The Heart of the Matter

by Muriel Jensen

  Adam turned to Jason and asked gravely, “Would you excuse us, Dad?”

  “Of course, Adam.” Jason stood, and with a glance encouraged Eric to do the same as Adam got to his feet and pulled out Brianna’s chair.

  Jason watched his son and the girl walk down the steps side by side, seeing it as a metaphor for what could be ahead of them. At the bottom she winked at Adam and challenged, “Race ya!” and took off, leaving him to pump like fury to catch and eventually overtake her. Jason grinned to himself. Another metaphor for what might lie ahead.

  Eric grabbed his hat off the back of his chair and pulled it on his head. “Well,” he said philosophically, “they didn’t ask me to come, but…” He held up a grubby ball. “I have the only ball that hasn’t ended up in the lake.”

  Jason grinned. “Heavy hitters, huh?”

  Eric smirked. “No. Slow fielders. They end up in the water before we can catch them.”

  Jason caught the back of his shirt. “Hey. Go easy on Adam, okay? In a year or so, some pretty little shortstop is going to stand you on your ear, so give him a break. And don’t tease him in front of the other guys.”

  Eric made a face. “Well, you sure know how to ruin an afternoon.” Then he smiled thinly. “Okay, okay. But if I ever get like that over a girl, you can shoot me.”

  Jason shook his head over the regretful information. “It’s going to happen, son.”

  “Then shoot me now and save me from it.”

  Jason patted his back. “Trust me. When it happens, you’ll be glad I didn’t listen to you. See you later.”

  Eric walked down the porch steps, giving Jason a disbelieving look over his shoulder.

  Laura began to stack dishes. Jason moved to help her, but she stopped him with a hand on his arm. “I’ll carry these inside. The baseball freaks forgot all about dessert, so that means more for us.” She looked greedily at Matt, who was beside himself at the prospect.

  She pulled the angel food cake in front of Jason and handed him a knife and clean dessert plates. “You serve while I take this stuff inside. The berries and yogurt cream are in the cooler under the table.”

  Jason followed her instructions, putting a heaping plate in front of Matt, who was looking pensive. Buttercup woofed from under the table. Jason fixed him a plate, too.

  “Is Laura working for us?” he asked, picking up his fork. “Like Mrs. Fregoza does at home?”

  Jason shook his head. “No. She has a job at the hospital, remember? She’s on vacation, too. She came with us as…our friend.” That was accurate, but largely lacking in detail. Since he didn’t know how to round it out, he left it at that.

  “Well, maybe if we paid her money,” Matt suggested, “she could do this for us all the time. She’s a really good mom. She even makes the healthy stuff taste pretty good.”

  Laura stepped out onto the porch just in time to hear the “mom” remark.

  “If we paid you…” Jason listened with trepidation as Matt took the matter into his own hands “…could you be our mom at home, too?”

  Laura cast a glance at Jason, who tried to tell her silently that Matt was acting on his own. She focused her attention on the boy.

  “Moms don’t become moms for money, Matt,” she explained with a smile, taking the plate Jason handed her. “They do it for…love.” She looked determinedly away from Jason.

  Matt turned to his father. “Then, she can do it, right? Because I love her.”

  Laura reached over to pinch his chin. “There are three other people in your family, Mathew. And moms…moms have to love dads for the whole thing to work.”

  “Oh.” He frowned at his father. “She would have to love you.”

  “Right.”

  The smile came again. “Well, that’s easy. Me and Adam and Eric love you. All we have to do is teach her how.” He turned to Laura. “Okay. You want to learn?”

  “Urn…” She bounced another glance off Jason, this one amused and a little devilish. “Sure.”

  “Okay.” Matt finished a large bite of creamy strawberries, swallowed and put his fork down. “First, you got to do everything he says.”

  “Everything?”

  “Everything. And right away. He doesn’t like it when you wait.”

  “I see.”

  “And you can’t fight in the house,” Matt rattled off.

