by Jennie Adams
There were a dozen reasons why she should go home. Her response to Dan’s nearness was top of the list but she couldn’t make herself get up, or say the words. And the longer she stayed there, the more aware of Dan she became, and the more she sensed that he was equally aware of her.
Yet Dan had pushed her away, and he hadn’t wanted the complication. Oh, Jess didn’t know what to make of her feelings, or of what she thought she might sense in him.
At about the halfway point of the story, Dan glanced her way and she turned her head. He clicked off the television and tossed the remote down. ‘What are we going to do, Jess? I thought I was making it up, that it couldn’t be all that it is, that I couldn’t…want you as much as I do, but it just doesn’t go away, does it?’
‘No.’ His words to her had been so sincere. Jess might have held her own need at bay if it hadn’t been for that. She might have held away from him. ‘It doesn’t go away.’
He kissed her then, and Jess wound her arms around his neck and kissed him back. She wanted him. She had done for ages, since they first met really, and she was tired of fighting her feelings, tired of holding back when all she wanted and needed was to be in his arms. In some ways she needed that even more because of Luke’s resistance to her presence in his father’s life.
Dan raised his lips from hers. ‘You work for me, Jess, and you’re so much younger. I don’t want to make you feel—’
Don’t do it, Jessica. Don’t invest yourself emotionally, and don’t let this end up where it wants to end physically. It won’t mean the same thing to him.
‘I want this, Dan.’ Jess spoke firmly. ‘I want to be in your arms tonight while it’s just us. It doesn’t have to be more than that. Just…tonight.’
Jess pushed aside her concerns and told herself to see it as a gift.
Dan stroked her hair away from her face with his hand and his gaze sought hers. There were emotions in his eyes. Questions, concerns, need and an edge of uncertainty. He too seemed to push it all aside. He drew a deep breath and their kisses deepened.
Jess melted into his arms in a tangle of emotions that she wouldn’t face. Not now. Not yet. Her hands touched his chest through the cloth of his shirt. His muscles were firm beneath her fingertips. He smelled of blunted aftershave and sunshine and Dan. She closed her eyes and didn’t even notice that the sweetness of his kisses had pushed through the walls she’d shored up around her heart.
‘Jess.’ Dan rose from the couch where he’d been kissing her. He needed to take her to his bed and take what they’d begun to its fulfilment and after that…
After that it would be over. Jess had said it. “Just tonight.” She knew what she wanted, and for tonight, while his children weren’t here, what harm were they doing?
Dan pushed his own thoughts down. He only wanted to focus on the moment. If he was avoiding issues, that was one more thing he didn’t want to acknowledge.
He threw back the cover on his bed and Jess stood at the edge of it. He took her hands and lifted them to his chest. She pushed his shirt over his head and her nails scraped lightly over his skin. Need rushed through Dan in a tight wave.
His hands shook as he removed Jess’s sleeveless top. A knot tightened inside him but Jess looked into his eyes, and her gaze was soft and welcoming.
Jess pushed her skirt down over her hips, and Dan removed the rest of their clothes slowly, touching every part of her as it was revealed. He drew her down on the bed and took her into his arms…
‘Dan. Please.’ Jess’s hands clasped his shoulders and she acknowledged her need for his hold and his touch and his possession.
His eyes were soft and filled with desire, blurred with passion held in check. Jess wanted him to give all of that to her, and, if she was fooling herself that she would still hold that gift tomorrow, she couldn’t care. She needed this. The chance to give herself to him and have him give himself to her. She needed it more than she wanted to acknowledge.
So she didn’t. She just opened her arms to him, and when he led them to their zenith Jess looked into his eyes and those walls built around her heart didn’t hold together as well as they should. She had a suspicion that she might have let Dan find his way further into all those parts of herself that she’d needed to protect after Peter than she’d meant to.
‘Stay, Jess.’ His hands soothed her, stroked across her body even as he pushed out a breath and a well of tension that had perhaps been in both of them, washed away on their tide of fulfilment. Lethargy followed for Jess.
