Michael took a deep breath and sighed, feeling as if he were girding himself for battle.
“Hey there, cowboy,” she said and smiled. As always, she looked absolutely stunning, with her hair teased and styled to perfection, her make-up exquisitely applied. And he noticed that under her long coat she wore the outfit he’d once told her he liked best: tight jeans, red silk blouse, and knee-high black boots.
“Good morning, Ann,” he said evenly. He leaned on the fence, feeling more at ease with something standing between them.
Ann smiled brilliantly. “What? No kiss hello? No ‘happy to see you’?”
Michael said nothing. Right now, Ann was the last person in the world he was happy to see.
“Grinch.” She leaned against the fence from the other side, folding her arms over the top slat. The movement lifted her breasts, widening the gap in her open collar. Michael noticed, then quickly looked away. “Listen, babe—what I said the other night about missing you—I meant it.”
“Ann, we’ve gone over this before—”
“Honey, I know why you brought that woman home. You felt sorry for her. And I think that’s so sweet of you.” Ann reached out and covered his hand with hers. Her palm felt cold against his skin. “I know I acted badly the other night, but it’s just because I still love you.”
Michael slid his hand away from hers. “Annie, don’t—”
“Don’t what? Don’t tell my husband that I love him?”
“I’m not your husband, Ann. How many times do I have to remind you of that?” Michael caught himself, lowering his voice so the kids couldn’t hear. “You walked out on me. On us.”
“I made a mistake.”
“Yes, you did.” Michael looked around, feeling absurdly guilty, and lowered his voice. “We’re not together anymore, Ann. It’s over.
Everything
between us is over.”
“You weren’t complaining the last time I came home—“
“That was six months ago. And
that
was a mistake, too.”
“I want to come back.” Ann took his hands again, this time holding them tightly. “Baby, I still love you. I’ve always loved you. And I miss you so much. I want us to be a family again. The five of us. Together.”
Michael studied Ann for a few long moments. How many times after the divorce had he dreamed of hearing her say those words? How many nights had he dreamed of this instant? Every time they’d slept together after the divorce, he’d hoped she would realize what she was giving up and come back to him. And every time she left to go back to Chicago, it was just as painful as the first time she’d walked away.
“Ann—I can’t do this—”
“Shhh, baby—I know it’s a lot to think about all at once.” Ann smiled and cradled his cheek in her hand, stroking her thumb along his cheekbone. The gesture slammed into Michael with unexpected force, bringing back a flood of memories of better days. “But we can work this out. I know we can.”
And with that Ann leaned over the fence, capturing Michael’s lips in a soft, familiar kiss. It caught him off-guard, shocking him with its unexpected warmth.
“You think about it today,” Ann whispered, nuzzling his nose with hers. “We can talk about all this tonight, when we come home. I know we can work this out, baby.”
Michael couldn’t speak. He managed a faint nod, feeling disembodied as he watched Ann pull away. There seemed to be something like triumph shining in her eyes.
“We’ll be back by eight!” she said, waving cheerily as she headed back to the car. “Bye, babe!”
Michael remained at the fence, frozen there. For the first time in his life, after all of Ann’s sweet talk, after all of her touches and kisses and smiles, he felt absolutely nothing for her.
Because all he could think about was how much he wished it had been Jessy saying those words.
Michael studied the scattered pieces of a build-it-yourself bicycle and groaned, leaning against the wall as he stretched his legs out before him and tossed the instructions to the side.
No use trying to concentrate. His mind kept wandering back to Ann’s visit that morning. And to the argument with Jessy.
After thinking about it all day, he could finally begin to understand her reasons. He’d come on way too strong, said too much too soon. He didn’t even stop to think about the relationship she’d been running from. Maybe she was still in love with the creep.
But he didn’t like to think about that. Something in what remained of the caveman portion of his brain couldn’t stand the thought of Jessy with another man.
Which is probably exactly how Jessy felt about the thought of him and Ann. The realization hit him hard, and he winced at how dumb he had been about the whole situation.
“Michael—?”
Jessy’s voice was so soft that for a moment Michael thought he might have imagined it. He looked up, saw Jessy in the doorway of the garage, and felt his heart go out to her. She had been crying, her eyes red and slightly puffy.
