Cloudy with a Chance of Marriage Read online

  To Steven, Margaret, and Jack with all my love

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  Thanks, as always, to the incredible duo of Jennifer Enderlin and Jenny Bent! And my deep gratitude goes as well to all the wonderful people at St. Martin’s Press, including Loren Jaggers, Eileen Rothschild, Anne Marie Tallberg, Brian Heller, Sara Goodman, Danielle Fiorella, and Matthew Shear. I’m so honored and proud to be a St. Martin’s Press author.

  Thanks also to my family, friends, and even my town for always supporting me and making my life rich. Special hugs to Starla and Johnny Davis, Rob and Mary Beth Harlowe, and Brindy and Gary Scott, my dear friends and neighbors. A shout-out to Dr. David Castellone, our family physician, and his staff at Palmetto Primary Care. For a decade now, you’ve given us a ton of TLC. And finally, I’d like to thank the teachers, staff, and administrators of Dorchester District II schools for watching over my children all these years and helping them become smarter, kinder people (and giving me time to write). Bless you all.

  CONTENTS

  Title Page

  Dedication

  Acknowledgments

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  Chapter Thirty

  Chapter Thirty-One

  Chapter Thirty-Two

  Chapter Thirty-Three

  Chapter Thirty-Four

  Epilogue

  Teaser

  St. Martin’s Paperbacks Titles by Kieran Kramer

  Praise for When Harry Met Molly

  Copyright

  CHAPTER ONE

  Books were Jilly’s great escape, but unless she chose to use them as missiles—which she’d considered but decided against as they were her source of livelihood now—even they couldn’t save her from the unpleasant task before her. She must stop the loud goings-on at the dead end of the cobblestone lane once and for all.

  She walked up from a murky bed of fog that swirled thickly about her knees onto the front steps of 34 Dreare Street and knocked on the door. The sprawling three-story house was situated on a scrap of lawn at a right angle to her own shop. A tattered skull-and-crossbones flag hung listlessly against the roofline while a piece of wood painted with the words HOUSE FOR SALE leaned against the aged foundation.

  No answer.

  She knocked again and heard bumping noises and several loud male voices, one of them singing off-key.

  Finally, the door opened wide. A gorgeous man with golden hair, dressed only in a cambric shirt and faded trousers, lofted his golden brow. “Thank God, it’s you.” His voice was like honey. “Miss Jones.” He swept a slow, warm gaze over her.

  Of all the nerve!

  Jilly was so taken aback by what she could only call his brazen maleness, she didn’t know what to say.

  He chuckled. “I thought you might be the constable.”

  And then he smiled and winked, as if he’d just asked her to meet him in the garden at midnight.

  She blinked, which she was wont to do when she was flustered. “And … and how would you know I am Miss Jones?”

  “Because you look terribly angry.”

  He certainly didn’t. He looked the opposite. He looked happy, damn his hide.

  “May I assume you’re the thoroughly undisciplined Captain Arrow?” she demanded to know.

  “The very same.” He took out a cheroot and lit it. She’d meant her remark as an insult, but he made unruly behavior seem like an appealing state. “I only forgo discipline when I’m off duty, you know. What can I do for you … Miss Jones?”

  Really. He was too much. Did he honestly think a woman with any brains in her head would fall for that kind of nonsense?

  “Stop saying my name as if—” Oh, dear. She couldn’t finish that sentence, not if she were to remain a lady.

  “As if what?” He gave her a wide-eyed, innocent look.

  “Never mind.” She forced herself to inhale a breath through her nose. “There’s a man hanging out of your upstairs window.”

  Now it was his turn to give a short laugh. “Lumley, probably.”

  She blinked. “Aren’t you concerned?”

  “No,” he said around the cheroot. “It’s a trick of his.”

  “Well”—she shook her head and tried not to make her hands into fists—“I find it hard to work when I see a man hanging upside down out a window.”

  Captain Arrow gave her a charming grin. “You’re not getting angry again, are you, Miss Jones? We moved onto Dreare Street on the same day, after all. That’s a special connection, don’t you think?”

  She huffed. “Your sign makes clear you’ve no intention to stay. I do plan to make this my home. And I’m not angry. I want—”

  “You want what?”

  Very well. She was angry.

  “I want to be able to look out my window and not see a man hanging upside down, that’s all!” She flung an arm in the direction of her store. “Who’s going to have a pleasurable browse for books when my neighbor holds parties night and day? You and your cohorts had just better not introduce any fallen women to the mix, or I’ll call the constable myself.”

  “We already have,” he said, his expression angelic, “but the ladies leave discreetly through the rear so as not to cause a stir.”

  Jilly gasped. “How dare you! The sooner you sell this place, the better.”

  “I told you,” Captain Arrow said, “after the last letter you put through my door—”

  “My fourth,” she interjected, running out of breath. “My fourth in six days.”

  “Yes, your fourth,” he replied equably. “I had a courier deliver you a note in return—”

  “You call a drunken man who falls through my door a courier?”