She tucked her head against his chest and his arms came around her. Dan eased into sleep and she lay there and closed her eyes. She didn’t want to think because there had been too much thinking about too many things in her life and she had not found any answers. Now she had hope with Ella’s grandparents and she would survive at whatever home she found to live in.
Would she go on working for Dan? Was it best to do that, or to walk away after what had happened tonight?
How could she walk away when he was helping her to afford to live by the income his employment provided?
She should have thought of that before she made love with him! But Jess couldn’t regret it. She pressed her face to his chest and she didn’t regret any of it.
‘Good morning. I woke up because of Ella so I thought I’d get started early on breakfast and then I’ve written a shopping list. If you’ll give me the card, I’ll take Ella with me to the supermarket. You’ll need to be well supplied for when the children get back, and your sister and brother-in-law might decide to stay as well.’
Jess put a cup of tea in front of Dan and pushed the breakfast cereal and milk his way. She bent to pick Ella up off the floor, sat down with her and started to spoon baby cereal into her mouth.
Jess’s head was bent over the task and she was going determinedly about her business, but her hand shook as she fed her daughter.
‘Jess.’ Dan didn’t know what to say to her. He was shocked by how he had felt when they made love. Dan had told himself it was just about sex. He was attracted to her. It had been a long time. He’d…justified it in that way. But it hadn’t felt like just sex. He didn’t know what he had felt.
‘Du—du-u-u!’ Ella wriggled on Jess’s lap and Jess set her down on the floor.
She still didn’t meet Dan’s gaze. What could he say to her? How did he reassure her that what happened—? Dan didn’t even know what he wanted to say. What they’d shared had stunned him, but it had been…ill advised. And Dan felt guilt, and didn’t want to have to confront that feeling.
‘Du—Da-a-a—’
Dan glanced down in just enough time to see Ella pull herself up on the leg of the chair Jess was sitting on. She reached out first one hand towards him and then the other.
Ella tottered forward.
Jess gasped and held her breath.
Dan shot his hands out. ‘Come on, Ella. Look what you’re doing. You’re walking. All by yourself.’
Ella got three and a half steps in before she seemed to realise that she was on her feet, and started to wonder how she was doing it. Dan caught her up just as her legs wobbled, and praised her for her amazing efforts.
‘Did you see that, Jess? She walked.’ Even in the face of this morning’s concerns, Dan couldn’t help but grin.
‘I’ve been waiting for this moment.’ Jess’s words were filled with pride, and then her voice turned husky as Dan passed Ella to her and she cuddled her daughter close. ‘What a good girl you are, Ella.’
Ella gave a baby laugh and cuddled back, but Jess still had the strangest look on her face. It had come the moment she saw Ella walking to Dan.
Dan looked at her with her daughter in her arms, and he thought about Ella walking to him and all the memories of all of his children, and he wondered what it would be like to have a child…with Jess?
The thought so startled him that he fell silent. Did he want to have a child with Jess? That would mean that he wanted—
Dan’s mobile phone
rang. The caller was Adele. ‘Hello, Adele. How are you? How are the children? Is everything okay?’
He sounded quite normal, Dan thought. Not like a man asking himself questions that he’d believed were answered four years ago.
‘Yes, we’re all fine. Just letting you know we’ll be back today at about five.’ Adele cleared her throat. ‘And that we, sort of, well, shopped a little.’
‘No problem.’ Dan could feel his ears turning red, as though some part of him felt that his sister would know that Jess was here holding her daughter, and that Dan had made love to Jess last night.
Well, now it was today and they had their lives to get on with. They weren’t going to cross those boundaries again. They’d both agreed about that so Dan didn’t have to psychoanalyse or regret.
‘I’ll see you later, Dan.’ Adele’s tone was a little questioning, but she ended the call without saying more.
He set the phone down. Of course Adele would wonder. He hadn’t asked to speak to any of the children or what they’d been buying or any of the things he’d normally have done.