“I think I—
we
—need to talk.”
“Uh, sure.” He fought the urge to apologize for what he’d said that morning. Every word he’d said about the way he felt was true. He saw no need to make excuses. Unfortunately, he also saw no way to make her believe him. Maybe he didn’t know her inside out, but he knew her well enough to sense that once she’d made up her mind about something, nothing less than an act of God could change it.
“So where do we start?” he asked quietly, resting his elbows on his upraised knees. He watched Jessy carefully perch on the edge of a trunk, aware that she purposely kept a good ten feet between them. She wouldn’t meet his gaze, keeping her eyes downcast as she clasped her hands on her lap, tightly lacing her fingers.
“I’ve been thinking about this morning,” she finally said, her voice an unreadable monotone. She looked up, gaze pinning his with remarkable strength. What he had believed to be reticence was actually caution, wariness masquerading as fear. Once again, he wondered exactly what she had gone through in her life, what kind of pain could give someone so young such a world-weary strength.
“And?”
“You were right,” she said.
“About what?”
“About all of it.”
Neither of them spoke for a few moments. Jessy picked up one of the bicycle pedals and absently studied it. Michael sensed that she was gathering courage, choosing her words carefully so this fragile understanding would not be shattered.
“Can you understand why it’s so hard for me to believe you?” she finally said, turning the force of those eyes back to him again.
“Honestly?” Michael smiled faintly, sadly. “No. I can’t.”
The faintest ghost of a smile flickered across Jessy’s lips even as her eyes darkened with sadness. Michael wanted to go to her, to hold her until that sadness went away, but knew he needed to keep his distance. For the moment, at least.
“I don’t mean for this to sound melodramatic,” Jessy said quietly, “but I don’t know how to do this.”
“Do what?”
Jessy hesitated before she spoke, her gaze dipping away from Michael’s.
“I’ve never really been a
part
of something. Family. Couple. Whatever. I’ve been a self-contained unit for a long, long time now.” She looked back to Michael again, a faintly sardonic smile on her lips. “And I’ve never had anyone say that they’ve had any so-called ‘feelings’ for me before. To be completely honest, it scares me.”
“What about—” Michael caught himself before he could finish. Even though he burned to know more about Jessy’s relationship with the mystery man in Kentucky, he knew he didn’t dare push. He had to wait for her to trust him enough to tell him. That’s the way it had to be.
“What?” Jessy looked at him, expectant. “What were you going to say?”
“I was going to ask you about—” Michael sighed in resignation, dreading the answer almost as much as he anticipated it. “I was going to ask about the guy in Kentucky. What about him? Do you still love him?”
The question seemed to hang in the abrupt silence, and Michael wished fiercely that he’d kept his mouth shut. Jessy’s cheeks reddened and she looked away from him, staring down at the floor.
“I guess I would have had to tell you sooner or later.” Jessy took a deep breath and slowly released it, raising her gaze to Michael’s again. “Until last year, I’d never dated in my life. Nobody asked me out. Simple as that. And I was okay with it. I know that I’m not the kind of woman men ask out, so I accepted it. I went to school and worked and read and only felt lonely once in a while. It wasn’t that bad.” Michael remained silent, hearing the pain that Jessy was so desperately trying to disguise.
“My Aunt Amelia was in her eighties when she died,” Jessy continued, voice softer than a whisper. “I took care of her for a long time. It seemed like the house got twice as big and ten times as empty once she was gone. I thought I’d been lonely before, but— this was almost suffocating.”
Jessy fell silent for a moment, staring at her folded hands. Michael noticed that her nails were short, almost gnawed to the quick. He moved over to the trunk to sit beside her.
“Charlie Wilks was a guy I’d gone to high school with,” she continued. “He moved back to town and started teaching gym at my school, so we would have lunch together and talk. He was the first guy who ever seemed interested in me. So when he asked me out to grab some dinner, I went. And it just kind of grew from there. We’d hang out together, watch videos during the week. Anything to keep that house from being so quiet and empty. And that led me to make some bad decisions that I still regret.”
Michael brushed a tendril of hair away from her eyes, allowing his fingertips to linger along her cheek. If she noticed his touch, she didn’t react to it.