  Captain Arrow looked abashed—yet somehow not. “This is an unusually complicated house party, Miss Jones. I beg your patience. On the one hand, my friends and I are celebrating my safe return from my final voyage with the Royal Navy, during which I captured a notorious pirate. He was a ruthless murderer, so you must grant—”

  “Your noble deeds don’t give you license to disturb the peace!”

  “Nevertheless,” he went on smoothly, “at this house party we’re also mourning the fact that I didn’t receive the purse I should have. All that pirate gold seems to have vanished into other people’s pockets.”

  “That’s your business, not mine—”

  “Which brings me to the third reason for the house party. There’s hope yet for me to become a rich man. I’ve suddenly found myself the proud owner of this tidy mansion, and as soon as I procure a buyer for it, I’ll be well equipped to make my way through the world as a landlubber. In the meanwhile, the house needs christening, don’t you agree?”

  She narrowed her eyes at him. “No. I don’t. It needs paint. And you’re ruining my business.”

  He chuckled. “I’m ruining your business? I shoul
d hardly think so. Perhaps your business needs a proprietress with a little more sport in her.”

  He smiled, and one of his eyebrows flew up in a suggestive manner.

  “Why,” she asked, ignoring his disgusting display of masculine allure, “would a respectable female wish to be sporting?”

  “You’ll know once you try it. Come to my house tonight. We’re holding a small theatrical evening.”

  “Over my dead body,” she said, even though she adored theatrical evenings. “Let’s get back to the point that forces me to venture over here—you’re disturbing the peace, sirrah.”

  “Hardly. We’ve had no one running naked down the street in the last two days.”

  “Fancy that!”

  “And not a single one of my guests has sung a word of any song outside.”

  She put a finger to her mouth, pretending to consider his words, then dropped her hand. “You know, you’re right. They only sing in the house now—with the windows wide open. And sometimes”—she drew in a breath and said low—“the singer is wearing only a tricorne hat.”

  “That’s Lumley again,” he said as if he were talking of the weather.

  Speaking of which, didn’t this unrelentingly cheerful man notice they had bad weather here on Dreare Street? All the time?

  Jilly’s heart was pounding so hard, she needed support. So she leaned forward and put her hands on either side of the door jamb. Captain Arrow leaned back a fraction of an inch.

  “If I”—she whispered—“have to come over”—she pulled back to take a breath—“one more time—”

  “Yes?” He leaned forward again. “What will you do?”

  She closed her eyes a brief moment, then opened them and stared at him. “I’ll go mad.” It was as simple as that. “I’ll go stark, raving mad.”

  Before he could answer her, she turned around and marched back to her store, directly through a plump cloud of fog that refused to be dispersed by the weak morning sun overhead.

  * * *

  Miss Jilly Jones.

  Already Stephen adored her. He always did the outliers. Perhaps because he was one himself. Of course, his new neighbor was doing her best to be true to type. She excelled at appearing bookish. Prim. A bluestocking with no sense of humor. A woman to be avoided at all costs.

  But no other prim miss he’d ever met had grasped door jambs and leaned into his face as if she’d like to bite his head off. He was a sea captain used to giving orders, not taking them, by God. This cheeky Miss Jones showing up flinging commands about was something new. Truth be told, he’d never met a woman as unmanageable, which made him admire her a great deal. It also made his blood hot for her. She was a challenge, that one. And Stephen never turned aside from a challenge.

  Hadn’t he risen to the challenge of being named an Impossible Bachelor not long ago with his three best friends, Harry, Nicholas, and Charlie? And he’d come out of Prinny’s ridiculous albeit amusing wager unscathed, unmarried, and as unrepentant a bachelor as he’d ever been.

  When Miss Jones left his front step, he instantly determined that he wanted to have a scorching flirtation with her. Other than sell his house, what else did he have to do?

  He had a strict rule that he didn’t seduce virgins, so bedding her was out of the question. But imagine what creative machinations he’d have to go through just to steal a few kisses! Grabbing a delicious tendril of her hair and wrapping it around his finger would be practically out of the question unless he were good … very good. And if he could slip a hand up her gown at least to her knee, then his short stay on Dreare Street would go from being mildly entertaining to memorable.

  This was one war he’d have to be very cunning to win.

  He was crestfallen when she entered the bookstore and pulled the door shut without looking back out to see if he were still there. It was a good move. Pretend indifference to the enemy—shake their confidence. His own strategies would have to be put in place, he realized. Miss Jones was too substantial, obviously, to fall for his good looks alone, a fact which delighted him. Infatuated young ladies bored him.

  He wanted a real dalliance. A real one, of course, engaged his mind.

  And Stephen had a brilliant mind. He chose not to emphasize that point when he was out of uniform. It was something to do with his need to relax, to disengage, to not be the leader always. As captain of a ship in the Royal Navy, he’d always been at the center of things, interconnected by necessity to every man on board. It was an exciting but exhausting way to live.

  Perhaps he was addicted to lack of sleep, loud noises, near-death experiences, and chasing enemies. Settling down in a quiet, peacetime navy held no appeal for him, which was why he was leaving it, despite the Admiralty’s hope that he’d take command of a man-of-war.

