2000 Kisses Read online

  A COWBOY WITH LAZY BLUE EYES HAD ONE CALLUSED HAND WRAPPED AROUND HER THIGH.

  And one of her stockings was gone.

  She shot upright. “What do you think you’re doing?”

  “Trying to take off your other stocking.”

  “Do it and you’ll regret it.”

  The cowboy’s eyes narrowed. “I think we’ve got a communication problem here.”

  His face was burned dark by the sun. Tess remembered him now. He was the sheriff her brother had said would protect her. Not with his hand on her thigh, he wouldn’t.

  “Get your hand off me.”

  A vein pumped at his clenched jaw. “Don’t go jumping fences until you get to them, Ma’am.”

  “If you really are the sheriff, then you’d better explain why you had your hand up my skirt.”

  Something glinted in his eye. “Doctor’s orders. Too many clothes, he said.”

  Tess wasn’t sure what a sheriff should look like, but it certainly wasn’t this. She smiled icily as she pointed at his chest. “If you’re the sheriff, where’s your badge?”

  He stalked across the room, yanked open his desk drawer, and shoved a tarnished, weather-beaten tin star into place on his shirt pocket. “Feel safer now?”

  “Not much,” Tess admitted.

  Published by

  Bantam Dell

  a division of

  Random House, Inc.

  This novel is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  Copyright © 1999 by Roberta Helmer

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without the written permission of the Publisher, except where permitted by law.

  Dell® is a registered trademark of Random House, Inc., and the colophon is a trademark of Random House, Inc.

  eISBN: 978-0-307-48103-0

  v3.1

  Contents

  Cover

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Epilogue

  Author’s Note

  Dedication

  Acknowledgments

  Other Books by This Author

  1

  BOSTON HARBOR

  OBSERVATION LOUNGE

  THE SILVER PRINCESS

  SATURDAY, DECEMBER 31, 1999

  Some things were almost as good as sex.

  Tess O’Mara took a deep breath. Excitement bubbled through her as she looked around the quiet room, thinking about the night to come. Chandeliers cast a soft glow over the elegant two-tiered observation lounge. Waterford crystal gleamed on white damask tablecloths. A dozen chocolate dessert courses waited to be whisked out at the first stroke of midnight, accompanied by champagne from five different vineyards.

  Best of all, three more reporters had already called, pleading for exclusive interviews.

  Yes, success felt incredibly good.

  She checked her watch. In two hours the orchestra would tune up, ready to usher in the new millennium with a shipboard party for two thousand people. Tess had arranged every detail, right down to the 360-degree fireworks that would be set off at the stroke of midnight. Two years of planning.

  Two years of dreaming.

  The champagne would be vintage and the flowers would be rare Indonesian orchids of her own selection. She prayed that the evening would be a wild success.

  Outside the ship’s wraparound windows, snowflakes drifted down over the harbor. Tess danced from foot to foot, her pulse racing.

  “Get a grip,” she muttered to herself. “Remember your training. You’ve got a degree in marketing and eight years of experience, and that makes you a consummate professional.”

  She glanced at her reflection in the window and grinned. Good hair, but nothing fancy. Face too pale, mouth too wide. It was a face that radiated energy but would never be called beautiful. Long ago Tess had stopped seeing that as a limitation. She knew how to make people laugh, how to make them listen, and how to put them at ease.

  And right now, professional or not, she was riding a wave of pure, heart-slamming adrenaline.

  A phone rang outside in the staff area, and the double doors swung open in a rush. A woman with sleek red hair and a chic black pantsuit breezed into view. “Hold on to your seat. That was the Golden Wind Cruise Lines.”

  “The people who hung up on us twice last year?”

  Tess’s assistant smiled smugly. “That’s right, only now they’re seriously groveling. They want to talk to you first thing Monday morning about planning a charity event for them next year. Red carpet all the way.”

  Tess felt her grin growing wider. Even the competition was calling. She let out a jerky breath. “Tell them I’ll get back to them, Annie.”

  “Will do.” Her assistant chuckled. “By the way, a reporter has phoned five times, pleading for tickets to the party tonight. I told him the cruise had been sold out for months, and he offered me four figures if I’d slip him a ticket anyway.”

  “Four figures?” Tess braced one hand on the wall.

  “That’s what he said.” Annie named a preeminent daily paper sold across the nation. “I still turned him down.”

  Tess felt her chest squeeze. She looked down and saw that her hands were shaking. Calm, she told herself. Professional. “Did you tell him that only those signed on for the whole six-month cruise are eligible to attend tonight?”

  “Oh, he knew. He just didn’t like it. After he finally finished fuming, he said to congratulate you on an inspired marketing campaign. He wants to interview you next week, then maybe fly you down to Ft. Lauderdale and take some shots aboard the ship. He was considering an ongoing story, with installments at every port of call. Especially the Hemingway night in Key West.”

  “I’ll have to call him back.”