“To make a long, ugly story short,” Jessy said, smiling sourly as she looked up from her hands, “things didn’t work out. He moved to Minneapolis a little while back and we kept in touch. I thought I was in love with him, and I missed him like crazy, and so one night when he called me and said all these wonderful things to me about how much he missed me and how much he loved me and how he wished I would come up to live with him—I believed him. The fact that he was drunk when he called never crossed my mind. I wanted to believe that he loved me, so—”
Jessy’s voice faded away as she closed her eyes and leaned her head back against the wall. The sardonic smile remained on her lips, but a tear escaped her eye. At that moment, Michael had never felt so helpless, so distanced from someone.
“I’d just lost my job at the school,” Jessy said, voice soft. “Budget cuts. So I was out of work and living in that quiet old house alone and when Charlie finally said he wanted to be with me—I went. I left everything behind in Kentucky to go to him. Like an idiot.” Jessy opened her eyes and looked at Michael again. “And when I got there, I met his fiancée, a very pretty girl named Kirsten. Charlie hadn’t told me about her because he didn’t want to hurt my feelings. He didn’t even remember calling me that night, much less anything he’d said.”
Michael forced himself to keep breathing evenly, to tamp down the sudden flare of anger he felt for the son of a bitch who’d hurt Jessy. For a few moments, he couldn’t speak. He mimicked Jessy’s pose and leaned his head against the wall, staring at the ceiling. She took a deep breath and sighed, and he did the same.
“Jess—”
“I know.”
“I had no idea.”
Jessy rolled her head to look at him. “Well it’s not exactly the kind of thing a person feels like chatting about. I’d prefer that the world not know how big of an idiot I am. Was. Will inevitably be again.”
Her droll tone and slow smile was enough to momentarily distract him from his anger. Without even being aware of it, he smiled back.
“So what happens now?” Jessy asked.
Michael reached over and took her hand, entwining his fingers with hers. “What do you
want
to happen?”
Jessy gazed at him for a few long moments. “To be honest—I don’t know.”
“Mind a suggestion?”
“I’d welcome one right about now.”
“How about this—” Michael’s gaze caught on hers, holding it for a long moment. “You stay with us for as long as you want—as long as you need. No pressure. No expectations. And whatever happens can just—happen.”
“What if it doesn’t—”
Michael shook his head. “Nope—I don’t want to hear that.”
“You’re going to be stubborn about this, aren’t you?” Jessy grudgingly smiled, lowering her gaze to their joined hands. Her smile slowly faded as she kept her eyes downcast. “But what about Ann?”
“Ann—” Michael took a deep breath and slowly released it. “Ann will just have to deal with it. Whether she likes it or not.”
“What if she tries to take the kids? I don’t want to be responsible for that—”
Michael slipped his finger under Jessy’s chin and tipped her gaze up to his again. “She won’t. I know her. She’ll do what’s best for the kids.”
“What about you?” Jessy didn’t look away from his eyes. “Is it really over between you?”
Michael nodded, remembering how hollow her touch had made him feel earlier that day. Six months ago he would have been on top of the world if Ann had said she wanted to come home again. Now he realized that they had only been using each other.
“Yeah,” he said quietly. “It really is.”
Jessy said nothing, and Michael knew that she was struggling to believe him.
“Everything will work out,” he said quietly, trying to make himself believe it too. “It’ll be okay—trust me.”
The corner of Jessy’s mouth quirked up in a half smile. “Trust me, he says—”
“Yes, I says,” Michael said as he smiled back to her. Amazing how easily smiling came to him when he was with Jessy. “So—now that we’ve got this cleared up, I have a favor to ask you.”
“Anything.”
Without saying another word, Michael leaned closer and brushed his lips against hers, cradling her face in his hands, stroking his fingertips against her soft cheek. She caught her breath in surprise, then sighed into his mouth, her lips opening to him. Michael closed his eyes and allowed himself to react instinctively to the tentative strokes of her tongue against his, deepening the kiss by slow, gentle measures. Her hands moved to his throat, palms flattening against the throb of his pulse, then sliding down to cup his shoulders. He could feel her need to touch, to be touched. But she was holding back—