Loving Jessie (23 page)

“You ever think about what it would have been like
if we’d gone pro?” Out of the corner of his eye, he saw Matt’s eyebrows lift.

“Don’t tell me that watching that poor bastard get sacked is bringing on nostalgia pangs. Because if it is, we can go outside right now and I’ll run over you with the Jeep, just to remind you of how good it feels.”

“Thanks, but I think I remember pretty clearly what it felt like to have my face ground into the turf by a two-hundred-and-fifty-pound defensive end. Eating grass and mud is not high on my list of fun things to do. What I mean is, do you ever wonder where our lives would be if we’d gone into the pros?”

“Well, we’d probably have a lot more money and really bad knees.” Matt arched one brow in question. “Any particular reason for this fit of nostalgia, Kemosabe?”

“Early midlife crisis?” Reilly smiled and shook his head, then scooted lower in the chair, letting his feet slide farther onto the coffee table. “Just thinking about how things might have turned out. If I hadn’t torn up my knee. If I’d gone into the pros.” He rolled his head against the back of the chair and looked at Matt. “How come you didn’t keep playing? You had offers. You had great hands, man.”

“That’s what all the girls said.” Matt’s leer faded, and he lifted one shoulder in a half shrug. “Playing pro ball was your dream, Ri. Not mine. If we’d both been drafted, I’d probably have gone along, but it wasn’t my dream.”

“You and your camera.” Reilly shook his head, his mouth twisting in a half smile. “Guess you got your dream.”

“Guess I did.”

But Matt’s expression made Reilly wonder if the dream had turned out the way he’d thought it would.

“Coffee, anyone?” Jessie’s voice preceded her. She
came into the living room carrying a tray loaded with cups and a lime-green thermal coffeepot with yellow daisies painted on it. She was wearing a long, flowing skirt in some sort of bluey, greenish color, and a soft, fuzzy sweater in a warm shade of brown that made him think of chestnuts and acorns. Late-afternoon sunshine splashed through the front window, pulling gold and red highlights from her hair as she passed through it, and for just a moment Reilly saw her, not just as one of his closest friends but as a woman—a very attractive woman. It was something that had happened several times since she and Matt had gotten engaged, and it made him uncomfortable. He didn’t want to think of Jessie as a woman. Didn’t want to see her that way.

His eyes dropped, and his grin held both relief and humor when he saw the pink bunny slippers that completed the outfit.
This
was his Jess.

“Nice shoes, Jess.”

“I thought so.” She set the tray on the coffee table and reached out to smack his foot. “Get your feet off the table, bum.”

Groaning in protest, Reilly scooted higher in the chair, letting his feet slide to the floor. “You always were pushy.”

“And you always were a slob.”

“Cruel, Jess. You shouldn’t make fun of the tidiness-challenged.”

“Tidiness-challenged?” She lifted laughing eyes to his face. “Is that the politically correct term for a slob?”

“Some of us are born without the neat gene.” He caught her hand as she came around the table, tugging her off balance until she perched on the arm of his chair. “You wouldn’t happen to have a small morsel of food for a starving man, would you?”

“How about some biscotti?”

“Almond?”

“Could be.” She laughed when he grabbed her hand and planted a sloppy kiss on the back of it. She ruffled his hair as she pulled her hand away and stood up. “Idiot.”

“Bottomless pit,” Dana corrected as she carried a plate of biscotti in and set it on the table next to the coffee. “I don’t see how you can even think about eating after that meal.”

“That was hours ago. Besides, you know that they say. There’s always room for biscotti.”

“That’s not how I remember it,” Matt said, swinging his feet to the floor as he sat up. He caught Jessie’s hand, tugging her down to sit next to him on the sofa.

Dana poured the coffee and passed it around. Reilly found himself watching the easy grace of her movements, feeling the familiar twinge of amazement that a woman like this had chosen him and the equally familiar pang of regret for the distance between them. And the always there, steadily growing fear that they were never going to close that distance.