‘I—I should get busy with some housekeeping, Dan. It’s too early to go to the shops.’ Jess heard the tentative edge to her tone as she addressed him, and forced her chin up. She couldn’t fall apart. Not now. Not because of last night. Not because Ella had walked to Dan and Jess’s heart, those walls around her heart, had taken one final big shake and crashed down.
Ella had reached out to him with total trust and taken her first steps to him.
Jess had reached out to him last night and taken a step with him too. She’d thought she had it under control, but she hadn’t. Because when she watched Ella walk to Dan, it hit Jess just why she had felt so deeply about what they had shared last night. Why she had needed it and longed for it so much.
She’d fallen in love with him! All the way in, heart, soul, the whole lot. She hadn’t realised she was doing it and now she had and she had to undo it! She couldn’t love Dan. Not like that. He wouldn’t give back in the same way and she’d end up so hurt.
Been there, done that, and Peter Rosche had turned out not to even be the man Jess had thought she’d fallen for.
Dan was Dan. Jess had no doubt that he was exactly who he was. Her complete lack of doubt was what should concern her most of all. Dan was a man who’d loved and lost and would never love again. Eighteen years with his Rebecca. How could he ever move past that amount of history with a woman he had loved utterly?
‘I apologise, Jess.’ Dan’s low words weren’t really unexpected.
They still hurt, and wasn’t that silly? But Jess didn’t want to hear him apologise. She wanted him to refuse to say sorry for any aspect of last night, to want to keep her and find some means to take their relationship forward…
‘There’s no need to say anything.’ There was no need for Jess to think such thoughts, either. It wasn’t going to happen. Not in a million billion years.
‘I think there is.’ His mouth tightened. ‘You work for me. I shouldn’t have put you in a position that could make you uncomfortable with me afterwards, could risk that. I don’t want to lose you as the carer for the children. Even when they’re back in school I want at least two days a week—’
‘What happened was a joint decision.’ Jess had walked into it, eyes open. She’d made up her mind what she wanted. But her heart hadn’t realised what it was letting itself in for.
Dan was worried that she’d feel too uncomfortable to stay with him—and he wanted her to stay on more permanently! A frown came to her brows as Jess started to think what that would be like, now. She loved Dan. She was in love with Dan.
And he liked her. He wanted her to help him with housework and the children. He didn’t want her for herself.
It was still work, and Jess cared about his children, even the difficult Luke.
Jess drew herself up. ‘This job matters to me. I like knowing that I’m helping you. If you’re happy to carry on, I don’t see why we can’t.’
He blew out a breath and his face for a moment reflected relief.
Because he was trying to back away from what happened last night, Jessica, and without losing you for his children. Don’t read anything more than that into it.
Dan might even have been concerned how she would react to a perceived breach of their employer/employee relationship, but it had been a joint choice.
Jess excused herself then. There was nothing more to be said. She’d fallen in love in a totally unsuitable way with a man who didn’t love her back and never would.
With Ella scooped into her arms, Jess took her daughter away to change her nappy, and then immersed herself in taking care of laundry and house cleaning and shopping.
They ate sandwiches for lunch and Jess baked, and then put on a casserole so there’d be food for when Dan’s children got back. Mid-afternoon she excused herself and went home.
Jess hadn’t told Dan about her visits from Peter’s parents but it could wait. There hadn’t exactly been the right moment.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
‘JESS. IT’S…DAN.’
‘Dan. What’s the matter?’ Jess had been sound asleep when her mobile phone started to ring. She’d leapt from bed and grabbed it, hoping the sound wouldn’t wake Ella. It was still dark outside. The bedside clock said five a.m. Why would Dan call at this hour?
‘I—don’t feel right. One eye blurry. Face feels funny.’ He drew a sharp breath. ‘Called—to go to hospital.’
‘Oh my God. Dan!’ Jess snatched up the skirt she’d had on last night and pulled it on with the phone to her ear. ‘You’ve called an ambulance?’
‘Yes. Need you to come.’
A sick knot lodged itself deep inside Jess. ‘I’m coming. I’ll grab Ella and be right there, Dan.’