  “Good idea. Make him suffer.” Annie’s eyes narrowed. “Are you all right, Tess? You look shaky.”

  Tess was shaky, but she was also walking on air. News coverage of the cruise was snowballing, just the way she’d hoped it would. “Shock, that’s all.”

  “Get used to it. Something tells me this is just the beginning,” Annie called as she retreated to a corner to answer her cell phone.

  Tess stood absolutely still, watching twilight fall over the churning waves in the harbor. She heard Annie laugh in the corner, her voice slipping low in an intimate conversation on her cell phone.

  Her boyfriend, no doubt.

  Tess thought about her own nonexistent love life. Maybe she would meet someone special tonight. Her boss, Richard Mainwaring, the mercurial guru of Boston public relations, had hinted he had a friend he wanted her to meet. If Tess hadn’t had a thousand other details on her mind, she might have been more intrigued at the thought.

  But how could she think about anything but work? For months
, her whole focus had been her carefully planned millennium cruise, docking in a dozen ports between Boston and Bora-Bora. In every port, festivities were tied in with local charities.

  Tess’s favorite was the Hemingway look-alike party in Key West, complete with two actors in a rhinoceros costume, ready to be felled by would-be Papas. Proceeds would go to a wildlife preserve in Kenya. For those of a literary bent, there would be shipboard writing classes and a series of lectures on Hemingway’s novels, led by a Harvard professor who had known the great man personally.

  To Tess, this was the real theme of the millennium: celebrating life by staying young at heart and young of mind in an age of unpredictable change.

  And tonight Tess was going to celebrate, too. She told herself she was entitled to some fun after the two-year war she had waged on this campaign.

  Annie waved to Tess. “The chef needs to know when you want him to take the cake out of the refrigerator.”

  As Tess dug through a pile of silk roses to get to her meticulously prepared timeline of the evening’s events, she couldn’t help but visualize the magnificent millennium cake. Baked in the shape of an oversize silver ice bucket, its frosting rose in streamers of red and silver, forming a giant champagne bottle complete with cascading waves of confetti.

  It had taken the decorator two weeks to complete and had cost a fortune, but the finished effect was worth it.

  “Let’s see,” Tess said, flipping a page of her schedule, “the cake exits the refrigerator at 11:34 PM and enters the observation lounge at 12:01 AM.”

  “Great! I’ll go tell the chef. Oh! The champagne’s just arrived,” her assistant called as she headed for the kitchen. “Thank heavens, nothing looks broken.”

  Tess muttered a few choice words, brushing her hair from her face. “At the price we paid, those bottles should come packed in platinum.” She pulled a master list from her briefcase and started checking the cases of champagne against the list, to see if anything was missing. Just as she was finishing her inventory her assistant returned. Tess let her shoulders sag dramatically. “I still wish you were coming tonight, Annie, even though the cruise staff has been wonderful.”

  “It was a hard choice.” Her assistant smiled slowly. “I finally had to draw the line between business and pleasure. After all, the millennium will only come once in my lifetime.” She pressed her hand to her heart in a solemn gesture. “And if Stan asks me tonight, the answer is yes.”

  Tess straightened a row of foil-covered chocolate boxes on the table. “If he asks you what?”

  “Anything.” Annie grinned. “Whenever and wherever. With or without props, I’m his.”

  Tess felt a pang of envy for the long kisses and husky breathing, the feverish looks and searching fingers. How long since she’d felt that swift, hot descent into sensual oblivion?

  She swallowed hard, unable to remember.

  “Hey, you look pale.” Annie shoved a cup into her hand. “Drink this double espresso. You look like you need it more than I do.”

  Tess gulped the strong coffee gratefully. Had it actually been two years? Had her personal life been stalled that long?

  She took another drink of coffee, refusing to think about it.

  The caffeine was giving her a nice edge of energy when the statuesque cruise director emerged from the kitchens, clipboard in hand.

  “Everything looks fabulous, including those chocolate raspberry soufflés.” She studied Tess. “How do you feel?”

  Giddy. Sick. Wonderful.

  “Excited,” Tess said levelly. “Are you coming tonight?”

  The blond woman shook her head. Her chocolate-brown skirt and beige silk blouse fit her like wind around a flagpole, and Tess had to admire her style—all six feet of it. “I’m afraid not. My husband and I have a date for a candlelit dinner. Very private,” she said, smiling mischievously. “It’s our first anniversary, and we want to be alone at midnight.” She grinned. “If you know what I mean.”

  Tess felt another tiny pang, which she resolutely ignored. “Sounds like fun.”

  The blonde smiled. “Well, congratulations are definitely in order for you. From what I hear, people are already lined up outside, trying to crash the party.”

  Tess was glad she’d hired a team of discreet security guards. She made a mental note to call ahead and check security as she held out a box of the premium chocolates. “Happy anniversary.”

  The cruise director gave a silent whistle as she studied the name on the box. “This is serious decadence you’re handing me.” Her head tilted. “Any chance you might save a bottle of Krug champagne in exchange for one cabin upgrade?”