Looking away from her, he saw Matt lay his arm on the back of the sofa. His hand shifted, his thumb rubbing against the curve of Jessie’s ear with an easy intimacy that made Reilly shift uncomfortably. After twenty years of the three of them being friends, he hadn’t quite adjusted to the idea that Matt and Jessie were married. Were lovers.

Jessie tilted her head into Matt’s touch. He smiled down at her as he brushed his fingers across her cheek in a quick, casual caress. It wasn’t a particularly intimate gesture. Over the years, Reilly had certainly done as much or more. He couldn’t even begin to count the num
ber of times he’d hugged Jessie or kissed her. But he’d never looked at her the way Matt was looking at her now, with that warm heat of knowledge in his eyes. Even from where he sat, there was no mistaking the promise in the other man’s eyes, a promise that brought a delicate flush to Jessie’s face.

Irritated, Reilly looked away. He’d watched Jessie grow up. They’d
both
watched her grow up, dammit. He’d always thought of her like a kid sister and had assumed Matt felt the same way. Now Matt was looking at her like… Well, hell, he was looking at her like a man looked at a woman he wanted, a woman he knew he could have.

He didn’t like thinking of the two of them together, didn’t like the idea that there was a Matt-and-Jessie apart from Reilly-and-Matt-and-Jessie or even from Reilly-and-Matt. It made him feel…shut out. Alone.

Great. So now he was jealous of his best friends. His own marriage was screwed, and he was sitting here mentally bitching because his two best friends had a relationship that didn’t include him. Perfect. Just perfect. He downed the last of his coffee without tasting it. As if adultery wasn’t bad enough, now he could add petty jealousy to his list of personal lows.

Life didn’t get much fucking better than this.

Neither Dana nor Reilly spoke during the drive home, but there was nothing unusual about that. Dana couldn’t remember the last time they’d managed to exchange more than the most banal of conversation with each other.
Did
you get a chance to have the car serviced? I picked up
the dry cleaning on the way home.
And the ever-popular
Have you heard the weather report?

Watching Jessie and Matt, the way they were so easy
with each other, the casual touches, the quick smiles, all the myriad bits of wordless communication that went into a relationship—into a marriage—had made her acutely aware of the gap between her and Reilly. Gap? That was like calling the Grand Canyon a little crack in the earth.

She ran her fingers restlessly over the webbing of her seat belt. Her eyes were focused out the windshield, but her thoughts were turned inward, looking back over the last year, seeing the distance growing between them and looking ahead to…To what? More years like the one just past? Empty. Lonely. Silent. Watching her marriage slip further and further out of reach.

She stole a glance at Reilly. She wondered what he would do if she reached out and put her hand on his leg, let it rest there the way she used to do, when they were first married and they hadn’t been able to go for more than a few minutes without touching each other, even if it was just her hand resting on his thigh while he drove. What would he read into the gesture if she touched him now? How could she possibly guess what he might read into it when she didn’t even know what she wanted it to mean?

Leaning back against the leather seat, she turned her head to look out the side window. She did know what she wanted it to mean. She wanted it to mean
I forgive
you
and
Please forgive me
and
Let’s put it all behind us
and
I still love you
. All in all, it was an awful lot to expect from one small touch. If she could be sure he would understand… If she could be sure she really meant it…

She
wanted
to mean it. She’d never wanted anything so much in her life. It wasn’t even the fact that he’d slept with another woman that made her hesitate—or not only that. She could accept,
had
accepted, the act itself. It had been a mistake. She believed him when he said that, be
lieved that he regretted it. She even believed that it would never happen again. Or she believed it as much as she could without letting time prove the truth of it. It would leave a scar, but she could get past that, move on. But she couldn’t quite still the small voice that kept insisting that he wouldn’t have strayed if there hadn’t been something wrong with
her
. That she’d failed. Again. And this time the price hadn’t been a silver crown. It had been her marriage.

