“I just broke down a damned door to get to you,” he snarled. “I’m sure as hell not going away now.” He took her by the shoulders and turned her to face him. She jerked away as if scalded.
“Don’t look at me. I don’t want you to see me cry.”
“Why the hell not?”
“Because I look ugly.”
“Don’t be an idiot,” he said, wrapping his arms around her and burying his face in her hair. “You could never look ugly to me. Do you think I married you for your looks?” She stiffened, and he drew back slowly, fingers under her chin, forcing her to look up at him. “You do think that,” he said incredulously.
“It’s… Why else would you marry me?” she asked finally.
“Why else?” Reilly stared at her and wondered how he could have missed this. How could he have been married to her for all these years and never have seen this? He wanted to be angry that she could think so little of him, but, looking into her eyes, he saw nothing but acceptance, as if she knew her looks were all she had to offer.
“The first time I saw you, I thought you were the most beautiful woman I’d ever seen.”
Dana flinched and tried to turn away, but he refused to let her, cupping his hand against her cheek, making her look at him. “Listen to me. I’m a guy, and that pretty much guarantees that I think with my zipper first. I asked you out, and I could hardly believe it when you said yes. It was like having Snow White agree to date the guy who digs the castle moat.” He put his finger over her lips, stilling her protest. “All through dinner, I looked at you and wondered if I was going to be able to get you into bed. I’m not sure I even paid all that much attention to what we were talking about. And then, on the way out of the restaurant, your heel caught on that crack in the tile and you fell into the fountain. Remember?”
“I remember feeling like a total idiot,” Dana muttered.
“But you looked so damned cute, sitting there with your hair hanging in your face and water dripping off your nose. And instead of getting mad or bursting into tears, you started to laugh. I think that’s when I started falling in love with you.”
“Because I looked like a drowned rat?”
“Because you looked human. Touchable. Not just an ice princess but a real, live woman, a woman I wanted to get to know better.” He slid his fingers through her hair, feeling the short strands curl around his hand. “I won’t tell you that I don’t notice how you look, that I don’t feel a little smug when other men look at you, but I’d still love you if you were bald and had warts.”
Dana laughed, choked on a little sob and pressed her face into the soft flannel of his shirt. “That’s ridiculous. You would never have noticed me in the first place if I were bald and had warts.”
“Well, I think I’d have noticed you. Bald, warty women aren’t all that common, you know.”
She laughed again, and Reilly felt something lost and aching in his heart start to heal. He pressed his cheek against the top of her head and breathed in the scent of her. It was going to be all right. For the first time in more than a year, he could really believe it was going to be all right.
Jessie was in the kitchen when Matt let himself in the front door. He could hear her moving around. Something clattered in the sink, and he smiled at her annoyed mutter. She would have heard the Jeep pull up, but she didn’t come out to see if he was okay, even though she must have been worried that he’d been out all night. That was okay. It was going to take a little while to get everything back on an even keel, but it was going to happen.
He glanced between the kitchen and the stairs, torn between wanting to see Jessie and wanting a shower. The shower won, but only because he didn’t want to have a significant, possibly life-altering discussion in clothes he’d been wearing for twenty-four hours.
Twenty minutes later, he was back down, shaved, showered, and wearing fresh jeans and a blue denim shirt. Jessie had her back to the door when he entered the kitchen, and Matt let his eyes linger on her. She was wearing a pair of khaki-colored leggings and a bulky sweater the color of summer skies. Her hair was caught back with two clips in the shape of multicolored butterflies, and those ridiculous pink bunny slippers completed the outfit.
There was a cake cooling on the counter, which told him that she’d been up quite a while and that she was worried about something. Jessie always cooked when she was worried. Providing Ernie’s with desserts gave her a safe outlet for the end result. While he watched, she put bacon in a skillet and used a paper towel to rub grease over the waffle iron.
Home, he thought. This was what it felt like to come home. It wasn’t a place, or even the fact that they were married and expecting a child, though those things were part of it. It was a tangled web of emotion and place and need and… Jessie. In the end, it all came down to Jessie.
“I love you.” He hadn’t planned to say the words. They just spilled out of his heart. He saw her jump and turn to look at him, her eyes wide and shocked, a strip of bacon dangling from the fork she held.
“What?”
“I said I love you. I know that wasn’t part of the bargain, and it’s okay if you don’t…oof!” Between one breath and the next, he found himself with his arms full of sobbing, babbling Jessie. He took a moment to be thankful that she’d dropped the fork or he might have found himself with bacon in his hair.
“Oh my God! I can’t believe you said it. Me too. I mean, I love you, too. I was going to say it first, because I just figured it out and I thought you should know. I mean, I always knew I loved you, but I didn’t know I loved you. You know, with a capital ‘L.’ And then, when I did figure it out, you didn’t come home and I was afraid that might be some sort of sign, except I don’t really believe in signs like that. So I was going to tell you anyway.” She was pressing wild kisses along his jaw as she talked, words spilling out faster than he could hear. “I was making waffles because I know you love them, and then I thought we could talk and I—”
Matt wound his fingers into the thick weight of her hair, tilted her head back and silenced her with his mouth. She melted against him, arms coming up to wind around his neck, her slim body pressed close to his. He kissed her until they were both breathless and dizzy.
