Jessica once again exerted some force to pull her mouth from his, but Will only pressed harder, held her tighter. His tongue continuously seeking advantage and taking it, whether she was willing to grant access or not. She pushed the panic away as she’d taught herself to do with aggressive men. It had been a very long time since she had allowed herself to be powerless in the arms of any man.
Then it hit her suddenly, the realization, the understanding of where the art came from inside Will. His embarrassment, his pain, his punishment of her for seeing it were all suddenly clear to her.
Jessica struggled against Will with more force as she renewed her efforts to pull away, her rising angst finally giving her enough strength to fight against his hold on her. She was seconds from doing something to physically hurt him when Will finally let her go.
Free of his demanding mouth at last, and more mad and hurt than she’d been in a couple decades, Jessica couldn’t have stopped the truth from pouring out if her life had depended on it. She was never, never again going to let her experience of life be silenced or controlled by any man, especially not one she might have liked under better circumstances.
“Self-portrait in stone,” Jessica said stiffly, swallowing tightly, upset to have to push remnants of her reluctant arousal down, deep down inside her. “The statue is you, Will. The proportions are yours. The perfect statue of David. The perfect form. It’s like I already know your body from touching your work. I’m right, aren’t I?”
Will tightened his hold on her upper arms, gripping hard enough to bruise her, but he couldn’t seem to help himself. Jessica had stripped away the artistic secrets of several decades from him in under ten minutes. He was suddenly very afraid of the other damage she could cause. It was too late to stop himself from hearing her conclusions, too late to wish she hadn’t seen and understood.
“How?” he demanded harshly. “How do you know these things? I’ve been doing this work for thirty-two years. You’re the only person who ever just
saw
.”
“What does it matter?” Jessica asked sadly. “Why does it bother you so much?”
She stood in his arms with his hands gripping her painfully, stood there and reeled from understanding. Intuitive knowing poured into her like someone filling a bucket up with water until it overflowed. Looking into the artistic soul of this man was like looking into a mirror and seeing herself. Already she was deeply regretting her insights, and Will’s bruising grip was making her sorry for speaking the truth out loud to a man so unready to hear it.
And intentional or not, Will’s artistic pride was completely destroying the wonderfully sweet attraction simmering between them. Regardless of how much it grieved her, there had been nothing even remotely affectionate in Will’s punishing kiss, even if it had still weakened her legs and cemented her feet to the ground.
Even now the man still looked at her with loathing, and Jessica could feel Will’s panic all the way to her bones. Empathy for him assailed her, but she also cursed him to hell and back for making her care. Despite the number of men she had dated and bedded, she was standing by the man’s art with her heart breaking for him and for what they could have had if he had been ready for it—for her.
But she wasn’t seventeen this time, though the attraction and the capacity to love Everett Williams had come just as hard and just as fast as it had with Nathan Daniels. Older and much wiser, Jessica could and would run, she vowed. This time she would not have to have the pain of loving and losing.
Jessica pulled twenty-two years of teaching around her and summoned her best, most authoritative voice. “Get your fucking hands off me or I’m going to knee you in the balls.”
Yanking herself forcefully from Will’s grip at last, Jessica stepped away from him in relief. She glared over her shoulder at the artistic perfection he had created, and then glared at Will as well, who seemed to finally have the common sense to look ashamed. Then she turned her back on Everett Williams and his work and strode briskly away from both.
By the time Will got to the parking lot and the bike, Jessica was standing arms crossed, gaze on the pavement, her helmet in her hand.
“You don’t have to worry about me telling anyone your artistic secrets,” Jessica informed him quietly, but firmly. “I teach art, Will. Go with that explanation about how I knew, and we’ll both be better off. I’m ready to go home now.”
Even though the apology he owed her was on his tongue, Will didn’t say anything in return, just opened the compartments on the bike to retrieve the rest of their gear. Still feeling exposed from her observations, he didn’t know how sincere his apology would be anyway—which was just as well because Jessica didn’t look capable of hearing anything he might have to say to her.
What in the devil had possessed him to kiss her like that? He had just wanted to stop her from telling him more because he hadn’t been able to bear hearing what she saw in his work. But the moment his lips touched hers, the desire that had been building for hours had ruled his actions. Will hadn’t even realized how far gone he had been until she wrenched herself from his arms and swore at him. His instant remorse and shock at his actions had frozen his tongue.
Jessica was suited up, zipped, and helmet in place before Will had finished his own. He climbed on the bike and felt her settle in the seat behind him. This time she used her knees to hold his hips, keeping the rest of her as far away from him as possible.
He immediately missed the heat of her, missed the intimacy of her long legs beside his. Her hands around his middle weren’t shaking, weren’t damp, weren’t even moving. It was like Jessica had drawn her entire personality back inside herself to keep it away from him, Will thought regretfully, just as she had now positioned her body as far away from his as she could on the seat.
He started the bike and reached a hand to pat hers as a signal they were going to be moving. She didn’t flinch away from his touch, but she didn’t acknowledge it back either. All remnants of the vibrating energy of excitement she’d had when he’d picked her up were totally gone. In fact, it was like there was no connection between them at all anymore, Will thought, frowning.
Not only shouldn’t he have kissed her when he was so upset, he also shouldn’t have all but accused her of—
what
, he asked himself? What had she done? Tell him some truth he wasn’t comfortable hearing? So what if all of his male statues were self-portraits? What did he have to be ashamed of?
He still couldn’t explain his panic, couldn’t explain the magnitude of anxiety he’d felt when Jessica told him the truth about his art. She had reached inside to places he had locked away from everyone, even his children. First he had panicked, and then he had overreacted. Now he was ashamed, but didn’t know how to make things right again.