Reilly pulled the truck into the garage, where it loomed over Dana’s black Porsche. They’d bought the car the first year they were married, joking that they might as well enjoy a sports car while they could, because once they had a kid, they would have to trade it in on something with less style and more room. The way things were looking now, they could keep the car until it qualified for classic status.

The thought did nothing to cheer his mood as he walked around the front of the truck and followed Dana through the connecting door into the kitchen. She pulled open the refrigerator door and began putting away the leftovers Jessie had insisted on sending home with them. Thanksgiving wasn’t official without at least one leftover turkey dinner, she’d said.

He shut the door behind him and then stood there, watching his wife take neatly labeled plastic containers out of a paper grocery sack and put them in the fridge. She hadn’t bothered to turn on a light. From where he stood, she was a shadow, a silhouette against the pallid glare of the bulb in the refrigerator. She bent forward to put something on a low shelf, and a lock of pale gold hair slid loose from the tidy French braid to swing against the perfect curve of her cheek.

Reilly felt suddenly as if he were choking, as if there
were something huge and painful caught in his throat. Allergies, he told himself as his eyes began to burn. Had to be allergies, because he sure as hell wasn’t standing in his own damned kitchen, driven to tears by the sight of his wife putting away leftover turkey and dressing.

“I don’t think I’ve ever seen anyone actually label leftovers,” Dana commented as she put the last container away. “She even added instructions on how to reheat it all.”

Reilly swallowed, willing his voice to steadiness. “I don’t think she really trusts anyone else to know what to do in a kitchen.”

“If I could cook like that, I probably wouldn’t trust anyone else, either.” Dana pushed the refrigerator shut, plunging the big kitchen into near darkness until she reached out to snap on one of the under-the-cabinet lights.

Reilly watched her shrug out of her black swing coat and then reach up to smooth that stray lock of hair back from her face. He wondered if she had any idea how even her simplest gesture moved him, and then wondered if she would care. What would she do if he closed the distance between them and took her in his arms?

Would she let the barriers drop and melt against him? Push him away? Or close her eyes and think of God and country? There was that damned knot in his throat again. Maybe he was coming down with something. He pushed away from the door.

“I’m going to see if I can catch the news before heading up to bed.” He was careful to walk on the opposite side of the maple island as he crossed the kitchen. He didn’t want to brush against her. Not tonight. Not when he so desperately needed to touch her, to hold her.

“I…guess maybe I’ll take a bath and then go to bed,”
Dana said. He could feel her eyes on him as he walked past, but he didn’t—couldn’t—look at her.

“Fine.” He summoned up something that was almost a smile. He could feel her eyes on him, but he didn’t turn. “I’ll see you in the morning, then. Sleep well.”

“You too,” she said, and he hoped she would take his nod as acknowledgment, because he wasn’t sure he could get his voice to work past the damned knot in his throat.

Dana watched him walk away, opening her eyes wide against the sudden sting of tears. She wanted to call him back. Say something. Anything. But she didn’t have the words, didn’t even know what she wanted to say.

She heard him go into the living room and then the tinny mutter of the television. Swallowing hard against the tightness in her throat, she got down a wineglass and then opened the refrigerator and pulled out the half-full bottle of white wine in the door. She started to pour herself a glass, hesitated a moment, and then picked up the glass, carrying both it and the bottle out of the kitchen with her.

I
n all his years of travel, Matt had seen a lot of different definitions of sexy. Skinny women, plump women, bones through the nose, earlobes stretched to touch the shoulders, tattoos, miniskirts, veils, high heels—it was all a matter of your cultural perspective. And then there were fetishes. Guys who got turned on by eyebrows or big toes or a woman in a plaid apron. Sex appeal was a pretty flexible concept.

