Love

by Sherryl Woods

  Dana smiled. “And you’re still slaying them, aren’t you?”

  “I’m trying,” he admitted.

  “Why?”

  “I think you know the answer to that. Do you want me to say it out loud?”

  “No,” she said hurriedly. Somehow she knew what he’d say. And hearing him say aloud that he loved her here in this wonderful house, in this perfect setting would distract her from her goals. It would make her dreams actually seem within her grasp.

  And anyone from her neighborhood knew all too well that dreams didn’t come true, not unless you made them happen yourself. If Jason gave them to her, she would lose something, though exactly what was beginning to elude her.

  Chapter Eleven

  Dana had every intention of starting her new job as scheduled on Monday. Jason had other ideas. In fact, he had the perfect ruse. He convinced John Lansing to let her complete a project for him before filling out all the necessary paperwork at the Lansing Agency. That left her free to spend the entire day Monday making arrangements for Sammy to transfer to a new school. Last night she and Jason had devoted long hours to arguing about the transfer. She’d insisted that there was no point in pulling him out of his old school until she knew where they were going to be moving. Jason had countered that leaving her brother where he was would defeat the whole purpose of getting them out of the old neighborhood.

  Even though they’d disagreed, Dana had felt an odd sense of relief at being able to share the burden of decision making. It frightened her how easily Jason was weaving himself into the fabric of her life, how readily she was willing to relinquish her responsibilities. It just proved what she’d known all along: she didn’t dare let a man like Jason into her life. It would make her weak.

  As it turned out, Sammy’s suspension complicated matters. The new school didn’t want to take him until he’d completed the punishment. Overhearing Dana’s dilemma, Mrs. Willis offered to tutor Sammy until he could start classes again. Since she also offered to reward him with chocolate chip cookies, Sammy readily agreed to continue his lessons at home.

  Dana watched in astonishment as Sammy and the housekeeper immediately disappeared into the kitchen. Sammy had his arm draped around the older woman’s shoulders as he tried to convince her that he needed food first if he was to study properly. Chuckling, Mrs. Willis agreed. She seemed destined to play the same grandmotherly role in his life that Mrs. Finch played in Dana’s.

  With Sammy settled for the moment, Dana spent the remainder of the afternoon at loose ends, wandering through the house. It was the first time she could recall when she didn’t have a dozen things that had to be done. She found a leather-bound copy of Treasure Island in one of the living room shelves and settled into the window seat to read. Caught up in the adventure, and imagining Jason reading the story in the very same place as a boy, made her feel closer to him than ever. It was a dangerous allure.

  Jason didn’t arrive home until after six. From her place on the window seat, Dana watched him, feeling unexpectedly shy as he came into the living room looking for her. As if they were an old married couple, he dropped a kiss on her brow, then handed Sammy a bag filled with the latest computer games.

  Sammy emptied them onto the sofa, his eyes widening. “Hey, these are radical! Are they for me?”

  Jason grinned. “They’re yours. Maybe you can teach me to play them after dinner.”

  “Sure. Hey, sis, did you see?”

  “I saw.” She shot him a pointed glance. Sammy responded with a puzzled expression, then jumped up.

  “Oh, yeah.” He held out his hand to Jason. “Thanks, man.”

  “You’re welcome. I thought maybe they’d keep you busy until it’s time to go back to school.”

  Sammy groaned. “Who’s got spare time? Did you know Mrs. W. used to be a teacher? She gave me more assignments than I ever had in school. I’ll be up till midnight.”

  Anxious to get to the computer games, neither man seemed inclined to waste much time lingering over the housekeeper’s beef stew. Amused that Jason seemed every bit as excited as Sammy, Dana went back to her place in the window seat to watch the two of them as they hunched over the computer. Sammy couldn’t believe that Jason had never played a computer game before. He delighted in patiently explaining the rules, then beating the daylights out of Jason. Listening to their heated exchanges, she decided it was a toss-up which one was influencing the other.

  Curious about the games, she got up and took a closer look. The game they were so intent on masked a geography lesson, one of Sammy’s poorest subjects.

  “Pretty sly,” she told Jason, when Sammy finally went to his room, leaving the two of them alone.

  Jason came over and nudged her legs aside, so he could sit across from her. Dana was all too aware of the way their knees intimately bumped, her faded jeans a sharp contrast to his expensive wool slacks.

  “I haven’t the foggiest idea what you’re talking about,” Jason said.

  “Oh, really? I suppose it was just an accident that the game focused on geography.”

  “True,” he said, his expression all innocence. “It looked like fun. I’d seen a lot about it in magazines and on public television. I’d just never gotten around to trying it.”

  “You’re a crummy liar, but thank you. For the first time, I think Sammy realized learning could be fun. He’s never loved books the way I have. He’s just wanted to experience things, to see them firsthand.”

  Jason tucked her sock-clad feet in his lap and began massaging them. The deep strokes were both soothing and oddly exciting. Tingles shot from her toes straight to her midsection.

  “There are some who say that his way is right, that people who get all their education from books never really learn about living,” he said as if it were no more than an idle thought. His caresses said otherwise.

