Finding Jessie: A Mystery Romance (16 page)

“You’re right. I might get carried away, pull over to the side of the road and take advantage of you in the bushes!”

He laughed again. “It is a little cold for outdoor fun, but I’d like to try that with you someday. When there’s no snow on the ground. And when the bushes have leaves! And not on the way to a funeral.”

She smiled and caught his eye in the rearview mirror. “How about a hotel room tonight? Or shall we take turns and drive straight through to Ohio?”

“We have plenty of time. I think we should stop for the night when it starts getting dark.”

“We are making good time,” she agreed. She stole another look at him.

“Are you okay, Sam? I mean about your dad?”

He was quiet for a moment. “I’ll miss him so much, Jessie. He was very special to me. He was a farmer who helped put his only son through law school, because he believed in me. He never came out and said he loved me, but because he believed in me and talked to me and wrote me letters, I knew that he did love me. When I was going to get married in my twenties, he pegged my fiancée as a gold digger. I was very offended at the time, but he turned out to be right. Dad taught me to hold myself to a higher standard than others expected me to, and I think I am a better person for that.”

“He was a good father. I suspect that you are quite like he was.”

“Yes. He was not always a good husband, but he was always a good father.”

“What do you mean?”

“He did cheat on my mother, but only because she became bitter and cold to him when she was tired of being a farmer’s wife. It just was not exciting enough for her, the rural life, I mean. Farming is a lot of drudgery, I won’t lie to you. There were days when, even as a young man, I was fed up with chores.”

“But why did he cheat on your mom?”

“She also had a physical problem that developed in her middle age—sex was just too painful, if not darn impossible.”

“Children should not know these things about their parents,” Jessie said, scrunching up her face a bit.

“True but we were close, Dad and I. We talked. My father was a very sexual man and he had a hard time coping with the loss of female affection of any type, not even kissing. He suffered unmercifully at my biological mother’s refusal to even hug or kiss him.” Sam paused. “Most of what I know about women is what Dad passed onto me, by words or through osmosis.”

“Your ability to understand women comes from your father?”

“A lot of that is from Dad, some is from my college days, and some is from reading, especially romances.”

Jessie smiled and kept her eyes on the road, listening to Sam talk.

“He told me the secrets of listening to women and thinking before I replied. He believed that every word leads to more words, and that you can affect the outcome of your entire life by the words that you say, and when you say them. And who you say them to,” he added meaningfully.

“I don’t doubt that he was very much like you. Or perhaps, you are like him.”

Sam smiled. “The latter, most likely.”

“What happened after your parents got a divorce? I mean, what happened to you?”

“When my mother left my father, and took me away from him to the nearest city, those infrequent visits between us, mostly weekends and summer vacations, became precious times. When we had time alone, he told me where he had made mistakes in his life, told me things that nobody else knew. Or ever will, because I would never betray his confidences, not even after his death,” Sam said meaningfully.

“That is a lot of trust between a father and son.”

“Yeah.” Sam paused. “This simple farmer with a fifth-grade education became a voracious reader. Once a week, he went to the library and over the years, plowed through most every book in that little place. He wrote me many beautiful and meaningful letters, most of which I still have—he told me what he learned from each book, how it affected his life and made him a different person, one who started thinking about a lot more than farming.”

“It seems so,” she said.

“When did he meet his second wife, the one we are going to see tomorrow, it was in the library. I find it strange that he and my stepmother met over books and so did we.”

She smiled at that and let him talk.

“As the town librarian, she got him most any book he wanted, even getting them from other libraries. While he was still married to my mother, and she cut him off of sex because of her physical problem, he started seeing the librarian in the stacks, first vertically for kisses during library hours, then horizontally, for the whole enchilada, after the library closed for the night.”

“I don’t know what to say. She must be quite something, his second wife!” Jessie said.

“In some ways, she is. He divorced my mom, finally, or she divorced him. He was alone for months, trying not to create a scandal by marrying Nora right away. But when he found Nora in his heart, a younger, more passionate woman who wanted nothing but to be at his side, that hot little librarian that is Nora, became my stepmother. On a farm, or in the city, she never cared where they lived. He was well-read and so was she, so they had plenty to talk about on those long, cold nights during Ohio winters. As long as she was with him, that was all that mattered to her.”

“Like me?”

“Like you, Jessie. But she is not as nice of a woman as you are. Let’s not forget that she pretty much busted up our family, though by then, it was a family in name only.”

“Still, she must have loved your dad very much. People can’t help who they love. I mean, I guess they can, but then they would never know what could have been...”

“I think you will like Nora Gold. She has a passion for social issues and she is very well read. Nora finally completed my dad. He was happy and so was she. Over the years, I visited them quite a few times. It pained Dad to hear me call her his
new wife
, which I accidentally did in front of him once. It was one of the rare times that he put me in my place. I didn’t mean anything bad by it. It was just a slip of my tongue. She’s a woman who made him so happy that he was filled with joy from the day he met her. They had a wonderful life together.”