  “Okay.”

  “And if you fight, you can’t hit. And you can’t say bad words. And you have to put your laundry in the hamper or it doesn’t get done, ‘cause Mrs. Fregoza won’t come looking for it.”

  “Gotcha.” Laura leaned toward Matt on folded arms. “But I think you’re telling me how to make him love you, instead of what makes you love him.”

  “Oh.” Matt considered the change, then didn’t seem to see a distinction. “Well, we love him ‘cause he loves us. He takes care of us, and doesn’t let anybody hurt us, and he plays with us and takes us places and even when he yells at us, it’s because he loves us. That’s what Adam says. And he’s…you know…he’s been around the longest, so he oughta know.”

  Laura looked up into Jason’s face and wasn’t at all surprised to see a somewhat self-satisfied gleam in his eyes. It sounded, she thought, as though he deserved to sport it.

  He leaned toward his son, his eyes filled with the love Matt had just boasted about. “I think you definitely need a raise in your allowance,” he said.

  Laura carried dishes into the kitchen, emotion, elation, excitement all curiously entangled and feeling as though they were caught in her throat.

  As though she needed lessons in how to love Jason Warfield. All evidence so far seemed to prove that as a father, a friend and a flirtation he was just about perfect. But perfection was always just a little worrisome.

  She filled a bowl with cream and tried to lure Sergei out of his carrier with it by placing it far enough away from the carrier that he had to come out to lap it up. He did, then went right back in again.

  She knew he was coming out of the carrier when no one was around because he used the litter box she’d put in the service porch. But she was beginning to worry about his ability to adjust.

  The boys were home in time for supper, which was soft tacos Laura made with highly seasoned ground white turkey meat, corn niblets with peppers and other spicy things, and virgin strawberry margaritas.

  Exhausted from the day’s activities, the boys and the dog were all in bed and asleep by the ten o’clock news.

  Jason found Laura at the table in the kitchen, newspapers spread out under some project that involved paint. He went to look over her shoulder.

  Spread out on the newspaper was a red sweatshirt Patsy had given Matt and that he loved to wear because it had a Power Ranger on the back.

  Laura was painting smaller figures on the front of the shirt, her red hair aflame under the overhead light.

  She glanced up at him and smiled, then turned back to her project. “Matt stained this in a couple of places,” she said in a distracted tone of voice. “So I told him I’d try to cover the stains with paint so he can still wear it.” She put the finishing touch on one figure right in the middle, then leaned back to assess her work. “What do you think?”

  With one hand on the back of her chair and one on the table, he leaned over for a closer look. The figures she’d copied from an open book at her elbow showed that the creative flair she displayed in the kitchen could apply to many other talents, as well. And what was most important, Matt would be delighted that he could wear the shirt again.

  “About you,” Jason asked quietly, “or about the shirt?”

  He was close enough to feel the tension sharpen in her, to feel her subtle intake of breath. She was still for a moment, then reached a steady hand out for the small bottle of paint and the cap and took her time putting it on.

  “The shirt,” she replied finally.

  Jason put both hands on the newspaper and pushed shirt, paints and brushes to the far end of the table. Then he perched on the e
dge beside her. “I think the shirt looks great,” he said. “That was clever of you and will make Matt very happy. And…” He hesitated, wondering if this would hold the import for her that it did for him. “It makes me very happy. Every time I turn around you’re doing just the right thing for one of the boys.”

  Then to his complete and utter surprise, she put the jar of paint down and gave him a smile that was at once sweet and seductive. All he could do for a moment was drink it in.

  “Then that makes me happy,” she said, putting a hand on his knee. Everything inside him began to race.

  He was suddenly spurred to action and used that hand to pull her to her feet as he stood.

  Laura turned away from all her fears and concerns about what could and couldn’t possibly work between them and accepted that she simply had to be in his arms again. She’d done her best to keep a circumspect distance from him when the boys were around, but he was so kind and warm and charming that that was growing increasingly impossible.