  Dana’s breath had gone perfectly still. “Is that what you think? Do you think I’ve been missing out on life?”

  His gaze met hers. “It doesn’t really matter what I think. What do you think?”

  Dana had to try very hard to stay focused on the train of the conversation. “Maybe I’ve missed out on some things, but not the important ones.”

  Jason’s hands slid beyond her feet and began a hypnotic caress of the bare skin just above her socks. She’d had no idea just how shivery sensitive that part of her anatomy was.

  “What about love?” he said as matter-of-factly as if he’d asked about the likelihood of snow. “Isn’t that one of the most important things?”

  “I suppose. What about it?” she asked, her voice suddenly choked. That increasingly familiar ache was back again, that deep-down need that was aroused in her by Jason’s most casual touches.

  “Don’t you think that’s one of those things you have to experience to understand? You can read about it, but until you’ve felt your heart open up to another person, you don’t really know what it is. I’m just beginning to realize that myself. How about you?”

  “Maybe.” Her voice was a near whisper as she succumbed to the delicious warmth spreading through her. With the fire crackling in the fireplace and Jason’s intoxicating touches, she felt as if she’d discovered paradise. If ever she was going to allow herself to love a man, it would be this one. He could be exasperating and arrogant and stuffy, but his heart and his touch were gentle.

  His fingers came to rest just above her knee. Her stomach quivered in anticipation. Yet nothing more happened.

  Why wasn’t he finishing what he started? she wondered, filled with a frustration she couldn’t quite explain. Why, for the first time in her life, wasn’t she afraid of what might happen next? Could it be that she was actually ready to admit she needed another person in her life and that Jason Halloran was that person?

  Fending off male advances had become second nature to her by the time she was twelve. The guys in her neighborhood hadn’t been respectful of age or innocence. Dana had known intuitively that the first time she gave any one of them
the slightest encouragement, she would become fair game for them all. That’s when she’d learned exactly where to hit to prove that no meant no.

  To her confusion, she wasn’t the least bit interested in saying no now. On some level she couldn’t explain, it was as if she’d waited her whole life for this moment, yet Jason was holding back. His touches teased, inflamed, then left her wanting. Agitated by the sensations and her own unexpected response to them, she dared to meet Jason’s gaze. At once she saw the turmoil, saw her own turbulent desire reflected there.

  “Jason?”

  “What?”

  “I think I need you to kiss me.”

  A half smile came and went, then his mouth slowly covered hers with exquisite tenderness. His tongue coaxed her lips apart, and Dana’s senses went spinning. It was a response she’d come to expect and, again, she wasn’t afraid.

  Nor was she satisfied. There was a sweetness to the kiss, a gentle persuasiveness, but she knew there had to be more, and she wanted it, desired it with a fierce intensity that shook her to her very core. She wasn’t ready to label the wanting love, wasn’t ready to think at all beyond tonight. Tonight, though, she wanted to be held in Jason’s arms.

  The daring prospect was fraught with obstacles. Sammy, for one. She couldn’t make love to Jason with her brother in the same house. And what would Mrs. Willis think if she discovered that Dana’s bed hadn’t been slept in?

  Those were just excuses, she told herself. Jason’s master suite was at the opposite end of the house from the rooms she and Sammy had taken. As for the housekeeper, Mrs. Willis wouldn’t see anything out of the ordinary if Dana’s room was tidy when she first entered it tomorrow. Dana was too used to making her own bed to leave it for someone else to do. Even this morning everything had been neatly in place before she’d ever walked out the door. Though Mrs. Willis was clearly inclined to pamper her while she was there, Dana had explained that she was used to doing things for herself.

  There was nothing, then, to stand in the way of her spending the night with Jason. Except maybe Jason himself. She gazed at him and saw the banked desire still lingering in his eyes, felt the hesitation in his touch. He was every bit as troubled by the prospect of taking this next step as she was. Maybe it was his willingness to hold back that touched that part of her heart that had always said no in the past. She would never find a man who cared more about her feelings than Jason.

  Sliding toward him, she took his face in her hands and slanted her mouth across his. She felt the heat climb in his cheeks, felt the urgency mount in his kiss as he matched her hunger.

  Then his hands covered hers and he pulled back, no more than an inch, but the separation was too much. She felt bereft. She tried to close the gap, but he held back. “What do you want, Dana?”

  “You know,” she said, lost in the first whisper of a smoldering sensuality she was just beginning to discover. “Can’t you tell?”

  “I want you to say it. I need to know that you mean it.”

  She swallowed hard. “I want you to make love to me.” She began faintly, but by the end she managed to sound bold and convincing.

  Against her hands, Jason’s fingers trembled. “You’re sure?”

  “Very sure.”

  “You aren’t doing this out of some misguided sense of obligation because you’re staying here?”

  “I’m doing it because I think I’ll fly apart if I don’t experience what it’s like to have you love me.”

  The words had come from her heart—her poor, misguided and probably soon-to-be-broken heart. Apparently they were enough. Jason scooped her into his arms and carried her up the steps. “You can back out anytime,” he said, but the look in his eyes pleaded with her not to.