  Cabin upgrades could be very useful in soothing a passenger’s ruffled feathers if something went wrong. “Throw in a private tour of the boat with the captain, and I’ll give it a shot.”

  “Done. By the way, did you know that according to the Mayan calendar this isn’t a new millennium at all. Actually the new year will be 5119?”

  “Oh, go ahead and confuse me. Let’s see, that leaves eight hundred and eighty-one years until I have to do this again.” Tess glanced at her watch and gave a low moan. “I’ve got to dress and do something about my hair.”

  Outside the snow was picking up, great fluffy flakes of white that drifted down in exquisite silence.

  “Our fearless leader just phoned,” Annie called out. “He says to remind you to wear something sexy. He’s got someone he wants you to meet.”

  Richard Mainwaring, Tess’s boss and mentor, was a Harvard graduate who was blue blood by birth and New Age by choice. The fact that he was rolling in trust funds and blue chip stocks gave him the dangerous ability to indulge in every new fad that took his fancy. Last year it was an ashram in India. This year it was buying a solar energy-equipped yacht to cruise French Polynesia.

  “What makes him think I need any help in the dating department?” Tess raised a hand as Annie started to speak. “Don’t answer that.”

  “Richard has a lot of interesting friends. Maybe he’s set you up with an inscrutable stranger in a turban.”

  “Sounds like the taxi driver I had last night.” Tess glanced at her watch and groaned. “Gotta go. If Mel Gibson calls, tell him his ticket’s at the door.”

  “Break a leg,” Annie said with a jaunty smile.

  Tess grabbed her small suitcase and garment bag and headed for the stateroom she’d been assigned to use as an on-site office and, tonight, a place to change clothes. “By the way, if anyone calls to tell me I won the lottery you have my permission to transfer the call to my stateroom immediately.”

  “What, give up the good life?”

  “You mean the long hours, the demanding clients, the millions of details to keep track of, and the excruciating phone calls? If I had a million dollars, I’d be sitting perfectly coiffed behind a polished Louis XV desk while I calmly issued orders to about a hundred workers.”

  Annie just smiled.

  “What are you smiling at?”

  “You. Millions or not, you’d still be out in the trenches. You love the thrill of a good product placement. But Richard’s right,” Annie added, shaking her finger at Tess, “you need to find a personal life. Remember the clock is ticking—and not just for the new millennium.”

  At twenty minutes to eight, Tess stood beneath the great chandelier in the observation lounge. She smoothed her hair and checked her watch anxiously.

  Twenty-five bottles of vintage 1995 Perrier-Jouet champagne stood cork-free, breathing beside a similar number of Belle Epoque Rosé. She had verified that calla lilies decorated every guest’s stateroom, along with a personalized box of designer chocolates hand-dipped and wrapped for the cruise. An elegant assortment of designer spa items had also been delivered to soothe the inevitable morning-after hangovers.

  The cruise staff had undertaken all the serving arrangements, and now there was nothing left for her to do but sit back and relax.

  Red silk clung to her body from bodice to ankle, brightened b
y simple rhinestone straps. The gown was Tess’s only recent indulgence, and it made her feel like a million dollars. Garnets glittered at her neck and wrist, and not a hair was out of place. Her nerves were frazzled, but that was only to be expected.

  She fixed a radiant smile on her face as the first guests arrived to the accompaniment of a string quartet. Soon she was elbow deep in Versace gowns and Armani tuxedos, sharing smiles, compliments, and congratulations. A multimillionaire software designer asked her to share his cabin on the cruise, then offered to fly her to Paris in his private jet, with the clear assumption that she would be sharing the sheets with him. Her flat refusal didn’t deter his pursuit.

  Considering the giddy excitement of the occasion, Tess took no offense. Tonight was all magic and merriment.

  Champagne corks popped and diamonds glittered. By the time Tess had fielded a third not-quite-sober marriage proposal, she was starting to enjoy herself. The trick, she decided, was to keep the whole thing in perspective.

  She was surveying the exuberant scene with quiet pride when an attractive man with a hint of gray at his temples beckoned to a waiter to refill her glass. “May I? I’d consider it repayment.”

  He had nice eyes, Tess thought. In spite of herself, she felt a stirring of interest. “Repayment for what?”

  “Because looking at you in that amazing red dress makes me feel very young, my dear.”

  French, she thought. Very romantic. Also very experienced. “Now, that has to be the smoothest line I’ve ever heard.”

  “It’s not a line at all. I speak with all sincerity. Right now you’re exuding energy from every pore.”

  “I thought that was my perfume.”

  He chuckled softly. “You’re very edgy. Things are happening fast.”

  “What things?” Why was he staring at her as if he could part invisible layers and see what was beneath?

  His eyes narrowed as he drew her palm into his. “Fascinating,” he murmured. “I see extremely bright colors swirling around you.”