Matt had always considered himself a meat-and-potatoes kind of guy when it came to what turned him on. Sheer stockings on a long slender leg. A neckline that dipped low enough to show the swell of a woman’s breasts. Skimpy lingerie on a curvy body. Those were the kinds of things that got his motor humming. Nothing exotic. Nothing surprising. Just your basic male lust triggers.

How had he managed to get this close to forty without realizing what a turn-on plain white cotton could be? Matt’s eyes narrowed as he watched Jessie cross from the bathroom to her dressing table. Her nightgown was de
signed more for function than seduction. Long-sleeved and knee-length, with a row of small pearl buttons up the front and little frills of lace at the collar and cuffs, it was more Victorian England than Victoria’s Secret. So how to explain the quick, electric burst of lust that ran through him.

“I think everything went really well,” Jessie said as she picked up a brush and began to pull it through her hair. “I mean, the food was okay, and everyone seemed to have a nice time.”

“The food was incredible, and everyone had a great time.” He slid off the bed and moved toward her. The feel of the cool wood floor under his bare feet did nothing to soothe the heat rising in his body.

“You don’t think the stuffing had too much sage in it?”

“The stuffing was fine.” Did she really expect him to think about stuffing while she was standing there in that prim little gown with the lamplight catching in her hair?

“I think using half maple syrup in the pecan pie was a good idea.” She tilted her head to one side and brought the brush up underneath her hair. “It added a little extra layer of flavor.”

“Hmm.” He was close enough to smell her now. Soap and shampoo and Jessie. It was an intoxicating combination.

“You know, I might be imagining things, but I sort of thought I saw sparks between Gabe and Lurene.” She was brushing the other side of her hair now, frowning a little. “Wouldn’t that be great? If they got together, I mean?”

“Great.” Personally, he thought the odds of his older brother pulling his nose out of his laptop long enough to get together with anyone were fairly slim, but he wasn’t
going to argue the point with her. He had other things to think about, like how long it would take him to unbutton the neat little row of pearl buttons that marched in such a demure line down the front of her nightgown.

“I know it’s a cliché that a woman gets married and then turns into a compulsive matchmaker but I really do think there was something between them.”

“They both like dark meat?” She’d put the brush down, and he reached out to catch a lock of hair between his thumb and forefinger, letting it slide through his light grasp before picking up another silky strand.

“I was hoping their attraction might go a little deeper than a shared love of poultry.”

“Every relationship has to start somewhere,” he murmured, sliding the fingers of one hand into her hair. God, he loved the feel of her hair on his skin. Silk and satin, alive and warm. His. She was all his.

Jessie tilted her head into his touch, but her head was still buzzing with the day’s events. All the time she’d spent planning the meal had paid off, and everything had turned out just the way she’d hoped. But all the planning in the world couldn’t provide the feeling of family she’d gotten today. Maybe even better than family, because they all liked one another, which wasn’t always the case when it came to blood ties.

She was even starting to think she might like Dana if she gave the other woman half a chance. Not that a ten-minute conversation over a pile of dirty dishes had made them best friends, but there had been a certain…connection between the two of them, something she couldn’t remember feeling before.

“You know, I’m worried about Reilly and Dana,” she said.

Matt stiffened, his fingers curling into a fist in her hair
before he made a conscious effort to relax them. He was standing inches away, with an erection hard enough to pound nails, and she was thinking about
Reilly?

“It’s nothing obvious,” Jessie said, frowning a little as she stared into the mirror. “But there’s just this sort of… I don’t know. A kind of distance between them, maybe?”

Yeah, screwing another woman will really cause problems
with the whole closeness issue
. Matt swallowed the urge to say the words out loud. It wasn’t his place to tell her why there might be a little distance in the McKinnon marriage, even if there was a small, nasty part of him that wanted to do just that, wanted her to know that Reilly’s size-eleven feet were made of clay.
Nice, Latimer. Really
nice. Betray your best
friend’s
confidence because you’ve
got a little green monster riding your back
.