  There was no chance she was going to change her mind now, anyway. Dana felt a shimmering feminine awareness that pulled like a magnet. It was all she could do to keep her hands from roaming down Jason’s shoulders to explore his chest. Curiosity mixed with desire made her bold. Whatever shyness she might have been expected to feel had long since vanished, swept away by wave after wave of deep longing. All of the warnings she’d given herself just this morning seemed unimportant when compared to the discoveries she was about to make—about herself, about Jason, about making love.

  With the door to Jason’s room firmly locked behind them, she stood on tiptoe to draw him into a kiss from which there could be no retreat. She was desperate to know where passion led, where this tantalizing spiral of white-hot sensation peaked.

  Lifting Dana gently and putting her on the bed, Jason scanned her face, his gaze intent. “No regrets?”

  “Not now. Not later,” she promised. And if there were, she would keep them to herself, knowing instinctively that there would be worse regrets if they never shared this moment.

  His fingers looped under the hem of her sweater, then slowly drew it over her head. The casual brush of his fingers against her bare midriff left a trail of heat. He traced the swell of her breasts, teasing until she was sure she would die if his touch didn’t reach the sensitized nipples. With one deft movement, he unhooked her bra and for a moment he simply stared, his expression rapt. If Dana had ever worried about her attractiveness, that look put her worries to rest. Fascinated, he touched one swollen, rosy peak, first with the pad of his thumb, then with his tongue. Dana’s back arched as a riot of new sensations shimmered through her.

  But for every feathered touch and every deep caress, satisfaction was followed too quickly by a rising sense of need. Like the climber who always discovers new peaks the instant the last has been attained, Dana discovered that each glorious, thrilling sensation only hinted at one even more spectacular.

  She lost track of where one stroke ended and the next began, caught up instead in a never-ending wave that crested, then eased gently away before building again, higher than ever. Still there was this emptiness that she didn’t understand.

  Jason’s flesh burned every bit as hot as her own. His desire was written on his face, but he seemed determined to take his time, determined to tease and taunt until neither of them could wait an instant longer for fulfillment. That time was fast approaching.

  Up until the last possible second, Dana waited for the fear to ruin what was happening between them. She was so sure that her conscience and common sense would kick in and rob her of Jason’s tenderness, of his love. As her body lifted toward his, seeking the elusive fulfillment he withheld, she realized that behind the desire in his eyes there was worry. He, too, was waiting for her to change her mind, giving her time for thought to overrule sensation.

  She reached for him then, boldly caressing, telling him without words that there would be no retreat. He couldn’t hold back a low moan as her strokes became more insistent. And then he was chuckling.

  “I get the message,” he murmured as he held himself above her.

  “I certainly hope so,” she said. “There’s a lot to be said for anticipation, but I think it’s time you make a commitment.”

  The word with its multitude of meanings crept out before she realized how Jason would interpret it. Satisfaction flared in his eyes as he eased into her at last. There was one brief, searing instant of unexpected pain, then Dana was filled with that sense of completion that had eluded her for so long. Lost to the sensations, she forgot all about her foolish slip of tongue, forgot everything except the wild racing of her heart, the rush of heat and, finally, the most incredible release—as if she’d just discovered a way to catapult over rainbows.

  The night was all about giving—and learning to accept. It was morning before her last teasing remark came back to haunt her. She woke to find Jason propped up on his elbow, staring at her. His sleepy, sensual smile made her stomach flip over.

  “So, let’s talk about commitment,” he said, drawing a fingertip over her breast.

  “I can’t talk about anything when you’re doing that,” she said.

  To her regret he opted for talking over touching. “How do you feel about com
mitment?”

  Suddenly all too aware of the silver-framed family photographs that lined his dresser, she was shaking her head before the first words were out of his mouth. “Are we talking in general? I think it’s a fine idea…for some people.”

  “But not for you?”

  “Not for me.”

  “Then why are we here?” he demanded mildly. “Why did you make the choice to make love last night, when it’s a choice you’ve obviously never made before?”

  “Because I…” She saw the expectant look on his face, but she couldn’t bring herself to say the words she knew he wanted to hear. “Because I trust you. Isn’t that enough for now?” she said wistfully.

  For a minute his gaze clashed with hers, but then he sighed. “For now,” he agreed. “But I want more than an occasional night in bed with you, Dana.”

  “It wasn’t all that long ago that you dismissed me as a flake. Why the abrupt change?”

  “I wish I could explain it,” he said. “All I know is that for the past few weeks I’ve felt alive for the first time in months. You’ve brought out a side of me I never even knew existed. I may be a lot of things, Dana, but I’m not stupid. I recognize a good thing when I have it within my grasp. I will give you anything you ask, do anything you want, but I’m not known for my patience.”

  “Tell me about it,” she muttered.

  He scowled at her. “All I’m trying to say is that I can wait only so long.”

  Dana was shaken by the unspoken threat underlying his words, but she put on her bravest front and resorted to teasing. “You’ll do anything, huh?”

  “Anything,” he vowed.

  “Well, that presents some intriguing possibilities.”

  There was just enough time for him to show her one of them before they left for work.