At her house, Jessica climbed off and removed the helmet, handing it to him along with the ink pen that had been in her hair. She leaned down and kissed his cheek lightly, barely a brush. The lack of any emotion in it had his gut churning.
“Thanks for the bike ride,” Jessica said, breezily. “See you around, Everett Williams. It was interesting to meet you. Good luck with your work.”
With a wave over her shoulder, Jessica walked slowly up her sidewalk until she disappeared behind a firmly closed door.
Maybe he hadn’t dated in decades, but Will recognized her actions as a major and very final brush-off. He scrubbed a hand over the still visible part of his face, then turned around and stowed her helmet in the now empty storage compartment.
Jessica’s helmet
,
Will thought miserably, something he’d bought for the sole purpose of taking her for a ride. He wasn’t going to be letting anyone else use it anytime soon, no matter how brave he’d been earlier.
Tucking the pen she gave him back into his jacket, Will stared off down the street, letting the reality of what had happened sink in completely. He knew enough about women to know what returning the pen meant. Jessica was done with him. She wanted no reminders of their time together.
Now he wished like hell he’d kissed her earlier in the afternoon when she had taunted him. He wished he’d just stepped into her and hungrily kissed her teasing mouth when her lips had first called to him. She would have tasted like the excitement and energy of wanting the bike ride. She would have kissed him back, laughed against his mouth, and maybe even invited his tongue to play with hers.
Instead, he’d forced his mouth on hers when he was angry, forced an intimacy she obviously hadn’t wanted at that moment. As Will thought about it now, he realized Jessica had not for one moment responded with any heat to his kiss in the garden. Not that what he’d done counted as real kissing anyway. He almost wished Jessica had kneed him. Maybe it would have balanced out some of his now growing guilt.
The only thing that helped calm him at all was remembering that Melanie knew her, knew who Jessica really was and all about her life. Will decided he would just give Jessica Daniels some time to stop being so upset at him, and then he would find a way to make this right with her.
Today was not going to be the only interaction he had with Jessica Daniels.
He wasn’t a bad guy. He certainly couldn’t live with the idea she might think he was one.
Will sighed unhappily, put the bike in gear, and rolled away from her curb.
Chapter 4
The statue in Michael’s work area now had a leg and the beginning of a hip. Will had found the motivation to carve again when the panic over his botched ‘date’ had subsided. He had had a full week to think about things, a week where he told himself to forget Jessica Daniels, but found he couldn’t. The wound she had opened in him had mostly closed and healed. He had hoped every day the same was true for Jessica because he wanted another chance. He had to find a way to get the warmth of her back into his life.
“No chemistry, huh?” Will said morosely, sighing into his coffee as he took a sip. “I can’t believe Jessica said we had no chemistry. She’s lying, Melanie. There’s enough chemistry between Jessica Daniels and me to blow up a damn science lab.”
Melanie wanted to laugh at how upset Will seemed to be over the one and only reason Jessica had given her as explanation of why things hadn’t worked out on the date. She had never heard William Larson swear before, never seen him upset for more than a few moments. She’d love to know what really happened between Jessica and him on their ‘date’. Jessica had pretty much refused to talk about the details of it.
“That’s all she told me,” Melanie confirmed with a shrug.
“Do you think she was serious?” Will asked.
Melanie shrugged again. “Jessica’s pretty honest. I can’t even tell you half the things she said the day she met you here. I blush thinking about them. But I guess if she didn’t feel anything when you guys kissed—I mean, she said she didn’t feel much, Mr. Larson. Women are usually pretty honest with other women about things like that.”
No chemistry, Will thought. Well that was just bullshit. There was chemistry. Granted, he hadn’t used any finesse with her, had definitely not shown her his best moves, but there had been chemistry—damn it. Plus he couldn’t stop thinking about her.
“She’s lying, Melanie,” Will said again, absolutely believing it and planning to prove it to Jessica the next time he saw her. “Don’t call me Mr. Larson anymore. Call me Will, and tell me Jessica Daniels’ story. Why isn’t she married?”
Melanie shrugged. “I don’t know if she wants to get married. Jessica dates a lot,” she said carefully, thinking Will didn’t need to know specifics of what that meant. Some men wouldn’t understand a woman like Jessica who did what she wanted.
“Jessica told me she got married at seventeen. Her husband was a solider and got killed before she got to go overseas to be with him. There was a guy she dated seriously for a couple of years in her early thirties, but he kept wanting her to cut her hair and dress more—I don’t know—not like herself I guess. I saw him a few times. He was very good-looking, but never seemed quite happy with who Jessica really was as a person. They broke up the first year Brent and I were in her class. After that, Jessica hasn’t stayed with any one guy very long.”
“What kind of art does she do?” Will asked.
“That’s too personal for me to share with you,” Melanie said quietly, her voice and her tone firm and uncompromising. “If she wants you to know, she’ll tell you herself.”
What kind of art could the woman be protecting that was more embarrassing than his statues, Will wondered? Jessica had put her hands on his penis for crying out loud. Well not his, he amended, but his statue’s—which was practically the same thing—as she had damn well figured out the first time she’d touched his work.
“Her art is too personal? What does that mean? Is she embarrassed by it?” Will demanded.
Melanie looked at him with a firmness in her gaze. “It simply means her art is too personal and that I’m not telling you no matter what tone you use on me. I outgrew being afraid of you when I started serving you coffee last year.”
Will rubbed a hand over his face. “Sorry. The woman scrambled my brain. I should have kissed her when she told me to the first time. Now I’m haunted by not doing it right.”
Melanie burst out laughing. “You did kiss her. Jessica told me about it. She said it wasn’t very good—sorry. I don’t mean to keep harping on the fact.”