Matt closed his eyes and drew a long, slow breath. Jealous. He was jealous of Reilly. If it hadn’t been so damned pathetic, it would have been funny. During high school and college, there had been a few times when they’d both competed for the same girl, but he’d never felt jealous, never wanted to smash his fist into a wall—or into Reilly’s nose. No, he’d had to save that particular emotion for Jessie. For his wife.
His wife, dammit!

“I hope they’re okay,” Jessie said, frowning into the mirror without really seeing their reflection. She was a little surprised to realize she meant it. Somehow, in the last two months, she’d come to terms with Reilly’s marriage in a way she hadn’t been able to do in the five years that had gone before. “I hate to think of Reilly being unhappy.”

Matt gave one of those noncommittal male grunts that could mean anything or nothing. She opened her mouth, intending to push him for something more substantive.
Reilly was his friend, too, after all, but his hand was on her shoulder, turning her toward him, distracting her.

“Do you know what that nightgown makes me want to do?”

His voice was dark and warm, full of promises. For the first time since entering the bedroom, she really looked at him, her eyes widening a little. He was wearing nothing but a pair of pajama bottoms that rode low on his narrow hips, and the soft cotton did nothing to conceal his arousal. Flushing a little, her breathing suddenly less than steady, she looked up into his face and felt her heart stutter at the hunger in his eyes.

“My nightgown?” She had to swallow twice before she managed to get the words out.

“I want to put my hands on that pretty, lacy collar.” Matt’s fingers curled into the shallow scoop of the neckline. “And I just want to rip it off you.”

The fabric split with a sibilant hiss, punctuated by the clatter of buttons scattering over the wooden floor. Jessie gasped in shock, then gasped again when his hands slid inside the ruined gown to cup her breasts, pinching her suddenly taut nipples between thumb and forefinger.

It was like being plunged from a steaming shower straight into a snowbank, every nerve in her body suddenly painfully alive, shivering with awareness, with need. Her breath hissed out, her head falling back, suddenly too heavy for her neck to support.

Matt buried one hand in her hair, drawing her head back farther, exposing the taut line of her throat. He ravished it with teeth and tongue, leaving little biting kisses from collarbone to jaw. When his mouth closed over hers, it was with bruising force, demanding her response, plundering the sweet depths like a conqueror.

When it came to sex, Jessie might have been a slow
starter, but over the last two months Matt had been more than willing to help her make up for lost time. She’d thought that she had a pretty good grasp of the whole sex-hunger thing, even without years of practice, but she’d never imagined that passion could slam into her with the force of a fist, leaving her gasping for breath, knees weak and skin burning, in the space between one heartbeat and the next.

Matt’s hands were everywhere, hot and hard, molding her, shaping her, branding her. His mouth ravaged hers, stealing what little breath she had before sliding away to taste the delicate shell of her ear and then down to devour the breasts his hands held cupped and ready. It was like being offered up at a feast, she thought, her fingers clinging weakly to his bare shoulders as panicked excitement trembled through her.

She’d never imagined this much want. This much need. For her, she thought as her mind went hazy with need. He wanted
her
this much, needed
her
this much. The knowledge filled her with power, with a matching hunger.

“Mine,” he said, his mouth leaving her breasts long enough to cover hers in an almost angry kiss. His eyes glittered down at her, blue fire and need. His fingers dug into her hips, pulling her forward, until the hot length of him was cradled against the trembling softness of her belly. When had he taken off his pajama bottoms? she wondered, arching to deepen the contact.

“Mine,” he said again, stripping the ruined nightgown off her shoulders and pulling her down to the floor.

Jessie gasped in shock at the feel of the cool wood beneath her back. She arched up and found herself pressed against Matt’s muscled frame.
Talk about your
rock and a hard place
, she thought with her last few functioning brain cells. And then he cupped his hand over
her, fingers sliding deep, and she forgot how to think, nearly forgot how to breathe, as he pressed his thumb against her and sent her, shuddering and crying out, over the first ragged edge.