  So, there seemed to be nothing else to do but see where this could lead. It didn’t seem possible that it could turn out badly, despite her previous experience with relationships.

  She stopped thinking about it when his head came down to block out the light and he covered her mouth with his. She felt a sigh expelled from deep inside her as his arms closed around her. She wrapped hers around him, drinking in his kiss, offering her response with all the open-hearted love she’d come to feel for him.

  This was the sense of belonging she’d been trying her whole life to recapture.

  Jason felt the change in her, the yielding of suspicions, the extension of trust. And he accepted it for the gift it was.

  He lifted her into his arms, hesitating a moment to allow her to protest if she chose to. But she looped her arms around his neck, rested her head on his shoulder and whispered, “Yes.”

  He carried her up the stairs and turned toward his room.

  Laura had been in it only once to retrieve something Matt had left there and thought it comfortably messy. There’d been notes, probably from his work, strewn across the dresser along with a ceramic openmouthed whale in which he tossed extra change and his watch.

  But the watch was on his wrist now, ticking madly near her ear as he put her on her feet and framed her face in his hands.

  Or was her heart ticking? She couldn’t be sure. Every pulse in her body was beating out of control, marking the seconds until they finally came together.

  “I’m in love with you,” he said quietly to the lively rhythm her body played.

  But she heard every word sharply and clearly and let the sound bathe away her loneliness and fill all the empty places.

  “Jason.” She wrapped her arms around his middle and leaned into him, her cheek against his chest, and just let herself absorb the moment. “I love you, too. Desperately. Enormously.”

  He simply held her for a moment, his lips in her hair. Then his hands went into the back of her shirt and pulled it up. She took a step away from him to raise her arms and let him pull it off.

  He reached behind her again to unhook her light sports bra and toss it at the chair. He covered her breasts with his hands, and she felt a ripple of sensation all the way to her toes.

  Needing desperately to feel him against her, she pulled his T-shirt out of the waistband of his jeans and pushed it up. He yanked it off, dropped it at his feet, then sat on the edge of the bed and pulled her toward him with a finger hooked in the belt loop of her shorts.

  In an instant, they were unbuckled, unbuttoned and unzipped, and sliding down her legs. He held her hand so that she could step out of them, then drew her to him with it as he lay backward on the mattress. She landed on top of him, sprawled over him, and he made a sound of such contentment that she immediately dismissed any thought that her weight made him uncomfortable.

  His hands explored her spine, her waist, the mounds of her hips and the lengths of her thighs.

  She rubbed her upper body against him, the gentle abrasion of his chest hair against her nipples causing another shudder of sensation. She nipped at his earlobe, his chin, his collarbone, then sat up astride him and unbuttoned and unzipped his jeans.

  He could die a happy man now, Jason thought, as she pushed herself backward on him to draw down his jeans and briefs. Except that he had so much to live for.

  The moment he’d kicked off the clothes, he pulled her back to him so that she landed in the crook of his arm. She looked up at him, eyes bright and love-filled in the darkness.

  He stroked her from chin to toes with a slow, gentle hand, tracing and adoring every curve, tenderly exploring every hollow. He loved that she was now drawing shallow breaths and held tightly to him, as though she couldn’t bear to be out of contact with any part of him.

  Laura wondered if a woman could faint from being the focal point of a man’s attention. She felt as though she were no longer in control of her body, but that it answered only to him. Muscles fluttered and skin heated where he touched, and the feminine heart of her felt heavy with waiting.

  Laura ran kisses over his chest, ran loving hands over his back and hips, then dragged her fingernails lightly over him as she brought her hands up again. His groan brought a smile to her lips.

  She wedged a small space between them and eased her fingernails down the front of him. He groaned again, then the sound stopped abruptly and she felt him tense as she approached his manhood. But she changed direction, raking lightly over his thigh.

  In retribution he dipped a finger inside her. She gasped with the magical perfection of that contact.