“You’re the only woman I know who would plan a seduction around waffles,” he muttered, tracing the line of her eyebrows with his mouth.
“I’ve heard the way to a man’s heart is through his stomach,” she said breathlessly.
“I’d love you even if you couldn’t cook.”
She drew back far enough to look into his eyes. “Then you don’t mind if I never make another chocolate cake?”
His eyes slid away from hers, his expression uneasy. “Well…”
“Cupboard love,” she whispered against his mouth. “I knew it all along.”
Epilogue
“That was a smile,” Matt said firmly. “That was definitely a smile.”
“According to the baby books—” Jessie began.
“What do they know?” he interrupted scornfully. “Who are you going to believe, some writer, a stranger, or her father? Do you think I can’t tell the difference between gas pains and a smile?”
Jessie decided it was safest to treat that as a rhetorical question and made a noncommittal noise. If Matt wanted to believe their three-week-old daughter was smiling at him, who was she to argue?
A small child plunged into her path, trailing high-pitched giggles in his wake. Jessie stepped around him, then had to detour around two picnic tables and a very fat dog of uncertain pedigree before she rejoined Matt.
The Labor Day picnic was in full swing. She’d been concerned about bringing Sara, afraid there might be too much noise, too many people, too much everything, but, held close in her father’s arms, Sara seemed oblivious to her surroundings, blue eyes focused intently on Matt’s face.
“Daddy’s girl already,” Jessie complained.
Matt grinned. “Of course she is. That’s because she’s a child of exceptional
intelligence.”
“I thought maybe it was because she knew a sucker when she saw one,” Jessie said dryly.
“That too.” Matt glanced at her, grinning.
Looking at the two of them, Jessie felt an almost painful upwelling of love. If Sara was going to smile at anyone, it would probably be her father. She responded to his voice as readily as she did to her mother’s, her fuzzy gaze seeking him out whenever he was nearby. And he made it a point to be nearby most of the time.
Contrary to the cliché of the nervous father, Matt handled Sara with an easy competence that Jessie envied. It struck her as ironic that she’d spent half her life dreaming of motherhood, and yet, now that it was a reality, she felt clumsy and hopelessly unprepared for the reality that was Sara Marie Latimer. Yet Matt took to fatherhood as if he’d been handling newborns all his life. Diapers, baths, the terrifying delicacy of this tiny new person—none of it fazed him, while she was still reeling with the overwhelming weight of the responsibility.
“Breathe.” Matt’s hand caught hers, his fingers squeezing gently. “Deep breath.”
Jessie obeyed automatically, taking a deep breath and letting it out on a little laugh. He had a knack for sensing when she was teetering on the brink of full-blown panic, and the reminder to breathe had become a sort of joke with them, shorthand for all the reassurances he would offer her if they were alone.
“Do you know how annoying it is that you aren’t panicking along with me?” she complained, moving closer to him as they walked past the barbecue pit.
“I figure I’ll do my panicking later, like maybe when she’s sixteen and learning to drive. If she takes after her mother…” He shuddered.
“It was one little tree,” Jessie protested, scowling. “And it didn’t even leave a very big dent.”
“That’s your story, and you should stick to it.” Matt tugged her out of the path of a pair of teenagers who were so absorbed in each other that they were oblivious to everyone and everything else.
“Young love is so sweet,” Jessie said with a sentimental sigh.
Matt raised her hand to his mouth and nibbled on her knuckles. “Old love ain’t half bad.”
“Stop it, you two. This is a family event.” Reilly’s voice was teasing. He left the blanket where Dana was sitting and came over to take the picnic basket from Jessie, pausing to peer down at Sara, who pursed her rosebud mouth at him and made smacking noises.
Family, Jessie thought as she settled on the blanket, lifting her hands to take the baby from Matt. A year ago she’d been dreaming of having a family, only half believing it would happen, more than half afraid that marrying Matt was the biggest mistake of her life. Instead it was the best thing she’d ever done, she thought as she watched Matt and Reilly squabble over the picnic basket. Dana was sitting on one corner of the blanket, managing to look elegant even in a maternity top.
Things hadn’t turned out the way she’d expected, Jessie thought, shifting Sara higher against her chest, bending her head to sniff the sweet baby smell of her daughter. She had the husband and baby she’d wanted, but she’d figured out that family was so much more than a wedding ring or even giving birth. Family was the people you cared about, the ones you knew you could count on, who counted on you.
Lifting her head, she saw Matt watching her, saw the love in his eyes. Her mouth curved. Husband. Best friend. Lover. It was a hell of a package. And it was all hers.
All the characters in this book have no existence outside the imagination of the author, and have no relation whatsoever to anyone bearing the same name or names. They are not even distantly inspired by any individual known or unknown to the author, and all the incidents are pure invention.
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First published in Great Britain 2009.
MIRA Books, Eton House, 18-24 Paradise Road,
Richmond, Surrey, TW9 1SR
© Dallas Schulze 2002
ISBN: 9781408907351
Loving Jessie Page 33