“Mine,” he whispered against her stomach, his fingers still moving on her, in her, pushing her up again even while she was still trembling in the aftermath of that first climax.

“Matt, please, I can’t. I— Oh!” Her fingers tangled in his hair, tugged in weak protest as his mouth found her. She couldn’t do this again. Not with the echoes of the first time still making her heart stutter. But he ignored her incoherent protests, his tongue tracing her quivering flesh in a gentle, almost soothing touch that was guaranteed to drive her right out of her mind.

Her breath catching in little half sobs, Jessie gave up trying to stop him. She couldn’t stop him. Couldn’t stop this. Didn’t want to. Had to find out what lay at the end of this glittering, shimmering path. Giving in to the need that was driving him, she opened herself further to him, knees falling outward, hips arching in ancient rhythm, her arms stretching over her head, grabbing hold of the bottom of the footboard to anchor herself as he pushed her off the side of the mountain again.

“Mine,” he said, kneeling between her spread thighs, his eyes fierce on hers as he lifted her, pressed against her still-quivering flesh and then filled her with one hard thrust.

Jessie’s breath left her on a thin sound that was nearly a scream, her slim body shuddering under the impact of his entry. She let go of the footboard and reached for him, nails biting into his shoulders as she dragged him down into her arms, needing the weight of his body on hers, needing to feel him, all of him.

She could taste herself on his mouth, feel her heart beating to his rhythm even as her body arched to take him deeper, harder, faster, taking even as she was being taken. It was no longer possible to tell where one began and the other ended. There was no Matt. No Jessie. Just mattandjessie, one entity. Moving. Straining. Reaching. Finding. Oh God, finding.

“Mine.” He ground the word out, his back arching as he gave in to the pulsing demand of release, emptying himself into her.

“Yes,” Jessie moaned, shuddering beneath him. “Yours.” And she followed him right off the edge of the world.

Her hands slid off his damp back to lie limply against the polished oak floor. She wanted to hold him, but she had no strength, no coordination. The floor was hard beneath her back, but the discomfort was a vague, distant thing. She was going to have bruises in the morning, she thought, from the floor, from Matt’s hands on her hips. It didn’t matter. Nothing mattered right now except holding on to this hazy, golden feeling as long as possible.

His body still shuddering with the force of his climax, Matt realized that Jessie lay unmoving beneath him. After everything else he’d done to her, he was probably crushing her. Struggling with muscles that didn’t seem to want to work, he lifted his weight on his elbows. She moaned, a soft little sound of distress that heaped coals on his already aching conscience.

What had he done? His hand trembling, he brushed a lock of hair back from her damp cheek. She turned her face into his touch as if seeking comfort, making his heart twist. He lifted himself away from her, reaching to gather her up into his arms, vague thoughts of warm baths and
hot chocolate and groveled apologies dancing through his head. As if anything could make up for the way he’d… Jesus, he’d fallen on her like an animal.

“Here, baby, let me help you.”

“Hmm?” With a supreme effort of will, Jessie managed to open her eyes. Matt was kneeling over her, his broad shoulders blocking the light as he lifted her. “Help me?”

“I didn’t mean… There’s nothing I can say that… Let me get you up, baby.” Her body was lax in his hold, her head falling back as if too heavy for her neck to support. Regret scored deep claw marks into his already battered conscience.

“That’s okay,” she murmured, letting her eyes close again. “I’m okay here. I’ll move later. Maybe in a day or two.”

Something in her tone made him hesitate. She didn’t sound upset. She sounded…sated. Frowning, he braced her limp weight against his knee and looked down into her face. No tears. No cringing fear. She looked…pleased. Like a woman who’d been well and thoroughly loved.

“Jessie, you aren’t… Aren’t you upset?”

That made her open her eyes again. “About what?”

“About… Well, hell, I just…ravaged you on the floor.”