at the clock—damn!—she slipped the key in the ignition and slung gravel as she peeled out of the driveway. From her house to the shop was ordinarily a fifteen-minute drive.

She’d need to do it in ten.

It was obscene how much that pleased her.

* * *

“WHAT THE HELL,” Griff muttered, his gaze trained on the rearview mirror. He’d first noted the red Camaro—the retro-kind Chevy had debuted a few years ago—more than half a mile back when it had first appeared in the distance.

It was damn hard to miss.

Candy-apple red, white racing stripes from hood to trunk, and the way it had moved seamlessly in and out of traffic, smoothly passing everything that interrupted its path had certainly drawn his attention. A little admiration, even.

Now, as the car drew nearer to his bumper—so close that he could read the tag on the front, which appropriately read Faster—irritation was quickly dimming the original sentiment. He was moving five miles past the speed limit on a two-lane highway with a double yellow line. The driver couldn’t pass without breaking the law, and he refused to go any faster.

Though he couldn’t make out much beyond a lot of dark curly hair and sunglasses, he knew it was a woman behind the wheel and he’d admit, she seemed more than capable of handling the powerful, if impractical, car she drove. But if she didn’t get off his damn bumper, they were going to have a serious problem.

He slowed a little, just to infuriate her. “I’m in front of you, lady. Get over it,” he muttered.

She dropped back as they mounted a small hill, and Griff had just congratulated himself for making her retreat, when the yellow lines changed in her favor and she roared past him. He barely caught a glimpse of her pleased smile, but it was enough to make him want to hit the accelerator a little harder and take off after her.

Which was irrational, of course, so he put the thought firmly out of his mind. He was a grown man on his way to an important job, his first as a civilian. Playing cat and mouse with a girl—one who had a much faster car, no less—was a distraction he couldn’t afford, and it rather startled him that he’d been inclined to do it in the first place. Chasing after her would have been pointless and, as a rule, he didn’t pursue things he knew would be a waste of his time.

Feeling strangely unsettled, Griff watched the red car disappear over the next hill and released a pent-up breath. He drummed his thumbs against the steering wheel, suddenly restless, and shifted in his seat. He’d been on the road for almost eight hours already and knew that at least another four would be in his future today, if he planned to stick to his schedule. Which he did, of course, otherwise what was the point in having one?

He’d allotted eight minutes to pick up the bra and his Rossi escort, another seven for a bathroom break, and planned to arrive in Hagerstown no later than eight o’clock tonight. Dinner would be a little late, but not terribly, and that would put them within four hours of their ultimate destination. They’d hit New York City by noon tomorrow, which gave him a two-hour window to check out the venue before the press junket started. The bra would officially be on display—on the runway for the reveal—at noon on Saturday.

Payne had provided the building specs, which were certainly helpful, but Griff preferred to do an in-person review. He wanted to know every stairwell, elevator, exit and access point. He didn’t expect any problems, but would be remiss if he didn’t prepare for them anyway. Besides, he liked to be prepared. There was a certain comfort in knowing that things were in order.

Big, round hay bales lay in the fields on either side of the road and Queen Anne’s lace and wild black-eyed Susans bobbed in the lazy breeze along in the ditches as he drove on. Nestled in one of the many valleys of the Appalachian Mountains, Shadow’s Gap suddenly came into view, a quaint village of white clapboard houses, red bricked shops and well-manicured grounds. Though the leaves had begun to turn, fall hadn’t quite gotten a foothold yet. Varying shades of green blanketed the hills rising up over the valley, creating a verdant landscape that would look perfectly at home on a postcard.

Following the signs for the Historic Town Square, Griff made the necessary turns and began scanning the various storefronts for Rossi’s Fine Jewelry. It was then that he saw it, the red Camaro, and his pulse gave an inexplicable little jump.

Wonder of wonders, it was parked directly in front of the jewelry store.