Jess disconnected and threw on the rest of her clothes, shoved her feet into sandals, snatched up Ella and the carry bag she always kept with her, and rushed to the car.
What was happening to Dan? He’d been struggling to speak. The symptoms sounded like a heart attack, didn’t they, or a stroke? Either one was really bad!
She was at Dan’s minutes later, in time to see Luke walk beside the officers as they loaded a gurney into the back of the ambulance. Dan was on that gurney. Jess drew up as close as she could, got Ella out and into her stroller in record time—her daughter was still more than halfway asleep—and hurried over. Her stomach lurched for Dan even as she worried how Luke would respond to her.
‘Jess. I don’t know what to do!’ Luke blurted out the words without leaving his father’s side. Tears formed in his eyes and he blinked them back fiercely.
‘Stand back and let us load him, son.’ The first ambulance officer caught Jess’s gaze as he and the other man got Dan loaded into the back of the vehicle. ‘Are you his partner?’
‘Yes.’ She was Dan’s working partner and she loved him. That was enough as far as Jess was concerned. She wrapped her arm around Luke’s shoulders and held on tight to the boy, and hoped he wouldn’t get upset about that lie. ‘Tell me what’s wrong with him.’
‘He’ll be properly diagnosed at the hospital.’
‘But you must have some idea.’ Jess tried not to sound as worried as she felt. Beneath her hand, Luke’s shoulders locked with tension.
‘It’s presenting as some form of stroke.’
‘That’s serious.’ Luke made a choked sound, quickly stifled.
‘We’re going to take care of this, Luke. Your father’s going to be all right.’ Jess spoke almost sternly, but oh, she was terrified.
‘Jess.’ Dan said her name.
Jess’s heart leapt into her throat as she curled her fingers around Dan’s and held on. ‘I’m here, Dan.’ The words were choked. ‘You need to get to the hospital.’
Worried eyes sought hers. ‘Take care—?’
‘I will, Dan. I’ll take care of everything.’ Of course she would.
Jess turned to the nearest ambulance officer. ‘Please!’ She didn�
�t know what she was begging for, only the taste of fear in her mouth. Nothing could happen to him!
Dan relaxed back onto the gurney. He caught his son’s gaze with his eyes, and a moment later Luke had his arms around his father. Luke dry sobbed, once, and then the ambulance was on its way.
‘We should have gone with him,’ Luke said in a strangled tone as Jess hurried him inside. ‘We could have woken everyone up.’
Jess struggled to think. ‘I have to organise babysitting.’ She needed to be at the hospital, to do whatever she could, ensure Dan got the best care. Anything! Jess snatched up the phone.
In what felt like an hour but was less than half that time, Jess had organised babysitting and was on the way to the hospital.
‘Thanks—thanks for letting me come with you.’ The words came uncertainly from Luke’s mouth as Jess screeched her car to a halt in the closest visitor parking space at the hospital. She flung her door open and half jogged with Luke to the entrance.
‘He’s going to need you, Luke.’ It was all she could manage for the worried boy. Jess was worried. Sick with it.
If anything bad happened to Dan… If she lost…
‘You’re scared, too.’ Luke cleared his throat.
‘Yes, Luke, I am.’ Jess couldn’t tell him she was even more scared because she’d fallen in love with his father. In Luke’s mind that part of his father belonged to his mother and always would. Jess couldn’t fight that out with Luke. Not now.
Maybe Luke, too, was too upset to think about it because he didn’t say anything, just stuck to her side as she rushed to the front desk. ‘Dan Frazier. He came in by ambulance.’
‘Are you the partner?’
Jess glanced at Luke. ‘Yes.’
‘He’s being cared for. You can take a seat for the moment.’
Jess and Luke sat. ‘I wanted them to be open with me about his condition, Luke.’
‘I know.’
It was a tense wait before they were allowed to slip in to see Dan briefly. He had a nurse watching him and he was in the intensive care unit.
There were monitors hooked up to him; his face was pale.