  Neither was he tempted to resign himself to a subdued gentleman’s existence on land, complete with a demure wife, several adorable children, and a second career in banking or international trade.

  Give him lots of money—more than his pension was worth—so he could live beholden to no one. Give him noise and bluster. Boxing and horse racing. Bawdy girls and boisterous men.

  His own sailing vessel.

  A pied-à-terre in Paris.

  Give him something out of the ordinary.

  Give him Jilly Jones.

  CHAPTER TWO

  In the late afternoon of the day of her useless conversation with Captain Arrow, Jilly heard a loud popping noise from his house. She looked up from smoothing a page in her nearly blank accounting book and saw a young man at a second-floor window drop a bag of water onto the pavement.

  “Bull’s-eye!” the fellow cried.

  A roar of approval went up from the group of well-dressed gentlemen gathered on the street.

  Jilly sighed. For goodness’ sake, when would a constable ever arrive and throttle the lot of them?

  “I often wonder,” she heard her clerk, Otis, remark to their lone customer of the afternoon, a small, elderly woman perusing a copy of Pride and Prejudice, “if Mr. Darcy and Elizabeth had a few secret trysts before they made their nuptial vows.” He chuckled and looked into space. “Who could have resisted Darcy?”

  “Well,” the elderly woman speculated, one hand to her lips, the other balancing the book, “I’m not sure—”

  “If,” Otis interrupted her in dramatic tones, which made her nearly drop the book, “if Darcy were too much a gentleman to propose an illicit liaison, then don’t you think Elizabeth must have been driven so mad by desire that she seduced him instead?”

  The old woman stared at him.

  “It’s quite a titillating thought.” Otis took the book out of her trembling hands and placed it back on the shelf. “It’s our only copy,” he confided to her in an earnest whisper. “Let me show you something else.”

  Dear God. Jilly watched her assistant sway gently down the aisle toward her meager collection of atlases, crooking a finger at the tiny woman to follow him. The shop would be bankrupt within a month if the mayhem persisted at Captain Arrow’s house and if Otis didn’t learn to sell books.

  Her father’s ex-valet didn’t seem able to part with any of them, except for the atlases, but what was Jilly to do? She couldn’t cast him out in the cold, for heaven’s sake. He’d been devoted to her father and, after his death, her only trusted friend.

  “You dress very well for an older man,” she heard the little lady rasp, “but you’re quite mad. Almost as mad as those people who live next door.”

  A few seconds later, the bell at the front door tinkled, and the door shut with a loud bang.

  “And you have a lovely day, too!” Otis flung after their lost customer with all the sarcasm a frustrated, impoverished bookseller could muster. “That atlas was just the thing for you, if you’d only listened to reason. And how dare you call me an ‘older man’? I’m not a day over thirty.”

  “Otis,” Jilly called in a warning voice.

  He’d been thirty for as long as she could remember. He twi
sted around to face her, his large feet crossed in outrageous saffron-colored shoes, his tailcoat swinging madly.

  “But Lady Jilly!”

  “Miss Jilly,” she corrected him.

  “Oh, dear,” he apologized. “But what am I to do? She wouldn’t have appreciated Pride and Prejudice. She has no fire in her soul. I’m saving it for someone who has spirit, style, and good looks.”

  Jilly blew out a breath. “Some of the worst villains and biggest fools have good looks,” she reminded him.

  “Yes,” Otis returned smugly and touched the nape of his neck.

  He believed himself to be quite good-looking, she knew. And he did have mesmerizing eyes, a jolting blue that was quite disconcerting. But he hardly filled his waistcoat, he was so thin. He also had knobby knees, a Roman nose that looked as if it had been broken several times but hadn’t, wispy gray hair that circled his ears, and a pate as shiny and bald as a baby’s bottom.

  “I never said good looks alone.” He lingered on the last word, which was his tendency. “I also mentioned spirit and style. Or did you forget? Those gentlemen at the captain’s house have them in spades.”

  Jilly marched past him with a small square sign, which she placed in the window. “That isn’t spirit and style,” she said. “That’s what happens when you buy a cask of brandy and invite your debauched friends over to drink it with you until it runs out. We must start selling books soon, or we’ll run out of money.”

  The sign promptly fell over, and she adjusted it again until it was right. “I need a ledge beneath the window.” She brushed past Otis, wishing she had enough money to ask the carpenter who’d put in the bookshelves to come back and make the ledge. But she didn’t. She’d have to make do for a while, until profits started coming in.

  Otis traipsed after her. “I abhor what Hector has done to you,” he said over her shoulder. “A lady should never worry about money. And she should stay far away from the taint of trade. We may thank Hector for this state of affairs.”

  “Be that as it may”—she picked up a feather duster and swept it over a line of dictionaries—“please try to remember, the next time a dull, unattractive patron requests Pride and Prejudice, to acquiesce and allow him or her to purchase it.” She turned and faced him. “If you want to keep food on your plate.”