  She closed her hand over him, wanting him to share the wonder. She whispered his name as her body began to pulse for him, and he said hers in a kind of stunning surprise as he entered her and erupted inside her. She tightened around him, and he felt her tremble with climax and bury her face in his throat.

  They shuddered together for what felt like an eternity. She thought it was like flying through space, and he thought he’d never felt so connected to the earth as he did at that moment—as though he were composed of all the elements that made up trees and mountains—as though he’d stood forever and knew every secret known to man.

  Jason finally rolled onto his back, tucked Laura into the crook of his arm and yanked the top of the quilt over them.

  She kissed his bare shoulder and wrapped her arm around his neck.

  “I can’t believe you happened to me,” she said softly.

  He laughed. “You make me sound like an accident.”

  “You are, kind of.” She kissed his chin in apology. “I mean, you’re not a jock jerk, or an arrogant doctor, or some holistic hypochondriac who wants me for my expertise. You’re an anomaly.”

  “Oh-oh,” he said, playing with her hair, “when Captain Picard talks about anomalies, it’s never a good thing.”

  “Those are ‘sub-space anomalies,’“ she quoted one of the “Star Trek—The Next Generation” captain’s favorite explanations for the unexplainable. “You are a male anomaly.”

  “I didn’t know they came in male and female.”

  She pinched his earlobe. “Jason, I’m telling you that you’re wonderful.”

  “Oh.” He caught a fistful of her hair and tugged gently until she tipped her head back to look at him. “Well, let’s hear it louder and in plain English.”

  She hiked up on an elbow and grinned down on him. “If I say it any louder, I’ll wake the boys.”

  He put a hand over her mouth. “Don’t say that even in jest,” he whispered. “I can’t believe nobody needed anything.”

  She listened to the quiet. “Just lucky, I guess, but you’ll have to be happy with the whispered news that you’re wonderful.”

  He pinched her chin and kissed her. “Actually, you once told me that I was able to be quite eloquent without words.”

  She bit back a smile. “Did I?”

  “You did. As I recall, you said that sometimes actions say what words cannot.” />
  She kissed the base of his throat. “I’ll be happy to,” she said, looking up at him with bland innocence. “But this action…would also require some action on your part, and, well, you’ve already put in quite a performance.”

  He nodded modestly. “Yes, well, I’ve been taking an aerobics class and I have a personal diet consultant who’s quite extraordinary.”

  “So you’re saying….”

  “I’m saying,” he interrupted, pulling her astride him and wrapping his hands around her thighs until he had her right where he wanted her, “speak to me, Laura. Shout.”

  9

  I’ve become an outdoorsman. Not by choice, nor by accident, but by coercion. She’s an outdoors woman. How the mighty have fallen. And the sluggardly.

  —“Warfield’s Battles”

  Laura awoke to the sounds of a great commotion downstairs. There was loud conversation, laughter, the clink of crockery, then the sounds of running footsteps on the stairs and Buttercup barking as he followed. The Warfields had company.

  For a moment she wasn’t sure where she was. She looked around at the rich gray walls and the blue-andgray furnishings and still wasn’t sure. Then she caught the scent of Jason’s cologne on the quilt she’d pulled up to her chin and was suddenly deluged with memories of a long and delicious night.

  Her clothes were mussy but they would have to do. She could hear Adam and Eric shouting at each other excitedly from their rooms, so she doubted she could run around the gallery to her room without being seen.

  But if she went down the stairs on this side, the boys wouldn’t know she’d come from their father’s room.

  So the company, whoever they were, would have to see her in mussy clothes.

  She dressed, combed her hair and tied it back with a clip Jason had pulled out of her hair last night. She went downstairs, trying to school her features into a look of dignity, so that whoever was visiting wouldn’t be able to read in them that she’d just spent a wild night with her host.

  She followed the sounds of laughter in the kitchen where Jason’s sister Patsy sat at the table opposite a thickly built man with graying hair and glasses.