“How will she cope without your dad?”

“I’m not sure how she will be able to live alone,” Sam said. “I do know one thing for sure. She can’t run that big farm by herself.”

“Is it hers now?”

They exchanged a look and then she watched the traffic again.

“I assume so. I hope he wouldn’t leave the farm to me! I don’t want the responsibility. I love my dad, but I hate farming! He knew that about me.”

“Surely, Sam? I mean, of course he would leave it to her. They’ve been together for decades. And didn’t you do his will?”

“No, the person who prepares the will shouldn’t be the beneficiary.”

“Oh, what am I thinking? That makes sense.”

Jessie saw the exit sign for a rest stop up ahead and steered the Volvo that way.

“I have to pee,” she announced. “Also, how about we change drivers for a while?”

“Tired of driving?”

“Not really. But I want to take some photos of the scenery coming up with your digital camera and I can’t do that while I drive.”

He smiled. “I’ll be happy to take over. Thanks for packing my camera. I might want to take a photo of the farm. It’ll be the last time I see it, I think.” He paused. “Did you say we have roast beef sandwiches and sodas in cooler in the back seat?”

“I sure did.”

“How about we stop and eat and then I will drive for a while and you take photos?”

“Great!”

Jessie pulled the car to the curb at the rest stop and ran quickly in the ladies’ room while Sam spread the impromptu winter picnic on the dashboard and opened the sodas.

After lunch, he took over the driving and instead of Jessie taking photos of scenery, she fell asleep.

Later that night, after they were checked into a motel and he had called Nora to let her know they would arrive the next morning, Sam ordered a pizza from a local place, to be delivered to the motel room while Jessie took a bath in the huge tub.

“You’ve got to experience this tub, Sam,” she called.

“I’m waiting for the pizza man,” he reminded her.

He heard her laugh and some splashing sounds and then she replied, “Bring the pizza in here when it comes. And get in with me.”

He did.

They ate steaming pizza while sitting naked in the frothy water, surrounded by votive candles that she had brought from his house and immaculate mirrored walls that did not fog up. Jessie had brought the portable CD player in the bathroom, so they even had the music of the
Best of the Moody Blues
while they ate.

“This is the best pizza I’ve ever had,” Jessie exclaimed.

“I’m on my fourth piece,” Sam said.

“Oooh, you’re gonna get fat, Sam Gold! Not that I care, since your hipbones are a little sharp on mine lately.”

“Are they?” he asked. “Not compared to yours. You’re a woman who can eat anything and never get fat. It’s disgusting that I am just the opposite. Where’s the justice?”

“There is no justice. You must know that the metabolism fairy just waves her wand over me and poof, all consumed food becomes raw energy to use as I please.”

“You don’t weigh but a feather,” he said.

“Flatterer. I’m one-thirty now that I have a kitchen to cook in.”

“But it looks so good on you. You should keep it.”

“You’re just saying that because I have more on top now, and that’s your thing.”

“That’s true.”

She smiled and took a sip of the small bottle of wine that she had snagged from the honor bar in the room fridge, on her way into the bathroom. She grimaced, and then she handed it to him and he took a swig.

“
Blech!
It’s cooking wine at best,” he observed, rising out of the tub to spit it in the sink and rinsing out the bowl. “Was it made last week?”

“Beggars can’t be choosers,” she rejoined, giggling. “Anyway, this is my second little bottle. Just drink some more and that initial bad taste goes away.”

“No, thanks. One of us has to be sober, so we don’t drown. I’ve never eaten in a bathtub before and I certainly won’t drink alcohol in one. I think I like this hot water jet on my back though,” Sam told her. He enjoyed all the sensations of being with Jessie, always, but she never failed to surprise him with her ideas in creating new atmospheres for enjoyment.

She dragged a toe gently along his inner thigh under the water and watched his face redden as he jerked away, extremely ticklish.

“Hey! Quit that! I’m eating!” he protested. “Can’t a man eat pizza in peace without being seduced?”

“Hey, yourself. Any man who brings pizza into an occupied whirly tub deserves all the seduction he can stand!” she teased.

She added the other foot and then tickled him in the crotch with it and smiled wickedly, as she felt him rise into hardness under her toes.

“Oh!” he said out loud, and put his pizza and paper plate on the bathroom vanity. “Don’t touch me there with your toes! That’s too weird to be touched by feet!”

“Okay, another one of your touchy idiosyncrasies is revealed.”

“Yes, it is. I won’t apologize for it. Feet are weird.”

“Yeah, they are. Let’s see if you can get over this.” Then Jessie raised an eyebrow and she put her plate on the vanity, too. She leaned forward to stroke him with both hands as well as tickling him intimately with her toes.